JESUS AND MO - MOSES IS BACK

author says:

Moses is back! Where has he been? Nobody knows where he goes when he goes a wanderin'.


Peace and blessings,

J&M

From Jesus and Mo.

MAPLE STREET CAFÉ

Yesterday, Grandpère and I drove to New Orleans to have lunch at the Maple Street Café. Although we had dined at the restaurant some years ago, we had a little trouble finding it, and we ended up about two blocks away. GP went into the building which we'd thought might be the restaurant, but it was a gym. Anyway, he asked directions and was told it was two blocks up the street. We decided to leave the car where it was, since parking is scarce in the area, and walk to the Café. The sidewalks are badly uneven and even broken in some spots because of oak tree roots, and GP kept hurrrying me along on the uneven sidewalks, until I finally told him, "I'm doing the best I can! Stop it, or I will make a scene in the street!" And I would have, but he stopped. Men!

The interior of the restaurant, which is no more than une petite boîte, is attractively decorated. The Google Earth view of the exterior is pictured above. I wanted to take my own pictures but the battery on my camera was dead, after taking pictures of my daughter's newest pet, a black kitten named Paco. The Virtual Tourist has a much better photo, along with all sorts of dire warnings about copyright infringement, so I can only link.

As the first course, GP had the spring mix salad, and I had creamed soup with portobello mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. For an entrée, GP ordered Angel Hair Ziad - Fresh Gulf shrimp sautéed with wild mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes in a light olive oil and garlic sauce, which he said was delicious. I chose Duck Jameel - Pan seared boneless pepper crusted duck breast served with a blueberry sauce, along with a vegetable selection of red cabbage, sliced turnips, and broccoli, and new potatoes. The duck with blueberry sauce was to die for, along with the cabbage, and even the turnips were tasty, and turnips are not, by any means, my favorite vegetable.

To top the meal off, although we'd both had our fill, we sinfully ordered dessert, and I had coffee. Tom ordered the pie of all pies, for him, Key lime, and I had bread pudding with a white chocolate sauce. You should know that I am a white chocolate junkie.

A fine meal and well worth the trip. We'll definitely go there again.

BATHING CATS

 

BUT YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!

 

AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!

 

I DON'T THINK I LOVE YOU ANY MORE

 

N-O-O-O-O! N-O-O-O-O!

AREA 51

You've all heard of the Air Force's ultra-high-security, super-secret base in Nevada, known simply as "Area 51"?

Well, late one afternoon, the Air Force folks out at Area 51 were very surprised to see a Cessna landing at their "secret" base. They immediately impounded the aircraft and hauled the pilot into an interrogation room.

The pilot's story was that he had taken off from Las Vegas, got lost, and spotted the base's runway just as he was about to run out of fuel. The Air Force started a full FBI background check on the pilot and held him overnight during the investigation.

By the next day, they were finally convinced that the pilot really had been lost and really wasn't a spy. They gassed up his airplane, gave him a terrifying "you-did-not-see-a-base" briefing, complete with threats of spending the rest of his life in prison, told him Vegas was that-a-way on such-and-such a heading, and sent him on his way.

The next day, to the total disbelief of the Air Force, the same Cessna showed up again. Once again, the MPs surrounded the plane as it pulled to a stop...only this time there were two people in the plane.

The same pilot jumped out and said, "Do anything you want to me, but that's my wife in the plane, and you have to tell her where I was last night."

The baseless fear of WOMAN as black widow spider.

Don't blame me. Blame Paul (A.). And his wife is a lovely woman.

SEN. VITTER APOLOGIZES

A couple of days ago, I posted on Sen. David Vitter's comments about Rachel Maddow during a radio interview - comments which did him no credit at all.

According to Greg Sergant at The Plum Line, Sen. Vitter has apologized.

Dear Rachel,

Regarding my remark during a radio conversation today, I apologize.

The hosts made their comment and I obviously chimed in. While we do not usually agree on the issues, I do not think you deserved that comment.

Sincerely,

David

The senator could have left out, "While we do not usually agree on the issues...," but still, he aplolgized. Credit due.

Rachel Maddow responded graciously:

Dear Senator Vitter --

As a former radio host who knows how on-air exchanges like that can escalate, I both understand how it happened, and appreciate the apology.

Thank you.

Best wishes,

Rachel

Thanks to Cathy for the link to Sargent's post.

BISHOP ALAN - ON EQUITY AND JUSTICE

Bishop Alan Wilson, of the Anglican Diocese of Birmingham in England, spent last week on retreat at St. Wandrille Abbey in Normandy, pictured above. After Keeping the Hours and being steeped in the Psalms for a week, Bishop Alan writes:

If, quoting Michael Ramsey, “The Church exists that Christ may reign,” our life should be characterised not by weird exceptionalism, but intentional striving for equity and justice. What equity means pragmatically differs from age to age. However the challenge remains constant. God’s justice may transcend that of the world, but it has to be at [l]east as just. And after a week praying the collect, much more elegant in Latin than Engilsh, that Christians may reject those things that do not fit with the name we claim and choose those that do, it just doesn’t make any sense to suggest that basic issues of justice and equity are marginal or secondary, or merely secular impositions. They spring, in fact, from the core of our faith, as reflected in the psalms.

As I responded in the comments at Bishop Alan's blog:

The Psalms speak time and again of equity and justice and have done so for thousands of years, with particular attention to those on the margins. How can we think or speak of these qualities as an innovation in our Christian lives?

Please read Bishop Alan's entire post and view his other photos of the abbey.

The lovely photo above is Bishop Alan's. I hope he doesn't mind my borrowing it. The lush greenery (but not the building) reminds me of south Louisiana.

MY ENNEAGRAM

Main Type	Overall Self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||| 38% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||||||| 62% Type 3 Image Focus |||||| 22% Type 4 Hypersensitivity |||||||||||| 46% Type 5 Detachment |||||||||||||||| 66% Type 6 Anxiety |||||||||||||||| 70% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||||||| 38% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||| 74% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||| 34% Your main type is 8 Your variant is social

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Certain of the results seem right to me, and others not quite right. My Main Type surely gives fodder to those who wish to criticize me. How can I have a tendency to be domineering tyrant and, at the same time, score high on compliant traits and low on assertive traits? Well, it's only a test.

I know that the test is old hat to most of you, and I'm trailing far behind.

Doorman-Priest's sermon on Martha and Mary inspired me to take the test.

ZING!

Maureen Dowd is not amongst my favorite opinion writers, but, at times, she gets it exactly right. I remember her commentary on the Republican members of the US House Judiciary Committee whose members voted to impeach Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair. Dowd described them thusly in the New York Times:

What a tableau. Henry Hyde lumbering across the marbled halls from the House to the Senate, allegedly more in sorrow than in anger, leading that pack of gray-haired, gray-faced, gray-suited and gray-spirited fogies. These self-appointed Torquemadas of the birds and the bees looked more like gouty Florida retirees hurrying to get to that early-bird buffet.

I've never forgotten her words.

Her opinion column in the New York Times today is another instance of Dowd getting it right.

If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn’t really do that.
....

The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.

There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution.
....

Stupefyingly, the new Vatican document also links raping children with ordaining women as priests, deeming both “graviora delicta,” or grave offenses. Clerics who attempt to ordain women can now be defrocked.
....

After the Vatican launched two inquisitions of American nuns, it didn’t seem possible that the archconservative Il Papa and his paternalistic redoubt could get more unenlightened, but they have somehow managed it.

Letting women be priests — which should be seen as a way to help cleanse the church and move it beyond its infantilized and defensive state — is now on the list of awful sins right next to pedophilia, heresy, apostasy and schism.

Dowd quotes Garry Wills in the New Republic:

In The New Republic, Garry Wills wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.”

Maureen Dowd is Roman Catholic, as is Garry Wills. Ah, but I hear the voices who will say, "What kind of Catholics are Dowd and Wills, if they speak such words about their church?" In return, I ask, what kind of Catholics would Dowd and Wills be if they did not speak such words of truth about their church?

A few more columns of this caliber, and Dowd might make it onto my favorites list.

Read the entire column.

WHO SAID IT?

My regular readers will know immediately who participated in the conversation. The rest of you must visit the website linked below and click on the picture over there.

From Tea Party Jesus.

By the way, it's a wonderful website.

Thanks to Marcia at OCICBW for the referral to the "Tea Party Jesus" website.

BISHOPS - WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

Today is the feast day of William White, the 2nd/3rd (along with Samuel Provoost) bishop to be consecrated for the Episcopal Church in the US after the first, Samuel Seabury.

James Kiefer at the Lectionary says:

Before the American Revolution, there were no bishops in the colonies (partly because the British government was reluctant to give the colonies the kind of autonomy that this would have implied, and partly because many of the colonists were violently opposed to their presence). After the Revolution, the establishment of an American episcopate became imperative. Samuel Seabury was the first American to be consecrated, in 1784 (see 14 Nov), and in 1787 William White and Samuel Provoost, having been elected to the bishoprics of Pennsylvania and New York respectively, sailed to England and were consecrated bishops on 14 February by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and the Bishop of Peterborough.

I am one descendant of former colonists who is not opposed to the presence of bishops. In fact, I like having bishops as a way of bringing a degree of order to the functions of the church, but I'm quite pleased that in the Episcopal Church laity and clergy have a voice in electing bishops.

A good many gifted bishops with shepherds' hearts serve in the Episcopal Church, and I'm thankful for them. The best of them keep foremost in their minds their positions as servants of the people of God entrusted to their care.

The following passage from 1 Timothy 3:1-10 is included in the readings for the feast day:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil.

To expect our bishops to be such paragons as described above would be beyond unrealistic. Bishops are, after all, human. The qualities listed by Paul are perhaps ideals for the bishops to keep in mind, but not necessarily qualities by which the rest of us are to stand in judgment of them.

Which leads me to an article in the Guardian by Hywel Williams, titled "Ditch the bossy-boot bishops".

An obsession with bishops is a defining characteristic of Anglicanism, both ancient and modern. Church of England types may be wedded to traditional patriarchy or encouraged by women's rights. They can be Anglo-Catholic, evangelical or liberal, touched with Pentecostalism and keen on charismatic gifts, ensconced in the rural deanery, immersed in the urban mission, or droning on in the Lords. But what unites them all is a preoccupation with the bishop, that ecclesiastical bossy-boots figure who fingers the cross that bounces up and down the heaving and preachy chest. Even dozy congregations can liven up a bit when told that "the bishop is coming".

If what Williams writes is true of the English, then I believe that we are not as obsessed with bishops in the Episcopal Church. Before the start of the Anglican soap opera over the election and ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay partnered bishop in the Episcopal Church, I hardly paid attention to my local bishop or my diocese except when the bishop visited for confirmations, installations, or ordinations. Much less attention did I pay to the Presiding Bishop. My focus was on my local church, and I expect that for the greater number of Episcopalians, their interest is in the local church, and much of the commentary and controversy in the Anglican Communion swirls about them mostly unnoticed.

What a change took place for me over a period of 7 years. I don't know if I'm obsessed with bishops, but one might easily conclude that I'm obsessed with the Anglican Communion soap opera, for better or for worse. I often look back longingly to my days of ignorance and innocence of it all.

Williams continues:

Many other churches, of course, have bishops – especially the "historic" ones that pretend to be possessed of supernaturally guided lines of direct communication with the apostles. Any one ordained into these organisations has to subscribe to the ridiculous belief that spiritual authority can be directly transmitted by the "laying of hands". Peter and the apostles had this power because they were Christ's intimates. Bishops have it now because they were ordained by earlier bishops. Follow right on to the end of the line and you will be in touch with the first century.

This "apostolic succession" is the Ouija board theory of Christian communication – "Peter – are you there?" – and an absurd basis for any authority. It is nonetheless the only reason why bishops should exist in either gender, and the quarrel about female bishops ignores the fact that it's the office itself that stinks. Serious-minded people who want to get on ecclesiastically presumably cross fingers behind backs when kneeling before a bishop while waiting for a dollop of heaven to drop down.

I do not agree with Williams' dismissal of the efficacy of prayers and laying on of hands associated with ordination to any orders of ministry as ridiculous belief. The power to ordain for ministry is, indeed, passed down through the Christian church over the centuries, or so I believe.

However, I stand with Williams that the claimed unbroken line of apostolic succession is, in fact, a fiction and is rather a very broken line, despite the declarations of the church which most vehemently lays claim to it.

Thus the horror of the members of the Church of England (And - alas! - some in our own Episcopal Church) who view women bishops as breaking the pristine line of apostolic succession is difficult for me to understand. Having said that, I don't question their sincerity or their distress over the prospect of women bishops. Nevertheless, I very much disagree with their views and hold that, as a matter of simple justice and equality, none of the baptized should be barred from any order of ministry because of their sex or their sexual orientation, for that matter.

Thanks to Cathy for the link to Williams' article.