Is the Episcopal Church necessary? Guest commentary

This is a really terrific commentary by Bishop Dan Edwards about the Episcopal Church. Is our church even necessary? Why? What do we offer? I highly commend this to you, and hope you will read to the end:

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Saturday, August 9, 2014 
6th EPISTLE TO THE NEVADANS Is The Episcopal Church Possible Today?

The Conga Line. I will tell you what I mean by “the Episcopal Church” and why it is a real question as to whether we have any place in the 21st Century. But first we need to consider why our existence matters. This story may not say it all, but it suggests a lot to those who can set aside the assumptions about religion grounded in how we adapted Anglicanism to suit the tastes of Boomers and Gen-Exers over these past 40 years.

Around 1990 (give or take), an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco began bold new innovations to their ritual. Some were grounded in practices of the Early Church, but others suited the tastes of young people a quarter century ago. One such innovation was the conga line. The people danced their way out of the liturgy of the word into the liturgy of the table. As happens in our culture, especially in our church, the bold new innovation either disappears and is forgotten or it meets another curious fate: it becomes fashionable. I pass no judgment on the use of the conga line then. My point is what happens when it becomes fashionable.

In one diocese this year, a diocese we might think of as rather conservative, the bishop and youth minister decided to make the diocesan convention more engaging to the youth. Their plan: a conga line at Communion. They were giddy with the excitement of how cool the youth would find this, how delighted the youth would be with their boldness in doing what had been going on in San Francisco for 25 years now. But that was before EYE (Episcopal Youth Event) 2014.

That diocese sent a strong youth delegation to the Episcopal Youth Event in Philadelphia. The mission-focused event was a huge success. The worship had a few unfortunate snags from my standpoint – like passing the plate for the offering during the final half of the Eucharistic prayer on one occasion – but on the whole it was high energy, moving, powerful, engaging worship – and, after all, the glitches were probably grating to only this 64 year old curmudgeon from a seminary notoriously picky when it comes to ritual. But, to the point: the adult planners of EYE were of a mind with the conservative diocese – cool worship for cool young people needs a conga line so a conga line we had.

Near the end of the week, the diocesan youth minister asked her teens what had been the best part of EYE and what was the worst. There were almost as many contenders for the best thing as there were teens. But they all agreed on what was worst: the conga line. At the moment when they had wanted to meditatively and reflectively prepare to meet God, their prayer was interrupted by a self-conscious poser attempt at coolness. The conga line may have rocked the world of Gen-X in 1990 – but not teens in 2014.

The Episcopal Church. We are an oddity in the Christian world by the very way we define ourselves – not by different answers from other denominations, but by different questions. Since the 2nd Century A.D. Anglican Christianity had a distinctive style of worship and spiritual practice. It was never set over in opposition to the rest of Christianity. It was just our way, our part of the Body of Christ.

In the 16th Century, Western Christianity splintered into multiple factions, each defining itself over against the others by fine points of doctrine. The Lutherans had the Augsburg Confession (350 pages); the Calvinists, the Westminster Confession (550 pages); etc. Roman Catholicism had previously entertained a variety of doctrines but in response to the Reformation, began to tie down the party line at the Council of Trent so they too could be defined by their doctrines.

Anglicanism waffled briefly but after the Elizabethan Settlement simply declined to define ourselves very tightly by doctrines. We later came up with 39 Articles (2 pages) so we could talk with our ecumenical friends, but even those Articles failed to grab our imagination or hold our allegiance. We said instead, “This is how we pray” and “praying shapes believing.” “Come pray with us, in the old ways, the Apostolic ways, and over time your beliefs will grow and deepen and become more refined.” Two people praying in the same pew may hold very different doctrinal opinions, but they can still pray together, each interpreting the prayer in her own way. They can talk through their differences of belief in a class or just keep their opinions to themselves. We are a people of diverse opinions united by Common Prayer.

Common Prayer held us together while we differed over all manner of things – evolution versus creation; racial issues; support for versus opposition to controversial wars; etc. etc. People who disagreed passionately about politics and even religion knelt together, confessed their sins together, were absolved together, and blessed each other with “the peace of the Lord.”

In addition to Common Prayer, there was also a secondary trait that defined us: the way we made our decisions. It was a question of authority – who got to make the decisions. The struggle for authority reared its head in Western Christianity early and often. Look at the Epistles of Paul, Clement of Rome, and Ignatius of Antioch. Christians have always been a bit headstrong. It came to a crisis as a fight between clergy authority and lay authority in “the Investiture Controversy” of the 11th Century.

In a dramatic showdown between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, the clergy won and ran the culture for 500 years – but never without rumbling from the lay authorities (kings, princes, lords). The fight between Archbishop Thomas Beckett and King Henry II is a classic example. The melodrama around Henry VIII’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon was not about sex as it seems in the movies. It was about the limits of clergy authority and the autonomy of national churches.

The English Reformation was about authority more than anything else. The resolution was a notion that has come up again this year as the Episcopal Church undertakes restructuring – “Shared Governance.” Some authority was vested in clerical authority; other authority was reserved to lay authority; and a lot of things require the concurrence of both clergy and laity. Take for example the election of a bishop. In order to elect a bishop at a diocesan convention, the same candidate must receive over 50% of the votes of the Order of the Clergy and the Order of the Laity on the same ballot. The authority of clergy and the authority of the laity do two things: 1. Obviously, they check and balance each other so that one order does not impose its will overmuch on the other; but also 2. (less obviously but just as importantly), they inform each other, teach each other, refine each other, keep a lively conversation going.

The authority of clergy and laity are organized this way at each level – rector & vestry in the parish; bishop & Standing Committee/ Convention in the diocese; House of Bishops & House of Deputies at General Convention. (The laity are reinforced by priests and deacons at the diocesan and Gen Con levels to keep a special eye on bishops – whom we don’t want to inflate with too much power lest they run amok.) This dialectic, this conversation, of laity and clergy is not as apparent on a Sunday morning as our Common Prayer, but it is also intrinsic to our character and it is distinctive among Christian denominations.

Romantic Individualism And Common Prayer. Over against Common Prayer and Shared Governance, there is a prevailing force in our culture. That is to say it has been prevailing for the past half century and it has roots going back to the early 19th Century. It is the elevation of the autonomous individual over all other sources of truth or judgment of right. Particularly in the domain of religion, where things cannot be proven by our one universally accepted authority – the scientific experiment – our culture values radical subjectivity. “I believe in the God of my creation and worship that God in the way that expresses my feelings. My religion is how I express my subjective beliefs, which are of my choosing.”

This poses an obvious problem for Prayer Book Spirituality, i.e., the practice of Common Prayer. Priests take ordination vows to be loyal to the “worship of the Episcopal Church.” But that is hard to do in an era whose theme song could be “I did it my way.” If the priest does not adhere to the Church’s practice of Common Prayer, then either the priest leads the congregation into his or her own subjectivity or tailors the worship to suit the subjectivity of the most influential members. It becomes a problematic power dynamic.

The Book of Common Prayer does not tie down every detail of worship. It leaves options and room for innovation and addition, but it does have a basic structure. It is like a tennis court with bounds and a net. That is what sets us apart from the “Free Church” traditions in which worship has no prescribed form. If one goes to a particular UCC (Congregationalist) Church for example, worship may follow a completely different form and style from another UCC Church. In the Free Church tradition, each congregation goes its own way like the divorcing members of Fleetwood Mack.

I do not mean to criticize the Free Church tradition. Most Christian denominations are of that form. The question I am asking is this: if the Episcopal Church gives up the spirituality that defines us, is there any reason for us to exist as part of the Body of Christ? If we are not defined as a denomination by our fidelity to Common Prayer, then that raises the pressure considerably for us to find a new way to define ourselves – that is, by some common opinion.

But here’s where the situation goes from troubling to deeply disturbing. It is highly unlikely in our era of Romantic Individualism that we can come to a common theological opinion. People today, even in doctrinally defined churches, do not personally identify with their theological beliefs. They identify instead with their political ideologies. In fact, we live in a society that is increasingly unable to address the issues that confront us – environmental issues; immigration policy; income inequality; the influence of money in elections and the consequences for government, etc. – because we are so identified with our political opinions that we cannot reason with each other or reach compromises without fear of losing our souls, which we have come to think of as fused with our politics.

The hope for holding together a society so politically divided is people coming together in prayer to be shaped together, formed together, challenged together and so transformed. In a world where people only gather for worship with those who share their political and social beliefs, there is no opportunity for transformation. But where we do come together, prayer that does not express what we already feel, but rather Common Prayer, the liturgy and those who are faithful to it can change us. Do we dare to be changed?

A story: Shortly after the Civil War in Virginia, a Black man showed up at an Episcopal Church. That was not new. But this time he did not sit in the balcony. When the invitation to receive Communion was extended, he went up to the altar rail and received. The white 1866 Virginia congregation did not know what to do. But from the back of the Church, the grey bearded senior warden walked up the aisle, knelt at the rail, and received the sacrament. Perhaps because the Senior Warden was Robert E. Lee, the rest of the congregation received the sacrament as well. The liturgy did not express what they believed. It challenged what they believed and changed them. It built a bridge they had not imagined. Do we dare to be changed? Do we dare to build bridges to people with whom we do not agree? If you want to consider this issue presented far more compellingly than I can, especially here in print, I urge you to watch Bishop Michael Curry’s explanation of the unifying power of the Eucharist in this short video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USOMZpGheBc

This ancient ritual we have inherited as our spiritual legacy is not an arbitrary construct. It contains truths that cannot be conveyed directly. It touches us at levels we cannot understand. Sometimes we feel moved emotionally as in Evangelical or Pentecostal worship. But other times the movement is at a level deeper than emotions, as in Buddhist meditation. Common Prayer does not express what we already feel or recite opinions we already hold. It calls us into truths that are new to us as individuals but older by far than humanity.

Romantic Individualism And Shared Governance. Romantic individualism is at a minimum suspicious of, usually downright opposed to, any authority other than the subjective will of the individual constrained only by the duty not to interfere with the subjective will of another individual. That works quite well for dancing depending on what kind of dancing is being done on the particular dance floor. It might not work so well if folks are square dancing, line dancing, or waltzing. It also would not work so well for a football team. Some things can be accomplished only by people working together and that necessitates the group exercising some sort of authority.

Our system is unusually democratic. Clergy have authority over a very limited set of decisions. That is based on their training, which qualifies them to make those decisions wisely and in keeping with the tradition and teachings of the Church. Most of what happens in Church is governed by democratically elected lay people. Authority in the Episcopal Church is exercised collaboratively because working together is how we learn and grow.

But again Romantic Individualism poses a problem. During the course of setting out a path to restructuring the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine and the President of the House of Bishops both spoke of a plan for “Shared Governance.” They were rather surprised to hear responses objecting to “governance” at all, shared or not, regardless of who did it.

A story: This year I made an appointment that is in my canonical authority to make. But I did not just haul off and do it. The vestry asked me to do it by an overwhelming majority vote. Still I invited the congregation to offer their guidance. Again the overwhelming majority of the congregation joined the vestry in asking me to do the same thing. But some members of the congregation still objected to my making the appointment. It was an oppressive exercise of power.

Romantic Individualism makes it impossible to function as a group even when the group has high level of consensus, perhaps especially when the group has a high level of consensus. The Romantic Individualist wants his way regardless of any authority structures, even the authority of the majority of the group even on a decision about the course of the group.

So here is the question: are we willing to be part of a community if that means bending our will so we can accomplish things together? Does bending our will diminish us, make us less – or are we something larger than our will, so that giving up our will might be a way to grow. Might submission to the God’s Church, the Body of Christ, be an exercise in submitting to God? And might submitting to God be how we most genuinely pray, “Thy kingdom come”?

I am not sure the Episcopal Church is possible in an era of Romantic Individualism. But it may well be that Romantic Individualism makes the Episcopal Church necessary. Romantic Individualism may be the disease for which the Church is the cure. Christianity along with Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and most of the name brand world religions, regards our ego, our self-will, as the problem to be overcome through religious practice. “I have become a great problem to myself,” St. Augustine said, explaining his decision to embrace Christianity. To choose Christ was to give himself away. Paul said, “Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . . . . Do nothing from ambition or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians) “Be filled with the Spirit . . . submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5: 18-21)

If Christian spirituality is right that the path to joy lies through surrender of the ego-will (often called “the flesh” by Paul), then submitting to the reasonable and moral decisions of people authorized to make those decisions is an essential spiritual practice. If we approach our faith that way, then we do not go to Church to get our way. Quite the opposite. Such a spirituality would even give money to the congregation trusting the vestry to spend it rightly rather than designating gifts so as to hang on to the power.

Do you see that the issue is the same in governance and prayer? It is the choice between the assertion of self and the surrender of self. So is the Episcopal Church, with its Common Payer and Shared Governance, possible in our time?

Conclusion: Tom Wolfe dubbed people my age “the Me Generation” because we were so unabashedly self-involved. I am not sure those just a bit younger are much less self-involved. For us, Romantic Individualism is an implicit assumption about what makes for a good life. To us, the Episcopal Church is naturally a hard sell, but it may be a necessary one. Just as we have had a particular need for 12-step programs to free our souls from the chemical addictions we acquired while expressing ourselves, we need help getting free from addiction to self-will. Is the Episcopal Church possible for us? Gabriel told Mary, “With God all things are possible.”

But the Millennial Generation is a whole new ball game. They are looking for mission, hungry for community, and in many cases lean toward a contemplative mystical ritual such as the Book of Common Prayer as opposed to the more exuberantly expressive worship of the renewal movement so loved by my generation. I am thinking of those young people who did not like the conga line to the altar rail one little bit. It may just be that this generation, which is so commonly said to have left the Church, is the very generation for whom the Episcopal Church, Common Prayer, and Shared Governance is a perfect fit.

My concern is whether the Episcopal Church, as we know it will be here for them. I am not concerned that we will close our doors. I am concerned that we will abandon Common Prayer and Shared Governance caving to Romantic Individualism. My hope is that we will not. My hope is that we will keep the porch light on for today’s young people who will be looking for us tomorrow night. 

The analogue Church in the digital age

Beginning tomorrow, the Episcopal Communicators hold their annual conference in Memphis (among my favorite cities). The Episcopal Communicators is an association of church professionals who are responsible for getting our message into the world and, we hope, the message of the world back into our churches.

The message coming back is digital, but we are listening in analogue.

The conference should raise a question: Aren't all of us supposed to be "Episcopal communicators"? Shouldn't all of us in the Church be figuring out how to communicate in this digital world? Isn't that what mission should be about in the 21st century? The video below was posted by my friend Dan Edwards, the bishop of Nevada, on his Facebook page. It is worth five minutes of your time and a lot more than that in conversation:

Dan Edwards: Planting seeds where he goes

I've been posting a fair amount here lately, and so today I bring you a guest blogger, Dan Edwards, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Nevada.

He writes a very thoughtful blog about his many travels through the sage brush state, his experiences of God and his theological reflections along the way. He plants many seeds where he goes.

Bishop Dan posted this last week, and I bring it to you today:

Envivo De Michoacan

By the Right Rev. Dan Edwards

Every day I forget that my purposes for what I do are only my purposes. God invariably has larger plans. Today I set out to study Spanish, and so I did -- in the morning – more irregular verbs and rules for when to use and when to omit articles. (Those who speak languages are strictly bound to obey the rules; but those who create the rules make up exceptions at will. Where is the justice in that?)

This afternoon, I was supposed to go with the other students on a guided (in Spanish) walking tour of the city. But the tour was cancelled so I walked alone and found myself at the Cathedral – a beautiful old Gothic building. Along with a scattered group of clearly devout people, I spent some time praying in the nave, then went to pray in the Lady Chapel which was crowded with people praying fervently on a Wednesday afternoon. It is a holy thing to be surrounded by so much reverence. As I began to leave, I heard the beginning of mass at the main altar so I stayed for worship. It was an unexpected blessing.

I then walked back to the school for Conversation Club, an informal gathering for casual discourse, the point of which is to practice one’s language. I went to practice Spanish, but found myself at a table of young Mexicans who needed to work on their English. So we spoke English most of the time, as we sat outside on the roof the school, the darkness falling around us.

One of the young men at my table is an artist, a sketch artist who wants to become a “real” artist and his passion is to paint sacred art. He was a bit shy about this since his teachers and fellow students have told him he is in the wrong century for that kind of painting. This issue set me off and I found myself giving a lecture on theology – how religion is a language about the ineffable mystery, it is a set of symbols pointing toward things that cannot be spoken – and art can sometimes suggest the mystery better than words – Caravaggio was the greatest theologian of his day.

Then I rambled on to what we mean by “God” and how for the past few centuries we have identified “God” with dominating power – and if “God” means our highest value and God is defined by such power, then we worship power. The effect on our souls is to make us power mongers and that is the religious root of violence.

But an older view of God as the Supreme Beauty has been reclaimed by contemporary theologians beginning with Hans Urs Von Balthasar. We call to mind the greatest beauty we can imagine. Then we consider that there may be a beauty beyond that, something we cannot touch even with our imaginations, and in that thought we begin to approach God. Such a view of God opens us to pay attention, to apprehend beauty, to be transformed by beauty. The transforming power of spiritual beauty is the meaning of the beatific vision in Dante.

I noticed this group of young people was utterly and completely with me, caught up in my spontaneous sermon on faith and the visual arts. The artist was genuinely inspired. So I said to myself, “And I thought I was just here to study Spanish. Maybe God intended to nurture my soul with the silent reverence of those people praying in the cathedral. And maybe God gave me a message someone needed to hear.” I actually believe God did. Maybe someday someone’s soul will be touched in some blessed way by a painting, and they will be grateful for this work by Rivera (his name, like Diego) but will never know that Rivera’s approach to painting drew in a small way on spiritual guidance he received from a nameless American cleric in Morelia circa 2011 – or that the nameless cleric spoke out of the silence he had just experienced among the nameless faithful gathered to pray on a Wednesday afternoon in the Cathedral, people who prayed for their own purposes, not knowing that God intended their piety to touch a foreigner who would in turn touch a young artist who would someday touch someone not yet born.

Above: Semeadores ("Seed Planters"), painting by Diego Rivera.

All True Christians: Bishop Dan Edwards

I am off on the Vestry retreat today, so I am featuring a "guest" blogger: Dan Edwards, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Nevada. I met him in an elevator last summer in Anaheim at General Convention. He was the only bishop wearing a baseball cap on the floor of the House of Bishops so I had to like him.

He wrote this the other day on his blog (you can read his blog by clicking HERE). I am reprinting this in full; it is thought-provoking:

All True Christians

By Dan Edwards

“All True Christians Are Pro-Life,” thus said a bumper sticker in Carson City.

I am indebted to this bumper sticker for keeping me entertained for days, spinning out lines of inquiry and wonder at such a curiously arrogant assertion of dogma. These are a few of the things I wonder about.

Who decides what opinions you have to hold in order to be a “true Christian?” For centuries, we worked out our definitions of orthodoxy in ecumenical councils. Bishops from all over the Christian world met in prayerful deliberation, guided by theologians, mystics, and people of noted sanctity. They came to a consensus definition of the faith. In those days, the statements of the ecumenical councils set the limits on Christian belief. There was a lot going on in the Protestant Reformation, but the theological heart of it was the claim that the definitions articulated by the councils had become too precise. Each person, the reformers insisted, should be given a copy of the sacred text, written in his or her own language, and allowed to find their own understanding of the truth guided by the indwelling Holy Spirit -- not an ecclesiastical hierarchy. That opened up the possibilities of “true Christianity” to a radically wider array of opinions. What may be new in our time is the extension of this individuality to the right of each individual not only to discern his or her own interpretation but to declare that interpretation to be orthodoxy itself and pronounce anathema on anyone who has reached a different interpretation.

So who defines a “true Christian” today? Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition took most of the pending legislation of the 1990’s, prescribed a right position on that legislation, and claimed that any legislator who voted wrong on any issue was not a “true Christian.” But how did Ralph get that authority? He couldn’t even get himself elected Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. Yet he claimed a greater authority than the Council of Nicaea.

It used to be so simple. For Paul, if you could say “Jesus is Lord,” you were a true Christian even if you had some harebrained ideas. Eventually that 3-word affirmation grew into the Apostle’s Creed, and finally the Nicene Creed. In the 4th Century, being baptized and saying the Nicene Creed were enough to call yourself a true Christian even if you could not have passed Ralph Reed’s gauntlet of legislative issues test. Who decides whether someone is a “true Christian?” Maybe we could go back to objective standards like the Bible and the Ancient Creeds. Otherwise, we are in the hands of the manufacturers of bumper stickers.

But what about the substance of the claim itself? Are all true Christians “pro-life?” The threshold issue is: what do we mean by “pro-life?” If it means a basic orientation toward life and engagement with the world as opposed to life-denying asceticism, then I have to agree that a true Christian is pro-life. We are an Easter people, a people of the Resurrection. So we are for life – no doubt about it. I would think being pro-life compels one to be an ardent advocate of the Millenium Development Goals, to eradicate death-dealing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, and malnutrition. A pro-life person sends Nets For Life to Kenya. Since life depends on health, surely one who is pro-life must oppose toxic waste dumping, nuclear proliferation, global warming, and smoking. Are all of these positions essential to being a true Christian? Is that what the bumper sticker means?

Of course, that is not at all what “pro-life” means in American politics. It means support for government regulation of a women’s choice to carry a pregnancy to term as opposed to abort. I have no doubt whatsoever that a true Christian can be “pro-life” in that sense. I know many of them. But is that moral stance so indisputable as to be the core of Christian faith? It is probably not in Scripture (one verse is possibly – but it’s a stretch – arguable). It is definitely not in the Creeds. It is not an ancient dogma of the Church. It was never addressed by an ecumenical council. The Episcopal Church’s Resolution on abortion is “pro-life” in that it regards all life as sacred, it holds any abortion to be a “tragic choice,” and says abortion should never be done for trivial reasons – but it finally affirms that this is an intimate moral decision to be made by a woman with pastoral guidance and moral counseling – not something to be regulated by the government. So, if being “pro-life” means I have to support legislation, I would have to defy the teachings of my church in order to be a “true Christian.” Yet, so many of the Epistles and the writings of Church Fathers like Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Rome say that a true Christian respects the teachings of the Church. The bumper sticker does put many of us on the horns of dilemma.

How do we define a “true Christian?” What are the standards? My son-in-law, an ordained presbyter of the Methodist Church, recently “became a fan” of a Face Book page supporting gay marriage. A friend wrote him a lengthy exposition explaining that homosexuality is a sin, so she could not understand how a Christian could support such a thing. She was making a host of major assumptions which many of us who think of ourselves as Christians do not share – for example the basic function of the Bible as a rule book, the interpretation of ritual purity violations as “sins” even though both Testaments clearly treat them differently, the idea that forbidding one specific sexual practice implies the prohibition of others, the idea that rules explicitly directed against men can be extended to women, the notion that most ritual purity rules were superseded by the gospel but a select few were not, that the whole of moral revelation was complete in the Scripture, etc.

Again, there are clearly thousands of people on both sides of this issue –thousands who have been baptized, who receive the sacraments regularly, who recite the Ancient Creeds, and revere the Holy Scriptures, all saying “Jesus is Lord” and meaning it – yet who disagree about the morality of homosexuality. Is it possible for these people to disagree and yet recognize each other as “true Christians?” Yes, if . . . .

And here I gulp at what I feel compelled to say. In this post-modern age of devout subjectivism, I know this sounds hopelessly conservative. We can do what our forebears did. We can disagree and have high-charged energetic provocative conversations about the implications of the faith, but only if we embrace a strong orthodoxy and a vigorous orthopraxy.

The orthodoxy consists of a commitment to the sacred text, our holy Scriptures, as the starting point of discussion; a commitment to the ancient creeds as the framework, the language structure for our image of God; and a willingness to listen respectfully to the teachers, saints, poets, and sages of our tradition more than the pundits of today. The orthopraxy consists of a commitment to the Summary of the Law. To love God with all our hearts is to love a mystery, to revere a mystery, and so to be humble in the presence of that mystery. To love my neighbor as myself is to give him what is his due and what I expect in return, a decent respect for my integrity and my conscience. It occurs to me that adherence to the Summary of the Law might imply a certain reticence in what I paste to my bumper.

Blogs I like

This morning I am feeling out of words -- perhaps I need a sabbath from the blog for a bit. So I want to tell you about a few blogs I really like. There is a whole string of them on the left side of this page. But here are three I am plugging:

Lori K's Cafe -- Yep, wife Lori's food blog. Check out her cooking tips, everything from the difference between fried and baked bacon to drying parsley. Even if you don't cook, it's good fun and probably will make you hungry. Find her blog by clicking HERE.

Midlife Bat Mitzvah -- My long-time friend Ilana Debare, a former reporter and columnist with The San Francisco Chronicle, has started a blog about her journey as adult Bat Mitzvah (the ceremony to take place in 2011). What else is a middle-aged former journalist to do? Ilana has a great wit and a genuine discerning heart; travel along with her by clicking HERE.

Pickup truck bishop -- Speaking of journeys, Dan Edwards, the Episcopal Bishop of Nevada, writes a wonderful blog about his travels around his state in his pickup truck (which is patched together with duct tape). He has a dry wit, a holy presence and a cowboy hat. Follow him by clicking HERE.

What is salvation? Ask a poet

We soon enter into Holy Week, with the events of betrayal, crucifixion, and entering into Hell itself. At the end comes the startling celebration and declaration of Resurrection, new life, Easter. And as Dan Edwards, the bishop of Nevada, suggests on his terrific blog, these events raise the question: What is salvation?

The apostle Paul attempts to answer that question in his many letters, but even Paul admits we "see in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:12). Many a theologian has since tried to define salvation and/or the mechanisms of grace. Complicated scholarly constructions and volumes of paper are created in the task. Thomas Aquinas finally admitted that his efforts amounted to little more than a "stack of straw" and he never wrote another word.

I rather think that the poets may have a better grasp of this, or at least a better grasp at expressing the meaning of salvation (regular readers just knew I'd end up at a poem, didn't you?). And so it is that our friend Karen in Tennessee sent a poem yesterday that took my breath away. Here it is:

Salvation

by Lynn Ungar

By what are you saved? And how?
Saved like a bit of string,
tucked away in a drawer?
Saved like a child rushed from
a burning building, already
singed and coughing smoke?
Or are you salvaged
like a car part -- the one good door
when the rest is wrecked?

Do you believe me when I say
you are neither salvaged nor saved,
but salved, anointed by gentle hands
where you are most tender?
Haven't you seen
the way snow curls down
like a fresh sheet, how it
covers everything,
makes everything
beautiful, without exception?