February 29, 2008

Names

One of the more surprising developments in the current presidential campaign is the introduction by his opponents of Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

Out of courtesy and respect for the opposition, Obama’s people have deliberately refrained from implying any possible association with King Hussein I, father of modern Jordan and close friend of the US. They felt that by using that honored name they might be suspect to the possible charge of taking unfair advantage by tilting what had otherwise been their attempt at keeping a moderately level playing field.

Their reasoning, of course, is that mentioning King Hussein I, who has long been credited by his historians with such outstanding leadership as having “brought the wisdom to walk in the path of honor, the courage to follow his convictions, and an abiding compassion for others enriched all by the nobility of his spirit and the vision to which he devoted his life” would clearly suggest similar virtues and qualifications for their candidate. Further, it is not known at this time whether the other party’s apparent nominee has a middle name at all or whether he has one they may simply be keeping to themselves.

For example, in one of his addresses to his nation, King Hussein made such altogether relevant remarks as, “We must shun any continuance of vilification of others, because that would diminish the democratic process (and) give free rein to ignorance… Perhaps what we should resist most of all,” he said, “is the tendency to make quick, emotional and superficial judgments on others — from a position different from theirs and without any responsible or realistic examination of their actions or decisions taken in the course of fulfilling their duties.”

And on another occasion when speaking at a university, Hussein said, “A vast chasm separates objective, constructive criticism, which emanates from concern for the higher national good, from attempts at slander and defamation. Pluralism does not permit any side to claim a monopoly on truth. No side may claim for itself the sole prerogative to confer the quality of good citizenship. None may claim to be more concerned for the national good than another.”

The King was an oustanding champion for democracy in the middle east much earlier and by considerably more peaceful means than some of the more bellicose endeavors of recent times. For further evidence of the rich history associated with his name and leadership, one may compare references on the following website…

February 28, 2008

Dirt

Lent 4A Jn 9.1-38

John’s story says that Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples, faithful to what they’d been taught about such disabilities and maladies all their lives, automatically presumed, “Who sinned?”

Jesus said that’s not the point, things are different. Then he spat on the ground, made some clay with the spittle and the dirt, anointed the man’s eyes, and sent him off to take a bath. The man came back with sight and some considerable insight.

For now and without getting into the rest of the story about the incredulous neighbors, lets just take the incarnate part — the dirt and the spit.

We westerners are said to be a clean lot, some say we’re obsessed with washing. I don’t know about you, but I was brought up that way. I have vivid memories of my mother, the soap, and the washcloth. The soap never failed to get into my eyes, the washcloth felt like sandpaper. My ears were always apparently dirtier than anything else and more needful of fierce scrubbing.

Dirt is an ambiguous word. It can mean unclean. It can mean obscene. It can mean gossip, as in What’s the dirt? Or it can mean the ground as in nourishment and foundation and basis and nature’s wall-to-wall carpet. It is what God took to make Adam. It is what God took to make us. Literally and metaphorically, for both are true. The great theologian Paul Tillich called God the Ground of Being.

Christianity is anchored in earth, not the earth, but earth. William Temple, one of our greater archbishops of Canterbury, said that Christianity is the most materialistic of all the religions. Sure it is spiritual, but it is not spiritualistic. The Incarnation is at its heart. God’s Word became flesh and, says the Greek word, Pitched his tent in our midst.

Earth is good.So what does this mean for us? For one thing, it has a lot do with vocation. A farmer’s son was working in the field and noticed the clouds forming the letters G P C. He left the plow, went to his parson, said that he felt called, that the letters meant Go Preach Christ. The parson knew him well and thought better of it, said would he consider whether they might meant Go Plant Cotton.Earth is good.Earth is nourishing. Earth is the source of our food and of many of our medicines. Earth is the way we engage life and the means through which we serve. Earth is the instrument for and the implement of the way we harness and lever the universe with our stewardship. Gardening and its big sister farming are among the noblest of works. Remember, Eve and Adam didn’t get their start in a supermarket.

So what are the implications of all this, of the fact that Christianity is the most materialistic of all the religions? Of Jesus’s dirt and spit for healing?It tells us first of all that we are inseparably connected with the environment. The flora and the fauna are our sisters, our brothers, our parents. It tells us that by virtue of our seeming autonomy, we are even more responsible to be engaged, to be stewards of one another under the vast creative umbrella of human rights, and to do this through our political systems, our cultures, our sciences, our arts.

I am mindful that the great poet John Donne said it well in 1623 that “All (humankind) is of one author, that No one is an island, entire of itself; every one is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”But some of us still haven’t learned that truth that no person is above another. No person is more blessed than another. No person has the right to subjugate another. No person has the right to torture another. No person has a right to hoard — and flaunt — his wealth above another.”

For, Donne continued, “Anyone’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in humankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Let us consider these things. Dwell on these things. Embrace these things. For they come in the healing power that gives true vision through dirt and spit.

Until then, here’s mud in your eye.

February 27, 2008

Oscar

OoN’s west coast stringer reports the rumor that Oscar de la Renta, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Oscar Wilde or their estates or whatever will shortly file a class-action suit against Hollywood.

It is alleged that the recent 80th annual motion picture awards festival is not only a continuing travesty against their historic name, but even more importantly and especially that it is eight decades behind in royalty payments. The suit will argue that never mind how glitzy, gold-plated, or statuesque the industry may attempt to cover up this endeavor, they have yet made of it a grotesque caricature of their honored professions.

Research by their staff librarians on Google reveals that “Oscar” is of Old English origin having precious little to do with Hollywood’s “presumptuous” use of it. The name may as well have a possible Gaelic root in “os cara.” Napoleon thought well enough of it to give it to his godson, who later ascended to the throne of Sweden as Oskar I, thus giving the name even more historical rootage and significance.

The 1990 US Census shows that Oscar is a very popular male first name and surname, as well. It was commonly revived by 18th century literary use, hence, its logical recovery by the claimants who hope by their own celebrious use of it thus to expand their reasons for class action litigation.

Late broken news also informs us that Oscar the Grouch and the entire Sesame Street cast, writers, and producers are consulting with their attorneys.

February 25, 2008

Connections

Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 near Madrid. He wrote the classic Spanish novel “Don Quixote” about a self-styled knight tilting with windmills. He doesn’t have a calendar day among Anglicans that I know about, but his quixotic skill lurching with literary windmills maybe might get him considered one of these days.

Picking up on this same theme, Graham Green wrote “Monsignor Quixote,” a delightful 1982 novel and pastiche of Cervantes’s story. His title character is a country parson who helps out someone with a stalled car who turns out to be a bishop and, coincidentally, a friend of the pope.

For the parson’s reward, the bishop arranges a major Thank You and has the pope designate him a monsignor. The lucky parson has never been one of his own bishop’s favorites, to say the least. For one thing, his bishop takes a dim view of the fact that his closest friend is the town’s mayor, a Communist who knows more church history than the parson, even down to the essential purple socks monsignors wear. This friendship and going over episcopal heads to the Vatican doesn’t endear him any more than it might under similar circumstances today.

I suppose it never hurts to be one of the pope’s friends. I don’t know how many saints may have made it to the canon like that rather than the hard way with slings and arrows and the like. Or, to carry through with a grasp at anything that might make sense out of today’s OoN, getting canonized like Matthias who has his special calendar day today not by rivaling the Good Samaritan, but merely as the result of an apostolic crap game.

February 22, 2008

Bettering

Plagiarism reared its ugly head in last night’s presidential debates (cf also OoN 19xi07). It was charged that if this is to be a campaign of words, then the campaigners should use their own words and not those of another.

As it it turned, it was not only a problem for the debaters. For news of this struck terror in the hearts of presidential speech writers. “If it weren’t for plagiarism, we’d be out of work,” one of their spokespersons told OoN’s Washington stringer. “Out of respect for the office, for the aspirants for the office, and for this especially wordy season for which we give our utmost, we’ve also even abstained from joining our fellow writers’ on strike. You cannot imagine the embarrassment and professional ostracism that this has already caused us. Now comes plagiarism.”

The writers who produce OoN consider themselves compassionate liberals, but that doesn’t mean that they are any less compassionate than compassionate conservatives. As a matter of fact, it means that their compassion is even more worn thin by its considerable, as one might say, liberal largesse. Consequently, they identify deeply with their presidential colleagues. It is precisely for this very reason that they’ve risked their professional associations and memberships by not joining their other fellow writers on strike.

As for plagiarism and OoN’s almost daily essays, our writers create and produce following Milton’s famous aphorism that “plagiarie is borrowing without bettering,” and also that more recent affirmation that borrowing from two or more sources without bettering is simply studious research.

February 21, 2008

Shock & Awe

Lent 3A (Jn 4.5-42)

That pensive mystic and altogether lovely person Madeleine L’Engle once wrote about Christmas as “the irrational season / When love blooms bright and wild. / Had Mary been filled with reason / There’d have been no room for the child.”

The story of the Samaritan woman come to Jacob’s well for a jar of water is about another such an irrational season. Here’s a woman who is surely down to her last nerve in monotony, dipping once more after countless times into that all-too-familiar well with its long and tiresome history. Suddenly, she’s faced with almost a time warp, a totally unexpected detour in her seemingly unending serial of one domestic and personal crisis after another.

In a rapid succession of shocks — a stranger, a Jew, a man speaks to her, a woman, a Samaritan. He speaks not only across religious and ethnic and sexual boundaries, but with an alarming candor and penetrating insight. Then he brings her back to earth and does a “guy thing.” He asks for a drink of water. But then he speaks to her of a living water that does away with thirst forever. Step by step, he lays bare her past and her present and sees right through her into her future.

In one stroke, the rigid sanctions of the kind of worship and religion and custom that she and her people have embraced for centuries are abolished. Jesus proposes a revolutionary new liturgy based not on the usual male-dominated, retrogressive system of exclusion and judgment, but a Way grounded unpretentiously and candidly in spirit and in truth.

As if all this is not enough, he commissions her to be a disciple to her own people and does not send “a member of his staff” or some man to accompany her to make sure she gets it right. Obviously, the ordination of women is not all that novel, after all. Those who oppose it could well do to meditate on this story.

The Samaritan woman dares to accept her charge and returns to her townsfolk to tell them her tale. Never did she have to say, “He told me how sinful I was.” Rather could she say, simply, “He told me everything about myself.” One can suspect that she’d never had such self-esteem before as in this altogether irrational assignment.

As well, there’s nothing especially rational about the Gospel which is entrusted to us. Every occasion in which we embrace it creates an “irrational season” in our lives. The love at its center which can cast out fear, even the fear of risking the acceptance of such a trust, is perhaps the most unreasonable of all that we’ve ever undertaken. For it means that we remember ourselves, and that we love ourselves, and that this comes before any other truly creative love we could give to others, Madeleine L’Engel’s love that “blooms bright and wild.”

At our baptism, we and those who sponsored us, stopped by a “well of living water” and confronted and experienced a bend in our own personal history. We made and continue to remake the Covenant that commissions us to go and to tell our “townsfolk,” not because of who we are, but because of who we can become.
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Note: May I suggest that should the celebration include this preachment, the Baptismal Covenant be used in place of the Nicene Creed (BCP pp 304f).

February 20, 2008

Rehab

Out of the thirty-five or so cardiacs and don’teverwannabe cardiacs who show up at our rehab center of a day, twenty or so of us usually remain after workout for morning happy hour. This is to remind ourselves with and about what got us there. By that I mean the abundance of coffee, cinnamon-flavored, cream-cheese-slathered cholesterolic bagels, and freshly baked cakes that are passed around for all to share.

Sometime I wonder if this is not what motivates us to chase blood-pressure and waistlines in the first place, the opportunity to put it all back where it came from. The conversation varies. The women and men sit at opposite ends of the big table. The talk ranges from progeny to golf and occasionally to politics, even once to Hillary’s tears.

This morning it seemed less like its usual casual repartee and more like a study group. Several recent issues from our town’s daily were spread around with people going over them in detail. On closer observation, I saw that they were reading the obituaries, checking for ages and looking for any familiar face or name.

Whatever I might say about the obvious irony of it all, there’s a disciplined and almost palpable pleasure in this bunch just to be alive. Some even exercise with canes or walkers and even take half-baked turns at aerobics. Those of us on the 17-lap/mile track usually pair up with the same people, jesting about who is really working or merely sauntering and catching up with what we’ve been reading and who’s been visiting. Some just hog the weight machines as a place for gossip, not letting a lot of reps get in their way.

Were we churchers to realize that we, too, have a common enemy outside and beyond all our often pettiness and crutches and peculiar diets, maybe Old Scratch wouldn’t make so much headway in our councils, and the real Way might be made clearer for ourselves and for others.

February 19, 2008

Quirk

I’d been playing around with the apparent kinship shared by humor, human, humility, and humus. So I bounced the idea off Canon Quirk. He didn’t think much of it, said for me to be extra careful about confusing humor with humility, that it wold be typical of me to get into that kind of foolishness. They aren’t the same, he said, they just sound alike and besides, it would be too easy and an insult to true humility, as well.

The same goes for human and humus, he said. And the only thing out of that whole garden of cognates that could possibly apply to me was human, and even so, he wasn’t all that sure.

These are all the things he said. I share them with you only because they weren’t exactly private, because I don’t agree with him, and also because such revealing might possibly give me a leg up on the humility in which I am altogether lacking. And then there’s the possibility that you might understand how sardonic all this is, whatever that means.

Maybe you’ll notice that in my lead paragraph, I did not refer to the Canon as either my mentor or my friend as I have done frequently. Frankly, he has also recently written me to cool it on the mentor stuff, that even though he is not “taking clients” (his term, not mine) anymore, he still has a reputation to protect, and that he’s never listed me on his “resumé” and doesn’t intend to.

He also said that the whole notion of mentoring is passé. At one time in the past when it was altogether appropriate for use with youth, it may have had some value, but that nobody thinks they’ve anything to learn anymore, especially the insufferably incurious X-generation and their Republican models. He did add that even so, the X-ers are aptly named, as “X” has always been an appropriate symbol not only for the unknown, but, in his opinion, for nothing, as well.

Whether we are yet friends, I suppose remains to be seen. Friendship is one of those palpable intangibles, oxymoronic to the core, one of life’s pleasantries that one never quite gets a grip on without some risk. It gets overlooked too often that Jesus called his associates his friends, a way, I suspect, of his setting them free to be and become themselves, to find their way of the Way and without too much dependence on him. I don’t know if it worked, not much evidence that it did, but it’s always worth a try. Maybe that’s where the Quakers get their lovely name as the Society of Friends, a neat model for all the rest of us who are so often at each other’s ideological throats and decidedly less of a drain on the national budget.

February 18, 2008

Hookerans

Today’s liturgical time remembers Martin Luther. But I’m not sure whether anything is being made of it around the altars and in the pews, coming on a day after we’ve already offered God our weekly Much-obliged.I suppose Martin Luther is where MLK got the name he gave MLKJr. And I suppose the two of them get more credit for more people hearing about him than does the calendar. But that’s probably due to us churchers more than anything else.

A Lutheran friend of mine told me that Martin Luther was too humble to want any church or especially any denomination named after him, especially some of the LutherSplits that have come to pass over the years. I understand that. Just think how Richard (or we) might feel were we called Hookerans.

I don’t know much about him, have wondered in off moments why he limited his theses to ninety-five and didn’t round them off to some biblical multiple of seven. And I’m wondering today where he really is when we need him most, not more than they did in the mid-16th century, but a lot more than some of the archpurple lesser satraps telling us what we ought to be about in these times. I’d settle for a few theses being nailed on the front door of Lambeth Palace or its Nigerian equivalent, for that matter. For I wonder what Martin Luther might think about the Windsor Report or the periodic restoration of the Anglican Covenant’s hardware.

My bias suggests he’d be almost as proud of the other Covenant, the one we use for baptising and for repeating ever so often when the Spirit moves us, as he clearly was of the Old and the New. I’d present him for Confirmation any time, even let him skip enquirer’s class, or maybe elect him bishop if he’d accept.

February 16, 2008

Experiment

Pogo, the wonder possum, it was, who said, “How’s we gonna know what to say, less’n you tells us what we think?”

Elections are like that. They seem to be times for telling us what to think so we’ll know what to say when it comes time to say it. Times for defining. They’re not alone, of course. It is the way we do things. We define each other — race, sex, color, religion, nationality, politics — presumptuously, subjectively. Or we let somebody else do it for us.

But Jesus never defined the kingdom. He simply told what it is like. He told what it is about, never really what it is. He told kingdom stories and our place in them. It is another way.

How refreshing it might be if this forthcoming time were spent by aspirants telling us what the America they’d lead would be about, what it would be like, what it is they want for and from all of us, themselves included. How they’d celebrate the international kinship we all share as fellow human beings and the billions they’d spend helping to bring us to wholeness. How they’d be stewards of the great American political experiment. How they’d embrace the presidency as a servant leader. And perhaps above all what this would require of us, how we could help, how we could be a part with it, how we could help inform and shape it.

The psalmist wondered something like, “What is man that you love him, and woman, that you gladden her heart?” (Ps 8.4 more or less). God’s whole covenantal message to us — old and new — seems satisfied to include that to be human is to be creatively imagined into being, and then, to be handed the keys and an owner’s manual without much further definition at all. The American political experiment is like that.