Episcopal Cafe Essay

After a steady diet of General Convention on all things Episcopal/Anglican sites I have an essay published that has NOTHING to do with convention...but everything to do with the household of God. Feel free to peruse, and comment, as I share the details of my first baptism. I wrote this essay in light of my first baptism in a church setting--all my other baptisms as a priest had taken place in the hospital. So, I reflected on what was my first--and will continue to reflect on what it means for the crucifixion and baptism to be so intertwined in my theological understanding.

Running, Dancing, Being

I came to running fairly late in the game. In the sixth grade we were required to run a mile for P.E. About two laps into my run I had an asthma attack and decided that maybe the option for taking dance classes instead of compulsory gym held some appeal. So, from the age of 11 until 23ish I took dance classes fairly regularly. I loved dancing and enjoyed the physicality of the experience--contemporary jazz and modern dance lend themselves well to unconventional explorations of body and space and I enjoyed my time dancing and performing.

But, I was very aware that I was the biggest kid/adolescent/adult in every class I took and remember acutely a review in our local paper when I was a senior that noted my both my enthusiasm and unconventional body type. I laughed it off--silly critic! But, the fact that I remember this comment 12 years later is striking. I received repeated messages throughout my young adult hood that I had no business being, gasp, athletic or even active.

But, I refused to defer to these messages. In college I discovered the freedom of a bicycle in the small town where I went to school. I had no car and as time passed I began to realize the freedom accorded by my two wheels. Whizzing down hills and getting to town from my first, small, summer apartment was amazing. The bike, still blue but now a bit rusty, is still the bike I ride to the closest coffee place or library.

Then, in my early 20s I couldn't afford dance classes anymore. The 10-12 dollar a class fee just ate too much of my youth ministry salary and I couldn't justify the expense to myself. So, just to see if I could, I tried running--for 5 minutes. Then a bit longer...until I was routinely running 4 miles at a go. It was a wonderful stress reliever and felt such pride when people would comment about my athleticism (a novelty amongst the clergy and inner city folk who I spent most of time with). It was a new concept for me...athletic.

So, I ran and continue to run. Not far...my years as a pediatric chaplain left me too tired most of the time to entertain running as an option (one of the many reasons why this wasn't the healthiest call for me). So, now 30, I put one foot in front of the other--trying to get back the distances of a few years ago but really mostly okay with a couple of miles most of the time.

So, I run--and running is dancing--and dancing is living--and living is daring to do the joyful things!

Pentecost 4B poem

Good News and Lamenting: A Poem for Pentecost 4B

There is so much to mourn, to regret
Lost hopes, dreams, lost friends
The dead.
The sufferings of day to day
With its unfulfilled dreams
And hopes

It is easy
To shake a fist
At a God
Seemingly unmoved

Yet, no pain, no suffering
Is the will of God
And in the midst
Mercy beckons
And soft words call,
“Talitha Cum”

Such are the miracles
Of day to day survival
When living is a choice
Bravely made.

Letting Go of Expectations

I did it. I started the book. I have an outline and a self-imposed deadline--one year. This is not precisely the book I though I would write, but I think it is the book I'm being called to write. No spoilers here...but any editors out there who can keep a good secret?

That said, I will keep writing shorter things (having realized that it's true that one MUST write things in order to write things and that starting with the goal of a book requires that one take practice strokes and work out other parts of the writing brain)--essays and such, blog posts, etcetera.

So, what I do ask is that any of you who stumble upon this, or even read my blog or Episcopal Cafe essays regularly, keep me in prayer. Please, such things are not solitary processes--at least not for this extrovert. So, prayer. Plus, I'm a priest, I should be asking people to pray all the time!

Another Episcopal Cafe Essay

I was once again published in Episcopal Cafe. The essay I wrote was partially motivated by an essay they had published that I had found disturbing. The essay was written by a young clergyman who wrote about his love for violent on-line games--his cavalier tone and the nature of the games which he described, games in which you shoot/kill other players in cyber space was fairly gruesome. I read his essay after a parishioner, not realizing that the essays are changed daily, mistakenly thought that his essay was mine (he was wildly relieved when he realized it wasn't). So, my essay in response...

I was also concerned that he mentioned playing such games in the office. Who has time? Now, I don't want to be judgmental, altho' I recognize that I am in this case. But, really, the very idea of guns being pointed at other people makes me skin crawl.

Crash Helmets

This is the passage I referenced in my sermon on Pentecost--crash helmets indeed (and here I go, trying to get more people to take pictures of our events!):

"Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”

—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.

Meditation Tool

This "prayer lava lamp" may be just the ticket for a case of anxiety. The funkadelic music doesn't hurt either!