"What Happened?"

Because my mind is presently preoccupied with a family matter, my concentration is off, and I should probably stop blogging for a spell. I notice that I'm making more mistakes than usual. Even in the best of blogging times, I make not a few errors. I joke about my policy of "post first, edit afterward". When the editing comes in the title of the post or the first few lines, that makes trouble on the feeds that have already gone out. I get queries about the changes. "What happened?"

Nevertheless, in my own intrepid and probably misguided way, I'll stumble along in my Inspector Clouseau's inner-female persona and attempt to carry on.

Meanwhile from TPM:

The attorney behind the first-ever Birther infomercial started teabagging way before it was cool.

Yes, indeedy. He started back in 1970s during the Ford administration. His name is - wait! - Gary Kreep. The infomercial says that anyone who sends just $30 will receive a "got a birth certificate?" sticker and have "a fax sent in their name to the 50 state attorneys general and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that President Obama produce his real birth certificate." You can watch part of the infomercial at the link above.

It gets better.

The program was produced by LivePrayer.com, a Web site affiliated with Bill Keller, a fundamentalist Christian minister who also hosts the infomercial.

Imprisoned in the late 1980s after an insider trading conviction, Keller later committed his life to God, attended Liberty University in Virginia, and founded Bill Keller Ministries, according to his bio. LivePrayer.com was "founded for the sole purpose of having a site on the internet where people can go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for prayer."

Also from TPM comes really good news. Sarah Palin's book will be out on November 17. I know that you've been waiting with bated breaths. Her book will be titled Going Rogue. That is just so Sarah, don't you think?

Thought For The Day - Is It Just Me?

On occasion, when we sing hymns from the Hymnal 1982 of the Episcopal Church, I detect British Empire references in certain of the hymns.

"What Our Faith Demands Of Us...."

From a guest column by Bishop Alan Scarfe, of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa, in the Des Moines Register:

Iowa finds itself along with the dioceses of the five New England states where equal marriage is upheld in the forefront of the church's conversation on marriage equality. Faith communities are deciding what this means to their traditions or what it does not. Many faith communities have long awaited the chance to celebrate civil marriage for same-gender couples. The Episcopal Church has been engaged with this for more than 30 years - almost alone among churches of the Catholic tradition. That Episcopal couples were among those cited in the Iowa State Supreme Court Ruling is significant.

Of course, we are not of one mind in this. Not all my own clergy or congregations agree with my position in celebrating this opportunity for same-gender couples. But is there not a beauty in this situation? Faith communities that cannot and will not welcome or embrace these marriages have that freedom in this state and nation, even while others that do coexist beside them peacefully and lawfully. When a bishop in Southern Africa learned of the Iowa ruling, he sent me a note asking me its implications. He was concerned that we might be seen as going against the constitution now if we disallowed such marriages. He found it rather admirable that there was no such pressure upon religious institutions, and that there was a specific exemption for religious institutions to pursue their consciences. (My emphasis)
....

Faith, however, demands more of us. At the recent General Convention, we heard a sermon by Bishop Stephen Charleston, a Native-American bishop. He stood before us and said in hyperbole that he "had 10 minutes to save the world." Boldly claiming his anointing as a prophet of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, he said that the alarm clock. which had been ticking away the hours toward our civilization's demise, had stopped its ticking. "The alarm bells are ringing," he said. He went on to say that unless we woke up and put aside those things that have used up our energies for the past 30 to 40 years in our disputes together, and bring the peace among human beings needed to care in common for each other and for the planet God has given us, none of what consumes our heated passions today will mean anything. The generations to come, he added, who will have to rebirth civilization on their burned up cinder of a planet, will not thank us, nor will God thank us.

Fiddling while Rome (and a far larger territory) burns. I mean all the talk of sex is titillating and all that, but don't you get sick of it sometimes? Wouldn't you like to talk about other matters? Why, oh why are we bogged down in discussions about the minutiae of what people do (or don't do!) in the privacy of their homes? The amount of attention that the "thou shalt nots" lavish on the sexuality of other people looks very much like an obsession to me. For one thing, we could take note, as Bishop Charleston says, that "The alarm bells are ringing," and our planet is headed for a burn.

Lord, have mercy!

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth, you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer, p. 827)

H/T to JB Chilton at The Lead.

Please Pray...

...for my niece, Donna, who will have surgery today for breast cancer,

...and for Bishop Mark Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California who will have surgery for prostate cancer. Bishop Marc' wrote a beautiful meditation titled One Bread, One Body on the day that he learned the results of his biopsy.

Before an Operation

Almighty God our heavenly Father, graciously comfort your servants Donna and Marc in their suffering, and bless the means made use of for their cure. Fill their hearts with confidence that, though at times they may be afraid, they yet may put their trust in you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

UPDATE: Donna's surgery is not until Wednesday. I made a mistake, but God promised me that all the prayers already prayed will count toward the surgery on Wednesday. How could I get this wrong? I am sorry.

Living Will

Last night, my kids and I were sitting in the living room and I said to them, 'I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.'

They got up, unplugged the Computer, and threw out my wine.

They’re such asses ...


From not the usual suspect, but from


Ta-Dah!




Padre Mickey!

Grandpère loves this one.

Daily Meditation - Richard Rohr

I would like to reclaim an ancient, evolving and very Franciscan metaphor to rightly name the nature of the universe, and to direct our future thinking: the image of “the Great Chain of Being.” It was a metaphor not of hierarchy but of connection, thus the word “chain.” The essential and unbreakable links in the great chain include

the Divine Creator,
the angels, saints, and ancestors,
the humans,
the animals,
the world of plants, trees, and vegetation,
the waters upon the earth,
the earth itself with its minerals and metals.

Each, in themselves, and in their union together, they proclaim the glory of God (Psalm 104) and the inherent dignity of all things. This image became the basis for calling anything and everything sacred.

Adapted from Hope Against Darkness (p. 135)

From Richard's Daily Meditations.

Story Of The Day - Gap

The only thing that separates me from
the animals is a lot of words, so when
I'm not talking much, the gap closes
really quick.


From StoryPeople.

"No Man's Land"

And the wars continue, and the dying continues on, and on, and on.

Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Story Of The Day

not sure if she's ready for the whole
world, but not sure if she can take
another minute cooped up in that cage
either. leaving the door open so if she
has to come back she can do it with a
minimum of anxiety


From StoryPeople.

Don't Give Up Hope For The Public Option

According to a New York Times poll:

By a margin of 52 percent to 27 percent, Americans believe President Obama has better ideas about overhauling health care than Republicans do, according to a national poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News. And nearly two-thirds of the country supports creation of a government-run insurance plan, or public option. Read the full story.

Folks are waking up to the fact that having health insurance will, very likely, be mandatory, and a good many will want an alternative to fattening the profits of the health insurance companies who treat many of their sick clients so badly. The Congress will have hell to pay if they do not provide a public option that will serve anyone who wants in and not just the poor and unemployed.

Watch Sen. Ron Wyden on Countdown with Lawrence O'Donnell.