PLEASE PRAY...

From Arkansas Hillbilly:

Could you please add the family of Kathy Berg to your prayer list? She was a member of All Saints and died in a car accident today. She leaves behind a partner and teenage daughter.


May Kathy rest in peace and rise in glory.

May God give comfort, consolation, and the peace that passes understanding to all those who love Kathy.

"CHRISTIANITY...IS A LOVE-POEM"

From Diarmaid MacCulloch at the Washington Post:

What constitutes Christian love amid the sweaty delights of sex? Organized religion always takes an interest in sex, usually so it can tidy people's sexual lives into some easily-managed pattern. The Vatican's traditional emphasis is that God commands humans to procreate. Good sex has the potential to produce children; bad sex is everything else. Bad sex includes heterosexual acts involving contraceptives; masturbation; gay sex acts of all sorts. The equation of sex and procreation remained convincing for centuries because contraceptive devices were expensive, unreliable and even more comic in appearance than they are now. Now, however, readily available contraception has transformed the way in which human beings use and experience sex. Sex has always been fun: contraception has shown that the fun can be detached from the possibility of having children. The Christian tradition is now faced with the reality that pleasure and procreation are two separate purposes of sexuality, and many parts of the Christian Church, especially the Vatican, are baffled and angry.

MacCulloch's words are amusing, but quite true. He continues, opening a window into the manner in which the church came to its stance on human sexuality. Once again, Greek ideas creep in to contaminate the Jewish heritage of Christianity.

Christian theologians in late second-century Egypt took up the theme: 'to have sex for any purpose other than to produce children is to violate nature', said Clement of Alexandria. It does not inspire confidence in Alexandrian judgment on matters sexual that Clement's successor, Origen, is said to have castrated himself because he regarded his sexual organs as a source of moral danger. However, these views on sex were so influential in the Church that we can call the equation of sex and procreative potential the Alexandrian rule. The rule was repeated with enthusiasm by Thomas Aquinas, who did so much to make the Church of Rome see the world through Aristotle's eyes. And so matters in the Vatican rest from the 13th to the 21st century, although its celibate theologians apparently do not now adopt Origen's desperate measures.

All right, now I'm rolling on the floor, but please read the entire essay, for MacCulloch turns quite serious:

Christianity, whether or not you think it's true, is a love-poem. It should not be afraid of love, even when the love seems dangerous and unfamiliar. Christianity has danger built into it.

Yes. Read the rest.

Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote the masterful The Reformation, which I read a few years ago. His newest book, which is sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read, is Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. MacCulloch is nothing if not ambitious in undertaking to write on huge swaths of history. If his latest is half as good the previous work, it will be good, indeed.

H/T to Nicholas Knisely at The Lead

UPDATE: MacCulloch was interviewed on NPR this morning.

A BRIEF PASSAGE FROM "PRIDE AND PREJUDICE"

Indulge me again for a bit with my dear Jane Austen. After writing my earlier post on my life in books, I took up Pride and Prejudice to read last night. What's lovely now about reading Jane is that I can pick up her books and start anywhere, because I know what came before because I've read them so many times, and I can put them down anywhere, because I know what follows. I quote a brief passage which delighted me last night. When I read Jane's books, I stop after reading certain passages to reflect in amazement at her wonderful writing.

Jane's description of the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet:

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

The exchange below takes place after a ball attended by Mrs. Bennet and her five daughters. Mr. Bennet stayed at home with his books, and upon their return, his wife went to his library to give him an account of the ball.

"Oh! my dear Mr. Bennet," as she entered the room, "we have had a most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there. Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Every body said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful, and danced with her twice. Only think of that my dear; he actually danced with her twice; and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time. First of all, he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him stand up with her; but, however, he did not admire her at all: indeed, nobody can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going down the dance. So, he enquired who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next. Then, the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger --"

"If he had had any compassion for me," cried her husband impatiently, "he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of his partners. Oh! that he had sprained his ancle in the first dance!"

And if you really want to know about the relationships and connections in P&P, I found this wonderful chart to help you out. Click on the chart for the larger view.


Am I going overboard? Is the chart TMI? Is the entire post an unnecessary self-indulgence? Well, it is my blog, after all.

STORY OF THE DAY - PLACE BY THE SEA

He kept a piece of algae behind his ear
to remind him of his roots. A million
years ago every place was a little place
by the sea, he would say & my mind
would go blank & I would swim through
the day without a care in the world & it
all seemed so familiar that I knew I
would go back someday to my own little
place by the sea.


From StoryPeople.

EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF RIO GRANDE ELECTS THE REV. DR.MICHAEL VONO

The Reverend Dr. Michael Louis Vono was chosen bishop-elect of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande. Dr. Vono presently serves as Rector of St. Paul’s Within the Walls, Rome, Italy.

From Dr. Vono's essay at the diocesan website:

"As Rector of St. Paul’s, Rome, I live and work with people of diverse cultures and religious backgrounds. My church is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, ecumenical and interfaith community. Our ministries include the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, a sizable Latin American community, service to the elderly poor of the city as well as displaced youth. At the center of our mission and witness is a profound ministry of radical hospitality. "

H/T to Nicholas Knisely at The Lead.

IT'S NOT JUST A NOVEL

 

From the Telegraph:

I can’t have been the only one taken aback to hear that the apparently cheerful and pragmatic Emma Thompson suffered severe depression after the break-up of her first marriage, and to such a debilitating extent that, in her own words, she “should have sought professional help”.

But her choice of self-medication drew a huge nod of recognition, in this house at least. For Thompson was “saved” not by Prozac, or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but by immersing herself in Sense and Sensibility, the Jane Austen novel she turned into an Oscar-winning screenplay. “I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, and then I was all right, because I was not present,” the actress and screenwriter said. “Sense and Sensibility really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way.”

I would not disagree with the healing power of Jane Austen's novels. I've mentioned before my dysfunctional home life, and I don't bring the matter up again looking for sympathy but simply to put in context what reading meant to me in my childhood and youth. The very first books besides school readers that I remember reading on my own were the Raggedy Ann series of books. I still have the books, and the first is signed as a gift from my father when I was 7 years old. I remember the Peter Rabbit and Alice books. We had a large, beautifully illustrated book of nursery rhymes which I poured over. I read the rhymes, sometimes aloud, just for the sound of them, although I knew them from memory, and I loved looking at the illustrations.

I may have read other books before those mentioned above, because I learned to read at the age of 5 when I was in Primer, which in the ancient days was the equivalent of Kindergarten, except we plunged right into the three R's, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. I'm almost certain that we had Joe and Jane, rather than Dick and Jane in our reader. Their friends were Mary and Dan, and the dog was Spot. I believe there was a cat character named Muff.

Anyway, as conditions worsened in my home, reading became not only a pleasure, but an escape into another world. I know that I left my physical surroundings, because I did not hear people when they spoke to me. I was told that I had to be addressed three or four times before I would answer. "You're lost in your book again!" Louisa May Alcott's books were favorites along with Nancy Drew. I remember reading the Five Little Peppers and other children's series, Black Beauty and Hans Brinker, which I still have, along with my copy of Eight Cousins, In those days, the libraries would not stock Nancy Drew books because they were not "good literature", so a friend and I cooperated in buying different titles of the books and lending them to each other.

Nancy Drew books may have been formula books, but Nancy was not a bad role model for an impressionable young girl. Her mother had died; her father was a prominent attorney and quite busy; and the housekeeper, Hannah, had not much control over the headstrong Nancy in her sporty blue (or maroon) roadster. She was on her own, a strong-minded girl, who made her boy friend Ned Nickerson look like a wimp in comparison, always cautioning her to be careful, but she paid no mind to him. Nancy's best friends were two cousins, Bess and George, (a girl!).

When I reached high school age, keeping in mind that I had The Roman Catholic Index of Forbidden Books hanging over my head, I turned to the clean late 18th century and 19th century English novels, which I preferred to American novels, although I read Hawthorne, Twain, Poe, James Fennimore Cooper, (yes, I read all the Leatherstocking tales), Jack London, Melville. Gee, I read more American writers than I thought.

Mixed in were the English novelists, Defoe, Swift's Gulliver (although I did not really "get" the Swiftian satire back then. I read for the story.), Walter Scott, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, the Brontes, Dickens, Hardy, and others, and last but, most certainly not least, Jane Austen, who is my favorite fiction writer in all of English Literature. Henry James, whom I read in college, runs a close second to Austen.

As a 16 year old living in a tumultuous household, Jane was balm to my troubled soul. What sparkling wit! No fiction writer is Austen's equal in writing dialogue. What limpid prose! Reading Jane was sheer delight, not to mention that reading her books took me out of myself and out of my environment. After reading the first of her novels, which happened to be Pride and Prejudice, and which is still my favorite although I dearly love them all, I rushed to read the other five. I wanted to be Elizabeth Bennet. I read Jane's novels, and I read them again, and again, and again, up until now, and when I need cleansing and freshening from the load of drivel in print and on the tee-vee, I plunge into the novels and come away refreshed and renewed.

Jane's gift for irony is, to me, unsurpassed. Disclosure: my alcoholic and verbally abusive father had a gift for irony which was not always inflicted on his wife and daughters, and I learned from him to view our mad world through ironic eyes. I owe him for his gifts of books from an early age and for encouraging me to read by always having books and magazines around the house, even when my mother had to borrow grocery money from extended family. We never lacked for music, either. There's irony for you. To this day, I feel sorry for my poor mother's plight, but, in my heart of hearts, I can't regret that the books and music were present.

Well, I've indulged myself and run on here and strayed away from Jane Austen's part in healing Emma Thompson's depression, but the piece inspired my verbosity here, for good, or for ill. One last thing: I believe that reading Jane Austen's novels in my impressionable teen years contributed for the good to the formation of my moral center, which should give pause to anyone who says, "It's just a novel."

Note: The picture above is of P&P from my favorite of the editions of Austen's novels that I own. I purchased the set new some years ago for the modest price of $55.00 for all six books in the set, which includes her minor works.

Thanks to Lapin for the link to the article.

UPDATE: While I'm on the subject of Jane Austen, I'll give a nod to another new blogger, Penelopepiscopal, who is an admirer and who chose as her blog name (or header?) a quote from Austen's Emma. She is, as you may gather from her name, a fellow member of the Episcopal tribe.

"JOSHU-AH"

Florrie Forde, British music hall's most enduring singer of chorus songs, is joined here by Harry Fay in the 1912 hit, 'Joshu-ah!'


Lapin sent me the link to the video, because I have a grandson named Joshua. What can I say? Shall I show the video to my grandson? What will HE say?

Those were simpler times, indeed.


The chorus:

JOSHUA

Joshua, Joshua,
Why don't you call and see Mama,
She'll be pleased to know
You are my best beau.
Joshua, Joshua,
Sweeter than lemon squash you are.
Yes, by gosh you are,
Joshu-oshu-a."

DARK WAY

I'm not sure if the world's all that
serious, she said, or if it just has a really
dark way of having a good time.


Wow!

From StoryPeople.

LETTER TO HISPANICS FROM BISHOP KIRK SMITH OF ARIZONA

From Bishop Kirk S. Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona:

Today I have sent the following letter to our Spanish-speaking Arizona Episcopalians:

My Dear Spanish-Speaking Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
photos from around the Diocese

Today is a sad day in the struggle to see all God's people treated in a humane and compassionate manner. I had hoped that our Governor and law-makers would listen to their consciences and not be swayed by the voices of bigotry and racism. With the Governor's signing of SB 1070, it seems that for now the advocates of fear and hatred have won over those of charity and love. Arizona claims to be a Golden Rule State. We have not lived up to that claim.

I know that the passage of this law is deeply troubling to many of you, especially those of undocumented status. I know that many of you fear for your jobs, your families, and your future in this state and in this country.

You are not the only ones affected. According to this law, anyone giving food or even water to an undocumented person in need could be subject to arrest. What would Jesus say?

I am writing to encourage you not to loose heart.

First, there is no need for panic. This law does not take effect for 90 days. During that time there will be many court challenges, including those coming from the federal government. The law might be tied up for months or years in litigation, and I believe that there is a good possibility it will never go into effect.

In the meantime, know that the majority of us in the Episcopal Church, and in many other churches and faith communities, stand with you in support and solidarity. We will continue to work as hard as we can to defeat this law and to work toward just and fair laws that protect the rights of all human beings. We all know that our immigration system is broken, but it cannot be fixed by scape-goating the most vulnerable of those among us.

Finally, know that God is with you in this struggle. Jesus always stands with the oppressed. You therefore have our concern, our prayers, and our support.Kirk Smith

Faithfully,

+Kirk

Episcopal Church bishops are doing us proud today: First Bishop Benhase and now Bishop Smith.

H/T to Andrew Gerns at The Lead.

HOPE FADES FOR MISSING RIG CREW

From NOLA.com:

Barring an overnight miracle, the search for 11 workers missing for more than 48 hours after an oil rig explosion was expected to be called off early today as two drilling companies and the federal government marshal resources to contain leaking oil after the burning rig sank Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico, creating what an industry official said "has the potential to be a major spill."

Hope for survivors dimmed Thursday as some of the 115 rescued crew members said the missing workers may have been near the Tuesday night explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig about 45 miles southeast of the Mississippi River's mouth, said Rear Adm. Mary Landry, commander of the Coast Guard's 8th District.

With a water temperature of 67 degrees, the probability of finding survivors had diminished to almost zero by Thursday afternoon, Landry said.

Working on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico or any offshore waters is not for the faint of heart. The potential for a dangerous accident is quite high. The Gulf provides around 25% of the US oil supply.

Please pray for the missing workers and for their families and friends.

Pray also that the leaks in the sunken rig can be contained and not lead to a major oil spill.