JOY IN THE LAND OF THE DANES

Church bells are now ringing for everyone, with no exceptions, in Denmark as the Parliament has approved a law allowing same-sex couples to get married in church ceremonies.

­On Thursday Danish lawmakers voted with 85 in favor and 24 against to change the country’s marriage laws wrapping up years of battle for the rights of gay and lesbian couples. The legislation was passed despite a strong campaign mounted by the far-Right Danish People’s Party.

I doubt that the folks in the far-Right Danish People's Party are joyful, but you can't please everyone.  C'est la vie.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

MY FRIEND PAUL, THE AUTHOR...

A teen from Queen Anne's England unexpectedly finds himself in a parallel world, launching an adventure that spans centuries. Ian the Stranger faces the challenge of defeating a demon of darkness that is ravaging his new-found world, since "nothing in the world will overcome it but it will be overcome." He and his companions follow the tracks of the demon's destruction, doing their best to decipher prophecies and overcome obstacles.

The two bravest among the Norrung tribe are separated as Njothir, their chief, must remain at home to guide the people while his soul mate, Ringskild the warmaiden, is chosen as captain of the band. Pjortan the star singer is sent for spiritual protection and guidance and Wulfdar the healer is at hand for mishaps. Jannir the merchant guides them through strange lands and Meldreth, a lecherous warmaiden, always has entertaining stories to share. Others round out the band, each carefully selected for a quest that seems both foolhardy and absolutely necessary.

I have not yet read The Demon Slayers, but, with Paul, I've followed the progression of the writing of the fantasy/adventure novels over the years, and now that the book version is out, I look forward to a good read.  The Kindle version has been out for a while now, and already two favorable reviews have been posted.  From what I've hear of the novel, it sounds - um - fantastic!

The novel is available at Amazon.  

Kindle version here.

Book here.
 
Give yourself a treat.  Paul blogs at Byzigenous Buddhapalian.

HEADLINE IN THE SCOTSMAN

Scottish Episcopal Church says No to ‘gay marriage’ agreement 

THE Scottish Episcopal Church has rejected an agreement backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury that could have seen sanctions imposed on them if they diverged from the Anglican Communion’s rulings on issues such as the ordination of gay bishops and same-sex unions.
....

David Bain, a member of Scottish Episcopal Church General Synod, characterised the covenant as a “blancmange with shards of glass in it” that was “completely unexceptional until you come to that awful crunch”

The Scotsman tells us in a few words whence sprang the odious Anglican Covenant.  What can I say about Mr Bain's characterization?  "Ouch!"  

The article includes a picture of Rowan Williams with the caption, "Archbishop of Canterbury: Backed the agreement".

NATURAL LAWS

Truer words were never spoken.

 

1. Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee.

2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe.

3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal - and someone always answers.

6. Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).

7. Law of the Bath - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.

8. Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know INCREASES dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

9. Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, IT WILL!!!

10. Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

11. Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena – At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

12. The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

13. Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

14. Law of Physical Surfaces - The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor, are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

15. Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible IF you don't know what you are talking about.

16. Brown's Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.

17. Oliver's Law of Public Speaking -- A CLOSED MOUTH GATHERS NO FEET!!!

18. Wilson's Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

19. Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you'll feel better.. But don't make an appointment, and you'll stay sick.

Thanks to Frank.  My natural law: I tend to type "Thanks to Franks" to make the rhyme.

TRINITY: CHOOSE TO ACT AS THE BODY OF CHRIST

Jack and George

Giles Fraser in the Guardian on the prosperity Gospel:

This is a big idea for many of the little shopfront Pentecostal churches that share space with the nail bars and pawnbrokers all the way along the roads that spread out from the Elephant and Castle. The Old Kent Road may be the cheapest brown on the Monopoly board, but in its theological imagination it dreams of being Mayfair and Park Lane.
....

This is a theology that hums to itself "O Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?" and is widely – and rightly – dismissed by the more liberal mainstream as being highly exploitative. For it often turns out that the best way to express belief is by giving to the church and often specifically to the pastor. The more you give, the more you will receive.
,,,,

For while I wholeheartedly agree that prosperity theology is deeply mistaken – I feel the need to say this several times – , there are many for whom it represents the dream of a world radically transformed for themselves and their family. Is this not a legitimate aspiration? Would you too not dream of this as a loo attendant at the Elephant and Castle? I don't much care that the abundant life ministry brings out liberals in hives. When so much of our political culture has become little more than the management of an existing order, an order that does precious little for the poor, who else is giving voice to the order of change that would be necessary in order to bring prosperity to all?

And I'd add that all too often church culture "has become little more than the management of an existing order."

The Village Voice reports that Occupy protestors who were forcibly evicted by the police from Duarte Square, the barren plot of land owned by Trinity Church Wall Street, are scheduled to go on trial on Monday, June 11.  Occupy has asked Trinity to drop the charges against those who were arrested, but the church responded as follows:

Trinity does not have the legal ability to drop charges. Those cases are being prosecuted by the District Attorney's office. However, Trinity has contacted the District Attorney's office and has been advised that the District Attorney has offered non-criminal dispositions without fines or incarceration to all those defendants who were arrested and charged with trespassing for simply being present at Duarte Square.

On the other hand:

Gideon Oliver of the National Lawyers Guild says this statement is misleading on several counts. For one thing, while many of those arrested were offered and have declined Adjournments in Contemplation of Dismissal, not all of them have. For another, its disingenuous for Trinity to claim it has no control over the outcome in these cases. Sure, the District Attorney is in charge of the prosecution, but without the testimony of the church's lawyer, Amy Jedlicka, prosecutors would have no case.  (My emphasis)

See?  It's not that hard.

Press accounts make [rector of Trinity, James] Cooper, sound like the modern Episcopal version of a Borgia pope. He received compensation of $1.3 million in 2010, awarded himself the supplementary title of CEO, and picked out a $5.5 million SoHo townhouse for himself, paid for by the church. And his Scroogely actions extend well beyond stiff-arming Occupy Wall Street: he shuttered Trinity's homeless drop-in center in 2009, then announced plans to borrow church money to build luxury condos on top of a palatial renovation of the church's offices.

What's wrong with this picture?  And yes, I know that churches across the country and the world showed hospitality to the Occupiers, but the church of Wall Street, the street which symbolizes so much of what's wrong about the inequities in our country, surely failed in the Gospel imperative to welcome the stranger.

Another piece of the picture from Occupied Bishop George Packard:

Recently there has been commotion about the wisdom of Jack Boyle’s decision “to choose” a hunger strike and refuse to take his AIDS medication as a witness against Trinity Church’s prosecution of the December 17th protesters. Jack says, “Drop the charges and I will eat and take my meds.” At first I thought my friend was a little batty, worse, showing signs of PTSD from that violent early morning roust on November 15th at Zuccotti. He wouldn’t be the first to exhibit signs of that trauma’s aftermath. But after spending two hours with him at his home last Sunday I’m not so sure.
....

But during that long talk at his apartment I realized I didn’t really know him at all and the dignity of the man who had the right to make such an existential choice. I didn’t know his fears of being HIV positive since 2003, his sense of his own finitude and what “it was good for” or of his dual Irish citizenship, or, most tellingly the minute-by-minute recall he had of that violent sweep of Zuccotti on November 15th and how a cop had disfigured his hand.

God knows, I want Jack to eat and take his medications, but God also knows, I want Trinity to drop the charges.  My wish is to see Trinity turn its part of the world upside down in this small way, heeding the words of Mary in her song of praise to God, the Magnificat:

His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.

 George ends his post with these words:

And herein is the ultimate blasphemy for God’s church to defer to the law at hand rather than the justice on which it stands. But that would meant Trinity Church would have “chosen” to act as the Body of Christ instead of the soulless corporation it has  become.

SCOTLAND SAYS NO TO ANGLICAN COVENANT

Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost at St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow, says on Facebook:

Scotland says firm and clear No to Anglican Covenant.  Yes to Communion.  No to the Covenant.

The news warms my heart.  In a sense, the Scottish Episcopal Church is our mother church, because she gave us our first bishops.

The SEC joins House of Bishops in The Episcopal Church in the Philippines and the dioceses in the Church of England in rejecting the Anglican Covenant.  I wonder if the  Anglican Communion Office will report the rejection of the Covenant by the Scottish Episcopal Church.  Thus far, we don't hear negative news on the Covenant from the ACO.

The rejection by the Scottish church will help the campaign at next month's General Convention of The Episcopal Church by those of us who favor a vote to reject the Covenant by TEC.

UPDATE:

The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church today voted against the adoption of the Anglican Covenant.  Following a variety of views expressed by members of General Synod, the Motion that Synod agree in principle to adopt the Anglican Covenant was put to vote - 112 votes against; 6 votes in favour; 13 abstentions.  The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, The Most Rev David Chillingworth, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane then presented a resolution on the Anglican Communionin support of Motion 27, saying “The Anglican Communion matters deeply to us in the Scottish Episcopal Church.  We invoke the history of Samuel Seabury, consecrated in 1784 by the Scottish bishops as the first bishop of the church in the United States of America. We want to be part of the re-founding - the bringing to birth of a new phase of Communion life.” 

Yes!  I love the mention of Bishop Samuel Seabury.

UPDATE 2: From the ACO:

The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church today voted against the adoption of the Anglican Covenant.

Primus David Chillingworth's address to Synod is here.

STORY OF THE DAY - LAUGHTER & DIGESTION

There are only 2 things I take seriously, 
my aunt said once. Laughter & my 
digestion. I'm too old to bother with 
more than that. 

From StoryPeople.

Good one.

WARM MILK

In a convent in Ireland, the 98-year-old Mother Superior  lay dying. The nuns gathered around her bed trying to make her last  journey comfortable. They tried giving her warm milk to drink but she refused it. One of the nuns took the glass back to the kitchen. Then,  remembering a bottle of Irish Whiskey that had been received as a gift  the previous Christmas, she opened it and poured a generous amount into the warm milk. Back at  Mother Superior's bed, they held the glass to her lips. The frail nun  drank a little, then a little more and before they knew it, she had  finished the whole glass down to the last drop. As her  eyes brightened, the nuns thought it would be a good opportunity to  have one last talk with their spiritual leader. "Mother,"  the nuns asked earnestly, "Please give us some of your wisdom before  you leave us." She  raised herself up in bed on one elbow, looked at them and said: "Don't sell that cow." Thanks to Ann.

PAY ATTENTION NOW, LOUISIANA!

Click on the map for the larger view.

The energy and fishing industries along the Gulf of Mexico must begin now to adapt to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, more intense hurricanes, loss of coastal wetlands, and the biological effects of warmer water temperatures, according to a report released at a news conference Wednesday by three Louisiana State University scientists.

The report is sobering, indeed, and not just for Louisiana, but also for its message on how climate change will affect energy resources in the rest of the country.  A good many politicians and citizens in the state, and in the country, for that matter, do not believe that the practices of humans affect the climate of the earth, but rather that global warming is due to nature taking her course and will soon reverse on its own.  How much the cautions and warnings will be heeded in Louisiana is an open question because of the widespread suspicion of science.  I don't have much hope that the powers will take action as a result of the report.

The number of oil and gas platforms in the hurricane-prone area of Gulf of Mexico is astonishing, and to ride the single, fragile connection to Port Fourchon and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port on the portions of Highway 1 that have not been elevated is to bear witness to the extreme vulnerability of the entryway for a major source of energy imports.

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH - "SHARED GOVERNANCE"

SHARED GOVERNANCE EXAMINES THEOLOGY, HISTORY of EPISCOPAL POLITY

Essays are tools for “education, reflection” on how Church’s governance evolved

 Shared Governance: The Polity of The Episcopal Church, a collection of essays on the history and theology of church governance by the House of Deputies Special Study Committee on Church Governance and Polity is now available from Church Publishing.

“The collection is intended specifically as an educational and reflection tool for Deputies to the General Convention, and offers a number of insights particularly geared to their work,” said the Rev. Tobias Haller, who chaired the committee, which was appointed by Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, after the 2009 General Convention. “However, any Episcopalian wanting to be better informed about how and why our church came to function in the way it does will find the essays helpful.”

The book focuses particular attention on the history and structure of the two Houses of the General Convention and how they interact; the role of the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies and how their offices have evolved; and the role of the Executive Council, which carries out the work of the church between sessions of General Convention.

Haller said the collection dispels “some of the prevailing mythology concerning the origins and practice of our shared governance.”

"I want to thank the House of Deputies special committee for creating this remarkable resource," said Anderson, who is serving her second term as President of the House of Deputies. "Our polity distributes authority among all church members, whether lay or ordained, at every level, in the parish, the diocese, the provinces and at General Convention. It is a great gift, and one I hope the church will always safeguard and treasure.”

A copy of the book has been mailed to every deputy to next month’s General Convention, and to every diocesan bishop. It is also available through Church Publishing’s website.

“One of the things I am most committed to for Church Publishing is our role in facilitating the dialog within the Episcopal Church,” said Nancy Bryan, editorial director of Church Publishing. “How do we help people talk to each other, share ideas and collaborate and come to a clearer sense of the church’s call and mission and vocation? For me Shared Governance is a piece of that dialog.”

H/T to Jim Naughton

Canticle Communications

jim@canticlecommunications.com

www.canticlecommunications.com

NOTE: Although I am not a deputy to GC, nor will I be attending the convention this year, I plan to purchase a copy of the book simply to help me understand how The Episcopal Church functions beyond the level of the parish.