A Real Bishop's Reality

The Presiding Bishop's Easter Message

2010-04-03T19:00:00.001-05:00

THE PRESIDING BISHOP'S EASTER MESSAGE

The Feast of the Resurrection, 2010

My Dear Friends,

Most years as I have approached the task of writing my Easter message the real struggle has been how to say something that doesn't upset the apple cart of most people's sensibilities while still writing something I feel comfortable claiming as my own thoughts and beliefs. Perhaps it is that I am a bit more ornery than in years past, although anyone who knows me well will attest that orneriness is a chronic condition in me that neither gets better nor worse but instead remains a constant. I believe instead it is that I can no longer support the myth for the sake of supporting the myth. I am no longer willing to perpetuate the distortions of the message of Jesus Christ that institutional religion has developed in order to control the thoughts and behaviors of her members. I am no longer willing to pretend to support doctrine and dogma that I believe was developed in error in response to some severely mistaken notions about the person and meaning of Jesus the Christ.

Jesus did not die to atone for your sins, or those of anyone else, for that matter.

It is true that in Jesus we are reconciled and that in Jesus we discover the path to everlasting life. We find these things not in his death, we find them in his life. You see, Jesus loved so radically that he was unwilling to allow the systematic oppression that existed in both religion, culture, and government to continue unchecked. He spoke out against all three where they were in error. Interestingly, he was extremely critical of theocracy, the very form of government that conservative Christians in our day see as optimal. There is no small irony in that. Jesus called his disciples to follow him to the cross, not because he went to that cross to atone for their sins or those of anyone else but because he knew that in following him to the cross their lives would be transformed. They failed to do so on that first Good Friday, but eventually they all followed him to the cross of persecution and death. Some died natural deaths, others were martyred. Whatever kind of death they died, they died after being radically transformed as they came to understand the real message of Jesus and of his cross.

What message is in that cross? The cross is a message that nothing is more important than love and compassion, a message that people matter more than rules - even when people who claim to speak for God make those rules, a message that the most despised of society are the most beloved of God, a message that temporal power isn't really power at all and that financial security isn't really security at all. There is also the message that crawling into bed with political leaders is in fact offensive to God, as is any kind of legalism, but perhaps most especially religious legalism. Jesus died to teach us than rather being something to be despised, humanity is indeed valuable enough to give ones life for. He died to demonstrate to us that nothing ever has or ever will be able to separate us from the Love of God - no matter how many theologians have tried to convince us otherwise throughout all eternity. He died to show us that guilt is evil and manipulative.

He died to show us that most of what institutional religion would claim to be true was false, and yearned for the day we would discover that - even as he knew it was a discovery we would have to make on our own. I believe Jesus hoped we would see in his example an instruction to question our institutions and all those in authority. I believe that today he cries with all those harmed by the Pharisees of our day. I believe that both Jesus and God are deeply grieved whenever those who claim to be spiritual leaders abuse those in their care and when spiritual leaders care more about preserving their institutions than loving people. The same is true when hate masquerades as love and people are discriminated against for any reason - even if that "reason" is defined as sin by those who perpetrate the discrimination.

In short, I believe that Jesus died because he had demonstrated such a radical path of transformation that he became such a perceived threat to his society and they killed him. What's more, I believe he calls us to examine our own society just as critically - not to engage in the culture war that the evangelicals have promoted, but to look at those in power and hold them accountable for whenever they minimize the children of God. This isn't about the pro-fetus movement or human sexuality, in fact Jesus would find both of those things to be irrelevant to his mission. It's about creating a world where all people are allowed to grow into the fullness of the humanity they were intended by God to enjoy - and calling out everyone who tries to get in the way of that goal. That's a much more meaningful death, in my opinion, than some contrived notion of atonement driven by a Jewish theology that most contemporary Gentiles don't really understand or apply accurately.

It is in light of this that I can say with great joy and meaning: Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

--
The Most Rev. Dr. Craig Bergland, EFR
Founder, ChristEnlight.org - Followers of Jesus for the 21st Century and beyond
Presiding Bishop of the Universal Anglican Church
Rector, Love of God Cathedral
Spiritual Director, Bishop Craig Ministries

"What matters is not spirituality, not religion, not perfection, not success or failure at this or that, but simply God and freedom in God's Spirit. All the rest it pure stupidity" - Thomas Merton

Is Glenn Beck the Anti-Christ

2010-03-15T15:17:00.002-05:00

You sure would think that Glenn Beck is the Anti-Christ from all of the attention he is garnering from church folk these days. To be honest, I just don't get it. This would be the same Glenn Beck whose whole schtik is that he is obnoxious, says crazy things that are way over the top, got fired from CNN because of his behavior, hooked up with Fox and set out to become the blue collar version of Bill O'Reilly. Would someone please remind me why anyone listens to Mr. Beck, much less takes him seriously? So Glenn Beck says that anyone connected to a Church that preaches social justice sould be reported to "Church authorities" and everyone gets all fired up. Sojourners wants me to sign petitions that say I am a social justic Christian. Color of Change is emailing me to do the Sojourners petition, as are other groups whose email lists I am on.

Why?

Beck's statement proves how ignorant he is - as if that hadn't been proven every time he has opened his mouth. Everyone with even a modicum of exposure to the Church knows that all parts of Christianity hold social justice in high esteem. What he has said is tantamount to him saying that the grass is blue and the sky is green. Why does anybody care?

This is America, and whether we like it or not he has the right to say whatever he wants to with rare exceptions such as yelling fire in a crowded theater. We progressives tend to want to silence those with whom we disagree just as much if not more than conservatives do, all the while fashioning ourselves as very inclusive and open minded. The truth is, by protesting Glenn Beck we play right into his hand in that it will appear to his employer and their advertisers that people listen to him. If what Glenn Beck says really bothers you, why support him in any way? You would do better to ignore him.

The other part of this is that any wise person learns sooner rather than later to pick their battles. Glenn Beck isn't a battle worthy of my time - or yours.

An Open Letter to the LGBT Community

2010-03-14T16:58:00.002-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Since its inception in 2003, the Universal Anglican Church has been a radically inclusive denomination with a strong emphasis on social justice. Our spiritual tradition is moderate to progressive Christianity. Our vision has been to create what, for lack of a better term, is a "mixed" Church - a Church that is representative of the broader culture in which we live, move, and have our being. We have sought to create a place where everyone has one thing in common - that they are on a spiritual journey - and that nothing else is necessary to belong. We are not "of, by, and for" any one particular segment of the population. We notice that Jesus sought to get the people of his time to see that all people are welcome in the Kingdom of God. In our understanding, this rules out tokenism of any kind as well as seeking out people in targeted niches or demographic segments of the population. As much as humanly possible, we have sought to be a Church for all people.

We acknowledge that other Churches have a different understanding from ours. We have experienced places that claim to be welcoming and affirming, or reconciling, but that seem to miss the full truth of what is means to welcome all people unconditionally. We have seen places that, reacting to segregation of its members in society at large, seem to believe that a chosen segregation of their own is preferrable to a forced segregation - and to full integration. We find that rather curious and tend to believe that a ghetto is still a ghetto, even if you relocate it. That having been said, it seems that some people are attracted to and quite content in those situations and we rejoice with them in their happiness.

We have also noticed Churches and Church related organizations whose exclusive emphasis seems to be on political action. We receive their mailings and note that the mailings never speak of spirituality, but rather of political action - this or that protest, calling or writing this or that political official, travelling to the State or Nation's Capitol to meet with this or that political figure or their staff, and so on. While all of that is wonderful - it is, after all, the reason for political lobbying organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign and others - we can't help but wonder if those faith institutions ever speak to the spiritual journey of their members. To those people who are perfectly happy having their spiritual lives consist of political action, we rejoice with you.

Of the rest of you, we have a question: Have you ever just wanted to be yourself, without hiding or changing anything about yourself, and follow Jesus on a spiritual journey with other people who love you unconditionally? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to just relax in a community without worrying about being pushed to do this, or go there, or speak out on behalf of anything unless you really wanted to? If so, we encourage you to check us out. We recognize that there are many ways to effect change in society. Some of us are called to travel to meet politicians, to stand on the corner in protest or support of some cause. Others of us work for establishing a just society through perhaps the most effective means possible - through prayer, and through opening ourselves to change.

The Universal Anglican Church - where you can be yourself, where you can have your spirituality fed, where you can exist in community, and where you can determine your own level of involvement. Sounds awfully good to me!

We've moved!

2010-02-26T11:39:00.001-06:00

This blog has been moved to http://www.ChristEnlight.ning.com

I invite you to visit us there, sign up, and continue to follow!

Thanks!

Right now, God

2010-02-20T22:38:00.003-06:00

So much of what passes for institutional spirituality is little more than distraction. For example, was there ever a committee in a parish that had anything to do with God? Sure the meetings begin, and sometimes end, with formulaic prayer. Sandwiched between those prayers is very often the most nonspiritual discussions, the most manipulative planning, nearly as much spin as a White House press conference, and little or no talk of our spiritual journey. One of the blessings of serving small parishes is that we don't need those meetings. To be quite honest, I'm not sure if anyone needs those meetings. Looking back on the meetings that I have chaired in the name of faith communities, most of them we could have done away with and nobody would have noticed.

It's not just committee meetings, though. It's fundraisers, arguments about polity or doctrine, activities like movie night, arguments about which books to buy for the parish library or what to do if the new dictionary has "oral sex" in it - we have so laden what passes for religious life in this country with non-spiritual minutae that we can barely squeeze in the hour or two we spend in worship each week. God knows we don't have any time left for the most important things like visiting widows in their distress or teaching prayer.

I'm truly not being judgmental about all that. I used to scedule those meetings and eagerly attend and participate in them. The truth is that I'm changing and I no longer see things the way I used to. I now see that the great majority of it is just nonsense - intentionally and/or unintentionally constructed to keep us away from God by the power and control arm of institutional Christianity. We don't need to get people involved in committees, we need to get them to fall in love with God - and there are very few things less romantic than a committee meeting!

Someone once said, "In the end, God." I agree completely, but why wait until the end? What not right now? Jettison the nonsense, kindly but firmly refuse to engage in any more busy work or make work meetings and make time for God. After all, God doesn't really care of the brass altar rail is so shiny you can see yourself in it or if the linens are bleached and starched. Do it every other week. Quit every committee you are on except one. Keep the one that comes closest to being important. Walk away from every argument. If someone tells you that you believe the wrong thing, just smile and say, "OK!" Turn off the TV at least four nights a week, and limit what you do watch to one hour each on the other three nights - there's very little there worth anything.

I used to get embroiled in all sorts of discussions and meetings and thought they were very important. Now I have seen the light, and everything looks so much better. Why? The answer is simple - right now, God.

Universal Health Care and Mental Health Parity

2010-02-16T15:47:00.003-06:00

I have been restraining myself, but I can do so no longer. I absolutely fail to see how anyone who considers themselves to be a person of any faith persuasion at all can be opposed to universal health care.

I have heard all the excuses, and to be quite honest every last one is based in nothing but selfishness. I don't care if it's not the best plan, whatever plan that will pass is better than nothing and we can work to reform it later. I am absolutely disgusted whenever I hear someone say that some people are not deserving of "free" health care. Can any person of faith really say that anyone deserves to be sick and untreated? Do you realize the implications of such an ignorant statement? Does not every child of God deserve, if only because they are, in fact, children of God, health care? Is your greed, your perceived need for another large flat screen TV, or a bigger home, or a new Lexus, really to be fulfilled at the cost of the health of any human being? Are you so morally bankrupt that you believe that could ever be true?

Maybe you believe that vacuous bimbo Sarah Palin when she talks about "death squads" of physicians as a part of universal health care. Let's be honest. Sarah Palin would pimp out her grandmother for a chance to lose another election. The only death squads this country ever supported were in Central America under the Reagan Administration and in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo under George W. Bush - both Republicans. None of those death squads ever posed as universal health care. They don't need to because this country so blindly supports military imperialism that no disguise is necessary.

We also need mental health parity. Mental illness is a medical condition, and as such it needs to have the same insurance benefits as any other medical condition. The barbaric days of chaining the mentally ill in shackles in the basements of "sanitariums" are over. We can be proud that now we let the mentally ill suffer endlessly in their own homes because of obscene limits on mental health insurance coverage that fail to recognize what the medical community has known for decades - that mental illness is a medical condition that is no different than diabetes, anemia, or any other illness. If you claim to believe in a just God, then you had better get consistent really quickly and offer all people who suffer the same opportunity for treatment that every other American has.

If not, you should be honest and admit that you are your own idolatrous god, and all you give a damn about is yourself.. Take heart, though. At the rate things are going when you contract Alzheimer's and your money is gone you can wander the street pissing your pants. In your rare moment of clarity before your mind slips into total oblivion, you will wish you had supported universal health care and mental health parity when you could. Then you will go back to eating your own fecal matter on the street corner. See? There is justice.

The Post Christian Era - The Kingdom of God

2010-02-15T16:49:00.004-06:00

I am convinced that we are on the crest of, and in fact some of us are already living in, a Post-Christian era. Count me in on that. I don't see it as a bad thing at all, and we need to get the rest of the responsible Christian world to see the truth in that. The biggest part of the reason we need to move beyond Christianity is that the institution has perverted the diversity that existed in early Christianity into something so narrow that I don't think Jesus would even recognize it. You see, Jesus never talked about salvation - despite the fact that the great majority of Christians today believe their religion is all about. What he did talk about was the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of God, interchangeable terms, neither of which have anything to do with what we today call salvation, an both of which start right here and now.

The Kingdom of God means that the day when we can afford, as a world community, to allow institutions to control our thoughts is long past. The day when any responsible human being is well served by being spoon fed doctrine and dogma - political or religious - is long past. The day when any responsible human being can sit by in quiet, uncritical assent when someone tells them they must do something they know is wrong because it is "the will of God" is also long past. Ditto with the day when any person with more than a borderline IQ is willing to believe that any single system of belief could possibly not only hold ALL the truth about God but also be the only system of belief that does so. Is there really any thinking person who cannot see that religions, while no doubt inspired by God, are creations of humankind?

Of course, if any fundamentalists should read this they will by now have logged off in an angry huff - and I am absolutely fine with that. In fact, it's better that way, because anyone who still buys into a fundamentalist brand of any faith isn't ready to think for themselves anyway. They are the people who still believe that everyone else is going to hell, that God wants us to kill people of other faiths, that God wrote their particular holy book, that the Homeland Security Administration is a good thing, and a host of other nonsense that they have been spoon fed and swallowed whole because they are either too stupid, too lazy, or too irresponsible (or some combination of those three) to critically examine this issues.

Why am I officially identifying as Post-Christian? I do so because the God I find in the Hebrew scriptures assigned responsibility for the created order to humankind. The Kingdom of God requires that we take that responsibility seriously. When I look all around me I see governments and multi-national corporations hell bent on destroying that creation through pollution, governmental failure to regulate business and the financial industry, and the multi-national military industrial complex's constant effort to blow the creation to bits. What I don't see is a Christian body making a serious attempt to speak out about this for fear of irritating their major contributors - who, by the way, work for the same aforementioned financial, corporate and military industrial complexes. Christianity isn't alone in its tendency to play act in response to serious moral problems, but since it is the tradition in which I was raised it is the one about which I can speak with the most authority.

I am Post-Christian because I see every last Christian denomination standing by in silence as the American government propagandizes the American public into believing that "our American way of life" is in danger (we should be so lucky) and that we have to kill innocent human beings and engage in imperialist conquest to preserve our idolatrous way of life. It's idolatrous because we have so strayed from the teachings of Jesus that what we really worship is wealth and materialism, and we don't give a damn aqbout who we have to run over to get it. If I am involved in any way of life that requires the death of anyone to preserve it, then it's not worth preserving. The tragedy if it all is that our "way of life" doesn't require any of this nonsense, and the Kingdom of God actually prohibits it.

I am Post-Christian because I see every Christian denomination failing to speak out against a government that has more than enough money to fight a fictitious "war on terrorism" on two fronts but can't seem to find a way to fund health care for every citizen and education for every child. That's called greed, and it's a sin, and while individuals within denominations speak out against it the powers that be within Christianity remain mute. Why? I can only assume because they don't believe in the God they say they do and that they are just as greedy as everybody else. If we really wanted to end terrorism, we would feed the world and ask nothing in return - and it would be cheaper than war. The Kingdom of God is a place where hunger, disease, lack of health care, and war are unacceptable - no mater the cost.

I'm Post-Christian because I no longer find the energy necessary to explain to people that the religious right does not speak for every Christian, that it does not follow the teachings of Jesus, and that the last thing it wants is the Kingdom of God. I also can no longer pretend to believe that I believe that any one religion has God in a corner, has exclusive or exhaustive possession of God, or that God gives the tiniest little damn about which religion anybody belongs to. Nor do I believe that staking out positions and then setting out to defend them does anything to bring about the kingdom of God.

Institutional Christianity is not a little bit like the Titanic. They run around rearranging deck chairs and ignoring the gaping hole in the side of Christianity. Attendance at worship continues to decrease overall, and yet every Sunday the organ or the worship band play the prelude and the show goes on. Those of us in leadership positions, if we're honest, can't really come up with an adequate reason to explain why we worship. Only those who believe in a very small god indeed believe that we do so to appease an angry god or an ego maniac god. We used to say that we worship because human beings need to, but clearly that isn't the case for everyone.

What we do need to to build community, and build it quickly. We need to grow spiritually, and that means we need to engage in prayer, contemplative and meditative, so that we might transform our hearts and our minds to be open to the leading of the Spirit. We need to grow in Wisdom and Communion with God, and we need to find new forms to do so. We need to get back in touch with the breadth and the depth of what Jesus taught. We need to talk about the things of this life - love and relationships of all kinds; illness, loss, and death; about working for peace and an end to all violence; about ending poverty and hunger; and most of all we need to abandon the false notion that anything about spirituality doesn't apply to life right here and right now. To be sure, spirituality does speak to us about what happens after we die - but it also, and much more importantly, speaks to us about life.

You can just call me a follower of Jesus. If you must call me Christian, be sure you put a Post- in front of it.

A Reminder

2010-02-10T08:48:00.000-06:00

A quick reminder that I do not publish anonymous comments on any of my blogs. I have the courage to sign what I write and ask you to do the same.

I would also remind you, as is apparent if you read the information about me to the right, that I am Anglican, not Roman Catholic.

R.I.P CTA

2010-02-08T20:23:00.003-06:00

Call to Action, the Roman Catholic reform movement with roots in the liturgical reforms of Vatican II is dying, and many people - most especially CTA members - wonder why. After watching YouTube video from their last annual meeting in Milwaukee, I know exactly why they are dying. They are dying because they have not done a good job of keeping their message contemporary, and the truth is very few people under the age of sixty are energized by the things that energize CTA.

CTA sought to change the Roman Catholic Church from within. As I have argued in this blog before, you cannot change an international organization, religious or otherwise. As a priest who has served a small church full of CTA members in the past, I understand the problems of groups like CTA very well. You see, CTA developed in reaction to real and perceived oppression by Roman Catholic Church authorities, from the Vatican right on down to the local bishops and priests. They wanted to have a say in liturgy, they wanted women to be able to read from the lectern during Mass, they wanted to have someone acknowledge that their little feelings had been hurt. They wanted folk Mass, they wanted women priests, they wanted their Church to be responsive to them - and they wanted all of it to happen right now.

The problem is that life doesn't work like that. We don't get our way very often, even less often when we want our way in a multi-national organization in which we are a stunning minority.

So they started finding sympathetic priests to celebrate Mass for them at their meetings, and then (moving from the sublime to the ridiculous) they started designing their own Masses. If you search CTA 2009 on YouTube, you will see the result; geriatric "dancers" prancing around as if they were in a commercial for Geritol and carrying all sorts of things, a geriatric thurifier with no training doing his best to set the place on fire and/or hit the priest in his head with the thurible, absolutely absurd looking puppet costumes being worn by human beings, and a geriatric crucifer in a wheel chair struggling to hold the processional cross (which can be difficult for young ambulatory people) as she is wheeled up the aisle. There are a host of other nonsensical goings on, including representatives of the oxmoronic "Roman Catholic Women Priests" (who aren't Roman Catholic Priests at all - please see my blog on that subject) wearing scarves instead of stoles and butchering the "liturgy" in sing song voices while stumbling over the poorly chosen words of that same psuedo liturgy.

Good ceremony requires that one be educated in good ceremony and then that they stick to the rules. It requires that people rehearse ceremony, and that they do it over and over until it flows smoothly. It also requires that people be honest with one another about how something looks. Most of these CTA types are much too concerned about being nice, and the result is that they let their friends embarass themselves while they look on and say how wonderful it all is. They are the liturgical equivalent of these fools who convince their tone deaf friends to audition for American Idol.

Younger people will not join CTA - and by younger I mean most anyone under sixty - because they don't like making fools of themselves. When I served my CTA-like parish they had an absolutely horrid "Advent Wreath Procession" during the Christmas Eucharist that finally died when all the young people had embarrassed themselves by participating in it and refused to do so again. The same is true for these CTA debacles.

CTA is going to die - and that is OK, because everything dies sooner or later. In addition to not wanting to embarass themselves, the under sixty crowd has also learned that trying to change the Roman Catholic Church from within is like hitting their head off a wall. It felt so good when they stopped that they finally left and found a church home that actually accepted them for who they are.

The recovery movement has a saying. They define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. CTA is, by that definition, absolutely and incurably insane. Rest in Peace, CTA!

Pissing In (not on) the Body of Christ

2010-02-04T10:38:00.003-06:00

I am continually amazed at the in-fighting that goes on within Christianity. I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I don't know that I ever will be used to it. Conservatives and progressives exchange barbs, as do Protestants and Catholics. Within Protestantism groups fight with one another based on tiny pieces of doctrine or practice, condemning one another to an eternity in hell based on minutiae that, were the broad long term view to be held, would be seen for the absurdity that it is. It wasn't that long ago that we burned people as witches. Maybe we aren't lighting literal fires under people any more, but we sure are lighting figurative fires.

Letting alone the fact that Jesus never encouraged this kind of behavior and in fact was critical of the Pharisees for just this sort of thing, there is so much important work to be done in the world for us to allow these petty arguments to be an issue. What issues?

HIV/AIDS is epidemic in the world. The Christian community was initially very resistant to working on the HIV/AIDS issue. At the very beginning that was due largely to fear caused by ignorance, but that excuse has long been proven to be invalid. None of us are going to catch HIV through a sneexe, or a dirty toilet seat, or anything other than the means by which any blood borne illness, such as hepatitis, are transmitted. There have also been many ill informed attempts to cast HIV/AIDS as God's punishment for something or other. The problem there, of course, is that such a view is inconsistant with the God that Jesus knew and loved. When you look at what the punishment is allegedly due to, the arguments become absurd. If AIDS is some sort of punishment for homosexuality, how do you explain that AIDS is now also a heterosexual problem? How do you explain that generations of heterosexual people on parts of the African continent have been decimated by AIDS and that the number of orphans are increasing daily? Even if you do believe that God punishes, I don't believe that you can honestly suggest that God is punishing those children who are now orphans because of the sexual orientation of a segment of the population in America.

Poverty and hunger are problems that go hand in hand. We hear so-called Christians attempting to make distinctions between impoverished and poverty stricken people who "deserve" help and those who don't. In response to that I must ask what child "deserves" to go to bed hungry tonight? Even if you want to argue that their parents are lazy (such arguments are always fallacious, by the way) how does that make a child deserving of hunger. What's more, the Hebrew people wandered - wandered, which is hardly productive) in the desert for forty years and yet God fed them with manna from heaven. How can that be reconciled with the notion that someone must have a certain activity level in order to be deserving of food to eat?

Immigration reform remains an urgent need in this country. We have forgotten that the vast majority of us are not, in fact, Native Americans and so we all have immigrants in our family tree. Some of those people came of their own free will and others came against their will, but they came nevertheless. When they arrived, they were welcomed with open arms. Somewhere along the way we lost our memory of this and became fearful of the very process that created this country. We became convinced that we were a culture of lack, despite the fact that we are far and away the wealthiest people in the world! We had better be careful, because there is great truth to the notion that we will create a world that is in accord with our beliefs. If we believe that we lack, we will soon lack. In fact, this Country's current immigration policies are steeped in racism and the Churches have largely remained silent.

Education reform is needed in this country, and it is needed badly. We are repeatedly told that the money simply isn't there - but it is there and freely available to prosecute two "wars against terrorism" that are actually little more than terrorist actions themselves - and the Church is all but silent.

HIV/AIDS, poverty and hunger, immigration, and education are just a few of the many issues that people of faith need to be addressing today, and we are failing miserably. I can't help but wonder if part of the reason is that we are engaged in pissing contests among ourselves. If I believed in a devil (which I don't) I would say that in arguing amongst ourselves we do much more to advance the cause of the devil that we do to advance the cause of God. Jesus said that no house divided amongst itself can stand. Its ironic that the people spending the most time to get the Christian house to fall are, in fact, Christians themselves.

The State of the Union

2010-01-28T16:17:00.006-06:00

I must confess, I couldn't stomach much of the State of the Union address last night, nor of the Republican response. I am more and more disillusioned with politics as usual in this country, and have come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter who is running the show - they would seem to be interchangeable parts without an original thought among them.

President Obama is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and the Republican Party's response applauds that action - and then continues to say that the President is not doing enough to ensure our national security. I couldn't agree more, but not for the reasons they cite.

The President is not doing enough to ensure our national security because he continues to prosecute unjust wars on two fronts - Iraq and Afghanistan. He creates more terrorists every day the fighting goes on, and in sending 30,000 more young Americans to die in that cause he sacrifices more of the finest young people we have to offer. They sacrifice not to create peace, as politicians would have us believe, but to destroy it. War is never the path to peace, it is only the path to more war. Acts of terrorism, even when conducted by the military forces of a country, lead to more acts of terrorism. The Republican response throws more fuel on the fire of fear by taking advantage of the foiled plot to destroy an airplane in Detroit earlier this month, and like sheep the American people surrender more and more of their rights trying to defend against a fear that exists largely because our Armed Forces continue to fight an unjust war. How do I know it is unjust? I know this war is unjust because there are no just wars - no matter what St. Augustine and scores of others since have tried to argue in order to win favor with temporal powers.

We could have peace in our time by feeding the world, and we could pay for it from the military budget. Not even a dog bites the hand that feeds it, and yet we continue to participate in the endless cycle of violence that is The American Way - Imperialism. I shouldn't be surprised - after all, the wealthy and the religious right in this country are so selfish that they stand in the was of universal health care, preferring that we have the worst standard of health care in the civilized world so that they can fund a terrorist producing war. Fund education? Forget about it. President Obama's 4 billion for education works out to 80 Million per State if it were to be divided equally. We are spending an estimated 820 Million per day prosecuting a war on two fronts. To save you from doing the math, that comes to just under $300 billion a year for the war, vs. a 4 billion increase kicked in for education this year. Why am I one of the few who seems to see that this is a huge problem in terms of priorities?

Do we really want to talk about ensuring our national security? Then let's talk about the millions of Americans who are under educated and who lack adequate health care. Let's talk about the generation of children who will grow up to be angry, under prepared adults because we cared more about chasing Osama Bin Laden and being the best recruiting program he ever had than we did about our own children.

Let's see this for what it is - the largest moral failing in the history of the United States of America. We are a nation that claims to be largely Christian, yet the followers of the Prince of Peace (that would be Jesus, in case you were wondering) are little more than dogs of war. Where is the non-violent protest? where are the preachers calling out from their pulpits for justice and peace? Have we all become so self absorbed, so unable to focus on anything but out own wealth, so heartless, so brainwashed, that we can't see what is happening?

Apparently.

For my part, I will not pledge allegiance to the flag nor will I stand for it, I will neither sing nor stand for the national anthem, I will show no sign of national pride or respect until we withdraw from this war and bring our troops home.

This isn't a political issue, it is a spiritual issue, and since I love and worship the God of Peace and Love - the only God there is, no matter what name you call God by; be it God, G-d, Allah, the Universe, Yahweh, or any other name; all religions and all views of God are views of peace and love - I cannot disrespect my God by pretending to respect a country that is so blatantly opposed to the call of God.

Won't you join me? It won't be easy, we will be criticized and threatened - perhaps even have violence directed at us. Violence is, after all, the American Way. The only hope we have of changing that fact is to stand up to it in non-violent protest. In doing so we follow the very example of Jesus, who the vast majority of Americans purport to believe in but who they betray and deny through their actions.

Here I stand. I can do no other.

Brett Favre and the Ego

2010-01-26T10:13:00.004-06:00

While many would suggest that Brett Favre is not a spiritual topic, I find that I must disagree. His behavior over the course of his career has reflected ego run amok, to the point where one of his closest friends on the team said earlier this year the "Brett has always been a diva."

For those who don't know, Brett Favre retired from football two years ago. For at least two years prior to that he threatened retirement and was unable to make a decision until months after the season ended. After he finally announced his retirement two years ago, the Green Bay Packers moved on with their plans and installed a new quarterback. Then, as could be expected, in the summer Brett Favre announced that he wanted to come out of retirement. The Packers declined, having been held over a barrel for the two previous years and traded Favre to the Jets. His performance last year with the Jets was abysmal, allegedly due to a torn biceps tendon which was surgically repaired after the season. Just prior to this season, in August, Favre signed with the Minnesota Vikings. This was the team that would give him the opportunity to win the Super Bowl, something he had done once before with the Packers. The year after his victory in the Super Bowl he lost the same game to the Denver Broncos. Those of us who watched the NFC Championship game last Sunday saw vintage Brett Favre, as he threw an interception late in the fourth quarter that ended up costing his team the game in overtime - the same result that he produced two years before in his last game as a Green Bay Packer.

After the game he refused interviews. He was injured late in the game, but remained in the game, as his long suffering wife looked on. This is the same long suffering wife who put up with Favre's years of ego maniacal womanizing in the bars and nightclubs of Milwaukee. Not only was he sleeping with everything that moved, he made no effort to be discreet about it and so anyone who spent any time in the club knew about it. Only when his wife contracted breast cancer did he stand by her side and she announced that they were over their troubles.

But the ego rages again. Over the past year I have watched as first Favre did a commercial for Sears in which he poked fun at his indecisiveness and at the same time spun the story of his history with the Green Bay Packers to make himself the injured party, acting as if he was thrown away because of his age after all he had done for the team. Now we have a reminder of "all he has done." He won one Super Bowl, and in that game he was afforded a lead by the special teams that they never relinquished. It was his only big win, and in it all he had to do was protect a lead.

In the end, quarterbacks are evaluated by their ability to win the big game. Fran Tarkenton, longtime quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings and later the New York Giants, was very talented and very successful, but never won a Super Bowl and so he has always been under appreciated. Brett Favre won a single Super Bowl, led his team to countless come from behind victories in the regular season, but in the playoffs when the games were close he almost invariably threw interceptions that cost him the game.

If the value of a football player is determined by his ability to win the big game, then Favre is not one of the greatest of all time. He owns almost all the records possible for a quarterback, including most career interceptions and most consecutive games played, but in the end he was unble to win consistently in the playoffs. His ego drove him to return to prove the critics wrong, to cast himself as the injured party. In the end, his epitaph may be that his ego and the poor decisions made because of it was what kept him from winning the big game.

In the end, nobody is irreplaceable. We all have our shining moments, and we all fall flat on our faces. We all age and lose the physical skills we once had. As an athlete myself, I often joked that since I was never all that fast to begin with, when I lost a step due to age nobody noticed. Those who are exceptional don't have that grace, and we as fans seek to convince them they are impervious to aging. We heap praise and adulation on them, and project all of our dreams and ambitions of fame and success onto the home team and its star players. People call in sick from work when the home team loses the big game. We have lost all perspective.

Our culture has a habit of substituting entertainment for spirituality. In the end, it's not the culture's fault. Institutional religion has failed the people, insisting as it does on outdated models and irrelevant presentation designed only to keep the powerful in power. The Pope will never say anything to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the 21st century, and neither will the Archbishop of Canterbury, because they value their power and position even more than they value the people they claim to serve - all the while claiming to be altruistic and compassionate. I suppose one could say they share the same distorted perception of themselves that Brett Favre does, and the same ability to spin. The problem is that failing people spiritually is much more significant that failing them on a football field or in a nightclub.

In the same way that Brett Favre sold the city of Green Bay down the river to protect himself and his power, the Institutional Church has sold millions of people - the disabled, the mentally ill, the LGBT community, people living in common law marriages, divorced people, anyone who dares ask a question, and many others - dowm the river to protect its power and authority. The empty pews speak for themselves, and the Roman Church, at least, has announced it will abandon the northern hemisphere for the southern hemisphere because they are good boys and girls and don't question authority.

Hey, I have an idea! Maybe Brett Favre could be the next Pope! He has all the qualifications - he is good at protecting his image, he's all about power and authority, he covers up his indiscretions well, and as Pope he won't ever have to retire! The other advantage for him is that to date he has only been able to screw the women he found in nightclubs. As Pope, he could screw the whole planet.

Perfect!

Spiritual Communities and Spiritual Teachers

2010-01-01T12:11:00.003-06:00

Your assignment for the new year is to get yourself a spiritual community and join it. Then get yourself a spiritual teacher. By that I don't mean the priest, pastor, rabbi, or whatever the spiritual leader of the spiritual community you have joined is called. I mean someone who can provide for you spiritual guidance, or spiritual companionship, or spiritual direction, or spiritual teaching. Any of those titles, and a host of other similar titles, will be just fine. If you just aren't ready for the spiritual teach, you can wait for that for three months while you are getting yourself a community. Why? You need a spiritual community because you are going to die. In fact, you could die before you finish reading this article, in which case it will be too late.

May people suffer from the notion that because they attended someones parish for six months in the late 1990s the priest there is obligated to take care of their sacramental needs when they die in 2015. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If all clergy were responsible for the pastoral care of everyone who ever walked into their church, we would all have burnt out long ago. The attitude that we are responsible for your sorry self perpetually is caused by some mistaken notions.

The first is that the public at large believes that clergy are called by God to be at the complete and total disposal of the public at large. Untrue. We are called by God to serve God, and being effective at serving God means being a good steward of all your resources, including our spiritual health. As a part of that calling, those of us called to serve in parish ministry are called to serve that particular parish. In serving the parish we serve its members - and membership is not defined as anyone who ever passed through the door. I have received calls from people who I haven't heard from in literally four or five years because someone has died and they don't have anyone to serve the funeral. There may be times I can help, but there will also be times that I cannot - and probably more of the latter than the former.

The second mistaken notion is that the role of a person in developing their spirituality is completely passive. Like a car pulling into a gas station, they expect that they can show up on Sunday, get gassed up, and leave again. Naturally, when people with this attitude die they imagine they can just pull into that gas station they stopped at five years ago and get "funeralled" up. The problem is that the pastor of any community is first and foremost responsible to its members, and tending to any parish takes quite a bit of time.

The third mistaken notion is that spirituality is something that can be achieved in a vacuum. "I don't need to belong to a church to be a Christian." True! But you do need to belong to some sort of spiritual community to achieve spiritual growth because our spiritualities are of necessity played out in a community - because humans are social animals! When you drop dead you are going to want your loved ones comforted, and to do that most effectively you need to have established relationships within the context of a spiritual community. If it's not a church it can be a prayer group, a monastery, a group following a particular spiritual teacher - but it needs to be a relatively current relationship.

Why worry about all this? If we are honest with ourselves, we worry about every other facet of preparing for death. We write wills, we establish trust funds, we invest so that we leave something for our children, and a host of other tasks in preparation for death. The only reason we ignore our pastoral needs is because in this culture we are in absolute denial about our own death.

Throughout the coming year we will be doing everything we can to come to reality about our own mortality - both here and in the Christ Enlight program.

Christmas Cards

2009-12-26T11:06:00.003-06:00

Completely blew it on the Christmas Card front this year, and I can honestly say that hasn't happened before. Oh, sure, there have been years when I have mailed them out on December 23rd. Not this year - I whiffed on the whole thing. I could make excuses, like it was busy around here, and the truth is that it was crazy busy. I would rather look at the reason than the excuse, though, because I think it is far more productive.

Maybe there is a part of me that believes that greeting cards, on the whole, belong to a time that is passing. It was great to get a card from Aunt Helga back in the days before email. Remember those days? I realize a growing number of you don't remember those days, but I do. You could actually go a year without hearing from anybody! You couldn't catch their status on Facebook, or get a Tweet from them, or have them shoot you an email whenever they had three minutes they didn't know what to do with - and so you actually looked forward to their cards.

Often times, inside the card was a page long letter that brought you up to speed on everything that had happened during the year. Since you hadn't heard from those folks since their last Christmas card, the "year in review" notes were often kind of interesting. They were interesting on many levels - for what they contained, for the insight into what other people thought was interesting but really wasn't, for the sometimes inappropriate things they revealed (Fred had a flare up of his syphilis last Fall), and perhaps the best part was what you had to read between the lines (Albert lost three jobs again this year).

In contemporary times the truth is that we are brought up to date on the daily happenings of most people's lives. There are no surprises any more, at least not surprises that are more than twenty-four hours old. I never thought I would say this, but I am going to:

Most of us are over connected.

I am aware that I am as guilty of this as anyone, but I am a public figure and it comes with the territory. There is a certain expectation of information, but maybe it doesn't have to be satisfied all the time. Maybe the fact that the chronic boil you have on your left buttock has flared again and you have an appointment at 3pm to have it lanced is better communicated by Tweeting "Doctor Appointment" than by Tweeting "Boil Lancing."

It may well be a worthwhile goal to allow enough mystery to develop in your life to make the Christmas Card Letter necessary again. The peace that will accompany not feeling obligated to put everything out there might just surprise you.

Of course, that doesn't get me off the hook. None of my friends or family reads what I write anyway!

Christmas

2009-12-21T10:01:00.002-06:00

Christmas is coming, and for many of us it will be a very white Christmas. A major snow storm hit the east coast over the weekend and another is brewing in the Plain States. Travel arrangements that involve the areas impacted over the weekend are already running behind schedule, and anxieties are running high. For many people, the holidays are a time of stress and anxiety, laden with expectations of satifactory performance - and we have those expectations of ourselves and of others. It is precisely those expectations that cause so many of us to have unsatisfactory holiday memories and to dread each holiday as it approaches.

The solution is to jump off the performance treadmill.

You may protest, "but Aunt Bette has expectations!" I say, good for her! You don't have to buy into Aunt Bette's expectations. Those expectations belong to her, not to you. You, in fact, don't have to do anything at all. If you need a reason, say that this Christmas you have decided to imitate Jesus on his first Christmas. You may think that I am kidding, but I am completely serious.

Think of the possibilities! Why aren't you going to Sally's Christmas party? Because you are getting in touch with that first Christmas, and Jesus didn't go to any parties. Why didn't you get your third cousin twice removed a Christmas present? Because Jesus didn't give any presents on that first Christmas. In fact, Jesus never gave any Christmas presents because there wasn't a Christmas for many years after his death and resurrection. Why aren't you happy, smiling, upbeat, or any number of other things this Christmas? Because Jesus mostly slept on the first Christmas, and you are getting in touch with that this year. Why aren't you eating more? Because Jesus only ate breast milk on that first Christmas (men may want to be careful about giving this answer to a woman).

This Christmas, get out of the performance trap and relax. You might want to observe the people you encounter and notice how miserable they are. That should be enough to give you strength to avoid the performance trap every holiday. While you are at it, you might share what you have learned about the performance trap with someone else who is struggling. It will make you feel good - imagine, feeling good during the holidays. What a novel concept!

Christmas Message

2009-12-12T10:36:00.003-06:00

"What matters is not spirituality, not religion, not perfection, not success or failure at this or that, but simply God and freedom in God's Spirit. All the rest it pure stupidity" - Thomas Merton

This quote is part of the signature line of my emails. I have always liked this quote - actually there is very little of or from Thomas Merton that I don't like - but only recently have I understood the truth of it. You see, my body is failing me - not in a way that will kill me quickly, but in a way that is increasingly more debilitating from month to month. Merton had a similar experience when he was about the age that I am right now. He finally came to the conclusion that his body wasn't telling him it was about to die, but rather that he should slow down. Mine isn't giving me the choice. Maybe that's the wisdom of the body. My body knows I wouldn't listen if it just told me to slow down (in fact, it probably has been telling me to slow down for years and I haven't heard it), and so it is forcing me to do so! I mention this not to generate pity - this will happen to each and every person reading this message sooner or later - but rather because I am amazed at the epiphany I have had.

Merton was absolutely right.

As Presiding Bishop of the Universal Anglican Church, I have fought the good fight. We have, both in the birthing of this Church and in the time since, examined the issues that confront spirituality in general and Christianity in particular. We have engaged in discussion and debate, and we have learned valuable lessons through both our successes and our failures. And now, lo these many, many (6.5) years later I look around at the debates that go on both inside and outside the Church and have to agree with Merton. The vast majority of it is stupidity.

Every now and then I am approached by some well meaning dignitary from some denomination or organization who wants me to unite with them to fight this or that point of polity, or band together to take on the Roman Catholic Church, or purge the Universal Church of left handed dwarf clergy, or some other pressing (in their mind) matter that simply must be addressed. It's all stupidity.

It's all stupidity because it isn't about God and freedom in God's Spirit (you can substitute any word for God that works for you and the statement remains the same). In fact, it's all a massive distraction from God. If every Ecclesial Pomposity who had a bug crawl us his (and it's always his) butt would just stop and spend 45 minutes in sincere prayer around that bug, the vast majority of Church-initiated stupidity would cease - including in Rome!

Now to Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Festivus, or Yule, or whatever you celebrate or fail to celebrate I urge you to apply the same principal. When you gather with friends and/or family please ask yourself, "Does the argument I am about to have have anything to do with God or freedom in God's Spirit?" In other words, is it about Love and Freedom, or is it about something else? When you see the argument coming, go to the prayer chamber (bathroom) and sit on the prayer throne (toilet) for five minutes pondering that question. If it isn't about Love and Freedom it is stupid, and why in the world would you want to argue about stupidity? I realize, sometimes the other person is very interested in arguing about stupidity but it truly does take two to tango. You will find that when you look at another and realize they are interested in debating stupidity that it becomes very easy to choose not to engage! I'm not suggesting we exclaim, "Moron!" as we disengage, but rather that we do so compassionately. It is not easy to be caught up in things that are inconsequential, and we all get caught there from time to time. That's why it's so critical to disengage compassionately, having compassion for those who are still caught in the cycle of (stupidity) being entangled in things that are not about God and freedom in God's Spirit.

If I may be so bold as to suggest a New Year's resolution, it would be the same thing! In the coming year, no more stupidity. If it doesn't make you or somebody else more whole, more complete, or more loved - forget about it, it's just stupidity. I recommend that in those cases you simply smile, nod, and move on. You will be surprised how transformative that is, what a positive effect it will have on your stress level, and how it will free you to pay attention to the things that really matter - like Freedom and Love!

Merry Christmas!

+Craig

Why the Church is Irrelevant to Young People

2009-12-03T21:25:00.002-06:00

I just got an email fr0m the Wisconsin Council of Churches about their big annual meeting on Washington Island, and in the email - in the description of one of the sessions at the summer gathering - is all you want to know about why young people, and why m0re and more older people like myself, are turned off by institutional religion. Some of the sessions at this meeting are designed to discover why young people don't want anything to do with the Church. They have dubbed the younger generation the "OMG Generation." In their explanation of the meaning of OMG lies the problem: They say it means "Oh my gosh," when in fact it means, "Oh My God." Even 49 year old me knows that.

You see, young people are turned off by the institutional Church because the Church can't handle the truth, and so they lie in an attempt to be perceived as in touch with young people. The very Church that claims to speak for God apparently can't handle saying God's name for fear of offending some right wing nut job who doesn't understand that the command against taking God's name in vain has to do with oaths - like the ones we make in court rooms all the time in the west. Even if it were a prohibition against profanity, I would need a lot of help in seeing how the expression, "Oh my God" is profane. If you're going to try to convince me you have never said it, then I guess you are admitting you have never had an orgasm - and you have my sympathy. All that notwithstanding, I find it more than a little sad that the very people who are rejecting institutional religion feel much more comfortable calling on God than the institution itself does - or maybe they have found a new God whose name is gosh?

True Diversity

2009-11-10T14:41:00.003-06:00

I saw dethroned beauty queen Carrie Prejean on The View this morning. Yes, I do occasionally watch The View and I am not ashamed. It actually is a very good program. I only recently started watching it, having seen it in its early years and not liked it at all. The cast has changed somewhat, and I find that they interview folks very well. This morning it was Carrie Prejean who, to be quite honest with you, I have paid not a bit of attention to until now. I was aware of her now infamous answer to the gay marriage question, and had heard the latest gossip about her allegedly having a sex tape floating around out there. Many thoughts rush to my mind, the biggest of which is, "Who cares?"

She does, most likely inadvertently, bring up an important issue. That issue, she might be surprised to learn, is diversity. You see, I don't agree with her answer to the gay marriage question, I don't agree with beauty pageants, and I don't know what misguided soul would actually want their child to grow up emulating a beauty pageant contestant. I don't think we should scrutinize beauty pageant contestants' backgrounds or get all shook up if they posed nude or semi nude or made a sex tape. We are not judging potential moral leaders, we are judging (forgive me) bimbos. That having been said, they asked her a question and she answered it. So what's the problem?

They started asking questions in beauty pageants some years ago in an attempt to prove that they were not just flesh parades. I guess it's better if you have a flesh parade with a question or two in it, although I'm not quite sure why. I'm not quite sure why a person of faith, and faith, would feel it necessary to enter a flesh parade - not because there is anything morally objectionable in flesh parades, but rather because I would hope they would have enough self esteem to realize they were of much more value than the sum of their admittedly shapely parts.

But I digress. The last time I checked this was America. There are Constitutional protections for free speech. The government is also prohibited from establishing an official State religion, and so we have freedom of religion. Carrie Prejean can believe whatever she wants, and she can talk about it. I don't agree with much of what she believes, and I can talk about it as well. That's one of the beautiful things about this country. That is true diversity.

Apparently, a good number of us don't like true diversity. It doesn't seem to matter whether we are conservative, progressive, or somewhere in between. We seem to want our beauty pageant contestants to answer questions the way we would answer them. When they don't comply, we would rather they be dethroned. True diversity only exists when we are willing to accept that there are legitimate differences of opinion among human beings. We all need to stop attempting to silence each other so that we can sit down and dialogue together. It's the only way we are going to be able to get along and address the real issues in society.

What I Believe

2009-11-06T12:36:00.002-06:00

I recently wrote a letter in response to an inquiry about what I believe. It occurs to me that this would make a pretty good blog, so after removing anything that would identify the recipient, here it is:

As you may know, one of the unique - and I think important - characteristics of historic Anglicanism is that we exist living in the (hopefully creative) tension created by diversity of views. I say that because my views are not the official views of this Church nor are they the views of every member whether clergy or laity. That having been said, here are some of my views:

Personally, I would never have an abortion - and not just because I don't have a uterus. I am very pleased that my daughter, who became pregnant at 20, chose to have her baby. My granddaughter is the light of my life. That having been said, I am pro-choice. There are many reasons for this, chief among them that I find the so-called pro-life movement to be in fact only pro-fetus. To be truly pro-life, I believe one would also have to be opposed to the death penalty, in favor of universal health care including pre- and post- natal care, in favor of fully funding education, in favor of fully funding feeding programs, and work wholeheartedly to end poverty. I am sickened every time I see anti-abortion groups picketing on busy intersections holding pornographic pictures of aborted fetuses. When they do so they traumatize young children and others who pass by in their cars without warning or opportunity to divert. My wife, who has never had an abortion, is traumatized by those images.

Regarding the historic creeds, I do hold to them while at the same time believing that they have become a rather esoteric statement of faith. Unless one is raised in the church - and a growing percentage of folks today were not raised in the church - the language can be very difficult to penetrate. I am fully an advocate of using affirmations of faith in worship that state the faith in language that is easier to understand. At our cathedral we use either the Apostle's or Nicene Creed once a month, and other affirmations on the other Sundays. People cannot believe in what they do not understand. That having been said, our parishes have autonomy to construct worship as they see fit, with the caveat that it be liturgical and that Eucharist is available every week. Our parish in Buffalo is and Eastern Rite Anglican parish, for example.

I would agree completely with what you believe about Christianity being a faith of service, and that our job is to carry our cross - which quite often is more than one cross in a lifetime. I believe wholeheartedly in the Great Commandment to love God and love neighbor. I believe that, as Jesus said, all the law and the prophets hang on those two commandments. That is a truth that I believe many churches have lost sight of - to their detriment and to the detriment of their members.

I am an apophatic theologian and a contemplative with active tendencies . I believe that God is infinitely vast and the more we learn about God the more we realize how little we know. I am also a process theologian. I believe that God is constantly offering us opportunity and that we have the freedom to choose which of those opportunities to take advantage of. After we choose one, more opportunities are constantly offered, and so whether we succeed or fail, God is always present and in relationship with us. I am a Marian, but am steadfastly opposed to the notion of Mary as co-redemptrix.

I am also something of a Christian Universalist. I do believe that, in the end, God wins. I don't believe that we all go straight to heaven, but I do believe we all get there eventually. I think it is very instructive that the word "hell" does not appear in the original language of the New Testament. What is translated "hell" is most often "Gehenna", the garbage dump outside the city walls in Jerusalem, where the fires did never go out. I think hell has been used and abused by the Church to frighten people into belief and to empty their wallets into the collection plate.

Adlof Hitler burned six million Jews until they died and we consider him to be one of the greatest despots in history. The Church would have us believe God is burning billions and trillions of people for all eternity. I cannot believe that God is a bigger despot than Hitler. Are there consequences for sin? Absolutely. I also believe we created our own hells right here on earth through our sinful actions and just plain poor choices. I do not believe in a personal devil who is some sort of anti-God. I do believe, as 1 John tells us, that Jesus came to reconcile us to God and save us from our sins - and not just ours, but the sins of the whole world. I do not believe Jesus was a failure in that venture or in any other.

Does that mean Hitler went to heaven? Certainly not right away - but I leave to God how that works that out, whether through purgatory or some other means I do not know. That is a mystery I cannot penetrate. I do know God has all eternity to work on old Adolf, and I believe in a God who is strong enough to work anything out.

After having said all that, not all of our clergy would agree with me - and that is just fine. It is the beauty of Anglicanism. I know that when I stand before God I feel much better about God saying to me. "You believed in me but not in hell" than, "You believed in hell more than you believed in my saving power."

The UAC is a radically inclusive Church. All people, including women, are welcome to participate fully in the life of the Church - including ordination. I find in the gospel that men were Apostles. I also find a large group of women following and financially supporting them. I find a woman to be the first person to whom the Risen Jesus appeared. I believe it was only patriarchal convention that refused to see her as an Apostle - after all, St. Paul is considered an Apostle based on Christ's appearance to him on the road to Damascus. Mary Magdalen has the same resume.

I also find that Jesus did not use his genitals to do his work. Therefore, his maleness was not a requirement for his mission. I am unpersuaded that a group of celibate males prefers to keep the priesthood a good old boys club. I have seen female priest do amazing work, in some cases things that male priests would struggle to accomplish. We need both, just as we need priests from every ethnic group, short and tall, thin and fat - I don't believe that a penis is the measure of whether or not God is calling you. After all, God doesn't have a penis. Would we exclude God from priesthood?

In line with that radical inclusion, we also ordain gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. In truth, I must say that we have not to date ordained any transgendered people - but they would not be excluded based on their sexuality. I am not convinced by the seven or eight scriptures that are routinely used in the argument against homosexuality. I find there to be no evidence in the Bible or in other writings of the time that the notion of sexual orientation existed. What they wrote of were things they perceived to be "unnatural" - a heterosexual man sleeping with another heterosexual man. They wrote of cultic prostitution, in which those who believed in fertility gods went to the temple prostitutes, male and female, and had sex with them in hopes the fertility god and goddess would see, become aroused, and have sex themselves and so ensure a good harvest. I agree with the biblical writers about both of those things.

What I don't see addressed is human sexuality - I do see a whole lot about sexual behavior. Seven or eight verses - as opposed to over 3000 about poverty. No verses about abortion. Where have our priorities gone? If we had spent the money that has been spent on protesting LGBT folks and abortion on poverty and hunger, just imagine what we could have done!

I believe the current focus on human sexuality and abortion in the Church is the direct result of male dominance in the hierarchy of the Church. If I am a married, or celibate, male then clearly I have never had an abortion and I am not gay. I have taken all the focus off of me and put it on someone else - and so I never have to confront that I beat my wife, sexually abuse my children, cheat on my taxes, steal from my employer, or anything else because every one's attention is on those two issues - and I feel so good and holy.

And yet Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, was very clear that we were not to do these things. We were not to judge others, but rather to get our own house in order. Clearly, we have lost the vision. I believe that the mission of the UAC is to restore that vision. I have a program in development called Christ Enlight that is designed to do just that - return the focus to the Sermon on the Mount and how Jesus instructed us to treat ourselves and one another. All the rest is just distraction and ego - certainly not God.

By now I may have scared you off! I hope not. I hope you will hang in there. Know that what makes us strong as a denomination is that we have people of differing beliefs. It helps us to offer a church where all people are welcome, and where all people can feel comfortable as they ask the difficult questions that a faith journey requires!

Is God Running a Protection Racket?

2009-11-03T14:07:00.005-06:00

I remember a particularly opinionated 12 year old boy who wrote me a while back after having become enraged when I suggested that God was love and that there isn't any hell. He proclaimed in his email that "If there isn't any hell then there isn't any reason to go to church!".

That's precisely the problem, isn't it? We have so bought into the preachers of hate and fear who misrepresent themselves as Christian preachers that most of those who do still attend churches do so because they have had the hell scared into them. They have bought into the lie that if we aren't good then God will "withdraw his [sic] protective hand" from us and we will be left to fend for ourselves in our never ending war against the devil. Their extortion is very polished and very well presented, but it is extortion nevertheless. The message is that if you keep coming to my church and putting at least 10% of your income in my collection plate then I will tell God to keep the devil from kicking your ass - and you.

How is that any different from a gang led protection racket? You have a shop and I come in and tell you that if you pay me so much money each month then I will protect you from the other gangs in the neighborhood. If you fall behind in your payments, well, even God won't be able to help you. The implication is that the other gangs will get you first, but the truth is that I am the one who is going to will take care of you ourselves.

It isn't any different. It is exactly the same. Your preacher is running a protection racket. The truth is that if you don't pay your preacher then the preacher will beat you up himself. He won't use his fists, he will use social pressure. He will make sure that the rest of the congregation shuns you as one who has gone over to the other side. If he manages to get some of the congregation worked up enough, they may well come beat the devil out of you themselves.

Is God really running a protection racket? NO, of course not - your church is. Not a bit of it is biblical, either - it's all about greed.

When Jesus was asked what the Greatest Commandment was he answered with two commandments - to love God with all you heart, mind, and soul; and to love your neighbor as yourself - and then he added "on these two hang all the Law and the Prophets." In other words, the whole shooting match depends on loving God and neighbor. That means that the lens through which everything we do as Christians must be filtered is love of God and love of neighbor.

If you are a Christian plowing through the Old Testament, for example - as the Christian Extortionists love to do - then you must do so through the lens of loving God and neighbor. Must I really point out to you that extortion is not loving? Apparently I need to do so to much of the Church world, who have completely missed the point of Jesus Christ. God isn't going to withdraw any "hand of protection" - primarily because God is loving, and secondarily because God is spirit and doesn't have any hands to withdraw!

What about the 12 year old's question? Why go to church if not to avoid punishment?

The answer is that we go to church for a number of reasons - all of them life giving. We go because we need community. We go because we hope, together, to create a better world - to work to establish the peaceable, loving kingdom of God on earth. We go to support and encourage one another, and to receive support and encouragement when we need it. In short, we go to love.

If you don't think love is reason enough to go to church, you are forgetting the outrageous things we all do to get the attention of a potential date. If you don't think love is enough reason to go to church, then you have never been lonely. If you don't think love is reason enough to go to church, then you need help - and more than that you need to be loved.

You see church isn't about denominationalism or which religion is best, or any other nonsense that 95% of the so called churches in our society want you to believe it is. It's not about fear, and it's not about appeasing God or humankind - it's about giving life and love indiscriminately, abundantly, wastefully. It's not about who is in or out because everyone is in; it's not about right or wrong because we all are right; it's not about fear, it's about love - because perfect love drives out fear.

If you don't believe me, if you think I am wrong, if you feel compelled to respond to me with anger in defense of your God please allow me to ask you a question. What kind of a god needs human beings to protect or defend it?

If you are tired of all the nonsense that traditional Churchianity is offering you, please contact me. I will help you set up a small group of like minded lovers in your area. Why would I do that? It's all about love!

Christian Violence in Language

2009-10-29T11:12:00.004-05:00

Do you think we might stop the violence that we use in languaging the Christian experience. This morning on facebook I saw a prime example:

"Once God’s DOMINION has been established by the Spirit in any human heart, the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven is accomplished in that life."

I don't mean to single this person out, and I certainly don't intend to mention their name. This kind of language is all over Christianity and it does not belong there. Let's look at what this really says, getting away from all of the jargon, to a person who is not part of the Christian experience. It says God, through the Holy Spirit, is going to spiritually rape my heart, move on in, and take over. It's a war, and whether I want to or not, a violent religious experience is about to occur within me.

Who in the world would want that to happen to them?

This kind of violent language pervades the evangelical corner of Christianity, and it needs to stop. The extension of it contributes to acts of violence by Christians everywhere. It implies that we are at war, at war with the devil, and we don't know who the devil has on his team, but we have to defeat them. We need to let the Holy Spirit in, into our hearts (how much repressed sexuality is in that statement?), so that he might rule our lives, so we can do battle for God. Can you see that is but a small jump from there to acting out violently?

The funny thing is that none of this is consistent with language that Jesus used. This kind of language is rooted in Paul, and in defense of Paul is a great distortion of what he said. We aren't at war - God isn't a God of war, not is God a God of dominance/dominion. God is a God of peace.

Put down your swords and your sword metaphors. This kind of talk isn't Christianity, it's combat. Let it go and discover the God of peace and love before we all kill each other.

Roman Polanski

2009-10-15T13:38:00.002-05:00

It boggles my mind that it is necessary to write about this, but I feel I must: Roman Polanski raped a 13 year old girl 31 years ago and has been avoiding prosecution by hiding in France ever since. Recently he was arrested while attending a film festival in Switzerland. Several celebrities are pleading their case for Polanski's release because, after all, it happened so long ago - and, after all, he is a celebrity.

I suppose it's good that he is a celebrity because he certainly is no man. A man doesn't have sex with 13 year old girls. A man doesn't rape women - statutory or otherwise. Finally, a man takes responsibility for his actions and when there are consequences for those actions, a man accepts them. A man doesn't run from the consequences of his actions.

What's more, the impact on a 13 year old girl who is raped by an adult male cannot be underestimated. Who is standing up for the rights of this girl? Furthermore, this was not the only inappropriate relationship Polanski had with underage women. He had a fondness for little girls, and he acted on it repeatedly. Letting him get away with his crime would send the wrong message to a large number of people - including all the 13 year old girls who hear about is and all of Polanski's fellow pedophiles.

Surely these celebrities aren't serious?

This is just another consequence of the way we treat celebrities in this country. The next time you are at the grocery store, look at the magazines that adorn the checkout lanes and notice how many of them have to do with celebrities. Unless you are in a very strange grocery store indeed, the majority of them will be about celebrities and their lives. I believe this is a direct symptom of the loss of spirituality in America.

The failure of the institutional Church to meet the needs of the vast majority of Americans has led them to leave that Church and to look for other ways to meet their spiritual needs, chief among them the need for transcendence. Rather than do the hard work required by authentic spirituality, our lack of tolerance for delayed gratification has led us instead to escapism as a spiritual narcotic. We escape into the lives of celebrities so that we might forget about how unhappy we are in our own lives. It's a fix with a very short half life, but worse than that it is a fix that causes us to fashion our lives after folks with some very questionable judgment.

Unless of course, you have a 13 year old daughter and would be willing to invite Roman Polanski to stay at your home with her while you go on vacation...

More on Letterman

2009-10-08T11:05:00.003-05:00

My Letterman blog has generated a bit of heat, which is great! Please remember that I do not publish anonymous comments. I have the courage to sign my stuff, please have the courage to do the same.

Some people felt that my role as Bishop in the Church made my comments inappropriate, and I would like to explore that today as well as explore the Christian response to this situation.

First let me say that, unlike clergy you have most likely encountered in the past, I do not play games or hide behind my office. What you see is what you get with me, I am a real person and I refuse to take on the "holier-than-thou" stereotype. It is that sort of nonsense that has opened up the door to clergy abuse of every kind. I see my role as being a teacher of what the earliest Christians called "The Way". I am also a spiritual guide and mentor. I am not the morality police, largely because the Jesus who I encounter in the Bible told us not to do that!

Letterman had sex, and that sex may or may not have happened in the context of Letterman being either in an ongoing relationship or being married. He may be guilty of adultery - or is he? If he is guilty of adultery, let me call your attention to John chapter 8 beginning at verse 3:

"The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in their midst they said to him, 'Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?' This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, 'Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.' " (RSV)

Apparently, there are a whole lot of you out there who have never sinned. Good for you! It is so hard to be perfect, you must be exhausted from the effort!

Let's look a bit further. How about Matthew 6, verse14 and 15:

"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses." (RSV)

Pretty clear there that we aren't supposed to be holding people's misdeeds against them but are to forgive them. In fact, we aren't even supposed to be looking for them! Let's look at Matthew again, chapter 7:

"Judge not, that you not be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye," when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." (RSV)

The bad new is that if you are sinning (and we all sin) the log is in your eye. Now for the really bad news: If you are criticizing David Letterman on the basis of your Christian faith, you are directly contradicting Jesus instruction and are setting up a situation where you may be beyond forgiveness. That God that God is merciful!

Here's the real issue: If you are mad at David Letterman or upset by his activities, one of two things has most likely happened. Either you made the mistake of setting him up as some sort of moral guide for you and your family (not very likely, but possible), or you need to do some healing around some incident in your past that had to do with someone either cheating on you or some one close to you or some other kind of sexual misconduct. I am very sympathetic of all those situations, and what I want to say to you is that your reaction to Letterman is an indication that you have some healing to do around those issues. That's not a criticism on my part, it's an attempt to help. Talk with your pastor, talk with a mental health professional, talk with anyone - but please, don't continue to be miserable.

The truth is that David Letterman's sex life is no more your business than your neighbor's sex life, your mailman's sex life, or the sex life of the guy three blocks over. The fact that he's a celebrity doesn't make any aspect of his private life any one's business. Unless you are willing to have a complete stranger knock on your door and ask you when the last time you got laid was and was it any good, you really should stay away from other people's sex lives!

Please, do yourself a favor, and take some time to look into why you are reacting this way. Address this issues that are at the root of your reaction, and move forward. If, on the other hand, you are reacting this way because you think it is your Christian duty then I would encourage you to get in a Church that is healthy. Like mine!

David Letterman Got Laid?

2009-10-07T13:35:00.004-05:00

Really? David Letterman had sex? With a woman? With several of them? Holy cow, I had the whole thing wrong. I was almost positive...wait...people are upset? Because these women worked for him? Oh, so he forced them. No? So what's the problem?

Really people, come on! I am so tired of all of you people who can't manage to get laid and are so upset that someone else does get laid that you feel compelled to raise hell when you find out the whole world isn't ugly, frigid, or both. Why do you care? I mean honestly, don't you have anything better to do that worry about two or more consenting adults having sex? Are you professionally miserable? Does someone pay you to rain on other people's parades?

What is wrong with us? Let's clear a few things up. First, from any healthy spiritual perspective, there isn't anything wrong with people having consentual sex. We are biologically driven to do so, as a matter of fact, and when you don't it indicates that you either have an unhealthy attitude, for spiritual or other reasons, toward sex. Alternately, you could have extremely poor hygiene or be quite ugly. I can't tell from here - you might take a whiff of yourself and look in a mirror. If you smell bad, take a shower and consider purchasing deodorant. If you're ugly, consider a makeover. The good news is that there are ugly people of both sexes and all orientations. Sooner or later, someone ugly will come along and want to sleep with you.

If you have problems with people having sex because you have been traumatized, please get some therapy. I guarantee you that getting your jollies camping out outside David Letterman's bedroom and listening for his bed to squeak isn't the only way that this is affecting you. Healing is possible, and in all seriousness I urge you to get the help you need.

The rest of you, stop worrying about who is having sex and go have some yourselves. It is supremely unhealthy and inappropriate to be peeking in people's bedroom windows, so stop it, already!

Religious Right Prefers Flacid Members, film at 11

2009-09-18T14:27:00.003-05:00

It's true, the watchdog groups are all over it. The religious right has a strong preference for flaccid members - in every sense of that word. They are all riled up about the Levitra commercials on Major League Baseball and National Football League coverage. Apparently, Frank Fundamentalist doesn't want his children asking him "Isn't that the name of the stuff you keep next to your bed, Daddy?"

That's the only reason I can come up with to explain why the fundies don't get upset about commercials for pregnancy tests and birth control. Those things wouldn't really need to be in their homes because fundamentalist males are impotent - and so their children won't ask questions about those other items because they won't find them in the house. You can't very well be pregnant if Frank can't perform. No need to have those EPTs around when Frank's "P" is on the fritz.

No wonder they are so crabby!

An Open Letter To Whoopie Goldberg

2009-09-16T12:49:00.003-05:00

At last weekend's Detroit Lion's game the television announcer compared something to thinking that you had a date with Beyonce and finding out you had one with Whoopi Goldberg. Leaving aside how rude that is for just a moment, and avoiding the temptation to say unkind things about whoever the announcer is or isn't in a relationship for a moment, I'd like to tell Whoopi something:

The truth of it is, most of us would rather date you. Sure, we like the idea of Beyonce, but we like the reality of Whoopi. Why? We don't want Beyonce because she would require a whole lot of maintenance and a high probability of rejection. We also aren't too sure what we could talk with Beyonce about - not because Beyonce isn't intelligent, but because we really don't know anything about her except that she looks good prancing about.

Whoopi, on the other hand, is intelligent, well spoken, has a wide variety of interests, and is very funny. We know that after our twenty minutes of fun there would be something to talk with Whoopi about, and those of us over the age of 18 also realize there are twenty-four hours in a day. - which means there are 72 twenty minute periods in a day.

Who knows, maybe I am selling Beyonce short. The truth is, Beyonce and women like her scare the hell out of me and bring out all my self doubt. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. I know the beauty queen has a hard time finding a date.

Give me a call, Whoopie - we'll grab some dinner.

Kanye West, Poster Child for Abusive Males

2009-09-15T12:25:00.003-05:00

It's always this way - the Kanye West way. Some alleged man with massive insecurities picks on a tiny woman while exposing the muscles he spent hours developing in the gym so that nobody would notice his massive insecurity, poor manners, lack of talent, and (most of all) that he is a supreme bitch.

Jay Leno was surprised that Kanye didn't cancel his appearance on Jay's new show last night. I am disappointed that Jay didn't cancel Kanye. When will we as a culture stop providing motivation for bullying by refusing to give bullies a pulpit. Kanye is sorry? He didn't realize that would be a hurtful thing to do? OK then, he is a supremely stupid bitch, but a bitch nonetheless. An aside for you rabid feminists: A man calling another (alleged) man a bitch isn't about degrading women at all, it's about degrading the man. It only becomes about the women if you call THEM a bitch.

Isn't it interesting that Kanye chose a skinny, timid little girl to pick on? I wonder what he would have done if, say, Toby Keith had won that award? What he would have done was sit his punk ass down where it belonged because he is a bitch.

Unless and until we refuse to tolerate this kind of behavior by sanctioning the individuals involved in it (famous or not) and not viewing programming that subsequently has these interviews as guest we will continue to send the message to our children that males can do whatever they want to females in this country.

By the way, if you are more upset by my (intentionally chosen) language in this article than you are by West's actions, then you are part of the problem.

Healthcare

2009-09-10T11:28:00.003-05:00

I saw a friend's comment on Facebook today about health care. They said, "Leave our heath care the way it is.........sell you boat, your Harley and all the other toys you have so you can afford heath care and if you don't, don't expect a hand out from all the WORKING people in the world!!!!!! . EVERYONE can afford... health care if they need too [sic].

This post, while well intended, is reflective of the problem that so many Americans have in grasping this issue. I was very saddened to hear a debate about health care on one of my favorite podcasts - "The God Journey" about this issue that also reflected the same problem. The problem is that the whole country is not middle class white America.

If you believe that the answer to people who don't have health care is that they should get a job, you should know that a significant number of this country's small to mid-size employers do not offer health care - or if they do what they offer is over priced under coverage. If you work for in retail, or for a small construction company, or for a physician, or a host of others you either have no insurance offered, or a ridiculously high deductible ($5000-$10,000), or major medical only, or a similar situation.

If you believe the answer is to get another primary job or a second job, you need to recognize that for many people these options are not viable. They already work two jobs, or they cannot find another job in this economy, or their field of expertise is in a field that simply doesn't offer insurance from any employer. Most often the rationale is that if you take this action you can buy your own insurance. That is a fallacy for most people. What you can buy is major medical - if you have no pre-existing conditions. Insurance that covers catastrophic illness is great - but most of the average family's health care expense is not covered by major medical.

If you think the problem can be solved by selling a toy, you aren't facing the reality that most of the middle class and all of the working poor in this country don't have a toy to sell. Neither do your parents or grandparents - and they would certainly benefit from universal health care.

If you believe that the proposed plans would take away your choice of physicians or care, you are believing a lie. If you believe that your current insurance company isn't making your health care choices for you, you are living a fantasy.

If you aren't moved by the reality that we are the only country in the developed world to not offer health care to all its citizens, I wonder what does move you. I don't see you complaining about the enormous amount of money being wasted each day in support of the war in Iraq. Why are you OK with killing people but not with saving them?

If you believe that emergency rooms have to treat people even if they don't have insurance you are misinformed. Emergency rooms have to stabilize people with emergent, life threatening conditions. If you show up with the swine flu, strep throat, a sprained ankle, or other non-life threatening condition they will refer you to a clinic - where you will need insurance.

I want to know just how selfish you have to be to deny health care to a child.

If you think this is about a handout to the unemployed, they already have health care provided to them through Title 19 and similar programs. What we are really talking about is taking care of working people and their children. What we are talking about here is taking care of every person. What caring person could deny someone health care? How can anything be more important to us as a society?

What the hell is wrong with people?

Why don't you use your insurance to pay for some therapy to investigate why you are bereft of compassion?

Overcoming Racist Parenting

2009-09-02T19:16:00.004-05:00

As some of you know, we recently moved into the city of Milwaukee from a first ring suburb. It's not so much that we set out to move into Milwaukee. We didn't set out to move to Milwaukee and we didn't try not to. We were looking to rent an affordable three bedroom house with a finished or semi-finished basement that was affordable.

I suppose some background is necessary. We have for the last eight years lived in a duplex owned by my wife Erin's sister. She wasn't her biological sister, but she was her sister nevertheless - her sister from a different mother. The fact that I mention this will probably get me hate email from a member of Helen's family who regularly polices my blog, but I don't care - the truth is the truth. Before Erin and I came to live together she lived with Helen, and after we came to live together we lived with Helen. We lived in a duplex in which the outside doors got locked, but the inside doors to our apartments did not. We were a family. When Helen passed away rather suddenly after a four month battle with cancer this January, we decided that we could not stay in the home we were living in because there are simply too many memories there. We learned as we searched for suitable housing that we couldn't live with "strangers" because we hadn't done that for eight years - and more in Erin's case.

We found a nice house in Milwaukee in a neighborhood where there are more people of color than not. I love my new neighborhood. In many ways it reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in - lots of kids on bicycles, neighbors who actually talk to each other across the street from their front porch. I learned rather quickly that most every impression I had received from the media about neighborhoods like this is largely false, the product of sensationalism and the attempt to get people to buy the local paper or watch the evening news. The truth is that Milwaukee is a violent urban area - and I am finding, in the part of Milwaukee that I live in anyway, that it's a wonderful urban area.

The biggest thing I noticed about my new neighborhood is that kids get to be kids. They aren't rushed off to activities constantly. I believe that is a mixed blessing because some of that it because of financial restrictions - but kids do get to be human beings and not human doings. I was glad to be out of my old neighborhood of hypocrites and busy bodies who spent a great deal of time monitoring my children's friends during their high school years. My wife and I are white, as are two out of three of our daughters. Our white daughters have always dated boy/men of color and had friends of color, and my racist neighbors were forever calling the police because black folk were at out house. This was nothing but harassment, because it tended to be the same black folk all the time. The neighbors knew damn well there was nothing untoward going on when they called the police.

We also has a few busy body neighbors over the years in the old neighborhood. Because we ran an unofficial home for troubled female friends of our daughters over the years we have always had several cars in the driveway. At one point in the old neighborhood the busy body retired school teacher from across the street asked another neighbor if we were running a rooming house. That statement irritated me then and it irritates me know. God save me from being retired and having nothing better to do than harass the neighbors!

I've been enjoying the new neighborhood immensely, despite the fact that the move has been horrific. I love the little grade school kids that stop by the house to ask grade school questions, such as whether or not we have cake for our dog's birthday (we do not). I'm less proud to admit that my positive experience of my neighborhood has caused me to reassess my opinion, and more significantly my feeling of safety, in other urban neighborhoods. Don't get me wrong - there are still places I don't especially want to go, especially after dark - but I have realized that a little bit of my racist upbringing still lingers in my assessments of "bad parts of town". I am not happy about that, but I am growing.

One night earlier this week one of our new neighbors asked my daughter Brandie if we were running a rooming house. I guess some things are the same no matter where you go, but I still love my new neighborhood - and the growth it is causing in me.

Christians, Israel, and a Whole Lot of Nonsense

2009-08-28T13:52:00.003-05:00

I received a friend request on Facebook (yes, I am on Facebook and I will accept your friend request) from someone who was looking for Christians who support Israel to be their friend. Leaving aside for a moment the shallowness of searching only for friends who support one's own political position, I couldn't help but be reminded of how absolutely short sighted, lazy, and frankly ignorant it is for anyone to take a political position because of ancient history. It gets even more absurd when you delve into the reason that certain Christians tend to be violently pro-Israel. The reason, you see, is that they literally believe that in order for the Kingdom of God to be instituted on earth the Temple must be rebuilt. They fail to recognize that those Old Testament prophecies were given at a time when Israel was a theocracy and when it was believed that the Messiah (who is, from a Christian viewpoint, Jesus) would rebuild and restore that theocracy and the military State of Israel. In his very Incarnation Jesus seems to have spent quite a bit of time disabusing the Jewish people he encountered of that knowledge. He repeatedly stated that his Kingdom was NOT of this world - a fact that seems to still escape contemporary pro-Israeli Christians.

Another fact that escapes these small minded politicos is that the Christians in the Middle East are, by and large, Arabs! I'm certainly not suggesting that it is any better to choose one's friends by their faith than it is by their politics, but the inherent contradiction here is astounding. Christians supporting Israel at the expense of their Christian brothers and sisters because they want what is best for Christians? Are you serious?

Here's a unique thought for you Christians of every political persuasion: How about we decide we are going to work for what is best for ALL people of ALL political persuasions of ALL faith persuasions? Isn't that what Jesus would want? If you really read that Bible you spend so much time claiming to support you would see that was the truth.

Who's Pants Are YOU Wearing?

2009-08-24T14:19:00.003-05:00

I was in Madison this last weekend to celebrate the wedding of Megan Sexton and Jeremy Wood. It was a lovely ceremony (but then I am biased) and they are a truly wonderful couple in every way, and their friends and families are great as well. I am not going to write about their wedding per se, but rather about something that happened at the hotel that Erin and I stayed at on Friday night (between the rehearsal and the ceremony).

On Friday night as we checked into the hotel we came across a mother and daughter in an argument. At first it was hard to tell it was mother and daughter. From her hairstyle to her clothing, the mother was doing everything she could to appear to be as young as her daughter - and failing, simply because she isn't as young as her daughter. (She was, however, acting as young as her daughter.) They were engaged in a argument about a pair of pants. Apparently they were arguing over who was getting possession of this particular pair of pants. The daughter was acting extremely entitled about this particular pair of pants. The mother was carrying on about how the daughter was only 19 years old. The conversation became increasingly heated and increasingly loud - and eventually spilled into the lobby of the hotel, after which God only knows what happened.

Seems like a lot over a pair of pants, doesn't it? There are two truths at work here. The first truth is, it's not about a pair of pants at all. The second truth is that we all have problems with this sort of thing - "this sort of thing" being an inability or unwillingness to talk about feelings and so appearing to make a big deal about nothing. Instead of talking about how the mother is afraid of losing her daughter as she drops her off for [another?] semester at college and the daughter is feeling a need for independence and feeling smothered by her mother - and she may also be just a little bit uncertain about her ability to function on her own at college. The result is that they get into a huge fight about anything but what they appeared to be fighting about.

The point here isn't about mothers and their daughters or anything of the sort - it's about our inability to discuss our feelings with each other and so we project those feelings onto all manner of odd things - including "those damn pants." It's not just parents and children, it's adults and their significant others, neighbors with neighbors, employees with their supervisors - in just about every relationship we can think of we avoid talking about how we are feeling like we avoid passing gas in front of our mothers-in-law. The result is that we are stressed, we don't feel as if we are understood, we question whether or not we are loved, and all other kinds of insanity.

Wake up, take off you damn pants, and start communicating!

General Assembly

2009-08-03T11:51:00.003-05:00

I haven't published in a while, and there actually is a very good reason for that. The General Assembly of the Universal Anglican Church was held here in Milwaukee from July 23rd through July 26th, and the amount of preparation that meeting requires is not insignificant. When you add to it my general ministry load it makes for a pretty hectic month - but a month that is full of rewards.

There is something about gathering with your colleagues that is rewarding in and of itself, no matter your vocation. When those gatherings are exceptionally productive and enriching on many levels they become absolutely life changing and enriching in a way that I never can imagine they will be while preparing for them. With all due respect to women who have given birth, I would say that the General Assembly is always for me a giving birth (with a shorter gestational period and much less physical pain) that leaves me feeling blessed and causes the work involved in bringing a meeting to fruiting to fade into the recesses of my mind.

We are blessed in that our meeting is truly a leadership meeting, and so there aren't truckloads of resolutions and proposals to wade through. In fact, the "business" part of our meeting takes only a few hours. The rest of our time together includes prayer, worship, presentations, and relationship building. Because of our semi-congregational polity, there just isn't a lot to argue about. When you are successful in building a Church where everyone is truly welcome, most of your potential arguments are eliminated before they start!

The other thing that makes our General Assembly so enjoyable is the humility and security of our clergy. This year, for the first time in our short history. no one who joined us suffered from the kind of insecurity that compels them to talk more than they listen or to spend most of their time in self-justification and/or self-aggrandizement. To be sure, every human beings have those moments. Some human beings live in those places, and we are blessed to have a very secure groups of bishops, priests, and deacons.

There are several exciting new programs within The Universal Anglican Church and her ministries, including a way for people who are attracted to the UAC to become active members even if there isn't a UAC ministry in their location. To learn more about this opportunity, visit http://l-o-g.org/LoveofGodSpiritMemberships.dsp . Thanks to technology, it is no longer necessary to settle for a local parish whose message is that you are anything less than a fully loved child of God!

We also are happy to announce the launch of new devotional societies. The Divine Mercy Society (www.divinemercysociety.org) and The Sacred Heart Society (www.sacredheartsociety.org) afford ALL Christians access to these beloved devotions that are so in union with the UAC's message of God's unrestricted Love for ALL people! Watch the Universal Anglican Church website for more developments!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Don't forget to check out the Love of God Cathedral podcast on Itunes or on our hosting website http://cbergland.libsyn.com/ Feel free to leave comments and review our Podcast on Itunes - it helps move our Podcast up the list on search results and makes it easier for people to find us. Keep checking our website at www.uanglican.org for more exciting new ministries!

Wishing you and your family all the best!

+Craig Bergland, EFR

Michael Jackson and the Cult of Celebrity

2009-07-03T10:10:00.004-05:00

As everyone in the world with exposure to the media knows by now, Michael Jackson is dead. You will not find me shedding any tears for a number of reasons. The first is that I did not know him, and I find it curious that so very many people in America do seem to feel that they know celebrities to the point where they grieve their passing as if a close friend or relative had died. I believe that is symptomatic of a host of things, among them our isolation and loneliness, our lack of social skills, and the Cult of Celebrity wherein we worship celebrities as if they were gods. If you doubt that, consider one impudent clergy candidate from a sister denomination who took me to task publicly not once but twice for a tweet I sent upon hearing of his death that said that with his passing little boys everywhere could rest easily. If it were only this particular fool who had reacted I would say it was an anomaly, but one other woman removed me from her contact list - and that woman had seemed to be rational.

I am not saying that to be rational you have to agree with me. I am saying that Michael Jackson was, for me, three things: A brilliant musical talent, a tragic example of what can happen when financial success and fame come upon the chronically unstable, and a pedophile child abuser who should have permanently lost custody of his child when he dangled him outside of a hotel room window for the benefit of the press. He was, in my opinion, both a tragic and a reprehensible human being. Now he has died, and we see what happened in the case of countless celebrities who died at an age the culture considers "too young" happening again - he is being canonized by the masses, and it makes me want to puke.

People die. That is the reality of life, and nobody gets a pass. As a culture we need to consider that, pray about it, meditate on it, and come to accept death as a natural part of life and not some frightening enemy. My wife's best friend, a vital woman who worked as a forensic nurse - caring for those whom the Michael Jacksons of the world caused to need her services - died last January at 51 of a particularly aggressive cancer. Helen will be missed, and has been and continues to be remembered and honored by her community and friends. This is the kind of loving, service filled life that should be honored by all people while the Michael Jacksons of the world are seen for what they were - sick, twisted individuals - and perhaps pitied, but not worshiped and deified.

I will not miss Michael Jackson, nor do I miss Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, or any of the scores of others who have been deified solely by virtue of their dying before society has arbitrarily decided it was time. May they rest in peace, and may God have mercy on them. Michael is going to need it.

The Wisconsin Council of Churches - The Finest Hypocrites I Know!

2009-06-30T10:41:00.004-05:00

I was so pleased to get another email from the Wisconsin Council of Churches (WCC) last week. I actually only get their emails so that I can be constantly reminded of what a bunch of elitist, racist, classist bunch of hypocrites they are. Why do I say that? I say that because their conferences are always priced way beyond the means of any but the mid to upper socioeconomic classes. That way they can keep those pesky people of color and those pesky urban ministries from showing up at their events - after all, they are SO untidy. "Those people" might remind the WCC that they are living a delusion when they say they are an interfaith body - because interfaith implies that ALL faith communities and churches are potentially working together. When weekend conferences run in the range of $350-$650 and up, it isn't too hard to figure out whom they are not interested in hearing from. Add to that the reality that they tend to hold their conferences at least an hour away from Milwaukee (the largest urban area in Wisconsin) and the picture gets completed rather quickly.

This time they have outdone themselves. Last week I received an invitation that read, in part"

"You're invited to a very unique conference later this summer: The Earth Speaks: Hunger, Our Spiritual Challenge, to be held at the Conference Point Center August 16th-17th.With the deteriorating economic situation, food pantries throughout Wisconsin and the Midwest are reporting a dramatic growth in need for emergency food, particularly at the end of each month. And this growth is not just due to the dire economic circumstances facing low income families, but also to the rising number in the middle class who are losing their jobs.

"This August the interfaith community will gather at Conference Point Center, on the shores of Lake Geneva, to take a close look at the conditions which are causing hunger, both locally and abroad....

"We'll have workshops looking at the religious community's response to hunger, and we'll have an opportunity to reflect on what needs to be done back home to address the systemic issues which are contributing to food insecurity. "

For those of you who don't know, Lake Geneva is a beautiful lake and resort city located about an hour southwest of Milwaukee and about the same distance northwest of the Chicago metro area. It is where the "beautiful people" go to vacation. I absolutely love to visit Lake Geneva. It is beautiful, it has many charming shops and restaurants, and it is a very nice get away. It is also very expensive. If you are choosing to spend your money there on a vacation I have no problem with that - in fact, I encourage it.

I must ask - what in the world is the WCC thinking? What kind of an abject idiot plans a meeting about hunger and poverty in the lap of luxury? I will grant you that this is one of their more affordable conferences at $130 (for Sunday evening through Monday morning), but it is still in a place that is hard for less wealthy pastors and parishes to get to and is about as white as a freshly bleached bed sheet. God forbid the clergy of Wisconsin should get their hands dirty by holding a conference about hunger in an affordable place in an urban area where it might include representatives from food pantries that are struggling in the face of decreased supply and increased demand. No, no, no - they would much rather have talking heads from the national offices of food programs. That's much more edifying than having someone who just might be working with folks in the towns they serve. Oh, I forgot - nobody who goes to these things really works with the hungry in any significant way anyway.

I am so silly. I forgot that the real purpose of this is to comfort the complacent and delude them into thinking that attending a conference makes an impact - silly me! They even invited a Rabbi and a Muslim woman! How broad minded! Now they can feel so very enlightened without ever having to endure any African American, Hispanic, or poor folk. How special!

In truth, this is representative of everything that is wrong with the Institutional Church - and every reason to return to Primitive Christianity. Those who support this kind of out of touch, self deluded, feel good nonsense are an example of the worst in middle class pseudo-Christianity and are largely responsible for the very accurate perception that the Institutional Church is irrelevant and effete. Even worse is that criticisms such as this fall on deaf ears and tend to be written off as the product of a lack of intellectual acumen or ignorance. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Needless to say, I haven't received a response from the WCC to my email expressing my concern over this conference. I sent it after I received my invitation to Lake Geneva. The WCC needs to take note what when you bury your head in the sand you lose the right to complain when someone kicks you in the behind. I suppose they are safe from that, though, because they are mostly ignored by anyone actually serving the people they cogitate about. They will keep on fiddling while Rome burns and feel very good about themselves, a prime example of mental auto-eroticism.

The Church as Social Service Agency

2009-06-23T13:10:00.003-05:00

There is a popular misconception that the Church is a sort of social service agency. The concept probably started back during the depression, when the Salvation Army would feed people if they first listened to a sermon (that isn't really charity in my mind, but that's another issue for another time). It has been continued unwittingly by the fine tradition of churches offering food pantries, free meals, clothing banks and other similar services. There isn't anything wrong with any of those programs - in fact, they are fine examples of direct social justice work. The problem is that people have generalized from those programs and have decided that the Church is a full time social service agency with unlimited cash at her disposal. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

We've had a gentleman stopping by the church several times over the past week. The details of his story aren't terribly important, except that there were some obvious contradictions in his story that made me suspicious of his sincerity. We have a policy here that we do not offer financial assistance beyond bus fare and/or a McDonald's coupon - and then only once a month to any one individual. In the course of this gentleman visiting us over several days he expressed some notions which I suspect may be fairly prevalent.

He was looking for housing, claiming that his wife had left him a few weeks ago and that he had a friend who would put him up in a few days once he got back to town. He said he couldn't stay in the shelters because he had an assault charge in his past, and so he was looking for money ($50 a night) to stay in a hotel until his friend returned. At first his friend was to return last Thursday, then was delayed until Saturday, and finally when he stopped in yesterday he explained (no surprise here) that his friend was still delayed.

I allowed this gentleman to use our phone on three occasions, the last one being yesterday. As he called around looking for money, he became increasingly annoyed that he wasn't getting the response he sought from churches. Never mind that he had no relationship with these churches, that he is from another town about 30 minutes west of here, that he admitted he hadn't attended his home church for many years and so couldn't avail himself of their assistance, that he was offered food from several churches and refused it - he was absolutely fixated on the notion that churches have money laying around in abundance just waiting for someone to come ask for it and seemed to believe it was the "Christian" thing to do. He also told me he walked the main streets in the area looking for "Christian" bumper stickers or "fish" signs. Upon finding one he would enter the nearest store and seek out the mark...er, Christian...and hit them up for money for his hotel. Finally, yesterday, he became belligerent with a woman on the phone and I asked him to leave.

I don't want to dismiss the problems that folks encounter, nor do I wish to disparage the homeless. I want to say quite clearly that local parishes (for the most part) have programs through which they do outreach. These are vital, important ministries to which these churches devote substantial funds. For security reasons, churches do not leave cash on site. For reasons of doing effective ministry, churches do not distribute cash - it is the least effective way to help people.

What's the moral of the story? Church is about community. If you want to avail yourself of the help of a community, be a part of that community before you need the help. If you need a referral to an appropriate social service agency, your local church may well be able to help - but we aren't the social service agency. The work of God should not be confused with an ATM machine.

A Primitive Christian

2009-06-16T20:01:00.005-05:00

I believe that "a primitive Christian" perhaps describes me best. I also very much enjoy that the title allows me to poke a bit of fun at myself as I try to describe to what it is I feel called.

Many Christians get very exercised by things like the Creeds. I think that's fine if you want to get exercised about such things, but I simply cannot. If you can get exercised about the "virgin birth", I think that's wonderful. I cannot, because I recognize that just about every other religion that sprung up around the time that the Bible was written contained a virgin birth myth. It was the authors' way of indicating someone special was being born. I know Christians who would claim that Jesus' birth was, in fact, a virgin birth and all the other claims to virgin births are, in fact, false. I suppose that could be, but I feel compelled to point out that those decisions are made by folks who are rather biased, to say the least! For me, there is nothing about Jesus that changes if his mother wasn't a virgin, because I believe that God can sanctify human beings in any of a number of ways and that the absence of a hymen does not affect
God somewhat the way Kryptonite affects Superman. In fact, I can do without most if not all of the doctrine the Institutional Church has piled on to Jesus.

Primitive Christianity, the first three or four hundred years or so, has a lot to say for itself. Perhaps its biggest appeal is that very little was officially defined or declared back then. People were closer chronologically to the Jesus experience, and diversity was tolerated rather than extinguished. Anyone with even a passing understanding of statistics knows that everything that has been defined as doctrine or declared dogma since that time has at best a 50% chance of being true - even less when there have been more than one alternative to choose from.

I believe the Church of the future may well be found in a return to the past - not the past that the Vatican and others are trying to return to, a past when the Institution had power - but the past of early Christianity when what was central was the experience of Jesus.

There isn't any time to waste!

Apologetics = Trying to Prop Up the Dubious

2009-06-05T14:03:00.002-05:00

It's always struck me as rather odd that there is a field within Christianity called "apologetics." Perhaps the clearest definition of apologetics is, "The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines." I think of it more as trying to prop up the dubious.

After all, if something is true should that truth be not hard to see? Certainly there are some things where that is not the case. One that springs to mind is scientific truths. There is nothing about truths in physics that is at all self-evident to me. Shouldn't theology be different? Why do we need a whole "department" that spends all its time defending declared truth? May I suggest it's because such "truths" are really little more than WAGs (wild-assed guesses)?

If a truth is a truth it doesn't need anyone to defend it. Gravity is a truth. If you don't believe it, jump off a bridge and I promise you will be convinced. There are certain things in the spiritual arena that are relatively easy to verify and/or experience as well. The truth is that apologetics isn't concerned with truth at all, but rather with propping up arguments and theories. Why do these things need propping up? The need propping up because in what they declare they go too far. They go to far because those who propose them are essentially insecure. In the name of honesty, apologetics should be called "argumentation."

From my point of view, the very need for argumentation is proof positive that people are over stepping their boundaries in what they declare about God. They have this need based primarily in insecurity to define God until they feel God becomes benign, manageable, weak - in short, until God is no longer God. Unwilling to tolerate any dissent or questioning, they establish the science of quarreling to cover up their insecurity - but it is a thin veil at best. Wouldn't truth, and ultimately God, be much better served by learning to live in mystery? Wouldn't an all-knowing, all-loving God want us to be honest? Do you really believe that when we come to stand at the gates of heaven (metaphorically speaking, of course) God is going to give us a special medal for lying (or, if you prefer, stretching the truth) about our understanding of things spiritual? Does that make any sense at all?

Of course it doesn't - but then there have always been a majority of Christians who have found it far more important to be loud than to be sensible.

Alleged Pro-Lifers, You Can't Walk Away From This

2009-06-02T10:40:00.003-05:00

I have debated for several days before writing this, but it has to be said. Those who self-identify as pro-life and engage in the rhetoric of that movement share responsibility for creating a cult in which the murder of a physician who is performing a legal procedure not only occurs but is even thought of, no matter how twisted the killer actually may be.

Don't you see that when you lose your loaded words and stand with your pornographic posters of aborted fetuses that your words and actions can so easily be misinterpreted by someone who will believe that he (or she) is acting on God's will in committing murder? Are you so blind? Do you not understand your own spin and its effect on people?

Do you not realize that if the money spent on your protests had been spent on birth control and real sex education (the kind that goes way beyond abstinence only) the reality is that the perceived need for abortion would be almost non-existent? Are you so blinded by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church that you are content to create the environment in which murder can be twisted into "an eye for an eye"? What about you Protestants? Why aren't you promoting birth control and adequate education? Do you really need a place to vent your anger so badly that is doesn't matter to you if people murder in God's Name?

And you hypocrites, chief among them Fr. Frank Pavone, who said: "I join with those voices, as I always have done, that declare that the end never justifies the means, and that violence has no place in the effort to end abortion", allow me to enlighten you. You created the environment in which this is acceptable. You can try to walk away from it now, but it's too late.

The time is long past when we start to hold people accountable for their rhetoric. I am an absolute proponent of free speech, but I also am an absolute proponent of the notion that each of us are responsible for our the impact of our speech. If you are really pro-life (and to be quite honest most folks who identify as pro-life are anything but, they are really only pro-fetus) then you need to reexamine your rhetoric. At the front of it must be firm instructions to your followers - every time you speak - that violence is not acceptable. You must educate your followers, you must stop the spin, you must stop the hatred.

You see, you have become what you claim to abhor: Murderers.

A Reminder

2009-06-02T10:08:00.002-05:00

Just a reminder that I do not publish unsigned comments to any of my blogs. If you have the courage to sign it, I welcome all comments. If you don't, then I must assume what you have to say means very little to you.

Why I Am Not a Christian Anymore

2009-06-01T18:31:00.003-05:00

I realized something today with the help of some folks who were questioning my doctrinal purity around the issue of the Trinity. You know the Trinity, that doctrine that has but a very limited and very questionable basis in Scripture - the one that wasn't defined until a few hundred years after the death of Jesus - the one that Jesus himself flat out said was not the case when he said that he was not God? The doctrine that nobody in liturgical circles wants to preach about on Trinity Sunday? Yes, that one. Apparently, for a bunch of folks, the Trinity is the litmus test for Christianity. I'm not complaining about them in particular because for every so-called Christian it is something or other - the trinity, the virgin birth, keeping women/minorities/homosexuals in their place, this or that nonsensical doctrine - that they use to decide who gets to stay in God's club and who must leave.

Do you really think God needs the help? Can you even fit your ego through a door? What WOULD Jesus do, really? I'll tell you - he would slap the shit out of you.

As I have been reflecting on this, and on the God of my experience, and on my experience within Christianity, and on having the great honor of hearing Sharon Salzberg speak in Madison last week, and having reflected for some time on folks like Wayne Teasdale, Bede Griffiths, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, and a host of others; having found God not only in the so-called Christian writers but also in people like Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, Pema Chodron, Sharon Salzberg, Ghandi, His Holiness the Dalai Lama; having found God in documents such as the Tao, the Dhammapada, the Quran, the Gita, and in Buddhist Sutras; and having failed to find very much of God in the current Pope, the religious right (which is all wrong) in Christianity, or fundamentalism in any religion, I have news for the Christian world...

I QUIT!

From now on, I shall be a follower of Jesus. You've heard of him, but you probably have heard of him from the folks of religion. That means you have heard an awfully twisted view of Jesus. I encourage you to pick yourself up a Bible and read what Jesus actually said. That's what I have done, over and over, and each time I do it I find less and less Christianity there. Since it's Jesus I signed up to follow, from now on it's Jesus I will follow. Jesus was never critical of anyone's attempt to draw closer to God, and neither am I. Jesus never talked of hell, although he did mention a garbage dump outside Jerusalem named gehenna and Christianity has been kind enough to twist his words by translating gehenna as hell. What Jesus did do, and therefore what his followers need to do, is love. He loved radically, he loved wastefully - both God and people. All people, all creatures, all of creation - in short, everything - received his love. As followers of Jesus, we are called to follow suit. Notice that nowhere in doing that is there judgment or criticism or ex-communication. We'll leave that to the Christians - after all, they are so damn good at it. In fact, come to think of it, you might say they spend more time worrying about who they feel is going to hell than they seem to spend doing anything else. Fine with me, because I'm not in that club any more!

I'm a follower of Jesus.

What is the UAC?

2009-06-01T11:42:00.004-05:00

I wrote this in another context, but thought it might be helpful here as well:

One of the things we have very intentionally done is seek to distance ourselves from the Independent Sacramental Movement, where many (but not all) seem to be much very involved in arguments about who has the prettiest vestments, the best lines, and a host of other things that for us are largely irrelevant. You can say we aren’t Christian for whatever reason you like. In our hearts we know what we are. You can say we are not Anglican because we don’t visit the queen (or any other reason), and that’s fine with us - we know we are. For us, living an authentic life of faith isn’t about getting into arguments about doctrine or other definitions. Living an authentic life of faith is responding to God’s call to care about those whom we here God calling us to care for. If for you God is calling you to police certain doctrine or dogma, we say “God bless you on that journey, but it isn’t ours.”

In the end, we believe that we are called to focus not on our differences but on what we share in common. We take seriously God’s call to love our neighbor, and we believe that all people are our neighbors. If you don’t agree with us, that’s really quite ok. We will be happy to visit with you, chat with you, share our experiences, our joys and concerns, and when you are in our churches you are certainly welcome to receive the sacraments and participate fully in the life of the Church.

In the earliest Church, before Constantine did Christianity the great disservice of making it “official”, there wasn’t much fuss about how to remove those who were not of like thought. In fact, there was great plurality of thought. This can perhaps be seen most clearly today through the non-canonical gospels. Clearly, the people who wrote and read these documents found Christ in them - before, and I would suggest even after - they were declared inadequate by the establishment. As an apophatic theologian, I experience a God who is infinitely vast and who transcends my experience of God (and, in fact, transcends all that is). I don’t find myself called to pass judgment on or invalidate others’ experience of God.

In the end, if you don’t agree with us or find us lacking, we still love you and wish you well - and most importantly you are still welcome here. We believe that perspective allows us a diversity that affords us a richness we could not otherwise achieve. That perspective has also afforded us the opportunity to enjoy rich friendships with folks from the mainline traditions as well.

What’s more, we do not see ourselves in competition with anyone - most especially the Episcopal Church. We in the Universal Anglican Church exist to serve those who have fallen through the cracks of the Institutional Church. We never have, and never will, put our fliers on cars in the parking lot of any other church. To paraphrase Popeye, we are who we are. There are more than enough hurting people in this world to serve, and so we certainly don’t need to compete with one another. Take us or leave us, that’s perfectly fine. In any event, we will continue to have what I dare say is one of the better records in the Independent Movement of actually being Church. Our clergy are required to have active, verifiably ministries - including bishops, who must have ministry outside of their episcopacy. As a result, we have found that our energies are much better directed toward doing ministry than toward excluding others or getting embroiled in arguments.

Racism at Applebees

2009-05-27T11:09:00.003-05:00

I had an awakening last weekend in Cleveland, and it wasn't a good one.

I was in Cleveland for Liberation Conversations 2009, a wonderful annual conference of the Interdenominational Conference of Liberation Congregations and Ministries. To learn more visit http://www.amistaducc.org/ICLCM/ICLCM%20Home.htm. On Sunday evening, after the closing worship, nine of us went looking for a place to eat. We ended up at Applebees on Steeleyard Drive in Cleveland. There were nine of us people at the table and I obviously wasn't thinking about the fact that I am white and the others are people of color. The first time the waitress approached to take our drink orders I noticed that, while she called everyone else either "honey" or "dear", she called me "sir". The first time I thought it was an accident or some sort of coincidence. The second pass through when she delivered our drinks the same thing happened. Might still be a coincidence - unless, the third approach when she took our dinner orders, it happened again.

I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but there is no benefit to be gained here. I was not older than everyone else. I was not dressed better than everyone else. In fact, because I wear my hair longer than most men do you might say that if someone was going to judge my by my appearance they might dismiss me as a hippie. A very handsome hippie, but a hippie nonetheless, and if they did that they would only be half right because I am not a hippie. When the food was delivered, this time by a woman of color, we were all called "dear" or "honey". Generally speaking, I don't like being called by any term of affection in less I have been affectionate with you - but this night I felt great relief for you see these people I was with are in fact my brothers and sisters is a profound sense that transcends biology, family, and most certainly the color of our skin.

Wake up Applebees - wake up America! The time for this nonsense never was, and the time in which is was tolerated is long gone

The Truth About Aging

2009-05-24T12:30:00.005-05:00

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who is one of my primary influences, wrote in his diaries when he was more or less my age that he thought his death was imminent. In truth he lived another ten years and died an accidental death at the age of 58. When I was younger, I used to wonder why he seemed so preoccupied with his death. By the time he was a couple of years older than I am now, he wrote that he had realized that he was not about to die. He wrote that his body was telling him not to die but to slow down. I didn't understand that fully until very recently.

I now know that I can't do what I used to do. For American males that is a hard pill to swallow. We have been conditioned to keep going at any cost. I certainly identified with that in the past. I would drive all night, attend three and four day conferences, and leave late at night on the fourth day to drive all night home. When I encountered an obstacle I ran it over. It was a badge of honor, a proof of my man-ness, and I was as good as anyone at it. Recently I have learned that instead of running through walls I bounce off of them. Even more recently, I have learned that is not a bad thing.

You see, when you aren't operating "full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes" you can actually attend to what you are doing. You can give more of yourself to people by giving less of yourself to proving your toughness. You can actually be centered.

It isn't as easy to accomplish this transition as you might think. The people around you, including many who are past the age where they too should begin to slow down, will not accept the change in you. They will continue to demand more, and be blind to the reality that what you are giving them is better than more. The only way to respond to this appropriately and with dignity is to politely continue to do what is right. The opinions of others never does anything for anyone but the opinion holder.

I now understand why so many cultures value their elders. The American culture has harmed itself greatly by rejecting the elderly and packing them away in warehouses called nursing homes. I don't say that I am an elder yet, but I do say that I see in the elderly great wisdom and great spiritual teaching, if only we will slow down long enough and let them out of their prisons that we might hear from them on a daily basis.

I love my wife Erin more than I ever have (and she hears enough from me at home and so doesn't read my blog, so that statement is not self serving). It is no longer a love based on either of our perfections, because neither of us are. It is a love based in the comfort, energy, and wisdom that grows from time spent together, challenges encountered, and most of all (for me anyway) finding what I have never believed I would - someone who loves me despite all my limitations; old, new, and yet to come.

So if you expect me to be somewhere and I can't get there, that's OK. If you are mad or have any other feelings about that, that's OK too. I am still who I am, and you feelings or lack thereof aren't going to manipulate me any longer, because there are some things I simply can't do anymore. In a strange sort of way, that is a wonderful gift and there is wonderful freedom in that.

There is a spiritual freedom connected to this, and I will write more about that in a later post.

Danny Gokey Day

2009-05-16T12:05:00.002-05:00

I confess, I watch American Idol. Not as religiously as I used to, but I still catch it when I can. And, as everyone in Milwaukee, Little Rock, and San Diego probably knows, the top three finalists were sent home to their respective home towns for a huge publicity thing about two weeks ago. None of that surprises me. What did surprise me was the number of negative reactions I read. Most of them ran along a line that argues since we don't have parades for my favorite thing, or since the economy is in the tank, we shouldn't have a parade/weekend for the hometown boy (and this year they are all boys) made good.

How mean spirited is that? Have we really become so jaded that we would deprive people of their day in the sun? Are we really so focused on the negatives in life that we cannot allow ourselves to have a little go old escapist fun? I read several comments that said we should have parades for returning soldiers. I'm fine with that, but let's remember that when those parades occurred in the past they occurred after the (declared) war was over, not as each soldier returned home.

All of that notwithstanding, I say knock yourself out with parades for everybody. The more important issue to me is the rampant negativity that would deny someone their day in the sun. Perhaps we all need to take a deep breath and reexamine our own lives with an eye toward finding our joy. It is there - and it's there in the simple things, the daily things, the everyday. We all need to take a step back from our own imagined self importance to find the joy again. Take a day off and walk in the park, visit your friends, take in a movie, help an old person across the street. I bet you will find that the company you work for doesn't close because you missed a day.

One thing is certain: If we don't relax a little bit and start enjoying life, life will kill us. What a legacy that would be - to have lived a life without joy, you last breath muttering curses about a Danny Gokey parade.

A Word from Bristol Palin

2009-05-06T10:17:00.003-05:00

Like, wow! Mr. Rove and my mom told me that I need to get out there and start, like, campaigning for her next run for President. So I got a job with Candies (they gave me some really cute shoes that make my legs look really sexy). I do some commercials, and I go around talking about something called abstinence education. Somebody asked me something about living in a glass house, but our house isn't made of glass. I guess if it was I wouldn't have to go outside to see Russia.

I just know that all my friends are going to stop sleeping with their boyfriends because they will see the common sense in this. I'm going to stop having sex too, because...er...wait a minute.....

MOM! MR. ROVE!!!!

Toward A Non-Theistic Understanding of God

2009-05-04T13:58:00.004-05:00

Note: This post assumes that the reader has read the preceding post entitled, "Who is God, anyway?"

A non-theistic understanding of God is one that assumes that God is spirit (John 4:24 "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."). There is no super-human God hovering just about the clouds. Rather, God is infinitely vast and transcends all that we know. God is without beginning and without end, because God transcends time (and everything else). God was present at the creation (however that happened) and will be present beyond the end of life as we know it on this planet.

Religions, every last one of them, are limited as opposed to transcendent. They cannot possibly capture God, who is infinite. The best they can hope to do is to capture some part of God, to come to an imperfect understanding of God. To remain vital, they must remain open to input. The notion that God, who is infinite, ever stops speaking is absurd because even if God spoke only once it would take us forever to hear it because, unlike God, we are bound and limited by time.

Since every religion falls short, it is absolutely absurd for us to engage in wars over religion. It is also absolutely absurd for us to hate, exclude, ostracize, ex-communicate, or seek to punish those who do not agree with our religious viewpoint because we have this great religious truth in common - we only see part of God. If we are going to kill someone because we believe they are wrong about God, we may as well start with ourselves because we, too, see only in part (1 Cor 13:12 "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.").

It follows from this that every religion has something to offer of God, quite possibly something we have missed. If God is infinite, God contains all things, and so all things show us something of God. All religions may not work for me, but most certainly I can learn something from other religions. None of us has a corner on God, for infinity has no corners. Understand Jesus how you will, understand Mohammad how you will, understand Buddha how you will, understand Krishna how you will, understand all systems how you will, but above all understand that they all contain something of God. They may not all speak to me, but they most definitely all speak of God.

Of course, there will be those who are critical of this thought and get their hackles raised - but their interest is not in seeking God, it is in defending their own particular view of God or their churches' view of God. Churches, however, are not infinite and God is infinite. God is bigger than any church and bigger than all of them put together. What you really are defending is your need to feel superior, your need to reassure yourself that you are going to be with God and those who disagree with you most definitely will not get to be with God.

God then is not a guy (or a girl), who lives some physical place or destination (heaven) to where we travel when we die. It would be much more accurate to say that when we die we hope to achieve union with God. We might even say that we hope to achieve union with infinity, or all that is, or the universe...

You don't have to agree with me, you can believe whatever you like. The truth is that most human beings at this moment in history have a rather tribal understanding of religion, even if they no longer have a tribal lifestyle. For some reason most people seem to need to be primitive when it comes to God - and that is very ironic when you consider that God is so infinite, so transcendent, that the last thing God would ever want is tribalism and hatred, especially in the name of God.

This view opens up for us the truth that there is something to be learned from all religious systems, because they all contain something of God. I suspect that most of us will find a system in which we feel most comfortable, and that is a good thing. At the same time, however, there is no need for any of us to feel uncomfortable about inquiry, because all inquiry (religious or not) leads us to learn more about God. Ind the end, that's what we all want, and that's what we all need.

Who Is God, Anyway?

2009-04-28T17:38:00.003-05:00

Who is God? In your heart of hearts, I want you to think about who God is. Is God a person. Forgetting for a moment about all this contemporary talk about a "personal God", is God a person in the way that you and I are people? Does God have a physical form, and if so where is it located? Is God just beyond the skies with a white beard and sitting on a throne? If so, why haven't we found him yet with satellites and moon shots and space shuttles?

Is God definable? I suppose we all make attempts to define God, and we all believe we can at least define God in part, but by definable I mean completely definable - can we describe, define, or doctrine God into neatly defined categories?

Is God bigger than our religion, or does religion completely circumscribe God? If we can define God, wouldn't that make our intellect bigger than God's? Is the God who is beyond all, who is behind everything from the creation of all that is to the cry of a newborn child easily described in words - or is there a mystery to God and is there truth in the apophatic notion that the more I learn about God the more I realize just how little I know about God?

When Jesus said that the Father is spirit, and the time is coming when those who worship God will worship in spirit and truth, what did he mean?

Ponder these things, because in a few days I will propose an answer.

2009-04-25T20:49:00.001-05:00

Well as wedding receptions go I would say that was slightly more awkward as your mother walking in on you losing your virginity to the varsity basketball team

2009-04-25T13:38:00.001-05:00

At home getting ready for tonight's wedding reception

2009-04-25T07:58:00.001-05:00

Apologetics: The theoplogical equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (lol!)

2009-04-24T13:26:00.001-05:00

Here's a little tip from me to you: If you can't control your child in public, you need a parenting class.

Need A Lifeboat?

2009-04-23T16:08:00.003-05:00

Pope Benedryl XVI is following through on his promise to make the Roman Catholic Church smaller and more theologically "pure". He seems to envision a Church that dwells somewhere in the early 19th century - although that may be a bit to progressive for him. Perhaps the counter-reformation and the Council of Trent would suit him better. Now, of course, I want to begin by saying there is nothing wrong with being a spiritual neanderthal if that is what you feel called to be. There is a whole lot wrong with being forced to become a spiritual neanderthal if you don't feel called to be one, however.

Spiritual neanderthals, in both their Catholic and Protestant incarnations, care very little about anything other than apologetics and doctrine. Don't talk to them about Jesus, they have no time for him. I had an electronic conversation yesterday in which I asked a neanderthal of the Catholic variety to show me where Jesus ever said anything that could be considered even remotely in favor of excommunication. He quoted Paul to me - and wasn't even savvy enough to know that the letter attributed to Paul from which he quoted is regarded by biblical scholars to not be original to Paul at all, but rather to be written by the early Church to tame Paul. When I reminded him that Paul wasn't Jesus and repeated my request for a word from Jesus he couldn't come up with anything (because it doesn't exist) and so he took to attacking my person in an attempt to defend his indefensible position by disqualifying me as an inquirer. In debate circles that is called an ad hominem fallacy. This little neanderthal Catholic is just what Pope Benedryl is looking for - someone who will toe the line and not let the truth get in the way.

I believe that Rat-boy will get what he wants - reiki will be out, habits on nuns will be back in, women will be back in the kitchen where he prefers them, homosexuals (except, of course, for his brother) will be out of the Catholic Church, and a new phase of the Spanish Inquisition will begin. Why do I care? Frankly, I couldn't care less about what happens to the Church. I do care about the people that will be hurt in the process.

There will be calls to remain within the Church and attempt to fight - but you can't fight an autocratic system of governance and win. In this case, nothing will work. The Roman Catholic Church as we know it will fade over the next fifty years into a small cloister of irrelevance. Even after Benny and the Jets have passed on, their successors will be no different because they were chosen from sheep of the same stripe. In their wake will lie the very many people they have destroyed along the way.

What's the alternative? Well, Roman Catholics can remain aboard rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and hoping the ship won't really sink. A much healthier place would be to get out now. Go to the UAC, to the Anglo-Catholics, to the Episcopalians, to the Lutherans, to the Methodists, go anywhere - but please, get out now before they destroy your spirit. Move your selves, you family, your religious orders, your priests; move everyone who values freedom of thought and conscience. Move everyone who values Jesus more than apologetics. Move everyone whose Lord is Christ and leave all those who worship the catechism and the Pope behind. They are too far gone, locked in their mode of self destruction, to save anyway.

Here - take this life boat. You are going to need it.

2009-04-22T09:45:00.001-05:00

Leaving the dentist wondering why MY hygenist is such a hag

2009-04-13T15:13:00.001-05:00

At Body Ritual, it's tat time!

2009-04-12T19:41:00.001-05:00

After church this morning spent the afternoon and early evening moving everything from the old church to the new - and my ass is kicked

2009-04-06T16:31:00.001-05:00

leaving work and headed to Stein Optical to either get my glasses or leave the place in ruins

2009-04-04T14:04:00.001-05:00

Stein Optical has screwed up my glasses not once but twice and the really irritating thing is the manager is a good guy so I can't bring myself to be shitty

Judgment - or Loving?

2009-04-04T09:00:00.004-05:00

We certainly like to judge, don't we? While both secular people and church people love to judge, I believe that church people get a whole lot more excited over the opportunity that secular folk do. Perhaps that's because church folk believe, on a more or less conscious level, that they can bring the wrath of God onto those they judge.

The problem with all of this is two fold. First, Christians are instructed in the Bible not to judge. Of course, that doesn't stop them. The second problem is that God is not wrathful. I refer you to Julian of Norwich on that point, with whom I completely agree. Dame Julian points out that since God is unchanging God cannot one moment be loving and the next be angry as this would involve a dramatic change in the person of God. I would say that is is impossible to be both loving and wrathful - that wrath drives out love.

Despite all this, we judge. We judge the lady down the street because her kids are "wild". We judge people's dress, their hair, their homes, their cars, their occupations, their illnesses, their health, their friends, their lovers, and just about everything else we can get our judgment on. We do this either because we think God needs the help or (more likely) because we feel woefully inadequate ourselves.

If I feel inadequate, one of the unhealthy ways for me to feel more adequate is for me to convince myself that everyone else is even less adequate than I am. I look at people I meet not as a opportunity to expand my circle of friends but rather as an opportunity to expand the group of folks I have decided are not as fine as I am. Even the church leads the way on this, declaring as sin a truckload of things which are not sinful at all. Parts of the church even declare love sinful, and virtually every corner of the church is way too concerned about how we express our love as they press their collective noses against our bedroom windows. If an individual worried about sexual activity as much as the church does, we would diagnose them sexually preoccupied. For my part, I think it's too bad that the church universal can't have sex, because I can't help but think if it would just get laid it would relax about sex.

It's time we stop worrying about everyone else and start worrying about ourselves. If each of us spent half the time we currently spend judging others and used it to work on ourselves and getting our own house in order we would very soon lose the need to judge others. If we could all relax (perhaps take a laxative) and rest in the simple truth that just as their is diversity in nature their is diversity in human beings - and that is OK, it is the way it is supposed to be - we wouldn't need to spend all our time judging and could put our time to the much better task of loving unconditionally!

When I was completing mu undergraduate studies at Wisconsin Lutheran College (a very fine school, by the way) I was exposed for the first time to the notion that judgment can be loving. They told me that by excommunicating someone from the church (which means declaring them unwelcome, expelling them, kicking them out) they were actually acting in a loving way because even though their feelings might be hurt the change existed that this action could cause them to repent and fall into line with the behavior and thought control mechanism that is the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church (WELS). To me that sounds remarkably like the physically abusive parent who is pounding the snot out of their child while announcing, "This hurts me more than it hurts you." Judgment, and even more so judgment followed by exclusion is never loving and is always abusive.

In truth, every major religion cautions against judging in their scriptures. Christianity's "Judge not, lest ye be judged" and "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" need to be ringing in our ears before we even think about judging someone. And, from the Dhammapada, "Do not consider the faults of others or what they have or haven't done. Consider rather what you yourself have or haven't done."

Stop judging and look within - and you will find that your practice of judging isn't nearly as attractive when you use it on yourself.

2009-04-04T08:40:00.001-05:00

Saturday with no meditation group this week - what will I do? What a sad statement that is!

2009-04-01T10:26:00.001-05:00

It's April Fool's Day - so that must explain the weather?

Now You've Gone Too Far, Rat Boy!

2009-03-19T10:21:00.004-05:00

Generally speaking, I have a pretty high regard for Popes. I certainly don't agree with everything they proclaim, promulgate, or support, but I do respect them as men of great intelligence and faith.

That is, until now. Now, Rat-Boy has gone too far, and I can respect him no more. He lied, and he lied in a way that will be responsible for the death of many Roman Catholic faithful. That makes him a murderer in the same way that the man who drives the getaway car in a bank robbery gone bad can be charged with murder if the gunmen inside kill someone.

"You can't resolve it [AIDS] with the distribution of condoms," the pope said. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

You can't be serious, but you are. Never mind what the science says, in your mythical world where fallacious beliefs trump science and where you actually believe that under certain circumstances (although not this one, to be fair) you are infallible, you tell a bald-faced lie that will be responsible for the mindless followers or yours in the developing world who will actually buy your nonsense as truth. The will do this because they trust you and you office - and you have proven yourself completely unworthy of any one's trust.

Now before you smug, conservative, anti-catholic protestants celebrate too much, realize you are susceptible to the same nonsense. If you doubt that, look at your struggle to hang onto "Creationism" even when science has disproved it - and calling it "science" doesn't make it anymore valid. Nonsense is still nonsense, even if I call it "nonsense science."

So on the African continent, where whole generations have been almost extinguished by AIDS and where orphanages are overflowing for the same reason, the pope makes the problem worse. Beautiful. Rat-Boy has made the leap from irrelevant to murderer.

Nice job. I can hardly wait to see your next trick. Genocide, maybe? Oh wait, maybe that's your agenda in this "Condoms don't work" ploy. You'd better rethink that one, because the southern hemisphere is the only one you can fool anymore, and if you kill them off who will listen to you? Who will keep filling your coffers?

The Vatican is already spinning this one, just like they have all of his other blunders. I'm not quite sure there is enough spin even in the Vatican to undo this disaster.

Boycotting Heterosexual Weddings

2009-03-17T11:23:00.003-05:00

There is a move afoot among some of the progressive clergy in this country to refuse to file paperwork with the State for Weddings they perform for heterosexual couples until all people are allowed to marry. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a strong supporter of marriage for all, and I also absolutely support the right of my colleagues to make decisions in accord with their own ethical sense, so nothing I say here should be construed as a criticism of any clergy person's stance on this issue. However, since I have been asked a few times by a few different people why I don't adopt this policy, it seems like a good topic for a blog.

I think that refusing to file papers with the State - in essence, to perform blessings of all unions but not to file marriages with the State - is misguided, illogical, and counter-productive.

The intent, of course, is to raise consciousness about the issue of marriage and to bring pressure on legislators to change the law. While such a practice may raise awareness, the truth is that heterosexual couples will simple have someone else perform the marriage. It will also increase the already predominant felling among people of all orientations that they have been rejected by the Church. Is that really an admirable goal? What's more, I even question that we will raise awareness, since I make no secrets about the fact that I am a pro-LGBT clergyman. The couples who come to me to be married obviously have no problem with my standing. In refusing to marry them, all I really succeed in doing is alienating allies of the LGBT community. Is that what we really want to do? Alienate allies?

Moreover, there is a logical inconsistency in this practice. We are justifiably upset that the LGBT community is denied what we believe is their right to marry. We object to Prop 8 because it amended the Constitution of the State of California to deny rights - and amendments are supposed to grant rights, not take them away. How then can we protest this by seeking to deny the right to marry (through our practice) to those who already have the right. Two wrongs never make a right. Denial of rights is always wrong, regardless of our motivation.

I believe in marriage equality with all of my being. I make no judgments about my colleagues who make decisions in line with their own ethics. That being said, I won't violate my ethics, and so I will continue to proud perform marriages.

Absolute Pacifism - Is It Possible?

2009-03-13T11:24:00.003-05:00

Pacifism, the practice of non-violence, is certainly desirable. I do not for a moment, however, believe that absolute pacifism is even possible to achieve, and so I do not think it is a worthy goal. Allow me to illustrate with two examples.

Suppose you are walking down the street and you pass a school playground where little children are playing during their recess period. You notice that a heavily armed man is approaching the playground, intent on killing as many children as he can. He clearly has the weapons to accomplish his task. Looking down at your feet, you notice a rifle. You have the knowledge to use the rifle, and you know that if you shoot at the gunman you will kill him but not harm any of the children. Given that there is no other way to stop the gunman, do you take the shot?

In this particular example, there is no true absolute pacifist response. If you shoot the gunman, you are acting violently. If you don't act, you are allowing the murder of many innocent children. I believe the moral act is to shoot the gunman. It is the lesser of two evils. You may think from this that I am opposed to pacifists. Nothing could be further from the truth, I just do not believe that it is possible, or desirable, to be an absolute pacifist. Here is another example:

Suppose you are asleep at night and are awakened by the sound of someone breaking into your home. Peering down the hallway, you notice the perpetrator is armed. You notice that you have a baseball bat in your hands, and the perpetrator is headed into your child's room. He hasn't noticed you, and his back is toward you as he is about to enter your child's room. He is only three steps away from you. Do you let him enter your child's room. or do you take your bat and drive his skull into the living room like a belt high fastball? I find it hard to believe any parent would allow the burglar to enter their child's room in the name of pacifism. "It's all right Timmy, Daddy loves you, but he has to let this thug kill you because Daddy is not a violent man."

My point in this article is that we must make moral decisions in light of reality. We can't just make them in a vacuum. Very often things that are wonderful in theory are pretty lousy in practice. It's fine to have principles, but there also have to be exceptions for extraordianry situations.

The Bah-a-bull

2009-03-04T11:37:00.003-06:00

The title is a phonetic pronunciation of "Bible", most often used by folks who believe that the Bible is the Word of God. This is a mistaken notion, most often perpetrated on people by pastors who want to manipulate them into mindless compliance with the pastors' interpretation of how things ought to be. How things ought to be is most often that the people have the hell scared into them so that they keep returning and pouring money into the offering plate at an irresponsible rate in hopes of appeasing the fictional god of anger that the pastor postulates rather than the very real God of love that is actually reflected in the scripture. In actuality, you see, the Bible is a book, and Jesus is the Word.

As an aside, one of my many writers of hate mail regarding my "Back" post (most of whom, I am quite certain, come from one family and none of whom have the courage to sign their comments) accused me of breaking one of the Ten Commandments because I wrote the word "hell". I can understand it from the author of this hate filled comment because s/he identified as being one third of my age, which would make her just under 13. The commandment I allegedly broke by using the word "hell" was taking the Lord's name in vain.

This comment beautifully illustrates how much conservative pastors distort the Bible in their preaching and teaching because hell is a place. It happens to be a place that I don't believe in, but it is nonetheless a place. God, being Spirit, is not a place - in fact God is everywhere at the same time, and everywhere God is is sanctified by the presence of God. If hell did exist, which I don't believe it does, God by God's very presence there would sanctify hell. Since God is by definition everywhere in that there is no place God cannot go, there can be no hell.

However, if you want to insist that there is a hell, it certainly isn't a name for God. Taking the Lord's name in vain has nothing to do with any place. What's more, since the word "hell" has been used in translations of the Bible into English (even though the word hell does not exist in the original New Testament Greek), if "hell" is taking the Lord's name in vain, then the Bible takes the Lord's name in vain.

Stay with me here.

SOOOOO, if you argue that "hell" is taking the Lord's Name in vain, since the English translations of the Bible use the word "hell", the Bible itself breaks one of the Ten Commandments and therefore is sinful!!!

Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, this is one hell of a mess we have ourselves in! We get into this mess when pastors teach us only to believe in them and what they say, when they fail to teach us to think for ourselves and thereby make us dependent upon them rather than on God (which, by the way, would be idolatry - another one of those pesky Ten Commandments). What a mess!

All of this so beautifully demonstrates why biblical literalism is bankrupt. In fact, biblical literalism has only existed for the last 200 years, and it is an error we need to repent of. Nowhere does the Bible claim for itself that it is top be literally understood. In this one example of the word "hell" we have seen what a conundrum we get into when literalistic power hungry pastors tell us what the Bible says. If find that tendency terribly curious, given that one of the fundamental tenets of Protestantism is that the believer can, for and by themselves, understand the Scriptures.

Oh hell!

A Tribute to the Train

2009-02-27T18:35:00.002-06:00

I once got accused of being a Renaissance man. I believe that is overstating the case more than a little bit, but there is some truth to the fact that I very much like some things that others have written off as old fashioned or obsolete. One of those things is the train.

I love Amtrak. Sure, it isn't perfect. Its on time record could be better, but I have learned in riding the train that there are circumstances that are beyond Amtrak's control that do impact timely arrivals. Did you know, for example, that the actual train tracks in this country are owned by the freight lines? That means that freight trains have priority over passenger trains, and sometimes passenger trains have to stop to allow a freight train to pass. I have learned to cut Amtrak some slack now that I know about track ownership and right of way.

The train reminds me of a time when we weren't so self important, when we didn't have to be there as fast as possible. In fact, we really don't have to be anywhere nearly as fast as we think we do. Much of our sense of urgency is self created, and so is a false sense of urgency. On the train you can see the sides of a city the city attempts to hide from you - the back side, if you will. Buildings are constructed with their back sides to the tracks - on both sides of the tracks. Junk yards tend to be built near the tracks, as do homes of the economically disadvantaged. The homeless often camp near the tracks, I suppose because they afford a measure of privacy. Not too many people walk behind warehouses and junk yards to explore the railroad tracks.

The train also offers a wonderful opportunity for people watching. What kind of people ride the train? Near as I can tell, the same kind of people who ride the plane. Whatever people's preconceived notions about train passengers might be, I have learned that for the most part train passengers are everyday people. Of course, there is always a character or two on the train, and that is part of the fun. The train also offers an opportunity to catch up on reading, and to take naps. You tend to arrive at your destination well rested when you take the train because it has a way of rocking you to sleep.

The other nice thing about the train is that you don't have to go through the nightmare that has become airport security, and they don't charge you for baggage. You don't have to take your shoes off before you board the train, and you can take you nail clippers and just as much shampoo as you want on board. You can even take beverages that haven't been purchased past the security check point, because nobody wants to hijack the train. Well, they might want to, but the reality of the train is that you have to drive it on the tracks which means that hijackers would pretty much have to hijack the train to its normal destination - and there isn't a whole lot of call for that.

The train also reduce our carbon footprint. An almost unlimited number of people can ride the train - they just add another car. Trains never have to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. In fact, trains are a very safe way to travel, and the train is an experience I believe everyone should have at least once in their life - so why not this year?

A Word About Comments

2009-02-26T11:19:00.002-06:00

I have received some rather negative comments about my last post. Unfortunately, none of them were signed, and I do not post "anonymous" comments. I have the courage to stand behind what I write, and I only post comments from people who have the courage to sign what they write.

I would like to respond to some of the issues raised. Some folks felt it was inappropriate for a bishop to be angry and encouraged me to reread my Bible. Actually, I read my Bible regularly and have never found a passage that says it is inappropriate to feel, or inappropriate to be angry. What's more, there certainly is no indication that ordained folks should not feel - in fact, not being able to feel would be a terrible detriment to people in ministry as they would proceed on a rather heartless basis.

There was also mention made that I and the people whom I sheppard would all end up in hell. Since I do not believe in hell - in fact, the word "hell" does not appear in the New Testament in the original language - I am not too concerned about that. In fact, my personal feeling is that those who hold to some sort of hell have huge doubts about the efficacy of Jesus' redemptive role in the history of humanity. Such calls for damnation result from human beings projecting their anger onto God, not from any biblical understanding of anything

There was also a call for me to be reported to my supervisors for the angry tone of my last blog. How interesting, and yet how predictable. First, this is a personal blog and this is still America, where freedom of speech exists. I also took great care not to identify any individuals involved in the subject of my post. I assume the comment writer comes from a rather conservative theological position (given the tone of his comments), and I have always found it curious that conservative folks' answer to any disagreement is not dialogue, but rather an attempt to silence the person with whom they disagree.

So, to summarize: it is ok for people to mistreat other people, even people close to me I would assume, but it is not ok for me to have strong feelings about that. Very interesting, and in fact very curious.

I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree. I suspect that will be a problem for you, but that is your issue, not mine.

Back!

2009-02-16T09:06:00.002-06:00

I have been out of action due to a death in the family, but have returned!

Speaking of family, what is it about a death that brings out the worst in everyone? It never ceases to amaze me that people who could not have given the tiniest little damn about someone while they were alive all swoop down after the person dies and engage in a festival of self deception and, frankly, lies about their motivations.

You aren't trying to "do something for the deceased" because you now recognize you failed to do anything for them - even spend the smallest amount of time with them - while they were alive. You are trying to control the deceased and those who actually meant something to her - you know, the family she built because the family she was biologically burdened with couldn't make time for her. You motives are not the least bit altruistic, they are all about greed. How do I know? I know because even when you are told that nobody gives a damn about the contents of her house and you can just take them all out, you still need control and you deny that you want anything.

Fortunately, the universe has a way of balancing things out, and each of you will be the victims of the same kind of heartless stupidity you now engage in - and your memory will be disgraced just like you are trying (but failing) to disgrace your sister's memory and wishes. You see, the problem you will have is that because you care only about yourselves no one is going to really miss you when you are gone. Take heart, though, your family will still fight to control you after you are gone.

It's a pathetic excuse for a life, and it is repeated on a daily basis when people pass away. It also represents a failure of religion, which has focused so long on fear and control that it actually encourages this kind of nonsense rather than teaching the reality that God is love - which would clearly also teach that we can't be in control of anything. Life is lived in letting go, love occurs in letting go. Those who love little only have control to turn to. Not much of a life, is it?

Bad Career Move, Jesus!

2009-01-23T13:31:00.002-06:00

I can't tell you how many times I have heard stories of pastors and priests who have been told that they either have made a bad career move or are about to make a bad career move. The moves in question have not been the things that truly are bad moves - exploitation of others, sexual misconduct, fiscal mismanagement, or other similar repugnant behaviors - but rather these "bad career moves" usually involve choices about which congregation these clergy choose to serve. The congregations are bad career moves because they are in the wrong place, or are too small, or have internal problems, or are in membership decline, or are in neighborhoods in transition, or similar things.

My first reaction is that I really struggle with the reality that there are clergy career ladder climbers out there - yuppies in a clergy suit. How can you adequately serve someone when your ultimate question is "how will this impact my career"? That isn't servant ministry at all, it's self-servant ministry and I find that repugnant. I am realistic enough to know that there have always been clergy who have been ambitious and who have eyed up higher posts even before they graduated from seminary. What I didn't realize is that these people would evaluate potential ministries based upon that ministry's impact on their career progress - and what career progress means is climbing the church hierarchical ladder.

My next reaction is that I have no doubt that this kind of thinking has negatively impacted not only the mainline denominations but the independent denominations as well. A minister who sends a message to a certain group of folks that they won't serve them because they won't serve their drive for promotion sends a message that is heard way beyond the confines of the small parish they reject. Presumably, the good career move choices would involve only ministering to the beautiful people, never rocking the boat, being a good company man or woman, and doing whatever is necessary to protect one's superiors, even when they are wrong.

Applying those criteria to Jesus, I would come to the conclusion that he never made a good career move. In fact, he spent most of his time making bad career moves by associating with the very people his church avoided. He was also critical of the practices of the leaders of his religion and culture - certainly not good career moves. Finally, he went and got himself killed which for most of us would be the end of our career.

Everybody needs to eat and have a roof over their heads, but I would strongly suggest that those clergy who are busy making decisions based upon what is good for their career need to get out of the clergy business because they are there for all the wrong reasons. It's not unlike being a physician not because you can help people but because you can make a lot of money. Either way, you are going to be terrible at what you do. The truth is that unless and until the broader Church changes its habits and returns to the servant ministry mentality it is not only a failure it is a sham.

I don't mean for a minute that the independent church movement is exempt from this problem. We certainly have our share of folks who have an alternate agenda. Since most of us are bi-vocational, career advancement isn't usually as big a problem, although there certainly are those who covet titles. The truth is that we aren't Jesus, and so we need to take certain steps to make sure we are on the right track.

One of the biggest of those steps is spiritual direction. It is known by a number of other terms as well including spiritual guidance, spiritual companions, transition guide, and a host of others. Whatever the term of choice, a spiritual director (assuming we are honest and engage the process honestly) helps ensure that our motivations are correct and that we are on the right path. I believe that it is no coincidence that none of the clergy who have fallen away or imploded from our denomination were in spiritual direction.

I'm not suggesting that spiritual direction is a panacea, or that it is the only thing clergy need to do to care for themselves. Clergy need to take care of their physical and psychiatric health, spend time with their families and friends, take vacations, pursue hobbies, and so on. A good director will encourage you to do all those things. A good director will also remind you that ministry is about service, not career or other special agenda.

Misunderstanding that distinction is killing the Church.

Ego

2009-01-19T10:51:00.003-06:00

Lately I have heard more distorted perceptions of what ego is, and isn't, than I ever dreamed possible. I have been accused of being an ego maniac because I refuse to give the ministries I have spent the last ten years building to someone else (actually, "someones" else, since there are several folks who seem to feel entitled to them); and because I protect my denomination's integrity by enforcing our Canon Law and insisting that those who would have the Universal Anglican Church adapt a baptist identity actually make their attempt according to our Church Law; and because I feel ethically compelled to protect those we serve from inappropriate comments that constitute a violation of our sexual harassment policy; and other similar situations. If that makes me an ego maniac, so be it, but the truth is that it doesn't.

I have learned that there are more than a few people in ministry who like to use the accusation of ego run amok to attempt to manipulate others. When things don't go their way, they claim that it was only ego that kept things from going their way. I would go on at some length about the irony in such a view, but I trust that it is apparent. Suffice it to say for our purposes here that the call to ordained ministry does not automatically make anyone's ideas good, or provide them with the skills necessary to accomplish their goals. There are still things to be learned, and mistake will still be made. It is only ego and/or delusion that causes one to assume that, without experience and without mentoring, one is ready to do any sort of ministry.

I have also learned that it matters very little how much of a laid back leadership style one employs, there will always be those who will accuse you of being an autocrat when you don't let them have their way. With all due respect, if you know it so much better than everyone else - including your colleagues in your denomination - then why in the world don't you start your own ministry? You might even declare yourself Pope and then accuse others of being ego driven...

By contrast, I have spent quite a bit of time studying the concepts of ego - both in the western sense and in the Buddhist sense. In truth, if you want to understand ego and humility in the Christian sense I believe you have to study the monastic traditions and their understandings of humility and obedience. Ego is most definitely not when someone gets in the way of your sense of entitlement - in fact, your sense of entitlement is a manifestation of your ego run amok.

Western society has little patience for the concepts of formation and mentoring. However, clergy need to be immersed in those concepts because they have been the foundation of Christian formation for two thousand years. Those who would bypass them do so to the detriment of their own ministries - and, unfortunately, those to whom they minister.

The years of effort, prayer, work, and money that a pastor invests in launching a ministry do, in fact, lead to a healthy sense of ownership. No one who understands the process would ever expect someone to surrender their ministry to them just because they feel they are entitled to it. If you doubt that, try it yourself. Once you get everything established, give it to me. I think you will see my point

I am very proud of what I have been blessed with in my ministry and what God has entrusted me with. I will gladly mentor you, help you, guide you, do whatever I can to get you into a place where you can do the same - but if you expect me to just surrender my ministries to you so that I can start over and you with your lack of experience can destroy them, you will just have to be disappointed.

Get over it, and go build your own.

In Support of the Episcopal Church

2009-01-13T10:50:00.004-06:00

Can we talk?

I was in the shower the other day (I do some of my best thinking in the shower) and I suddenly realized what it is about the schismatics in the Episcopal Church (and the "confessing movement" in the Methodist Church, and all other similar bodies in other denominations) that really bothers me.

They are entitled little brats.

I don't have any problem with being a schismatic, per se. I am one myself. What I have a problem with is this idea that being a schismatic entitles me to the property of the group I am leaving. Imagine, for example, if a person left their secular job and announced to their employer that they would be taking their desk and computer with them. Once the employer stopped laughing they would probably offer to pay for a psychiatric assessment so that someone so obviously mentally unstable wasn't wandering the streets!

Some will counter and say that the parish owns the property. Not true. In both the Episcopal and Methodist Churches the denominations owns the property. Perhaps more importantly, unless that parish in question is less than, say, ten years old the people currently inhabiting the parish didn't build it. Those who built it are most likely long deceased. What makes these ultra conservatives think they have the right to the labors of generations that have gone before? What makes them think that is that they are entitled little brats. They want to benefit from the labor of others. They say they care enough about their beliefs to leave their denominations but apparently they don't care enough to actually do the work of building a church around their beliefs. They would rather steal from someone else.

Maybe the reason they don't want to put their money where there mouth is has a whole lot to do with the truth that conservative schismatics who leave mainline denominations never succeed. In the Episcopal Church every group that has left attempting to turn back the clock has died a slow death of attrition. These dinosaurs are no different - except that the folks who have left in the past have had the integrity to not attempt to steal other people's stuff.

I am a schismatic of sorts. I left the Episcopal Church to form the Universal Anglican Church. We have never seen ourselves in competition with the Episcopal Church and, quite frankly, we don't want their stuff. We have built our Church ourselves, with God's help and blessing. Ironically, there have been those who have traveled along side us for a while and sought to take control of this Church and change its direction. To them, and to the schismatics in the main line denominations, I say build your own. If it is of God, you will succeed, but there are no shortcuts. There is no way to legitimacy while riding on the backs of others. Even if you manage to steal the trappings of legitimacy in the form of parish buildings you will not be legitimate until you go out and do the hard work of ministry in your local communities.

Time to grow up.

Who's It All About, Alfie?

2009-01-06T12:37:00.001-06:00

What it's all about it PRAYER, and when we lose sight of that all kinds of unpleasant things happen. I used to hate it when someone would mention that they thought it was all about prayer, but now I realize they were absolutely correct - and that I only disagreed with them because I didn't understand what prayer really was.

I believe there is a very human tendency to rush full speed ahead, damn the torpedos. I have come to see that strategy as not serving anyone very well on a consistent basis. We also tend to be masters of self deception in many different ways, particularly in the spiritual realm. The first self deception is that we tend to assign ourselves very grandiose roles. We become defenders of this or that, guardians of the truth of this or that. I remember hearing of some pompus stuffed shirt of a bishop refusing to attend an ordination as a guest because he felt he had to "protect my precious apostolic seed." Yes, he actually said that. I don't know if he was concerned they would be giving away free vasectomies or not, but clearly something was very wrong with his perspective - because he saw himself as somehow responsible for protecting God! Now I don't want to burst anyone's bubble (or wherever one stores one's apostolic seed), but God doesn't need our protection from anything or anyone and, even if God did need protection, how arrogant do you have to be to assume you can protect God from something that God can't protect himself from? Wouldn't that make you bigger than God? That's more than a little theologically and egotistically problematic! Well, others will say, we need to protect Christian truth or orthodox doctrine or any of a host of other things. No you don't. Moreover, you can't. Both are bigger than little old you.

I think we would realize when we had gotten off the beaten path - much less the sane path - if we spent significant amounts of time in prayer. By prayer I don't mean intercession, or liturgy, or praise, or any other forms of active prayer. I mean listening to God, communing with God, spending significant amounts of time in the silence with God so that our thoughts, our plans, our delusions all fall away and we are left with nothing but the presence of God. If we do this regularly ego cannot help but fall away - and that scares the hell out of us. So instead we fall back on positions, and doctrine, and purging the church of heretics, and schisms...

...and in all of this, Jesus is lost - lost in the clamour of people struggling to gain power, money, fame, and control in the name of God. Denominations implode, "foreign" bishops trangress geographical boundaries, "confessing movements" sue for church property, and Jesus is lost - lost by the Institution that has proclaimed itself the protector of the faith. How can this be?

It can be when we lose sight of the fact that it is all about prayer, and not at all about us.

What the Church Needs Now...

2009-01-05T10:41:00.003-06:00

What the Church needs now - in fact what the world needs now, perhaps more than ever - is mentors. The problem is that there is not only a shortage of mentors, there is a shortage of people willing to be mentored. I am not quite sure where all of that comes from - I suspect that it has its roots in the notion that everyone wins, that every child who participates gets a trophy, and so on. Such a system created an expectation that, no matter how ill prepared I am, I will always get the reward. I'm not denying that such systems have a positive impact on self-esteem - they certainly do. I wonder if they don't also set up some unrealistic expectations about my need to be prepared to take on a certain task or responsibility.

What I have noticed in my experience as a bishop in the Church is that when I start to mentor someone, to begin the process of training them for greater responsibility, they assume that I am handing them the keys to the denomination and saying, "Have at!" All of that would be wonderful, except that the people who believe that they are ready for full responsibility lack the experience necessary to do the job. I am trying to give them the experience, to mentor them to be able to do their own thing, and they misunderstand that and feel that somehow I am being unfair.

Excuse me?

Suppose that you shop at a little store in your neighborhood, say a corner grocer. You decide that maybe you would like to learn about the grocery business, so you go to the corner store and tell the owner that you would like to learn the business. Suppose that he agrees to teach you the business so that one day you might open your own store or take over his when he retires. You say that sounds great, and after a month ask him to add you to the checking account and the deed. Somehow, I don't think he would respond positively. The truth is that you wouldn't be ready. What's more, there is nothing about that grocer agreeing to share his wisdom and experience with you that entitles you to his store!

Starting a parish, not to mention a denomination, is a lot like giving birth to a child. It is a process, and in doing so you make mistakes and learn by trial and error. You come to love and care for the people in it. You want to help others do the same thing if they feel they are called to it. You are willing to give them your time, to share with them, to (so to speak) birth them into being in a place where they are able to start their own ministry if they are so called, to help them avoid some of the mistakes that you made along the way. I have found that, at least in some circles, a hugely mistaken assumption on the part of those I mentor is that they get, as a part of that process, the fruit of my labors!

Are you nuts? Go ask that corner grocer for his store and let me know how that works out for you. Even better, go ask the corner grocer for his store when you have little or no experience running a grocery store, and then tell him he is selfish and abusing his power when he tells you "no". I would be willing to bet that when he stops laughing he will tell you, among other things, to start your own.

That's my advice - go start your own.

Presiding Bishop's Christmas Message

2008-12-25T12:12:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends,

Greetings to you on this eve of the Incarnation! As I reflect on this season this year, and on the year that has passed, there are several things that impress me and for which I feel very blessed. I must mention the one thing that fails to impress me, which is that I did not succeed in sending even one Christmas card this year...my sincerest apologies.

I am grateful for the health of most of my family, and I am grateful that Helen Kelly is tolerating her radiation and chemotherapy as well as she is. As you may or may not be aware, Helen and my wife Erin are to each other the sisters they never had. I know this has been a time of trial for both of them. I have found it, while certainly something I would rather have not happened, to be a time of God's Spirit being especially discernibly present and visibly working in all of our lives. I covet your continued prayers for Helen and all those involved in her care.

I find myself to be, at intervals, increasingly limited by my back problems. I would be less than honest if I didn't say that there are moments at which I am simply quite tired of being in pain, but there are more moments in which I have found this to be a great grace. As I said to someone recently, I used to run through walls but now I bounce off them. I believe the latter is a much healthier perspective, and I am reminded of my mentor Thomas Merton who came to terms with his health problems when he realized (to paraphrase) that his body was not telling him to die, but rather to slow down. I have found in the slowing down a profound richness in my prayer life. I would suggest that one does not have to encounter physical limitations to achieve slowing down - a wiser person that I might just decide to slow down and discover for themselves that rich presence of God that has always been there but was obscured by busy-ness.

I find myself blessed by the addition of wonderful new colleagues in ministry during the past year. The ordinations of Rebecca Pierce+, Mary MacInnes+, Mike Wilson+, and Tommy Sheppard+ have been blessings to all of us. The relocation of +Eron Hull and John Jadwisiak+ to Milwaukee, as well as the aforementioned ordination of Mike+, have strengthened not only our staff at Love of God, but also our UAC presence in the State of Wisconsin, which with Ann+ and Chrystal+ now numbers six clergy. The beauty of our situation in Wisconsin is that, unlike other small jurisdictions with concentrations in other parts of the country, we are actually doing ministry in Greater Milwaukee and the Fox Valley.

Locally we have also been blessed by the Love of God family, which has stepped out boldly in faith in procuring full time space for the cathedral community. There are times when we don't know how we will pay the rent, but our experience has been that, somehow, the money appears. We have an active outreach to several disenfranchised folks in our local community, and earlier this month we offered (in conjunction with UMOS) free HIV testing at Love of God. I am so proud of what this faith community has done, and I am confident we will do even greater things in the future to serve the local community.

Finally, I look forward eagerly to the next year with all of you. There are hurting people, disenfranchised people, and people who are just tired of hearing the nonsense of the prosperity gospel and/or the God as punishing parent gospel. Both are false, and both have served to separate people one from another as well as from the Church. Particularly at Christmas, we are provided with the amazing story of Christ's incarnation that speaks so clearly against the nonsense of both of these false Gospels. If prosperity is a sign of God's favor, what does that say about the Jesus who was born into poverty, lived in poverty, loved in poverty, and associated with those not in power or privilege but in poverty and powerlessness? Jesus stands, or in this case lays in the manger, as the voice of God against the Creflo Dollars, Joyce Meyers, Benny Hinns, and Joel Osteens of the world who are nothing more than con men in the name of God who seek to separate people from their money and try to use God as an excuse. Or perhaps you really believe that Joyce Meyer's $120,000,000 a year salary from her "ministry" in the name of God can somehow be justified?

The ordinariness of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus - the earthy symbolism of manger, stable, animals, and rejection from the local Marriott - and the people with whom he associated are ample evidence that God doesn't punish those who fail some litmus test of right behavior. If that was the way God worked, why would Jesus have associated with the "notorious sinners" that he ministered among, chose as disciples, and called his friends?

Despite all of the nonsense that surrounds us and masquerades as religion, the Nativity stands as testimony to the reality of the Love of God and against the fear of God. The liberating life of Jesus, who healed, freed, restored, and even brought back to life those whom his society had rejected calls us to realize that the Church can never reject anyone and still be Church. It also frees us to realize that we will never be perfect, that we will on occasion fail, but that there is nothing we can do to separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing.

To those who claim that people can be separated from God we need not say a thing. To those who have heard that message, we need to say that it is wrong and misleading. We need constantly to invite those people into our communities, our churches, our ministries, and yes even our homes. We need to show them God's love, not just talk about it, because talk is cheap - unless it's one of those prosperity folks talking, and then it's very expensive indeed.

This Christmas, and throughout this coming year, may each of us become beacons of love to all we encounter.

God's Peace,

Craig

Performance Based Spirituality

2008-12-16T11:39:00.005-06:00

It's the insidious trend of the present - and probably the future. Performance based spirituality, in its most blatant form, says that if I do what God wants then God will do good things for me. Conversely, if something goes wrong in my life it must be because I made God mad. There are other forms of it, too, some subtle and others not very subtle at all. The so-called prosperity Gospel, which says that if I do what is pleasing to God then I will prosper financially, is another popular version of performance based spirituality. In truth, the prosperity Gospel is not based in any responsible understanding of scripture and the only ones who prosper under such a system are the frauds who perpetrate it, Joel Osteen chief among them. It is a repudiation of Jesus Christ and a return to the primitive notions of the tribal Hebrew people, who themselves were smart enough to realize that the world just doesn't work that way after they were conquered in the sixth century before Christ and the wealthy people were carried off into captivity (and, according to their beliefs away from God's presence in the destroyed Temple) while the poor were left behind in proximity to God. Why then the return to this antiquated and fallacious belief system?

I think the first reason is that as human beings we have something of an innate desire to escape personal responsibility. If I can blame the bad things that happen in my life on something correctable then I can avoid the reality that bad things do happen to good people. I can explain away the misfortunes of others on their personal failings in their relationship with God even as I attribute my own moral failures to the notion of some impersonal "devil" who acts on me and forces me to do reprehensible things. At the same time, I can avoid being realistic about my financial life choices by believing in a prosperity Gospel, which I believe may turn my financial situation around at any moment if only I give enough money to my prosperity pastor (who is, in the end, the only one prospering from this system) and say enough prayers in the right way.

What difference does it all make?

It makes tons of difference, because it changes spirituality from what it authentically is (a healthy, life giving method of connecting with transcendence and understanding our relationship with the Source of all that is) into a system of manipulation and behavior control at the hands of either institutions or con artists like Mr. Osteen. The result is not only personally damaging, but damaging to anyone who might otherwise be inclined to investigate their spiritual lives from a Christian perspective.

Of course, the prosperity con men are not the only ones guilty of a performance based spirituality. The institutional church, in all its forms, has done it for years. Any time anybody tries to convince you that you must do something to be acceptible to God they are trying to talk you into a performance based model - and that model is always defective. All of the guilt imposed by the Roman Catholic Church was nothing less than an attempt to manipulate and control through performance based spirituality. All of the evangelical culture war nonsense is the same thing. Authentic spirituality is about liberation, not about moving from prison to prison is search of a less abusive warden.

It's time for those of us who see it differently to speak out!

A Good Thanksgiving

2008-12-01T14:11:00.003-06:00

Did you have a good Thanksgiving? I had a good Thanksgiving. I suppose the better question is, Did you make a good Thanksgiving. That is a different matter entirely. As Americans, I suspect that most of us rarely make a Thanksgiving - but we should.

What are we thankful for? I suspect many of us could come up with a pretty sterile but readily accessible list - family, friends, health, jobs, our homes, and other similar things. That's a good start, I don't want to be critical of that at all, but I do want to suggest that perhaps we don't realize what we have to be thankful for until we either get some distance in time from things or we start to lose things, or both. Allow me to elaborate...

I have some pretty significant struggles with degenerative disc disease and the pain that accompanies it. It certainly could be worse (and probably will get worse rather than better), but it makes me appreciate a lot of abilities that I used to have but don't have any longer. It snowed here last night - the kind of wet, heavy snow that first snowfalls often are. My wife went out and shoveled quite a bit of it despite the fact that I have set my alarm so that I could take care of it (I suppose her stubbornness is something I should be thankful for, but I confess I struggle with making that particular thanksgiving). When I went outside to finish the snow I quickly discovered that I was unable to do it. Within three minutes I was in terrible pain and knew I couldn't handle the shovel any longer. Fortunately, I was able to start the snow blower and finish the job.

Believe it or not, I am thankful for this experience. I now understand why the guy down the street runs his snow blower for even the smallest amount of snow. I was reminded of how quick we are to pass judgement - after all, a man running a snow blower for a small amount of snow is often seen as lazy, when in fact he may be quite the opposite. I also know that the day is going to come when I can't even run the snow blower.

As western males we spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that our value lies in our brute strength and our ability to accomplish any (physical) task, even against all odds. No wonder we as a society are involved in a never ending (and ultimately futile) attempt to stay young! The reality is that it matters very little how much we modify the exterior of our bodies, the interior continues to age. Unless we find some other way to establish value we are doomed to be miserable.

Other cultures have valued the wisdom that their elders had to offer. I can certainly attest that, despite the fact that I am not yet eligible for an AARP card, I find myself in a place in my life where I can see the mistakes that younger folks are going to make and I have the wisdom to know that there isn't a thing I can do to stop most of those mistakes from happening. I also recognize that preventing those mistakes would prevent learning. What I can do is remain present to offer support and encouragement as the pieces are being picked up after the mistakes have occurred. Is that valuable? I suppose occasionally it is, but more importantly I find it to be extremely rewarding.

Larter this month is the 9th anniversary of my ordination as a priest. I have been blessed for the past four and one half years to serve as Presiding Bishop of the Universal Anglican Church. As with many small, relatively new, denominations I have had the pleasure of participating in the vocational formation of many fine men and women. When the denomination began we had a goal of responsible rates of growth, and we have accomplished that without stagnating. We have made mistakes, and we have done things well. We have been profoundly human. We have evolved as individuals and as a group. I am proud of what we have accomplished, and I am recognizing that my role in that organization is evolving as well. Not unlike the snow shovel there are things I have to delegate to the more able bodied, and that is as it should be.

I have realized that I am, first and foremost, a monk. Granted, I am something of an ideorhythmic monk in an extremely contemporary setting, but a monk nonetheless. I have been, and a various times still serve as, a theologian, liturgist, pastoral counselor, spiritual director, wedding celebrant, and a host of other things. I love them all, but at my core and in my heart the thing I am most of all is a contemplative. The beauty of that is that the life of prayer can never be taken from us. In those quite moments spent in the silence of God's presence none of the failings matter. All of life becomes food for that communion with the One who never rejects us. Everything else will come and go, but it need not be a tragedy unless our hope is in the finite.

Imagine what good we might do for all people if we were able to teach them that simple practices such as meditation can bring anyone to the place where there is an abiding calm and an abiding sense that we do not need to be afraid, that everything is going to be OK. Imagine if people got in touch with the reality that the inner life beings a stability that no amount of plastic surgery can ever hope to come close to providing. Imagine what would happen if we realized that loving our neighbor would bring a greater transformation that any medical procedure could ever hope to bring.

I don't want to imagine any more. For whatever time I have left I am going to teach this truth, to teach that institutional and special interest religion - large and small - is little more than a power and control game that in no way resembles what Jesus intended. I will teach that what we need as human beings is to gather together not to fight against the culture or to advance our special agenda in the name of God. We need to gather to love one another and to reject those voices who would suggest that in the name of love we can hate, or marginalize, or exclude - and let's be clear, both conservative and progressive voices want to do just that.

This is a minority viewpoint. To be sure, there are plenty of voices out there who would advance their platform against what they correctly identify as an oppressive platform - but in the end both perspectives marginalize someone, both perspectives exclude someone, both perspectives are harmful, and neither has much to do with God. How easily we become attached to a narrow perspective in the name of religion, on both the left and the right.

From my chair, we would do well to step away from all special interests and focus on the life of the soul. That's where you will find me.

Toxic Religion

2008-11-20T11:50:00.002-06:00

I had the opportunity to have a most interesting conversation with a woman last Sunday afternoon. Actually, the conversation was very sad, because it could have been used as a textbook illustration of the effects of toxic religion.

Toxic religion is best understood as religion that seeks to control and manipulate its members by convincing them that God is angry with them and will condemn them for all eternity at the smallest provocation. For all its claims to not be based in works righteousness, it is the ultimate system of works righteousness because your trip to heaven is entirely based upon your performance - or lack thereof. Worse than the effects of toxic religion on the individual are the effects of toxic religion on the people they encounter, for surely if I am one misstep away from being cast into hell my family must be in the same boat. Not only do I have to fear for my own eternity, then, I have to fear for the eternal salvation of my family as well. On top of that, many toxic systems teach that I am responsible for the salvation of everyone around me. If anyone steps out of line, I will be blamed by God for failing to stop them. The expectation is perfection, and that expectation is sold to unsuspecting church members by clergy who are really engaged in little more than ensuring high weekly attendance and high weekly collections.

I suppose that if such notions about God were accurate, they would be less damaging - but not much. Before anyone starts arguing about what it says in the Bible, let me just say that anyone willing to take the Bible out of context can use it to prove or disprove almost anything they want. The more important question is whether or not such an image of God makes sense. Anglicanism has always held reason on a par with tradition and scripture when considering theological issues. The toxic god proposed by toxic religion just doesn't make sense and behaves in such as erratic manner that were that god a human being they would be hospitalized post haste.

I truly believe that this vision of God is beginning to be challenged, and that eventually it will fade to a very minority position. The real question that those of us who are in the more progressive churches need to start asking ourselves is, "How are we going to help all those people who have been so misled about God for so long?" The fallout will be enormous. Imagine, people for the first time being faced with making decisions for themselves rather than asking their pastor what to do! Imagine the freedom, but with that freedom comes a whole new level of personal responsibility. No longer does the devil, or anyone else, make me do anything. No longer can I attempt to control my family members and use God as my reason. No longer can I refuse to associate with anyone in the name of religion, and even more importantly no longer can I seek to ostracize or limit the rights of any other human being in the name of my religion because we have seen the truth that such things are never the will of God, but rather only the will of toxic religion.

The time has come.

A Call for Perspective

2008-11-06T10:38:00.002-06:00

I have steadfastly avoided endorsing any political candidate throughout this campaign because I do not believe it is appropriate for leaders of faith communities to do so - not because to do so endangers our tax exempt status, although it does, but rather because all faith communities are comprised of people with varying political perspectives and I do not believe it is part of my role to alienate any of them.

Now that the election is over, I have a few observations...

To my conservative religious friends, particularly Roman Catholics but also evangelicals, who are praying for the conversion of Barack Obama: You need to repent. Barack Obama is a member of a United Church of Christ parish in Chicago. That makes him a Christian, and you need to sit down and shut up.

To my conservative religious friends, Roman Catholic and evangelical, who are upset because their "pro-life" candidate didn't win: You aren't pro-life, you are pro-fetus. Be honest about that, or sit down and shut up. If this confuses you, read the blog post immediately preceding this one.

To my gay and lesbian friends who are so upset over the passage of Prop 8 in California that they have lost all perspective and become so self absorbed that all they can see is that loss, and not the victory of a presidential candidate who talks about full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in society: Get over yourself, stand back, get some perspective, and understand the difference between losing a battle and winning a war.

To my friends of color who see this election only as a victory for people of color: We all need to see the reality that this victory goes way beyond race and that it was accomplished by multi-cultural support - and for the victory to effect real change President Obama will continue to require support from all Americans. Celebrate the victory. It is long overdue. Let us move forward together.

No one is exempt from the tendency to view life while wearing a very large set of blinders, but we need to remove those blinders at every opportunity. The situation in this country, indeed in the world, demands that we remove them. We can no longer make decisions or cast votes based upon single issues or pet projects. At one time, long before any of us were born, that might have worked - but the world today moves at a faster pace and is much more complex than it was one hundred years ago.

People of faith certainly must vote in a way that is informed by their faith, but when we reduce the way in which our faith informs us to a single issue we distort not only our perspective but our faith as well. Clergy who suggest otherwise are more interested in winning popularity contests than in speaking the truth and following God. This particular issue cuts both ways, liberal and conservative. We need to move beyond the tribal notion that we all must think alike and/or vote alike in order to be faithful members of our religious communities.

In the last eight years the people of this country have willingly surrendered their rights to a government that chose to use fear of an unknown - and often misidentified - enemy. Churches have been largely complacent in this effort. Homeland Security, or KGB America, has become more and more powerful because we as a nation have committed the idolatry of substituting nation for God. There is nothing inherently sacred about this country, or any country, and God does not favor one country over another. When we go to war, God grieves because everyone who is killed in war is one of God's children.

Gays worry about gay issues, straights about straight issues, people of color about issues of color, white people about white issues, on and on ad nauseum. What we really need to is to worry about human issues - about ALL people in ALL places at ALL times.

Get over yourself. The world depends on it.

"Pro-Life" Legislation is an Oxymoron

2008-10-27T11:56:00.004-05:00

After some extensive reflection, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as pro-life legislation regarding the issue of abortion. The problem is that the largely religious forces who are behind making abortion illegal are at best overly simplistic in their ethical assessments or at worst bald faced liars when they use the "pro-life" label.

First, the general problem is that if you are going to label yourself "pro-life", then you need to be pro-life across the board. You need to be opposed to the death penalty because the death penalty ends lives - and if you are "pro-life" then you by definition must be opposed to ending life for any reason.

Second, if you are "pro-life" then you must be pro-social welfare programs as well. It makes absolutely no sense to assert that you are "pro-life" and then allow the very fetuses you supported in your anti-abortion crusade to live in squalor, disease, receive a substandard education, and live a life of chronic under or unemployment. To be consistent, you must support adequate social programming.

Third, if you are "pro-life" then you have to be concerned about the elderly, that they have adequate health care, prescription drug coverage that renders their medications affordable, adequate housing and long term care coverage, and adequate hospice benefits.

Finally, if you are really "pro-life" then you recognize that the abortion question is complicated and not just a yes or no question. You recognize that legislation to stop legal abortions will not stop illegal abortions, and illegal abortions out the mothers at risk. Therefore, you can't have that one both ways. You simply have to rely on winning the hearts and minds of the individual mothers.

Some of you will say that all of this is too expensive. I say to you that we have been paying for an ill advised first strike war that was based completely on lies and we have been paying for that for more than five years. If we want to be truly pro-life, we can. The problem is that way too many of us are willing to settle for being only pro-fetus - largely because being pro-fetus doesn't cost us much, and being pro-life is expensive indeed!

Vote Sarah Palin for Anti-Christ

2008-10-23T11:33:00.002-05:00

Yes, I can actually make a case for that biblically, but that's not my point here.

My point is that Sarah Palin is nothing more than a small town political hack who is willing to compromise what little integrity she has for a shot at the big time. Think I am wrong? Let's try again.

Sarah Palin plays at the politics of racism and loves every minute of it. If she didn't, if she actually had any integrity, she would refuse to do it. She panders to anti-Arab sentiment in this country and to anti-Black sentiment in this country in her futile attempt to push the corpse that is her running mate into office. Think I am wrong? Look at all the crackers hanging Obama in effigy, in their yards.

Sarah Palin is little more than George Wallace - not the comedian, the former Governor of the State of Alabama who ran for President on a platform that called for the return of all African Americans to Africa. Actually she is less than Wallace, because I don't think she is as intelligent as Wallace was. On the other hand, she is more than Wallace because I can't imagine ever getting drunk enough to sleep with George Wallace when he was alive....

We need to send Sarah back to Alaska and allow her to fade into obscurity, running her State with her usual fascist charm.

The god of Materialism

2008-10-20T09:16:00.001-05:00

Our Country, and perhaps before long every corner of our world, is in the midst of a financial crisis that some experts believe is worse that that of the Great Depression.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom I often disagree, has rightly said that much of this crisis stems from the fact that our financial system isn’t real. Wealth – enormous wealth – has been made by the buying and selling of pieces of paper called stock certificates. The prices of stock are determined by the sellers’ and buyers’ “confidence” in those pieces of paper. The problem is that there isn’t anything tangible behind those pieces of paper. There aren’t any goods or services, merely the notion that I own something. If you ask me what I own, all I can show you is a piece of paper – and I can buy 500 sheets of blank paper for less that five dollars.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things in all of this crisis to date is that the price of gasoline has actually dropped more than a dollar a gallon. I’m certainly not complaining about paying less for gas, but if gas is coming down as everything else is going up due to fear and superstition I take it as a pretty good indication that we have been getting gouged by the oil companies in this country for a long time – and I believe it is time for real governmental regulation of not only the oil companies but much of our economy. In America the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. We are now reaping the harvest of that corrupt system.

As Christians, we are called to love God and love our neighbor. For all the nonsense we hear from the religious right about this being a “Christian nation” we as a nation are consumed with acquiring wealth – very often at the expense of others. How is that love?

Jesus spoke of acquiring wealth for ourselves in heaven – not on earth, because earthly wealth perishes. We are certainly seeing the wisdom of that teaching! While we all need enough to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over our heads, if you asked the average American how much is enough I suspect their list would go way beyond food, clothing, and shelter. We have bought into the extremely erroneous god of capitalism that teaches us the lie that the road to happiness is paved with belongings and senseless acquisition.

How much is enough? We probably live better without the stress of wondering where our next meal comes from, but we now see in a very real way the stress of wealth.

On the other hand, if you aren’t heavily invested, this isn’t hurting you so much yet. If you didn’t have half a million dollars in the stock market, you didn’t just lose two hundred thousand dollars. That isn’t to say that the impact of a slowed down economy won’t hurt people who aren’t heavily involved in Wall Street, because it will. I am saying that it is more than a little ironic that those who tend to hide behind a wall of denial about the existence of the poor are the ones who have been most heavily impacted by this crisis – and their fear is that they will become those very people they deny exist – the poor.

In fact those who learn to live with less have more time to spend with their families. Those who learn to live with less have better relationships with their children, fewer stress related illnesses, and avoid the roller coaster ride that so many who took a bigger mortgage than they could ever realistically afford are on right now.

It’s time to take another look at St. Francis.

Would you like a book about the Lord Jesus?

2008-10-13T15:41:00.004-05:00

That's what the guy at the airport last night was asking everybody who passed him. In the interest of truth in advertising, it wasn't a book. It was a lot more like a pamphlet. It doesn't really matter, though, because I don't want your book or your pamphlet or your Bible tract or any other propaganda you might feel inclined to be passing out at the airport or anywhere else, you freaking moonie - and I wish you would stop doing stupid crap like this that leads people to believe that all Christians are like you - just as much the boor as the average Jehovah's Witness. Mormon, or Southern Baptist who comes knocking on my door and doesn't understand the meaning of, "No, thank you."

What's more, these techniques are just about as effective (and almost as painful) as using a hobby soldering guy to shrink your own hemorrhoids. Both procedures require your head to be almost completely up your ass to see what you are doing.

You can't argue people into belief, you can't reason people into belief, you can't scare people into belief, you can't debate people into belief, and you can't obnoxious them into belief. The best you can hope for using these techniques is compliance - and compliance is a very different thing from belief.

If you doubt that, just think about the people you have met who have announced to you that they have found the Lord Jesus, or found God. Frankly, I never realized either of them was missing, but I may not have been paying attention. Usually these people have had the misfortune of running across one of the chromosomally impaired propaganda distributors in the midst of some life crisis. They receive a pamphlet or some similar nonsense from a lobotomized street corner evangelist and actually believe that saying a simple prayer will actually remove them from the problems of daily life and deposit them in the same haldol induced haze that the tract bearer inhabits. Once they find out that faith isn't like waving a magic wand, the Lord gets lost just as quickly has he was found - returning to that glorious hiding place called reality.

Funny thing is, I just can't find the Bible verse that says "Go and be obnoxious in all nations..."

Why I am not an evangelical or a fundamentalist.

2008-10-06T14:37:00.003-05:00

I just don't have that kind of energy.

Really.

Nor do I have that kind of time.

What's more, I pretty much like to leave the being God part to God.

I don't have the time or energy to evaluate everything that everybody says to decide if it is in accord with proper thought or doctrine, and then if the statement was made by someone in the church to send them nasty letters threatening them if they don't recant whatever they said that I find disagreeable. I don't want to spend the rest of my life reading what someone else says about a book or movie before I decide if I am going to allow myself to read the book or movie or choose to avoid it to save my eternal soul.

I don't believe my mind is so weak that books or movies have that kind of power over it.

I don't want to worry about who we need to keep in or put out of the church - in fact, I don't think anybody should be put out of the church no matter what they do. I don't want to pretend that I know the mind of God, because it seems to me that is the height of arrogance and idolatry. I don't want to have to pick apart every word in last Sunday's sermon every Monday morning so I can confront my preacher is there is something I disagree with because that makes me the error free arbiter of the mind of God - and there we go again with the arrogance and the idolatry. At least as important is that there is a word for people who are constantly picking apart the thoughts and work of others - and that word is ASS.

I'm not an evangelical or fundamentalist because I am not an ass.

I don't want to have the whole focus of my religious life be on the negative - what shouldn't be happening, what shouldn't be said, what shouldn't be read, what shouldn't be thought and on and on ad nauseum. I want it to lift people up, not tear them down. Why? Simply because that's what Jesus did.

I'm not evangelical or fundamentalist because I want to follow Jesus, not a Pharisee.

I don't want to have the whole point of my worship experience be a 45 minute Bible study that is supposed to be a sermon that is given by someone who is everything I don't want to be. I want a Sacramental life and Sacramental worship, because in the Sacraments I encounter God.

If this makes you mad, that's OK. You can be mad. You can tell all your friends not to read my blog or worship in my church. You probably have already, and that's fine with me - in fact, it proves my point.

And that's why I am not an evangelical or a fundamentalist.

Sports, the emotional salvation of every American male

2008-10-02T14:15:00.002-05:00

I like sports as much as the next guy. As I have gotten older I have become a bit more selective about what sports I will watch. I used to watch anything even remotely sports related. Now I confine myself pretty much to the NFL, Major League Baseball, select College Football games, and the NCAA tournament. Oh, yes, and - of course - women's tennis.

That having been said, I am always a bit surprised at social gatherings to see that most of the males are much more comfortable talking about the history of even the most inept sports franchise than just about anything else. God forbid they talk about their wives or children, current events, hobbies other than sitting on their asses watching sports.

We have raised a generation (or three) of emotionally crippled males. Maybe the mystery of the divorce rate isn't such a mystery after all. Maybe the biggest enemies of good old "family values" are fathers who are fluent in their discussions of all things sports but completely illiterate regarding anything that really matters in the lives of their family members.

Obnoxious Evangelical Christians in Public Places

2008-09-30T13:07:00.004-05:00

I was at Barnes & Noble last week in the Religion Section when I had to rescue a Roman Catholic woman who had been cornered by a zealous "Reformed Christian" of unspecified etiology. He was in the process of explaining to her just what was wrong with the Roman Catholic Church when I came around the corner. I decided to do the only decent thing and distract him long enough for her to escape, so when he started in about a literal Bible, I challenged him with Psalm 75:3 - which he was unfamiliar with. She looked at me gratefully and escaped. Unfortunately, I was then the recipient of his nonsense. Honestly, that was the last thing I wanted to spend my Friday night doing - I just wanted to be left alone - but it was worth it to save this poor woman who had unwittingly become the recipient of his boorish approach to Christianity.

He told me he had "known the Lord for the last five or six years." That has always been a strange statement to me, "known the Lord." I wonder if the people who use this kind of language run into Jesus at a cocktail party or some other social gathering. Who introduces these people? Most of the people I know have been introduced to me by someone else. Does Jesus have meet and greet events that I haven't heard about? Is Jesus on Match.com or eHarmony? It all seems very odd to me.

Then another curious thing happened. He started telling me how the early Church Fathers and the early ecumenical councils interested him greatly. Those were the people who really knew the scriptures and the Church, he said. They were serious about their faith. They had everything right. Then about five minutes later, he said he didn't go for that Catholic Bible. You see, the so-called Catholic Bible includes some books and parts of books in the Old Testament that appear only in the Greek versions of the Hebrew Scriptures commonly called the Septuagint but not in the original Hebrew versions of the Hebrew Scriptures. What this newly minted friend of Jesus was overlooking was that the same Church fathers he was so very fond of (and I am fond of them as well) used the Septuagint. Greek was the language of commerce. When St. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin he translated it from the Septuagint as well. So, my self proclaimed seminary student new friend of Jesus managed to contradict himself in a very big way without being aware of it.

This is the problem with trying to argue or cajole someone into belief or faith. It doesn't work. I don't believe it was ever meant to be used as a tool to introduce people to faith. You see, real faith comes by living, through experiencing God present and active in our lives. All the argumentation in the world doesn't equate with faith. When you add to that the truth that every analogy limps and every argument has holes in it, you realize that the standard evangelical approach is impotent.

So please, if you must argue confine your arguments to other evangelicals and don't chase people out of bookstores with your boorishness. You would do far better to spend the time in prayer so that you might come to actually experience Jesus instead of just cogitating about him.

Of course, that would call you to some real change in your life. It's probably much easier to be obnoxious.

The dumbest question ever asked...

2008-09-30T11:02:00.002-05:00

Do you belong to a Bible believing Church? That is the dumbest question I have ever heard, and reflects both an ignorance and an arrogance that are not only unbecoming a Christian but are unbecoming a human being of at least average intellectual functioning.

Here's a news flash: every Christian Church is Bible believing. Just because two Churches understand the Bible differently does not mean that one of them is not Bible believing. It may mean that the two Churches see the Bible differently, but that is quite a different thing from not believing in the Bible. It is the height of arrogance to assume that if I understand the Bible one way and you understand it another, it must mean that you don't believe in the Bible. Not only is that a fallacious argument, it assumes that I am the sole arbiter of what is correct belief. That would make me God and that, my fascist evangelical friends, is idolatry.

It's time to come off your high horse. Stressing this Bible-believing nonsense may make you feel better, but all it really does is reveal your own ignorance. It also directly contradicts Jesus' instruction to remove the plank in your own eye before attempting to remove the speck in your brother's eye.

If I didn't know better, I'd say you really worship the Bible and not the God found there in. Bibliolatry, anyone?

SAVE THE RICH!!!

2008-09-25T14:50:00.002-05:00

First, a disclaimer: I am not an economist. Yet another reason to be thankful.

Am I the only one who finds it more than a little ironic that our government repeatedly tells us that they don't have enough money for things that would benefit the common man and common woman, but let corporations get in trouble, let the wealthy get in trouble, there is more than enough money to spare.

While I recognize that the current financial crisis in this country potentially effects every person in this country, I find it more than a little ironic that we can't afford universal health care and we can't afford to adequately fund education, and we can't adequately fund Medicare but we can bail out the same insurance and investment companies that are responsible for this mess - despite the fact that the cost of doing so exceeds the cost of the war in Iraq (the other economic disaster that has occurred on the watch of the debacle that is the Bush administration).

I am absolutely furious that our government has any intention of bailing out ANY insurance company - the companies that exist to take our premium payments and then deny our claims. It is unconscionable that our tax dollar is being used to bail out companies that perpetuated the disaster that is an adjustable rate mortgage and then sold them to people who they knew would not be able to afford the rate adjustments.

I am not suggesting that the answer is to do nothing. Since I am not an economist, I cannot propose an alternative. I am suggesting, no - I am insisting, that when the government claims it doesn't have enough money to help the common person they are flat out lying. The reality is that politicians of every stripe could not possible care less about you and me. They care about themselves and increasing their wealth - nothing more and nothing less.

It has to stop.

Wanting It Now

2008-09-16T11:40:00.002-05:00

We are not a very patient people. Generally speaking, we struggle with delayed gratification. This really isn't news - marketing types have been exploiting this tendency for years. The real question is, why do we struggle with this?

We struggle with this, and with just about everything else we struggle with, because we are seeking to medicate the pain of not being content with where we are in life. We have bought into the capitalist notion that we must always be moving forward, always progressing. Who defines progress? Well, in the western mind, anyone and everyone gets to define progress for us - the only person unqualified to define progress seems to be the person being evaluated. The problem is that this represents a two dimensional view of life - and the dimension that is lacking is depth.

The view of life that evaluates it in terms of other-define "progress" creates a situation in which life is a race that never ends. Anyone who has ever been in any kind of race, or has even watched any kind of race, recognizes that (1) all races end because no one can race forever, and (2) that the whole point of the race is reaching the finish line. In other words, an endless race isn't really a race at all!

I suppose you could make the argument that the end of the race is death, but that leaves us with a couple of problems - not the least of which is that we are hurrying toward death. The other problem is that as a culture we spend a whole lot of time deluding ourselves about aging and death. We will never look older, we will never die - provided we buy the correct products and use them as directed. Since we spend so much time avoiding aging and death, death can't possible be the point of the race! In the end, this view has us locked into a race that has no point. Is it any wonder we are in pain?

What we need to do is spend some time re-evaluating our priorities - and the first step is determining what we want them to be. Most of us have never done this. In fact, most of us are convinced that our happiness is linked to forces that are very unstable and not at all reality based. If, for example, your happiness is linked to the stock market you will always be dependent on the whims of investors for your feeling of security and happiness. Ultimately, that means you have no control over your own happiness. Do you really want to settle for that? The truth is, even if you believe that sort of arrangement will provide happiness for you, it won't.

Ultimately, happiness is found in being content with life as it is - and recognizing that everything changes, all the time, and we can't control the changes. We can plan, we can be proactive, we can do any number of things, but in the end whatever is going to happen will happen. Our happiness is ultimately tied to our ability to accept that reality. Not only do we not have to be in control of everything, the truth is there is very little that we can control. While that may seem frightening, ultimately it is very liberating.

Good Wedding Band - An Oxymoron?

2008-09-15T10:18:00.002-05:00

Is there such a thing as a good wedding band? I don't mean a relatively good wedding band, I mean a good wedding band. I don't mean a good wedding band that is defined as such because they are just a bit less crappy than every other wedding band. I mean a really good wedding band.

Every time I see a wedding band full of white boys with the obligatory white female singer doing a white bread version of "Proud Mary" or "We are Family" I want to scream. More personally offensive to me are the uptight versions of "Sweet Home Alabama" and other southern rock classics that are done with all the feeling of the average upper middle class sexual encounter. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so predictable.

It gets even worse if the band has a horn section. As one who is old enough to remember what horn sections brought to bands like Chicago and Blood, Sweat, and Tears I just want to weep when I see some clown with a muted trumpet try to add a little flair to some piece of drivel from the vast musical wasteland that was 1980s pop music.

I'm not saying that any wedding entertainment option is without danger. There are certainly more than enough bad DJs out there - but I certainly have seen good DJs. Karaoke is almost always a bad experience - its only usefulness is that if you find yourself actually enjoying it there is a pretty good chance that you are too drunk to drive home. Give the keys to someone else immediately!

Maybe my problem with wedding bands stems from the fact that they are always mediocre, and never authentic to who they are. I'm not saying I could do any better, but then again at least I am honest about who I am.

Vacations

2008-09-08T10:42:00.002-05:00

My wife and I actually went away for the weekend this past weekend. With the exception of our honeymoon four years ago, this was the first time we had been away together (other than to visit family) in the seven and one half years we have been together. We have taken other trips, but always with an agenda - visiting family, attending a conference, and similar things. After this trip, I have come to the conclusion that the experts are right - we work too much. If you doubt that, just Google "American work hours" and check out the figures.

We take pride in how hard we work, and I suppose that isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it is taking a terrible toll on us. Statistics also reveal that we are sleep deprived. Aside from the physical toll this takes on all of us, there is a relational impact as well. I can't help but wonder what the impact of our work habits is on our children, our marriages, even on our availability to establish and maintain friendships. I suppose you could make the argument that such sacrifices were worth the benefit gained, but I am a little hard pressed to identify the benefit. A little nicer car, a little bigger house, status, prestige...I am not at all convinced that any of these are worth the price of increased isolation from other human beings - especially those we claim to love!

I clearly remember never seeing my father through my middle and high school years. He left early for work and came home late, and when he got home he crawled into a bottle. For him, and I suspect he is far from alone in this, the place he got validated was at the office, so it really wasn't about the money as much as it was the validation. That kind of thinking is a self fulfilling prophecy, however. If you are never home, it is more than a little absurd to imagine you will get much validation there.

As a culture, our solution to way too many of life's problems is to work more. Depressed? Work more. Economic downturn? Work more. Got a tax refund? Spend it right away, then work more. The problem is that things will not keep you warm at night (with the possible exception of an electric blanket). Things will not care for you as you age. Lonely people are never made less lonely by sitting among their possessions.

We need to reclaim an ancient monastic value - simplicity of life. I'm not saying that we all need to sleep on a mat on the floor and eat sparse vegetarian meals twice a day. I am saying that we have lost all sense of perspective. Every small step we take to live just a bit more simply potentially frees us to spend time with those we claim we care about. That will make us more human, not less.

Of course, we won't make quite as much money. If we eliminate a few of our luxuries, however, we won't notice the loss. In fact, if we succeed in eliminating some of our unnecessary expenses (and please, if you make more than $25,000 a year don't tell me that you don't have unnecessary expenses) we will find that we are able to take the occasional weekend vacation with those we claim we care about.

Imagine that impact that would have on families! One of the things that I find a bit incongruent is the "family values" folks who preach a "spend, spend, spend" outlook. If you really believed in families, you wouldn't encourage indebtedness. If you really believed in families you would work for labor laws that allow people to earn a living wage working a 40 hour week and outlawed mandatory overtime. As part of those laws, you would also mandate paid vacation. The naysayers will cry that this would negatively impact the economy - but if we are living more simply that threat simply won't work. The truth is, either we care about people and their families or we care about filling our own pockets at their expense. You simply cannot have that one both ways.

So what's it going to be?

The Truth

2008-09-04T20:43:00.002-05:00

Many of us struggle with the truth. In fact, many of us are so in the habit of lying that we lie even when it would be easier to tell the truth. Someone asks us a question - perhaps about why we do something - and we answer with a lie when we could just as easily answer with a very truthful, "because that's how I choose to do it." Of course, we imagine we are quite slick - that nobody could possibly tell we are lying. The newsflash is that the odds are very good that we aren't fooling anybody.

I'd like to propose an experiment. For the next seven days, keep track of how many times you tell a lie. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, or why you lied, or what you hoped to achieve. Just keep track every day and when you get home write the number down on a piece of paper. Before you go to bed, add how many additional lies you have told. Use additional sheets if necessary. At the end of the week, collect all your pieces of paper and come up with a total. Once you have a total, cut the crap and add in all the lies you "forgot" to record. Then answer this question: Who am I? Do you even know any more?

The truth is, if we ever want to have a spiritual life we need to get honest - and we need to start with ourselves and rapidly move to everyone around us. Nobody living an inauthentic life ever had a satisfactory spiritual life, because if you can't be honest with yourself you sure aren't going to be honest with God.

If you are clergy, we have a real problem.

Politics, the last haven of the social boob

2008-09-04T12:43:00.002-05:00

I don't know if you have noticed this or not, but nothing brings the social boob out of the closet like an election year.

You know the type. The person who during the course of an average year can't hold a conversation about much of anything other than themselves, or else perseverates on other inappropriate topics like their genitals or religion, finds themselves especially exercised about politics during an election year. It's almost as if being boorish three out of four years isn't enough for them - they feel compelled to complete the triple crown of social buffoonery on the fourth year by carrying on ad nauseum about presidential politics. I suppose it gives them something to feel superior about, and if they need that so badly I don't begrudge them their moment of self deluded importance - I just wish I wouldn't have to be the recipient of it. In fact, after a short time I find myself facing the choice of either messing with their heads or dosing off into a apathy induced nap.

So please, just leave me out of it.

It's all about WHO?

2008-09-02T13:02:00.002-05:00

I have sad news for you. It's not all about you. It's not all about me, either. It's all about all of us. What is all about all of us? Everything.

Yesterday was Labor Day. The best part of my Labor Day was that I only accidentally stumbled onto Jerry Lewis once, but I digress. Labor Day is the day when politicians talk about jobs, and how we need jobs in America, and how we need to keep our American jobs in America. It gets even worse in an election year.

And if you are a Christian, you cannot agree with any statement about how we Americans need to be employed at the expense of others because Christianity isn't about America at all - it's about the people of God, the vast majority of whom are not American at all. The Christian perspective is that ALL people have the right to earn a living wage under humane working conditions. Anything less is not acceptable.

The religious right in this country has fallen prey to the idolatry of nationalism. They have, for some reason that I can't even begin to comprehend, equated what they believe is good for America with the will of God. That is idolatry, nothing less. Authentic Christianity calls us to a much broader perspective, one that sees that the boundaries between nations are human constructs, not divine ones. We simply must be concerned for ALL people at ALL times and circumstances of life.

You see, it's not all about you.

OK, really, enough....

2008-08-28T14:00:00.002-05:00

I'm fat, and I'm OK with the fact that I am fat. I also cover myself up.

This weekend is the 105th Anniversary celebration of Harley Davidson.

After some observation, I have concluded that there is some connection between riding on a Harley Davidson and:
1. Forgetting you are fat and/or
2. Deciding the whole world wants to see your excess flesh oozing out from under leather clothing that is at least 2 sizes too small and/or
3. Believing that one more tattoo will make your fat invisible or attractive.

Now I understand why Harley riders drink so much. If you had to look at that all the time, you would drink to excess, too. I just might have to start myself.

Integrating Progressive Faith with Devotional Spirituality

2008-08-26T10:32:00.003-05:00

If there is one thing that is usually missing from progressive faith, it is a devotional spirituality. I believe this happens because progressive spirituality tends to be completely rational. For many people, if it can't be explained it can't be part of a progressive spirituality. There is a certain amount of arrogance that underlies that position, and a lack of realism as well. All of us have things in our lives that we can't quite explain or understand that we accept as fact because we have experienced them. I know that the sun rises even though I can't explain it in a scientific way. I know my car starts when I turn the key even though I don't understand how a car engine works. Why then do we insist that every article of faith be explainable? Perhaps we fear loss of control. Of course, to fear losing control we have to buy into the illusion that we are in control.

Ask a person on the side of the freeway changing a flat tire if they are in control. Ask a person whose furnace goes out on December 25th if they are in control. If we really were in control nothing bad would ever happen because we would take the necessary steps to stop the bad thing from happening. Even if you don't buy into the notion that God is in control, honesty will compel you to admit that you are not in control.

I heard a true story this morning about a woman who recently lost her husband to cancer. She took a long drive with a family member yesterday. Her passenger plugged her own Ipod into the car stereo and played some music. The first five songs this passenger played were the favorite songs of the driver's late husband - and the passenger had no way of knowing that. Do you honestly want to write that off to chance? I could list endless examples of similar incidents. If you close your mind to the possibility you will find a way to explain them as chance happenings. The problem is that progressive folks are supposed to be open minded, remember?

I have always been floored by self-identified progressive folks who are critical of people of faith who who engage in prayer practices such as the rosary, Eucharistic adoration, or intercessory prayer. Those who look down upon others who have a devotional spirituality need to look at themselves honestly and asses what right they have to be critical of another person's devotional practices. It is nothing less than hypocritical that those who would criticize (and rightly so) the Roman Catholic Church as being too restrictive of the spirituality of her members then turn around and dismiss the spirituality of others as simplistic or naive.

The truth is that to have a well developed and well rounded spirituality you simply must have a devotional component. It doesn't matter what devotional practices you engage in, but you must do something to have a faith that is not only cognitive but also affective. If you never feel it, it will never move you in any significant way. If you never allow your faith to touch your heart you will never experience the presence of God you claim to crave. Forget about control and start living.

The Elephant on the side of John McCain's face

2008-08-19T10:08:00.004-05:00

There's an elephant in the room, and it is attached to John McCain's left jaw. Apparently no one has noticed it except me. Even Rick Warren didn't notice it.

The problem is that the Presidency has become a sacred cow. There is no sacrifice too large, apparently, in one's pursuit of the Oval Office's -- not even an obvious recurrence of cancer. And the man Time magazine named America's most powerful Pastor chose to avoid doing what would be best for the person of John McCain by not mentioning the elephant in the room/on the face. So much for integrity -- or maybe it's just that there is no sacrifice too great to maintain one's unofficial status as Powerful Pastor. What was it that Jesus said about the last being first, Rick?

Of course the reason everyone ignores the elephant is that Americans suffer from a profound ignorance about things medical, and so campaigns don't want to take the chance of frightening potential voters by having the tusk removed from McCain's jaw. They worry that voters might decide not to vote for McCain because he might die, so they ignore McCain's new tusk in a spot where a previous malignancy occurred. In other words, rather than take the chance that voters might think McCain is going to die they are willing to take a chance that may hasten his death in order to keep the voters calm.

Am I the only one who sees the insanity in that?

Unity in Diversity

2008-08-12T10:54:00.002-05:00

Unity in diversity. It's a goal that many aspire to, but few achieve. I believe that the failures occur because we tend to focus more on our differences than on our commonalities.

In her excellent book Where the Edge Gathers Bishop Yvette Flunder reports that groups that have been marginalized tend to gather together around the issue that the majority have used to marginalize them and then they celebrate that issue. To paraphrase, they turn that issue from something that others would have them be ashamed of into a cause for celebration. I believe that is a good and important step in the history of a marginalized group. I also believe that if full inclusion of the marginalized group is the eventual goal of the marginalized group they must eventually move beyond focusing on that single issue.

As a parallel, I offer the example of a person who has been the victim of abuse or assault of some sort. In the early stages of their recovery, they identify as a victim and tend to seek the company of others who have had the same experience. This is important and a vital step in the process of recovery from trauma. As these folks work through their issues, hopefully they come to see themselves not as victims but as survivors. That means that, among other things, they move from understanding themselves as people who are acted on by others to people who feel they are in charge of their lives. It is absolutely necessary for this to happen to move beyond the trauma. Sadly, many of us know people who live most of their lives in the victim role. Becoming a survivor does not mean we forget what happened to us, but rather that it no longer dominates our experience. Every decision we make is no longer filtered through the lens of "assaulted person." That fact becomes but one part of our now integrated identity.

As Presiding Bishop of a radically inclusive denomination and a priest in a radically inclusive Church I have come to observe that this same failure to integrate that we see in the victim mentality. I know one woman in particular who frequently comments on how many of "us" (gay or lesbian folk) were at worship compared to "them" (heterosexual folk). The honest truth is that I (as a heterosexual) honestly don't even think of the sexual orientation of our members until she brings this up. This kind of "us vs. them" mentality is actually a barrier to unity in diversity. Mind you, I'm not talking about a don't ask, don't tell policy. It's fine to be whoever you are, but in terms of forming community I believe we need to spend more time talking about the things that we share in common - a sense of mission, a vision for the future, a common faith, a common heritage, the fact the we live in the same part of the community, the impact of the economy on our lives, and uncounted other things - than subconsciously attempting to create rifts by focusing on our differences.

It doesn't really matter what our personal issue of marginalization is - in truth, we all have them. The reality is that until we can move beyond shaping our identity principally around that single issue we haven't healed enough to be an effective member of any community. We can talk about Fred being a recovering addict, Sally being lesbian, John being blind, Mary being divorced, Peter being unemployed, Jane having a history of being a battered woman, Dave needing Viagra, and Dan having herpes - but if we are truly looking for unity in diversity we need to spend more time talking about the things we share in common. If we are going to build community across diversity we absolutely need to find common ground because communities form because of the things we share in common.

None of this means that we can't talk about our differences - we can and we must. However, if we are to become a healthy community, we must reach the place where we realize we are loved and accepted by the other members of the community. We must also realize we are loved not because of our differences but rather despite our differences. That's the only way it will work.

It's August - yet another sign of aging

2008-08-04T12:54:00.004-05:00

It's August, and surely that is another sign of aging for me. I remember years ago - maybe not all that many years ago - I welcomed August with a mixed feeling of anticipation and sorrow. For school aged children and their parents, the beginning of August is a stark reminder of the beginning of a new school year. By August 1st most stores have stocked their back to school merchandise, and denial is harder and harder to maintain. When I was heavily involved in playing and umpiring softball August always meant the season was almost over and the tournament was about to begin. Those sorts of season ending realizations are always bittersweet. We look to the ending of something that has been fun with the anticipation of seeing old friends again or finally determining a champion. This year I am especially aware that I no longer have school aged children (college starting again just isn't the same) and I am a "retired" softball player (although, I could always threaten to come out of retirement like some sort of softball version of Brett Favre, except without the talent). The result is that August has taken on a new meaning for me.

August now means that we might be close to getting some relief from the heat. It also brings with it a sense of perspective. Those things that once seemed to be major life events are now taken in stride. Actually, in some ways they are also a relief. There is absolutely nothing I miss about back to school shopping, school registration and fees, or orthopedic procedures to repair softball damage. Mind you, just because I don't miss those things doesn't mean that I regret having done them - quite the contrary.

Perhaps one of the great gifts of experience is that we gain enough wisdom to move beyond the need to simply do everything. We become (hopefully) OK with just being instead of always having to do. That transition doesn't come easily. Most of us have to be forced into it by changing life circumstances. It's only after the fact that we realize just how much frenetic activity we engaged in during our 20s and 30s.

The good news is that there are spiritual practices that can introduce us to this truth. It isn't necessary to wait until life forces the transition upon us. The Church needs to take responsibility for its failure to teach spiritual practice in favor of its politics of power and doctrine. The path to transforming lives is through spiritual practice that leads us from doing to simply being. It's never too soon to start.

Paying Dues

2008-07-29T11:03:00.001-05:00

It seems like nobody believes in "paying their dues" any more. Everybody wants the short cut, everybody wants it now, everybody has huge problems with delayed gratification. The problem is that there is a good reason for "paying your dues". The reason is experience.

You would hope that the Church would be exempt from this nonsense, but it isn't. There are many self proclaimed clergy out there who rapidly "promote" themselves because they want to run their own show, or feed their own ego, or achieve fame, or any of a host of other misguided notions. As a result, there are actually clergy out there with very little experience in ordained ministry who have declared themselves "bishops" and recruited clergy to associate with them. I am virtually certain they don't tell those who associate with them that they haven't the first idea what they are doing. There is a word for that, and the word is deception.

A ministry based on lies is no ministry at all. It is the product of ego run amok, and it is a problem in the Church. It is especially a problem in the Independent Movement, which has credibility problems in many areas due to this sort of irresponsibility. For these folks, it's all about them when it should be all about God.

General Assembly of the Universal Anglican Church

2008-07-29T09:35:00.003-05:00

I am in the process of recovering from the General Assembly of the Universal Anglican Church, which was hosted by Love of God Cathedral in Waukesha, WI from July 24-27, 2008. It is a good sort of recovery - a recovery from time well spent and important work well done.

Gatherings like the General Assembly always cause me to reflect on what the early Church must have been like - people of good faith coming together to map a course for the future, to talk about the needs of the people we serve, and to celebrate a unity in diversity that exists in the UAC and existed in the earliest Church as well - until Christianity became the religion of the empire and the inevitable push for conformity set in. It is that very [perceived] need for conformity that cripples most of Christianity today. As anyone who has ever wrapped a Christmas gift is well aware, when we try to force things into packages that do not fit we damage them. If they are living things, we injure or even kill them. Nothing could be more alive than faith, and nothing could be more damaged by a requirement to conform.

One of the things we discussed during our meetings was what distinguishes us from so many other denominational (and non-denominational) bodies. We arrived at the conclusion that there are two major distinctions that we celebrate.

The first is that we celebrate the love of God, not the fear of God. We reject the notion of a judgmental, punishing God as a distortion of scripture while we affirm the fact that we have a God of love - and that we have no need to fear that God. We bring the good news that there is no need to worship someone else's vision of God. We offer a place to celebrate the God of your experience - and that is key to the second distinction.

The second distinction is that we strive to celebrate unity in diversity. We resist the urge to establish elaborate doctrine because we recognize that doctrine is ultimately an instrument of division, not inclusion. Instead, we agree to come together and openly discuss the God of our experience and also agree to live in the (hopefully creative) tension that exists in those discussions. We note that as we look at the created order we see great diversity. Why should we expect the community of the faithful to be monolithic?

There were many wonderful discussions during General Assembly, and I will write more during the coming days. I believe we are experiencing a true renewal in the Church - a renewal of freedom and the reality of the experience of God. I am excited to be a part of that renewal!

The Right Thing

2008-07-21T12:28:00.003-05:00

What motivates you? To a certain extent that question is an over simplification. I suppose that very rarely is there just one motivation for any action. Generally speaking, however, I do believe we can look at our actions and sense some common motivations running through them. We learn a lot about ourselves when we examine our motivations and look at how often they have to do with ourselves compared with how often they are more altruistic. Stated more directly, how often are we motivated primarily by personal gain and how often are we motivated by a sense of what is right?

Of course, the two motivations do not necessarily have to conflict, but often they do conflict. At what point does personal gain outweigh what we instinctively know is the right thing to do? Is there a question of profit? Is $10 enough to get us to do the wrong thing, or $100, or $1000? Do we really all have a price at which we can be bought? Perhaps most importantly, what price do we pay as human beings when we make the wrong choice?

In my experience, people who are constantly looking to get ahead at the expense of others pay a price for that in their lives. Most often they do not make the connection, but the added stress levels in their lives prove that something is amiss. The truth is that constant scheming and looking to work every angle possible is tremendously stressful. We deceive ourselves into believing that we are not bothered by our actions, but our bodies tell us otherwise.

The sad thing is that we are not talking about major decisions. We aren't talking about people who are trying to decide whether or not to kill someone. We are talking about people who shortchange others, or run up bills without ever intending to pay, or who overcharge others, or who cheat on their expense reports. These seemingly minor issues do add up - not in the mind of God, but in our own minds. There is also more than a little irony in the fact that many of the people who routinely cheat others are absolutely livid when they feel someone has done the same to them!

Integrity is under rated in our society. Anyone who follows the media regularly learns of high profile examples of those who seek to cheat others. Pensions are destroyed, corporations bankrupted, lives ruined - all in the name of greed. The only way this is ever going to change is if on a very grass roots level we refuse to compromise. We must be willing to become people of integrity and to insist on the same behavior from all we meet. Nothing less will do!