A WEDDING IN THE FAMILY

 

My son and his girlfriend of several years are getting married today.  Please pray that Patrick and Marlet have many happy years together.  The wedding will take place at Patrick's house with family and a few close friends as guests.

O gracious and everlasting God, look mercifully upon Patrick and Marlet who come to you seeking your blessing, and assist them with your grace, that with true fidelity and steadfast love they may honor and keep the promises and vows they make; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer)

A song for Patrick and Marlet.



Leonard Cohen's great song "Dance Me to the End of Love" by The Civil Wars, a new musical duo I've recently discovered, whom I enjoy very much.

SHAMEFUL STATISTICS

 

Click on the chart for the larger view.

We're not first, but surely the richest country in the world has the wherewithal to do better than second highest in child poverty ratings.  A quarter of our children living in poverty is unacceptable, but we accept it.

Lord, have mercy.

HERE'S BARNEY!

Former Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass):

"In this terrible situation, let's be very grateful that we had a well-funded, functioning government. It is very fashionable in America ... to criticize government, to belittle public employees, talk about their pensions, talk about what people think is their excessive health care, here we saw government in two ways perform very well," Frank said on CNN's "Starting Point," noting the cooperation between state, local and federal authorities.

"No tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover," he said. "This is very expensive." (My emphasis)
....

"We're not asking people, look, do you have private health insurance or not, can you afford this or not? Maybe the government's going to have to pay for it," he said. "And this is an example of why we need -- if we want to be a civilized people -- to put some of our resources into a common pool so we are able to deal with this, and to deal with it, you can't simply be responsive once it happens."

Barney's right.  The resources to cope with such a tragic event have to be available before the disaster takes place.  And let's remember the first responders and volunteers risked their lives rushing in to help the wounded, not knowing whether there might be another explosion.

NEW ZEALAND PARLIAMENT PASSES GAY MARRIAGE BILL

Watch the video and listen to the love song.

H/T to Kelvin Holdsworth.

NAME AND SHAME - DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED AGAINST BACKGROUND CHECKS

Five Democrats voted against strengthening background checks for gun sales.

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas
Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota
Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.
Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who switched his vote only to allow the measure to be called up again. 

Double shame on you, senators.

Four Republicans voted for the bill.

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine
Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois
Sen. John McCain of Arizona

Thank you, senators.

The rest of the Republican senators, double shame on you.

DAVID BROOKS AND SCRAMBLED EGGS

Here's what I mean when I say David Brooks' columns in the New York Times turn my brain into scrambled eggs.

Brooks discusses "big data" versus "narrative" as predictors of human behavior.

Then there is the distinction between commodity decisions and flourishing decisions. Some decisions are straightforward commodities: what route to work is likely to be fastest. Big data can help. Flourishing decisions are things like who to marry, who to befriend, what career calling to pursue and what college to choose. These decisions involve trying to find people, places and things that harmonize with your subjective self. It’s a mistake to take subjective intuition out of this decision because subjectivity is the whole point. 

Grammar!  Should be "whom to marry, whom to befriend," right?  Brooks' column appears in the "Newspaper of Record."  I assume the newspaper employs editors.  If Brooks does not know that when a pronoun comes before an infinitive, the object form is used, then surely a checker at the paper does.  Or has grammar usage of "who" and "whom" changed when I wasn't paying attention?

The meaning of the paragraph is cloaked in fog.  I believe Brooks sees himself as a wise, unshrill moderate, who can look at both sides of an issue or problem and come up with opinions that everyone agrees are quite reasonable, even when they disagree with him.  From this position, he sees himself as qualified to advise us how to remake our society into his land-of-the-free-and-home-of-the-brave ideal.  Ah, if only he made sense. 

I remain amazed that Brooks appears regularly in such prestigious forums as the NYT , "Informed Sources" on PBS, and the Sunday talk shows.  That's to say nothing of Yale's invitation to to Brooks to teach a course on humility.  And not just because of the grammar lapses.   He may know what he means, but his muddled style of writing makes it difficult for me grasp the points he wishes to convey to readers and listeners.  Is Brooks the best the hirers at prestigious forums can do?
 
Brooks seems to want everyone to be moral and responsible.  Well, don't we all, each of us with our individual views on what is moral and responsible behavior?  Oh, and he probably wants us to be humble, too, a virtue which he knows well, because he's teaching the course at Yale on humility. 

Moving on; the final paragraph in the column left my brain in so scrambled a state that I can only guess at the root of Brook's worries.

Most of the advocates understand data is a tool, not a worldview. My worries mostly concentrate on the cultural impact of the big data vogue. If you adopt a mind-set that replaces the narrative with the empirical, you have problems thinking about personal responsibility and morality, which are based on causation. You wind up with a demoralized society. But that’s a subject for another day.

My best guess is he means that the use of narrative is superior to big data for the purpose of encouraging moral and responsible behavior, or the culture collapses.   Before he writes on the subject of the state of our society, I hope Brooks looks around outside the upscale suburb, from which he observes the world in his nearly $4 million house, and notes that we are already, in large part, a demoralized society.  Once he's made the discovery, I'll try to remember to read his commentary - that is, if my brain is unscrambled by the time he writes.

H/T to Charles Pierce at Esquire for calling my attention to Brooks' column.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.  

50 YEARS - LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL

Excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr's response to a letter from fellow clergy who opposed the civil rights protests, suggesting that the actions were "unwise and untimely".

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
....

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides–and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.
....

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

....

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

----------------

Martin Luther King, Jr's letter was written in response to a letter from eight fellow clergymen. The link to the letter from the clergy is on Standford University's site, from which I took the quotes from MLK's letter.

'...IN STILLNESS AND SILENCE..."

Colin Coward at Changing Attitude:

On the contrary, from my experience, I know that Christian worship is often complacent, reinforcing tradition, focussed on maintenance and survival, bums on pews, money on the plate, rather than the redeeming, liberating power of being born anew in the Holy Spirit into the resurrection energy of Christ. (And a danger here is to think emotionalism equates with this experience – I’m writing about something far deeper and more disturbing)

I don’t think that what I’m trying to describe has been researched. Maybe it’s impossible to research because as I know from experience, it’s hard to talk about and describe to other people, the feelings, ideas, insights, intuitions, that can flow when, in stillness, silence and open-hearted contemplation you open yourself to the infinitely loving presence of the living God. In that space, resistance melts, dogma becomes irrelevant, and deep truth seems to grasp awareness. (My emphasis)

Read Colin's entire post.  It is excellent.  Colin is one of a group of six members of the LGB&T Anglican Coalition who will meet with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby this coming Thursday for a conversation.  Since the discussion is confidential, Colin will not issue a report.  Pray that the conversation will bear good fruit.

I, too, find it difficult to describe the effect of the presence of God in my life, but Colin comes quite close in his words - so close that I felt a frisson.  And it's not that we suddenly become saintly in all we do and say, but the change of heart runs deep and changes how we think and view the world and each other.  For me, the best way I know to move forward in living the Gospel is to keep things simple and be mindful of the Two Great Commandments and the Golden Rule.

He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
(Matthew 27:32-40)
 
In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
(Matthew 7:12) 

IS THE HONEYMOON OVER?

Pope Francis has backed the Vatican’s doctrinal crackdown on a major group of American nuns, reasserting the Roman Catholic Church's conservative approach to various social issues in a move that could cool the warm reception he has received from some liberal Catholics since taking office last month.
 
The Vatican said in a statement Monday that Francis had reaffirmed the doctrinal evaluation and criticism of U.S. nuns made last year by the Holy See under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The assessment accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents most U.S. female Catholic orders, of promoting "radical feminist themes" and ignoring the Vatican's hard line on same-sex marriage and abortion.

"[R]adical feminist themes"?  It is to laugh.  Perhaps I am what the Vatican would consider a radical feminist today because of the fine example of the nuns who taught me in my Roman Catholic elementary and high schools.  Not that the words were ever mentioned, but the great majority of my teachers set an example for me by their intelligence, kindness, knowledge, and common sense.  That the investigation of the nuns will continue is disappointing, but, on the other hand:

Father James Martin, a prominent Jesuit priest in the United States who led a Twitter drive last year to defend the nuns, said it was too soon to say whether Francis, the church's first Jesuit leader, was shutting the door on dialogue.

"Given the long history of the LCWR investigation, it's not surprising that Pope Francis is asking the Congregation [for the Doctrine of the Faith] to continue its work. It would have been odd for him to halt things at this point, so early in his job," Martin said. "But given that he himself is a member of a religious order, I would imagine that the sisters will get a sympathetic hearing from him."

I hope Martin is correct that the nuns will get a fair hearing, and their harassment will soon be a matter of history.

PRAY FOR BOSTON

Pray for those who died and their loved ones. Pray for the injured, some of them horribly. Pray there will be no more explosions.