Bishop Alan Wilson’s Advent Suggestions

I love his blog.  Here’s his Advent suggestions.  I’ll check our boostore to see if they can get copies of the book he recommends.

Startling story of someone crushed to death on sale day at a Wal-Mart on Long Island. This is not the first time something like this has happened at such a place. With Christmas coming on, are there any alternatives out there to mindless consumerism?

In the US buynothingchristmas attemps to introduce some sense of sanity and proportion. Over here the Church of England has its own highly recommended website, whywearewaiting helps put the waiting back into wanting, with a brilliant, thoughtful and practical reflection from Rowan:

One or two people this week from the broader community have come across the site, and said how much they thnk it could help them think through an alternative run-up to Christmas to the usual clapped out desperate frantic activity.

As for me, I’m greatly loking forward to Advent with Sephen Cottrell’s Advent book, Do Nothing Christmas is coming. It’s a simple, good humoured practical countdown resource.
That doesn’t mean short on ideas. At one point he quotes Bertrand Russell:

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.What is provided is a daily opportunity to stand back from all that, and think. The text isn’t not preachy or specific in any way to particularly religious people. Each day starts with a daily snatch of ordinary conversation that captures one aspect of the season, with ideas and comment from Stephen, then some questions to help reflection. I don’t suppose doing it will take more than a five minutes a day.

This book is not, however, a comprehensive Bible Study resource, so I’ve loaded the iPhone with an application that supplemets the usual daily office with Bible themes.

Liberty’s Quest

When I first came to Trinity Cathedral in 2006, Libby Kovacs was on the Vestry (the governing board of the church.)  She was a fairly quiet member of the group, involved in meditation and the labyrinth that is set up monthly.  She was 78 (now 80.)  We have had several conversations and I have always liked her, but I never really knew her deeply.  Well today, I just finished reading her memoir, Liberty’s Quest, which was published this year. 

I now have a new hero.  Her story is quite remarkable.  She was born into a very strict Greek family and has been pushing against boundaries and cultural norms her entire life.  She was a pioneer in almost every area imaginable.  Raised in a culture where fathers decided who their daughters would marry and women did not go to college and did not work out of the home, Libby was a self-made woman.  She held her own in abusive marriages, went to college, was a pioneer in psychiatric nursing before it was a popular field, became a family therapist, and created new counseling modalities.  As situations in her life changed, she continually redefined herself.  In her fifties, she got a PhD and started a long love affair with whitewater rafting.  (She rafted the very challenging Colorado River on her 61st birthday and again when she turned 70.)  She endured heartbreaking loss and found herself stronger with each passing decade.  At the end of the book, she is contemplating retirement.   In a very recent conversation, she told me that she has had enough of retirement and is going back to work as a therapist.  Her quest continues.

Welcome to Advent

Today marks the first day of Advent.  It is also the first day of the Church year.  Advent is somewhat like Lent-light.   Whereas Lent is over 6 weeks long, Advent is less than 4.  Advent is a time of more focused devotion and a time for acts of charity.  The purpose is to prepare us spiritually for Christmas.  Without such preparation, we can end up looking at the meaning of Christmas rather than experiencing the new-birth of Christ in our own hearts.   

I am particularly eager for Advent this year.  These past weeks I have been slacking off from my spiritual practice.  It is a pattern of mine.  I’ve never been good at sustained spiritual discipline.  I think it is an ADD trait of mine.   I get all excited about a spiritual practice, enter into it wholeheartedly, and then get distracted by something else.  Advent calls my attention back to the Holy and invites me into focused practice for about four weeks.  I can do that.

So this Advent, I’m starting with the devotions that have been prepared by members of Trinity Cathedral. They can be found on the Trinity Cathedral CrossTalk Blog.    The first week of Advent is all fire & brimstone.  Don’t let this intimidate you.  The purpose of this week is to say that there is something wrong with the world in which we are living.    God is not pleased with the cruel way we often treat one another (just watch the news.)   A big theme of Christmas is God being with us in the midst of our pain – light shining in the darkness.  To help us get this, we need to see the darkness around us.  Don’t be put off by the vivid, poetic language the authors of the Bible use to express this.

Sermon: The Final Judgement, November 23, 2008

To listen, click HERE.

Pumpkin Night Slideshow

I just posted some slides from Trinity’s Haloween Pumpkin Night on the new Cathedral CrossTalk Blog.

Rally this Friday

I just found out there is a rally at the Capital on Friday at 10am.  Here’s the announcement from EqualityActionNow

Pink Friday / Prop 8 Protest Rally – Sacramento, Friday 10am

CA Capital State Building, Sacramento
Thanksgiving weekend, don’t spend the day shopping… protest instead!
Contact: fossilman104@hotmail.com

ban marriage, all of it

David Hensen, in his unorthodoxology blog suggests an interesting solution to the debate over marriage: eliminate it as a civil rite for everybody.  Change our civil practice such that everybody, gay and straight, enter into domestic partnerships.  Let marriage be a religious rite that diferent religions can treat however they choose.  The entire article is an enjoyable read, but here’s something that I particularly liked:

I still remember the day the Supreme Court ruling was handed down. That was the day I decided to be a Californian, rather than a Southerner. I danced with my son to Vienna Teng’s “City Hall,” an ode to that February weekend when Gavin Newsom illegally and and wonderfully pried open City Hall for gay and lesbian marriages. I remember thinking that straight people could learn so much about the lengths of love from some of the couples who were married that weekend.

One step forward, three steps backwards.

I’ll skip all the exegetical arguments about why I don’t think homosexuality is a sin. I’ll simply say that if the Bible truly forbids homosexuality, then it is wrong on this issue. It has only been within the past 30 years that our modern society has begun to understand homosexuality as a matter of identity rather than choice. And, more to the point, I don’t think sin is about personal morality, but about community ills. And denying equality to one group of people, I’d say, is a community ill.

So, how shall we then live, in a world where even the most liberal of states forbids something as harmless as gay marriage based on bigotry?

Video from Nov 9 Rally

Here’s a good video from the No On 8 rally on the Sunday after the election.  Susan from Trinity is featured twice.  I’m in it also, but Susan was more articulate than I.  It was the end of a long day when I was interviewed and I was getting pretty punchy.

Don’t Continue Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

There was a great program on NPR’s Talk of the Nation today looking at the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.  Over 100 retired generals and admirals signed a letter asking President Elect Obama to end the policy and move to full and open inclusion of gay and lesbian service men and women.  On the programs was Rear Admiral James Barnett (ret.) who discussed why he signed the letter.  

It is reassuring to see these military leaders stand up for gay and lesbian service men and women.  The world is certainly changing.  And it is exciting to consider that the DODT policy may be eliminated.  As a veteran and a West Point graduate, I have friends who have been serving proudly in the military who had (and have) to live completely closeted lives.  It is tragic.  This will be great for our service men and women, as well as good for the military.

It would also help with the inclusion of folks who are gay and lesbian into our society.  The military does inclusion well, I think better than the culture at large.  I believe this is true for two reasons. 

First, orders are orders.  When we commander says integrate, you integrate.  I entered West Point with the fourth class of women.  Andrea (now my wife) entered a year later with the fifth class of women.  While it wasn’t easy by any measure, the situation had drastically improved from 1976-1979.  In just a few years, West Point, an institution with deep traditions, made huge strides in accepting women into their previously all-male ethos.

Second, camaraderie runs deep in the military.  There may have been folks who weren’t crazy about the idea of women in the military, but they wouldn’t tolerate someone picking on the women in their unit.   After being on a deployment where you trust one another with your lives, things like race, sexual orientation or gender seem to matter less.

As gay and lesbian people become a normal, accepted presence in the military, there will be ripples of inclusion in the wider society.  Many people flow through the military and their beliefs are shaped by their experience there.

I think we are in for an exciting ride these next couple of years.  Hu-ah!

New Cathedral CrossTalk Blog

I’ve created a new blog for Trinity Cathedral.  This blog will contain articles, meditations and announcements from Cathedral clergy, staff and members.  If you subscribe to the cathedral’s weekly e-newsletter (by going HERE), and subscribe to the CrossTalk blog, or visit it regularly, you should be well informed about life at Trinity.