The Monday Funnies

Thanks to artist Dave Walker, here, at last, is a tour of a typical clergy office. Any resemblance to the living or dead is merely a coincidence. Welcome to the Monday Funnies...

Bishop Johnston meets at St. Paul's

A few days ago, Bishop Shannon Johnston visited St. Paul's and met with members of our Gay-Straight Concerns group. Bishop Shannon listened as each person told something of their own story. The bishop then discussed various developments in the Anglican Communion and some of the issues that are facing General Convention this summer. 

We are very grateful that Bishop Shannon spent time at St. Paul's and with this important group in the life of our parish. We look forward to having him back on a Sunday later this year or early next year. 

I am especially grateful to those who came to the meeting, for their faithful sharing and listening, and for their courage and their commitment in standing up for the equality of all people. I pray we will continue to witness to the Grace and love God intends for all of us.

And thanks to Gwynn Crichton for the photo.

Fiat Lux: One year later

I launched this blog one year ago today. I had never blogged before, but somehow managed to maneuver through the labyrinth of blogspot.com to get this out in the ethernet. 

My first blog entry was brief, and I wrote this: "I will post here from time to time items I find of interest, either in the church world or in the world at large, and I invite your conversation. Yes, this is no substitute for talking over a glass of your favorite beverage, so consider this to be a conversation starter."

That first post generated six comments.

Since then, there have been 367 posts in this space, including this one. In October, I added a counter, and since then there have been more than 20,000 views of this blog from all over the world and from every continent except Antarctica. Many of you have left comments (for those wondering how, click on "Comment" below each post). Many more of you have sent private emails or mentioned something in conversation about something you saw on the blog.

For me, I've enjoyed this immensely. My journalistic bones get their exercise by writing this blog daily, and I suspect I get more out of this than you do. I am especially appreciative of those who have sent me poems, essays and jokes for inclusion in Fiat Lux. Forgive me if I haven't used everything. There are days when a poem from Karen or joke from Bill or Pat have kept this blog up-and-running. Many mornings I have no idea what to put here until after I've read the papers and my email, and had a cup of coffee.

You may not have noticed: there is a related blog to this one where all of the poems on this blog are compiled in an easily accessible listing. You can reach that blog by clicking HERE or by clicking on the hand-and-pen icon on the left side of the screen.

I've tried to keep things simple; usually only one entry per day. On the left side of your screen are various links for causes and organizations that I support, and a blogroll of various blogs that I enjoy, not all of them church-related. This week I also added a link to the St. Paul's Memorial Church site on Facebook. From time-to-time there will be other additions, tweaks and improvements, and please send me your suggestions for others.

Some have asked about the name of the blog -- Fiat Lux -- which is Latin for "Let there be Light." The phrase comes from my personal mission statement, borrowed from the Song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68-79), quoted to the left at the top. And those with blue-and-gold toenails have also noted that Fiat Lux happens to be the motto of a certain large public university from which all Richardsons have graduated.

Thank you so much for following this blog, for your prayers and support and all of your comments. And, again, as I wrote at the outset, "this is no substitute for talking over a glass of your favorite beverage, so consider this to be a conversation starter."

Photo of Nepal sunrise, credit to REI.

Standing in the rain

It rains a lot in Charlottesville, and lately it seems like every day. The woods are now thick with foliage, and from our front porch the line of trees now blocks the view of the Ragged Mountains a few miles beyond. Here's a poem for a warm rainy day from our friend Karen in Tennessee (another place where it rains a lot):

What’s Left

by Kerrie Hardie

I used to wait for the flowers,
my pleasure reposed on them.
Now I like plants before they get to the blossom.
Leafy ones – foxgloves, comfrey, delphiniums –
fleshy tiers of strong leaves pushing up
into air grown daily lighter and more sheened
with bright dust like the eyeshadow
that tall young woman in the bookshop wears,
its shimmer and crumble on her white lids.

The washing sways on the line, the sparrows pull
at the heaps of drying weeds that I’ve left around.
Perhaps this is middle age. Untidy, unfinished,
knowing there’ll never be time now to finish,
liking the plants – their strong lives –
not caring about flowers, sitting in weeds
to write things down, look at things,
watching the sway of shirts on the line,
the cloth filtering light.

I know more or less
how to live through my life now.
But I want to know how to live what’s left
with my eyes open and my hands open;
I want to stand at the door in the rain
listening, sniffing, gaping.
Fearful and joyous,
like an idiot before God.

Come help at the community garden

Our community garden at 10 1/2 and Grady is sprouting! Please come join the crew tomorrow (Thursday) at 5:15 pm for an hour or two of weeding, staking and tending to the garden. 

All of the food will be donated to the community, and this is a great opportunity to meet other members of St. Paul's and some of our neighbors.

Next Wednesday June 24, the garden organizers are planning a celebration at 4:30 pm. Plans for the celebration: food, musical instruments, games, possibly creating an art project inside the circle, and to have some poems be visually up in the garden by that time as well as scriptural or poetry by anyone  who would like to read.

The Saints of Summer: Evelyn Underhill

I cannot let the week pass without mentioning one of the saints of summer, whose day we remembered yesterday: Evelyn Underhill (pronounced "Eve-linn"). Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) came to the faith later in life, first becoming a Roman Catholic and eventually an Anglican. 

Born and educated in England, Underhill is one of the giants of 20th century Christian theology and spirituality. She brought back into the conversation a recognition of mysticism as a valid expression of the religious experience.  She was the first woman to give a series of lectures at Oxford on theology. At her height, she spent the mornings writing and the afternoons serving the poor and providing spiritual direction to those she mentored.

Underhill's most important book was Mysticism, published in 1911, and it is still quite readable, though long (my copy is 519 pages). She wrote at a time when modernism had dismissed religious experience as psychologically irrational, and there was more than a whiff of class prejudice in that. Underhill was able to explain the mystical experience as an exploration of the self and God's presence deep within us and outside us:

To say that God is Infinite is to say that He may be apprehended and described in an infinity of ways. That Circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, may be approached from every angle with a certainity of being being found. [Mysticism, p. 238]

Without Underhill, we might not have an appreciation of such medieval giants as Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) or Hildegard of Bingen. Underhill's influence extends to this day, and among those she exerted a crucial influence upon is L. William Countryman, the now retired professor of New Testament studies at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific; he, in turn, influenced a generation of scholars and priests with an approach to biblical studies that plumbed the underlying mysticism of the Bible. You may detect Underhill's strong influence in my preaching, for example a recent sermon I did on the Trinity and my sermons in Lent. 

Underhill's approach is to see God in both the light and the darkness, in beauty and ugliness, seeing God as permeating all of existence. She concludes her great book on almost a poetic note:

According to the measure of their strength and of their passion, these, the true lovers of the Absolute, have conformed here and now to the utmost tests of divine sonship, the final demands of life. They have not shrunk from the sufferings of the cross. They have faced the darkness of the tomb. Beauty and agony alike have called them: the time of the singing of birds is come. From the deeps of the dewy garden, Life - new, unquenchable, and ever lovely - comes to meet them with the dawn. [Mysticism, pgs. 45-451]

The Monday Funnies

For those of you with teenagers, you've probably discovered that you can communicate with them sometimes best by texting them. For those of you unaware of this technological advancement, "texting" is the sending of semi-literate messages back-and-forth on cellular telephones.

And so it is with religious education, as we in the Church ever strive to keep up with the times. So, parents, here is how to text your kids instructions on the Ten Commandments. We got it straight from the mountaintop. Welcome to the Monday Funnies...

GOD TEXTS THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

1. no1 b4 me. srsly.

2. dnt wrshp pix/idols

3. no omg's

4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)

5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool

6. dnt kill ppl

7. :-X only w/ m8

8. dnt steal

9. dnt lie re: bf

10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

ps. wwjd?

Cartoon by Dave Walker

Sustained with love

This was a very difficult week for many people we love, both here in Charlottesville and far away from us in California. Lori and I are very grateful to so many of you who helped us stay connected with those who are so dear to us. I will say more at some point, but for now I want to simply give you this poem:

From “Meditation” 

by Teilhard de Chardin (French) c.1881

Love
is the free and imaginative outflowing
of the Spirit over all unexplored paths.
It links those
who love in bonds that unite,
but do not destroy, causing them to discover in their mutual contact
an exultation capable of stirring in the very core
of their being all that they possess
of ‘uniqueness’ and ‘creative’ power.
Love alone
can unite living beings
so as to complete and fulfill them,
for it alone joins them by what is deepest
in themselves. All we need
is to imagine our ability to love
developing until it embraces the totality
of the people of the Earth.

Theoretically,
this transformation of love is quite possible.
What paralyzes life is failure to believe
And failure to dare.
The day will come when,
after harnessing space,
the winds,
the tides,
and gravitation,
We shall harness for God the energies of love.
And, on that day, for the second time
in the history of the world,
we shall have discovered fire.

Public policy and the Church: Our voices can be heard

You may not be aware of this: The Episcopal Church in Virginia is deeply involved with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, which works on the nitty gritty of social justice issues in the Legislature in Virginia.  The center sends periodic email updates on its activities, and you can register to receive these by clicking HERE.

The Center maintains a terrific website with updates on public policy issues ranging from health care to jobs, education to hunger. The center earlier this year published a report on how health care costs are skyrocketing in this state, far exceeding growth in wages in this state. I highly commend the report. You can read it by clicking HERE.

Any discussion of public policy inevitably leads into the political arena, and that makes many devout church goers nervous. Politics is messy and polarized, and it is easier to keep the peace in the church by staying away from it. The problem with that is the Gospel won't let us, not if we are being truly faithful to the Gospel.  "Truly I tell you," Jesus says, "just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it for me." (Matthew 25: 40).

The Bible is replete from beginning to end with declarations that to hear God's call is to hear the call to care for the poor, the sick and those who suffer. The prophet Micah puts it: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8)

As a deacon friend of mine says, it is true that we are called to pull people out of the river before they drown; and, it is equally true that  we are called to walk upstream to see who is pushing people into the river. And That leads us to the messiness of the legislative process. 

I must say, as a relative newcomer to Virginia, that I am much impressed by the quality and depth of the work of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. And I say that as someone who has spent most of my adult life in public policy and politics, including on the staff of the California state Senate. I hope you will support this vital work.

St. Paul's Community Garden: Sprouting more than food!

We haven't checked in lately in this space on the progress of the St. Paul's Community Garden, located in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Charlottesville. So I went over this morning and took a few photographs in the early morning light. 

With all of the recent rain, the garden is very green with beans and tomatoes and lettuce and lots of other wonderful things. The food when harvested will be donated to the community. Great thanks goes to a dedicated group of volunteers who've lovingly tended to the garden.

Special thanks to the Rev. Neal Halvorson-Taylor for his vision and leadership and to Louise Gallagher for building the shed and to Peggy Galloway for leading the volunteer team.

I am totally inspired by this project. Besides growing food,  the garden is growing relationships between segments of the congregation that don't often interact: students, young people, retired people and all manner of families, and with people who live in the surrounding community.

In the days ahead I hope we can especially deepen our relationship with the neighborhood through this project. 

More volunteers will be needed throughout the summer. To find out how to get involved, contact the church office.

The Body of Christ is definitely growing in the garden!

The Saints of Summer

With Pentecost and Trinity now behind us, and the green of summer in front of us, the calendar is dotted with special days for the saints. The Episcopal Church saints and saint days are often the same as those on Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox calendars, but not always. We have a few of our own, like Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The saints on the Episcopal calendar are approved by General Convention, which meets every three years and will meet this summer (and it was my privilege in 1997 as a deputy to convention to vote to include on the saint calendar Absalom Jones who founded an integrated Episcopal Church in Philadelphia 1786). Becoming a saint in our church is not as elaborate as in some other traditions; miracles are not required, but courageous lives are.

Today is one such saint day: Ephrem of Edessa, aka Ephraim the Syrian. He is not exactly a household name, but that is one of the charms in remembering the saints. Ephrem died around 372. He was a deacon chiefly known as a hymn writer, and he accompanied his bishop to the Council of Nicea (as in Nicene Creed). As a deacon, he served the poor. He lived in a cave, and he distributed food to the starving during a famine in 372 and became so sick he died. It is for his selfless service as a deacon that Ephrem is remembered as a saint of the church.

You can keep up with the saint days by consulting the daily lectionary by clicking HERE. And we will probably celebrate a few more on this page this summer.

Fitting in: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing

Lori and I have been here almost a year, and we definitely still consider ourselves very new. It takes time to figure out a new community, the customs, the personalities, and the simple details of daily living that we took for granted in our previous community. 

When new people join a group, any group, it takes time to fit in. And that is true of new people joining a church. I bring this up to point out a few things as we work on our hospitality as a welcoming and inclusive faith community.

First, new people shouldn't be expected to simply "blend in." For one thing, expecting new people to adopt all of the ways of the established people puts all of the burden on the new people, and is not welcoming. 

For another, it doesn't really work that way. If new people find the circle so tight they can't enter, they will simply leave. And that deprives everyone of their gifts and talents.

It might help to know a little about group dynamic theory: Every healthy group goes through at least four stages of group life (different theorists have different words for this, but it is the same theory). Healthy groups are (1) Forming (2) Storming (3) Norming and (4) Performing.

Forming occurs each time someone new joins a group, or someone leaves the group. The group becomes a new group when the membership changes. In a church, whenever new people come into the community, or leave (or die) the church is a new church in big ways or small. Each time a new person arrives, the church is in a state of forming once again.

If you think about, St. Paul's is very accustomed to forming and re-forming. Every Fall new students, faculty and staff arrive at the University of Virginia and many land in our parish. Every Spring many move away. This annual cycle of forming has repeated itself now 100 times at St. Paul's.

Forming creates a certain degree of tension, or storming. In this stage, the group members work out who fits where and how the group will operate. Unhealthy storming manifests as a struggle for control, or defensiveness about "we've always done it this way" or "we tried that, it will never work here." The circle closes, and if the storm is fierce enough it will keep out anyone new. Unhealthy storming will lead eventually to the death of the group, either through attrition as the old members die off and are not replaced, or through a certain atrophy of the group's soul because the group forgets why it exists.

But there can be healthy storming: Healthy storming is creative, and brings new energy, new ways of looking at the group, and sees new people as seeds of growth, bringers of new energy and new perspective. The existing group members begin to adjust to the new members, and the new members begin to adjust as they learn about the richness of the old group. 

Storming, done well, leads to the next stage. The group is new, and it creates itself in a new way, leading to norming, or a new normal. The group looks both the same and differently, and acts both the same and differently, sometimes subtly. And that brings the group to the next stage: performing. 

The group is thriving, productive and everyone in the group is working together in ways that are new but echo the old. The new seeds have sprouted and everyone benefits from the growth, and the group is performing like an orchestra, each member playing their individual instrument yet in harmony with the whole.

These categories are a bit simplistic. Truthfully, every group of people can be in each of those stages at different times of the day sometimes. Most groups are in one stage more than in another, and may slip back and forth between stages. Churches have many subsets of groups, and those groups are in various stages at any given time. The larger church can be seen as working through those stages over and over, and in a macro sense, it can take years to get from one stage to the next. 

Yet, I also find these categories helpful; as we grow in our life together as a faith community, it helps me to recognize these cycles so that I understand what we are going through. If we all recognize the stages, we might be better equipped to surf our way through each stage.

And that brings me to a point made by Lyle Schaller, one of the more perceptive analysts of church dynamics of the last few decades. In his book, Create Your Own Future, he notes that good church leaders (lay and clergy) work together in understanding the group dynamics in the church, and then use their understanding for building of God's Kingdom:

These are the leaders who are convinced God has given to them the freedom to plan, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the future of that particular worshiping community. They can study, reflect, plan, articulate their dreams, formulate goals, and implement those plans. With God's help all things are possible.

Cartoon by Dave Walker

The Monday Funnies

We haven't had many jokes here in awhile, lame or otherwise. So here's a few, at the expense of religion, organized and otherwise. Cartoon by Dave Walker, as usual. Enjoy your Monday...

Little Johnny was at Sunday school, when the teacher asked, “Why do we have to be quiet in church?”

“Because people are sleeping,” answered little Johnny.

To which little Billy quipped, “Oh, I get it. They must be bored again Christians!”

***

A young woman brings home her fiance to meet her parents. After dinner, her mother tells her father to find out about the young man. The father invites the fiance to his study for a drink. “So what are your plans?” the father asks the young man.

“I am a Torah scholar,” he replies.

“A Torah scholar. Hmmm,” the father says. “Admirable, but what will you do to provide a nice house for my daughter to live in, as she's accustomed to?”

“I will study,” the young man replies, “and God will provide for us.”

“And how will you buy her a beautiful engagement ring, such as she deserves?” asks the father.

“I will concentrate on my studies,” the young man replies, “God will provide for us.”

“And children?” asks the father. “How will you support children?”

“Don't worry, sir, God will provide,” replies the fiancé.

The conversation proceeds like this, and each time the father questions, the young idealist insists that God will provide.

Later, the mother asks, “How did it go, Honey?”

The father answers, “He has no job and no plans, but the good news is he thinks I'm God.”

***

Our church assigns people to be greeters at church before worship.

According to my mother, this practice is known as “Howdy Duty.”

Bless our kids this Sunday

We have another big Sunday coming up at St. Paul's. We will thank and celebrate our Sunday School leaders, and we will send our youth group off on their mission trip to the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. 

Then around 1 pm Sunday, please join us for the parish picnic at Pen Park off Rio Road. Hope to see you then! 

The Moment...

Fridays seem like a fine day for a bit of poetry, a few words to start your weekend, your sabbath. Here is a sabbath gift from our friend Karen in Tennessee...

The Moment
by Margaret Atwood
(from Morning in the Burned House)

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Photo taken in the woods near our house.

Time for a picnic and celebrating our children's teachers!

This Sunday we will say a big "Thank you" to the volunteers who led St. Paul's Sunday School "Godly Play" program for our children. These wonderful adults put in many hours to launch this new program, including preparation time and their work in the classrooms. 

Our children are not just our future, they are our present. They bring us light and hope, and it is such a delight to see them "Marching in the Light of God" up the aisle on Sunday mornings.

By the way, you don't need to be a parent to be a volunteer in the Sunday School. Working with young kids could be one of the most rewarding things you've ever done. All the teachers work in teams, no adult is alone in a classroom. And the more adult volunteers we have, the more the load can be shared. Talk to Iris Potter to find out how. 

On Sunday afternoon, we will have a celebration picnic for the entire parish at Pen Park, which is off of Rio Road. Please join us and bring something to eat. There are big shelter pavilions in case of rain. Hope to see you then!

KANSAS: Wichita-area clergy, Presiding Bishop express horror at George Tiller's murder

June 02, 2009

[Episcopal News Service] Bishop Dean E. Wolfe of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas and a dozen clergy who serve Episcopal churches in the metropolitan Wichita area have issued a statement expressing their sadness and horror at the murder on May 31 of abortion doctor George Tiller.

Tiller, a physician who provided abortions, had become a target of people who oppose the procedure. He was shot dead during a Sunday morning service in his church, Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a June 2 statement that she was horrified to learn of Tiller's murder "made even more painful for occurring in a place of worship and sanctuary. I pray for him and for his family, that all may know they are held in the palm of God's hand. I also pray for those who believe that violence is ever the answer to disputes or differences, that they, too, may be healed.

According to reports, 51-year-old abortion opponent Scott Roeder was arrested a few hours following the shooting as the prime suspect in Tiller's murder.

The Wichita-area clergy included 10 priests and two deacons, along with Wolfe. In their statement, they said Tiller's murder "was not a Christian act; this is not what Jesus taught," adding that their faith in Jesus Christ makes them "absolutely certain that violence will never prevail, and that darkness will not win."

The clergy said they were reaching out to neighbors of all faiths in Wichita and beyond.

By early afternoon June 1, two Wichita rectors had announced that they would be available to their parishioners for special prayers June 3. The Rev. Cathie Caimano of St. John's Church said her parish's regular Wednesday Evening Prayer service would include special prayers for the tragedy. Dean Kate Moorehead of St. James' Church told her parishioners in an email that she would be at the church in the evening June 3 to pray and talk with anyone who wanted to stop by.

The clergy statement, along with its signatories, is available here.

Hospitality living in tension: Tradition vs. The New

There are many reasons people go to church. Some have gone to church their whole lives and wouldn't think of doing otherwise. Some even have gone to the same parish for all of their lives.

Others come as they have children, or as they move into a new community. Sometimes they've gone "church shopping" and settled on a church for a particular reason.

Some come seeking answers to questions that are huge. Others come because of a crisis in their life: the death of a loved one or the death of a marriage. Some come seeking friendship, or a relationship with Jesus, or God as they conceive of God. And many come for a combination of those reasons.

That holy mix of reasons can create tension in a faith community. One of the strengths of the Episcopal Church, I believe, is that we are able to live in the tension as a community -- most of the time -- through our worship. Yet the tension sometimes plays out as a conflict between traditional and contemporary forms of worship and music. Some prefer the "traditional" Lord's Prayer ("Our Father who art in Heaven...) while others prefer the newer version ("Our Father in Heaven..."). Some love only the hymns in the blue hymnal, while others love only those in the newer hymnals.

Both can exist together if our values include hospitality -- welcoming all people.  To practice hospitality, we need to find ways to live in the tension of accommodating, as best we can, the many reasons people come to church, the theological ideas they bring (or the lack thereof), and the tastes they have in worship and music. It may help to know that much of what we think of as tradition is sometimes not that old; traditions can grow up in a hurry in a church. The wording of the  "traditional" Lord's Prayer dates from the 1880s (check out the Middle-English version sometime). Many beloved hymns began as beer hall tunes in the Reformation. Meanwhile, a number of supposedly "contemporary" church songs are now more than 30 years old.

Sometimes someone at St. Paul's tells me of how the congregation "all knows" a particular tradition. I tend to wince at those pronouncements; we have 1,600 people listed on our rolls, and many new people, and many subsets of people. No one knows everyone or every "tradition." Meanwhile, some people bring "traditions" from other places, and they sometimes expect it will be exactly the same as the place they left. It won't.

It is my hope and prayer that we can find ways to live in community together by yielding to each other now and then (that is the point Paul makes in his Letter to the Romans when he talks of yielding to those who won't eat meat). Can you be happy that someone likes a particular hymn (traditional or contemporary) even if you don't like it? Maybe you don't need a service program to find your way around the prayer book, but can you appreciate that someone else needs the help? And if everyone has a program, then no one needs to feel embarrassed by using a program. Those are small items, but they loom large as details of hospitality. If we are truly serious about calling ourselves "inclusive" it must begin not with abstract theological arguments about the Bible, but with hospitality at the front door.

This is one in an occasional series on hospitality.

Cartoon by Dave Walker

The Monday Funnies: From Celestial Crabs Descending

For those of you having difficulty understanding the hymns, comes now to a church near you a special video with subtitles to popular hymns -- or what they seem to say. Thanks to Bill Bergen for this contribution, and a word of caution, there is mildly salty language here. Welcome to The Monday Funnies...

The Spirit of Pentecost

May the dove of peace be with you this day.

May many blessings follow you always.

May the Holy Spirit guide your path, give you strength, and kindle your heart for the journey that is yours -- forever. Amen.

 

Pentecost icon from Mexico

Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality

At its core, everything we do in church is about hospitality:

How we include people of all backgrounds and ages in our worship; how we greet one another at the "peace" and after our worship; how we treat strangers who come in the door, whether they are visitors from out of town, or new to our community and looking for a church, or hard up and living on the streets in Charlottesville -- all of it is about hospitality. 

How we treat each other and talk about each other is about hospitality.

How we work outside the parish is ultimately a reflection of our hospitality inside the parish.

From time to time this summer,  I want to explore the theme of hospitality in sermons, on this blog, and in our newsletter. I invite your reflections and comments on what we are doing well at St. Paul's and what we can do better. We don't have to do everything all at once, but we can strengthen our hospitality if we all do this together. 

Recently we started a Welcome Center in the Parish Hall. It has a big banner above it with the Episcopal Church emblem and is staffed on Sundays by members of our Newcomers Friends ministry team. If you would like to volunteer to take a rotation sitting at the table, or join the Newcomers Friends, please stop by the Welcome Center and sign up, or contact me through the office. 

And when you notice someone new, please introduce yourself, invite him/her/them to coffee in the Parish Hall and bring them to the Welcome Center. 

How to know a new person? The ushers are giving out nametags with stars on them to new people and visitors, which means that it is a good idea if you wear your nametag. More on nametags in another post. 

Cartoon by Dave Walker

Mysteries

I'm not sure if I have run this before, but I rather like it. The week can use a little astonishment, so here is a lovely poem from Mary Oliver. Enjoy...

Mysteries, Yes
By Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

Protecting families in the wake of Proposition 8

Recently, the step-mother of a prominent member of our congregation died suddenly. This member of our congregation happens to be gay. His partner of many years, who is also very active in the parish and who considered the deceased his mother-in-law, was unable to take bereavement leave from work. 

That hurt this family deeply. Such is the state of the civil law in Virginia, where only one type of family, between married people of the opposite sex, is recognized. Make no mistake: the civil law matters and has an impact on the everyday life of families.

I'd like to start there in reading yesterday's decision by the California Supreme Court on Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. We ought to be concerned with strengthening families, and to do so we need to recognize that there are a variety of families in our community -- straight, gay, and those with single parents. 

The tragedy of yesterday's ruling is it creates more outcasts in our society when we ought to be working to achieve unity. Inevitably, the decision will be read as affirmation by those who think their type of family is threatened by the existence of other types of families. That is simply wrong and has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Last night, I took the chance to re-read the California Supreme Court carefully (see post below from yesterday for my initial impressions, and for a link to the opinion). The court maintained that even with the repeal of the designation "marriage" for gay people, there remains in place a structure of rights to protect families -- all kinds of families -- in California. 

Nothing remotely close to that exists in Virginia. 

The ruling is likely to please no one. The court appeared to reverse itself from last year when it said that marriage is a right that cannot be confined to one class of adults. Yet yesterday the justices argued that the word "marriage" is simply a designation with no underlying rights. On pages 34-37, the opinion sets up a legal designation for gay unions with all of the rights of marriage as long as it is not called "marriage." Here's the crux of the court's opinion:

The new constitutional provision cannot properly be interpreted as having repealed, by implication, the preexisting state constitutional right of same-sex couples to enter into an officially recognized and protected family relationship except insofar as that preexisting constitutional right included the right of access to the designation of marriage...

[A]lthough Proposition 8 eliminates the ability of same-sex couples to enter into an official relationship designated “marriage,” in all other respects those couples continue to possess, under the state constitutional privacy and due process clauses, “the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage,” including, “most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.”

In other words, if the proponents of Proposition 8 believe they were peeling back all legal protections of gay people, they are wrong. What the court appears to have done is set up a new designation without name for legal unions among people of the same sex. The word "marriage" ends up with an unclear legal meaning.

Not to put to fine a point on this, but such legal verbal gymnastics do not pass the duck test: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If it looks like marriage, has all the rights of marriage, isn't it marriage? The California Supreme Court wrote a decision that might work in a law school classroom, but it lacks basic common sense. At best it creates more legal confusion around who is married, who is not, and what marriage legally looks like. There is no doubt that California voters will be asked once again to decide who can and cannot be married.

And that brings me back to Virginia. Yesterday evening, Lori and I joined a gathering of 35-40 people at "Free Speech Wall" in front of Charlottesville City Hall to show our support of our gay brothers and sisters who have been denied the basic right to be married, and to show our opposition to the California Supreme Court ruling. It was one of two demonstrations in Virginia on the issue last night. We then marched up to the federal building and stood with signs for about a half hour. Motorists driving by signaled support, and more than a few quizzical looks.

We were there for a simple reason: It is time that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in Virginia are afforded the same legal protections for their families that Lori and I enjoy. Churches may marry whom they wish to marry, but that should have no bearing on our basic legal rights as American citizens.

It is time to protect families in this state. It is the right thing to do.

California Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 and gay marriage

As you probably know by now, the California Supreme Court handed up its ruling this morning on Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to define marriage as between opposite-sex couples. The court ruled that the amendment was valid, but also ruled that the 18,000 same-sex marriages that were performed up until last November remain legally valid. You can read the full decision in Strauss v. Holton by clicking HERE.

I have read the decision, and I am struck by a number of items. In one sense, the court ruled narrowly, saying that its responsibility was confined to deciding whether the voters had amended the state constitution validly: "It bears emphasis in this regard," the court wrote, "that our role is limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values."

The court noted that, unlike the U.S. Constitution, amending the California Constitution is relatively easy. There have been only 27 amendments to the federal constitution since 1789 while there have been more than 500 amendments to the state's constitution in barely a century.

Here is where today's ruling gets interesting; the California Supreme Court rested its decision on the premise that Proposition 8 did not, in fact, limit the rights of same-sex couples other than to remove the designation of "marriage" from such unions. The court said that to have limited rights would have been a constitutional "revision," and that the voters cannot do.

The Supreme Court maintained that the legal rights of couples, same-sex or opposite-sex, remain unchanged regardless of whether it is called "marriage." Proposition 8, the court said, left "undisturbed all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection of the laws."

Yet is that true? Last year, the same state Supreme Court ruled that marriage was so inherently important that it could not be denied couples based merely on their gender or gender preference.

Therein is the crux of the moral, legal and political argument that will continue to take place. Are rights (not privileges) being denied, as the court ruled they were only a year ago? The stories of real human beings must be told -- again. Those with open hearts, I pray, will listen. No church, no member of the clergy, is being forced to perform any kind of marriage ceremony he or she does not agree with. I also pray that those of us who support equal access to marriage will do so in a way that is without rancor, that looks for the best in people, and not their worst, and seeks always to bring healing and reconciliation among all people.

As religious people, as followers of Jesus Christ, I pray that compassion will be our guide. And compassion should bring us to a place of support for those who wish to live in loving, committed relationships called marriage, with the full protection of the law. What would Jesus do?

Seek patience and passion

The remainder of this week promises to be busy. There is much happening in our church and in the world. 

We celebrate Pentecost this Sunday, and I hope it will be a wonderful celebration of God's call to us through the Holy Spirit to be active in the world, listening, working, healing and seeking reconciliation and justice wherever and whenever we can. 

Pentecost is about being the Church beyond the walls of churches, and that means being involved in the messiness of the world.

Today the California Supreme Court will hand up its decision on Proposition 8, the ballot measure that would ban gay marriage. While the decision applies only to one state, many eyes including here will be watching, waiting, praying, and analyzing every word.

Amidst all of this, I thought I would give you a short poem by Maya Angelou today:

Seek Patience

by Maya Angelou

Seek patience
and passion
in equal amounts.

Patience alone
will not build the temple.

Passion alone
will destroy its walls.