Abundant Fear

I mentioned earlier that fear was on my list of things that tend to occupy my thinking as I go about my daily activities. It was originally on my mind because of the financial meltdown we seem to be going through; today I was reminded of the fear that the Christian Right is experiencing with the prospect of an Obama presidency.

James Dobson and his "Focus on the Family (FoF)", terrified of what could be a center-left government, has given in to fear-mongering in order to influence Christians to vote for the Republican ticket. Apparently, and according to FoF, in four years the Democrats will be able to completely destroy this country from the inside out. Some Christians (including me) will be to blame. The link above says much that that I agree with, but I'll pull out a few things to reiterate.

FoF spends an inordinant amount of time talking about homosexuality and abortion. Granted it is their focus as an organization, but they are inordinantly important to the organization considered how little is in the Bible about either. Jesus talked about service to the poor constantly, over a thousand times. Homosexuality is mentioned in seven verses in the entire Bible, none of which is attributable to Jesus and the context is culturally specific to the Jewish people. Are not the FoF's priorities misguided in light of the Gospels?

I don't live with this type of fear anymore; Dobson can't control me like that. Matthew 25 is a good antithesis of the fear that Dobson peddles.

A concrete step

I just e-mailed Rev. Gil Stafford to tell him that I would like to submit to a discernment committee this coming Spring. I also just e-mailed Laura's grandparents and my rectors in Mobile to tell them something of the seriousness.

Two Tuesdays ago I talked with a friend here who had submitted himself to the process of discernment. At the end of his time with the committee, he had their recommendation but refused to follow though. He did not feel it was his time and the realization was hard on him. He was implicitly recommending that I submit myself to the process and that "If you are honest everything comes out; every selfish motive, every doubt, every thought that led you to this point..." These thoughts led me to think I would benefit from starting the process. The questions and thoughts relating to the idea of joining the priesthood are incessant and urgent. The process surely takes time but I'm ready to move forward in more concrete ways.

Writing to others and to myself forces me to make those concrete steps.

So why not start next week? Doubt, mostly...That I'm too young in the denomination, that I spent too long outside of church in my soft-agnostic stage to know what I should about the Bible, that I don't have a fully coherent worldview or theology...

Gil says he worries about people who go through "the hoops" quickly. The process needs to do its work. So I will wait for Spring and in the meantime I will throw myself into working on a Benedictine rule of life for how I will conduct myself in the world at large.

Oh yeah, the Benedictine rule... I've joined a group connected to the church I attend called St. Brigid's Community. It's a "new monastic" group.

Topics in Progress

My writing is more sporadic than I would wish it to be due to the demands of grad school; but here is an ever-growing list of themes on which I dwell.

1. Fear that is pervasive in our society
2. Church/state separation
3. Commitment to nonviolence?
4. New Monasticism
5. Prayer
6. The Worldview Questions
(Origin) Where did we come from? Who are we?
(Purpose/destination)What is my purpose or role in this world?
(Diagnosis)What has gone wrong with the world? (Why is there such a mess in the world?)
(Prescription)What can we do to fix it? (Is there any way out?)
7. Extensions to the worldview questions
How do I come to terms with death?
How do I make sense of suffering?
How can I possibly believe in justice?

My Home in Mobile

This is the church in which I was confirmed. The picture is from Easter Vigil during the liturgy of baptism.

"Starlight" by the Wailin' Jennys

The music is available on my Myspace profile.
____________________________
I have come back to you broken
take me home
And my body bears this trouble
take me home
Take me back to my beginning
Before the hell of night set in
And I came to this border
take me home

I have toured the endless starlight
take me home
I have shattered under midnight
take me home
There are no vultures in this clearing
Except the ones who brought me here
And I'll no longer feed them
take me home

Kingdom come, their will was done
And now the earth is far away
from any kind of heaven
Hallowed be these frozen fields
And every single one of us
still left in want of mercy
Take us home

Now the bells stand still and hollow
take me home
And no one has come to mourn me
take me home
Find me where I close my eyes
Beneath this sky of powerlines
And let me see us clearly
take me home

Kingdom come, their will was done
And now the earth is far away
from any kind of heaven
Hallowed be these frozen fields
And every single one of us
Still left in want of mercy
Take us home...
______________________

Not every experience with the infinite comes from a God or Goddess, it sometimes comes from those who sing from the perspective of one broken on the wheels of living. Or, perhaps, it truly is the infinite incarnate through us mere mortals.

Perspective, Process, Prosperity

An advantage of being in a denomination that follows a liturgical calendar is that, on any given day, just about every Episcopalian (and Methodists, and I think many Lutherans) is hearing the exact same passages from the Bible. Generally the sermon is then always on the same passage from the New Testament. This makes it easy for me to keep up with what certain priests make of the text. Thanks to the internet, the rector’s and asst. rector’s sermons from All Saints’ Episcopal in Mobile are available to me. Then I get to hear one or two different interpretations from priests here in Arizona depending on what services I go to throughout the week. Sometimes it ends up being a variation of a theme and sometimes the sermons diverge in subject. Most of the time I end up admiring the priest for what I see as radical statements usually in total opposition to what I heard in the Southern Baptist church in which I grew up. The first instinct is “heresy!” giving way to agreement that the radical interpretation makes more sense. I am finding myself growing in appreciation for theologies of process, liberation, and universalism as I learn more about them; they were what drew me back to the church in the first place. Here is another example of universalism from Mobile.

In light of our nation's turn to corporate socialism (a decent idea, but the wrong freaking beneficiaries) and a topic of conversation at St. A's, it seems like a good idea to talk about prosperity. Time magazine has published a column about the prosperity gospel and it's possible relation to the current financial brouhaha.

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise — that God will "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

One verse that the proclaimers of the prosperity gospel use is in Mark 10:29. They say God guarantees a "one hundredfold return" on what they give to the mission/church/ministry/pastor's pocket. I call bullshit; and once evangelicals quit talking about the issues of the pelvis that seem to preoccupy them, we tend to agree on a strong disdain for the prosperity gospel. Even most fundamentalists with a propensity for plucking bible verses without a care as to context agree that it is an aberration. The prosperity preachers tend to leave out the part that says a hundredfold persecutions come with the territory and that "many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." The guilt for such a message typically lies with the pastor espousing the gospel and I'm torn on what to make of those who follow it. While a better life materially is never guaranteed on this Earth (and this gives good ammunition to critics), I find it hard to fault people for trying to have some hope of a better life this side of heaven.

This brings us to the point of the story. What is also left out of the telling of hundred-fold myth is what happens right before (Mark 10:17-27). Long story short, a man refuses to sell his possessions and give to the poor. I have witnessed this story go over poorly with some congregations. Sometimes it goes over poorly because there is a sense of entitlement to the wealth a congregant has amassed, sometimes it is because of a sense of impotence in the face of a world with so much suffering. Still, that does not absolve us from a Christian responsibility to help the least of these, and not necessarily ourselves. Listen, a huge mistake that Christians make now is to get saved and sit back to wait for the rapture. We should be more concerned about what is going on in this world. We do no good waiting for the same thing Christians have been expecting since the generation after Christ or voting solely on abortion when we supposedly follow a man that was always at his most explicit when he was a social activist.

If you have not been to Global rich list, go and take a look at where you are in the world. It is a way of seeing how much work we have to do, Christian or not. My wife and I are in the top 5% and we are sometimes paycheck to paycheck but we still do what we can. Give locally or globally.

Here is something simple, it only takes five minutes or so. Compose an e-mail to the people most likely to give you something on your birthday and holiday. Ask/tell them to use the money that they would spend on you on a charity instead. Pick a few charities or causes that you like and provide links to that organization. You can even give to Heifer International in someone else's name, for instance. If you know all of your needs are met, then let that money go elsewhere.