Today we delivered Christmas gift bags to children at Jed Smith Elementary School. The kids were thrilled to see Santa. One young boy was so excited to get a small box of crayons. I heard others excited about their new socks. It was touching and great fun.
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Santa (Randy Cheek) with a student from the school.
You can see all the pictures here.
I firmly believe that within a generation the antigay hate speech Bishop Schofield so freely espouses will receive as little tolerance as we do today, and I look forward to a time when men like him will wish they had quietly harbored hatred rather than staking their reputations on it. Meanwhile, Bishop Jefferts Schori and other proponents of inclusion will be credited with having furthered the integrity of their faith institutions as dynamic, relevant forces in the 21st century.
Non-Episcopalian gays and lesbians might not think we have a dog in this fight, but we all have a vested interest in the outcome. We find ourselves in a very rare position here, one so unfamiliar to LGBT people we can scarcely grasp its significance: In the determination of the U.S. Episcopal Church to take a stand for our equality and inclusion, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, while the folks fighting for us risk their political and financial footing in the Anglican Communion, the third-largest Christian body in the world, which is far more sympathetic toward your Bishops Schofield than to the progressive platform embraced by Bishop Jefferts Schori and the majority of her church’s 2.5 million members.
We never asked Episcopalians to take up our fight. Rather, it seems, their spiritual path has led them to believe that we aren’t any less deserving of ministry or recognition or even consecration simply because we happen to be unpopular sexual minorities. I wish that weren’t an extraordinary concept in 2007, but it is. And Bishop Jefferts Schori has hardly blinked in a year of denominational strife that has seen her character and her commitment to her religious office questioned, challenged, dismissed, and maligned.
In this age of gay bashing from all sides, it isn’t often we encounter a religious leader—or any leader—willing to bulldog for our rights, especially when faced with such a potentially high cost to herself and the institution she represents. What I wouldn’t give for such genuine representation in our elected officials.
When I consider the trail of broken promises left by those we helped to elect, Bishop Jefferts Schori’s position becomes that much more remarkable. Reacting to the secession vote in San Joaquin, she not only refused to retreat from her position, she reiterated it: “We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness. We wish them to know of our prayers for them and their journey. The Episcopal Church will continue in the diocese of San Joaquin, albeit with new leadership.”
I keep meaning to bake that woman a cake.
In my fruitless search for a presidential candidate who not only believes in my essential equality but is willing to say it out loud and stand by his or her position when the inevitable attacks come down, I wonder if any money I may have set aside to donate to that elusive candidate’s campaign might not be better spent tithing to the Episcopal Church. At least there I know my support will go toward furthering my rights, not sending them to the back of the bus—or throwing them under it.
Like others who have read this article, it makes me proud of my Church. You can read the whole article here.
From December 6-9, 2007, Trinity Cathedral hosted two Tibetan Buddhist monks who created a sand mandala of the Medicine Buddha in the East Transept of the Cathedral. It was a remarkable experience. Close to 5000 people came to the Cathedral and our Sunday morning services were over-full. Here are some links to images and articles:
Articles I wrote for the Sacramento news and Review:
Radical Hospitality
Sand Mandala
We incorporated the Buddhist monks into our Sunday services. They chanted a Buddhist prayer for peace as part of the prayers of the people. The ceremony at which they destroyed the mandala was scheduled to take place right after our our 11:15 service. That service was packed with non-members who had come to see the monks. It was the 2nd Sunday in Advent and the gospel reading included John the Baptist shouting, “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand.”
Here’s an audio file of the sermon I preached.
Other interesting links:
Trinity Cathedral’s Photobucket page
Message from Mike Halfhill of the Dalai Lama Foundation:
On behalf of the Dalai Lama Foundation Sacramento Area Chapter I would like to thank everyone who helped make this event a beautiful and fulfilling experience for many. Our community has been uplifted and strengthened through the efforts of Trinity Cathedral, Spiritual Life Center, East West Books and Sacramento Friends of Tibet as hosts along with the DLF. I would like to give a special thanks to Trinity Cathedral and Dean Brian Baker for their overwhelming hospitality and support in allowing the use of their facilities for the monks to be there and share their Sacred Healing Arts with us. It is a living testament that we can come together and work side by side with great respect for each others traditions. I would also like to thank the media for acknowledging this as a newsworthy event. Thank you all.
Yesterday (Monday before Christmas Eve) we got our Christmas tree. Andrea and I drove up to Apple Hill and tromped through a muddy tree farm. It was a rainy day. We pushed through wet branches and found the right tree. We cut it down and hauled it to the car. We stopped at a winery for a tasting and bought a case of wine to have for Christmas parties. (It was our first time visiting a winery in the foothills.) We got home just in time to get the kids from school. We had to drive them around to their various activities, help with homework, etc. After attending an elementary school band concert, we hauled the boxes of decorations down from the attic. We put on Christmas music, lit a fire, made cider and got to work. Of course each of these items, mentioned in passing, took more time than expected. We had to find the Christmas music. It was our first fire of the season so we had to find all the necessary equipment and split some wood. The cider, well that was pretty straightforward.
The tree, however, was not. The tree that looked so perfect in the pine forest, was too tall for our living room. And it was very fat. And it had odd bulges. Of course I didn’t measure the height of the tree until after I brought it into the house and tried to set it up. Then I had to cut the tree down to size (in the house) and as a family we muscled it into its stand. I got to work trimming the bulges and thinning it so it would fit in the room. I was tired and grumpy as I lay on the floor adjusting the stand so the tree would stand straight(ish). By the time the lights were strung, it was well past bedtime. But the tree was up, music was playing, the fire was lit and hot cider was consumed and one of the Baker family traditions (including the grumpy dad) was observed one more year.
The day of tree getting and decorating has always been for me a symbol of Christmas and of my life. It is a great deal of work. There is much to be done. And it would be easy to see this day as a chore rather than a blessing. It would be easy to be distracted by the business of it all and miss the joy.
Of course the whole point of Christmas is to show us that all of life is a blessing. God is with us constantly. And at least this year I’m blessed with a glimpse of that presence in my family, in my church and in my too-big, oddly shaped Christmas tree.
How would you describe the brokenness of our world? In what ways are we living lives too small for us? One way Christianity answers these questions is through language of separation. We are estranged, or separated from God, from one another and from our true selves. Separation within the human family is obvious when watching the news or listening to political rhetoric. Whether it’s Sunni vs. Shia, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, pro-life vs. pro-choice, people are estranged from one another in endless ways. And this separation is not usually benign. We all too often consider ourselves superior to those in the other group. This superiority allows us to demonize and belittle the other. And the world becomes more fractured.
I do not believe this is how God intends us to live our lives. We are created to be interdependent, not independent. We are designed to be in communion and community with one another, which is one reason why hospitality is such an important spiritual discipline. We exercise hospitality when we make room in our lives, in our homes, in our social circles for others, particularly those who are different.
One reason Trinity Cathedral hosted the Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala and the monks who created it was to model radical hospitality. We wanted to show the world how two different religious traditions could come together, not simply to have a discussion, but to share intimate worship space and spiritual practices. And the willingness of the Buddhists to bring their spiritual practice into a Christian cathedral modeled the same hospitality.
The results were spectacular. The mandala alone was radiant and the monks were gracious and spirit-filled. But the context, the mandala within the Christian cathedral, made it even more remarkable. I was enthralled. I found it difficult to focus on anything else. It felt like God’s Kingdom of Love was blossoming right there.
But the hosting of the mandala was not problem-free. Hostpitality can be messy. We often have to make accommodations for others. People have different ways of living, different cultural expectations. The Cathedral can be a very busy place and people have different expectations of what will go on in a church (talking/laughing vs. silence, eating vs. not eating.) Worship services and music rehearsals took place while the monks were working and visitors were passing through. There were collisions of sound and space.
One such collision happened at 9am on Friday. We celebrate communion every day at Trinity Cathedral. On Fridays, the communion is at 9 a.m., which is also when the monks began their work with prayer and chanting. On Friday, Canon Carey, an 80-year-old priest, was at the high altar blessing the bread and wine (a particularly holy moment in the service) when the monks began chanting in the East Transept, about 15 feet away.
Some people might have taken offense. After all, shouldn’t the guests be more sensitive to services that are happening in the Cathedral? When Canon Cary recounted this experience for me, he was not offended at all. In fact, he said he was so moved by the beauty of the chanting happening at such a holy moment in his service, that he was moved to tears. He told the small congregation gathered for communion that this was a communion they would never forget.
Isn’t that beautiful? Christian communion enriched by Buddhist chanting. Such beauty can become manifest when we open our lives to those who are different from us. And God’s Kingdom of Love draws nearer.
-Dean Baker
Several years ago, while serving as a priest in Sun Valley, Idaho, a young woman visited me. She was to be married and she wondered if I would officiate at an Episcopal wedding service that included Tibetan Buddhist prayers. I was a little skeptical. Not because I didn’t think Buddhist prayers should be said at a Christian wedding. Rather I wanted to make sure Pilar, the young woman, was serious about her Buddhist practice. In my community Tibetan Buddhism had an exotic mystique and I wanted to make sure the prayers would be said with integrity rather than simply added to be chic.
As it turned out, Pilar was a devout Tibetan Buddhist and was very intentional in her spiritual practice. I did officiate at her wedding and she and I became good friends. She taught me Yoga. We began meditating together and after we prayed, we would teach each other about our different religious traditions. We opened our conversations to the wider community. Because of my friendship with Pilar, I took my own spiritual disciplines more seriously. I became a better Christian because of my friendship with a Buddhist.
There were some aspects of Pilar’s faith, like emptiness and compassion, that connected readily with my own perspective. There were other aspects of her beliefs that will probably always feel foreign to me. It was not necessary for us to be the same (as in “all religions are basically the same”) in order for us to respect one another and to learn from one another.
Toward the end of my time in Sun Valley, I was asked to organize and facilitate a meeting between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and local religious leaders. It was one of the highlights of my ministry and a lovely culmination of my relationship with the Buddhists in Sun Valley.
When I arrived in Sacramento, one of the first people to see me was Lama Jinpa, the leader of the local Tibetan Buddhist community. Pilar had asked him to visit me. Lama Jinpa and I have met a few times and have discussed how we might be able to work together. Because of this new friendship, Trinity Cathedral has been invited to host two Tibetan monks who are coming to build a sand mandala in early December.
I think it is important that the mandala will be created in a Christian church. In our world with so much conflict and division, religious groups should model hospitality and inclusion. Not only is this an opportunity for hospitality, it is a chance for mutual enrichment. The mandala will depict the Medicine (or healing) Buddha. At Trinity Cathedral, we take praying for healing seriously. We have people at every Sunday service that pray for those who need special prayers. These prayers take place in the same part of the Cathedral where the Medicine Buddha mandala will be. The mandala , which is a kind of icon, will be placed next to a beautiful icon of the Trinity at the Cathedral. These are just a couple of obvious connections. Others will become manifest as we spend time together.
The mandala will be open to the public and it is my hope that many people will come to visit the Buddhist monks as they create their beautiful and deeply spiritual artwork.
You can listen to the sermon HERE.
