Monthly Archives: July 2008

So Long and Thanks for All the Peaches

My computer’s packed; here’s a final note from M’s while we still have the modem up. 130+ boxes down and we pick up the truck later today. Big thanks to LP & Mrs. LP for helping pack the kitchen!

Next post will be from points north–but don’t expect it for a while.

Help the Cause!

Between the spider-bite thing, M not working, and now the move, things are a bit tight around here. (Of course, that’s nothing new for us…) Despite that, M and I are planning to send a donation to the Order of Julian of Norwich to help their expansion plan.

I feel very strongly about supporting this endeavor–and here’s why…

We Anglicans are a liturgical people. We believe that prayer matters. We believe that forming people into the mind of Christ matters. The catholic side of Anglicanism has strongly supported the retention of monastic forms and communities. It’s not because monastics are better or inherently more holy than the rest of us, some kind of spiritual super-class. Rather, it is a recognition of vocation.

We’re all called to do things in this world. We’ve all been given natural and spiritual gifts and graces. Those who excel in the gifts and skills needed to be geophysicists–and who are called to do it—ought to darn well go and be geophysicists. Yes, they could bag groceries or drive a desk, but to have the gifts, to have the calling and to reject it is to reject part of what God invites us into. The same is true of contemplatives just as geophysicists. Some are called to renounce property, sexual relationships and our highly-prized-though-largely-mythical personal autonomy for a life focused on the process of falling deeper and deeper in love with God and, by extension, his creation.

I’m not one of them.

I’m deeply drawn to things monastic and to our liturgical spirituality. I’m not called to be a monk. I’m called to be a husband and a daddy and I love those things with a passion that confirms my calling to them. However—I can be an oblate. I can be connected to and nourished by a monastic community. I can receive spiritual direction and insight from those whose focus can be more profoundly and constantly directed towards God than my own scattered life. And from them I can learn how to experience my scattered life as a process of falling deeper into love with God.

That’s what this expansion project is about. It’s not just about connecting some buildings in a place in Wisconsin. It’s about connecting members of the community despite increasing mobility problems, and it’s about connecting those of us outside the monastery with those inside it through increasing space and capacity for the monastics to share their wisdom, their folly, their simplicity, their own broken and woundedness with the world.

A lot of people have the wrong idea about philanthropy. They think it’s about giving money away. It’s not. It’s about investing. It’s about investing in your hopes, dreams, and goals in an organization with those same hopes, dreams and goals. An organization that not only shares them but, more importantly, can make a difference with them. I feel the order is one of those; take a look–I think you’ll agree.

So, I encourage you to hop over and check out the plans and download the pdf.

I don’t see a PayPal link or anything like that at the moment, but if you feel moved, shoot off a check to :

OJN Expansion Fund
The Order of Julian of Norwich
2812 Summit Avenue
Waukesha, WI 53188-2781

Mass without the Faith; Roof without Walls

There’s an interview up at WDTPRS with +Fellay of the schismatic Roman Society of St Pius the Xth. As you may recall, they’re the ultra-traditionalists who believe that Vatican II introduced grave errors into the Roman Church and thus split off to preserve their orthodoxy. Clearly I disagree with them on a number of points…

In any case, I noted this particular exchange:

Q: Contrariwise, would you say that the fight for doctrine has become more important?

Fellay: No, the fight for doctrine is and remains always as important. If we do not have the Faith, we have nothing, not even the Mass. The Mass without the Faith is like a roof without the walls. Doctrine is and remains the fundamental reason for our battle.

While Fellay and I no doubt disagree as to what is included within “the Faith”, I do believe this is an essential point. The liturgy—Mass and Office—is our great entry into the mysteries of reality as we understand them in light of the Triune God. It is the entrance into the encounter with the Living God that shapes us intellectually, emotionally, affectively, and morally. I sometimes emphasize the affective elements of the liturgy because I think the tendencies of the protestant tradition (and my personal tendencies) over-emphasize the intellectual. Indeed, I think the bishop’s words could be interpreted that way as well, but I read them as I believe the tradition has always read them: the liturgy alone without the way of being that the liturgy calls us into and calls forth within us is empty. There is intellectual content and affective direction that we must hold to and actively engage.

And if the Anglican “prayer book catholicity” that I and others speak of is to be fully realized, it’s those things I think we need to be more explicit about.

Homosexuality in the Communion–Once Again…

There’s a statement out from the Primate of Sudan said to be representing the views of 150 bishops from 17 provinces commending that Gene Robinson “should just go away from the Anglican world and be a normal Christian”.

This is not really news. (Except, of course, the revelation that Anglicans are not normal Christians…)

I’ll remark on what are the two most important parts of it from my read.

  • The real key quote: “Asked whether there were homosexuals in Sudan, Deng said, ‘They have not come to the surface, so no, I don’t think we have them.'” It’s one thing to look at homosexuality as it currently is lived out in the Western world, to analyze it as we analyze other behaviors, and to come to the conclusion that the Bible, Church tradition, and reasoned evidence in light of scientific and spiritual truths leads one to believe that Christianity does not and cannot sanction it. It’s another entirely to reject a thing without having a grasp on it. This statement shows that Archbishop Deng is speaking from a paradigm that fundamentally does not intersect the North American situation. (And I’d wager a great deal we do exactly the same when we shoot off our mouths about polygamy…)
  • Some interviewer asked if conservative Americans were behind the statement; the archbishop denied it. Based on the people and clergy that I have personally known from the Global South… Actually, back up… From the African people and clergy I have personally known, all of them have been vehemently opposed to homosexuality. I do believe some Westerners are of the opinion that conservative Americans are driving African and other Global South bishops to say something that they wouldn’t ordinarily say. And I think that’s false. I think the Africans would be saying this even if there were no conservative American party. As we all know, however, there is and they are stirring things up in the sense that their support emboldens primates like Archbishop Deng and others to say what they believe with reduced fear of reprisals, financial and otherwise.

One third point…: Along the lines of the first question, I wish a reporter had asked if there were any divorced people in the Sudan and what the Archbishop’s opinion might be of them as parishioners or clergy…

Update

I think it’s important to include this. These fuirther statments found at Anglican Mainstream give us a bit of background for the archbishop’s paradigm and some of the issues that make this whole situation harder:

“This issue of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion has a very serious effect in my country. We are called ‘infidels’ by the Moslems. That means that they will do whatever they can against us to keep us from damaging the people of our country. They challenge our people to convert to Islam and leave the infidel Anglican Church. When our people refuse, sometimes they are killed. These people are very evil and mutilate and harm our people. I am begging the Communion on this issue so no more of my people will be killed.

“My people have been suffering for 21 years of war. Their only hope is in the Church. It is the center of life of my people. No matter what problem we have, no material goods, no health supplies or medicine; no jobs or income; no availability of food. The inflation rate makes our money almost worthless and we have done this for 21 years. The Church is the center of our life together.

“The culture does not change the Bible; the Bible changes the culture. Cultures that do not approve of the Bible are left out of the Church’s life; people who do not believe in the Bible are left out of our churches. The American church is saying that God made a mistake. He made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Adam.

Globalization is a complicated force that we still have no clue how to handle.

The Current State of Oil Prices

Check out this post: watch the clip, read the text.

Just a reminder, CNBC has a lot of money and industry knowledge. They don’t invite flakes to speak unless they plan on ridiculing them afterward.

There recently been a call for a new “Marshall Plan” to rebuild a less oil-dependent economy and some Brits have put out a Green New Deal. I haven’t read ’em yet so can’t comment with any intelligence. Broadly though, I’m no watermelon–green on the outside, pink in the middle–I still think a primarily capitalist market is the best game going. However, my understanding is that the “invisible hand” of the market is not fundamentally a stupid hand. That is, market dynamics and a strong capitalist system are rooted in the notion of informed concerned participants who encourage market change by how, when, and where they spend their money. The complexities of international business in the age of multinational corporations and conglomerates makes it a hell of a lot harder to be an informed consumer. I’ll acknowledge the difficulty, but that it no way gets us off the hook.

From my perspective let me make this really simple:

  • **REDUCE**
  • Reuse
  • recycle

One of the great benefits of our move is that we get the chance to purge some of the accumulated mass of crap that we have for no particular reason. I’ll admit this pains me as I have pack-rat tendencies, but a simpler, cleaner, clearer life is one of the ways that we hear the Gospel calling us to embody ourselves in the world.

More on Anglican Catholicity

More good stuff from Third Mill Catholic. This time, it’s a response to Fr. Al Kimel (formerly known as The Pontificator).

The question at hand is the vexatious one of what it means to be catholic. Dr. Dunlap rightly argues that to play with Rome’s definition is to lose the game before it begins. Rather, we should seek and discuss  the Anglican definition. And I agree with his:

Romanism and Byzantinism both make claims of ecclesial ultimacy. But
their respective claims are mutually exclusive, as the former insists
on papal supremacy and the latter on the received faith of the
ecumenical councils. Thus, despite whatever superficial similarities
Rome and Byzantium may have, they are different ways of understanding
what it means to be catholic. In contrast, Anglicanism has never made a
claim of ecclesial ultimacy, and so defines itself not as the Catholic Church, but rather as a catholic church, and thus recognizes the other two communions as legitimate branches of “the
one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” Unlike Fr. Kimel, I see
this as Anglicanism’s greatest strength, not its weakness. And if it
survives the present struggles, then it will only be that much stronger.

You
see, believe it or not, I still believe in “common prayer catholicity,”
which, contrary to Al Kimel’s reductionism above, is more than just the
formal retention of ancient creeds and apostolic orders. Neither is my
position merely a “strategy,” failed or otherwise, for the orthodox to
stay put in TEC/Anglican Communion. I don’t need a reason or a strategy
to stay in TEC. Indeed, the burden of proof is STILL on those who
insist that I should leave! Rather Anglicanism is a way of being
catholic, or living into catholicity, that has proven itself very
effective and extremely resilient over the last nearly 500 years of
this independent Anglican experiment. I still believe that Anglicanism
is a movement of God. I may be wrong. But why should I give up on it
now?

Our catholicity is not an enforced catholicity then, rather, it is a formed catholicity, formed by attentively immersing ourselves in the Western/Anglican liturgical way of life.

…And I’m Back…

…with a some update and a bleg. And no, I haven’t yet begin to wade through my back feeds so more may be coming later as I sort out what all’s gone on since I left…

  • We got a place. We like it. M, as many of you know personally, is both wise and beautiful. At the moment, though, I’m doubting her sanity. She is planning for us to move in on August 1st. As in, the one 11 days from now… But–the girls are with the grandparents so we’ll be in a packing frenzy. Expect posting to be light…
  • I did see that Christopher is setting up a new blog to talk about a rule of life. I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about this, especially how it can be achieved in a busy…well, okay, chaotic…household with two preschoolers. I’ve got some solid ideas but nothing yet written. These will come later…
  • Thanks for keeping an eye on the pointy-hats for me–they seem not to have done anything too silly. Yet… 

On now to the bleg. This is for those who use the 1662 BCP or are familiar with its use particularly in the English Prayerbook Catholic paradigm:

  • Both the original 1662 lectionary and the 1922 update have quite a number of options in them. What patterns of use are favored–and why?
  • All of the red-letter days are supplied with collects, readings etc. Black-letter days obviously don’t change the readings–but how are they observed, there being no Commons of Saints?
  • The lectionary and kalender seem to indicate that 1st Vespers are not the custom of this prayer book. However, reading through the Rules to Order the Service, item 5 legislates it (“shall” be said) for all Sundays and red-letter days and item 6 leaves the option open. Is there a standard practice or much variability?
  • Also, the Rules to Order the Service make much causal mention of “memorials”, which I take to be supplementary collects in the fashion of commemorations. Are there other directions on memorials that I’m somehow missing?

Of course, I’ll consult my older written sources: Directorum Anglicanum and the 1st edition of Ritual Notes on these but I’d like to here about current use as well… Thanks in advance!

…And I’m Off…

For a week at the shore. And hopefully also finalizing future living arrangements.

I doubt I’ll be on much so I’ll leave it up to you. Make sure the bishops don’t do anything dumb while I’m gone.

I may also have an article up at the Cafe in the next few days.

I’ll leave you with a possible solution to an age-old naturalistic conundrum solved for you by Lil’ G.

Me [reading a book]: …And nobody knows how the dinosaurs died…
Lil G: I do!
Me: No, you don’t!
Lil’ G: Yeah, I do–they’re extinct!
Me: Yes, they are, but that describes their state, not how they got that way.
Lil’ G: Oh. Well…maybe somebody sprayed ’em…