Catching Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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:

1. confessional unity, expressed in matters of Faith and Order;
2. subsidiarity, where what may be wisely left to the local level (both diocesan and congregational) is left to the local level, including property ownership;
3. missionary focus, especially in structures, roles and representation;
4. flexibility, recognizing the diversity of Godly approaches common among the partners coming into union;
5. disciplinary reform, including address of concerns for Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders, as well as provision of a provincial tribunal.
6. 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

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

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

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

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!

I thought better of it and removed the original post.

I'm still praying.

The Thermometer at Resentful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Baptismal Covenant

The time changed this morning – Liz and I almost missed the change and would have been late for church. This morning we had some special guests – women from the Plainfield Community Church in Plainfield New Hampshire. The Rev. Suellen Luegers, pastor of the church was our preacher. The women had been here for a week, working in various community outreach programs – some based at St. Mary’s and some nearby. But most important, they brought us quilts which the Episcopal Church Women will give to families in a homeless shelter at the end of our block.

Today we had four baptisms of children – all siblings or cousins. As a result, we got to say the Baptismal Covenant – to my mind the best new thing in the 1979 Prayer Book. We promised, with the help of God,

• to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,
• to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord,
• to to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,
• to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself,
• to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

We have a fair number of baptisms at St. Mary’s each year, so we get to renew this covenant frequently.

If you Google “Baptismal Covenant Episcopal” you will find that some on the right hand side of the aisle find that the promise to “respect the dignity of every human being” is problematic. In 2007, Canon Gary L'Hommedieu of the Diocese of Central Florida wrote “What is unarguable is the novelty of the final promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being." It is this final promise that distinguishes the 1979 baptismal liturgy from all previous ones, apart from incidentals of language. ... It is the final promise that comprises the spirit of the Baptismal Covenant. Or rather, the final promise IS the Baptismal Covenant. ... Even though the language of [the Baptismal Covenant] is purely abstract and non-specific, it typically finds application that is politically motivated and unabashedly partisan, and invariably to the left.”

Canon L'Hommedieu is spot on, save for one thing. He does not acknowledge, perhaps he does not recognize, that opposition to the “invariably left” application of “respect the dignity of every human being” is also “politically motivated and unabashedly partisan.”

I have only recently become acquainted with the relatively new field of cognitive linguistics and cognitive science in general. Central to that discipline is the discovery that most of human thought and reasoning is not conscious, is based of cognitive frames sometimes called metaphors, and, because we exist in our bodies, is embodied and inextricably tied to our emotions. Most of my reading in this field is in the writings of George Lakoff. Lakoff observes that much of our political, and I would say also religious, thought is informed by the metaphor of the family. Now there are at least two models of the family out there. One is the nurturant parent model and the other is the strict father model.

Very recently I read on some blog or other a definition of politics as being about decision making and a refutation that said no, it was about power and who gets to exercise it. In either case, I think I’m right is saying that the ecclesial and theological perspective of both religious progressives and religious conservatives are politically motivated.

to be continued ...

BTW, tomorrow evening PB KJS is speaking at Columbia University, a few blocks from here, and I intend to be there. I hope to report on what she says.

Annual Meeting

Yesterday we had our Annual Meeting at St. Mary's.

I made a motion, which was carried unanimously, that we communicate to our diocesan delegates to General Convention that we urge the repeal of B033. I originally forgot to include support for same sex blessings, but we managed to tack it on before the meeting broke up.

I know that the support of one parish is not terribly significant, but it's important for our small congregation to be reminded of our connection to the wider church.

At one point in the discussion, it was mentioned that St. Mary's was the sponsor of two of the Philadelphia Eleven (the first women in the Episcopal Church to be ordained to the priesthood in 1974, not the 2004 anti-gay demonstrators) and that my signature, as Clerk of the Vestry, appears on the documents sent to Bishop Paul Moore in support of the ordination of Carter Heyward and Emily Hewitt. I mention it only to make the point that we (and I) have been pushing issues for quite a while. It's part of who we are.

I'm put in mind of another part of who we are by MadPriest's recent sermon on Mark 1:9-15. We minister to the marginalized. For several years we operated a weekly soup kitchen -- just over a year ago we urned it into a food pantry. The siginificant point is that a large part of the staff consists of people who first came to us on the food line. Many people from the line have become involved in the church. These days we also provide bag lunches in a Saturday outreach program to homeless people in our general neighborhood.

Three weeks ago, Estelle, a sometime member of our choir, passed away. Her passing was noted by Padre Mickey as well as several others who remember The Ronettes. Estelle is just one of the many fragile folks who have gotten some fellowship at St. Mary's.

S words

In October 2004, the website Radical Calendar said of Fr. Luis Barrios that he “doesn’t hesitate to call God, Goddess.” This past Saturday, February 28, MadPriest, picked up a Living Church story that said that in an open letter, Fr. Barrios said it is his “duty to our Goddess to build a better world.” At the Living Church website, this “news” is dated February 26, 2009. The actual open letter appears on a website where the posts are not dated. The letter itelf is dated January 27, 2009. In a comment to the post at MadPriest, at first I said I did not believe the quote and then I had to admit that it was accurate. In this case, I posted first and googled later – not a good idea. In the course of googling, I came to realize what is going on. Later on, in the comments at MadPriest’s, David [Dah + veed] Allen put it better than I could: “The statement was issued in English and Spanish and it says Our Goddess (Nuestra Diosa) in the Spanish as well. It appears that Padre Luis is an alternating inclusive, using both masculine and feminine language for Our God (Nuestro Dios) in the same passages.”

The problem for me is that “our Goddess” is an imperfect translation of what Fr. Barrios means when he say “nuestra Diosa.” This is partly because English no longer has grammatical gender (differentiated third person pronouns do not constitute grammatical gender.) So “Goddess” is not simply the feminine form of “God,” it has other connotations, especially the form “the Goddess.” Moreover, “-ess” words in general are now problematic for many people.

That said, now that I understand it, I am not bothered by Fr. Barrios’s use of the word “Goddess.”

Of course the pseudo Anglicans of the radical right are all over the story, mostly because of the protest for which Fr. Barrios was arrested, but also because of some of his earlier activism and what I admittedly intemperately call their own inability to comprehend inclusiveness in any form or to tolerate diversity of opinion. But that's to be expected.

Taking Hold

As I noted way back at the end of October, my computer failed just a day after we drove home from Heart Lake through a snow storm that delayed us and turned a three hour trip into an eight hour trip.

The problem was diagnosed as hard drive failure and I paid around $1,000 for data recovery. I bought a new hard drive and I finally got my computer back just before Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I was using Liz’s notebook computer. Well, it soon became apparent that there was still something wrong with the computer, as it kept giving me the blue screen of death. So I took it back to the shop.

I picked it up again on December 3rd; the diagnosis was a software problem. However, I soon began encountering bluescreens again, so I took it back once more. The technician, Irit, took quite a long time to pin down the problem. I was away twice, she had a bad case of flu, but finally, after a good deal of trial and error, she determined that the problem was the video card, which unfortunately is part of the motherboard, so I needed a new computer. Since I had already spent so much on data recovery, I looked hard for a desktop replacement laptop for under $700.

Now I finally have my new computer and have finished the slow process of installing all of the software I normally use. It’s been a long three months. I still have to clean up behind myself on Liz’s laptop and I have a lot of catching up to do. But I don’t feel crippled anymore.

I’m Back

On Monday afternoon, around 4:45 pm, Liz and I arrived home from our Florida trip. I’m very happy we went and especially happy that I got to see my Aunt Joyce and my cousins Eric and Sven in Miami.

When we got home, as we came into the building we saw a notice that our neighbor Bob Seaver, a retired professor at Union Theological Seminary, had died last Wednesday. Then when we up to our tenth floor apartment, we discovered that our next door neighbor, Aimee Scheff, had died early Sunday morning.

Both funerals are this afternoon -- Aimee's at 2 pm at a funeral chapel on 91st Street and Amsterdam Ave. and Bob's at 4 pm at The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, at 112th Street, also on Amsterdam Avenue. So they are a mile apart. It remninds me of the time we had invitations to two weddings, one at the cathedral and one at St. Michael's Church, at 100th Street and Amsterdam. It was not possible to attend both weddings, we had to pick one and go to both receptions. It will be possible to attend both funerals.

We didn't have high speed internet access for most of last evening, so we didn't check all of our emails. This morning we saw that there are some delightful new pictures of our granddaughter Amanda. I'll be posting one or two of them later -- as well as some pictures from our trip.

I'm still using Liz's laptop, since mine is still in the shop -- I'm betting I'll need a new one, but until I know definitely whether the problem is the video card or the motherboard, I'll keep hoping.

Greetings to all, especially my cousin Eric my only follower), my cousin Sven, and my Aunt Joyce. Gotta get dreesed for the funerals. Bye.

UPDATE 8:45 PM

We didn't get to the second funeral after all -- we spent the afternoon in a lunch with Aimee's brother and sister-in-law and several Morningside Gardens friends.

Greetings from Florida

My only computer access here on Anna Maria Island is at the library, where I am in competition for computers with several others, but the wait is never too long.

Liz and I are enjoying our vacation so far and we are looking forward to going to Miami tomorrow. We'll visit my Aunt Joyce whom I have not seen for half a century.

I'll have more to say when we are back in New York.

Away to Florida

We're off to Florida for a week.
While we're away, we'll miss author Thomas Cahill preaching at St. Mary's tomorrow, January 25, Prisosn Ministry Sunday in the Diocese of New York.
We'll also miss a special service on February 1 in which the Harlem Episcopal churches will honoe the ministry of Bishop Don Taylor, assisting bishop in the Diocese of New York, on the occasion of his retirement.
Too bad we can;t be in two places at the same time.

I probably won't post anything until I'm back.

Marion Hatchett on the American Church and Anglicanism

The Anglican arrived yesterday. It contains a "Response to the Distinguished Alumnus/a Award at The General Theological Seminary" by Marion J. Hatchett. The whole response is worth reading and I wish I had been there last October to hear him deliver it. Here are the last two paragraphs:

The American Church always seems to jump way out ahead of the Church of England and our other sister churches, and in a number of respects. One was in giving voice to priests and deacons and to laity (as well as to bishops and to secular government officials) in the governance of the national church and of dioceses and parishes. The American Church revised the Prayer Book in a way that went far beyond revisions necessitated by the new independence of the states. From its beginning the American Church legalized the use of hymnody along with metrical psalmody more than a generation before use of "hymns of human composure" became legal in the Church of England. At an early stage the American Church gave recognition to critical biblical scholarship. The American Church eventually gave a place to women in various aspects of the life of the church including its ordained ministry. The American Church began to speak out against discrimination against those of same-sex orientation, and the American Church began to make moves in establishing full communion with other branches of Christendom.

Historically the American Church has been the flagship in the Anglican armada. It has been first among the provinces of the Anglican Communion to take forward steps on issue after issue, and on some of those issues other provinces of Anglicanism have eventually fallen into step behind the American Church. My prayer is that the American Church will be able to retain its self-esteem and to stand firm and resist some current movements which seem to me to be contrary to the principles of historic Anglicanism and to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures.

The full talk is online here. The Anglican is a publication of the Anglican Society. 2008 Dues/Subscription = $15 US ($20 foreign) -- I think this is the latest rate -- the figures on the website are out of date.

Updated Friday to point to the text of the paper.

Gratitude

Thanks to Mad Priest several vistors dropped by my blog early this week. I'll be returning the favor and updating my blog roll, but probably not for a couple of weeks -- for reasons stated below.

Here are three other things I am grateful for.

Barack Hussein Obama is now President of the United States of America. Thanks be to God.

There is a ceasefire in Gaza -- or rather two unilateral ceasefires. Thanks be to God.

In about a week and a half I'll be seeing my Aunt Joyce for the first time in about 50 years. Thanks be to God.

Here we are 70 years ago (actually more, since it was in the summer of 1939). As you can see, Aunt Joyce is only seven years older than I. Joyce is my father's youngest sister and the sole survivor among my father and his siblings. She moved to Miami about 50 years ago. Here is a picutre taken while she still lived in New York State. She was a TV personality at the time.


A little more than 10 years ago, I reconnected with Aunt Joyce by email and telephone. I've been meaning to arrange a trip to Florida ever since, but it wasn't until this year that Liz and I got to it.

This coming Saturday, January 24th, we are flying to Tampa for almost a week with Liz's cousin Oliver on Ana Maria Island, just below St. Petersburg. Then we drive to Miami for a couple of days visting Aunt Joyce and part of her family.

I most likely will not be taking a laptop, so I don't know how much internet access I'll have.

I'm grateful that after half a century I'm going to see my beloved Aunt Joyce.

About blogging

It took me five days to write the last post. At first, I didn't know where it was going. I also don't know whether I have an audience, but no matter -- I will press on. I wonder what's next.

Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo wo wo).

Mrs. Robinson will be moving into the White House next week, as will her daughter and son-in-law, along with her granddaughters. I learned about this the other day from the New York Times. I was going to write about it.

On Monday, I learned about another Robinson -- Bishop Gene Robinson has been invited to deliver the invocation at the opening event of the inauguration festivities next Sunday. I first learned it at Of Course I Could Be Wrong and I wasn't sure it was true until I checked The Lead at Episcopal Cafe. At The Lead, Jim Naughton, who apparently broke the story, reports that it became the biggest blog event of the day at 4:30 Monday afternoon.

There were a few other things in the past few days that I wanted to take note of. Last week, our local weekly The Westsider had an aricle about a shelter for homeless LGBTQ teenagers here in New York City. It's not online, so I can't link to it, and we gave the paper to someone in our church who works with homeless people. The article makes the point that for these kids there are more pressing issues than same-sex marriage (or ordination of bishops and other clergy.) Bishop Robinson is quoted in the Concord Monitor as having told Beliefnet "The difficult thing is that [Rick Warren]'s said, and continues to affirm, some horrendous things about homosexuality." The horrendous things that Bishop Gene is referring to lead to horrendous consequences -- as witness the incidence of suicide among LGBTQ youth, the family rejection that many of the homeless LGBTQ youth have experienced, and violence against LGBTQ persons.

On Saturday I learned, also from MadPriest, that a church in my home town had lost its bid to keep the property ater the congregation seceded from the Episcopal Church. The Church of the Good Shepherd, on the south sde of Binghamton, is one of three parishes in the Diocese of Central New York that withdrew from the Episcopal Church at least in part in protest over the consecration of Bishop Robinson in 2003. Good Shepherd, whose rector is Matt Kennedy, is the only one of the three parishes which actually pursued the legal battle to the end (see this article in the Press & Sun-Bulletin.) Monday or Tuesday, I read in a post by Matt Kennedy over at Stand Firm (I will not link there) that they were given a a little more than a month to vacate the premises -- and they had to pay while they stayed. Well, on the church blog Matt reports they have found a disused RC rectory to house the Kennedys. and the gym of a Baptist Church for Sunday worship -- both within less than a mile and a half of their old church.

In a comment at OCICBW last week, Matt Kennedy wrote

Say what you will about me and my parishioners...as you have...but believe it or not, in all sincerity, we believe those who promote same sex sexual behavior are, albeit unintentionally, hurting people by leading them away from Christ.

I certainly believe he is sincere -- I also think he is dead wrong in his approach to the bible and the true nature of orthodox Christianity. I also think he is wrong about Anglicanism, but this is ground that has been contested at least since the days when Richard Hooker and his cousin Walter Travers preached at the Temple Church in the 1570's. I hope to write more about the significance of contested ground, but for now I want to take a close look at Matt Kennedy's statement.

"Those who promote same sex sexual behavior" is an odd choice of words. It isn't about promoting any kind of sexual behavior. It's about affirming people, accepting who they are, and where necessary encouraging them to accept who they are.

Affirming people does not lead them away from Christ. Telling people that God hates what they do when what they do is intimately related to who they are does indeed lead many people away from Christ.

I'll leave it to others to talk about why it is right for Gene Robinson to be a bishop in the Episcopal Church and wrong for Matt Kennedy to teach that same sex sexual behavior is contrary to God's will.

I conclude with part (slightly updated) of a 17th century prayer written when there was contested ground in the church:

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all humankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of people; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.

KJS at St. Mary's (Just Another Sunday)

Situated as we are in the Manhattanville valley, a few blocks from Union Theological Seminary and the Columbia University campus, we get a fair number of interesting visitors at St. Mary's. Just before the 10 AM service this morning, I noticed that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her husband Richard Schori were in the congregation. They were just visiting.

Today in place of a sermon we had the annual Sunday School Christmas Pageant -- the topic was the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt. Under the direction of Jim White, the slaughter took place in the sacristy, so all we heard were terrible screams. In the last scene, the soldiers had a change of heart -- that is, they repented -- and joined the Holy Family as refugees in Egypt. Then each soldier, or rather each child actor, presented gifts to the baby Jesus commemorating the names and ages of children killed in Iraq. I think the PB was as appreciative of the pageant as the rest of us.

Most of the congregation were not aware that Bishop KJS was there until announcement time, which we have just before the blessing and dismissal.

New Year's Day

Picking up where the last post left off ...
It was a real time away for us -- no internet, no TV news, very little radio news, no newspaper most days. I can't remember when I became aware that all hell had broken loose in Gaza.

I spent most of my personal time reading and trying to write a coherent piece about what I was reading. On the way to Jane and Scott's on Christmas Eve, we stopped for gas in Brattleboro, Vt and bought the New York Times. The was a front page article on Jewish response to the Bernard Madoff scandal. I was particularly struck by a statement made by Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed which is about a mile and a half from our apartment in Morningside Gardens.

In a recent sermon, Rabbi Kalmanofsky described Mr. Madoff as the antithesis of true piety. “I said, what it means to be a religious person is to be terrified of the possibility that you’re going to harm someone else,” he said.

The first time I read that, it struck a chord but I thought that "terrified" was a little over the top. The more I ponder it, though, the less extravagant I think it is.

As we started out from New York on Christmas Eve, I turned on the radio to catch the end of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Cambridge. After I listened to the ninth lesson (John 1:1-14) I mentioned to Liz that I had read a wonderful rendering of John 1:14a at Preludium:

The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood... (1.14a, The
Message)

(As an aside, I had never consciously encountered The Message before and in fact it was only after I got back to New York that I discovered where that rendering came from. In the course of looking The Message up, I found an otherwise perceptive review that oddly thinks the rendering "moved into the neighborhood" is facetious.)

We got to Jane's house too late to go to the afternoon Christmas Eve service at Christ Episcopal Church in Montpelier, so we went to another church a little later. -- I won't say which one. We did get to Christ Episcopal Church on Sunday and got to hear the opening of John again. The rector, David Hall, preached a fine sermon. We go to that church whenever we are visiting Jane on a Sunday. and we like it.

While at Jane's, I was also reading Helene Cooper's The House at Sugar Beach, a large part of which is about the bloody events in Liberia that began in April 1980. As I thought about the evils of war as exemplified by the Liberian events, about Rabbi Kalmanofsky's observation that to be religious is to be fearful of inflicting harm on another, and about the Incarnation, which is central to my own religious faith, I contemplated writing a brilliant blog post on the subject -- even though almost no one reads this blog. Since I didn't have my computer with me, I began composing in a spiral notebook.

I got far enough to observe that not doing harm was not enough -- we actually have to do good.

Another book I began reading in Vermont was Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. On Sunday after I learned that Israel had begun bombing Gaza, I was particularly struck by Obama's observation on the difference between values and ideology.

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.

Rather than getting into a rant about Israel and Palestine, I just want to observe that it appears obvious to me that the public statements of Israeli officials are dripping with ideology. The statements of the weaker party, Hamas, are also dripping with ideology.

In that article on the Madoff scandal, Rabbi Jennifer Krause said

The Talmud teaches that a person who only looks out for himself and his own interests will eventually be brought to poverty.

I believe that principle extends to security -- even national security.

The End of the Year

A week ago, on Christmas Eve, Liz and I left New York and drove to Jane and Scott's house in Vermont. We had a great time there, not least because we got to spend a good bit of time with our granddaughter Amanda. On the way home we stopped first and ahd lunch and a nice visit with Liz's brother and sister-in-law Peter and Cynthia. Afterwards we drove on down to the Berkshires and spent the night with our friends Roger and Holly, who are building a house near where Holly grew up. Finally we drove home, getting here midafternoon on Tuesday the 30th.

More to come.

The first week of December

Let's see.
Barack Obama named Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.
A group of former Episcopalians and others formed what they call a province of the Anglican Church in North America, but which is in fact a new denomination.
The Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles promulgated a rite for the blessing of same sex blessings.

Closer to home:
I picked up my computer, but it has crashed again. Probably I need to have Windows reinstalled.
On Saturday evening, Liz and I went to dinner in a Venezuelan restaurant with four three generations of the family of a friend of Liz's from her Union Seminary days. It was in honor of the birthday of the friend's granddaughter. Among the party were a female same sex couple who attend another St. Mary's Church -- this one in Rockport. MA. It was fun talking to them, and I'd like to get better acquainted.
Not technically part of the first week, on December 7th at St. Mary's, the celebrant was the Rev. Patricia (Patty) Ackerman. Patty was at St. Mary's as a seminarian, and has been actively ivolved on several progressive fronts. The Gospellers were Lysander Puccio and Miguel Escobar (we hear the gospel in both English and Spanish.) The sermon was by Betty Reardon, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During the service I counted seven known lesbian and gay people among the thirty or so people there. I think there might be others, but my gaydar isn't what it used to be. In an interesting and unplanned way, this service was St. Mary's answer to the "Duncanites."

It's Monday morning, and I'm off to the computer shop again.

My Computer

I got my computer back last Thursday, after three weeks without it. Then, the same day, it crashed again with a blue screen. I took it back to the shop and am again working with Liz's laptop, but not before I had managed to get almost all of the files I need backed up -- either on external media or on Liz's computer.

I feel curtailed in two or three ways -- first, although I now have access to my files, in order to use them effectively I would have to take over Liz's computer. Second, projects I was working on during the summer and into the fall are now at a standstill. Third, I am limited in what I can take on new. In short, I need my own computer.

Morningside Heights and Harlem Delights

From our terrace in Morningside Gardens I can see parst of Grant's Tomb, Jewish Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, Corpus Chrisi Church, the Interchurch Center, Teachers College, Barnard College, Columbia University, and look across Harlem on 124th Street. Nearby, but out of sight from our apartment are Riverside Church and the Manhattan School of Music.

On Friday evening, Liz and I attended an evening of opera scenes at Manhattan School of Music (MSM). MSM does this twice a year and we have attended many times over the years. This year the theme was Opera as Politics -- the evening began with a scene from Donizetti's Maria Stuarda dramatizing the final rift between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Suart Queen of Scots. There were several fine musical moments in the evening. I want to take note of two dramatic highlights.

I especially enjoyed an excerpt from Lehar's Die Lustige Witwe -- the end of the second act in which Hanna pretends to be engaged to Camille. I don't think I have ever scen this operetta performed in German before. The portrayal of Danilo by Chris Lucier seemed to me to be the best I have ever seen -- in part because the scene plays better, to my ears at least, in German than in English translation.

The Merry Widow was the applause machine that ended the first part; the evening ended with another applause machine -- because of its staging: the election campaign scene (Act III, Scene III) of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, in which William Jennings Bryan comes to Leadville during one of his presidential campaigns. MSM cast the sole Black member of the ensemble as Bryan. It was brilliant stagecraft and musically satisfying as well.

Wednesday Jury Duty

Today I started jury duty at 100 Centre Street -- the Criminal Court Building in New York City.

When I first got the summons for September 11 this year, we were planning to stay at Heart Lake for several weeks so I took advantage of an automatic deferment option. I was presented with the choice of deferring for anywhere from two to six months. I knew we would back in New York in November, so I chose to defer for two months.

The work on my dental implants is taking place only on Wednesdays, and I knew when I got the jury notice for November 12 that if I got on a case there was a likelihood that I would be tied up not only today (a Wednesday) but also next Wednesday. As it happens, I am currently part of a group undergoing voir dire on a case that is scheduled to hear evidence next Wednesday. I have an appointment next Wednesday and if I get on the jury I will have to reschedule it. I will know by the end of tomorrow whether I am on the jury or not.

Over the years, I have been on several juries -- the ones that stand out in my memory are murder, drug sales, and robbery in state criminal court and two interesting federal cases: a complaint against the City of New York and several corrections officers of assault on a prisoner and a wire fraud case (involving gold plated silver replicas of Chinese gold panda coins) before Judge Michael Mukasey.

I have also been empaneled but not selected on several cases, too. So I really don't care whether I am chosen -- on the one hand, a trial is fun, on the other hand, I have plenty to do and I don't need to be on a trial for entertainment.

Saturday Rambling Thoughts

There's lots of big news this week. And there has also been some small developments in my own life.

First, of course, is the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. I first voted for president in 1960. The country has come an amazing distance since then. I heard one commentator mentioning the difference in perceptions between people over and under 45 -- I think the magnitude of the change resonates more for those in my generation -- the pre boomer generation who lived through the civil rights movement of the late 1950's and the 1960's.

Second, the anti equality votes for LGBT people in California and elsewhere is disappointing. The struggle continues.

Third, the vote by the Diocese of Quincy to align with the Province of the Southern Cone, while expected, is saddening.

In my own life, the most pressing matter is the death of my computer. As I noted in an earlier post, the computer failed over a week ago, on October 29. Since I have Liz's laptop to use, I took my time deciding what steps to take. I finally decided to take it to a place on Broadway near 32nd Street that offers both computer repair and data recovery services. On the repair side, they told me that the hard drive was damaged, so I asked for a quotation on data recovery. When that quote came back at $925, I realized I had some hard thinking to do.

I called the shop that sold me the computer and they tried hard to sell me a new laptop with similar power for over $1,800. I'd love to have a powerful new computer, but I don't want to spend that kind of money this year for reasons that are probably obvious to everyone. So I did a little more investigating.

I found a recommendation to remove the hard drive and put it in a USB drive enclosure, so I rushed out and bought an enclosure so that I could try to recover the data myself. Then i went to the repair shop to pick up my laptop. While I was there, the technician asked me whether I had considered repairing the computer. She said that if I provide a new hard drive, she can reinstall the operating system for $150. At the same time, she told me what kind of hard drive to buy -- and I learned that I had bought the wrong enclosure for the damaged drive.

I know I am going to go ahead, buy a new hard drive, and have the computer repaired. I am still undecided about whether to attempt data recovery myself, or simply to pay for the recovery.

The Struggle Continues

Liz and I went over to vote a little after 10 am -- there was quite a line and we finally voted at about 11. I had every intention of following Tobias's Election Gospel Challenge but there were too many friends in the line for me to concentrate on reading Matthew -- I only got up to the verse where Joseph names the baby Jesus. Like Counterlight I voted for Obama, and for my State Senator, Bill Perkins, on the Working Familes line, but I did not vote for US Representative, Charlie Rangel. Instead I voted for Craig Schley -- it was a protest vote because Rangel consistently supports real estate interests over the objections of our local community.

As I heard Howard Zinn say recently, I voted for Obama -- with trepidation. He talks as if there are no poor people -- it's all about "middle class." A tax cut for everybody making less that $150,000? Come on! Last night at St. Mary's food pantry they gave out 50 packages of food in a little over an hour. Because it was the first Monday of the month, that was a low amount -- the week before, the last week of October, it was 80 packages.

Remember, whoever wins, the struggle continues.

All Saints Sunday

Yesterday at St. Mary's we had a baptism -- an interesting way to celebrate All Saints. On the first Sunday of the month, we have a custom of "Prayers for Baptismal Anniversaries, Birthdays and other special occasions." This comes before the Peace -- and yesterday it took place directly after the baptism at the font. November 2008 marks the fiftieth anniversary of my attending St. Mary's.


I don't remember which Sunday I first went there -- but I think it must have been November 16th. I met Rex late election night -- in the small hours of Wednesday, November 5, 1958, and went with him to evensong at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the following Sunday, November 9th. So I probably went with him to St. Mary's the Sunday after that. It's been a long time and it makes St. Mary's the second longest constant place in my life. (The first is Heart Lake in Susquehanna County Pennsylvania.)