petard.us

At a meeting of a focus group in our parish’s work on a profile, one of the people asked for less political preaching. But the Risen Lord–the one with the wounds–the same Lord as the one who lived and ministered among us. So the politics of the Risen one are not different from, are the same as, those of that Galilean rabble rouser who got it in the end but wouldn’t stay dead.

So how do we not stay dead? We look at what Jesus said and did in the context of his own world and culture. He would not have been charged and executed if he had not been political Our culture separates the religious and political, his did not. So what we see as religious may have been political as well. I frequently think that, according to the laws of his day, he was justly executed.

But God raised him from the dead, declaring him truly innocent. That constitutes God’s judgement on the laws that condemned him.

And invites us to look at our own laws, convictions, and executions in the light of God’s judgement.

That’s what the Resurrection means.

If I were able, I would love to be free to devote myself just to reading and writing, to study of the Scriptures and theology. I recently read _The Ideas of the Fall and Original Sin_ by NP Williams. It makes me want to go back and read a lot of the Father, especially the Greek ones. (And repudiate Augustine but that’s another issue) Also made me greedy for that wonderful $350 book, GWH Lampe’s Patristic Greek Dictionary. Ah, greed, but it’s good greed. I would love to have the time to study at length.

I would also like to have the time to be involved thoroughly in a parish. I have been teaching an adult Sunday School class, currently on the Catechism. I was teaching Galatians, and I might follow the Catechism with some on moral/ethical reason. (Hidden agenda, Scripture, Tradition and Reason )

I would like to be ministering. I have long experience with doing spiritual direction. It almost does more for me than for the directee; it reveals me to myself in very healing ways.

I would like to have the time to expand one piece of ministry I am already doing. I hang out in IRC channels and talk to people, listen, suppport, advise, etc. Todays prayer request for Pearl is an example, I just spend time with her online, listening and being supportive. I am online with her now. Her fear seems to have settled down a bit; she seems less anxious. I would love to be able to hang out and be there for people a much more of the time. Given that it’ IRC I chat with a lot of confused young people. Given the channels I hang out in, they are young gay men mostly. And many not in good shape. Like the 16 yo autistic transgendered person. He can be social online if not in the flesh. And he has a place to talk about wanting to be female rather than male.

The other weekend I noticed that I had been forgetting to take my depression meds off and on, and now had not taken then for several days. I thought maybe my body/mind was trying to tell me something. What a change. I felt happier somehow. I have accomplished doing some things for myself that i had been dragging my feet about for a while. Procrastination my old friend.

I have an appointment with the local Bishop about being licensed. I found that the new aquatics center has opened, fifteen minute by bike, so I have been swimming. Pray that I continue. I have been making notes about what I have been thinking, and then writing emails and blog entries. OK I am duplicating but www.petard.us/blog, it won’t be all duplicated. I have taken some other big steps to get my life straight. I may even find a way to collect social security benefits. Oh yes, I am now officially old; I can now be a curmudgeon. And I am starting back to the Daily Offices I think; pray for my perseverance.

It may not be all good. I find myself very irritable now that I am out from under the meds. I am much more aware of my anger. I try to read on the bus and all the other people on cell phones and populating Great Nattering On with loud conversation from different parts of the bus are really pissing me off. As is the television on one bus line, full of advertising, telling me how to get straight with the IRS and my credit card debt. All the while I am trying to read and pray. Oh and I think my impatience has shown up in some of my posts. If I am being abrasive, I’m sorry. But I am saying what I think, which is a Good Thing. And a lot of the anger is righteous anger. I had a confessor once who stopped me when I was confessing anger and asked me to see what was righteous anger, which is no sin. Bless you, Mother Julia Gatta.

This guy wants evidence. How refreshing. He’s someone we can actually imagine emulating. Don’t just tell me, he says, show me.

Don’t we want evidence for everything around us. It’s our scientific worldview. We expect to see evidence we can rely on before we take on new jobs, new responsibilities, new ideas. In evidence we trust. But do we bring it to our church, our faith, our prayer? If we pray and don’t ask for results, what’s the point. “Ask and it shall be given”

Are we afraid to ask God, “Where’s the beef?” God might answer, and that’s pretty scary. Jesus certainly did. “Here, stick your finger in this!”

Follow this Doubting Thomas.

And what of those “who have not seen and yet believe?” What evidence have they, we, seen. I guess we just have to be that evidence. Like Doubting Thomas.

I think I am a Luddite. Not to IT, Information Technology, but to Entertainment Technology. I don’t watch any television, I don’t get to movies. And the television on the MARTA buses here in Atlanta bothers me. After all I am trying to read and learn on the bus. My hunger is to be informed, not entertained, to understand what is going on, not be be distracted from it or anaesthetized to it.

What’s more, all th entertainment comes with advertisements. those need smashing. They tell me what to need, what to want. I am perfectly able to discern that for myself. Their voice insidiously tries to convince me that I don’t, that I am a child, that I need to eat from their tree of knowing what is good and what is not. “you are not good,” they say, “unless your eat of our fruit, our product.” Damnation!

_Solstice_ by Ulises Silva is an apocalypse, very bloody and
violent, about all the evil we humans are doing, about a
threat to rub out all humans, to cleanse the world. As
such, it is also a meditation on the source of evil and
its redemption. It is connected as well to the philosophy
of language and language mysticism. It depicts writing that
effects what it describes.

Enjoyment might not be the right word but I did appreciate
reading it. I do recommend it. I guess its genre is science
fiction/fantasy.

Today PJ our interim was talking about John the Baptizer’s question to Jesus, “Are you the One or should we wait for another?” He said John must have been expecting the Military Messiah, who would assemble an army and deliver us from our oppressors.

I fear the US in Iraq is precisely this False Messiah.

I am reading the book with this title about the recently discovered Gospel of Judas. The authors are Elaine Pagels and Karen King, both good scholars and reliable. This Gospel appears to have been written to oppose the martyrdom theology of the ealrly Church. It severely and angrily condemns those who advocate accepting martyrdom for their faith. It describes them as advocating and doing human sacrifice of adults and children. The Gospel of Judas, and some other early writings as well, advocate a view in which the body is lost and the God within survives and rises. There is no resurrection of the body.

Pagels describes these works as showing the conflicts and quarrels in the early Church. This reminds me that the history of the church is a history of conflicts and quarrels. The present conflicts in the Anglican Communion are nothing new and nothing different. As then, so now.

I also can see that the longings and hopes expressed and the questions raised by the “heretics” are nothing new. They are longings and questions we are still dealling with. We call them “new age” religions these days. The language about the god with in and the inner search for god are much the same. Again, as then, so now.

Pagels also says the the views of the “orthodox” were chosen to support episcopal hegemony. I would like to take a somewhat gentler view, given that what we have is that episcopal hegemony.

Pagels says:

Leaders like Irenaeus devoted decades of their lives to extablishing the structures of reed, canon, clergy, beleiving that the movement’s survival depended on them–and in some ways they may have been right, for there are limits to how many different views any group can accomodate, perhaps especially in times of trouble. But the recently discovered texts show us what was lsot when they consolidated these institutions and silenced so many early christian voices.

The question of “how many different views any group can accomodate” is precisely the question that lies before us in the Anglican Communion in these days.

All in all, worthwhile reading. I may need to go find some of the other writings from Nag Hammadi to read.

Sunday before last, at the adult ed I just listened, but it was mostly didactic anyway. Last Sunday there was more discussion and I was able to join in. I served as a complement to Fr Joe’s teaching, interjecting comments and contributions. I said my usual lain and simple stuff. Since the sessions were about the Trinity, simplicity was a good thing. Anyway I let my light shine.

And it was well received. Several people came to me and thanked me and praised my contributions. Fr Joe thanked me too; it was clear he valued my contributions. It was a little like teamwork. But this was the last adult ed of the season. So that was the end of that for now.

So I am feeling impatient to move ahead. Next Sunday is the parish picnic. I will see if I can form some social relationships. I did put on a temporary name tag last Sunday. I also conversed with Nancy the Deacon. I told her much of my story and let on that I am a priest. Joe actually said that to the adult ed group last Sunday too. So I guess I am out of that closet.

I am also impatient to move ahead as a priest. I really should find opportunities to do spiritual direction. It’s one of my best skills and my holiest. I mean that in the sense that i learn and grow in the spirit and in a certain holiness in doing it. I am not sure that my apartment is fit to have guests. the only really comfortable furniture is in the bedroom. I don’t use the rest of the house, or at least the living room, that much. A relationship with a parish or center where I could use a room would be better. But it needs to be in a place I can get to without a car.

I should also connect with the diocese. I guess I really should write a letter to my Bishop, with a copy to the local Bishop. OK, get to work on that, quick smart.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I had a long dream about a dessert festival in which I ate small bits of a large number of sweet dishes, most of them chocolate. I was awakened by florid indigestion. At least it didn’t raise my blood sugar.