Lazy Blogger

Peeps, I am a lazy blogger at this time. I'm tired of church infighting. I'm tired of politics. I can't get excited about blogging anything right now. When I've got nothing to say, it's best to say nothing, don't you think? I'm apt to make a fool of myself, if I speak.

One small thing. Yesterday, Lindsey Graham was hoist on his own petard while questioning a witness at the Senate subcommittee hearings on torture.

From Greg Sargent at The Plumline:

Hmm, not a great moment. While directing hostile questioning at a witness during the Senate torture hearing, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham cited an infamous ABC News report from 2007 that said a terror suspect broke under minimal waterboarding, and suggested it undercut the claim that torture didn’t work.

But Graham didn’t appear to be aware that the report has since been debunked, and that ABC itself has since corrected the record.

I know that I'm supposed to be a good Christian woman and all, but I don't like Lindsey Graham, and I experienced satisfying Schadenfreude when I saw his Whoops! moment on the tee vee.

Graham is a lawyer. Isn't it a basic rule of thumb amongst lawyers that it's best not to ask a question, if you don't already know the answer?

Of course, I could be wrong.

Image from Veto Corleone.

Oceanographer To Presiding Bishop

From Search Magazine:

Katharine Jefferts Schori loved being an oceanographer. She thought digging in the mud for squids and octopuses and trolling the Pacific Ocean with the National Marine Fisheries Service was the most fascinating job in the world, and had spent more than a decade studying biology, chemistry, geology, and meteorology to prepare for it.

Because of Reagan era budget cuts for scientific research, she lost her job at the fisheries service and could not find another doing what she loved, working in the field - rather the shore or the water.

However, the priesthood was far from her thoughts, even after suggestions on separate occasions by three people

But being approached by three people separately about ordination was strangely moving, too, so she discussed it at length with her pastor. Meanwhile, Jefferts Schori, never one to sit idle, threw herself into volunteer work, chairing the parent-teacher organization at her daughter’s school, founding a chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and serving on the board of a women’s philanthropic group in Corvallis. She also studied religion at Oregon State University, taking courses she was later asked to teach. Slowly, her grief over a lost career in oceanography began to fade.
....

One Sunday in 1991, Jefferts Schori was asked to preach at Good Samaritan while the clergy were away at a convention. The Episcopalians gathered at Good Sam that morning liked what they heard and told her so. “The experience of preaching, of preparing to do it, and the feedback I got afterward, finally let me hear the surprising thing people in the congregation were asking of me,” Jefferts Schori says. She is no pulpit thumper, but the former scientist’s sermons are quietly effective. She moves with ease from biblical exegesis to scientific analysis to wry, self-deprecating anecdotes, goading and exhorting along the way but rarely stooping to preachiness or sentimentality. Six months after that Sunday in the pulpit, Jefferts Schori entered the seminary.

Daniel Burke does a fine job in this article, telling the story of how Bishop Katharine went from oceanographer to Presiding Bishop. Check it out.

When the videos of the candidates for the position of Presiding Bishop were posted at the website of the national office, I watched all six of them, and, judging just from the videos, I was most impressed with Bishop Katharine, but I thought she had no chance of being elected. However, I put myself on record in the comments at Terry Martin's old blog, Fr. Jake Stops the World, saying that I thought she was the best of the six. I was as surprised as anyone when she was chosen. I think that it's cool that we have a presiding bishop who is a woman and a scientist.

H/T to Three Legged Stool.

Rye Bread

The 80 year old was amazed at his friend's stamina, and asked him what he did to have so much energy.

The 87 year old said, 'Well, I eat rye bread every day. It keeps your energy level high and you'll have great stamina with the ladies.'

So, on the way home, the 80 year old stops at the bakery. As he was looking around, the lady asked if he needed any help. He said, 'Do you have any rye bread?'

She said, 'Yes, there's a whole shelf of it. Would you like some?'

He said, 'I want 5 loaves.'

She said, 'My goodness, 5 loaves. . . by the time you get to the 5th loaf, it'll be hard.'

He replied, 'I can't believe it, everybody in the world knows about this (sh--) stuff but me.'


Help! Doug is discriminating against me. The only jokes he sends me that are postable (and this one was borderline) are about old folks. Can I sue?

Those Were The Days

Welsh singer Mary Hopkins in 1968.

The video is blurry and mostly out of sync, but, if that bothers you, close your eyes and listen and enjoy.

The joke cartoon below made me close to weepy nostalgic.

Please Pray - From Fran

I feel a bit stupid doing this as I have been so absent on the blog front of late but I am going to be bold and request your prayers for my friend and for my sister in law.

My sister in law OS has shown evidence of malignant cervical cells. Due to her age, weight and other health conditions her doctor is recommending her to a special surgeon for a hysterectomy. She is very frightened. O is not a woman of particular faith, actually has been quite scarred by it. That said she is wanting to pray and be prayed for. It is in the nature of my husband's family to expect the worst in all things and then actually manipulate things unconsciously to bring the worst forth and "be done with it." Please pray for her health but also for her hope and faith, which is what she really needs.

Although she has not asked me to do this, I am asking for ongoing prayers for less-and-less of a lurker Chris. She has said a few words and I know she has corresponded with at least one of you. She also has reached out to Roseann by phone, she feels so quietly connected to this community. She has had her ongoing health challenges that I have asked for prayer about in the past and these are indeed ongoing. Please support her and hold her in prayer. Chris is often taking care of everyone else, I seek prayers to take care of her!

For those of you who do post prayer lists, if you can post this on your blogs, great. If not, no worries, just thank you from deeply in my heart for the prayers.

And I am fine - presentation at diocesan event went well... so thanks for your prayers on that. Also ongoing thanks for all the amazing help I received and paid the deductible for my car. I send my love, gratitude and prayers to and for all!! I am just too busy this week and actually already late to leave the house which I will not return to until 10pm tonight. That's cool though, all is well, thanks be to God!!! Your collective prayers for me are ever present, well received and appreciated more than words could ever say.

Love,
Fran

The Ravages Of Aging

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

The ABC Sums Up the ACC Meeting

And I sum up the ABC's summing up by recycling my words in the comments at OCICBW, where I found the link to the Archbishop of Canterbury's summation of the meeting. Why not? They're my words..

From the Anglican Journal:

Archbishop Williams said that Anglican provinces are “a bit reluctant” to engage the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant in greater detail because it “does underline for us that the possibility of division is there, the possibility at least of certain kinds of division.” He said people have spoken of the future of the communion as a federation, “an association within which some groups are more strongly bound to one another and some groups less strongly bound.” He added, “I suspect that will be more inevitable if not all provinces do sign on to the covenant. And I hasten to add that’s not what I hope. It is what I think we have to reflect on as a real possibility.”

Arrgh! Clear as mud.

Archbishop Williams urged Anglicans to think about how the Instruments of Communion – the ACC, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, and the primates’ meeting – “can continue as organs of life-giving exchange” even if other alliances emerge.

And I say:

"Tell me how those entities have been life-giving recently. I can't see it. And this man is our leader?

"And he will attend our General Convention. As Paul, the BB, suggested, let's put him in the Exhibit Hall, as he did with Bishop Gene Robinson at Lambeth. He can be Exhibit No. 1, but he will not be allowed into any of the meetings."

The ABC goes on to say:

The challenge is, “how can those who share that cost, that sense of profound anxiety about how to make the Gospel credible, how are they to come together for at least some measure of respect to emerge, so that they can recognize the cost that the other bears and also recognize the deep seriousness about Jesus and the Gospel that they share?”

To which I respond:

"I'm afraid that I can't share the ABC's anxiety about how to make the Gospel credible. The Gospel is credible if it is preached just as it is and lived out. It is not lived out by passing a thrown-together Covenant, which is not a covenant at all, but only an instrument to discipline and punish.
....

"I'm experiencing a wee bit of anger. Every time a group of Anglican Communioners get together, they waste money and burn fuel which fouls the good earth, only to spew forth a load of crap, which further fouls the earth. For what? The so-called covenant which is not a covenant?

"Someone needs to put the covenant out of its misery with un coup de grâce instead of leaving it to die a slow, painful death."

A True Blessing

Ostrich at Head in the Sand is troubled at this time by mental health problems. Pray for her that she heals and gets the proper help from the mental health care givers.

Also, she has a lovely poem of her very own posted, along with a gift of a blessing for those who have prayed for her, in the form of a video of John O'Donohue reciting his poem titled "Beannacht", which is wonderful and which I found to be a true blessing.

I posted a smaller version of the heading of her blog, because her larger version startles me every time I visit - just so you'll be prepared. She's quite benign and non-agressive, so don't be fearful.

Go, Dickie, Go!

From Richard Cohen in the Washington Post in 2006 on the war in Iraq:

We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic.

Let's see. I'm not doing too well today. Who can I beat up on so I'll feel better? I need me some therapeutic violent action on someone else, preferably someone weaker than I am - some bully violence.

Cohen has a regular gig at the Washington Post, the closest we have to a national newspaper besides USA Today.

In his column today, Cohen says:

Blogger Alert: I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney. I know how upsetting this will be to some Cheney critics, and I count myself as one, who think -- in respectful paraphrase of what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman -- that everything he says is a lie, including the ands and the thes. Yet I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works.

Is Cohen talking to me? No, surely not. He's talking to the big-name bloggers. Is he losing his mind? That's seems a possibility to me.

Cohen goes on:

Cheney is a one-man credibility gap. In the past, he has said, "We know they [the Iraqis] have biological and chemical weapons," when it turned out we knew nothing of the sort. He insisted that "the evidence is overwhelming" that al-Qaeda had been in high-level contact with Saddam Hussein's regime when the "evidence" was virtually nonexistent. And he repeatedly asserted that Iraq had a menacing nuclear weapons program. As a used-car dealer, he would have no return customers.

Still, every dog has his day, and Cheney is barking up a storm on the efficacy of what can colloquially be called torture.

When Cheney barks Cohen listens. Cheney lies over and over, yet Cohen is still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Go, Dickie, go.

Is Cohen the best that the WP can do to fill the space on their opinion pages? I'll wager his pay is not chickenfeed, either. Is it any wonder that blog readership grows as newspaper readership diminishes?

H/T to Atrios.

Pluralist Speaks At The Episcopal Café

From Adrian Worsfold at the Episcopal Café:

If you go back to Tuesday June 27, 2006 and the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments , it was clear that the Anglican Communion Covenant was intended to divide the Anglican Communion into core and association elements, with privileges of participation given to the core in strengthened, centralised, Instruments of Communion making the Anglican Communion more like a worldwide Church.

So strongly was that envisaged, that the difference between being a core member and an associate was like the difference being an Anglican and a Methodist. It was solution by centralisation and organised hiving off, somehow better than a schism.

Whoa! Please read Adrian's entire essay at the Episcopal Café on the ACC meeting and the Ridley Cambridge Draft Covenant. Adrian is English, but he speaks our common language in a way that I understand perfectly.

There was something distinctly crafty about the RCDC. It would let in non-Canterbury Anglican Churches, and even dioceses of non-signing Canterbury-linked Churches, according to Dr Ephraim Radner. GAFCON theologian Stephen Noll thus urged a speedy signing on to the Covenant of his approved Churches including the Anglican Church of North America on the basis that the entry conditions were biblical and orthodox. While The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada dithered, his Churches could steal a march on them. Gregory Cameron spoke about a weight of Churches that might then mean a difference between core members and associates after all.

Thus the Covenant, more inclusive in its formal text, was a document of manipulation, allowing the kind of result it was intended for by the creative means of joining.

Ouch!

On taking up his job, the present Archbishop of Canterbury ditched his moderate narrative liberalism but retained his Catholicism, because the latter was seen as still legitimate. He used this as an institutional solution for the Anglican problem, but when an institution spins outwards the answer is to loosen up not tighten up. The whole of the Covenant process has been one of impossible expectations, and instead of accepting that there will be more Anglican difference and even competition, the attempt to divide and centralise has just increased the amount of recrimination as expectations of 'disciplining' could not be met. Anglicanism is not and cannot be the Archbishop's vision of a worldwide Church all based around bishops. His policy has been a complete and utter failure, of only half of what makes up Anglicanism, and whereas the previous Archbishop was arguably ineffective and blundering this one has been, I suggest, positively destructive as well as ineffectual in action. It may be that his options have never been very many, but the policy intention and direction was wrong from the beginning. Look at what was said in 2006 and look at the outcome now.

I've said myself that if the Archbishop of Canterbury intended from the beginning to divide the Anglican Communion, I hardly think he could have done a better job of it. In the end, few from either side are buying what he's selling.

And he will be present at General Convention 2009 of the Episcopal Church. Why will he be at our convention? I'd like to see him politely disinvited, if that's possible, or perhaps he could be there, but excluded from the business of the convention, as was Bishop Gene Robinson at Lambeth. He could hang around the fringes.