THAT WICKED PLURALIST!

If you're not reading Pluralist's satirical pieces on the commentary surrounding the Daft Anglican Covenant, perhaps you should. The English folk who follow the discussion of the covenant will have an easier time of it, because they will recognize the similarity of the cast to real life people, whereas, since I am not English, I have more difficulty. The names have been changed, not to protect the innocent, but to protect Pluaralist from litigation. Therefore, if you comment, perhaps it's best not to name names. Below is an excerpt from his most recent offering titled Covenant On Midweek.

Virginia Lake: I am the Director of the Anglican Confrontation Organisation called Unity Faith and Order that operates under SHADO - the 'Secretive Hierarchical Anglican Doctrinal Organisation'. I operate underneath Lambeth Palace and Rowanov Treetri carries the operational name Commander Straker, as he is the 'Ed Bishop.

Melvin Blagg: Not very zecretive den.

Virginia Lake: Well everyone knows about it. The secret part, as with all Anglicanism, is in the actual rule book as opposed to the formal rule book; it's an acquired taste, what you find out after joining. It's part of the Sense Inference Detector, or SID.

Melvin Blagg: So what is du dispute about den?

Virginia Lake: To cut a lot of representational conversations short, the upshot is that Harold Wilson here wants the UFO to be renamed DMC; indeed he thinks John Sendmehome could Run DMC.

Melvin Blagg: DMC sdands for?

Virginia Lake: It would stand for...

Harold Wilson: Disunity, Mistrust and Chaos.

Another offering is titled Five Go Down - Chadderbox and is beyond wicked.

QUANTITATIVE EASING EXPLAINED

What the Federal Reserve is up to, and how we got here.

As I said to Paul (A.), the cartoon video would be hilarious, if it did not make you want to cry.

Thank/Blame Paul (A.)

STORY OF THE DAY

finally stretching out into his life
because it doesn't look like there are any
real alternatives

From StoryPeople.

THE BAVARIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH SHOWS HOW IT'S DONE

From The Christian Century:

BERLIN (RNS) Gay and lesbian Lutheran ministers in the conservative German state of Bavaria may live with their partners in parish parsonages, but only if they enter into a state-sanctioned civil union.

Although the move may seem bold for what is generally considered one of Germany's most traditional states, Bishop Johannes Friedrich of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria said it was no great departure from existing policies.

He noted that the church had already welcomed openly gay ministers and same-sex unions. "We had only left out that a couple could live in a civil union in the parsonage," he said.

H/T to Box Turtle Bulletin.

WAXING GIBBOUS MOON

This is what I saw when I walked tonight.

Waxing gibbous moon
The words themselves a poem
Turning full moon soon

Grandmère Mimi - 2005

Reposted from last year, but true tonight.

HOW CAN THIS BE?

Rmj at Adventus on the millions Sarah Palin has made from resentment and discontent:

It's an interesting, perplexing, and finally sad kind of resentment that while not particularly American, certainly seems peculiarly American. Sarah Palin has achieved more in less time than most of us will achieve in a lifetime. I understand she's made $12 million since she left the governorship of Alaska. She's famous. Her tweets and Facebook posting makes national, if not international, news. And still, apparently, she is not happy. Or, at least, she's not content.

Sarah Palin embodies the Zeitgeist in a way that is amazing to me. The longer the Sarah Show runs, the more I am astonished. Have I been transported and plunked down in alien territory without at all being aware of the transition?

Photo from Stand Up For Our Nation.

TRANSGENDER AWARENESS WEEK - NOVEMBER 14-20

According to Religious Dispatches:

The Human Rights Campaign estimates that transsexuals represent approximately .25 to 1 percent of the US population. That number does not include the transgender people who haven’t undergone sex reassignment surgery (a process many people call “the transition”), so the number of transgender-identified people is likely much higher. The term “transgender” encompasses anyone with a gender identity that is different from his or her birth sex. A transgender person could be someone who just cross-dresses from time to time in private; someone who identifies as gender-queer (that is, neither male nor female); someone who is just taking hormones but not undergoing any surgical modifications; or someone who is undergoing or will undergo full sex reassignment surgery, including genital modification. Such differences vary according to socioeconomic status, age, and cultural context, but, in general, transgender people are sprinkled across every color and creed.

Transgender people, though, are much less likely to take part in an organized religion than non-transgender people, according to researchers. In their article “Understanding Spirituality and Religiosity in the Transgender Community: Implications for Aging,” authors Jeremy Kidd and Tarynn Witten posit a reason:

“The tendency not to identify with a formal religion may reflect an affirmation of one’s own dignity that these religions fail to honor, an expression of protest against certain religious tenets, and/or a refusal to align oneself with institutions contributing to the marginalization of gender and sexual minorities. The difference in religious identification appears to reflect thoughts and feelings toward religious institutions more than it does spiritual behavior or beliefs.”

Of the groups included in LGTB, it seems to me that transgendered persons receive the least attention in promotion of awareness and understanding. The statement below by Pope Benedict demonstrates awareness but not understanding.

Shortly before Christmas in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI said in a speech to the Curia (the administrative arm of the Catholic Church) that our gender was a gift from the creator and denounced those who would try to change it. “It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation,” he said, “the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God.” In other words, he threw down a transgender gauntlet.

For the Pope and many others, it all comes down to a literal reading of the Bible’s book of Genesis which says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” They say that means God created man and woman, separate and distinct.

So then, a cleft palate or a club foot is also a gift from the creator, and to have surgery to correct either condition would be self-destructive. Do I have that right, Your Holiness?

Lynn Walker is a transgender priest in the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America. In photos, she sports her priest’s collar, but in her day-to-day work at a transitional housing program for transgender sex workers, she’s all jeans, T-shirts, and blond hair pushed back. She says she doesn’t push her religion on anybody. Just like she doesn’t mention her transgendered status unless she wants to.

Walker looks at it this way. Being transgender is not a sin or a pathology; it’s about variety. “Based on science, this is uncommon, but normal and natural,” she said. “Somewhere in the Book of Job, it say all things come of thee, oh Lord.” Walker said that yes, transgender people take advantage of scientific advancements to change their bodies. But she doesn’t see why that should be wrong or controversial or an abomination in the eyes of God. “If science is a gift from God,” she asked. “Why don’t we listen?”

I prefer Lynn's take on God, creation, and transgender to the pope's. How about you?

Ann Fontaine at The Lead posted a video featuring Dee Ellen Dressler, who made the transition to a transwoman, along with several links to other sources of information, including suicide-prevention amongst transgendered youths and Day of Remembrance events.

JERICHO ROAD TREE PLANTING DAY

 

 

You, my readers, helped Jericho Road win the fruit orchard by voting for them online. If you are in or near New Orleans, you may wish to help with the planting the fruit trees.

MISSION STATEMENT

Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative of New Orleans is a neighborhood-based nonprofit homebuilder that provides families with healthy and energy-efficient affordable housing opportunities. We partnerwith neighborhood residents, organizations and businesses to create and maintain a stable and thriving community.

Donations to Jericho Road, which is sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, may be made here.

ANGLICAN COVENANT = A DYSFUNCTIONAL ANGLICAN FAMILY

Graham Kings writes at the Guardian in support of the Anglican Daft Covenant. Dr Kings is Bishop of Sherborne and theological secretary of Fulcrum. Below is my comment at the Guardian:

Dr Kings says:

The model of the covenant is drawn from family ties and kinship and bounded by mutually agreed norms of behaviour which benefit everyone.

From the text of the covenant:

The Standing Committee may request a Church to defer a controversial action. If a Church declines to defer such action, the Standing Committee may recommend to any Instrument of Communion relational consequences which may specify a provisional limitation of participation in, or suspension from, that Instrument until the completion of the process set out below.

So then, once the covenant is adopted, we will all be one happy family. But wait! Family members may suffer relational consequences or even be suspended if they don't follow the straight and narrow as laid out in the covenant. In other words, they may be thrown out of the family! The covenant appears to be a recipe for a seriously dysfunctional family, full of tattlers and busybodies trying to get other family members with whom they disagree excluded.

The author's implication that Armageddon will be upon the Anglican Communion if the covenant is not adopted is sheer nonsense. The negative, if unintended, consequences of adopting the ill-conceived document will boggle the mind. Rather than bringing the member provinces of the Anglican Communion together, the mess of pottage that we call the covenant will result in further splitting apart. Yeats' line, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold", is a glimpse of the future of the Anglican Communion with the adoption of the Anglican Covenant.

As posted at the Guardian with minor editing.

IF YOU'D LIKE TO HELP ST. MATTHEW'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN HOUMA, LA

I bumped up my post on St. Matthew's in Houma to include the information below for those who may want to contribute.

A relief fund has been established at South Louisiana Bank. Donations may be mailed to:
St. Matthew's Relief Fund
c/o S. Louisiana Bank
PO Box 1718
Houma, LA 70361
Please include the account number
in the memo section of the check: 02-0195-2.

Watch the slide show at WDSU.

Historic Church Destroyed In Morning Fire - Photos - WDSU New Orleans

Almighty God, we give thanks for the gift to the parishioners of St. Matthew's of many years of fellowship and worship in their beautiful church building. We ask you to give your people comfort, consolation, and the peace that passes understanding as they grieve the loss of their building. May the people of St. Matthew's remain bound together in love and obedience to you, ever mindful that a church is the gathering of its people to give you praise, honor, and glory. Give them strength and courage to continue in worship and fellowship, as they move forward to rebuild their building. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.