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| Out of Nowhere, by Lane Denson, Southern Sage and Jazz Musician |
Arise:Pentecost 4/8B [Mk 5.22-24,35b-43]
“Do not fear, only believe.”
Jesus said this to Jairus, the synagogue leader, whose daughter lay dying. Interesting that Jairus was already doing both. His fear drove him to Jesus, and ironically, his belief drove him to Jesus.
The crowd jeered. It is the way with crowds. But at Jesus’s touch and command, the child arose and walked, anyway. We need now to hear Jesus’s words. We need Jesus.
“Do not fear, only believe.”
We act, instead, as if our fear transcends our belief. For indeed, it does. Rather than turn to how belief can quench our fear, rather than turn to the faith and love and justice that our belief entails, we churchers turn again to the law, to our legislative bodies to pass resolutions, as if somehow, that will still our fear, when all it does is protect us for a moment.
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We remain afraid. It is the most pernicious kind of fear when we are afraid of what we do not know but think we know. We are afraid when authority goes into the hands of women or of gays and lesbians. We are afraid that it will turn into power and manipulation and patronizing as it always has in our hands. Our fear drives us to foolish statements, even childishly adolescent notions about how people should properly show their love. We are afraid that same gender parents will destroy the family. We are afraid to know that child abuse and domestic violence and divorce most often occurs in families with different gender parents.
We are not only afraid of what we do not know but of what we might learn if only we tried. We were and many still are afraid of new translations of the Bible and of our liturgies. We are afraid of illegal immigrants when we live in a land founded by illegal immigrants who rather than ask the native Americans for visas and green cards, stole their land from them, instead.
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But enough of our fear. Enough of our preoccupation that turns us away from our true occupation to love, to heal the sick, to feed the poor, to bring justice and peace to all. And to embrace our belief that we take this Anglican Christian heritage and shape it — in the language of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, itself — 'adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples of God into the unity of His Church.' Let all respect that fundamental affirmation as the several members of this Communion receive the same.
Let Jesus take us by the hand and say, 'I say to you, arise.' Then, let us joyfully go out together and, like Jairus’s daughter, get something to eat.
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| Buddy Stallings. Vicar of St. Bartholonew's Church, NYC |
A Stilling, Calming Voice
“Maybe you are a bit too anxious,” a friend suggested, an observation offered after reading my comments about how vituperative our cultural discourse about religion and politics often is. “You think this is anxious,” I thought, “I can show you anxiety.” I love Woody Allen for more than his comedy; I understand his anxious, existential whining. I mean – we could die here. Like any second.
Okay, maybe I am a bit too anxious. Maybe the stirred up dust on the horizon is not the fundamentalists coming for me – not yet. I get it. But….
Well, here’s the good news. Returning from Mississippi on Sunday, I arrived in time to preach and preside at the 7 PM service (about to become the 5 PM service). It was one of those rarified moments in liturgy when everything worked; the lighting was just right, the music was stirring, the spirit around and among us was as real as rain. All was well with the world. We heard the story of Jesus’ calming the anxiety of his disciples during a raging storm at sea. “Peace – be still,” he said. I like that. Stillness and peace – these are good conditions in our lives. Although one of our Eucharistic prayers reminds us that we gather at the table of God not just for solace but for strength as well, a good dose of solace on many occasions may be just what the doctor ordered.
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Can we live there all the time? I can speak only for myself. No, I cannot live in that assurance every second. But I can remember it even when I am not feeling it; and though that recollection is not always enough to smooth the troubled waters exactly, it certainly helps. It helps by reminding me that all of us are held in a greater mystery than we can imagine and that peace is not the absence of strife or trouble but the assurance that God is with us in the boat. That may be as good as it gets for me – a deep sense that I experience as a memory from where I do not know, but one deep enough to assure me that my anxiety in the end is always trumped by God’s presence.
Anxiety may win the moment but rarely the day. “Peace – be still.” Somehow it always comes just in the nick of time.
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| Brian's Reflection, by Brian Orrock McHugh |
Equality According to Jesus
Calculated risks of abuse are taken in order to preserve higher values. (ugh!) * - Chief Justice Warren Burger, who died June 25, 1995
Warren Burger supported Roe vs. Wade. I am glad he did, for theological reasons. In the past, that decision made me think well of him, from a moral point of view. Having read of various other decisions and having read many of his other statements, I consider him to have been an example of moral, as well as judicial, cowardliness, but for this one decision.
I am using this opportunity to make a case theologically for solving the “problem” of abortion. In my opinion, it will only be solved by following the teachings – as shown in His behaviour – of Jesus.
Women must be equal. Period.
This as we see, is extremely difficult in what is essentially a continuing patriarchal society ….. which America still is, in spades. Let me make this clear: opposition to abortion is a patriarchal tool in the determined effort to keep women as second or tenth class citizens. Opposition to abortion is a tool of male dominance, and of the enslavement of women.
No: I am not fundamentally “in favour” of abortion. But I am in favour of the equality of women. Women are not breeding cattle. They are not subjects to a male (or cultural) philosophy that relegates women to the stature of slaves to their child-bearing role. Nor should they be victims to the sex drives of
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male animal, or victims as single-parent families, struggling desperately to survive when abandoned by menfolk, who are often abetted by a patriarchal court system.
It is shameful I believe, and an affront to “God” and to Jesus, to demean the equality of women as human beings, based on some patriarchal and later interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures by men.
The horror and pain of abortion is a searing condemnation of our Christian and cultural determination to demean women, to deny them their equality as human beings.
Do we want to eliminate abortion? It can be done in a pen-stroke. Establish the equality of women. Then no woman need have a child she does not want or cannot care for, need not have a child foisted on her by a dominating male, need not ever be treated by a sexual partner as a subject being.
Then, no child will be born unwanted, or as a product of male dominance. No woman carrying a child to term will be afflicted in poverty or in psychological oppression and a form of slavery.
Women must be equal. I believe that this is what “God” intended. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
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| Poet and writing teacher Elizabeth Ayres (CreativeWritingCenter.com) hosts the radio program, Soundings, Monday evenings at 8:30 p.m. eastern time at www.wryr.org |
Knowing the Way by Water
The kayak is borrowed. I stop paddling almost as soon as I’m launched, studying the ragged edges of clouds as if they offered a map to the uncharted territory my life has become. I haven’t called it home for over 40 years, but the instant I’m afloat, the molecules in my body want to align with the molecules of paddle, boat and water, reconstituting that concatenation of elements in a certain direction, towards a certain spot on a certain nearby creek where, on a certain bluff, a house once stood.
Last week’s paper carried a story about a pod of whales beaching itself near the Cape of Good Hope. Hundreds of volunteers endured high winds and rough surf to try to push the creatures into open seas, but the whales kept swimming back to shore, and eventually the exhausted animals had to be shot, to prevent slow death by suffocation. No one understands such strandings. The whales could be sick, or following a confused leader, or attempting to rescue a stranded pod member sending off a distress call. Scientists think whales use magnetic fields and underwater topography to orient themselves, so a magnetic disturbance or peculiar coastline formation could bewilder them.
Now, I float amidst colored buoys and numbered channel markers, signs that mean something to someone but nothing to me. More significant is the cry of a baby osprey that scrapes the salty blue air near its twig-splayed
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nest. I recognize that familiar combination of morbid fear and importunate demand, and I’m tempted to turn my kayak towards the creek, the bluff, the collapsing house I keep wanting to call home, but the Patuxent River’s waters sparkle, and flow out to the Chesapeake Bay, then out to the Atlantic Ocean, then out over the whole huge earth, so I follow the river, knowing this liquid is the united sparkling of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Knowing each atom is the united sparkling of protons, neutrons, electrons. That each proton is the united sparkling of quarks and photons, each of which is a sparkling. Of. Something. That unites this kayak, this paddle, these hands that hold the paddle, the osprey’s open beak, the twigs of its nest, those trees along the shore, this whole huge earth and, indeed, the universe itself. One united sparkling.
Home.
And if the old house is collapsing, maybe that’s a good thing. Like those whales, we’ve been sick, following confused leaders, attempting to rescue something that’s beyond hope of repair. We all must contribute to the great work: finding a new orientation so we don’t end up stranded on a deadly shore, and in this uncharted territory, maybe those drifting clouds are a map, after all, with their hydrogen and their oxygen, their quarks and their photons, those mysterious inner somethings that teach us what we already |
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know, in our sparkling bones: that beyond morbid fear and importunate demand there is a way for this glorious concatenation of elements we call the earth to align itself rightly and arrive home together as a single, sacred community.
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| Clergy Family Confidential by Tim Schenck |
On Air
I admit I like listening to sports talk radio. This feels like a confession because it’s pretty mindless stuff. It’s not as if I listen to it all day long — just in the car on short jaunts around town. And it’s also not as if I ever call in; I’m a “lurker” in internet parlance. But since sports is a passion of mine, why wouldn’t I enjoy listening to people talk about it? It sure beats political talk radio.
I’ve come to realize that I could never host a sports radio talk show because, well, I’m simply not opinionated enough. At least about sports. I mean, I love to follow my teams (Orioles, Ravens) and I care about what’s going on in the “wide world of sports.” I just don’t hold controversial, provocative, or ranting opinions about this stuff. Which is precisely what talk radio is all about (see Rush Limbaugh).
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Actually now that I think about it, I did call a sports show once. When I was in sixth grade I called “Stan the Fan” in Baltimore to talk O’s baseball. I can’t remember what I said but I do recall being incredibly nervous as I got through (!) and waited on hold. But that was it; my radio debut was a one shot deal. I didn’t become a regular known as “Tim from Homeland.” But I’m sure my voice-cracking insights were profound.
I don’t think I’ll be starting an Episcopal Talk Radio show. Though there are plenty of controversial topics and ranting Episcopalians to go around. I’ll stick to listening to sports talk radio. After all, I’m always on the lookout for things to give up for Lent.
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