I was listening to the news or something when I heard something called the first ever of such and such a thing. So what if it is the first? Why is firstness important or significant? How does this privilege it? What is the privilege accorded? Does priority privilege something and why? Is this like the firstborn, like primogeniture? Isn’t it an inherent inequality? How can we change this?
What other privileges does the hegemonic ideology award and how may we judge them?
On Fri April 18 2008 6:10 pm, Ginga Wilder wrote:
> How did your meeting with the bishop go?
I don’t think there was a problem. Getting licensed is kind
of a bureaucratic thing, so we talked about the process.
And I tended to talk about my current situation, being
carless. This severely limits where I can go to be useful.
After finding a parish and starting to do things there, the
interim felt that I could be more useful if I were
licensed.
There are things I wish I had said. I am a good to great
preacher. I have lots of experience as a spiritual
director.I have led group and individual retreats. I am good
at doing liturgy. I am a good scholar and teacher. I can
get across the meaning of scriptures and theology simply
and clearly. I have successful experience as a group
leader.
If there were deacon’s school here I would love to teach New
Testament, I would love to lead a group in studying the
Greek of the Christian Scriptures, clergy or lay. I would
be good at helping them with the Greek because I myself was
trained to do this.
I may even have acquired some wisdom. Certainly I have no
illusions about the holiness of the church. I know
too many stories and incidents and I am still in the
church.
As you can see, I was led after the meeting to assess my
strength and talents.
I think I will copy this to the Bishop.
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.