Happy Birthday to Sandy

People come to the church office needing help.  It is a consistent challenge for me.  I don’t know how much we can really help.  We aren’t staffed to provide the real help needed – which I’m guessing is case management, counselling, financial support, etc.  The needs are overwhelming.  So we provide a little help.  Band-aids really.  But sometimes you need a band-aid.  One thing I have learned here is that when I try to be generous, like with rent or utility assistance, then the phone rings more and more and we get quickly overwhelmed.  So right now I stick to band-aids.

Today an older man I’d never met before came in needing a bus pass.  I had $5 in my pocket that I meant to give to my daughter this morning when I dropped her off at summer school.  So I gave it to the guy.

Then a little later a regular friend came by.  She is a 41 year old woman who speaks with this great southern accent.  We don’t hear such accents much here in Northern California so i smile when I hear her.  The reason I know she is 41 is because today is her birthday.  The reason I know that is she showed me her ID to prove it.  She was looking for food.  I offered to walk her to the food closet next door.  She said what she really wanted was a cupcake or something, with a candle. 

It just so happened that today was the day Tina Campbell, our deacon who is leaving on Tuesday for a 6 month sabbatical, came by with a huge box of doughnuts as a pre-sabbatical offering to the staff.  I excused myself and went into the office.  I came out w/ a plate and the box 1/2 full of doughnuts.  Sandy, our regular friend, looked at the doughnuts and with a beautiful smile, took two.   It was thinking about how great it was that we actually had something to offer, when Sandy said, “now if I only had a candle.”
A candle!  Of course!
I looked everywhere for a candle.  We celebrate birthdays regularly as a staff but I could not find a candle anywhere.  Sandy waited patiently.  Then I remembered the Blessed Virgin Mary candle that sits on my desk.  It is a pink candle in a gold metal cylinder with a painting of the BVM on it.  I took it out, lit it and we sang Happy Birthday to Sandy. 

Happy Birthday Sandy!

Love prevails

One of my favorite sermon preparation blogs is Sara Dylan Beruer’s SarahLaughed.net.  In her entry on the gospel for last Sunday I found this gem:

That’s why reconcilers must remind themselves moment to moment to stay grounded in God’s love. Remember just how much and how unconditionally God loves and values you, and you won’t be thrown off-center by anyone’s attempts to make you feel as worthless as they do. Remember just how powerful God’s love is to heal, and you won’t have to flee from things that remind you of your own vulnerabilities and wounds. Remember what God’s love looks like in the flesh, in the person of Jesus, and you’ll know how to respond. Keep in touch with that love in the core of your being, and you’ll be able to respond with authenticity and with love no matter what you’re faced with.

Don’t worry about what to say. Don’t worry — full stop. There’s a reason that Martin Luther King called the result of nonviolent resistance “beloved community.” It is the community of those who know, who proclaim, and who embody the Good News that love is the fundamental, powerful, and inevitable Word through which the universe was made and lives, and for which it is destined. We have seen that Word made flesh in Jesus, and we see it embodied among us. That can’t be stopped by violence; bringing violence to bear against God’s love only creates more opportunities for God’s love to disrupt the spiral of violence and build beloved community.

(Emphasis mine. The whole post is HERE.)

The last part of the second paragraph really resonated with me.  And the part about violence creating more opportunities for love was a big AHA for me.  That was what I experienced at the Gay Pride Parade.  The protesters created an environment where the loving support of the marchers was more palpable.  It was a wonder to behold.  And having the protesters come to church the following day simply helped me experience this wonder more consciously and deeply.

I never quite understood how the cross was a victory over evil but this paragraph and my experience at the parade helps me approach the mystery.  Evil can’t prevail. It simply creates more opportunities for love.

Sermon: Not Peace but a Sword – Year A, Proper 7

In the gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus says he did not come to bring peace, but a sword and that family members will be set against one another.  This was the Sunday after the Gay Pride Parade and we had people protesting outside the Cathedral.  Having protesters at the church was a new experience and many parishioners were anxious as the service started.    During the service, however, the mood shifted.   After the service, people went to the kitchen and prepared a cart with refreshments and they went out and served the protesters.  It was remarkable to watch.

To listen to an MP3 recording, click HERE.

Protesters at Church

We had the most remarkable church services on the Sunday after the Gay Pride Parade.  Because Trinity Cathedral was a visible part of the parade, we were apparently worthy of further attention.  The set up right outside the front entrance of the Cathedral.  

(Protesters outside the church.  It was also the day of our blood drive, hence the bloodmobile)

I had intended to preach on the Parade and part of what I wanted to talk about was how great it was when folks responded to the protestors with grace.  I wanted to talk about countering the spiral of violence with a spiral of love.  And then we had real live protesters to practice on!  It was great to see the congregation in action.  Folks prepared a cart of ice water, tea and juice and wheeled it out to them.  A group stood and graciously served them.  One of them accepted iced tea and chatted a bit.  It ended up being festive.  People who would have normally come to churh through a side door purposefully walked around to the front door just to be a positive presence. 

One young man was so angry when he first saw the protesters he wanted to pound them (his word.)  After the service he was eager to tell me he wanted to give each of them one of the gift bags that we give visitors.  They had left by the time our 3rd service was over so he didn’t get the chance. 

It was a holy and fun day.

My sermon from the day is HERE.

Gay Pride Parade 2008

Today i went to the Gay Pride parade in Sacramento.  Here are some of my reflections.

It was a very hot day.  I wore a short-sleeved black priest shirt w/ collar and shorts & sandals.  I intentionally didn’t wear any thing that would identify me as pro or anti gay.  I was clearly an establishment Christian and I was curious how I would be received.  It was awkward to walk around before the parade and not be “in” or “out” of the various groups.  The “anti” groups weren’t there yet so I was mostly walking by the folks in the parade.  While it is dangerous to guess other people’s feelings, I did feel like I was greeted w/ anxiety.  Most people averted their gaze.  I thought about how hard it must be to be treated with such hatred and I felt like I was an icon of that hatred.  How very, very sad.

Then one woman in the Sisters of Scota, a women’s motorcycle club,  said “Hi Father.”  We struck up a conversation.  Then “Blade” invited me to sit on her gorgeous bike.   i was a very happy man.     I had great conversations with several of the women.  Meanwhile I was sinning shamelessly (While the 10 commandments don’t specifically list coveting thy sisters motorcycle, I’m sure it’s included as a sin.)

(Me and “Blade.”  I didn’t notice the sign until I saw the picture.)

Also, during this pre-parade time, I went to the religious section of the parade (right behind the motorcycles!)  I was pleased to see many Trinity people there wearing rainbow leis, waving rainbow streamers and carrying signs.  It was great.

Then the protesters came.  They had their hateful signs and were shouting terrible things.  It was so ugly.  They were on the sidewalk right alongside my new motorcycle friends.  I couldn’t stay incongento any longer.  I donned a raiinbow lei and stood between the protesters and the motorcycle women.  I wanted to somehow block the taunts.  Or at least present a friendly face.  I blessed a few of the women.  One blew me a kiss. 

Experiencing the taunts was an emotionally charged experience.  And the emotions were mixed. I did feel fear.  I knew they couldn’t physically harm me, but it was somehow scary.   I also felt sadness.  The signs and taunts were so mean.  I was sad about how broken we are as a human community.  I also felt joy.  There was something beautiful about how the people in the parade were caring for one another.

There were rare moments when somebody from within the parade would be unable to contain themselves and yell back at the protesters.  At that point I knew Satan smiled.  But those moments where the spiral of violence and hatred kicked in were very, very few.   Mostly when people in the parade would come upon a clump of protesters, the folks in the parade would cheer.  It was lovely.  And holy.

(Cheering and greeting the protesters.)

The parade went about 10 blocks.  Behind us were lots of cars and floats.  We ended at a large field that was fenced off.  On the field was a great festival with lots of booths, live music, food.  Trinity Cathedral had a booth.  The atmosphere inside the festival was great. 

Across the street from the entrance, the protesters continued their show.  At the beginning, when lots of people from the parade were filing by, Canon Kathleen Kelly stood in front of them with her sign.

Once the festival got going, the protesters were mostly ignored.  The kept up their shouting and at one point i took Kathleen’s sign and just stood silently near the entrance.  I wanted something to offset their cruel noise. 

In the festival i got to drink beer and each Philly Cheastake w/ parishoners and then chat with my new motorcycle buddies. I had to leave too early so I could work on my sermon.  It was a great day.

Here’s my photos album from the Parade.

Here’s my sermon preached the day after the Parade.

Blessings,
Brian

Why Marriage Equality is Good for Us

i stole this from The Lead:

Jonathan Rauch in the Wall Street Journal writes of why gay marriage a good thing for our culture.

By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years. 

More ceremonies will follow, at least until November, when gay marriage will go before California’s voters. They should choose to keep it. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn’t happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage.

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question.

Imagine that in the law’s eyes you and your soul mate will never be more than acquaintances. And now add even more strangeness. Imagine coming of age into a whole community, a whole culture, without marriage and the bonds of mutuality and kinship that go with it.

Read the essay here.

Roman Catholic Church makes firm statement, “Women can’t be priests”

This came out a couple of weeks ago, I’m just late in posting.

My response to the question, “Do you believe in the ordination of women?” would be, “Believe it, I’ve seen it.”  Women are undeniably serving well in the catholic (universal) church.  The Roman branch of the universal church will continue to suffer without the witness and service of women clergy.  And women in the Roman church will continue to exist as 2nd class Christians.  Sad.

Vatican: Excommunication for female priests
2008-05-30 14:14:50
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican insisted Friday that it is properly following Christian tradition by excluding females from the priesthood as it issued a new warning that women taking part in ordinations will be excommunicated.

The move dashed the hopes both of women seeking to be priests and of Catholics who see that as an option for a church struggling to recruit men.

A top Vatican official said the church acted after what it described as “so-called ordinations” held in various parts of the world.

Monsignor Angelo Amato of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the Vatican wanted to provide bishops with a clear response on the issue.

The church has always banned the ordination of women by stating that the priesthood is reserved for males. The new decree is explicit in its reference to women.

“The church does not feel authorized to change the will of its founder Jesus Christ,” Amato said in an interview prepared for Vatican Radio that was released to reporters. The reference is to Christ’s having chosen only men as his Apostles.

Asked whether the Roman Catholic Church was going “against the tide” in respect to other Christian confessions, Amato said the church was in “good company” with Orthodox and ancient eastern churches and that it was the Protestants who are breaking with tradition.

In March, the archbishop of St. Louis excommunicated three women — two Americans and a South African — for participating in a woman’s ordination. They were part of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, which began in 2002.

The decree was published Thursday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, which in a headline called the ordination of women a “crime.”

The congregation said it acted to “preserve the nature and validity of the sacrament” of ordination.

The decree — signed by the congregation’s head, American Cardinal William Levada — said anyone trying to ordain a woman and any woman who attempts to receive the ordination would incur automatic excommunication.

Pope Benedict XVI led the doctrinal office before becoming pontiff in 2005. Like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, he has consistently rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on divorce, abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the requirement that priests be male and celibate.

“We didn’t expect anything different now, but in 20 to 30 years they will be expressing their regrets when they will need more priests,” said Vittorio Bellavite, an Italian spokesman for the international reform group We Are Church.

The Vatican released figures this week showing that the number of priests increased slightly worldwide between 2000 and 2006, with the growth in Africa and Asia. It said the number remained stable in the Americas dropped nearly 6 percent in Europe.

Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive the sacraments. Amato said the penalty can be lifted if those so punished are sincerely repentant.

Trinity on Sac News & Review Blog

Kel Munger from the Sacramento News and Review blogged about Trinity’s presence at the county clerk’s office during the first full day of same-sex weddings.  You can the original posting with a picture HERE. 

Taking the Soup

“Why” is the answer

My friend Bill Ellis, the Dean of the cathedral in Spokane, Washington wrote a lovely newsletter article that I wanted to share with you. 

A couple of weeks ago Beth and I went to hear a talk by David James Duncan, the author of two novels and three books of essays.  I have long been a great fan of his fiction, which weaves mystical insight into plot lines revolving around fishing in one novel and baseball in the other. Through listening to him speak I learned something new about this man; though he has long since abandoned organized religion after a childhood spent in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, he has a truly Franciscan love of God, a love born of his own deeply ingrained experience of being loved by God.  His talk reminded me of a crucial passage in his first Book, The River Why.  The Why River is a semi-fictional stream in an unnamed part of Oregon.  When viewed from the air its meander describes the word “why,” hence the name of the book.  I say semi-fictional because though Duncan made this river up, he made it up from his lived experience of fishing the coastal streams of Oregon, and so it is in a very deep sense a real river even though you will not find it in any atlas or fishing guide.  In any case during the course of his nomadic fishing life the protagonist, Gus, discovers that the river is trying to explain that “Why” is not first the question we ask of life, “Why” is first the answer life gives us.

      I thought of that as I listened to him and realized again the wisdom of that passage in his first book. If you want to know why things are the way they are in creation then look at this world, look at its’ indescribable, overwhelming beauty and you will know why.  This is why, this creation and the love that made it.  Look at the experience of love itself, and not just the love that fills your heart, the love that breaks it too. That is why as well.  Look at the mystery of the salmon that is born in the far reaches of remote streams, fights its way to the ocean, lives for years, and then, against odds that by any objective measure are totally insurmountable makes its way back to the exact place it was born to spawn and die.  That is why also. God has given us a gift beyond even the wildest, most outrageous imagination humans could muster, a gift that is simply ours, a gift that can only be the product of an unfathomable love.  So if you want to know why what is, is, then realize that the answer begins in God’s relentless love, and moves through our inability to appreciate or even accept that love, and the distortions of life we produce because of that inability, and then wanders back into that same relentless love that keeps coming at us nevertheless, and will never stop coming until the end of time when all is transformed into the true image of that love.  Creation itself shows us that, so you and I are the why, the earth is the why, the Orion nebula in all its six trillion miles of star birthing cloud is the why, because in the end the only why of life is God and God’s love. 

      It occurs to me once again that this is all the Church really has to offer.  We can, and must do our programs, develop our doctrines, celebrate our sacraments, offer our outreach, sing our songs and pray our prayers.  But to be truly meaningful and to become part of God’s work of redemption, it must all point at that overwhelming, life shattering and restoring love that God offers completely freely, a love that is stamped – like the River Why – into the very fabric of creation.  Our mission is not to fix this world, our mission is not even to be effective, whatever that means.  Our mission is to proclaim that profligate, unstinting love, and what is more, much more as a matter of fact, to take the enormous risk of opening ourselves up to it that it might transform us, so that we become the image of that love we seek to proclaim, and so part of God’s word to a world that is so bewildered it thinks “Why” is the question, and not the answer.