PRAYER FOR THE ELECTION OF A PRESIDING BISHOP FOR THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Almighty God, giver of every good gift: Look graciously on your Church, and so guide the minds of those who shall choose a presiding bishop for this church, that we may receive a faithful pastor, who will care for your people and equip us for our ministries; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"LOCKE" - THE MOVIE

The film, directed by Steven Knight, is gripping, harrowing, and claustrophobic. Nearly the entire movie is filmed inside a moving car with with one character, Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), a foreman in the concrete business, talking on the phone with various voices on the other end of the phone. Ivan is on his way to London from the hinterlands at night, in the dark, under great stress. The moving car lights on the road and road lights whizzing by are dazzling, dizzying, and blinding, all of which make for a dangerous ride and sustained suspense for the viewer. Will Ivan make it to London in one piece?

Locke has a cold; he coughs and constantly wipes his dripping nose throughout the film. The viewer sees Ivan's face, arms and hands, surrounded by darkness and never gets a look at the rest of him.

One bad thing after another happens to Ivan all along the way, but we hear about them only through the phone conversations. As Ivan's life begins to fall apart, in a sort of crazed desperation, he talks to his dead bastard of a father about how well he's handling all the problems. At one point, he says, "The Lockes were a long line of shit, but I straightened them out." And yet, and yet, even as he's near the edge, Ivan maintains enough control and sanity to deal with the problems as best he can, with very mixed results.

Hardy as Ivan is superb; words fail to adequately praise his performance. As noted above in the conversations with his dead father, gallows humor (unintended by Ivan) runs throughout the course of the film. I think especially of Ivan's attempts to calm the women on the other end of the phone by repeating, "You're distressed", and to calm those around the women with, "She's distressed". Another instance is when Ivan responds to one of the voices wanting reassurance that everything will work out, "Absolutely!...hopefully" The actors doing the voices on are terrific, too, especially Andrew Scott as Donal, Ivan's assistant on the job.

After watching the movie once, I decided to see it again before I sent the DVD back to Netflix, and I watched once more the following evening. Indeed, I had missed parts of the dialogue that I picked up on the second viewing, so it was a good thing I saw the film again. Not quite so harrowing the second time around, but nonetheless quite enjoyable.

RANDOM QUESTIONS FROM A GRIEVING, RACING MIND

Are we now seeing the beginning of the breakdown of civil society in the United States?

Have we ever had a civil society in the US?

Is there greater violence now, or were we always a violent nation?

When is a massacre by a white person a terrorist act, an existential threat that we must fight with all our might?

When will we give attention to the phrase "a well-regulated militia" in the Second Amendment and seriously discuss the meaning of the words? Or does the phrase signify nothing whatsoever?

Not that I expect answers, but I do believe we need to start talking about these matters.

Though I know them to be true, I was saddened by President Obama's words.

We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.

Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear:

At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.

It is in our power to do something, but we will talk about the shootings for a while, and then we will do nothing.

The president said further:

The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.

The dark part of our history goes back to the beginning, with the Founding Fathers acceptance of the institution of slavery for the sake of unity.

PRAYER FOR THOSE WHO DIED IN THE MASSACRE AT EMANUEL AME CHURCH

Dear God, may all those who died in the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, rest in peace and rise in glory. May God give comfort, consolation, and peace to all who love them.

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

Oh God, let it be.

The names of those who were killed:

Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41
Ethel Lance, 70
Susie Jackson, 87
Tywanza Sanders, 26
Cynthia Hurd, 54
Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton,45
DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49
Myra Thompson, 59
Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74

"CALVARY" - THE MOVIE

The other evening, I watched the film Calvary written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, starring Brendan Gleeson, as Fr James, a good Roman Catholic priest serving in a small church in the north of Ireland. Gleeson's performance is riveting, comparable to Mark Rylance's work in Wolf Hall. In Wolf Hall, it was Rylance's eyebrows and silences that so often communicated without words.  Gleeson, who is a large bear of a man, appears in nearly every scene in the film, and his rough, mobile facial features speak volumes without words.

McDonagh's script doesn't flinch as it takes us through the via dolorosa, which is Fr James' everyday life and most surely tests his faith to its limits. The good priest has the heart of a pastor and goes about his parish work shouldering the burden, as many priests do, of the aftermath of the child abuse scandal.   A dark comic thread runs through the movie but does little to relieve the sadness and gloomy portent that pervade the film.  Though I was completely caught up in the story throughout the course of the film, I found it difficult and disturbing to watch, but, at the same time, it was impossible for me to turn away. Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal came to mind.

The movie was filmed in and around County Sligo in the north of Ireland.  Though the beach scene settings and recurring views of the impressive Benbulbin rock formation are picturesque, I could not help but think of the town and the surroundings as relentlessly godforsaken places.

Writing about Calvary was probably the most difficult review of any I've ever done, because I admire the film greatly, and I wanted to get the words right.  Gleeson is magnificent in his role, and, though he dominates the film, the supporting cast of characters are intriguing and talented enough to hold their own.  In his script and direction, McDonagh resists any temptation to cater to the audience or take the easy way out in tackling difficult and controversial subjects in this splendid and powerful film.

A FIRM "NO" TO THE ANGLICAN COVENANT AT GC 2015

As a member of the No Anglican Covenent Coalition, I support Resolution D022 which has been submitted to General Convention 2015.

Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 78th General Convention of The Episcopal Church affirm our common identity and membership in the Anglican Communion, neither the present nor any desired future nature of which is properly described by the Anglican Communion Covenant; and be it further

Resolved, That the 78th General Convention direct The Episcopal Church’s members of the Anglican Consultative Council to express our appreciation to the 16th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC16, Lusaka 2016) for the gift of inter-Anglican conversation and mutuality in God’s mission engendered by the Anglican Communion Covenant process.

The previous GC declined to vote a firm "No" to the covenant, and now it's past time to lay the Anglican Covenant to its final rest and give it the decent burial it so richly deserves. The courageous dioceses in the Church of England and other churches in the communion voted the covenant down, so, for all intents and purposes, it is dead, and I hope General Convention will add its signature to the death certificate.

Many thanks to Lionel Deimel for his major effort to formulate the resolution and gather the support of a sufficient number of deputies to submit the resolution to GC.

WHO IS REWRITING HISTORY?

Brian Glyn Williams, writes in a guest post at Juan Cole's Informed Comment of the history of development of ISIL in Iraq, for which Republican candidates for the presidency now blame President Obama. The essay is a long read and a challenge for those of us with short attention spans who are accustomed to sound bites and Twitter feeds, but it is well worth attention as George W Bush's brother Jeb will soon announce his candidacy for president of the United States. A good many of George W's foreign policy advisers are already busy at work in Jeb's campaign.

Today ISIS fighter-terrorists rule over millions of Iraqis (many of whom were formerly secular Baathists under Hussein) and Syrians in a region larger than the U.K. and twice the size of Israel. It goes without saying (well except by the likes of Ms. Ziedrich) had Bush, or more correctly Paul Bremer, not fired both the Iraqi Army and Baathist Party after the 2003 invasion of Iraq there would be no ISIS today. It has been widely demonstrated that the Baathists fired by Bremer in 2003 play a major operational role in ISIS today. The Washington Post, for example, has reported that “almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes.”

Jeb Bush, it's not courageous Ivy Ziedrich who is rewriting history. Your brother is your albatross, and you are compelled to rewrite the history of the Iraq war during the campaign, but at least some of us see your lies for what they are.

Today ISIS fighter-terrorists rule over millions of Iraqis (many of whom were formerly secular Baathists under Hussein) and Syrians in a region larger than the U.K. and twice the size of Israel. It goes without saying (well except by the likes of Ms. Ziedrich) had Bush, or more correctly Paul Bremer, not fired both the Iraqi Army and Baathist Party after the 2003 invasion of Iraq there would be no ISIS today. It has been widely demonstrated that the Baathists fired by Bremer in 2003 play a major operational role in ISIS today. The Washington Post, for example, has reported that “almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes.”

Reading through the essay reopened wounds from the runup to war through the entire debacle, which is not yet over for us here in the US. If Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld had set out to test just how incompetent a government could be in launching and conducting a war, they could not have done a worse job.

PRAYER AND THE PRESENCE OF GOD

On weekdays, I usually read the Scripture passages assigned for the day in the Lectionary and pray the morning, noon, twilight, or evening prayers in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church. Some days, I am distracted nearly the entire time, at times to the point that right in the middle of the prayer time, I think of something I must jump up and do right this minute.  At Sunday services, it's the same, except I don't jump up and leave, but I stay and mouth the words of the prayers with thoughts mostly wandering elsewhere.  Most days are better, days when I'm middlingly focused, wavering between attentiveness and distraction.  Of course, I believe God is always present, but oftentimes I am not fully present with God. 

Ah, but some days are different and quite special, for prayer is easy because I am enfolded in and filled with God's loving and powerful presence in a way that is close to tangible.  If I'm at home, the best response is to continue with the prayers and then remain silent with God.  The felt presence of God is a wonder and a joy, but, in the end, the experience is ineffable, beyond description.  And, at least for me, it is something not to be too much looked for or ever to be counted on.  Nor is it merited by my doing good or avoiding evil, but is rather all gift, all grace.  And who knows, perhaps only God, but that perseverance in prayer in the face of great distraction is more efficacious than prayer that flows easily.

Last Sunday, the felt presence of God happened during the Eucharistic service, and it was quite lovely.  Thanks be to God.

Image from Wikipedia.

ST JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH - THEN AND NOW

St John - 1917

Nearly 100 years passed between the two photos.  The words over the arch are "The Lord Is in His Holy Temple".  The plaque holding the hymn numbers situated on the arch seems to be the same, painted white from black or a dark color, and moved to the left on the wall. Our best guess is the old picture shows a reed organ on the left in the front of the church.   

St John - 2014

When the Victorian decorations around the archway and windows were painted over, I can't say, but by 1969, when we moved to Thibodaux, the decorations were gone.  And all to the good, in my opinion, in our beautiful Greek Revival style church.

St. John's Episcopal Church is locally important because it is the oldest remaining church building of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River. The square on which it is located has been the home of the church parish since it was organized by Bishop Leonidas K. Polk on February 9, 1843. Even though the building underwent some alterations in 1856 and again in 1867-68, it is still a good example of the Greek Revival style, with its classical pilasters across the front and two sides, its entablature with dentiled cornice, and its pedimented gable end on the front. The use of the Greek Revival style for St. John's Church, probably due to its 1840's date of construction, separates it somewhat at least visually from the other Episcopal churches started by Bishop Polk in Louisiana. Most, if not all, of these other churches, which were built in the mid-nineteenth century, are believed to be in the Gothic Revival style.

St. John's suffered interior damage from occupation by Federal troops during the Civil War. Services were suspended at that time. The church was repaired and refurbished after the Civil War, and a recessed chancel was built in 1867-68, with a stained glass window in the west wall, at a cost of $1,500.00 This was the last structural change to the fabric of St. John's Church, although the original stained glass window was replaced in 1937 by the present one. The exterior brick received a cumulative layer of yellow paint, covering the soft red brick until 1969 when it was removed. Thus, St. John's Episcopal Church now appears to passersby on Jackson Street as it did in the mid-nineteenth century.

A closer view of the stained glass window

Sometime later than the old picture, an enclosed choir stall was built where the organ stands, but, in a later restoration, the stall was removed to open up the space and return the chancel to its lovely original symmetry.

Today, the organ console is in the right front of the church, and in the left front stands a fine Yamaha grand piano on loan to the church for our use in services and for the use of visiting musicians in the Music at St John series.

Organ console

The pipes for the 1893 Ferrand & Votey organ, situated in the loft of the church, are shown below.

Further information on the pipe organ may be found here.

My original intention was a simple compare and contrast of the interior of the church then and now, but the post turned into a tour de force of St John's Church.  I'm not called the long-winded lady without reason.  Below is a picture of the exterior of the church, in the event you're curious after seeing the rest of the photos.  As you see, the bricks have, once again, been painted, this time white.

Thus endeth the tour.

MARY LANDRIEU - THROUGH THE REVOLVING DOOR

Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., has signed on as a consultant with a D.C. law and lobbying firm, the firm announced Tuesday.
....

The lobbying firm, Van Ness Feldman, represents numerous clients in the energy industry, including TransCanada, the company seeking federal approval to complete the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline from the oil-producing tar sands of Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

While she was still in the Senate, Mary worked very hard for TransCanada with her persistent advocacy for approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. She knew where her bread was buttered, and the transition must have been smooth and easy.

Landrieu earlier this spring also accepted a position as a consultant to the Walton Family Foundation, a charitable organization of the family that made its fortune on Wal-Mart stores.

Perhaps while consulting with the wonderfully compassionate Walton family, Landrieu may suggest they end their reliance on "welfare for the rich" and rather pay their employees something closer to a living wage so they will not be dependent on food stamps and other government subsidies to house and feed themselves and their families. But surely that's asking too much.

Of course, Landrieu will suffer from constraints, because she cannot actually lobby until 2017.  In an email to former supporters, she stated she will serve as a Senior Policy Adviser for the firm.