Padre Mickey's Crew Respond To GAFCON

Padre Mickey and the Mr. Red Peanut Bank crew respond to GAFCON. This will whet your appetite for more:

Tune: Jesus Loves The Little Children

No one’s holier than we are
No one’s holier than we
Red, and Yellow, Black, and White
Unless you’re with us, you’re not right
No one in the Communion’s holier than we!

Ella Fitzgerald - Cry Me A River

Here's No. 3. Use your mind's eye to see Ella on this one, but you don't need to imagine the gorgeous voice and great style. There is an old video of Ella singing the song, but the picture and sound are of poor quality.

"On Being Spiritual And Religious "

Often, I hear folks say that they are spiritual, but not religious, or that they have a relationship with God, but that they don't need to go to church. Who am I to say that they are wrong? I won't say it. I'll simply say that would not work for me. I have a need to be anchored to a community. In my whole life, I have missed church for a total of perhaps three or four months.

I regularly receive the Abbey Letter from St. Gregory's Abbey, an Episcopal Benedictine monastery in Three Rivers, Michigan. Prior Aelred, who visits around and about in the blogosphere, is a member of the community. The following excerpt is from the abbot's message in the the most recent letter:

A decisive factor that led to my becoming religious as well as spiritual was a dissatisfaction with the eclectic approach. I reached a point where I realized that, in order for my spirituality to be centered, it had to be rooted in a particular religious tradition. My settling on Christianity, however, was not made with the sense that one choice was as good as another. At the time of decision, Christ, who very definitely willed certain things, such as fellowship with me, became very real to me. God’s grace and my choice to give myself to the particular Personhood of Christ were so inextricably entwined that there is no way I can separate one from the other. “Particular” is the key word here. The missing ingredient in spirituality without religion is particularity. Before this conversion, it seemed that believing in an impersonal “god”, whose manifestation on earth was not limited to one holy person, preserved my individuality. The irony is, that it is the making of particular choices in terms of friends, a community, and God that has enhanced my own particular individuality.

One of the particularities of Christianity is that the Holy Spirit makes spirituality religious by binding people and God together. The Holy Spirit is more than “the bond of love” between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is a Person who actively brings the Father and the Son together and also actively brings each one of us, in our own particularity, to the Father and the Son and to each other in that same bond of Love. That Holy Spirit inspires us to love everybody, not in general, but in particular. This does not mean that the Holy Spirit gives us the impossible task of relating personally with billions of people. Rather, the Holy Spirit inspires us to follow Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbors. Our neighbors are the particular people who happen to be present in our lives. With the Holy Spirit binding us together with God in this way, there is no room for binding together by way of collective violence. This is how the Holy Spirit makes religion spiritual.

Abbot Andrew in the Abbey Letter, Summer 2008, from St. Gregory's Abbey, Three Rivers, Michigan.

UPDATE: At the Episcopal Cafè, Mark Barrett speaks of "presence" in Benedictine life.

"Troubled Senators" Sponsor Bill

Everyone has this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story, but I liked the Times-Picayune's "Troubled Senators" euphemism in the headline, and I wanted to share. In truth, they are troubled.

From the Times-Picayune:

U.S. Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, have signed on as co-sponsors of a proposed Marriage Protection Act that would amend the constitution to declare that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
....

Some groups that support gay marriage charged that Vitter, whose number had appeared on the phone list for a Washington prostitution service, and Craig, who was arrested June 11, 2007, accused of lewd conduct in the men's bathroom at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, were engaging in hypocrisy.

The groups can't mean that. Hypocrisy is such a harsh word. "Troubled Senators" will do nicely. A touch of irony perhaps?

But Vitter, who has backed legislation against gay marriage since first being elected to the House in 1999, said he will not walk away from his beliefs.

"I strongly oppose attempts by liberal judges to redefine marriage, and so do a very large majority of Louisianans," Vitter said. "As I've said, I am deeply remorseful over having sinned in my past. But I don't think walking away from my beliefs is the way to make up for that."

He won't walk away from his beliefs. A stand-up kind of guy who demonstrates that he has backbone, don't you think?

In addition to Vitter and Craig, also co-sponsoring the proposed amendment are Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.; Sam Brownback, R-Kan.; James Inhofe, R-Okla.; Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; and John Thune, R-S.D.

All my faves are in the act.

Diana Krall - "Cry Me A River"

Here's my No. 2 version of "Cry Me a River". Can you tell I like this song? I like Diana Krall, too - a lot. Her backup musicians are excellent.

The North Pole Without Ice!

To get your weekend off to a cheery start, I give you this article from The Independent:

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
....

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Yes, they'll plunder and pollute that area, too, to produce more of the oil and gas, the use of which contribute to further global warming. As I said in an email to Lapin, who sent me the link to the article, "Sometimes, I'm glad that I'm old. What kind of world will my children and grandchildren inhabit?"

Say That Again

Grover Norquist, a Republican strategist, referred to Barack Obama as "John Kerry with a tan". At present, the Republicans seem prone to stepping in it, don't they? They should watch where they walk.

The US Justice Dept. Pays Out

From TPM:

Facing a massive lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department is opting to give a $5.8 million settlement to Steven Hatfill, the bio-weapons expert publicly tagged as a "person of interest" in the anthrax-in-the-mail scare from October 2001.
....

Hatfill, whose lawsuit against the New York Times was dismissed last year, will receive the lump sum of about $2.825 million and the government will also purchase for him a $3 million annuity that will pay him $150,000 each year for 20 years, DOJ said.

Once word got out that Hatfill was "a person of interest", he was terminated at Louisiana State University, where he worked at the National Center for Biomedical Research. The person who hired him at LSU was fired, too.

By the way, who did send out the envelopes that contained anthrax? No one charged, no one convicted, leaving unsolved a terrorist attack in the US. Why don't the Democrats remind everyone that the case languishes in the hands of the incompetent minions of Bush maladministration? And Bin Laden is still loose. Remember him?

The Chicago Consultation

What is the Chicago Consultation?

The Chicago Consultation, a group of some 50 bishops, clergy and lay people, supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.
....

Our Goals

* To strengthen the movement toward the blessing of same sex relationships.
* To advance the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in all orders of ministry.
* To strengthen the Anglican Communion’s witness against racism, poverty, sexism, heterosexism, and other interlocking oppressions.

The site provides news, such as:

In advance of next month’s Lambeth Conference, the Chicago Consultation has arranged for every bishop in the Anglican Communion to receive a copy of Other Voices, Other Worlds by Terry Brown, Bishop of Malaita in the Church of the Province of Melanesia and Convenor of the Anglican Way group of the Anglican Primates' Theological Education for the Anglican Communion Task Force.

The book offers essays by faithful Anglicans from around the globe who reflect theologically on human sexuality, an issue causing conflict within the Communion.

A section called Making the Case includes essays such as "Shaking the Foundation" by the Reverend Canon Marilyn McCord Adams. An excerpt:

In any event, ‘homophobia’ is no mere expletive, as if a loaded emotive term with no cognitive content. I use it advisedly, with a rather precise meaning: homophobia is the fear that I cannot exist and flourish as who I really am if others come out of the closet about being LGBT. So understood, homophobia is an instance of the false conviction that I cannot be as big as I really am (cannot stand up to full stature) unless others pretend to be smaller than they really are—a thesis that is ancient, dishonorable, and directly counter to the Gospel!

Further, it includes "The Sex Articles"
—a series of reflections on where we stand by The Rev. Tobias Stanislas Haller Vicar BSG, Saint James Episcopal Church Fordham.

I read the essays as Tobias posted them one by one on his blog, and they are excellent, well worth a read.

The Mulitmedia section includes a clip from the first meeting of the group.

I'm pleased to have this sort of information gathered together on one website. Those of us on the progressive/inclusive side have not always done the best job of making our case. This site should prove quite helpful, especially for people like me, without theological or Scriptural studies expertise.

Thanks to Tobias Haller, a member of the group, for the link.

The Annals Of Stupidity

Decorated Army Sergeant Darren Manzella has been discharged under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law banning lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans from military service, effective June 10. The Iraq war veteran was the first openly gay active duty service member to speak with the media while serving inside a war zone.

Mike in Texas has more on the story of Sergeant Manzella, who served honorably in Iraq, but was discharged because of the stupid "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the US military. His commanders and his fellow soldiers knew that he was gay, nevertheless, the bureaucracy knew best. He had to go.