Month: January 2010

What I Have in Common With Pat Robertson

Steven Woolley3 Comments
According to the CIA fact book, 80% of Haitians are Roman Catholic and over 50% of Haitians also practice Voodoo.  Why would I bother to look that up?  I wondered what Pat Robertson was blathering on about this time, but it raised another question.  The only thing I knew about Voodoo was learned from really, really bad movies, something I apparently have in common with Robertson. 
So I also looked that up on good old Wikipedia, and one must always take Wikipedia with a healthy degree of skepticism.  In any case, the author described the Haitian form of Voodoo as a syncretic combination of West African religion with Roman Catholicism that involves a universe of greater and lesser gods along with a belief in the presence of many spirits, including those of the dead.  One might even be able to draw some interesting parallels with the Christianity of mediaeval Europe.  I also learned that all those cool Voodoo dolls tourists can buy are used mostly to lure money out of gullible tourists, and if conjuring up zombies was ever practiced, it seems to have become a lost art.  What a disappointment!  What will become of B movie plots?
We, of course, are far too sophisticated for that sort of nonsense. Right?  I certainly hope so, knock on wood.

Looting?

Steven Woolley4 Comments

I note the headlines declaring that looting in Haiti is now rampant.  Is that what it is?  At least to me, looting is what happens during riots when people take advantage of the chaos to steal and plunder.  What’s going on in Haiti looks more like scavenging.  Seeing what can be salvaged from the wreckage that might provide some food, water, or something else to aid the survival of life.  No doubt there are those in the crowd, perhaps many of them, with criminal intent in mind, but if I was there as a survivor trying to survive I would be foraging for whatever I could find. 

A Look In A Mirror?

Steven Woolley2 Comments
Over the past few weeks I’ve had a vigorous e-mail conversation with Brad, a determined atheist who is not so much angry at the God he does not believe in as he is at the Church, especially the old Mainline Church, that purports to believe in and follow God in Christ Jesus.  For what it’s worth, he holds the “fundiegelicals” in even greater contempt. 
I’ve gone through our correspondence and pulled out his main arguments, not always in his exact words but close.  Take a look.  There is some truth in them, and the image in the mirror is not an attractive one.  To be sure, you and I can easily come to a quick defense, but that’s not the point. The point is that our defenses, however brilliant, are not believed because too many of our own public actions have got in the way.  I wonder how you might consider using some of Brad’s objections to underwrite a renewal of spiritual strength lived out in our cities and towns by congregations of intentional discipleship?
  1. Preaching one thing but living another makes it legitimate to call you a hypocrite.
  2. Churches are the most segregated institutions in the country so how can you say you are antiracist.  You lie.
  3. You support equal rights for everyone else but belong to exclusive clubs and send your kids to private schools.
  4. You cheer the revitalization of the inner city but live in the suburbs, as far away as possible from the poor and minorities.
  5. You preach family values but have higher divorce, alcohol abuse and domestic violence rates than atheists.
  6. Look at the poor sections of cities with store front churches in every third building.  What good to they do?
  7. The inherent ambiguity of Christianity is a programming bug, not a feature to be proud of.
  8. Churches listen to the poor except for their theology, lifestyles, and views on the roles of the sexes.
  9. If you are so sure you are on the “right road” why have you made so little progress?  Shouldn’t I be able to see a difference in who you are?  It looks to me like you are running twice as fast as atheists but going backwards.
  10. The Mainline churches are a bunch of out of date leftists.
  11. If one’s own politics are discoverable without he aid of revealed texts or any sort of hierarchy, what good is religion in the first place?
  12. Nobody listens to you anymore.  You do not represent the majority of Americans.  You just dress people up in fancy costumes and pretend.
  13. You are arrogant beyond belief.  Butler Bass recently wrote that the Mainline is the conscience of America.  Does that mean no one else can be trusted?
  14. I don’t believe in religion because its adherents don’t.
  15. Religion (Christian) is most clearly defined by its vitriol and self-absorbed idiocy.
  16. If a goal can be reached without religion, what good is religion?  
  17. Why should I pay money every week to support someone when I’m perfectly able to be moral without his help?
  18. What religions assert without proof, I will ignore without hesitation.

A Tea Party Governmemt

Steven Woolley6 Comments
I heard some Tea Party types interviewed on NPR the other day.  Very calm, very rational, very scary to me.  What would a Tea Party government look like?  I don’t think it’s much of a threat, but advance guards currently serving in congress such as John Boehner and “fellow travelers,” offer a bit of insight.  So do the demonstrators at various Tea Party related events and some of the more notorious, foxy, media commentators.
What comes to mind is a nation that would be controlled by a small, angry elite espousing extreme nationalism and restoration of a hierarchical racial equilibrium.  Constitutional guarantees that were seen to undermine security would be trampled underfoot.  Vigilante justice meted out by a well armed public would result in violence beyond any imagination.  Federal programs, particularly social programs, would be reduced or eliminated to drastically reduce the tax burden.  The result would be an even more dramatic shift of wealth to one end of the population spectrum, an immediate deterioration of the national infrastructure, an end to academic freedom and research, and, perhaps much to their surprise, an enormous increase in poverty, poor health care and lack of education among the very people the Tea Party movement seems to appeal to.  In its place would be a privately owned corporate superstructure working each for their own purposes in an environment of cross manipulation with each other and those representing government.  It would be a form of corporate socialism far beyond anything we might think exists today. In short order America would join the ranks of other corrupt and struggling nations.
Fortunately, I have enough faith in the American electorate to believe that is an unlikely scenario.   What really troubles me is that the advocates of that sort of thinking don’t seem to recognize how much they have in common with people such as Mussolini, Peron, and the petty dictators of the infamous “Banana Republics.”

Moses, Miriam and Drowning

Steven Woolley3 Comments
Morning Prayer on Thursday is a bit of a problem for me, a very small bit to be sure, but it’s always there.  One of the Thursday canticles is “The Song of Moses,” also called “The Song of Miriam.”  I find it impossible to incorporate into my morning conversation with God.
The song in canticle form consists of selected verses from Exodus 15 including 1-6, 11-13 and 17-18.  Together they sing praises to God for delivering the people of Israel from the pursuing Egyptians at the Red Sea.  The song cheers the sight of Pharaoh’s army being hurled into the sea, drowned in the Red Sea, overwhelmed by the fathomless deep, sunk like stones, swallowed up, and all because of God’s love.  Most others seem to be able to read the canticle as a celebration of deliverance from evil, metaphorically represented by Pharaoh’s army, and it doesn’t trouble them.  
Perhaps so, but I am more taken by the rabbinic story told in some Passover Haggadahs.  An angels standing next to God urges him to celebrate the great victory of deliverance as the sea washes over the army.  God hushes him saying: “Be quiet, my children are dying.”  I think I’ll take my stand with the rabbi’s story of God on his one.  I just cannot “sing” this canticle with any sense other than profound sadness and disappointment in the folly of humankind.  Don’t get me wrong, I can understand Moses and Miriam cheering and singing.  They had just escaped by the slimmest of margins, and there would be no further threat from the Egyptians.  Had I been there, I would have joined in the singing.
But I am not there.  I am here, some 3,300 years later (give or take), and from that distance I can both be grateful for Israel’s deliverance and horrified at the fate of their oppressors.  Moreover, it symbolizes for me the unending centuries of class, clan and racial feuding that seem to have taken us nowhere, in spite of the Incarnation we now celebrate.  I’m reminded of a verse written by Edmund Sears in the mid 19th century.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long; 

Beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong;

And warring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring;

O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing!

It’s the third verse of the popular Christmas carol, “It came upon the midnight clear.”
And so on Thursday, I tend to skip by that canticle, but not without remembering why.  I started this brief walk through a week of Morning Prayer last Thursday.  This brings me full circle.  We shall see what happens next.

Earthquakes and Prayer

Steven Woolley6 Comments
I always look forward to the Wednesday Morning Office because one of my favorite prayers is normally used on that day.

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought in safety to this new day: Preserve us with our mighty power that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in al we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It’s a prayer I most often say early in the morning, sitting in my study with a cup of hot coffee at hand.  But I have also said it from a hospital bed hooked up to a variety of tubes and monitors.  It’s been a prayer said as a litany while on a walk, naming each of our children, grandchildren and godchildren with each iteration.  It’s been a prayer said for friends and enemies.  It is a prayer, my prayer, of great thanks and great hope.
This morning, January 13, 2010, sitting in my cozy study and comfortable chair, surrounded by books and icons, coffee cup at hand, two dogs sleeping at my feet, grateful for yet another day that has safely arrived, I wonder.  I wonder about an impoverished Haitian, for whom life has always been hard, sitting homeless in the debris of a rain soaked street with the bodies of family, friends and strangers for company.  The earthquake that struck last night and this morning’s aftermath present an image that is another sort of icon, one through which the complexity of natural disaster and human moral evil come into sharp focus.  That sharp focus sheds momentary light on conditions like it elsewhere in the world, and reminds us of events and conditions in our own communities where personal safety arrives with no new day.  What then of this prayer?
The key is the last petition; “direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose through Jesus Christ.”  In whatever way we are able, let us be this day agents of God’s redeeming grace in places where that grace is most desperately needed.  That might be Haiti or Sudan or some other far off place, but it might also be in the house next door.

Be Not Afraid

Steven Woolley2 Comments
“Be not afraid.”  That’s the angels’ message.  Be not afraid when God comes near.  Be not afraid of the conditions you must endure.  Be not afraid of the task that is before you.  Be not afraid for God is with you.  Be not afraid is never a promise that tough times, danger or deadly confrontation with enemies can be avoided.  Be not afraid is always a promise that God has something in mind for the welfare of the world.  Be not afraid is encouragement not to fall victim to manipulating intimidation.  
How different that is from the message often heard in daily life, “be afraid, be very afraid.”  Be afraid of the boss, of life, of others who are different, of security, of almost anything.  The warning to be afraid is often used as an intentional tool of intimidation in order to manipulate the behavior of another.  Fearful people manipulating fear in others can be a powerful motivator, but seldom for good in any form. 
In the tradition of the Episcopal Church, Tuesday’s morning meditation focuses in part on fear, as we pray to God that we recognize that in serving God we will experience perfect freedom, and that “…we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries…”  Think about what it would be like to live without ever being intimidated through the intentional manipulation of fear by some other person.  How freeing would that be?  Our prayer this morning is exactly that.  By fully accepting who we are as beloved children of God we have no need to be intimidated by anyone, nor do we need to engage in the cruel act of intimidation. 
If on Sunday we prayed for an entire week lived in God’s favor, this is one of the ways to  experience that. 

King Arthur’s Lessons on Manhood

Steven Woolley4 Comments
On Christmas Day, 1952 I unwrapped a gift from my grandparents.  It was a book, Howard Pyle’s 312 page “The Story of King Arthur and his Knights.”  I cannot imagine what made them think that a ten year old boy would want to read a tome written in imitation Ye Olde English, even if it was about King Arthur.  The book got put away somewhere, and maybe that was a good thing because it is the only one of my childhood books to survive.  I picked it up a few days ago and started reading it,  fifty-seven years later.  
Pyle meant it to be both entertaining and a form of instruction for young boys that would lead them into the proper sort of manhood.  He interrupts the narrative now and then with a few paragraphs of instruction to the reader about the moral lesson they should have learned from the story just told.  But the stories are odd.  Pagan magic and Celtic fairies and enchanted places are mixed in with well populated towns, elegant cathedrals and an Archbishop of Canterbury well in control of all things religious.  The land of England is everywhere clean, neat, orderly and richly adorned.  The weather, of course, is perfect.  A knight’s manhood is authenticated by his “adventures.”  Adventures involve deliberately seeking out some other knight to fight with, always with the intent of causing injury or death, and it matters not whether one’s opponent is friend, enemy or unknown.  The whole point is to fight.  Good grief, even Louis L’Amour gunfights were prefaced by a moral reason that made some degree of sense.  
Pyle also populates his tales with women of striking beauty and sexually enticing demeanor who are constantly leading knights into their adventures, and yet who must always be “held unto the knights as sacred.”  Even a ten year old boy would know that was crazy.  This one had the experience of sisters who easily led him into all kinds of trouble and there was nothing sacred about them.  Good and practical lessons for the years that would be forthcoming, but I digress. 
Admittedly I’m only up to his story of the death of Merlin, and it remains to be seen how he will handle Morgan LeFay and the affair between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.  In any case, here are the rules of life I’ve learned so far:
  1. Pick as many fights as possible.
  2. Try not to get killed or hurt too bad, but do as much damage as possible to your opponent.
  3. Use your fighting skills to protect the non-fighters.
  4. Adore beautiful women but only kiss them on the cheek and then only if you intend to marry them.
  5. Magic is your friend but be careful with it.
  6. Beware of enchanted places.
  7. God is in charge of everything that magicians are not in charge of.
  8. A real man is a rich man.

Monday’s Child Is Fair Of Face. Phooey, Don’t Bug Me, It’s Monday

Steven Woolley2 Comments


Mother Goose says that Monday’s child is fair of face, which is so unlike the popular cartoon of Monday as the harbinger of another overbearing work week, and oh so hard to endure after a weekend of rest and delight.   Arrrgh, it’s Monday!
Whatever happened to the idea we considered just yesterday that the week ahead might be lived in God’s favor.  It didn’t take long to evaporate did it?  I wonder if that’s why the preferred Monday morning canticle has us singing along with Isaiah that we will draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation, that we will give thanks to the Lord and call upon his name, that we will sing the praises of the Lord and make his deeds known among the people (Isa 12.2-6). 
To be honest, anyone who expects me to sing praises of any kind, or even be civil, before I’ve had my coffee is expecting too much.  It’s why I spend my first hour or so in meditative prayer with God.  He’s the only one who can tolerate me in the morning.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that our Mondays, back in the routine of those we work with on a daily basis, is precisely the right time to recall our desire to live in God’s favor, and to do so by drawing water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation in the very place and among the very people of our ordinary daily lives.  That does not mean heavy handed proselytizing at the water cooler.  It simply means to let the love of God that washed over us in our worship yesterday flow through us into the lives of those we work with today simply in the way we treat them.  Nothing needs to be said.  In fact, words frequently create obstacles all but impossible to overcome.  Just let it be.  H’mm, that sure sounds familiar.   Where have I heard that before?
When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, 
speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. 
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. 
Have a happy and blessed Monday