Morningsider

Summer's End

2011-10-12T18:29:00.000-04:00

All right, it's actually Autumn. But today is the day the Liz and I finally begin withdrawing from our summer place and returning to the Big Apple. Yesterday we took our last canoe ride and put the canoe in the garage for the winter. Yesterday I briefly stood in the lake while I took the steps off the dock. Now that's all over.

We're not completely closing up yet -- we'll be back briefly tqwo r three times in the next couple of weeks. Partly it will depend on how much I can get in the car -- pratly on the weather. Our first return will be sometime next week -- I hope on Monday, since that is supposed to be warm and sunny, but perhaps later in the week. On that visit, I'll drain the water and bring in the outside furniture.

Oh, I forgot to mention that on Sunday we took a 6 and 1/2 mile hike that was actually 8 and 1/2 because of the walk from the car to the beginning of the loop and then became 10 and 1/2 because we tokk a wrong turn and had to retrace our steps. It was grueling and scary because we got pretty close to sunset, but since it turned out ok we were fairly happy and relieved at the end.

This summer I zeroed in on my family history project and I am planning to continue it over the winter -- which involves taking a lot of papers home that I don't really have room for in my study. So making room will be part of my New York activities.

My attention to what we are calling "my project" has had some side effects: I am less involved at Morningside Gardens than I might otherwise have been; I have not been following Episcopal Church developments as assiduously as I was before; I have not been blogging about things either.

For example, I have not mentioned meeting Canon Alan Perry in Allentown on September 24 -- that put me back in touch with my thoughts on the Anglican Covenant. In fact, I have not mentioned the meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists at all. Although I am only a hanger-on, I find these meetings stimulating and thought provoking and this one was exceptionally good.

One week ago today, we were going to come back to Heart Lake from New York, but we delayed our return by a day so we could join the march from Foley Square to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) site. We were near the front of the gathering in Foley Square, which was union led. As we entered the square we were offered caps -- by chance they were UFT caps and I was happy to wear one. It was good to see the unions in solidarity with OWS. It is just possible that this will develop into a real populist movement on the left. It remains to be seem whether the kind of real structural change we (the American people and the entire human race) need will begin to happen. Can the 99% actually bring about change? In truth, the 1% are supported by a cadre -- at least 9% and probably more -- so the 99% is really 90% or less -- and how many of those have the consciousness to realize that the game is rigged and to (at least) sympathize with OWS?

Postscript: I wrote the above before breakfast. Now it's almost suppertime and we are in New York.

Update on September 11, 2011

2011-09-11T12:28:00.000-04:00

Today is 9/11. I have to admit that I don't feel particularly moved by this anniversary. This year that's partly because I am at last actually working on publishing my family history cum genealogy, and have already put some of it on the web. (at allenandliz.com.)

A month ago our famiy was here -- Jane, Scott, Amanda and Juliana. They arrive Thursday, August 11, and left Sunday, August 14. It seems such a long time ago now. The day after they left, I drove to New York for a meeting. After I came back, for a week and a half I worked fairly steadily on my family history project and on a sermon I was scheduled to give at the Heart Lake Church on August 28th. Meanwhile, Liz worked on a proposal for a grant related to a new boiler at St. Mary's. On Tuesday, August 23, we felt the cottage shaking -- it was the earthquake in Virginia. Then on Sunday August 28, Hurricane Irene broguht large amounts of rain to our area. We had lost power hear in the middle of the night, so we had no power when we woke up Sunday. Church at Heart Lake was cancelled, so I didn't get to deliver my sermon. For about four hours on Sunday, starting around 10:30 AM the winds off the lake was strong and drove large amounts of rain straight at us. Water came in around the glazing in our porch windows and under the door. Without power, Liz was unable to work on the proposal. We had planned to drive to New York on Sunday afternoon, but we rescheduled for Monday. When we left, the power was still off. Our drive on Monday was uneventful until we hit the intersection of Rte 17 and the Thruway (I-87). Both the Thruway and Rte 17 were closed and everyone was trying to cross Long Mountain on Rte. 6 and take the Palisades Parkway. A trooper told us that the parkway was a parking lot and advised waiting a few hours, which we did in a park in Monroe. When we finally left Monroe about 4 in the afternoon, it was slow but steady going over the mountain, but on the parkway itself we moved pretty steadily.

The remains of Irene did a lot of damage north of us -- in the Catskills and in Vermont. Where Jane and Scott are in North Middlesex was spared the worst, but there was a lot of flooding not far from them.

After mailing off the proposal, we returned to Heart Lake on Wednesday, August 31. Along with our cousin Tim, we hosted our by now regular Labor Day Sunday family gathering. My mother's two surving siblings were there with spouses, as well as other representatives of each of the four families of my grandparent's children. There was also one family of second cousins.   The threatened rain held off, and it was a vey pleasant gathering.

Then on Monday afternoon the rain started. The rain was light the rest of Monday and on Tuesday, but got heavier on Wednesday and serious flooding began on Thursday not very far from here. Finally the rain stopped Friday afternoon. The remnants of tropical storm Lee raised our lake as high as I have ever seen it.   We are near the top of a hill. Down in the valleys, the flooding was devastating. Binghamton, my home town and just forty minutes from here, was flooded and in the surrounding area lots of homes were inundated. 20,000 people were evacuated. The Susquehanna River in this area isn't expected to subside below flood level until late tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I go to New York for evening meetings both Monday and Tuesday. Liz will stay here at Heart Lake and I expect to be back Wednesday afternoon -- I hope fairly early. In addition to the laundry, I'm taking home the first load of genalogical materials to aid me in writing through the fall and winter.

Another month gone by

2011-08-26T07:42:00.001-04:00

Another month has passed, and the current week is certainly eventful. On Tuesday we were sitting on our porch here at Heart Lake in Northesatern Pennsylvania and we felt the cottage shaking. Of course it was the earthquake, but for a moment we thought it was a big animal.

Now there's a hurricane bearing down on us. We had planned to drive to New York Sunday afternoon, but now we realize that would be foolish -- we'll wait until Monday. There's no telling what conditions will be if New York City takes a direct hit, or even a very near miss. Here at Heart Lake we're certain to get a lot of rain and maybe wind, but so far the projected path of the eye is well to the east of us.

Meanwhile, I have been working steadily at my family history, found at allenandliz.com, or rather, that's the introductory page to the site. I have posted the bulk of my TMG data, some of which is really not yet ready for publication, and am working on text pages to accompany it. Some of the commentary is already there. I will be posting details about the current state of the work on my genealogy blog.

Oh, What a Week!!

2011-07-26T11:56:00.000-04:00

Last Monday evening I had an insect sting or bite that I didn't even notice until my arm began to swell. On Tuesday, I began taking benadryl for the swelling and I was heartened that it was contained -- it didn't spread. But it didn't go away either and I knew I had to see a doctor. We were planning to drive back to New York on Wednesday morning, so I decided not to see a local doctor here in Pennsylvania, but to wait until I was home -- a decision I shouldn't have made, but in fact there were no bad consequences.

On our way home Wednesday, after we had been gone an hour, we realized we had forgotten to bring a very important flash drive, so we turned around, went back to the cottage, got the flash drive, and proceeded to drive home, arriving two hours later than we had expected. And arriving into a very hot New York City, with record breaking 100 degree temperatures.

I got to the doctor on Thursday and he prescribed a powerful antibiotic and told me to come back in a week for blood tests. Also, if there was no improvement, he wanted me to come back Monday (that is, yesterday.) I noticed a small improvement on Friday, and by Sunday it was clear that the antibiotic was dramatically reducing the effects of the infection.

One of the things on our schedule in New York last week was to have work done on our car -- it needed a new power steering pump and and oil pan gasket. So we took the car to our mechanic Thursday morning. We also had an important joint meeting of the finance, property, and stewardship committees at St. Mary's. Liz is working on putting together a grant proposal for some of the money we need for a new boiler at St. Mary's.

But our major preoccupation while we were in New York was working towards a resolution of a family situation involving some property in Vermont. That took up almost all of Liz's time and good deal of my time on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Since my arm didn't need attention, on Monday morning we began loading the car for our return to Heart Lake. Thin coming weekend sees a trip to Vermont for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a return to New York on Sunday so I can attend a meeting at Morningside Gardens on Monday, and then a return to Heart Lake next Tuesday, a week from today. So our packing took that upcoming schedule into consideration.

We got off shortly before ten in the morning, not good, but not too bad considering the things that had been occupying us on Sunday (I haven't yet mentioned the Vestry meeting and a farewell party for our interns, both on Sunday afternoon.)

After about 35 miles, at the top of the Palisades Parkway, I discovered that there was too much play in the brake. I was cautious with the brake as I went over Long Mountain on Route 6, and drove more slowly than usual on Route 17 to our favorite stop at Stewarts in Goshen. I began to notice a little stiffness in the steering, and thought, oh gee, I'll have to take it back to the garage to have that looked at. But as I pulled into Stewarts, I found that the power steering had failed completely. Manually steering a modern Buick is a lot different from manually steering a car was in the 1950's. A kind woman in the Stewarts directed us to a good garage in Goshen who sent us on to the local GM dealer. It turns out that we had sprung a leak in the brake line to one of the rear wheels, so we lost brake fluid. About the same time, the new (rebuilt) power steering pump failed. It was a message -- it's time to stop putting money into this car.

So we looked at cars in our price range that the dealer had, and narrowed the choices down to two, one five and one six years old -- a Buick LaCrosse and a Chevy Malibu. The Chevy is very like an updated version of the Vega we were driving when we first began going back and forth to Heart Lake -- it's very practical for carrying stuff, but not as comfortable as the Buick. The Buick has a very roomy trunk like our present Buick, and will suit our needs very well. So I think we'll go with the Buick. Both cars had to be prepped, so we got a loaner Malibu, and after the 2 hour drive to Heart Lake from Goshen, I am strongly leaning to the Buick.

Soon we face a four hour drive to pick up the car and come bake to the lake.

Publishing my Family History and Genealogy

2011-07-15T09:58:00.005-04:00

Finally my genealogy is back online at my new website. I'm starting small -- so far I have information up only on people descended from my 2nd great grandfather, Manzer Judson Goodrich. Manzer's oldest son, my great grandfather Earl Ashton Goodrich, was born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, not far from Heart Lake where I am writing this. I am beginning by publishing the information I have on his family, because several of my first and second cousins have expressed interest in the family stories. All four of Earl's grandparents, six of his eight great grandparents, and three of his sixteen second great grandparents lived in Susquehanna County. Two of his great grandparents lived in adjacent Wayne County, Pennsylvania and two other great grandparents lived two counties away in Chenango County, New York. I'll be adding information on all of those families. After that I'll be moving on to my father's family, my maternal grandfather's family, and my great grandmother Grace (Dayton) Goodrich's family. There are also pictures, letters and other exhibits to be added. I can't predict the order in which I'll be adding things.

For over fifteen years I have been using what I think is the best genealogy computer program on the market, The Master Genealogist, commonly called TMG, from Wholly Genes -- the link is actually to the Wholly Genes website. Some people think that TMG is hard to use, but I have always found it pretty straightforward.

The web presentation of my genealogy data is generated by John Cardinal's program Second Site, which is designed for use with TMG data. I am also using Second Site to link the narrative section of my family history to the more specifically genealogical pages.

I have no connection with either Wholly Genes or Second Site except as a satisfied user, although I contributed two chapters to the book Getting the Most Out of The Master Genealogist.

The website is in its infancy and has a lot of growing to do. Right now all I have is the beginning of the narrative and some rudimentary information on Manzer Judson Goodrich, his three wives, and his descendants. Part of it is still pretty kludgy. There will be pictures soon and information on more people. Navigation will improve, too.

Independence

2011-07-04T07:15:00.001-04:00

We're back at Heart Lake for the summer. This year I swear I'm going to make real progress on my family history project as well as getting the books in the attic organized.

I thought I might have separation anxiety after my term on the board at Morningside ended about two months ago, but in fact I don't. I'm just relieved, especially given what the current board has to face. If I feel moved to do so, I may write a little about that later.

I have agreed to remain as co-chair of the Tenant Selection Committee (our name for the admissions committee) and have also agreed to join the new Apartment Sales Committee. Those committees are meeting on Monday and Tuesday evenings next week and I'm going back to New York for both meetings -- which means two nights away from here. Not so long ago, it cost about $35 to make the trip -- now it's over $50.

I'm also still Treasurer of St. Mary's, a position I want to give up, and that will take some of my attention (and gas money) this summer aas well. I'm grateful that others, especially Warden Dorothy, are carrying a great deal of the responsibility for financial planning and keeping us on track.

For the most part, I'm free -- freer than I've been any time since February 2003.

Well, we've come to the end of another board year

2011-05-07T11:22:00.001-04:00

Well, we've come to the end of another board year here at Morningside Gardens. This year the terms of four of us board members were up. All four of us were eligible to run again but for varying reasons each of us chose not to run, so there were four vacancies. Seven candidates ran for those four positions; they ran as two slates -- one slate of three people and one slate of four people. The slates were each backed by one of the two parties that have dominated internal politics here at Morningside for the past few years.

In the past, I have agonized over how to refer to the two parties, since they don't have names and aren't even really parties. For the moment I'm going to use color names that don't carry too much baggage (at least for me) -- Purple for the supporters of the slate of four and Orange for the supporters of the slate of three.

While the parties embody divisions that have been with us during the more than thirty years that I have been actively involved in the governance of Morningside Gardens, their recent history goes back to the debates over the resale price that occupied us in the first half of the past decade and culminated in a change in the price structure in 2006. The Purples have at their core many persons who supported the increase in price while the Oranges have at their core many persons who opposed the increase in price.

Some vocal members of both the Orange and the Purple parties have made public statements which I deplore, and it is easy to caricature the stances of both parties. Despite slogans and hyperbole, though, both parties are concerned about both the future and the present well-being of Morningside Gardens and of its cooperators. However, they have divergent views of the best way to achieve that well-being. There is also, on each side, a deep mistrust of certain people on the other side which often spills over into a near total rejection of anything put forward by any of the people on the other side.

The Orange slate won the election handily, but one member of the Purple slate out polled all three of them. When we take into account that four of the continuing members of the board are supported by the Orange party and three are supported by the Purple party, it appears on the face of it that the board is starting out divided seven to four or possibly six or seven to three with one or two swing persons. This is essentially the position we were in two years ago and we didn't come out at all well. Last year we had a board which started out divided five to five with one swing vore. Again we didn't come out well.

The reason we came out badly each year is mistrust. Two years ago it was mistrust of the manager by the newly elected officers and mistrust of the officers by the minority. Last year it was mistrust of the preceding year's officers by the newly elected officers. I am not proud of my own role in the past year -- if I had been a little more thoughtful, I might have been able to steer us away from what became an expensive debacle -- expensive in dollars but more importantly expensive in increased ill-feeling and party spirit.

With four new members, the board has an opportunity to try to pull together. Time will tell.

No Anglican Covenant

2011-04-23T18:12:00.001-04:00

This afternoon, I emailed the following statement to both the General Convention office of The Episcopal Church and to the Covenant Study design group of the Diocese of New York.

My parish, St. Mary's Manhattanville, came out unanimously against the Anglican Covenant at our Annual Meeting on the first Sunday in Lent. A drafting committee, of which as it turned out I was the principal drafter, came up with a statement for submission to the national church by the stated Easter deadline. I apologize for a little awkwardness in the statement, especially for the fact that the scriptural quotations are somewhat loosely stuck in. I simply ran out of time and I wanted to include all the suggestions of all the members.

Here is the statement:

April 23, 2011

Resolution of the Annual Meeting

St. Mary's Manhattanville Episcopal Church

521 West 126^th Street
New York, New York 10027

In response to the invitation extended to all parishes in The Episcopal Church to study and comment upon the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant, this parish of St. Mary's Manhattanville Episcopal Church in New York, New York recommends that the General Convention of The Episcopal Church not endorse the Covenant. Adopted unanimously, March 13, 2011.

A drafting committee was authorized to expand upon the bare bones resolution and has concluded that we concur with the reasons set out in the vestry resolution of St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Albany, New York as follows:

* The Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888 provides a sufficient base for the unity of The Anglican Communion.
* The discipline that would be imposed by the Covenant is contrary to the traditional autonomy of the provinces of the Anglican Communion [Covenant § 3.2.2] and, in particular, of The Episcopal Church.
* The Covenant would change the balance of Scripture, reason, and tradition by minimizing the role of reason.
* We are concerned that the Covenant would establish an ultimate teaching authority that would impair freedom of conscience by dictating which beliefs and norms are permitted to Anglicans.
* We believe that each province in the Anglican Communion, and in particular, The Episcopal Church should continue to be free to respond to its discernment of God's will.

We also have a reason that is related to our history. As the sponsoring parish of two of the women who were ordained priest in Philadelphia on July 29, 1974, we see that one effect of the proposed Covenant would be to discourage actions that offer challenges to the church through prophetic witness. In this connection some of us are reminded of the words of Isaiah (61:8):

For I the Lord love justice,
I hate robbery and wrongdoing;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

We also think of St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians (5: 16-20a):

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets,

We are aware that Paul’s next words are “but test everything.” We believe the proposed covenant has too great a potential for quenching the Spirit and short-circuiting testing.

Finally, some of us feel, along with our Suffragan Bishop Catherine Roskam, that A Covenant for Communion in Mission is worthy of our study and attention. To quote Bishop Roskam, “It is neither juridical nor punitive and is consonant with our Anglican tradition—member churches joined by common prayer and common mission.”

St Mary’s Manhattanville has ministered to all sorts and conditions of people in what is now called West Harlem since our founding in 1823. For nearly 200 years we have stood for peace and justice for all – for racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, and sexual orientation justice.

Respectfully submitted,

on behalf of the Rector, Wardens, Vestry, and Annual Meeting of St. Mary’s Manhattanville,

Allen Mellen, Treasurer

Cc: Covenant Study design group of the Diocese of New York

The Harrowing of Hell

2011-04-23T17:19:00.000-04:00

There are three things on my mind this Holy Saturday. First, comments on the proposed Anglican Covenant are due to the General Convention office by tomorrow, Easter Sunday, if they are to be considered by the drafters of the Blue Book Report to the 77th (2012) General convention . Second, in just over a week cooperators here at Morningside Gardens will be electing four new members to the board of directors. Third, the likelihood is diminishing that the outgoing members of the Board of Directors will be voting on a capital loan for which we have applied.

I asked for it

2011-03-22T18:14:00.000-04:00

AN OPEN LETTER TO ALLEN MELLEN
A most important Board of Directors vote is scheduled for March 22 one which will affect Morningside Gardens for the next 10, 20 or 30 years. WE URGE YOU TO ABSTAIN ON THIS VOTE. That decision should not be the responsibility of one man; it should be made by the entire body of shareholders.
We know that you have served our coop over many years in many capacities, and now we ask you to serve once again in this most urgent way. ABSTAIN! You've made courageous choices in the past. You can make this one too.
ABSTAIN. Use your one man vote, like everybody else, to vote for new Board Members who will help guide us into our financial future, which is by definition both unknown and unknowable.
Thank you for your past service and for your honorable decision now.
Sincerely,
[eight signatures of persons most of whom I know]

The foregoing was delivered to me Monday evening, March 21. It's about a mortgage refinance that the coop has applied for. The writers appear to think that the board will be voting on the refinance at tonight's meeting, but that is not correct. They also appear to think that because I have described myself as a swing voter on some issues that I am a swing voter on this one. That also is not correct.

It happens that the three directors who some stockholders tried to remove are against this loan, as are two others on the board. But my reversal on the matter of sanctions and my opposition to their removal from the board was not because I think they are right and certainly not because I think they are right on the subject of the loan.

There's no doubt that the terms of the loan we expect to be offered are not those we would like, but I am convinced that they are the best we can get.

I'm posting this now, before the board meeting, and I may update it later.

"Mardi Gras" party at St. Mary's

2011-03-09T08:20:00.000-05:00

On Saturday evening, we held our first ever Mardi Gras Masked Ball at St. Mary's. The picture shows me, Janet, Ralph, and Liz. It was taken late in the party; that's why the table in the background is empty. We had a full house and it was great fun.
I expect that soon there will be sone pictures at St. Mary's Facebook page.

Trouble at Morningside - Six

2011-02-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

Today is the day of the special meeting at which the cooperators at Morningside Gardens will vote whether to remove directors from the board. Voting will be separate for each of the three directors in question. I have circulated a statement setting out the reasons I am urging cooperators to vote NOT to remove any of the three.

Others have also circulated statements, some urging a vote to remove, other urging a vote not to remove. I have long since given up trying to predict how votes here will go, so there is nothing to do but wait for the outcome.

We'll know the results by tomorrow afternoon.

Trouble at Morningside - Five

2011-02-12T17:16:00.018-05:00

Some private emails have made it clear to me that I need to make very explicit two things that I thought I had said clearly.

When I brought up the matter of last spring's censure of a board member, it was for the purpose of stating that I think that censure can be enough of a rebuke for actions the board deems improper. Once the person has been censured, that's the end of it. The censure does not alter the person's eligibility to fill any corporate office. In that instance, I thought that from the beginning. Only after the fact did I conclude that I should have applied that principle instead of voting to impose sanctions on three board members.

Second, while I have found what I am calling the Maimonides standard (don't say or do anything to cause hurt to another person) to be a useful guide for my judging my own conduct, I never said that it is binding on anyone else, nor do I judge anyone's conduct by that standard.

I need to amplify that last statement a bit. In a blog post, I used the word "conspiracy" and referred to "the devil." "Conspiracy" was an unfortunate choice of words to describe the agreement to keep the motions to sanction the three a secret from the rest of the board until they were introduced at the September 14th board meeting. I am sorry now that I consented to the secrecy agreement, but at the time there seemed to us all (including me) to be sound strategic reasons for doing it that way. I apologize for calling my fellow board members co-conspirators, just as I apologize to the other five board members for my part in springing the motions on them at the meeting.

A second thing that needs clarification is my use of the term "the devil." As I said in part three of this series, when otherwise good people act to cause harm to other people, I find it useful to attribute that to a malign influence. I say that not to let people off the hook for their own actions, but to try to counter the all too human tendency to demonize other people. I do not mean to suggest that any individual is possessed by "the devil."

Moravians

2011-02-12T05:37:00.001-05:00

Yesterday (Thursday) , Liz and I drove to Bethlehem, PA, to attend the Eucharist that formally inaugurated the full communion relationship between the Episcopal Church and the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church. The link is to the write up of the event at Episcopal News Service.

Liz was a member of the Moravian - Episcopal Dialogue when it began in 1999. Liz left the dialogue for personal reasons after interim eucharistic sharing was approved by both Moravian provinces in 2002 and by General Convention in 2003. Over the years of Liz's ecumenical involvement, I have met a number of folks in the field, including some Moravians, and it was a pleasure to see people I knew in Bethlehem last night. Mostly it was a pleasure to attend the joyous service in Central Moravian Church.

It was a welcome break from the troubles here at Morningside.

There is a video of the service at the Episcopal Church website.

Come on, Mouneer

2011-02-02T09:56:00.000-05:00

The Episcopal / Anglican Bishop of Egypt has issued a statement which essentially buys into Mubarak's speech of last night. I am disappointed but not surprised.

Another Blog Notice

2011-01-30T18:33:00.001-05:00

UPDATE 5 AM Wednesday mornuing.
I have now caught up on moderating comments. Things should move much faster now.
I still have some responses to write.

Because of the pressure of other matters, I have not been able to attend to comments awaiting moderation or to other correspondence regarding Trouble at Morningside. I hope to be back on this track soon.

Blog Notice

2011-01-27T05:32:00.002-05:00

I have turned on comment moderation and word verification.
Anonymous comments will not be approved.

Trouble at Morningside - Four

2011-01-26T14:18:00.004-05:00

Last night at the board meeting here at Morningside I came out. No, not as a gay man, but as a conscience stricken Christian. My conscience would no longer let me be unjust and unmerciful towards three of my colleagues on the board.

Before I left for the board meeting, I told Liz that there was no need for her to come to the meeting -- that the open session would be boring and that my dramatic move would come in closed session.
I had no way of knowing how wrong a prediction that would turn out to be. In what follows, I will use the same letters to denote individuals that I used here.

J had submitted a board member motion to rescind the September 14th motions and had specified that it be for open session. However, because the motion included a number of "Whereas" clauses that alluded, by extension, to matters that remain in closed session, C, on the advice of corporate counsel, moved the motion to closed session on the agenda.

At the outset of the meeting, J asked for a vote to change the agenda and move his motion into open session. Because two board members were late, the motion passed. I voted against it, and I have been pondering why. Mine was largely a strategic vote. I didn't want to tip my hand, especially not that early in the meeting.

Counting the adoption of the minutes, there were some 15 motions before we got to J's motion to rescind. I had earlier sent an email to J saying that if he really wanted the motion to pass, he needed my vote -- I even told him how to pare down the motion so that I would support it. When J introduced the motion, it was in the pared down form which has a stark simplicity. It was very clear what the issue before us was -- whether or not to rescind, period.

The first speaker was H. H is loud and he speaks his mind. One of the things he said was that to vote for this motion would be to state that we were wrong when we voted for the September 14th motions.

I was the second speaker . I said that, yes, voting for this motion would be to state that we were wrong and that was why I was going to vote for it. The harm we did to the coop by passing those motions far exceeds the harm done by the improper actions we were responding to.

Jaws dropped -- at least figuratively. One board member perceived my move as a personal attack, or at least he spoke in that way. Another (A) flat out told me that I was wrong and told me why.

I asked for, and got, permission to respond to the latter (A). I said I was not defending the actions that I still think were inappropriate, but that I have concluded that our response was excessive -- that an appropriate response would have been simple censure as it was when a majority of the board censured A last April for what we perceived as misuse of privileged information. I paraphrased the statement of Maimonides that I cited in Part One of this series.

any utterance (true or not) that might cause a person physical or monetary damage, or shame, humiliation, anguish or fear is prohibited

(Obviously I was not as clear as I could have been. A heard me as saying he was wrong to have caused monetary damage to B. In fact my intent was to say that I am applying the Maimonides standard to myself, not to others.)

I said that under that standard even simple censure is prohibited, so I apply the law of double effect (an action that has both a good outcome and a bad outcome is permissible only if the good outcome outweighs the bad outcome.) Censuring is a lesser evil than condoning improper behavior and is thus the better choice

Which brings me to the question of why I did not suggest replacing the September 14th motions with a simple motion to censure. The short answer is I didn't think of it. In any case, I don't think it would have gotten enough votes to pass, and finally, at this late date, even that response to the "offense" is excessive.

During the discussion, C made a great point of the harm that was caused by the secrecy of the actions of the prior administration. In fact, we cured that harm, if indeed there was any, by electing new officers last May. I say "if there was any" harm because, while there was certainly a potential for harm if the situation had continued, it did not continue. As for any financial harm to the coop, I strongly doubt that the charge imposed on E is collectible; the other charges were purely symbolic and hence to my mind they not only "might cause" but their intent could only be to cause "shame, humiliation, [and] anguish" to the three. I do not presume to judge the motives of the others who voted for the September 14th motions, but I can judge my own -- and having judged, I now repudiate my vote in the only effective way possible -- by voting to rescind.

Five people voted along with me for J's motion to rescind. Based on prior votes, I differ with all of them on key issues, including the issue of whether anything improper took place last year. But they are my sisters and brothers and I have to love them as myself.

The five people who voted the other way are also my brothers and sisters and I have to love them too as myself.

It's lonely being the swing voter. I sometimes jokingly say that I'm the decider -- and that seems to be true on a number of questions.

At the end of the open session meeting last night, I heard some one who should know better say "The spin has started," in reaction to a statement of someone else.

Pray for the peace of Morningside.

Chasing "Chasing Heaven"

2011-01-25T08:23:00.004-05:00

Yesterday evening, Liz and I and our friend Celia took the subway downtown so that we could go to a play, "Chasing Heaven," in which our friend Christine Campbell is playing the lead. We met at about 6 pm, on the Number 1 train. Celia was coming from 168th and we met her at 125th street. "Chasing Heaven" is by Leah Maddrie and is playing the Metropolitan Playhouse at 220 East 4th Street. I never knew, and Celia forgot, that 220 East 4th Street is not between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, but is rather between Avenue A and Avenue B, three blocks east of where we thought it was.

When we got there, we discovered that the show was sold out -- the theater was packed. The director told us that he had to give up his seat. We went across the street to an Irish bar -- I don't know the name of it -- and drank some beer, in which the director, George Ferencz joined us. We'll try to get to one of the two remaining performances, at 9 pm Thursday and Saturday.

I've lived in New York since I came to Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the age of 22 in the fall of 1958. In all that time, I have never become familiar with the East Village. I did teach for several years a few blocks south of there, at Seward Park High School on Grand Street, so I know some of the territory south of Houston Street, but not the East Village. Next time I'll know to take the D to West 4th or Broadway-Lafayette, and then switch to the F to Second Avenue.

Trouble at Morningside - Three

2011-01-24T15:24:00.002-05:00

A week ago, an anonymous poster left this comment on my post Trouble at Morningside - One:

One need not turn to Jewish or Christian teachings for guidance on the subject of hurtful speech. Every child who graduates from Kindergarten is taught this. Backpeddling will not excuse you from your direct role and complicity in fomenting the conflict at MG that is tearing our community apart. Pandora's box is open.

It's a fair enough comment and I think it warrants being lifted out of the comments and into the main posts. My reply last Sunday was:

You misunderstand me. I am not looking to excuse myself from anything. Nor am I backpedaling, at least not in the sense that expression is commonly understood.

Now that I have posted this in which I say that I am going to issue a public statement urging a "NO" vote in the upcoming special vote to remove three directors, I want to expand on that answer.

I will avoid using actual names or initials in what follows, but I will use unassociated letters of the alphabet to distinguish those whom I am discussing. I acknowledge an inconsistency here; I link to an earlier post in which I did use first names.

The problem I have been struggling with since the end of July is this. I am convinced that some of the officers of the coop acted improperly last year when they consulted a law firm and incurred expenses with neither the authorization nor the knowledge of the board. But I also know that they are all honorable people and I do not believe for a moment that they knew they were doing anything wrong.

Last April we had an instance where board member A released certain damaging information about board member B, who was running for reelection. A was avowedly trying to prevent B's reelection. In that instance, the majority of the board concluded that the the information was privileged and therefore it was improper for A to release it on his own. We voted to censure him. By my current standard, my vote then was prohibited speech and therefore sinful -- I'll return to that point later.

Just before A released information on B, the then minority on the board, A, C, and D, alerted board members to certain invoices from an outside law firm -- invoices that had notations that it appeared were for matters that the board should have been informed about. It was, in part, those invoices which lay behind my statement last May in Board Affairs that "for the reasons I have stated [earlier in that post], and for some additional reasons that I will not put in a blog post, I have decided that I will not support" E for president. (My friend Z said that was innuendo and perhaps he is correct -- I'll have to ponder that. In any case, I think I made the right choice when I voted for C for president.)

I took a lot of flak from friends for my votes in the reorganization meting in May. In particular, people wondered how I could have voted for A for vice president when a few weeks earlier I voted to censure him. I'm not going to answer that question here, except to say that I thought then and I think now that the censure was a sufficient sanction for the move against B, and that what they were urging seemed to me to be, in effect, shunning.

After the new administration took office in May, three unexpected events happened. First, our auditors declined to renew, and we were forced to scramble to find a new auditor in time for the mid-year audit. Second, it became necessary to investigate the behavior of an employee. Third, in early July, E sent an email to several non board members in which he made negative statements about an employee -- a serious lapse in judgment. Each of those events required action by the new president and the new officers -- the choice of a new auditor also required action by the board.

Sometime in mid July, I was given a packet of material that C had assembled, detailing the history of the coop's involvement with the outside law firm I mentioned above. At the time I concluded (based on a careful reading of the material) that the material established that E and other officers had acted in this instance as if the authority for the affairs of the coop (the corporation) were vested in them rather than in the board. The board discussed this material in closed session in July.

On September 14th, 2010, the earliest possible date to call a board meeting with 100% attendance, another meeting was held in entirely in closed session, ostensibly to discuss the matter, but actually to take action against three board members, B, E, and F. My apologies to A, C, D, G, and H, my fellow conspirators, but that is in fact what we were. We conspired to keep the resolutions (which we had predecided to pass) secret from the rest of the board until they were sprung on them at the meeting. Those resolutions were fine tuned so that all six of us would vote for them. In particular, in order to get my vote, the resolutions stopped short of actually billing anyone for charges beyond those that we judged E to be responsible for.

In fact, I made that point in the meeting, and all ten of the other directors heard me make it. I can well believe that some of them (the five who were not part of the conspiracy -- excuse me, the majority caucus) did not fully take in the distinction I was making. Three of them were without doubt feeling the shock that comes with feeling attacked. The other two, I and J, were no doubt in shock also.

Here I must make another discursus. I apologize to those of my readers for whom the words in the subtitle of this blog "Thoughts of a progressive Episcopalian" invoke a yawn, but I now realized that I missed a significant signal. There were four motions. The first called on E to resign. The second billed E for a specific sum. The third censured E, B, and F, and stated that they "should" each pay a specific sum. The fourth was a motion to move all of the motions into open session and notify the cooperators of the text of the motions. The only one of these motions I was willing to make was the last. I was not willing to make any of the other motions. That was, of course, a sign that I knew something was wrong -- But I didn't know what was wrong.

In fact, as I see it now, there were two things wrong. First, and least important, the sanctions imposed in motions two and three were excessive, even if it were granted that some sanction was warranted; and second, the imposition of these specific sanctions was categorically wrong.

I believe in the devil. That is, I think that when otherwise good people act to cause harm to other people, that it is useful to attribute that act to the influence of a malign influence -- the devil. I wish I had been more alert to the opportunity my vote of September 14th for those four motions was offering to the devil. (Like many other places in the US of A, Morningside Gardens has been an open hunting park for the devil for several years.) And I recognize that I succumbed to the temptations of the devil in voting for these motions.

The upshot was that these motions led to a stockholder petition to remove E, B, and F from the board. There's a lot going on in this petition. It's whole foundation is inference from the motions and rumor originating from several sources. But there is also a subtext -- not explicitly stated in the petition -- that these people don't vote the right way on financial matters and therefore the coop would be better off if they were not on the board. After all, suppose they and their friends could regain the majority -- what would happen then?

In fact, in the summer and fall of 2009 there was a stockholder petition circulating to remove directors including at least some of the same people -- that petition was based in part explicitly on the way people voted and in part on unproven allegations of their intentions. Fortunately for the coop, that petition did not have a sufficient number of valid signatures. The current petition has withstood challenges to the signatures and the vote will indeed go forward.

At the December board meeting, I stated that I was going to vote against removing the three directors. There are ample reasons to vote against removal and I shall state some of them in the future.

This post is getting too long, so I’ll quickly add just a few points. First, as to “prohibited speech,” the insight (or perhaps conversion experience) I had the other day was to see that a vote constitutes speech. For me, the implications of that are profound.

Second, as to the censure of A last spring, for me the law of double effect comes into play here. Voting to censure was indeed prohibited speech, but taking no action would have been worse, because it would have amounted to condoning improper behavior. By the same token, if on September 14 I had voted to censure, or in some other way had indicated that I could not condone the actions, that would have been acceptable – voting for the motions as they stood was not acceptable.

Third, and this is a completely new topic, it is not possible to have genuine fruitful rational discussion at our board meetings. Time constraints, Robert’s Rules, and the fishbowl atmosphere all contribute to that impossibility. Much of what we say is either advocacy or posturing. Real deliberation on hard questions takes a great deal of time – time we don’t give ourselves. I may say more on this later.

Trouble at Morningside - Two

2011-01-21T21:20:00.004-05:00

I had planned to write something more on the troubles before now, but that didn't happen. The careful reader will recall that in this post I said (not in so many words) that I now perceive that I fell into sin when I voted a certain way at a closed session board meeting on September 14th.

For my distant friends I have to explain that at that meeting a bare majority of the board imposed certain sanctions on three board members who were officers in the last board year. The sanctions were imposed for actions the three had taken that the majority of the board deemed improper. They were not actions which were intrinsically improper -- the impropriety lies in the fact that they were undertaken without the authorization or knowledge of the entire board. I'm sorry -- I can't be more explicit.

I am now faced with the question of what to do about the results of my September 14th vote. I have struggled with that question for weeks.

Another thing that most people here at Morningide know but that my distant friends do not is that a valid stockholder petition was submitted to the president calling for a special stockholder vote to remove the three directors named in the September 14th motions. One thing I plan to do is issue a statement urging a "NO" vote on the question fo removal. That is the least I can do do.

I am pondering whether there is anything else I can do.

While I was thinking about this I encountered eight lines of a poen by Margaret Attwood:

We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.

The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.

The pom is about two peopple, but the lines seem to me to apt when I consider the state of thigs here at Morningside.

Also, this past Wednesday evening, Liz and I attended a hymn sing with Alice Parker and I heard and sang for the first time these words of Charles Wesley's:

Times without number have I prayed
"This only once, forgive";
relapsing when thy hand was stayed,
and suffered me to live.

Yet now the kingdom of thy peace,
Lord, to my heart restore;
forgive my vain repentance,
and bid me sin no more.

Still More than you want to know

2011-01-13T17:10:00.001-05:00

I showed up for my colonoscopy at 7:30 am; by 8:30 the procedure was underway and by 8:45 it was over. I was awake during the latter part of the procedure and experienced much discomfort from the pseudo-gas pains caused by the air pumped into me during the procedure. Two polyps were removed and, assuming the biopsy show they are ok, I have to go back in three years for another one. He also told me I have diverticulosis, which sounds alarming but according to the Naitonal Institutes of Health, half of all Americans of 60 have it and of those 75 to 90% never get diverticulitis -- which is painful and could require a colon resection.

Liz picked me up on schedule, at about 9:30, and we walked the 9/10 of a mile home. (I had also walked to the doctor's office.) The gas pains persisted into the early afternoon. After I got home, I slept for two hours, in two separate shifts -- one before I ate anything and one after I had eaten lunch. Finally, at about 3 pm, I began to feel normal and now at 5 pm I'm back in the groove.

However, the state I was in for most of the day meant that I didn't get much catching up done. I still hope to post part two of Trouble at Morningside by Saturday -- especially because I expect there will be a part three.

More than you want to know

2011-01-12T10:24:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow morning at 7:30 am I will report to nearby gastroenterologist's office for a colonoscopy. Today I am on a very restricted diet, liquid except for some white toast I ate at breakfast, and the unpleasant part of the preparation will begin at 4 pm this afternoon. I am going to have to miss a pleasant gathering we have at St. Mary's every month -- it's called "Peace of Pizza" and members of the congregation share food and fellowship with the five interns who are housed as St. Mary's.

I'm planning to devote this day to "catch up" -- I have an awful lot to catch up on. Tomorrow I'll probably be logy from the sedation (and the fasting) so that may be another "catch up" day too.

I'm working on the next installment in the "Trouble at Morningside" series. I hope to have it posted by the weekend.

Eudora

2011-01-10T10:17:00.002-05:00

I have been a happy user of the Eudora email program since I first started using email. Since Qualcomm stopped updating Eudora a few years ago, I have begun experimenting with Thunderbird.
Yesterday, I made the switch over to Eudora OSE, which is really Thunderbird but has many of the features of Eudora. I hope I like it.

Trouble at Morningside -- One

2011-01-09T22:49:00.001-05:00

It's been a while since I posted anything and longer since I posted about Morningside Gardens, the cooperative I call home. Things are not well here at Morningside -- the board of directors is deeply divided and there is anger, dismay, and confusion among the cooperators. A friend said to me today that the general fractious mood that characterizes our country these days is also manifesting itself here at Morningside.

What follows is largely intended for my neighbors, but you more distant friends might find it interesting also.

I have recently been reading about the ethics of speech, in particular hurtful speech. I read that Maimonides said that any utterance (true or not) that might cause a person physical or monetary damage, or shame, humiliation, anguish or fear is prohibited in Jewish law. As a Christian, I find that teaching to be consonant with the Christian ethic as I understand it.

Over the past several weeks I have been increasingly uneasy about the effects of a vote I cast in a closed session board meeting on September 14. If I take the statement of Maimonides as a standard, my vote was prohibited speech.

Hospitalized

2010-11-28T06:43:00.004-05:00

What an end to a week!
Friday evening I fainted and ended up at St. Luke's Hospital for about 18 hours. First I have to reassure you and say there is absolutely nothing wrong with me.
Here's the story:
Friday evening we provided a sort of second Thanksgiving dinner for Jane and her family, Jane's stepmother Caroline, and Jane's cousin Jay. (We did the same thing last year and included Scott's parents then.)
As usual, I was the primary cook. I went into the day quite tired, and indeed I wondered early on how I would be able to hold up. In retrospect, I realize that I also didn't dirnk enough liquids all day and so in addition to being tired I got dehydrated. Finally, just as I was putting the finishing touches on dinner, I had to go lie down -- and I dozed for about three hours. Then I got up for a whie, ate a little bit of the dinner, and enjoyed the company of our grandchildren, Jay, and Jane while Scott took Caroline home. At the end of that, what I wanted most was to soak in a hot bath -- something I rarely do, but my legs were very tired. It turned out my bathtub was unusable, because dirty water from another apartment had backed up into it. So I took a bath in Liz's bathtub. I luxuriated in the very hot water. However, when I stood up, I felt light headed. I should have sat down immediately, but all I could think of was drying off and getting to the bed.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, feeling sick. In fact, I had fainted and thrown up all over myself and the floor. I had also bumped my head on the edge of a shelf of a bookcase, and there was an amazing amount of blood from was in fact was a minor scrape.
When she saw me lying there, Liz immediately called our Security Department and told them there was a medical emergency. I said, "No, it's not an emergency," but they had already called 911 and an ambulance was on the way.
The EMS technicians are very good at their job -- they managed to persuade me that I should go to the emergency room because of the bump on my head. Once I was at the hospital they did a lot of tests -- a chest xray revealed that my heart is normal, a cat scan revealed that there was no hidden head injury, the EKG and blood tests also showed that I am in good shape. Still, they decided to admit me to the hospital -- the doctor told me they wanted to give me a stress test. Liz stayed with me for a couple of hours -- she went home after it became clear that I would be admitted. By then it was about 2 AM. I finally got to a room sometime between 3 and 4 AM. They took more blood, put me on a heart monitor, and an intravenous saline solution. (I'd had that in the emergency room too, but this one went through a a machine which monitored the drip and made noise.) Before 7 AM I had spoken to three doctors, and all were agreed that I was ok and could go home. The last one was an intern and he told me that when Dr. Bhat, the attending doctor, came in I would probably be discharged. That's not what happened. Dr. Bhat never showed and sometime after 10 AM a new young intern came. She told me the name, which I promptly forgot, of another attending doctor who would make the decision about discharge. Shortly after 11, Liz got there with my clothes. During the hour and half she was there, she went out and asked what was taking so long. Finally, we decided that she should not wait -- I would go home alone. Just before Liz left, the intern came back and said the attending doctor would be there in maybe 45 minutes. When he came, which must have been about 1 PM, he said he had spoken to my doctor, Dr. Romanoff, who wants to see me this week, and that he would tell them at the desk to discharge me. So I got dressed.
The next thing that happened was that I was told that I needed to have more blood tests and an EKG. It took a little while before that happened, but it was still only about 2 PM. Shortly before three I went out to the desk and asked what was happening. The intern was there and she told me she wanted to give me the lab results to take with me. She gave me print outs of the earlier tests and said she would have the EKG in a little while. Soon she brought the EKG results and apologized that the blood test results were taking so long.
Part of the time while I was waiting, I was dozing because I was still sleepy from the day and night before. If I hadn't been tired, I might have been a little more assertive. Finally at 5 PM, four hours after I was finally told I could leave, I went to the nurse and said this is ridiculous, I'm leaving. She said, give me a minute , I'll get the paper ready for you to sign out. She came to the room with the papers and while I signed she told me that if it had been up to her, I would have been gone hours before.
As I walked home, I thought how ironic it was. The reason I was taken to the emergency room was the bump on my head and in the emergency room I got a cat scan and a tetanus shot for that, but no further treatment for the minor scrape on my head -- not even an antiseptic. And I never got the stress test.

"You blog, don't you?"

2010-11-14T08:41:00.003-05:00

Last week at a party, in the course of a conversation about the urge to write creatively, someone asked me if I had felt that urge, and then said, "Oh. but you blog, don't you?" I had to reply that I was blogging very sporadically these days. According to that great fount of knowledge, Wikipedia, blogging began ove ten years ago as a kiond of online journaling, and my blog(s) and those I link to keep up that tradition at least to some extent. So, what's up, then?

Yesterday, I went to Diocesan Convention as a voting delegate. I wasn't looking forward to it, for reasons I'll go into a little later, but in fact I enjoyed it, even though I know very few of the people there. I did have a very brief conversation with Tobias Haller, but I didn't even say "hi" to anyone else except those from St. Mary's -- Earl Kooperkamp, Chlore Breyer, and Sarah Kooperkamp. I spotted Jamie Callaway and Diane Pollard ideep n conversation, but didn't break in on them.

The convention ended at 4 PM and I walked home (about a twenty minute walk.) Then Liz and I walked back up the hill to Broadway Presbyterian Church for a concert at 5PM by our friends The Orfeo Duo. That concert ended just before 7 PM and we went home and had a quick supper. Then we went to another concert, this one at 8 PM in Christ Chapel of Riverside Church, that concluded the Tree of Life conference on peace between Israel and Palestine. All in all, it was a full and rich day.

As we were driving home after closing up the cottage just over two weeks ago, Liz and I agreed that writing up family history for my cousins would be my major project in the coming weeks and months. In order to write up even a small portion of the family history that I have collected over the past 28 years I need first to make sure that my database is in order. When I began collecting genealogical data, I kept it in a word processing format. I laboriously converted the word processing data into a gedcom file by hand and imported it into Brother's Keeper. I then moved to Family Origins and finally to The Master Genealogist (TMG). Along the way, a good deal of the data was put in without sources, because the earlier programs did not allow sources. So now I am going back over all of my original notes and entering sources and in some case additional data. It's a long process, but I sm committed to it. The last time I began to update my data in serious way, I was interrupted by a crisis at Morningside Gardens and I ran for the Board of Directors. That was six and a half years ago. This time I not going to allow myself to be interrupted.

As soon as I can, I am giving up as much Morningside Gardens work as I can. I will remain treasurer at St. Mary's at least until our finances are in order and a qualified replacement is found.

More later.

Morningside Troubles

2010-10-04T19:20:00.003-04:00

Last week, cooperators at Morningside Gardens received in the mail a Flash Report setting forth some motions passed at a special closed session board meeting held on September 14th. I won't go into the substance of the motions here, but for clarity I should say that they amounted to censure of certain board members for actions during the last board year. (That is admittedly a minimal description, but I don't want to broadcast the details all over the internet.)

Since I voted for the motions I feel compelled to make a few points. First, the principal issue was secrecy -- the actions for which the board members were censured were actions that should not have been undertaken without specific authorization from the board, and without the knowledge of the entire board, including those who might not have voted to authorize the actions. Second, the motions were passed in the second of two long closed sessions -- the first at the beginning of the regular July meeting, the second held separately -- at both of which counsel for the corporation was present throughout.

There is great division and, dare I say it, a great deal of self-righteousness on the board. The passage of these motions has only reinforced the division. In retrospect, I can think of a number of ways I might have tried to influence an outcome different from these particular motions. But the operative word is "tried" -- and I might not have succeeded. In any case, I didn't present any viable alternatives. For me, ultimately it came down a choice between condoning -- or ignoring -- the improper actions or objecting to them. Once I knew of them, I could not, in conscience, condone them.

September 18

2010-09-18T08:51:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I returned to Heart Lake after several days in New York. My time in New York was intense -- I had to catch up on my duties as treasurer at St. Mary's; I had to attend a rather intense special board meeting at Morningside Gardens -- I'm in the process of writing a blog post about that; I had to catch up on our personal finances; and I had an appointment at the dental school.

Becasue Liz had to back here on Wednesday, I was left to take the bus to Binghamton on Friday. My second cousins Anne and her brother Stanley picked me up at the bus terminal and brought me here where we had a little gathering of Liz and I, Anne, Stanley, and another second cousin David and his girlfriend Debbie. We cousins talked some about family, including the fact that our great grandparents' family started coming here a hundred years ago in 1910.

This morning I am facing the fact that I have to produce a financial report for St. Mary's by Thursday, and I have to produce minutes and what we call a Flash Report for Morningside Gardens by Monday morning. We're leaving Tuesday adfternoon to go back to New York, so my days will be busy.

Also, seeing my cousins makes me realize that I have to write down some family history so that it won't be lost. That sets off another process of discernment about how I want to spend my time.

Enough for now -- I have things to do.

End of Summer Thoughts

2010-08-29T11:57:00.006-04:00

Here at Heart Lake as I sit at my computer and look out at the lake, while I listen to "Discovering Music" on BBC Radio 3 (a program about Brahms' Violin Concerto,) my mind is full of a number of apparently disparate topics. Sunday morning Liz and I went, as we usually do when we are here in the summer, to the Heart Lake United Methodist Church. This small church is currently in financial trouble and its future is uncertain. We are hanging in there with the active congregation -- a little over a dozen people. The situation at that church is very much on my mind, although in fact it is peripheral to my major concerns.

Thinking about the church here at Heart Lake, by an obvious connection of ideas, puts me in mind of the situation at St. Mary's. I took a break from the active treasurership for the month of August -- and indeed I won't piuck it up again in earnest until after Labor Day. Even then, I'll be pretty much an absentee treasurer until sometime in October.

Another obvious connection of ideas brings me to the wider Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. I am somewhat, that is, slightly, less addicted tyo reading all of the blog commentary on Anglican doings than I was, say a year or more ago -- but I still follow with bemusement the oddball antics of certain Anglican prelates with regard to the wedge issue of saem sex relationships.

On Sunday afternoon we attended a concert at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Montrose. During this past year, St. Paul's called as its rector the Rev. Paul Walker, whose life partner, the Rev. Randy Lee Webster is serving St. Mark's Church in New Milford and Christ Church is Susquehanna. I mentioned a few weks ago that we had met Randy Webster at a Saturday afternnon concert in Susquehanna. I'm impressed, anda little surprised , that the Episcopal Churches in upper Susquehanna County are welcoming and affirming. St. Paul's has a formal statement to that effect -- I don't know about the other two churches, but they are certainly welcoming and affirming in practice. (As, I may add, is St. Mary's, which does not yet have a formal public statement to that effect, despite our history of having gay and lesbian clergy, wardens, vestry members, and ordinary congregants.)

Two of the newer congregants at St. Mary's are Tom Cahill and Joel Kovel. I don't know Tom except to exchange the peace with, and he doesn't attend as often as Liz and I do when we are at home, so it will take a while to get to know him. Currently, I am reading the second of his Hinges of History books, The Gifts of the Jews. I know that sometime this past year I began Desire of the Everlasting Hills, but I don't think I finished it. Part of my problem is that I try to keep too many books going at the same time.

I do know Joel Kovel a little better. He has been going to our Celtic Morning Prayer held in the Lampman Chapel at Union Theological Seminary every weekday morning. (Liz and I started going only last November, but we find it a good way to start the day.) We are slowly reading ,out lous, Joel's book, The Enemy of Nature. It's a little tough going. Although I call myself a socialist, and having been going to the Socialist Scholars Conference and its successor the Left Forum for about twenty years, I am not well grounded in Marxist or other socialist thought, and I don't know enough to be able to fuuly understand the technical critique of capitalism that Joel makes, nor the concommitant argument that eco-socialism is the only viable choice. Both in The Enemy of Nature, and in statements made very recently, Joel has acknowledged the difficulty of overcoming capitalism and replacing it with a system with an ecocentric ethic. A major part of the difficulty, I would say, is persuading people that capitalism is in fact the enemy of nature and needs to be overcome.

Joel Kovel is about four months younger than I and his intellectual achievements leave me awestruck and more than a little regretful that I did not pursue my original desire to become an academic. I am also impressed by his activism -- mine amounts to attending the odd march or rally and making relatively small financial contributions to causes I find worthy.

I am, to be sure, being selectively unfair to myself here. Over the past thirty years, I have devoted quite a bit of energy to the governance of Morningside Gardens, the housing coop where we live and over the past forty years or so I have devoted energy to the lay leadership of St. Mary's Church.

I'll sign off here.

Whew!

2010-08-26T06:36:00.004-04:00

Yesterday evening, Liz and I drove back to Heart Lake after spending five nights in Vermont for the second time this month. With the driving time, that really mean six days away. Add to that two days I went to New York in August and I have spent 14 days of August away from here. Since today is August 26th, that's more than half of the month.

I'm looking forward to spending the next 10 or 12 days here without going anywhere else to sleep.

[Actually posted a day later than written for reasons I won't go into.]

Friday the Thirteenth

2010-08-13T07:33:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, I had to go to New York so that I could (a) attend to a little bit of St. Mary's Treasurer business, (b) chair a Tenant Selection Committee meeting at Morningside Gardens, and (c) have my temporary fixed upper denture repaired. On Wednesday afternoon I spent about three hours in the dentist's chair while the prosthesis was being repaired.

Thrusday morning I got up very early, loaded the car, and was on the road back to Heart Lake at about 5:45 AM. I was anxious to get back here because our granddaughters and their parents are here. There were signs on Route 81 that there was a closure between exit 206 and exit 211 and that there was a detour between. I thought that would not delay me much, but it it turned out to be a serious delay. I lost over an hour and a half and would have lost more time if I hadn't belatedly decided to cut my losses and turn around and take another route.

Anyway, I got here and enjoyed having the family here yesterday. I'm looking forward to the next three days, after which they are going back to Vermont.

I have to go to New York again for a brief meeting this coming Wednesday, then back to Vermont on Friday for five nights. I find that a lot of back and forthing is disruptive of continuity in any task. It seems to take a day after I get back before I am truly back in the groove to work on whatever project I was on before I left. The upshot is that I won't get as much done this summer as I had expected.

That's life.

Home Again to Heart Lake

2010-08-08T06:45:00.003-04:00

The pictures are coming -- I promise.

Shortly after I finished the previous post, we go a phone call that a canoe trip we had planned was canceled because tof conditions caused by the heavy rain the night before. At my suggestion we called another canoe company and had basically the same canoe trip -- at half the cost. This morning it just occurred to me that the conditions that caused the other company to cancel were probably not river conditions, but rather flooded ground at the access and landing points. It was my first canoe experience on a river that I can remember - perhaps I had a little river experience when I was a Boy Scout, but I'm not at all certain about that one way or another -- but I found it very similar to being on a lake. Of course, that part of the Lamoille River is very gentle.

After the canoe trip we took a dirve to Craftsbury Common on the edge of Vermont's Northeast kingdom. We got there at about 6 PM and everybody was indoors. Then we went back to Smuggs for supper and we sat up late, talking and exchanging pictures on the computers.

Friday morning, we loaded the car and drove down to Poultney for lunch with Nancy and Ross. At lunch, my denture broke -- it's an acrylic temporary fixed full denture. The center of it broke out, so I have a huge gap with no teeth. I'll get it fixed when I'm in New York this Wednesday, so I have to endure it for a few more days.

On Saturday we went to the family meeting. A major focus was how the family property in Poultney will be passed on to those in the next generation -- the principal question being willingness and ability to assume a share of the financial responsibilty for the upkeep of the property.

After the meeting, we had a lunch in celebration of Liz's brother Dick's birthday. There were twenty family members there, including Jane and Scott and our two granddaughters, Amanda and Juliana. After lunch, we drove home to Heart Lake -- it took about five hours all told, including a stop in a grocery store.

It's great to be back. We have a landscaper coming tomorrow and we also have to get ready for the arrival of Jane and family either in the middle of Wednesday night or on Thursday -- their drive is about two hours longer than ours was yesterday and they haven't decided whether to drive Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Meanwhile, I'll be going to New York for a meeting (and now to get my teeth fixed) so I won't be here until sometime Thursday morning.

The pictures are coming -- I promise,.

What are we doing in Vermont?

2010-08-05T08:19:00.003-04:00

For the past thirty years or so, Liz and I have been going to Heart Lake for much of the summer. In 1981, shortly before he died, my father told me he thought we could buy the cottage we now have at a pretty good price as long as we undertook to dispose of my my great aunt’s belongings – that her son did not want to have to do that. It took a few years for us to make the decision, but in 1987 we finally bought it.

We love it at Heart Lake. We also love Vermont – much of Liz’s family has ended up here – and our daughter Jane is here, along with our granddaughters and our son-in-law. So we come to Vermont a lot in the course of a year.

This year, though, we are here at a resort – Smuggler’s Notch Resort (Smuggs) on the west side of the Green Mountains. My cousin Vicki and her husband Jess are owners of a timeshare here and invited us to come up and spend time with them. It’s an almost new experience for me – Liz and I once won a short stay at a resort in Jamaica – that was in a hotel while this is in a condo apartment. Smuggs is about an hour from where Jane and Scott live near Montpelier, and they and the girls came over yesterday evening for dinner – we were so glad they got to meet Vicki and Jess – one of the reasons we came here was so they could meet.

We leave here tomorrow, Friday, to spend some time in Poultney with Liz’s sister Nancy and her husband Ross. We are co-owners of the property in Poultney which Liz’s parents bought and later retired to. Because of a partial family rift, we haven’t attended any of the annual family meetings since the summer of 2001, but we are going to attend the meeting this time – on Saturday in Rutland. Then we will drive back to Heart Lake on Saturday afternoon.

A week from today, Jane and Scott and the girls will be coming to Heart Lake for their annual brief stay. We’re att looking forward to that. Then, in two weeks, we are coming back to Vermont, to attend a memorial service for Liz’s uncle Perry and his wife Kathleen. Uncle Perry died this past winter – Kathleen died several years earlier, but had not been memorialized. We are going to pick up Liz’s Aunt Adele at the Albany airport and bring her to Poultney and thence to Ripton for the memorial service on Sunday. Liz’s brothers and sister will see to getting Adele back to the airport – meanwhile Liz and I will proceed to Jane’s to babysit the girls on Monday and Tuesday. Then it’s back to Heart Lake as August winds down.

I'm not good at keeping these promises, but I promise to update this with pictures -- soon.

Where were you on July 29, 1974?

2010-07-29T20:24:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Keaton asked the question on the HOBD (Bishops and Deputies) list and also at her blog. I decided to answer it before reading any of the responses on the HOBD list or reading her blogpost -- Telling Secrets: Lord, what a time!

I was the senior warden of St. Mary's Church. My partner, Rex, had died in February, 1973 and I went into a sort of tailspin -- the main symptom was that I was drinking far too much. St. Mary's sponsored two of the women who were ordained that day at the Church of the Advocate -- I should have been there, but I wasn't able to mobilize myself to get there. I did have a long telephone conversation the night before with Bishop DeWitt. I was concerned about the effect the participation of our rector, Neale Secor, would have on him and on St. Mary's. I don't remember that conversation in any detail, but I do remember that Bishop DeWitt told Neale he was impressed that I had made the call.

I still wish I had been there.

Small World -- Heart Lake Division

2010-07-24T21:15:00.002-04:00

When I came out to my parents in the spring of 1958 -- I was a senior in college -- they told me that I had been conceived when they made love on a lawn around a hundred feet from where I am sitting now. That would have been almost exactly seventy five years ago. It was a strange response to a difficult disclosure. It was also a complete non sequiter. Which is a great lead in to what Liz and I did today.

First we went for a short hike in the State Game Lands on the south side of the Susquehanna River between Hallstead and Susquehanna. It was too hot and we didn't have enough time anyway, but we'll go back when the weather is cooler but hunting season hasn't started.

Then we drove to Christ Church, Susquehanna for a short jazz concert and an an exhibit of early pictures of Susquehanna County, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the county. There I met Todd Moffett, senior warden, who it turns out attended St. Michael's Church in the early 1980's and knew Dorothy Cobb, one of the stalwarts of St. Mary's, who at the time was working (in her retirement) at St. Michael's. We invited him to attend St. Mary's if he chances to be in New York on a Sunday -- he in turn invited us to come to Christ Church any Sunday we could draw away from the Heart Lake United Methodist Church. We also met the priest, Randy Webster, who is also priest at St. Mark's in New Milford -- a church I have never been in. Randy's partner Paul Walker is the new rector at St. Paul's in Montrose. We happen to be on the mailing list of St. Paul's -- they have a super newsletter, and Liz and I were struck by the casual way they referred to the partner of their new rector. So now we have met Randy and not Paul -- but we will soon, no doubt.

Before coming to Montrose, Paul and Randy were at Christ Church, Belleville, New Jersey. The Mystery Worshipper reports that Paul wore a biretta there. I wonder if he does in Montrose -- perhaps I'll find out soon.

It was nice to meet an out gay priest today, the same day the Father Christian Troll reports on some of the doings of little Matt Kennedy, who tried to steal a church and succeeded uin steqling congregation about twenty fie miles down river from Christ Church.

I always say more later, but I never deliver. Ciao.

Another summer at Heart Lake

2010-07-13T06:10:00.002-04:00

Liz and I have begun in earnest our annual stay at Heart Lake, even as we are both significantly involved in things in New York. As chair of the property committee at St. Mary's, Liz has several important matters to attend to, and I have a full plate as the new treasurer of St. Mary's. This coming weekend, we have both been invited to join the vestry retreat, and so we will have to be in New York for that.

Meanwhile, the long saga of my dental implant and new prosthesis is approaching an end. I have an appointment at the dental school on Wednesday afternoon (tomorrow) and we have decided to drive down in the morning rather than late this afternoon as we originally planned. I am not yet sure whether to aim to get there in time for the Chinese class. To do that, we would have to be on the road by 7 am, 7:30 at the latest, and that might be difficult to manage.

Morningside Gardens still takes a good deal of my attention too. This year I am secretary and chair of the tenant selection (admissions) committee -- I'm not yet sure what other committees I will on. That means I have to be in New York on average at least twice a month for meetings, except possibly a little less in August. Since we try to stay here until at least early October, there's quite a bit of back and forthing.

A few weeks ago, I made a list of the personal projects I want to move forward on -- there were four, to the best of my recollection they are: the Dunciad project, studying Chinese, following and possibly writing about Anglican and Episcopal Church matters, and continuing with the organization of my study at home. After having been here at Heart Lake for a few stints of several days at a time, with a couple of equally long stays in New York, I have added at least one more project to the list -- I want to bring some more order into my genealogy papers.

That list of personal projects does not include reading projects -- Liz and I are reading Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature, and I am reading Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness, and Thomas Cahill's The Gifts of the Jews. I'm also starting again to read Richard Hooker -- right now I'm reading the sermon On the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect, which is printed before the Laws in the Everyman's Library version of Keble' edition. I've set aside Tristram Shandy for the moment.

And then there are the physical tasks associated with this cottage at Heart Lake. There are a number of things Liz and I want to do to improve the place, as well as organize some of the things that fill the cottage (especially the attic), the garage, and the shed.

I could go on, but it's getting towards 9 am and I have to turn to St. Mary's treasurer business.

The Judicious Mr. Hooker

2010-06-29T17:16:00.002-04:00

Over on HOBD, Michael Russell has announced the publication of the first of four volumes of a "new edition" of The Works of Richard Hooker. Michael is the author of Hooker's Blueprint, "which is essentially a Cliff Notes of the Laws [of Ecclesiastical Polity.] " The new edition includes the text of the Keble's 1836 edition of Hooker, as well as the Blueprint. Volume I can be ordered at CreateSpace.

Just the other day, I said to my slef that I ought to check and see if I could find a cheap copy of volume II of the Everyman's Library edition of the Laws at one the internet booksellers. It just seemed to me that I might be successful, and in fact I was. As it turned out, it was cheaper to order both volumes than just volume II (I got it for under $15, including shipping.) The Everyman's Library edition also uses the Keble text and notes. Here at Heart Lake, I have three volume copy of the third editon of Keble's Hooker, dated 1855, and inscribed to "Frederick Whiting, with W. Wayte's best wishes, on his leaving Eton. December, 1853. " The leather-looking bindings are in bad shape, but the text itself looks pristine. I doubt Frederick gave it much use.

At home I have a two volume edition of Keble's Hooker, in a similar condition, but I'll have to wait until I get home to identify it more clearly. I also have volume one of the Everyman's Library edition. I have wanted volume two for a long time, because it is a very easy way to read Book V of the Laws, which is the most fun. Now I'll have it.

I also have a copy of Michael's Blueprint, which I ordered because it was recommended to me by Grandmere Mimi, to whom it was recommended in turn by Tobias Haller.

Gay Pride Day and Gas Drilling

2010-06-27T06:54:00.003-04:00

I'm posting this from our cottage at Heart Lake. I had to make a choice (as I do most years) between being here and being in New York for the LGBT Pride march the last weekend in June. On the last Saturday of June every year, there is an opening brunch followed by an informational meeting of the Heart Lake Association. It's an important time both to greet our neighbors and to get some news.

The big thing that's happening around here is gas drilling -- to extract lots of natural gas from the Marcellus shale that underlies this area. In orderto extract the gas, it is necessary to use a process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking for short. Fracking involves the injection of a large amount of water and chemicals into the ground. The chemicals used are toxic and if there is a spill they can ruin streams. Even if there isn't a spill they can contaminate groundwater and ruin wells.

In Dimock township, less than 15 miles from here (shorter as the crow flies), there have been a number of accidents -- both wells and streams have been ruined. This afternoon, Liz is going on a tour of some sites organized by a progressive neighbor (they're rare here) and conducted by an environmental research organization.

I'm sorry not to be in New York for the Pride March, but I'm not sorry to be here. This morning we went to the Heart Lake United Methodist Church, our summer church. They are in the process of deciding what to do about their future -- I may write a little about that at another time. As part of the sermon, the pastor asked members of the congregation to say something about the meaning of "church." There were several thoughtful comments, mostly focusing on church as a place for worship, fellowship and taking a holy time away from daily concerns. Then Judy mentioned seeing a story on the news about a church that removed the cross on its steeple in order to be open to "people of other religions, gay people, and what not." The pastor commented that to his mind then its not a church. I would agree that it's not a Christian church any longer, but that's not what caught my attention. It was Judy's mention of gay people. Maybe she picked it up from the news program, but there's no mention of gay people in either of the stories turned up by Google News -- and one is on an avowedly conservative website. In case you're interested, the church was Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan and is now the C# Exchange. The pastor, Ian Lawton, is a former Anglican priest from the diocese of Sidney in Australia. If you google him you'll find out more.

That's all for now. Happy Gay Day.

More about Monringside

2010-06-09T21:08:00.001-04:00

NOTE: Posted witout links temporarily

I met the other night with a few friends here in Mornngsdie Gardens who were dismayed by my support of Glenn for president. The outcome of the organizational meeting was a clean sweep of officers. My friends were especially distressed that I had voted for Marlo as first vice president. They felt that as an ethical person, I should not have voted for Marlo because of what they perceived as his unprincipled attack on Chi (see LINK Board Affairs) in the weeks leading up to the election of board members. I did not have a good answer when I met with them, but I have thought about it since and I conclude that it is exactly because I am an ethical person that I could not automatically consider Marlo ineligible for office. I’ll explian, but first ...

Having decided that I was going to support Glenn for president, I also decided that it was appropriate to support Glenn’s preferences for the other officers. I would have preferred having Jerry as one of the vice presidents, but for reasons I cannot go into on this blog, in the eyes of the Big-endians on the board, there was a serious cloud over Jerry’s head. If I had voted for Jerry, it would have driven a wedge between me and the Big-endians on the obard at the outset of the year.

As for Marlo, the only thing against him is a tendency to go to the cooperators with matters that should have been dealt with on the board, as in his going to the cooperators with information about Chi. In the Chi matter, the board condemned his action, as I wrote at LINK. For me, that ends it – he has been rebuked, whether or not he acknowledges that his action was improper, and now we move ahead. The improper part of that action, by the way, was not the “going to the cooperators” but the revealing of information that he would not have had if he had not been a board member and that was therefore privileged.

As for “going to the cooperators,” on at least two instances this past year board members sent memos to the cooperators on matters that should have have been taken up by the board. In each case, they claimed that they had tried to bring up the matter and had failed – that in fact they were “stonewalled.”. While there are different perceptions as to whether a serious enough attempt was made to bring the matters to the board, the fact remains that in each case the matters were indeed brought to the board members’ attention before a board meetig and were not taken up at that board meeting – so the claim of being “stonewalled” arises out of genuine experience.

It is still true that the level of mistrust on the board is high, as is the level of mistrust among those cooperators who are partisan. I know that Glenn hopes to lower the level of mistrust and I intend to help as much as I can. But it’s a tough row to hoe and I am not certain we will succeed.

Authors and Bishops and Activists, Oh My!

2010-05-29T11:02:00.005-04:00

Last Sunday, which we now call Pentecost but which I still think of as Whitsunday, I was struck by the fact that sitting near the front of St. Mary's at the 10 am service were four "old men." My claim to fame is that I am the senior (in terms of time I have been there) male member of St. Mary's. The other three have come to St. Mary's much more recently, but they are each scholars and published authors. Thomas Cahill is an occasional visitor but not a member. Joel Kovel and Arthur Cash are regular attendees and are at least informally members. But even though we had four men visibly sitting toward the front on Sunday, St. Mary's these days is energized by a group of women, mostly somewhat younger, who are providing strong and dynamic lay leadership.

Tuesday morning Liz and I attended a service in a different venue and with a different cast of characters. It was a Service of Rededication on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Interchurch Center. We were there for two reasons -- we heard about it because Liz currently sings in the Intechurch Center Chorus, and after we heard about it Liz recalled that she had been at the dedication fifty years ago when she had a clerical job at the Interchurch Center and had joined the choir there. This time there was no choir, but an organ, a brass quartet, and a bagpiper. A guest of honor was Steven Rockefeller, whose family, especially his grandfather, provided the land on which the Interchurch Center is built. The address was given by Michael Kinnamon, the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ. Fr. Raymond Rafferty, the current pastor of Corpus Christi Church, which we can see from the windows of our apartment, was among several readers; he read a passage from Matthew 5. Just before the service began I noticed in the program the name "The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori." Bishop Katharine came in at the end of the procession, behind Father Rafferty and Michael Kinnamon, whether the placemen was liturgically conscious or not, I don't know, but it was appropriate because she was the ranking cleric there. Bishop Katharine read the Litany of Remembrance and Dedication. Liz and I made a point of speaking to Bishop Katharine after the service, before she ducked out the back door on to Riverside Drive. I have now had an opportunity to speak to Bishop Katharine at three functions here on Morningside Heights and also once when she and her husband showed up unannounced at St. Mary's.

Three days after the Rededication of the Interchurch Center, and having nothing at all to do with it, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a "Pentecost letter to the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion." Others have written at length of the more significant portions of this letter -- in which Archbishop Rowan reveals more than ever his retrograde authoritarian ecclesiology and his inability to see that his statements amount to saying the lesbian and gay persons, "I have no need of you." My initial reaction to his letter, and especially the press release accompanying it, was "Ho, hum." There was nothing new.

Last Sunday afternoon, Liz and I hosted a gathering of people, mostly from St. Mary's, who are concerned about peace in Israel and Palestine. We heard from one of the witnesses to the killing of Rachel Corrie in Rafah, Gaza, on March 16, 2003. We also heard a report on current conditions in Rafah. The question of Israel and Palestine is a difficult one. It is difficult for many people to understand that a person can be simultaneously for the Israeli people and for the Palestinian people; or that being against the policies of the government of Israel is not a form of anti-Semitism.

My 10th great grandmother, Anne Marbury Hutchinson, is said to have been opposed to the wars against native Americans in the 1630's that resulted in the near extermination of the Pequots and the enslavement of the survivors. It is ironic that some of her descendants grew rich in the triangular slave trade and that she herself was killed by native Americans in 1643.

Lost

2010-05-24T21:34:00.002-04:00

Some people in Anglican land, and, I presume, elsewhere, are writing, and maybe talking, and certainly blogging, about something on TV called Lost, which I gather just came to an end.

As for me, I just started reading Tristram Shandy again for the first time in over fifty years.

Busy and Wow

2010-05-22T20:39:00.004-04:00

A lot has been happening. I'm writing this as an update without links just to get it down.

We had the organizational meeting of the board of directors here at Morningside Gardens on Tuesday. My support for Glenn and other Big-endians caused a lot of consternation. I myself was elected secretary, an office I have held before. I'll be writing more about Morningside Gardens and about conflict in the coming days and weeks.

Liz just finished attending her 55th high school reunion, and from Thursday afternoon to Saturday afternoon we had one of her classmates, another Liz, as a house guest.

I don't think I mentioned that on Palm Sunday as we processed around the block I talked with Arthur Cash, a retired English professor, about my project to publish my master's essay on The Dunciad on the web. Arthur encouraged me and I have been itching to get back to that project. In order to do it properly, I need to read a doctoral dissertation on the Dunciad that predates the completion of my essay but that I somehow missed in 1982 when I did a literature search. On Friday, while Liz and Liz were at their reunion I went down to the 42nd street library -- the one with the lions -- and obtained permission to use the Berg Collection, where a copy of the dissertation is deposited. I had about a half hour to look at the dissertation and I now know both that I do indeed have to read it and that it complements my own work -- or the other way around. I'll be writing more about that in the coming weeks and months.

On Thursday we had the first meeting of the St. Mary's finance committee since I was elected treasurer. I still haven't had time to process what we discussed at that meeting. I got home from that meeting and had about 20 minutes to eat supper before I went to another meeting here at Morningside Gardens at which we discussed the financing of capital projects. Amazingly, a committee composed of Big-endians and Little-endians came up with a unanimous recommendation to the board.

There's more, but that's enough for now.

I am not a Big-endian

2010-05-19T21:42:00.000-04:00

Last night i voted to elect Glenn president of my coop, Morningside Gardens. It's safe -- and not at all boastful -- to say that last night I was the decider, so Glenn was elected. I was elected secretary, an office I have held before. The rest of the officers are Big-endians.

I am not a Big-endian. If anyone was watching, I demonstrated that in the very first vote of the evening. I also may have demonstrated it in the last vote of the evening -- I'm not saying.

As I have said before, the chief hallmark of the Little-endians may well be mistrust of the Big-endians and the chief hallmark o the Big-endians may well be mistrust of the Little-endians. There are also people who are not otherwise Little-endians who mistrust the Big-endians and people who are not otherwise Big-endians who mistrust the Little-endians. The mistrust that some of the Little-endians have for the Big-endians leads some of them to predict dire consequences as a result of the new set of officers. Even if control of the board were vested in the officers, I don't believe there would be dire consequences, but since control of the board is not vested in the officers, we'll never know. When it comes to decision making, all board members are equal and none are more equal than others.

To state it more explicitly, even if the five Big-endians all vote the same way on any question, I will vote independently. And if the Little-endians held all the offices, I would vote independently then too. So the outcome of any vote depends on the maekup of the board as a whole, not on who the officers are.

I voted for Glenn because I think he has a good chance of bringing us some way back down the spiral of conflict. It will be hard work, and I intend to support him in it.

Board Affairs

2010-05-15T23:09:00.003-04:00

SECOND UPDATE Sunday afternoon. I have corrected the numbers reported for this year's election results. I had mistranscribed the actual vote for John. Hat-tip to Glenn.

UPDATE Sunday morning. In this post I use the terms Big-endians and Little-endians to describe two groups of board members. The names come from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and I discussed my choice of these names in What's New?, which I wrote two weeks ago. The names refer to eggs, specifically to the correct way to open a soft-boiled egg.

This past Tuesday we had our annual stockholders' meeting here at Morningside Gardens. We elected three board members to join eight continuing members for what is now an eleven person board.

This coming Tuesday the board will hold its organizational meeting. We will elect the officers for the coming year. Last year I wrote a series of posts about the election here at Morningside starting with What's Up?, written before last year's annual meeting. In that post I discuss what turned into my candidacy for president. Most of what I wrote in that post I stand by today -- but there have been some changes.

Last year we changed the bylaws so that now there are only eleven board members which is why we elected only three board members this year. In each of the next two years we will elect four members, and then again three years hence we will again elect three (unless, of course, we change the bylaws again.)

As I noted in Whew, last year I ran for president, lost, and was relieved. I was also a little bit hurt. I haven't written about that hurt and I have talked about it very little. And it wasn't the first time. In order to talk about it, I need to give background and I need to use names -- I'll use only the first names of the characters, perhaps with initials to distinguish people with the same name. Some of this background I have discussed before on this blog.

Shortly after I was elected to the board and to the presidency in 2004, I appointed an ad hoc committee to study our resale price (we are a voluntarily limited equity cooperative -- that story is too long to include here.) To be chair of the committee, I appointed Tova, who I knew was in favor of open market, but who I believed to be fair. As it turned out, her idea of fairness and mine don't quite coincide -- and together we mismanaged a contentious situation and left scars on the community that persist.

The ad hoc committee came up with a plan to increase our maximum resale price and our flip taxes. While a large number of cooperators supported the plan, a significant group favored either a smaller increase in the resale price or no increase at all. As president, I was disappointed that the ad hoc committee did not engage in meaningful dialogue with those who favored a lower price. Instead many on each side vilified those on the other side. I too was vilified when I publicly stated that I saw flaws in both plans. When it came to the vote, the ad hoc committee's plan was overwhelmingly passed by the stockholders in March 2006. At the annual meeting which followed, Tova, Barbara, Steve and Jerry were elected. Tova, Barbara, and Steve were all vocal advocates of the increased prices, what I call the Big-endians. Members of that party showed open contempt for the advocates of lower prices, what I call the Little-endians. They also showed contempt for me and I was unceremoniously unseated by Tova. They didn't quite have a clean sweep -- I was elected Secretary, so I remained an officer although I was effectively frozen out of real participation in important discussions.

Two important things happened in that first year of Tova's presidency -- we hired a new general manager and there was a stockholder petition to study going to open market which passed at the 2007 annual meeting. I did not run for reelection that year for two reasons -- I didn't like being on the outside after having been on the inside, and I was having to spend a lot of time looking after my motther's affairs as she was declining.

In 2007, Dan and Patrick were elected to the board, Chi returned to the board after a year off, and Theresa was elected to a second term. During that year, I served on the bylaws committee, and later I chaired another resale price committee as we tried to hammer out a viable proposal for going to open market. I understand that the board meetings were quite contentious, although I was present as an observer at only a few of them. It was after a bylaws committee meeting that Barbara urged me to run for the board again, which I did. This time, in early 2008, the move to go to open market did not receive the vote of the requisite majority of all stockholders. A few weeks later Ann, Glenn, Marlo, and I were elected to the board. When I was running I explicitly said I was not running for president, but I was urged to run by the Little-endians, who were fed up with Tova's leadership. It became clear to me that we didn't have the votes to unseat Tova (see Trinity Eve), and the upshot was that Tova was reelected president, I was first vice president, Jerry was second vice president, Chi was treasurer, and Glenn was secretary. I was still out of the loop on a number of important discussions, and I was frozen out of the bylaws committee, which is one of my special interests, but I did become chair of our tenant selection committee.

There was a big struggle over the budget for 2009, and we voted a much smaller maintenance increase than I was comfortable with. Then in 2009, Tova left the board and Boyd, Chris and Detta were elected and Jerry was reelected to his second term. This time the Big-endians supported me for president and the Little-endians supported Jerry. I think the Bid-endians supported me because they were mistrustful of Jerry's leadership and the Little-endians were against me because they correctly perceived that I was not an orthodox Little-endian. We would have been deadlocked except that Theresa nominated and voted for Chi. Chi herself voted for Jerry. (I am speculating here, but I am sure I am correct.) So Jerry was elected president, Boyd was first vice-president, Theresa was second vice-president, Chi was treasurer and Anne was secretary. Dan and I were both elected to the executive committee, along with Anne and Boyd. It was an insult to me that I was not made an officer. Whether or not it was deliberate, it was an insult and I felt it.

In my opinion, Jerry made a number of mistakes as president in the last year. I was particularly dismayed that he scheduled information sessions during board meetings -- taking up time that might better be spent on important business. There were a number of other missteps -- times when I felt he could have handled things better. In addition, he has made a number of negative statements about Mike, the manager, that to this day are still in the realm of innuendo rather than concrete complaints on which the board could act.

I know that I am to some extent making assumptions about where people stand, but by and large I think I am correct in saying that during the past year the board had three Big-endians -- Detta, Glenn and Marlo; five Little-endians -- Anne, Boyd, Chi, Chris, and Pat; and four Independents -- Allen, Dan, Jerry and Theresa. Both the Big-endians and the Little-endians on the board include folks who are in active touch with people not on the board who share their general outlook.

At the end of this past board year, Pat chose not to run again and Theresa completed her sixth year and was not eligible to run again. Dan and Chi ran for reelection and there were four other candidates -- John and Larry who are generally identified with the Big-endians and Mimi and Tatyana who are generally identified with the Little-endians.

A couple of weeks before the election, Marlo went public with information that he felt cast doubt on Chi's suitablity to serve on the board. For me, Dan, and others, this was a serious breach because we considered that Marlo obtained some of the information only because he is a board member and hence the information is privileged. Dan introduced a motion at the next board meeting condemning Marlo's action. The motion passed, eight to three with one abstention. As I look back on it ten days later, I realize that the "whereas" clauses in the motion obscured what I think is the real issue -- that is, a breach of confidentiality and the use of confidential information for an apparently political purpose. That issue was conflated with at least two others -- whether the information released and Marlo's interpretation of it was accurate and whether Marlo had made a serious effort to present the information to the board for discussion before going public. The latter two issues played larger roles in community discussion than did the breach of confidentiality.

The outcome of the election was that John was the front runner, Larry trailed him by 43 votes, and Chi came in third, more than 150 votes behind John and more than 100 voted behind Larry. So now we have a board with five Big-endians, Detta, Glenn, John, Larry, and Marlo; four Little-endians, Anne, Boyd, Chi and Chris; and two independents, Allen and Jerry. (Again I want to emphasize that this is an over-simplification of people's positions, but it is pretty accurate as we go into the organizational meeting at which we will elect officers for the coming year.) The Little-endians are again putting Jerry forward for president and the Big-endians are putting Glenn forward. There are five on each side and at the moment I hold the deciding vote.

This is a good point to set forth my perceptions of the key characteristics of the Big-endians and the Little-endians when considered as parties. Since neither is a formal party, my perceptions are based on observation and are necessarily distorted by my own point of view.

One of the hallmarks of each group is a lack of trust of the other group -- indeed, lack of trust may be the chief hallmark of each group. There are elements in the outlook of each group that go back thirty years or more, but much of the current lack of trust can be traced to the lead up to the vote on prices in 2006. On substantive issues, I think it is fair to say that the Big-endians are concerned about our long term capital and operational needs and their costs, and the Little-endians focus on the short term costs to the cooperators of meeting those needs. That means that the Big-endians are likely to vote for a relatively higher maintenance increase in any given year than are the Little-endians. This is not to say that Big-endians are oblivious to the financial burdens that increased maintenance places on cooperators.

From my point of view, I think Chi, as treasurer, has for the past three years presided over a budget process and voted for budgets that have consistently under budgeted our needs and have produced operating deficits in each of those years. I think this is because, when it comes to budgeting, Chi, and some other Little-endians, are too myopic and unrealistic about actual costs which cannot be wished away or met through budget cutting and "cost control."

For the reasons I have stated, and for some additional reasons that I will not put in a blog post, I have decided that I will not support Jerry for president or Chi for treasurer. If not Jerry, then who? There are two obvious candidates: Glenn and me. I am very reluctant to try for president, although it is possible that I could be elected, especially if I bargained hard with ech side. But I really don't want the job. I'm willing to put in a lot of time, but not as much time as it takes to be an effective president.

That leaves Glenn, who, as I said before, is the candidate of the Big-endians. I am not a Big-endian. I do not share the deep suspicion many of them, especially those not on the board, have for people who disagree with them. I wince at the thought of the glee with which certain people will greet the election of Glenn as president and of anyone other than Chi as treasurer. But if I do not run myself, I have to make a choice between Jerry and Glenn, and since I have decided not to choose Jerry, I have to choose Glenn. I have talked to Glenn and I trust him to run a more open board than either Tova or Jerry did.

It's been a hard decision. I am somewhat surprised that I came out where I did. God willing, I won't regret my choice.

Conflict

2010-05-10T08:22:00.001-04:00

In my most recent post, I referred to the upcoming election of directors at Morningside gardens, the housing coop where I live, and to the existence of two parties, or factions, which I have somewhat facetiously dubbed the Big-endians and the Little-endians. Joking aside, there is genuine conflict here at Morningside, and it has reached an alarming point.

In January I did a post in which I mentioned reading an article by Canon C. K. Robertson in the December 2009 issue of Anglican and Episcopal History. I wrote:

Canon Robertson refers to the concept of "a spiral of unmanaged conflict" discussed by Susan Carpenter and William Kennedy in their 1988 book Managing Public Disputes. "Their premise," he writes, "is that any given divisive issue left unresolved will reappear again and again in slightly different guises, so that the passage of time, far from bringing healing, instead creates an ever-increasing intensity of opposition." I had never heard of the spiral of unmanaged conflict and was particularly struck by the idea, not for its applicability to the conflict in the Anglican Communion over sexuality but for its applicability to conflicts in the housing cooperative where I live and am a board member.

That was an incomplete post and I had intended to return to it earlier but here we are. In a footnote to that article, Canon Robertson refers to another of his articles -- this one appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of The Anglican Theological Review and is entitled "Courtroom Drama; A Pauline Alternative for Conflict Management." In that article, Canon Robertson lays out more fully his presentation of Carpenter and Kennedy's "model of the spiral of unmanaged conflict":

[T]heir underlying premise is that people in relationship with one another --- whether they are couples, groups, organizations, communities, or nations --- experience a relatively small number of issues that cause conflict, albeit in thousands of subtly distinct guises. Common themes manifest themselves at different points in the relationship in different ways and behind different masks. Thus, conflicting issue X, if left unresolved, will appear at a later point in the relationship but in a slightly different form, what we can call X2. If the parties involved again leave the issue unresolved and unmanaged, then later it will reappear in in still another appearance as X3, and so on. What is intriguing --- and disquieting --- is that with each new manifestation of the unresolved issue X over time, the intensity of anxiety, frustration, anger, and hostility that the parties bring to it increases dramatically. Carpenter and Kennedy elucidate this process in several steps:
X1 -- Presenting issue / problem arises
X2 -- Sides form along the lines of the issue (I am for issue X; you are against issue X)
X3 -- Positions harden (I see myself as pro-X; I see you as anti-X)
X4 -- Communication between parties breaks down; any meaningful dialogue between us ceases
X5 -- Resources are committed to the cause (I invest time, energy, even money in X)
X6 -- Conflict spills outside the parties (I talk to others about you, instead of to you)
X7 -- Perceptions of reality become distorted (I see you only as the Enemy, not as a person with whom I happen to disagree on issue X)
X8 -- A sense of crisis emerges, and the result can be litigation, dissolution, or war
It is not at all difficult to see how each stage in the spiral leads to the next. To reach the point of crisis where litigation appears inevitable, it is necessary for one or both parties to move relationally from fellowship to enmity. Disagreement alone cannot do this. Rather, it is the shifting of importance from a common bond between parties to agreement between parties that breaks down any sense of connectedness. Indeed, the relationship of those involved is viewed and subsequently re-determined in light of the presenting problem instead of the problem being viewed in the context of of the pre-existing relationship. Thus, any potential solutions that might work at a lower level of the spiral are useless at a higher lever. Indeed, any solutions grounded in the common relationship instead of common agreement will prove ineffectual altogether, as long as one party focuses on the existence and importance of disagreement.

I have quoted extensively from this article - I hope not too extensively - because I have not been able to locate a website that sets forth this model in any detail -- in fact the only links I have found are to pdfs of PowerPoint presentations (here and here) by Canon Robertson but without his accompanying explanations or comments.

To be continued,

What's New?

2010-05-02T22:39:00.000-04:00

This morning at St. Mary's, Bob Castle returned and (sort of) preached. It wasn't really a sermon, and it certainly wasn't based to the lections. Bob is engaging, entertaining, and maddening. Unlike the last time, when he spoke passionately about how right Jeremiah Wright is, this time was more of a reminiscence, with a little bit of fire thrown in for spice.

Enough of that.

This past week, our daughter Jane and son-in-law Scott took the first steps in adopting a baby sister for our granddaughter Amanda. Juliana is seven months old and Liz and I are trying to figure out how soon we can arrange to see her.

Last Tuesday, the Vestry elected me Treasurer and Bill Smith Assistant Treasurer. We're switching roles. I'm going to ease into the role of Treasurer, but I don't have much time -- I want to have a proper financial report for the vestry on day of the commemoration of the First Book of Common Prayer.

Here at Morningside Gardens, another election for the board is fast approaching. While we don't have named political parties here in the coop, we do have two groups who are at odds over a number of financial and other issues. I have struggled over what to call these two groups. One group is in power and one is not, so I could call them the Ins and the Outs. Many in one group support two men for the board and some in the other group support three women for the board, so I could call the Two Men Party and the Three Women Party. One group worked hard to keep a cap on our resale prices and the other campaigned hard to remove the cap, I could call them the Cap and the No Cap parties. But I have decided to call them the Big-endians and the Little-endians, after the two parties that Lemuel Gulliver discovered in Lilliput.

To be continued

Thoughts after the Third Sunday in Lent

2010-03-09T10:21:00.003-05:00

There are certain advantages to keeping a blog that no one (except the occasional spammer) comments on. One advantage is that I don't know whether or not anyone reads what I write.

This past Sunday at St. Mary's the preacher was Chris Ferguson. I alwats enjoy Chris's sermons -- he preaches from the text and has his eye on the truly radical meaning of the gospel. This week the gospel was Luke 13:1-9. Chris focused on the first half, verses 1-5. Twice Jesus says: "Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did."

Chris quoted The Future by Leonard Cohen: "When they said Repent, Repent I wonder what they meant." I'm not sure what Leonard Cohen has to do with it, or what his conclusion about repentance is, but is is clear that to Chris Ferguson, and to most of those in the congregation at St. Mary's on Sunday, repentance has nothing to do with being sorry for and turning away from personal sins.

Pilate had caused some Galileans to be slain while they sacrificed in the Temple, so that their blood mingled with that of the animals being sacrificed. Jesus clearly says that this didn't happen to them as a punishment for their sins. They were no more sinful than any other Galileans. The tower of Siloam in Jerusalem had collapsed, killing eighteen people. Jesus clearly says they were not worse sinners (he actually said "debtors") than any one else in Jerusalem. The clear message is that the bad things that happen to people are not a punishment from God.

Before I go further, a word about the "debtors" in verse 4. In the Greek and in the Vulgate the word is clearly "debtors." In the 14th century John Wycliffe translated it directly from the Latin as "debtors." By the 1th century, William Tyndale translated the word as "sinners." Chris Ferguson told us that being in debt was considered in New Testament times as a punishment for sins, so that a debtor was necessarily a sinner. I'm not enough of a scholar to comment on that. Also, I do not know whether the Tyndale bible or the Great Bible or the Geneva Bible which were based on it included any marginal alternative translations. The 1611 King James bible, however, does include in the margin the word "debtors" as an alternative to the word "sinners" in the main text. (It is a pity that few are aware that the original King James bible even had marginal variants.) It is beyond my purpose in this post to pursue further the matter except to say (following a lead of Chris Ferguson's) that it seems to me to be part of a consistent tendency to spiritualize economic references in scripture.

According to Chris, in this passage we are called on to repent the way of the world -- which is to accept as normal social structures which are built on injustice, inequality and exploitation. If we do not repent, we will perish. Of course, (and Chris did not say this,) if we do repent we may well perish anyway, because just as bad things are not God's punishment for sin, God does not reward us for doing the right thing by protecting us from bad things.

-----

In article at The Lead at Episcopal Cafe, Ann Fontaine asks "Did you know Justice Breyer's daughter is an Episcopal priest?" Well, yes, I did and do know that. In fact, I know the Rev. Chloe Breyer -- she is an associate at St. Mary's and celebrated the Eucharist this past Sunday.

Enough for now.

Lurking

2010-02-14T20:26:00.003-05:00

I follow a great many blogs in Anglican land and spend a fair amount of time looking at them. I am also on the ENS and ACNS mailing list as well as a lurker on HOBD. As a result, I am generally pretty much up to date on what’s going on in the Episcopal and Anglican worlds. However I mostly lurk and I haven’t posted on any of the hot topics for a while.

Mark Harris recently pointed to a review in The Living Church by Ephraim Radner of Tobias Haller’s book, Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality. (I have to confess that I do not follow The Living Church, Stand Firm, or other right wing publications or blogs and depend on others to point me to them. Rev. Ivan Ackeroff is particularly good at that.)

In reading Ephraim Radner’s review I was struck by two things. Consider this sentence from Radner: “Because the arguments are not actually founded on comparative research, however, they will never convince those who are not already persuaded.” This provides an insight into where Radner is coming from – as Richard Helmer points out in the comments at Mark Harris’s blog, Radner and his ilk base their approach on “top-down” theology. Radner’s statement is also, to my mind, disingenuous. His own arguments, at least in this polemical review, “will never convince those who are not already persuaded.”

As Bill Morehead points out also in the comments at Mark’s blog, there is an excellent (and favorable) review by Charles Hefling of Reasonable and Holy in the current (Winter 2010) issue of the Anglican Theological Review. As Hefling says, Tobias’s method is very much that of Hooker. His project is similar to Hooker’s, too -- “that of answering and controverting a stated position, strongly held, on matters of practical import for the church as a whole.” Tobias’ approach is largely biblical, explicitly taking the bible as we have received it. Radner complains that he does not also take the “coherent meaning and authority of the text,” persumably as defined by Radner and his party.

Which brings me to the second thing I was struck by. I recently read a piece by Elizabeth Kaeton in which she said that often in discussions in the church of same sexuality the discussants shift the ground to say it is really about biblical authority and that this is a form of avoidance of the real issue. (I know I’m not doing justice to her point, and I don’t feel up to tracking down what she actually said.) I would assert that next to the ick factor the question of authority (the authority of the hierarchy, the authority of scripture, the authority of tradition, the authority of reason, and the authority of experience) is precisely at the heart of the dispute over same sexuality.

To state it baldly, for some of us who call ourselves Christians, experience and reason trump tradition, hierarchy, and scripture. That is to say, we interpret scripture and the tradition using the lens of experience and reason.

I wrote the above a few days ago. Since then, Tobias has posted on the topic and one comment especially, by Fr. Gregory, pointed out the necessary (but unacknowledged) hypocrisy implicit in Radner's review. Fr. Gregory refers to "the question of whether any scholar, committed de facto to a set of pre-existing truths which he cannot question and does not declare, can serious[ly] and objectively review a work which basically questions those pre-existing truths." His implied answer is of course "No." But this raises for me the question of those of us who know from our own experience that we must reject any interpretation of scripture that condemns all same sex behavior out of hand. Can we listen to the other side with any more openness than they can listen to us?

Reading "Reading Jesus"

2010-01-26T07:55:00.000-05:00

I have just finished reading Mary Gordon's new book Reading Jesus. As Mary Gordon describes it, her book is the result of a realization that while she had been hearing passages from the gospels in church all her life, she had not actually read the four gospels straight through.

The first section of her book takes up ten readings which she quotes from one or more gospels. The tenth reading is the the beatitudes from Matthew 5: 3-10. When I read Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, I expected to turn the page and read Luke's version, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, but no, Mary Gordon does not give us Luke in this case.

She writes

For many days, I write and rewrite these words [the whole passage, Matt. 5:3-20] by hand and then I am paralyzed. Struck dumb. Afraid to write. Silenced by the depth of my attachment to them, silenced at the example of sheer moral greatness and the sense that after these wrods there is, perhaps should be, nothing to say.

What kind of life, what kind of living is suggested by the Beatitudes? Perhps equally important, what virtues are not mentioned...elided, simply left out?

Most striking: the bourgeois virtues. There is nothing about onesty. keeping your word, paying your debts, placing yourself in the right place in relation to authority or hierarchy. Mercy, peacemaking, poverty of spirit, purity of heart (the body is not metioned here). The sexually well-behaved are not given a place.

And a little later:

When I complained to a wise friend that it was impossible to live up to all the Beatitudes -- how can you be both meek and hungering for justice -- she told me no one was meant to live up to all of them, that was the glory of them.

I myself don't take the Beatitudes as a list of virtues to live up to. Rather they are are a list of priorities. And they are paradoxical, taken in the complete context of the gospel. Blessed are the poor, but we are called to relieve their poverty. Blessed are the hungry, but we are called to feed them.

To return to "Blessed are the poor...," in The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan gives two other versions besides those cited above from Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20: Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. [Gospel of Thomas 54] Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? [James 2:5]

Crossan writes:

The basic problem is not just Matthew's gloss "in spirit," although that certainly diverts attention and interpretation from material to spiritual, from economic to religious poverty. Even when that is left aside as a Matthean addition, there is still a serious problem with the word poor itself.

Crossan then goes on for three more pages to demonstrate that the Greek word ptochoi means "not the poor but the destitute, not poverty but beggary."

In The Essential Jesus, Crossan renders this saying as "Only the destitute are innocent."

Mary Gordon grapples honestly with the text of the gospels -- but she grapples with the texts only as they are translated, even to the point of prefering one translation to another not for the accuracy of the translation but for its resonances. And she grapples with the text without a glance at question of when or how the gospels were written -- especially the synoptics.

Mary Gordon's treatment is not fully satisfying to me. Many parts of her book, however, do resonate with me. For example, she asks the question (page 176) "What is lost if we give up the idea that Jesus is God incarnate?" Part of her answer is "If the experience of birth, friendship, suffering, and death was shared by the divine, a relationship of intimacy, and a refusal of dualism, is necessitated. And this, to me, is a pearl of great price."

Autumn in New York (but posted in Winter)

2010-01-25T10:32:00.000-05:00

Here's an incomplete post from October 15th.

Two days ago, Liz and I shut up our cottage and returned to New York, two weeks earlier than last year. In the past few weeks, I have been pondering how I want to spend my time.

A good deal of my time is taken up with Morningside Gardens affairs. Another large chunk is time that Liz and I spend together. It's the rest of the time I am thinking about -- what I might call my intellectual projects.

This fall I returned to the study of Chinese -- there is a free Chinese class here at Morningside Gardens. When I was teaching at Seward Park High School, I took a Chinese class for several years, but since it was 1993 when I left Seward Park, that was over 15 years ago. I have a lot of reviewing to do to bring me back to where I was in the past.

I am also determined to spend some time seriously pursuing genealogy -- with the particular aim of having something concrete to pass on to my cousins and my neices and nephews.

A third topic is the Dunciad. I need to find time to get down to the NYPL and read a dissertation before I proceed.

This blog post puts me in mind of a topic I have been thinking about -- what exactly is a blog for? Today I am using this blog as a kind of online journal -- but without the depth of a real journal.

Highs and Lows

2010-01-25T10:17:00.000-05:00

Here's another unfinished post -- this on from December 6th.

One of the reasons I have been posting infrequently is that I actually have other things to do with my time (believe it or not!) There's lots been going on in the wider world recently and today I am goingto take the time to note some things that have particularly struck me.

Most recent was the election of two women, one a lesbian, as suffragan bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Susan Russell has an initial reflection on the election and Elizabeth Kaeton rejoices as herstory is made. Rowan Williams issued a predictable if disappointing statement.

Everything free and easy, do as you damn well pleasy

2010-01-25T10:14:00.001-05:00

Here's another unfinished post -- this one from last December 18th.

The lines in the title of this post are from The Lambeth Walk, a song from the 1938 musical Me and My Girl. To my mind they are in an ironic sense doubly appropriate to the situation we in the Episcopal Church find ourselves in.

In case you don't know, the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has elected two women as suffragan bishops. One of them happens to be a partnered lesbian. Judging by some of the reactions you would thiink the sky had fallen.

On the one hand, the Diocese of Los Angeles has acted in accordance with the canons of our church and the clear intent of resolutions at our most recent General Convention. The fact that a person is a lesbian (partnered or not) is irrevelant to considering her as a candidate for any of the Holy Orders. On the other hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the ill-named Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order and the newly jumped up Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion have all issued statements urging the bishops and standing committees of our church to exercise "gracious restraint" and withhold consent to the election of

The draft breaks off in mid sentence. I don't remember, but I was probably searching for a phrase, or maybe a quote. But what they were saying was that The Episcopal Church should not consecrate Mary Glasspool a bishop.

I posted the the song The Lambeth Walk in 2008 at the beginning of the most recent Lambeth Conference. YouTube took that video down, but here it is again:

[I have also fixed the older post.]
To paraphrase the intro to the song, "You can no more walk the US way than we can walk the UK way." We have General Convention, you have General Synod, Parliament, the Archbishiops, and the Government, and the Monarch. We elect bishops, you appoint them. But most important, since the 1979 revision of the Prayer Book, we promise, with God's help, to

strive for justice and peace among all peop;e, and respect the dignity of every human being.

And we repeat that promise regularly.
It isn't really true that everything's free and east in TEC, nor that we can do as we damn well please -- but it is true that we are bound by different constraints than our sisters and brothers in other parts of the Anglican Communion.

A New Year: Conflict and Concord

2010-01-24T23:00:00.003-05:00

Here is a fragment that I wrote on January 1st, New Year's Day.

The current issue of Anglican & Episcopal History arrived this week. I have just read a paper by C. K. Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop, entitled "The Challenge of Definition: Concord and Conflict in Anglicanism." Canon Robertson provides a useful look at the development of the concept of Anglicanism, starting from Richard Hooker: "Hooker's example of letting go of one's own supposed infallibility of opinion in order to learn from and be open to others would become his lasting gift to Anglicanism ... and its defining mark."

That's all I wrote that time. Now I add this line from Marilynne Robertson's Gilead:

Doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief.

This is the second in my series of posts that I started earlier.

Breaking Silence

2010-01-24T20:45:00.002-05:00

I began writing this on Friday, January 15, 2010 -- the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. at 9:30 in the evening here in New York. Just over three days earlier, an earthquake devastated the city of Port-Au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, as well as many other parts of the country.

Earlier that week, I finished reading Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson. The narrator, John Ames, is a minister in Iowa, whose grandfather fought for abolition in Kansas. Towards the end of the book I spotted this: "doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief." I almost wrote a post beginning with that quote.

I've been trying to get something posted for a few weeks now. Early this month, the journal Anglican and Episcopal History arrived. I was attracted to and immediately read three articles. The first two, "Anglican history in the 21st Century: Remembering All the Baptized," by Jane Shaw and "Anglican History in the 21st Century: Remembering All the Baptized: How Then Shall We Teach?" by Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatoski were presented at the annual meeting of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church which took place in Anaheim in July, in conjunction with General Convention. My principal takeaway from the first article is a reminder that it was the "British conservative evangelicals" who were opposed to the early Lambeth Conferences producing any binding resolutions and now "it is the conservative and evangelical bishops, not only in England but all around the globe, who are pushing for Lambeth decisions to be binding."

The second article brought to my attention the early Christian community in China, evangelized in the seventh century by the Church of the East. There are Chinese writings called Jesus Sutras which date from the seventh and eighth centuries. I am interested in this partly because of my renewed interest in learning Chinese and partly for its own sake. The Jesus Sutras reportedly use language drawn from Taoism -- this interests me and I want to find out more about it, to see if it offers any insights that might be helpful in meditative spiritual practice.

Around the beginning of November, Liz and I began going to morning prayer at the Lampman Chapel in nearby Union Theological Seminary. This service was started by our rector at St. Mary's, Earl Kooperkamp, and takes place Monday through Friday at 8:30 a.m. I call it morning prayer without the capital letters because we do not use the prayer book rite -- instead we use a form from Iona. There's a lot of silence in it, and I am beginning to get used to that. We read two lessons from the Daily Office lectionary, but no psalm, no canticles and no gospel. My interest in the Jesus Sutras is partly so I can use them to briefly meditate on in this morning prayer time.

The third article that grabbed my attention the current issue of Anglican and Episcopal History is "The Challenge of Definition: Conflict and Concord in Anglicanism," by C. K. Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop. It's an important article, but here I will focus on a what is almost a side issue. Canon Robertson refers to the concept of "a spiral of unmanaged conflict" discussed by Susan Carpenter and William Kennedy in their 1988 book Managing Public Disputes. "Their premise," he writes, "is that any given divisive issue left unresolved will reappear again and again in slightly different guises, so that the passage of time, far from bringing healing, instead creates an ever-increasing intensity of opposition." I had never heard of the spiral of unmanaged conflict and was particularly struck by the idea, not for its applicability to the conflict in the Anglican Communion over sexuality but for its applicability to conflicts in the housing cooperative where I live and am a board member.

Note: This is first of a series of posts that I began in the past. I have rounded off the last paragraph that I wrote earlier and leaving it at that

Spam

2010-01-23T16:50:00.001-05:00

This blog gets a small amount of spam in the comments -- as do most Blogger blogs, I suspect.

This morning I got the following email from Blogger:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Finite Time":
Hello everyone! Who knows where to upload the film Avatar?I even bought the film Avatar for a SMS to a Russian URL, the link was, but download fails, the system will boot quite strange cocoa something.Men, advise where to normal as quickly download film avatar?

I have substituted "a Russian URL for the link, which was of course the whole purpose of the spam, but otherwise the comment as shown above is verbatim.

It's a found poem:

Hello everyone!
Who knows where to upload the film Avatar?
I even bought the film Avatar for a SMS to
a Russian URL, the link was,
but download fails,
the system will boot quite strange cocoa something.
Men, advise where to normal as quickly download film avatar?

"The system will boot quite strange cocoa something."

Last Wednesday my computer sytem booted quite strange -- or rather it wouldn't boot at all. And I hadn't even sent an SMS to a Russian URL. (I had to use Goodsearch to learn that SMS is a common term for texting -- in fact it stands for Short Message Service -- a name that describes an essential part of the underlying technology for texting.)

Pizza and Higher Power

2010-01-22T17:25:00.003-05:00

On Wednesday evening, January 20, several members of St. Mary's gathered with the current interns who are living at St. Mary's. There were about a dozen of us from St. Mary's, predominantly from the choir. This post is a continuation of what I wrote about this gathering in my previous post.

Each of us spoke to the questions "What do you do to connect with your Higher Power?" and "What do you do to express your creativity?" My immediate reaction when I saw the words "Higher Power" was a negative one. After all, this is a church, not an AA meeting. As it turned out, however, it was ok. The first two who spoke were Charles and Rhonda -- both members of the St. Mary's choir and both people who live or have lived on the margins, sometimes in the grips of addiction and sometimes homeless. Both spoke of prayer and praise as important to them.

I spoke after several others had spoken. The first thing I said was that my experience was more like the interns than like several of the choir members who had spoken -- I have never experienced real hardship. I didn't say it, but I am the beneficiary of both white privilege and male privilege.

During my sophomore, junior and senior years in college, while I was pondering the implications of being gay, I was also seeking a satisfying relationship to church. We had Sunday evening chapel at Hamilton in those days -- i don't remember anything about the order of service except that we said the General Thanksgiving, which at the time I did not know came from the Book of Common Prayer. When I was at home, I went with my mother to the Community Baptist Church in Port Dickinson (a suburb of Binghamton, New York,) which was the church she grew up in and in which my grandparents were leaders. In the summer, if I was at my grandparents' cottage at Heart Lake, I went to the Heart Lake Methodist Church. Each of these places had a different flavor, but none truly grabbed me. I knew I was a Christian, or at least I thought I did, but I wasn't sure what brand of Christian I was. In the fall of 1955, when I was 19, my grandparents brought me to New York to see a production of Ruddigore by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Before we went home, we went to Riverside Church and I heard Dr. Robert James McCracken preach. I don't remember what he said, but I remember that it left me with more questions than answers.

I started graduate school at Columbia University in September, 1958. I was 22 years old. At about 3:15 in the morning of November 5, I met Rex Slauson in a gay dancing bar called the "415" at 415 Amsterdam Avenue. Rex and I immediately clicked, and we were together for the next fourteen years and a little over, until Rex died of a heart attack on February 13, 1973. Rex took me first to an Evensong at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and then to St. Mary's. I immediately found that I liked the Prayer Book liturgy and I have been at St. Mary's ever since.
For a few years, probably five or six, Rex and I read Morning and Evening Prayer daily, week in and week out. So my spiritual practce consisted of fixed forms of prayer, either at Sunday worship, the Daily Office at home, or grace before meals. I should also mention hymns. I sang in the choir at St. Mary's for many years. I used to know the names and tune names of many of the hymns in the 1940 Hymnal by number. I can't associate the numbers with hymns in the 1982 Hymnal. The words and music of many of the traditional hymns are an important part of my spiritual life.

Liz and I have from time to time had a practice of reading psalms, scripture, and prayers as well as singing hymns in the morning and sometimes we have done compline in the evening. In recent years we have done this more at Heart Lake where the pace of life is a little more relaxed than it is here at home in New York.

About three months ago, shortly after we came back from Heart Lake for the season, we began going to the Morning Prayer service sponsored by St. Mary's weekday mornings at 8:30 in the Lampman Chapel at Union Theological Seminary. This is not a Prayer Book service, rather it uses an order of service from the Iona Community that uses daily themes from iona and short Celtic prayers. We use the Old and New Testament readings for the day from the 1979 Prayer Book Daily Office Lectionary. The service has a lot of silence, which I am beginning to find useful, especially since from where I sit I can gaze at a large Eastern Cross with a chi-rho in the center; or I can turn my head and look at a Christos Pantokrator ikon. I do miss the psalms, the canticles, the fixed prayers, and the gospel readings.

I answered the question about how I express my creativity by mentioning this blog.

The preceding is a revision and expansion of what I said Wednesday evening. What follows are some relsated additional thoughts.

I am currently reading Mary Gordon's Reading Jesus. I find it a maddening book in many ways, but I keep reading. I keep reading because I am looking for something -- I'm looking for an answer to an important question -- not the answer, but an answer. To put it in Anglican terms, the question is: How can we use reason to reframe our understanding of scripture and tradtion and still remain in continuity with the communion of saints through the ages? I doubt Mary Gordon would come up with those words, but I suspect that is the question she is also exploring.

Sigh! and Hi!

2010-01-21T21:40:00.004-05:00

For weeks I have been trying to write a post for this blog. I have lots of drafts, but none of them have seen the light of day. But yesterday evening I mentioned the blog and someone said she would like to see it and I gave her the url.

Blog is short for weblog. The web part is the world wide web, that is, the internet. The log part originally was sort of like a journal, or the way some folks use Facebook or Twitter. So I'll use this post as a sort of journal tonight.

Yesterday morning my computer died. It's still under warranty and today I took it to the shop -- that's easy to do since I live in New York. They said they have a five business day turnaround, which is fine (though inconvenient) because I can use Liz's laptop as a replacement.

Yesterday evening at St. Mary's we had a pizza gathering with the interns. Click on the link to learn more -- to understand what I am saying all you need to know is that there are five interns living in an apartment at St. Mary's, it's an AmeriCorps program and the interns work in social service agencies. Most of the St. Mary's people there are in the choir, since the pizza gathering came right after choir rehearsal.

There were somewhere between 16 and 20 of us there and over the course of about an hour and a half each of us spoke to the questions "What do you do to connect with your Higher Power?" and "What do you do to express your creativity?"

I'll give you my (revised and extended) remarks tomorrow.

Silence

2009-12-06T17:53:00.002-05:00

Anyone who has been trying to read Morningsider in the past several months knows that I have been posting rarely and not particularly commenting on events of any kind. For example, my most recent post, on November 15th, was about Chinese characters in a photograph on the front page of the New York Times. Before that,

On November 12, completely unnoticed by the blog world, I broke the story of the response of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church to the Apostolic Constitution.

On November 10 I commented on the pejorative use of the term "unequivocal love" by an ex-Episcopalian in Fort Worth.

On September 28, I reported cryptically on the meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists and referred to a conversation with Alyson Barnett-Cowan.

On September 11, I posted a very personal account of a week and included this paragraph:
As for me, I'm in the process of discernment about how I want to spend my time -- when I have time. I may turn back to genealogy for a while -- or I may go back to The Dunciad. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try to blog assiduously about things Episcopal (or Anglican) or political. But who knows?
As an update, I'll report that a free class in Chinese here at Morningside Gardens has captured my attention.

On September 7th I posted about a Labor Day gathering, some old chairs, and an old canoe.

On August 29 I posted about the Anglican roots of the Faith and Order movement and on the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order.

On August 28, I posted about an article by Adrian Worsfold at the Daily Episcopalian in which he said things that I thought, and still think, show an appalling ignorance of the relationship of Anglicanism, Christian Unity, and Faith and Order.

Here, in reverse order, are a few things I have not posted about:

Elections of bishops
A court ruling against the use of eminent domain in my neighborhood
Defeat of marriage equality in the New York state Senate
Sending more troops to Afghanistan
Uganda

The list could be longer, but that will do for now.

Help wanted

2009-11-15T14:41:00.009-05:00

On the front page of this morning's New York Times, above the fold, is a photograph with the caption "A Beijing store is selling notebooks with an image of President Obama, who arrives in China for a three-day visit on Sunday." Most prominent in the photograph is a handwritten sign in Chinese -- and since I am once again studying Chinese (in a very relaxed way) I was curious as to what the sign said. Here is an image of the sign:

There are three characters on the top line and a single character in parentheses below. I should have recognized two of the characters, but the only one I recognized was the one at the bottom in parentheses: 女 (nǚ) which means female or woman.

To find what the other three are I went to YellowBridge and drew the characters into the handwriting recognizer. I learned that the three characters were 招店員 (zhāo diàn yuán) and mean, roughly, "seeking a shop assistant", so the sign means "female shop assistant wanted." I was surprised that the character 員 was the "traditional" form and not the modern "simplified" form, which is 员. The other three characters are the same in both traditional and simplified.

Another (Roman Catholic) Response to the Apostolic Constitution

2009-11-12T11:54:00.002-05:00

In April, I mentioned attending a gala for the 80th birthday of Leonard Swidler, who is editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Leonard is also Co-Founder and President of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC). Yesterday Leonard sent out, on behalf of ARCC, an open letter to Anglicans.Episcopalians thinking about coming over to Rome. The full text of the letter is here.

Completely without irony, the letter lists a number of things that might make someone think twice before making the move. Here is the text except for the footnoteswhich can be found at the link cited above.

We, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), wish to extend a warm welcome to our brothers and sisters of the Anglican/Episcopal communion who are clergy and spouses, as well as laity, discerning the call to become members of the Roman Catholic Church under the recently announced Apostolic Constitution.

As committed and enthusiastic Catholics working for the renewal of the Church in the spirit of the Second Council of the Vatican (Vatican II), we recognize the primacy of an informed conscience in making your discernment and decision, To that end, we wish to offer the following observations, that you may be informed of the realities in the Roman Catholic Church of which you may choose to become a part.

You bring an experience of collegiality and subsidiarity at the parish and diocesan levels which, provided you are allowed to retain its practice, will bring a strong complement, even as it stands in polar opposition, to the top-down authority structure of the Roman Catholic Church, where collegiality and subsidiarity function only haphazardly, and almost exclusively at the international level.

You will find yourself members of a Church rich in the liturgy that flowed from the authentic conciliar tradition of Vatican II.

You will find yourself in a Church where at least 39% of marriages now take place across denominational lines, and where truly interchurch couples (who continue to worship together as much as possible in both their Christian traditions) offer an imperfect but real preview of the anticipated unity for which Christ prayed.

If you are a priest, you will find yourself a member of a Church where your Anglican/Episcopal priesthood, exercised with fidelity over the years, is considered “absolutely null and utterly void.” You will be required to question the validity of your earlier ordination and then seek re-ordination within the Roman Catholic Church.

If you are a priest, you will find yourself in a Church where, if your wife dies, you will be called to be celibate, and forgo for the rest of your life the joy and solace of a loving spousal relationship.

You will find yourself members of a Church where at least 60% of its members are in favor of married clergy and the ordination of women, and 45% are welcoming of gay and lesbian unions.

You will find yourself likewise in a Church which defines homosexuality as an objective disorder, yet where some 20-30% of the clergy (bishops, priests and deacons) have that orientation.

You will find yourself in a Church with a rich variety of theologies and practices, some of which you will be in agreement with, while others will be difficult for you to accept, yet all of which are held under the banner of the Roman Catholic Church.

Should you accept all these things, and in conscience believe that the offer of priestly ordination within the Roman Catholic Church is from God, then we will warmly welcome you, for you will have accepted the Church as it is, rather than the sentimental or imagined Church of integrity which some would have you believe.

Sincerely,
Leonard Swidler.

"Equivocal Love"

2009-11-10T20:24:00.002-05:00

I haven't blogged for well over a month -- no reason, except a host of other things have been occupying my time.

Here's a quote from The Wall Street Journal, via The Lead at Episcopal Cafe, in an article about the Diocese of Fort Worth:

Mr. Chaffe (part of the breakaway group) said he is no longer distracted by church politics or upset by issues such as the blessing of gay unions. He need not put up with what he sees as a flawed message of "unequivocal love" for all; instead, he can focus on bringing those he believes to be sinners toward repentance. His church, he says, is again his -- and that uplifts him.

The opposite of "unequivocal love" is "equivocal love," which doesn't sound very attractive to me.

NAAE

2009-09-28T16:39:00.003-04:00

Liz and I have just returned from the annual gathering of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, held this year at the Washington Theological Union in Washington, DC. The thene was The Ethical Horizon from and Ecumenical Perspective. As readers of this blog and those I link to and follow are already aware, the ethical question that dominates today relates to human sexuality.

There were five major papers presented at the conference. They will be published, perhaps by next fall, in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. One, by Dr. Timothy Sedgewick of Virginia Theological Seminary, dealy directly with human sexuality. The others ranged from a survey of those ecumenical discussions which had touched on matters of ethics to relflections on the Roman Catholic - Mennonite dialogue which in 2004 produced a report entitled Called to be Peacemakers.

As is often the case at conferences, informal conversations were as interesting and informative as the formal presentations. I was especially interested in conversations I had with Alyson Barnett-Cowan and Christopher Agnew.

Down Days

2009-09-11T15:40:00.003-04:00

This past Tuesday I drove home from our cottage to our partment in New York, in the full expectation or going to the dental school for another Wednesday appointment and then returning Wednesday afternoon and watching Obama's address to congress with Liz. The plan was that while I was at the dentist, my car would be at the garage.

The plan fell apart in several ways. First, shortly after I got home there was a call from the dentist that the work hadn't come back from the lab, so I didn't go to the dentist ater all. Then the work on the car took all day instead of half a day so I didn't drive back until very early Thursday morning.

I did watch Obama' speech, alone. It was a great speech. But it didn't excite me. My friend Christina sent Liz a link to an interview with Dennis Kucinich about the speech and I passed the link on to Grandmère Mimi who posted the video.

As for me, I'm in the process of discernment about how I want to spend my time -- when I have time. I may turn back to genealogy for a while -- or I may go back to The Dunciad. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try to blog assiduously about things Episcopal (or Anglican) or political. But who knows?

To review this week:
Sunday -- we had a family gathering here at the lake
Monday -- we were here but I don't remember doing anything in particular
Tuesday -- in the afternoon I drove to New York
Wednesday -- I mostly read all day while the car was being worked on
Thursday -- I drove back early in the morning, then lazed out for most of the day
Friday -- I've mostly puttered all day
Saturday -- tomorrow, we drive to New York. Sunday will be our first day back at St. Mary's in many weeks. We'll return here on Thursday.

Our time in the country is winding down. My commitments at Morningside Gardens are heating up.

Finally, I have begun reading The Church-Idea by William Reed Huntington, first published in 1870. I'll report on it as I get into it.

Chairs and a Canoe

2009-09-07T16:41:00.006-04:00

On Labor Day Sunday, September 6, we had what is becoming an annual family gathering at Heart Lake. The picture above shows my cousin Jenny, my nice Michelle and her husband Dan, Liz (my wife,) my Uncle Chuck and my cousin David. Chuck and David are sitting in spring steel lawn chairs that have been on that lawn for more than fifty years.
Here's a picture of the chairs by themselves.It's easy to see that they are in need of paint. Here they are from the back.None of us have ever seen anything like these spring steel chairs anywhere else. Here they asre from the side. In the background are two metal chairs with solid seats and backs, which are more common -- in fact you can find contemporary versions made of much thinner gauge steel. By the way, the reason the grass is so thin or eve nmissing is that the lawn was dug up several times last fall and this summer in the course of installing a new sewer system.

On the same day Uncle Allen took Caitlin and Aidan out in the canoe.
Thanks to my niece Tina for the pictures with people in them.

Christian Unity & Faith and Order

2009-08-29T22:02:00.000-04:00

The Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Episcopal Church has issued a Handbook for Ecumenism, most recently revised in 2007. It states, on page 8, that "the story of the Episcopal Church in the ecumenical movement has yet to be written," and goes on to say that the story may be said to begin in the 19th century with the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.

In 1870, an Episcopal priest, William Reed Huntington, published The Church Idea -- An Essay Towards Unity in which he proposed what later became the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Most of the 1886 resolution adopted by the House of Bishops in Chicago is printed on pages 876-877 of the 1979 Prayer Book. In paragraph 4 the bishops declare

That this Church does not seek to absorb other Communions, but rather, co-operating with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order, to discountenance schism, to heal the wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian graces and the visible manifestation of Christ to the world.

At General Convention in 1910, Charles Brent, Missionary Bishop of the Phillipines, suggested a world conference on faith and order and a motion by the rector of Trinity Church in New York City, William T. Manning, was became the first formal proposal for a World Conference on Faith and Order. The first conference was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1927, and Bishop Brent was elected its President.

The first North American Conference on Faith and Order was held at Oberlin, Ohio in 1957. In October, 2005, the National Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order issued a Faith and Order Commission Handbook which contains a brief history of Faith and Order written by Sr. Lorelei F. Fuchs, SA. She writes:

To date Faith and Order is the most comprehensive theological forum gathering together representatives of Christian churches to work towards the visible unity of the one church of Jesus Christ. It embraces more Christians and churches than the World Council of Churches. Serving this movement at the global level is the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Similar structures exist on other levels – national, regional and local. This world commission describes its meaning and purpose in its by-laws:
to proclaim the oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ, to call the churches to the goal of visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ, in order that the world may believe
Oneness of the church of Jesus Christ... visible unity in faith and eucharistic fellowship... worship... common life... so that the world may believe... These concerns are the heart of this unity movement, which identifies two spheres that frame their consideration.

“Faith” is the first of two spheres that expresses the goal of Christian unity in the Faith and Order movement. Behind the “faith” sphere is the desire for visible unity in the essentials of Christian faith, life and witness that inspired the churches to come together in a conciliar structure at the turn of the twentieth century. Regarding “faith,” the purpose of the Faith and Order movement is to unearth the common ground that is at the root which binds Christian creed and confession.

“Order” is the second sphere that expresses the goal of Christian unity in the Faith and Order movement. At the centre of the “order” sphere is the ecclesial praxis of the Christian way of life. Concerning “order,” Faith and Order’s purpose is to discern the ways to mutual recognition and reconciliation of Christian spiritual and sacramental life, Christian mission and ministry.

Together, “faith” and “order” unite in a “movement” enabling the churches to enter into the theological dialogue and reflection necessary to discern and transcend the differences that are church dividing and to recognize and articulate the bonds that are uniting. The dimension of “faith,” then, focuses on doctrinal matters of faith, sacraments, mission and ministry. The dimension of “order” focuses on the form or polity or discipline of these matters. That Faith and Order is a “movement” means that it is not a static entity but a journey towards unity with a direction that is
charted and followed by diverse routes. Rather than a mapped-out blueprint, the movement’s goal of the visible unity of the church is understood as gift and call – a gift from God revealed in the response to a call to fellowship, communion, koinonia. Various structures support this movement.

Sustaining the world movement of faith and order is the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. This commission consists of a secretariat, programmes of studies and world conferences. These latter, the world conferences, are the peaks of ongoing theological work and prayer that is carried out in the valleys and plains of everyday life lived as an ecumenical Christian. Parallel structures exist on national, regional and local levels.

This coming October, the Faith and Order Plenary Commission of the World Council of Churcvhes will meet in Crete. Among the items on the agenda are:

Sources of authority

By looking at how churches use sources of authority, the commission will take a new approach to the old debate around "Scripture versus Tradition", moving it from a theoretical discussion towards a sharing of experiences.

Moral discernment

Through the examination of case studies – some of them on controversial issues like proselytism, homosexuality and stem-cell research – the commission will critically look at how churches arrive at their positions on moral issues. The goal is to begin the process of developing an ecumenically recognized set of steps for the churches' moral discernment.

These seem to me to be important questions -- and like many of the issues that Fiath and Order has taken up in the past, they are not easy.

The current WCC director of Faith and Order is Canadian Anglican theologian Canon Dr John Gibaut.

Let me reiterate that I think that someone at the Anglican Communion Office or the Anglican Consultative Council blundered when they put together the title "Unity, Faith and Order." My wife Liz points out that the names of the two previos commissions -- the Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the Theological and Doctrinal Commission -- were clear and communicated what the commissions were about. The name of the Commission for Unity, Faith and Order is unclear, unless you realize that "Unity" and "Faith and Order" are technical terms that have ecumenical reference. The name is also unfortunate in that it lends itself to a risible acronym, which has been used by Adrian Worsfold not just once or twice on his own blog, but also at the Daily Episcopalian. Sad to say, Grandmère Mimi picked it up here and here.

Now that I've said all that, it's only fair to point out a few facts.

On The Anglican Communion Official Website is this page:

Ecumenical Affairs - Commissions IASCUFO

IASCUFO - Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order

IASCUFO’s mandate was approved by the Joint Standing Committee in November 2008.
The Standing Commission shall have responsibility:
to promote the deepening of Communion between the Churches of the Anglican Communion, and between those Churches and the other churches and traditions of the Christian oikumene
to advise the Provinces and the Instruments of Communion on all questions of ecumenical engagement, proposals for national, regional or international ecumenical agreement or schemes of co-operation and unity, as well as on questions touching Anglican Faith and Order
to review developments in the areas of faith, order or unity in the Anglican Communion and among ecumenical partners, and to give advice to the Churches of the Anglican Communion or to the Instruments of Communion upon them, with the intention to promote common understanding, consistency, and convergence both in Anglican Communion affairs, and in ecumenical engagement
to assist any Province with the assessment of new proposals in the areas of Unity, Faith and Order as requested.

The first meeting of IASCUFO will be in Canterbury in December 2009.

Note that the Commission's mandate was approved the Joint Standing Committee in November 2008.

The Windsor Continuation Group Report to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated 17 December 2008, refers to the IASCUFO. I have been unable to find any reference to the IASCUFO before May, 2009, although there is discussion of the report the Windsor Continuation Group starting about February.

Two resolutions of the May 2009 meeting of the Anglican Conultative Council (ACC-14) refer to IASCUFO. In section g of Resolution 14.09, the ACC

asks the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order to undertake a study of the role and responsibilities in the Communion of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting; the ecclesiological rationale of each, and the relationships between them, in line with the Windsor Continuation Group Report, and to report back to ACC-15;

and Resolution 14.10 reads

The Anglican Consultative Council, in the light of the Resolution 14.08 of ACC-14 on the WCG Report, asks that the report of the study undertaken by IASCUFO includes a study of the existing papers developed within our Communion and of current best practices in governance for multi-layered complex organizations, and makes recommendations to ACC-15 on ways in which the effectiveness of the Instruments of Communion may be enhanced.

The reference to 14.08 is a mistake -- they meant section g of 14.09 quoted above.

There's plenty there to brood on, but I don't think it's necessarily ominous. The questions they are asked to study are profound ones. I'm going to leave it there for now.

NOTE TO READERS, IF I HAVE ANY: I'll have very limited time on the internet from now until next Thursday, September 3.

Adrian Squeaks

2009-08-28T08:00:00.002-04:00

At Daily Episcopalian Adrian Worsfold has written a piece called "Anglican no longer." That title is intended to signify that he, Adrian, is no longer an Anglican or a Christian, which is fair enough. Adrian is a clever guy, and on his blog, Pluralist Speaks, has written several clever commentaries on things Anglican, especially taking on Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop Tom Wright. He has also had cogent things to say about the proposed covenant and about the apparent drive for uniformity within the Anglican Communion. But in the end, he does not know enough and so he sometimes talks (or squeaks) through his hat.

I refer especially to this statement: The latest development is still worthy of comment: having an office for Unity, Faith and Order - a UFO very alien to Anglicanism. In fact, the office for Unity, Faith and Order is not, as Adrian thinks, part of a "drive towards unity of process" in the Anglican Communion. In the first place, it is not new -- it is the result of the consolidation of two long standing Inter-Anglican Commissions. In the second place, Unity and Faith and Order are both terms that refer to aspects of the ecumenical movement -- aspects indeed that have deep Anglican roots. Two minutes or less on Google, or my favorite, Goodsearch, would have brought these facts to light.

To be sure, the average Anglican layperson, and even clergy, are not very well informed about the ecumenical movement and thus might be forgiven for missing the significance of the rather unfortunately named position, Director of Unity, Faith and Order. It is also true that the August 14 post by the Anglican Communion News Services Appointment of new Director for Unity, Faith and Order is not terribly informative. For example, it does not refer to the July 1 post Inter-Anglican Standing Committee for Unity, Faith and Order - IASCUFO in which two important points are made -- first, that the new commission replaces two earlier commissions, The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, and second, that the Secretary for the Commission will be the Director for Unity, Faith and Order, Anglican Communion Office.

It was at the third meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Trinidad in 1976 that the idea was conceived of a representative commission to consider theological and doctrinal questions which concern the Anglican Communion as a whole. The proposal was endorsed by the 1978 Lambeth Conference, and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission was subsequently established. -- For the Sake of the Kingdom - 1986

Following Lambeth 1988, the second Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission was formed and in 1997 produced the Virginia Report. Following Lambeth 1998, the third Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission was formed and in 2008 issued the report "Communion, Conflict and Hope."

The Inter-Anglican Commission on Ecumenical Affairs is relatively recent. It was established following Lambeth 1998. Before that was something called the Ecumenical Advisory Group of the Anglican Communion which issued the Agros Report to the Anglican Consultative Council at ACC-1o in 1996 and then to the Lambeth Conference.

It is true that both of these commissions have dealt with issues which touch on coherence within Anglicanism, but these are old issues and there is really nothing new here.

In part II, I shall discuss the Anglican and Episcopal roots of the terms Faith and Order and Unity.

Note: I inadvertently posted an incomplete version of this on Thursday, August 27.

Cottage and Canoe

2009-08-27T15:20:00.009-04:00

A week ago, I took our friend Howard out in our canoe. It's a 17 foot Morris canoe which my cousin Doug restored about 10 years ago. Here we are bringing the canoe close to the spot where Howard could disembark. I then took the canoe over to the spot where we could take it out of the water.And here's a view of our cottage from the lake.

So Many Thoughts

2009-08-24T07:53:00.005-04:00

As this last full week of August begins, I find my head swirling with ideas. Ideas, that is, that I want to write about. At the same time, I find that I have a number of tasks that seem to take priority over writing. I don't seem to be able to produce a coherent composition -- so I'll just jot down a few ideas and hope to be able to expand on them later.

Since I heard a broadcast last summer on Alternative Radio of a talk by George Lakoff, I have been interested in embodied mind theory, and especially in the explanation it provides for why rational argument rarely changes people's minds, why so many ordinary people are persuaded to vote and act against what is clearly in their own interest, and why otherwise decent people can so easily demonize others. This has application to the LGBTQ struggle, to immigrants, to anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions, to the health care reform struggle, and to a host of other issues. I want to write more about this.

Because my wife Liz is active in the ecumenical movement, I have been exposed to both current thinking and the history of the ecumencial movement, the desire for Christian Unity, the Faith and Order movement, and contemporary inter-religious dialogue. I want to write more about this, especially about the Episcopal roots of the ecumenical movement and the influence of William Reed Huntington and Charles Henry Brent.

Although I can't call myself a Marxist (I don't know enough to be able to tell whether I am a Marxist or not,) I do call myself a socialist. I am convinced that capitalism as it exists today, along with what I will call financialism, are incompatible with the Gospel as I understand it.

I would like very much to try to explicate what I mean by "the Gospel as I understand it." This will take a good deal of work.

Those are some of the things I am thinking about. Now for a few of the things I am doing.

Liz and I have been here at Heart Lake full time since July 25 -- that is, Liz has. I hve gone back to New York for one or two nights every week. Sometimes it's for a meeting, sometimes for a dentist's appointment, sometimes for both. The meetings are connected to my service on the Board of Directors of our coop, Morningside Heights Housing Corporation. The dentist's appointment are for prosthodntics at Columbia Dental School which can only take place on Wednesdays (because of the schedule of the attending dentist who is overseeing the work.) Two weeks ago I was in the chair for eight hours and last week for five hours. The drive to New York is three hours each way.

Meanwhile, here at the cottage, we are proceeding with some work to improve things both outdoors and indoors. When we rebuilt the cottage after the 1988 fire, we acquired an attic space. The number of things we have put in that attic is astounding. I have begun the task of cleaning it out -- it's a big job.

To be updated.

Stouter than I used to be

2009-08-12T00:02:00.006-04:00

I have mentioned before that I am a G & S fan and have been for more than 60 years.

I think (nay, I know) that I have also mentioned that that I am a fan of BBC Radio 3 on the internet and in the summer a fan especially of the Proms.

Well, on August 12, the day I am posting this, I have an appointment with my dentist so on Tuesday August 11 I had to drove back to New York. And while I was driving the BBC was broadcasting, live from the Royal Albert Hall, Prom 35 - Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience -- conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. (Chatles Mackerras is eleven years older than I, and I bought a record of his Pineapple Poll, a ballet based of G & S tunes, before I was 20, so I have known about him almost all my life and certainly all my adult life.

So consider my dismay when this broadcast (and internetcast) took place while I was driving. If I had been driving on the wrong side of the road in England, (I should tell you sometime o about the first time i did that) I could have listened to the broadcast live -- but in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and again New York, it just wasn't possible.

But wait, on the BBC iPlayer I can "listen again" for seven days. So I didn't miss it after all. As I write this, I am listening to Felicity Palmer, as Lady Jane, sing "Silvered is the raven hair," accompanying herself on the cello. I recommend it. You can hear it here.

The image of Lady Jane is from the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive.

Catching Up

2009-07-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

A lot has happened since I last posted. In no particular order:
General Convention has ended
The BBC Proms have begun
Liz and I went to the wedding of her (our) grandniece Sara and saw a great many family members including Jane, Scott and Amanda
So far this week and last week I have been to three meetings here at Morningside Gardens
To accomplish this, I have driven at least 660 miles with another 180 to go to get back to our summer base at Heart Lake (in truth, Liz drove some of it)
With all this I have been trying to keep up with the intertubes

Right now (Thursday morning) Liz is in Philadelphia and will come back Friday morning - then we drive back to Heart Lake.

I have another meeting this evening while Liz is in Philadelphia and I have to come back from Heart Lake next Tuesday for a board meeting.

All this is by way of prologue -- right now I want to write about some of the significant actions taken at General Convention. First, a couple of resolutions whose designations have become well known -- D025 and C056. I wrote last March that our tiny church of St. Mary's, in Manhattanville (now sometimes called West Harlem) voted at our Annual Meeting to call for the rescinding of 2006's B033 and also for approval of the blessing of same-sex unions. D025 effectively, but not formally, rescinds B033 and C056 is a small but significant step in the direction of approval of blessing of same sex unions.

As an autobiographical aside, when I was in a same sex relationship, my partner Rex Slauson was against "gay marriage," at least in the church, because he felt it was a slavish imitation of a straight institution. It must be said that Rex was not able to be faithful, so maybe that's why he held that opinion. Since Rex died in February 1973 (after a heart attack in a bathhouse) I've had a lot of time to develop my own views. At the end of 1974, about 21 months after Rex's death, I realized I was in love with Liz. We were married in February 1975 and for at least 15 years I fooled myself into thinking I was bisexual. Then Liz and I went to a Conference of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus EEWC in Virginia and at a presentation about the wives of "ex-gays" I realized that I was still simply gay and not bisexual. As always, I am reticent about what that means in our marriage, except to say that I have never "fooled around," but I am not reticent about my advocacy for full inclusiveness in the church.

Two members of our parish work at 815 -- both are in same sex partnships. As it happens neither was there at this year's Annual Meeting, and the other LGBT people aren't as tuned in to issues in the wider church as I am. So I was the one who made the motion about B033 at our annual meeting, and I was the one who realized I had forgotten to mention the blessing of same-sex unions.

Thoughts on B033

2009-07-10T21:31:00.004-04:00

While General Convention has been going on in Anaheim, I have been following several blogs and other sources on the internet to see what has been going on. As I mentioned a few months ago, my parish, St. Mary's, Manhattanville, at its annual meeting took a stand for the repeal of B033. Now B033, a resolution passed at the 2006 convention, provides, that is asks for, an effective moratorium on the election of of an openly gay or lesbian bishop in thr Episcopal Church. It is an amazingly hot issue for LGBT persons, considering that most of us don't aspire to be a bishop. But with B033 in place, all LGBT Episcopalians are damaged in two ways -- first, we are being told that the Episcopal Church welcomes us -- but only up to a point and no further. Second, we are being told that we cannot -- for a season -- see a person like us in the the role of bishop.

I live on the edge of Harlem, very close to 125th Street. On election night, 2008, when Barack Obama won the election for President, people poured into the street to celebrate -- especially African American people. Never mind that Obama has been a disappointment in several important ways -- to have an African American as President is very important to people of color -- and as we were reminded again today, to Africans as well as to people in the United States.

Just as people of color all over the world rejoice to see Barack Obama as President of the United States, so too many LBGTQ people who are not Episcopalians rejoice to see Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

NOTE: I have revised this post because my remarks on bishops were not really related to my remarks on B033. July 13, 7:50 AM

Friends

2009-07-10T21:24:00.002-04:00

The Friends of Jake, of OCICBW, and Wounded Bird are at this moment assembling in Anaheim, and probably heading towards the doors of the Integrity Eucharist. I wish I were there. 'Nuff said.

July 5th - Last week's Pride March and beyond

2009-07-06T06:10:00.006-04:00

Sunday July 5th Liz and I got up early at Heart Lake and drove home (2-1/2 hours taking I80 on a Sunday morning) in order to attend St. Mary's, Manhattanville, one last time before starting our ten (or more) week hiatus.

As I wrote last week, at the Pride March I carried one end of the Diocese of New York Banner and Lisa carried the other end. There were lots of pictures taken, but I haven't yet seen one that includes me. Here, though, is a picture of Lisa and her sister with +Gene Robinson.
Lisa has this picture on her phone and was able to send it to me when we spoke after church. I'll keep looking to see if there are any posted pictures of the full banner -- if there are, I am sure to be in them.

The reason for the ten week hiatus from St Mary's is that Liz and I are about to move to Heart Lake for the remainder of the summer. When we are there, we attend the Heart Lake United Methodist Church, where Liz plays the piano to the delight of the congregation, including Judy, who is a great musician but doesn't really play the piano. So once we get there, it's hard to not be there on a Sunday.

We're leaving for Heart Lake on Thursday, and so far my calendar shows that I have to be in New York for meetings every week for the next month. Usually I drive down alone the day of the meeting and head back the next morning.

Thus begins the summer.

Pride March 2009

2009-06-29T11:00:00.005-04:00

Here are some highlights from the NYC Pride March yesterday. I made a conscious decision to travel light, and I don't have any pictures to show you.

I got there quite early -- my plan was to march with the Diocese of New York. The announced assembly time was 11:30 and I was a few minutes earlier than that. We were in group 6 and assembled on East 54th Street. The delegation from St. Luke in the Fields had great tee shirts and I looked around for Counterlight. Overcoming my natural shyness, I spoke to him. Later I also saw and spoke to the Reverend boy.

The Eucharist was at 12. It was conducted amid a great deal of street noise but it went off well. Towards the end of it, the marshals wanted us form up so a few folks put the banners out as placeholders.-- we all knew that there would be a long wait afterward. The website had predicted a step off time of 1 PM.

I volunteered to help carry the diocesan banner and soon Lisa, another member of St. Mary's, Manhattanville, showed up and she volunteered to carry the banner, too. We both expected to see Patrick, another St. Mary's person, but he never showed.

Finally, we stepped off at 2:05 pm. The diocesan banner led, followed by Integrity, and at least four parishes -- St Luke in the Fields, Holy Apostles, St Bart's, and St John's in the Village. I carried the banner the whole way, so I didn't get a chance to circulate.

There are three churches near the beginning of the line of march. Out group didn't pass the first one, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian -- we started out one block south of it. Almost immediately we passed St. Thomas Church. Then two blocks later is St Patrick's Cathedral, with barricades isolating it from what was happening on the street. I think that's sad.

I was surprised at the number of people along the way who greeted us enthusiastically. A little more than a mile along the way, we came to Marble Collegiate Church, where there were people handing out cups of water -- a welcome refreshment.

The big surprise came a mile after that. At First Presbyterian Church they were also handing out water. Who should come towards us carrying a tray of cups, but Bishop Gene Robinson, who was their preacher yesterday morning. Receiving a cup of water from Gene Robinson on Pride Sunday was almost sacramental.

For the rest of the march, +Gene marched with us. An awful lot of people along the way recognized him and called out his name.

We got to the end of the march a little before 5:30. Three and a half hours to march around three miles -- an hour's walk at a good pace, maybe a little more for me these days. I called Liz, who had stayed at home feeling a little sick, and she came down to the Village for the Festive Choral Evensong at St Luke in the Fields. All in all, a memorable day. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures for you.

Pride March

2009-06-28T07:47:00.001-04:00

I'm off to the 8 AM service at St. Mary's.
I'll be marching in the Heritage of Pride Parade this afternoon, probably with the Diocese of NY group.

Faith in NYC

2009-06-26T10:27:00.005-04:00

Believe it or not, I live in one of the most religious cities in the United States. According to the adjusted data in the linked article, 83.44% of New Yorkers identify as religious adherents, compared to 61.49% for the United States as a whole. For Manhattan, where I live, the figure is 89.42%.
Two thirds (66.6%) of the total religious adherents in Manhattan identify as Christian, 29.2% as Jewish, 3.4% as Muslim, and 0.7% as adherents of other religions.
Among the Christians, the 66.6% percent in Manhattan is largely Roman Catholic (52.5%), followed by mainline protestant (9.3%).
The historically African American churches are not included in the unadjusted data but an estimate for them is included in the adjusted data reported here (a fact not mentioned in the article but stated in the underlying report at the Association of Religious Data Archives (ARDA).
It should also be noted that the article does not tell us anything about the definition of being an adherent of a religion (although ARDA does -- it includes children and ) or about the rate of religious observance.

Interestingly, the unadjusted data at ARDA shows more Episcopalians than any other protestant denomination. (This is sociological data so let's not quibble about the word words "protestant" and "catholic" or even "evangelical" and "mainline." )
More later.

Death

2009-06-26T08:19:00.003-04:00

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. -- John Donne, Meditation XVII.

I mourn Michael Jackson as a human being. I am not in a position to judge his artistry as I never paid much attention to him. I found his notoriety distasteful but confess to having had a prurient interest in his trial.

I mourn Farah Fawcett as a human being. As far as I know, I never saw any of her performances.

I mourn Ed McMahon as a human being. I actually used to stay up and see the beginning of the Johnny Carson Tonight show, so I have a clearer impression of him than I do of the others.

But among the human beings I mourn the most are those ordinary persons who have died as a result of hunger, fear, injustice, oppression, the violence of war, and capital punishment.

Oh, I forgot hate -- I mourn Dr. George Tiller and Stephen T. Johns, both shot by haters.

Parent of all, we pray to you for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of god, rest in peace. Amen.

How Spent My ...

2009-06-25T20:32:00.000-04:00

I'm so glad I don't have to try to be up to date when I'm posting.

Last Saturday, Liz and I had dinner with friends at The Symposium, a Greek restaurant on 113th Street that has been there as long as I can remember. We walked to the restaurant, and on our way we passed a small group of people picketing Jewish Theological Seminary -- most of the signs were anti-Jewish, but I did see a "God hates Fags" sign, so I thought it was probably the Westboro Baptist crowd. There were more police than picketers.

After a pleasant supper with our friend Ginny and her husband and granddaughter, we walked our guests to the corner of Morningside Drive and Cathedral Parkway, they headed over to the A train and we walked back home. As we were walking along past two sides of the Cathedral of St John the Divine, Ginny mentioned that when she was living at Union Seminary, she used to bring recycling to the Cathedral grounds.

On Sunday morning, we went to St. Mary's where we had some special guests, the James Parks Morton International Visiting Fellows, who were in New York from Glasgow and Barcelona. James Parks Morton was Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for 25 years and started the first Recycling Center in Manhattan's Upper West Side on the Cathedral Close. After he retired as Dean in 1997, he founded the Interfaith Center of New York, and for several years he and his wife Pamela have been members of St. Mary's. Two years ago, Chloe Breyer, a priest and member of St. Mary's, succeeded Jim Morton as Executive Director of the Interfaith Center. Chloe preached and all in all it was a pretty good St. Mary's service.

After church we drove to Vermont. Monday was our granddaughter Amanda's second birthday, and we just had to be there. Before the birthday party, we spent four hours in the morning at Amanda's day care facility. We met her two principal caregivers and six of her classmates -- it was a really fun time.

On Tuesday morning we drove back home -- total time away, almost exactly 48 hours. Total driving time -- about 10-1/2 hours. Sleep time -- maybe 17 hours. It was worth it, though.

Sorry I don't have any pictures.

Confession

2009-06-18T21:23:00.004-04:00

On the new website of ACNA (the Anglican Church in North America,) Bishop Robert Duncan has written An Introduction to the Constitution and Canons. He has identified six principles behind the governance structure that the delegates at the Inaugural Assembly of ACNA next week will be asked to ratify. The princples are:

confessional unity, expressed in matters of Faith and Order;
subsidiarity, where what may be wisely left to the local level (both diocesan and congregational) is left to the local level, including property ownership;
missionary focus, especially in structures, roles and representation;
flexibility, recognizing the diversity of Godly approaches common among the partners coming into union;
disciplinary reform, including address of concerns for Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders, as well as provision of a provincial tribunal.
collegial accountability, especially in matters relating to bishops.

The first principle, "confessional unity," means that ACNA is going to be a confessional church, which comes as no surprise. Now I have no particular quarrel with confessional churches as such -- it's just that they generally construct confessions of faith that are designed to exclude somebody. In this case, they are designed to exclude those who believe that sexually active LGBT people are just as worthy as sexually active straight people of participating in the full sacramental life of the church.

On ACNA's What We Stand For page are two documents, a Theological Statement first issued by the Common Cause Partnership and the Jerusalem Declaration, issued in 2008 by GAFCon, and "a foundation for fellowship in the global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans." Particularly relevant is statement 8:

8. We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.

For those attracted to members of the opposite sex, that is a good and adequate statement.

But if you believe, as I do, that sexual orientation is real, then you either have to say that statement is inadequate or you have to accept the statement and conclude that sexual intimacy outside of the marriage of a man and a woman is not proper.

A lesbian or gay person who accepts the second alternative is likely to be unhappy. A lesbian or gay person who accepts the first alternative may either reject Christianity altogether, as many do, or may find a church home in what has come to be known as an "affirming" church.

Bloomsday (and after) thoughts

2009-06-17T10:50:00.000-04:00

In my Blogger profile, I list James Joyce's Ulysses as one of my favorite books. It truly is one of my favorites, although it's been years since I've seriously looked at it. Among other things, Ulysses is a book about the author's home town. My own hometown is Binghamton, New York -- at least that's where I was born and where I spent the majority of my young life before I headed off to college when I was 18. Even though I have lived in New York City for more than 50 years, Binghamton is still my home town and nearby Heart Lake, Pennsylvania is my summer home place -- not quite a town.

Binghamton is the home -- not the home town -- of Matt Kennedy, a former Episcopal priest who led his parish out the Episcopal Church (TEC) and who blogs at Stand Firm. Just as the Rev. Mr. Kennedy seems to be obsessed with gay sex and with what he sees as the failings of the Episcopal Church, I am somewhat, although to a much lesser degree, obsessed with the doings and writings of Mr. Kennedy (I mean no disrespect -- I am simply being low church.) The current location of the Church of the Good Shepherd is under 30 miles from our cottage at Heart Lake and that no doubt plays a role in my interest in their doings. Because of my mini-obsession I sometimes drop in on the Blog of the Good Shepherd. Today I found this gem:

Many have been asking about how to become a member of Good Shepherd. I'll be putting together a packet and a class in the next week or so. So stay tuned for information on that. The membership regulations in the Episcopal Church are very low...something like "Are you breathing and are you in the pew?" Yes. "You are a member of our church". We hope to do a little better than that now that God has given us this new start.

That quote includes a gratuitous and unsupported slur.

Mr. Kenndedy is a regular blogger at Stand Firm. Here's a recent quote on a thread suggesting that the Episcopal Church might soon endorse bestiality:

Jackie did not “attribute” this particular “vile thing” to TEC. She simply wrote: “New Frontier for TEC” and concluded with a question mark—as in: could this be the next “new thing”

Personally, I do not at all see such things as future impossibilities for the “church” that embraces already one form of sexual perversion and whose bishops participate without censure in “Pride” parades which specialize “vile things” and extreme lewdness

Let's see, he's saying that the Episcopal Church is not a real church, rather it is some kind of a false "church," it embraces a form of sexual perversion (by which he means same-sex sexual behavior,) and its bishops participate in parades which "specialize" in "vile things" and "extreme lewdness."

Putting the word church in quotes is a form of innuendo that is devoid of content.
The assertion that TEC embraces a form of sexual perversion is wrong. TEC's limited acceptance of LGBT people is in no sense an "embracing" of any kind of sexual behavior. There is a genuine debate going on in TEC (as in the Anglican Communion as a whole and in othe denominations) about same-sex sexual relationships. Use of the word perversion adds heat, but not light, to the discussion.
The complaint about bishops participating in Pride parades at which other people engage in "vile things" and "extreme lewdness" seems to suggest that the bishops, whoever they are, are endorsing the "vile things" and "extreme lewdness." That's remarkably close to the complaint that Jesus consorted with tax collectors and sinners.

In the same thread, Keith Töpfer, another commenter, made this remark:

The last time I checked, bestiality was just as much a “sexual orientation” as is heterosexuality, homosexuality, pædophilia, necrophilia (and the list, in all probability, goes on a considerable distance from those.)

This statement is either intellectually dishonest or simply stupid. "Sexual orientation" is a technical term with a specific meaning, not just a faddish catch-all term to descirbie any and all sexual behaiors. Specifically, it refers "to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes" and "to a person’s sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." Mr. Töpfer, if indeed he checked anywhere at all, did not check any reputable source, or he would have found that while there are indeed advocates for treating pædophilia and zoophilia (bestiality) as "sexual orientations," there is no reason to think these efforts will go anywhere.

I didn't notice Mr. Kennedy disassociating himslef from Mr. Töpfer's foolishness, so, using his kind of logic, I guess I can impute those remarks to him..

It's Only Me and it's Awesome, Dude

2009-06-10T19:09:00.004-04:00

For at least a week I have been absent from the blogosphere. I have been somewhat obsessively spending my time vicariously at Ulvescott, at St. Mark's College, Cambridge, and in Strelzen, Rothenia, in the company of a whole bunch of fictional characters. I don't make any promises about resurfacing, because I am now beginning to peruse the works which brought Rothenia to light. I'm also going back to the long narration that tells how come Jacko is in residence at Ulvescott. Let the reader understand.

P.S. I didn't include any links, but the works I refer to, although they contain explicit X-rated content, verge on being literary.

Holiday Weekend

2009-05-25T06:28:00.002-04:00

Liz and I came to our cottage here at Heart Lake on Thursday afternoon. Friday morning, I started turning on the water -- a process which involves reconnecting pipes in and under the cottage and putting the footvalve back in the lake. The final step is to prime the pump and the line to the lake. At that point, I discovered that I not properly drained the pump jast year and it was cracked. So I had to call the plumber and get a new pump. The plumber came Saturday afternoon, and now we have running water again.

The next task was mowing the lawn. The grass was high and it was something of a struggle to cut it, but now that's done. It will probably be at least two weeks before we are back, and the grasss grows fast, but next time won't be as hard as this time.

They had a yard sale at the Heart Lake UM Church on Friday and Saturday -- we got there Saturday morning and everyone was delighted to see us. On Sunday, Liz played the piano for the service -- people really appreciated having her back.

Today's our last day here -- gotta go back to NYC tomorrow morning.

Slogging On

2009-05-19T06:41:00.002-04:00

When I last reported, I was working my way through In a Godward Direction. I finished that and then went on to Noble Wolf. I spent most of yesterday working through Of Course I Could Be Wrong and I'm still only in the G's.

Drat!

2009-05-18T12:59:00.005-04:00

I thought better of it and removed the original post.

I'm still praying.

The Thermometer at Resentful

2009-05-17T19:56:00.006-04:00

Come to our bracing desert
Where eternity is eventful,
For the weather-glass
Is set at Alas,
The thermometer at Resentful.
-- W H Auden, For the Time Being

I have removed most of this post.

I am praying for Joel and for Margaret; for John and for Elizabeth and the rest of his family; for Mimi; and for Jonathan.

Exploring the Community - First Report

2009-05-16T08:57:00.003-04:00

I decided to use my genealogy program, The Master Genealogist (TMG) to keep track of this small part of the blogging community. The inset paragraph that follows is technical and if you don't follow it, don't worry.

I began with this blog, Morningsider. I entered each of the Blogs I Follow and each blog on my blog roll Some Blogs I Read. To the program, the blogs are people. I also entered the blog owner as a parent to the blog, so I have a list of people that includes both bloggers and blogs.

Each blog I entered from my list was an associate of Morningsider. I then repeated the process with the associates of the first of Morningsider's associate, which chanced to be Adventus. I discovered that Adventus had a number of links to blogs that were far afield from the community of inclusive Anglicans but at first I entered them anyway. After a time, I realized that it was extraneous to my purposes to enter (those that are neither blogs nor directly concerend with inclusive Anglicanism. (If I encounter a link to "the other side," I will include it, but I will not explore its associates.)

After I finished Adventus, which is on my blogroll but not among those I follow, I decided to proceed down the list of Blogs I Follow. I have finished An Inch at a Time, Counterlight's Peculiars, and Father Geoff Farrow (who has no blogroll), and now I am working my way through In a Godward Direction.

Another Morning

2009-05-14T07:20:00.003-04:00

Continuing in the spirit of the last few posts, I am going to continue to talk about me.

It has taken me at least a full day to come down from the high induced by the excitement of seeking the presidency of my coop. But now I am turning back to other things -- while at the same time remaining a committed board member and committee chair here at Morningside.

Morningside Gardens is a community -- six 21 story buildings with about 980 residential apartments and a population of more than 1,700 persons. I am deeply involved in this community and that involvement will not change.

I am going now to direct my attention to another community -- a community of people, many of whom have never met, who blog or comment on blogs on the inclusive side in the Episcopal Church and othe Anglican churches. I want to explore this virtual community more deeply than I have in the past.

On an occasion or two in the past, I have surfed from blog to blog, seeing where it took me. This will be a different sort of exploration. I'll keep writing about what I find.

Whew

2009-05-12T21:16:00.002-04:00

The Board of Directors of Morningside Heights Housing Corporation had its organizational meeting this evening. The elections are over.

I narrowly escaped being elected president. There were two other candidates and the vote, so I was told, was 6-5-1. (I got 5 votes.)

I wasn't elected to any other office, so this year I am not an officer, and that's ok with me.

I was elected to the Finance Committee and to the Executive Committee.

Now that that's over, my preoccupation with this aspect of our coop is also over and I can get back to some other things that interest me.

Suspense

2009-05-11T21:36:00.003-04:00

We got to Heart Lake (not having been there for 28 weeks) and found that the phone was out -- no dial tone. So I had no internet access -- we did have our emergency cell phone, so we used that to call the phone company. The phone was still out at the time we left.

After I got home I learned that there's no change in the vote count. Four people solidly for me, five if I count myself. Two more are needed to elect. Maybe we won't find out until the board meeting tomorrow night.

Away,away, ere I expire

2009-05-10T14:18:00.002-04:00

This afternoon, Liz and I are taking off for our cottage at Heart Lake. We have haven't been back since the end of October.

I still don't know whether my supporter have rounded up enough votes to elect me as president. The truth is, while I am willing to be president, I am not running against anyone. There is another candidate who I think would be fine but there are some who are really against him. It's an odd position to be in.

I'm leaving right now. More later.

New Board Members

2009-05-07T20:39:00.002-04:00

Well, the waiting is over. Four people have been chosen for the board -- three new and one reelected for a second three year term.
There is another candidate for president, but I think I am more qualified. I am actively campaigning for the office, although in a low key sort of way. While the Whip is finding out what the count of votes is, I'm waiting again, but more actively, because nobody gets to vote until Tuesday.

Waiting

2009-05-06T14:22:00.005-04:00

Last night, our Morningside coop had its annual meeting. We voted for four board members to begin three year terms. Now it's all over but the counting.

Depending on the outcome of the election, I may or may not be chosen by the board to be the next president. As I said before, I don't really want the job, but I am willing to take it if the votes are there.

So I'm waiting for the results -- waiting to see who will be on the board.

Update: I had thought the results would be out this afternoon, but I just learned that the Elections Committee will not begin counting the votes until this evening. So I had best be patient.

What's Up?

2009-05-04T14:24:00.008-04:00

This morning I was asked whether I am a candidate to be president of my coop. My answer was that I am not seeking the job, but that if there are six board members who want me to, I will accept the job (and be the seventh vote.)

There is another person who I am told wants the job, but since the person who told me that is severely irony-challenged, I don't know for sure -- the statement the presumptive candidate is quoted as making could have been meant humorously.

I have already served as president of this coop for five years -- and I am completing my fourteenth year on the board. I do not want to be president -- it's quite enough to be a responsible board member. So why am I willing to accept the job?

First, though I say this who shouldn't, of all the present and potential board members, I am the most suited for the job -- temperamentally, by availability, and by experience. For over a decade now, the president has been a retired person. When I was president the first time, in the early 1980s, I was not only working but I was beginning a new career -- high school teaching. During my second stint, from May 2004 to May 2006, I was putting in 20 to 30 hour weeks at the job. I believe our outgoing president is averaging more time than I did.

I think I will able to chair even handedly. Depending on who gets on this time, there may be some sparks. I think I have the skill (or at least the vision of what's required) to help the board have vigorous but civilized discussions.

I think my experience at Morningside both on and off the board will help me help the board to be a better board.

Our main challenge right now is financial -- this has nothing to do with the current economic crisis, but that sure makes finding solutions more difficult.

The first time I was president I had just been overwhelmingly elected to the board for a second three year term. My three years as president ended in acrimony -- not over me, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I vowed never to be on the board again. Six or seven years later I ran again and that time I was tied for a one year term. I won the run off and a year later I was elected to a full three year term.
In 2004, I was on a trip in early February and when I checked my phone messages I had received an urgent message that things were awry at Morningside Gardens. Upon my return I was urged to run for the board (even though the official deadline for a candidacy had passed.) I did run and I was again elected with a large number of votes. I was elected president by the board, unseating the then current president. Two years later the same thing happened to me -- I was unseated by an incoming director.

In November 2007 I wrote in a small notebook:

Should I run for the board or shouldn't I?

Against:
I need to have my time.
If I run, I might want to be president.
Being president is too time-consuming.
For:
It's fun.
I want to.
The corporation needs me (or somebody good.)
I'm good

As it happened, in December I decided against running -- then in January a board member implored me to run. So I did.
Sure enough, I was asked to be a candidate for president. It turned out, there weren't enough votes and I withdrew. I didn't really want to be president anyway, and I also did not think that the incumbent, who had unseated me two years before, was all that bad. We all have strengths and weaknesses and the question was this -- did her weaknesses trump her strengths? For some board members, the answer was yes -- and some were against her for political reasons. But there were an equal number who were for her on account of her strengths.

Some of that politics is still here, but the cast of characters is changing slightly, and my candidacy would not be challenging anyone. In our coop we have twelve directors; each year four are elected for three year terms. A director may serve a maximum of six consecutive years -- that is, normally, two three year terms. Three years ago, four new directors were elected -- three of them were clearly perceived to be part of a faction. This year, none of those three are running for reelection -- they are all going off the board.

I hesitate to say too much about the politics here -- largely because so much of it is driven by personalities. I will say this -- for each of the six candidates for the board there are people who say "I wouldn't vote for that person," because of either a personality trait or a position that person has taken (or is said to have taken) on a no longer live issue. In my judgment, none of those reasons speak at all to the question of whether any of the candidates will be a good board member.

The Apostles’ Teaching and Fellowship

2009-04-28T11:28:00.004-04:00

Liz and I went to Philadelphia this past weekend to attend a Gala Celebration honoring Leonard Swidler. The Gala celebrated Leonard Swidler’s 80th birthday, the 45th Anniversary of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, and the establishment of the Leonard and Arlene Swidler Chair in Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University.

In 1977 Leonard and Arlene Swidler edited a book entitled Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary of the Vaitican Declaration (referring to Inter Insigniores, the Declaration of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the question of the admission of women to the ministerial priesthood. -15 October 1976.) The text of this book is available at the Women Priests Internet Library.

While the Swidler gala was getting underway at Temple University, two Catholic women were being ordained a few miles away– one to the diaconate and one to the priesthood. I heard from a friend that several people who might otherwise have been at the gala were attending the ordinations. The ordination was under the auspices of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an international movement of Roman Catholic women and men who support the ordination of women and since 2002 have been ordaining women and some men to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate. [NOTE: the Women Priests Internet Library is separate from Roman Catholic Womenpriests.]

In looking up information on Roman Catholic Womanpriests, I discovered that last week four Catholic women were consecrated bishop, and now there are five Catholic womanbishops in the United States alongside three in Europe.

UPDATE 10 hours later: His eminence, Jonathan the MadPriest, has picked up the story. Sadly, his focus is on the spin put out by the RC hierarchy.

Good Friday

2009-04-10T08:51:00.004-04:00

In a Good Friday meditation a few years ago, I said that Jesus' death on the cross was God's act of solidarity with us humans. I don't much care about the atonement in the sense of reparation or appeasement. What's important is the original meaning of atonement - reconciliation. In Jesus' death, God reconciles us with himself.

Last Sunday Liz and I were at Christ Church, Montpelier, Vermont. The rector, David Hall, told us he was very fond of the processional, celebratory part of Palm Sunday. He referred to The Last Week, the book by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The opening of that book is cited here in a post this afternoon by Doorman-Priest. Jesus's entry in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was a subversive event. Both David Hall's sermon and Doorman-Priest's post remind us that we are faced with the question of which camp are we in -- in simplest terms, that of the rich or that of the poor. For many of us, it's a bit of both.

Two weeks ago, we were in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at Moravian Theological Seminary, for a talk by Ian Douglas, the priest and missiologist. He got us all to think about being either in a p0sition of privilege or a position of being a target (I don't have the vocabulary quite right) and made us realize that we may well be in different positions in different areas of our lives.

Last night at St. Mary's, our Deacon in training, Sydney Blake, preached on servant ministry. Sydney reminded us that Jesus's statement in John 13:15 "I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you" calls us to all aspects of servanthood, not simply foot washing.

Next weekend I will be attending the Left Forum. One of the reasons I go every year is to be reminded that our economic system is inherently unjust. The Religion & Socialism Commission of DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is sponsoring a panel "God's Economics: Is an Ethical Economy Possible?" I look forward to it -- I know many of the panelists. The question makes me ask myself about employment practices here at Morningside Gardens. I'm an currently 1st Vice President of our housing cooperative, so I get reports of personnel actions taken by management. Here is a case that came to my attention.

Tom needed to unlock a door in the course of his duties. He discovered that the new key he had recently been given was defective. Tom left his assigned place and went to the shop. The locksmith was not there so Tom began making a copy of the key himself. A supervisor told Tom to stop because he was not authorized to use the key making machine. Tom protested in an angry manner and went on to make the key.

Tom was suspended pending investigation for the following reaasons:

* unauthorized use of the key machine
* failure to follow supervisor's instructions
* insubordination
* unauthorized break

The actions of management in this instance are fully consistent with the culture. Tom is a union employee and is being treated fairly according to the union contract. But I suggest that there is something wrong with the culture operating here.

Tom needed a key to do his job, so he took steps to get a working key. This was initiative which should be commended. But instead, Tom is charged with violating a boundary (using the key machine,) insubordination, and leaving his post. There's a presupposition here that Tom (or any employee) needs to be subordinated to a supervisor and needs to operate under strict rules.

How does the way I (by proxy of management) treat our employees square with the Baptismal Covenant? Is it a proclamation of the Good News of God in Christ? Is it seeking and serving Christ in every person, loving my neighbor as myself? Is it striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being? In our complex, and all too human society, is there anything I should be doing to change the way we conduct employer - employee relations?

I don't know the answer. And yet, even on Good Friday, the kingdom of God has come near: repent and beleive in the good news.

John 3:16

2009-03-22T18:06:00.006-04:00

Over in Leeds on the fourth Sunday in Advent, Doorman Priest preached on "what is probably the most famous Gospel text known to Christians."

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that all who believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life.

D-P writes "Taken literally this passage from John suggests that those who do not believe in the son will perish," and then proceeds to argue against taking the passage literally. Now I liked D-P's sermon, but I have to say "Sorry, D-P, but that is not correct. Taken literally, this passage (unlike John 14:6) asserts nothing at all about those who do not believe in the son."

A 2004 paper by Samuele Antonini points out that for students of mathematics, the false equivalence of a statement and its inverse is intuitive and the true equivalence of a statement and its contrapositive is not intuitve. The same is true for most people who are not trained in mathematics or formal logic. But what do the terms inverse and contrapositive mean? Taking the statement in John 3:16 as an example (and restating the may as will):

1. Statement: Those who believe in the son will not perish.
2. Inverse: Those who don't believe in the son will perish.
3. Contrapositive: Those who perish don't believe in the son.
There is a fourth possibility, the converse:
4. Converse: Those who do not perish, believe in the son.

Now we take 1, the statement, as true, based on our view of scripture. For most people, it is not intuitive that 3, the contrapositive, says exactly the same thing as 1, and so is also true.
2, the inverse, and 3, the converse, also say the same thing as each other, but, despite our intuition, their truth value cannot be deduced from the truth of 1.

But to leave the realm of logic and return to the substance of the sermon, D-P points out a corrective to those whose intuition tells them that statements 1 and 2 are equivalent. In the passage before this, Nicodemus mistakenly takes Jesus literally (John 3:4). In a 2006 sermon entitled No One Comes to the Father But By Me, John Thatamanil makes the same point about John 14:6.

I'll say more about this topic in my next post.

Litany in Time of War

2009-03-20T21:59:00.008-04:00

Last year I hoped I would not be posting the following email this year:

Subject: Great Litany at the Isaiah Wall

From: Earl Kooperkamp
To:

Dear sisters and brothers:

Please be aware of the following and pass it on to others who may be interested:

The Great Litany chanted in Solemn Procession:

The Fifth Friday in Lent, March 27, 2009 12 noon
The Last Friday in Lent, April 3, 2009 12 noon

Ralph Bunche Park (The Isaiah Wall) NW corner of 42nd Street and First Avenue
(across from the United Nations)

Vestments: Cassock, surplice, tippet and hood (clergy are asked to vest, and if lay members of Altar parties in parishes care to vest, please come in cassock and surplice)

Please join us as we ask for God's mercy on us for the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we mourn the deaths of the children, men and women of those nations and the death United States and other military personnel.

Sponsored by: St. Mary's Episcopal Church - Episcopal Peace Fellowship chapter

For more information, please contact Earl Kooperkamp, (212) 864-4013 or revkoooperkamp@aol.com

Thank you for your kind attention and may you observe a blessed Lent.

Peace, Earl Kooperkamp

The United States invaded Iraq six years ago in the small hours of March 20, 2003. Here in New York, it was still St. Joseph's Day, March 19. We began chanting the Litany at Ralph Bunche Park during Lent in 2003. We've done it at least once or twice every Lent since. We intend to keep it up at least as long as there are US combat troops in Iraq. I'm going to lobby for continuing the practice while we have troops in Afghanistan.

If you are able to make it on either Friday, you will be welcome. As it turns out, I won't be able to participate on April 3rd and it's not likely I'll be there March 27th either. At the beginning of April, Liz and I are going to Vermont to see our granddaughter Aamnda and her parents. More on that later.

This coming Thursday, March 26, Liz and I are going to Bethlehem, PA, to attend the 2009 Campbell Lecture sponsored by the Lehigh County Conference of Churches. The speaker will be the Rev. Ian Douglas, of Episcopal Divinity School, speaking on Living into Unity in a Time of Disunity. We're staying overnight in Bethlehem and depending on the weather we might pop up to Heart Lake on the way home.

Bishop Katharine on Morningside Heights

2009-03-12T10:00:00.001-04:00

This past Monday evening, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori gave the Episcopal Lecture at Columbia University. The event was jointly sponsored by the Canterbury Club and the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Columbia.

After some brief introductory remarks, Bishop Katharine fielded questions from the audience. I made a few notes on her remarks – these are not verbatim quotes and represent only what I took away from the evening-- they are the equivalent of a few sound bites.

“The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society”
I have interspersed some comments of my own in [brackets.]

The corporate name of The Episcopal Church lifts up the missionary calling of our church. Bishop Katharine describes it as working towards God’s reign – by feeding the hungry, striving to end poverty, healing the sick, working for peace, for justice, for environmentally responsible actions.

The word “Society” in our corporate name highlights our interconnectedness – that we are interdependent. Churches in the Anglican tradition place a good deal of emphasis on the incarnation. As a consequence we take bodies seriously. As Christians, we say that the church is the body of Christ. [It should be obvious that this is a metaphor.] Theologian Sally McFague talks about all of creation as being the body of God. [Another metaphor.] When one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. [“God hath created nothing simply for itself: but each thing in all things and of everything each part in other hath such interest that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto anything created can say, I need thee not.”– Richard Hooker: Learned Sermon on Pride. Compare specifically 1 Corinthians 12:21, Romans 12:4-5 and Ephesians 4:15-16, and more generally, 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31; Romans 12: 3-8;Ephesians 4: 11-16.]

On Sexuality

Taking the Incarnation seriously and taking bodies seriously means, in the Episcopal Church, that we take sexuality seriously.

Some of the tensions in the Anglican Communion over sexuality arise from the fact that in some cultures sexuality isn’t discussed at all and it is deeply embarrassing to have to discuss it.

Another characteristic of Anglicanism is lex orandi, lex credendi. We have very few systematic theologians – our theology is contained in our prayer books and our worship. The question of developing a liturgy for the blessing of same sex unions is fraught with tension, because the existence of such a liturgy would bring same sex unions right into the center of our life as a church – into our worship.

On Intra-Anglican Relations

Both the election and consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and the election of Bishop Katharine as Presiding Bishop were seen in some parts of the world as just another example of American arrogance, alongside the arrogance of the Bush administration. The change in Washington, as well as the conversations in last summer’s Lambeth Conference, have helped ease things somewhat.

Americans who are bishops in African churches [Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda] do not attend synods in those countries. The local bishops do not like that and wish their primates (some of whom are near retirement) to correct the situation. This is a hopeful sign.

On Ministry

In our thirty year old “new prayer book” the Episcopal Church emphasizes the ministry of all the baptized. What used to be “Canon 9 priests” or priests ordained for a purely local ministry need to be viewed in the light of the ministry of al the baptized.

On Emerging Church

Because we take the incarnation seriously, we recognize that things don’t necessarily need to be the same everywhere.

On the proposed Anglican Covenant

In the latest draft, the first two parts seem ok. The objections are to the third part. The next draft is scheduled to be presented to the Anglican Consultative Council in May. We’ll have to wait and see what its contents are and what the ACC does with it.

The exercise itself may be the most important part of the process.

On the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury

We view him as first among equals. He has the authority to call people together for conversation.

All of the questions were friendly,but there were three questions that were somewhat challenging. First, there was a young man who asked Bishop Katanrine how she responded to those who challenge the validity of her ordination as a women -- after all, Jesus chose only men as the twelve.

Mary Magdelene was called "the apostle to the apostles." Women in leadership positions are referred to in Acts and in Paul's letters. We don't know very much about actual ordination in the early church. There's some evidence that the rules against ordaining women are post Constantinian.

[I'm reconstructing and perhaps making up this part.] Our incarnational theology of people and our baptismal theology of ministry both lead us to support the ministry of all persons.

Bishop Katharine was asked about the prophetic ministry of the Episcopal Church and mentioned two issues -- our stand against the death penalty and our stance for the right to abortion while we recognize that abortion is a moral tragedy. The same young man asked how we could support the right to an abortion while calling it a moral tragedy. In this case, my notes don't have Bishop Katharine's exact answer and I am not going to put words in her mouth.

The third challenging question was about a hypothetical ordinand who admitted that he no longer believed in the Resurrection -- the question was whether she would ordain him. Three things stick with me from her answer:

He seems on the face of it to be unusually honest.
She would want to have a long talk with him.

and finally,

God calls us to keep wrestling with our faith.

I have left out a good deal, but I hope I've given a flavor of what it was like to hear Bishop Katharine.

The audience included a dozen or so members of the Canterbury Club, other Columbia students, six or eight clergy unknown to me, and a group from Grace Church in Nyack, New York, including the Rev. Emily Sieracki, the assistant to the rector at Grace. Emily was sponsored for ordination by St. Mary's and the Columbia Episcopal Chaplaincy. Others there associated with St. Mary's, besides Liz and me, were Dean James Parks Morton and Pamela Morton, who are current members of the parish, and the Rev. Winnie Varghese, Episcopal Chaplain at Columbia and member of Executive Council, who was at St. Mary's while she was in seminary. And since our former rector Bob Castle ("Cousin Bobby") used to say to those who came to church at St. Mary's that they were now members of our parish, Bishop Katharine herself is now associated with St. Mary's.

Facebook

2009-03-08T23:06:00.002-04:00

This morning I received an invitation to be become a Facebook friend of one of my Florida cousins. I joined Facebook in January 2008, but have been very inactive. In October, I became a friend to a Massachusetts cousin, but was still incative. In January, i became a friend to an internet store, Betterworld Books, but still was otherwise inactive. But tonight, I have acquired new friends from a 17 year old high school junior (I'm her uncle and godfather) to an 84 year old retired pastor (he's my uncle.) And just now I became Facebook friends with a blog friend -- one who came to Of Course I Could Be in New York. It opens up lots of possiblilities -- this person has lots of friends who I know -- some in person and some through blogs.

And so to bed.