Jed Smith Back To School Night

Last Wednesday night I got to participate in a remarkable event.  Our congregation partners with Jed Smith Elementary School, a school located in housing projects in which ever student is enrolled in the school lunch program.  For quite some time we had been supporting classroom teachers by compiling student materials at the beginning of the year, adopting classroom teachers and giving them little gifts and encouragement, providing every child with small gifts at Christmas, etc.  More recently we have established a program where we send children home on Fridays with backpacks of food for them and their families.  We started this when we found out that children were being adequately fed at school during the week but were going hungry over the weekends.  We also started a free clothes closet at the school. 

Last Wednesday night we did something new, and equally exciting.  The remarkable, high-energy principal, Fay Sharpe, has been working hard to connect the life of the school with the neighborhood.  (Every student lives within a few blocks of the school.)  One of the key opportunities to foster this connection is Back To School Night, which is an open house at the beginning of the year that usually runs from 5-6pm..  Last Thursday, for Back to School Night, members of Trinity cooked dinner for everybody who came.  They made over 20 gallons of delicious, meaty spaghetti sauce to serve with the spaghetti as well as salad, garlic bread and ice cream.  We also had the clothes closest open.  Usually the children are the only ones who go to the clothes closet because we open it on Friday’s when school is letting out.  But this time, entire families could go.  We also had a health fair with lots of health information and nurses on site to answer questions, take blood pressure of offer other services.  We had a sign up for a parent’s group.

It was a breathtaking success.  Fay said attendance was more than double the attendance in previous years.  As an example she said in a class of 20 students, 18 students had their parent(s) come.  The energy at the school was lovely.  The clothes closet was crazy – good crazy.  Lots of health material got picket up and the nurses spoke with many young women about women’s health. 

I remember my former bishop in Idaho, Bishop Bainbridge, challenging congregations to make such a difference in their communities that if the church would disappear, the community would lament.  I feel like Trinity Cathedral is starting to make that kind of difference.

Six parents signed up for the new parent's group

Meditating with Mercedes – Audio

Here’s the audio from Mercede’s meditation. I apologize for the annoying noise toward the end of the recording.  It doesn’t last long.

For those who weren’t there, here’s a description of what we did.  My friend Mercedes Bahleda is a  Tibetan Buddhist teacher who was raised as a Roman Catholic.   Although she is a devout Buddhist with a very intentional practice, she has not abandoned her love of Jesus and has recently been studying the Christian mystics.

While meditation practices have always been present in Christianity, they have played a much more significant role in Buddhism.   Over many centuries Tibetan Buddhists have developed and refined their meditation techniques, focusing primarialy on spoken meditation — what I had heard referred to as “guided meditation.”  This is different from the silent meditation emphasized in Zen Buddhism and Christian Centering prayer.

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Outword Magazine

I was invited to write a column for Outword Magazine.  Here’s what I submitted:

I recently received an email from a woman asking “What do I say to friends and family members who tell me I’m going to Hell because I’m gay?”  I had to resist the urge to suggest she tell them to go to Hell.  Beyond that knee-jerk reaction, what could I suggest?  I’m not sure if there was anything she could say that would change their prejudice. Without knowing her family, I certainly wouldn’t know what those words might be.

I was more concerned with what this woman might be thinking about herself.  I wondered if she might be asking, “what do I say to the voice in my own head that tells me I’m going to Hell because I’m gay.”  We ended up having a lovely face-to-face conversation that I hope was helpful.  But this encounter made me realize that there may be other folks who are wrestling with this same question.  I would like to offer some thoughts as well as resources.

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A warning to the religious – from Rabbi Abraham Heschel

I copied this from Susan Russel’s Blog:

“Religion had declined not because it had been successfully argued against, but because it had become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, uninteresting. When faith is replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crises of today are ignored because of the remembered splendor of the past; when faith becomes an inherited heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority and rules rather than the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

What’s Your Pirate Name?

I’m Cap’n Jack Knocknees.  To find your pirate name, click HERE.  There are other sites to find your pirate name HERE.

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  To mark this important day, Trinity Cathedral is having a Pirate Eucharist at the Cathedral at 5:30 p.m. 

For more information on Talk Like a Pirate Day, visit the “official” TLAPD website.

San Diego Union-Tribune Changes Position on Marriage Equality

The usually conservative San Diego Union-Tribune has decided to support marriage equality and oppose Proposition 8.  The editorial in today ’s paper ends with:

In the past, this page has advocated civil unions for gay couples rather than marriage. But our thinking has changed, along with that of many other Californians. Gay and lesbian couples deserve the same dignity and respect in marriage that heterosexual couples have long enjoyed. We urge a No vote on Proposition 8.

Earlier in the editorial, they articulate one of their reasons:

As gay couples have gone to the courthouse and entered into matrimony, usually surrounded by champagne, family and friends, the worst fears of gay marriage opponents suddenly seem greatly inflated. For instance, Christian conservatives have asserted for years that allowing gays to marry would undermine heterosexual unions – hence, such laws as the Defense of Marriage Act. In truth, however, there has been no discernible impact on traditional marriage between a man and a woman now that gay couples in California have the same right.

The witness of faithful gay and lestiban couples who have stayed together, often in the face of persecution, serve as a powerfulwitness to hetrosexual couples.  Their marriages strengthen marriage in general.  It looks like that witness is changing hearts and minds. 

You can read the entire editorial HERE.

Meditating with Mercedes

Here’s what I posted for the Cathedral Blog about last night’s meditation with Mercedes:

Last night my Tibetan Buddhist friend, Mercedes Bahleda, who was visiting from her Buddhist community in Arizona, led us in a Christian-Buddhist meditation. We used an ancient Tibetan Buddhist form of guided meditation to invoke the presence of Jesus into our lives and our hearts. It was beautiful. I’m hoping to have audio of the meditation posted on my blog in the next few days.

We put this together rather quickly with little publicity. We were surprised when people kept showing up. We had over 30 people crammed in the church nursery. We were relegated to the nursery because of all the other thing going on in the Cathedral: we were hosting homeless families in our classrooms, the choir was in the cathedral, a political action group wanting to preserve the right for same-sex marriage in California was in a meeting room, a Buddhist sangha was meeting in our conference room, AA in another room. Amidst all that bustle, we managed to carve out an hour of contemplative time and space. It was absolutely lovely.

Lama Marut Photos

At Zuda Yoga with Lama Marut and Anne Marie Kramer

Sermon: Forgiveness – Year A, Proper 19

To Listen to the Sermon, PRESS HERE.

Buddhist and Christian Meditation

 I will be leading a meditation with my Tibetan Buddhist friend Mercedes Bahleda at 7pm on Wednesday, September 17 at Trinity Cathedral.  Mercedes lives in Arizona and has been visiting me this week.  She was raised a Roman Catholic and is the director of Star in the East, an organization that sees close connections between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity.  She is eager to help Christians learn eastern meditative practices.  Here’s a poster for the event: