No, I’m not just talking about sex. I’m talking about all the sorts of relationships that have been made possible because of social media and the connectivity that the Internet provides. I was talking with a friend of mine and she was making a cautionary point to me, but then followed it up with the phrase, ‘but you’ve had more internet relationships than I have, and you’re better at the nuances,’ or something to that very similar effect. And it’s true. While I have a whole host of people that I know, love, and hang out with in person and on the phone, there is also this whole pantheon of people who I know, and who know me entirely through the media of the digital word on their computer screen. Continue reading
Tag Archives: theological reflection
Change
Change is not easy. Or maybe it’s better to say that for most of us, for most of the time, most change is darn difficult. Think about it; doing the same thing we’ve done for months or years, the same way, not really having to think about it much, not having to consider whether it was a healthy way to eat, or a helpful way to act, or a kind way to speak, or an ethical way to be because let’s face it–whatever we were doing and however we were doing it was good enough–change brings an end to the comfort of not having to look too deeply into our lives. Suddenly we are unable to continue as we were. The heart attack, or stroke, or death, or divorce, or unemployment, or relocation, or advancing years, or the presence of infants and school loans, or the marriage, or the financial shift, or the retirement, or the retired rector has required a change in how we are in the world. Continue reading
Sex, God & Twilight
So, I was doing some procrastinating, and rereading a delightful piece of Twilight fanfic, ‘The Courtyard‘ by la_tessitore, and it got to the point that some canon and nearly canon fics in this fandom get to; Jacob finds out that Bella has chosen Edward over him. Now in this particular iteration of the oh-so-familiar moment to fans and readers, it just so happens that Bella and Edward are also (just recently, with said choice) sexually active. This is the sort of activity that Jacob, the Native Nearly-Werewolf can smell on her. Now, for a variety of reasons Jacob has a negative response to this. Continue reading
Sarey’s Brief Guide on How To Be a Christian & Not an Asshole
Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” And now we have Anne Rice declaring on her facebook page this afternoon, “I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”
And the thing is, I get it. It was the Crusades that turned me off as a child. And then I found out about the Spanish Inquisition (which no, I didn’t expect, but no one expects the Spanish Inquisition) and I was horrified. Then I started rethinking this whole ‘convert your friends or they’re going to roast in hell’ doctrine that was shoved down my throat as a child. Then I got really outside the box: I started rethinking hell itself. Then the world was my oyster, and by that point I was in Seminary. I didn’t even go to a liberal one. I went to a rather middle-of-the road one: Virginia Theological Seminary. It’s not known for its shocking outside-the-box thinking. I mean, in some courses you might have to read Jack Spong, but all the popular kids bitch about having to do so. I started rethinking sex, and gender, and sexuality. I started focusing on Jesus’ Summary of the Law (Lovelovelovelovelove). I went from being a Republican to a Democrat to an Independent to ‘blank’ which in New York State at least is the one true ‘none of the above’ option. It still stymies the volunteer poll workers. I do it because I vote not based on party, because no single political ideology agrees with mine, and that’s okay. I’ve started to question everything, which can be dangerous because babies sometimes get thrown out with bathwater. I get it. I’ve done it before. I’ve watched other people done it.
Note I’m still a priest.
But, I’m also like Amos – dude, don’t look at me when you think of religion’s insanity; I’m just a simple dresser of sycamores and God is only using me because no one else is listening. But I already blogged about that.
So, okay. I’m a Christian. ::waves:: And I have no wish to be an asshole. So, how does one do that? How does one be a) a Christian, b) non-assholish, c) have integrity at the end of the day? Behold: Sarey’s Brief Guide on How To Be a Christian & Not an Asshole. Continue reading
It’s On My Card: Dresser of Sycamore Trees
It’s On My Card: Dresser of Sycamore Trees
Me and my man, Amos, we’re two peas in a pod. He was a god-fearing man, born in a time of corrupt religion. In his day, religion wasn’t just the place you and the members of your family went to worship and get atonement for all the ways in which you were crappy to yourself and others. I mean, it was one purpose that religion did in fact serve in his day, but in the big picture, religion had a very different role that was as much if not more important. It was religion’s job to be a check on the corrupting influence that power has on people, most particularly in politics, most particularly in the king’s court. You see, every king had a prophet, or a school of prophets that when not corrupt themselves, had the delightful effect of moderating the king’s rule. When any king started lording it around, levying oppressive taxes, passing laws that benefited his wealthy associates at the expense of the scads of people living it poverty, it was the prophet’s job to tell him ‘God says knock that shit off, right now. The God you worship doesn’t stand for this kind of tomfuckery, and you bloody well know it. Also, your people are starving, jackass.’
As you might imagine, genuine prophets were frequently killed. Continue reading
Who is my neighbor?
Who is my neighbor? (Luke 10:25-37)
Speaking with respect – why is this so difficult for us? Swearing, racial slurs, ethnic jokes, belittling comments, attempts at ‘redeeming’ words… the redemption of words, an effort that comes to us from groups who have abdicated or been refused the power to ask or demand that certain utterly disrespectful words and tags not be used. Nigger. Bitch. Cunt. H00r. It’s all the same. The effort of redemption is to say, ‘no, we are blessed, too’ and to say ‘no, your words cannot hurt us, see? we’ll use them, too’ but it is a double edged sword whose blade never truly dulls, even with gentle use. As our skin develops callouses and a tough, leathery exterior from the thousand cuts we deliver to our own, and to ourselves, we fool ourselves into believing that our leathern armor is proof against the M-16′s, for what is a sword in our own hands becomes an assault rifle in the hands of the powerful other – literally powerful – these are the people to whom we cannot or will not say, “Do not call me a cunt. You may not call me a whore, or a h00r, or a ho. It is not allowed that you should call me a nigger, and I’ll thank you to stop that.” While we effectively desensitize ourselves towards compassion and empathy on the subject with our own – literally, we are no longer sensitive to this – we fall into the illusion that by calling our best friend a bitch it will somehow mitigate the pain and degradation when someone else spits the epithet in rage and anger at our best friend, a woman who we personally know to be wonderful and who deserves much more respect than that.
Language is so very important. It fails regularly in the conveyance of what we actually mean, and we fail in our attempts at using it to that end. And yet, it is language, tone and body that are the tools which we have to communicate, and of these three, language offers, both alone and combined, the method of greatest nuance and complexity. Language. For good or ill, it’s the best we’ve got.
And so I, at least, am resolved to once again examine my use of language with a special eye towards speaking respectfully towards and of others. I suppose this means that I can’t say ‘Fuck You’ to Terry during our clergy colleague/bible study meetings Tuesday mornings at Panera – rather, I’ll have to be honest and direct, knowing that I am not powerless and that my words do have power. Instead of fuck you, I will say, ‘that hurt my feelings, I’m still really sensitive about that,’ when he jokes about me being an utter failure at my previous position. And as we had this very conversation about language and respect and power and redemption, I brought up this example and he was surprised when I said, ‘that hurt my feelings’ – perhaps as surprised as the rest of the table had been when I’d originally said ‘fuck you’ in between bites of breakfast.
Love your neighbor as yourself, he said. Who is my neighbor? the other guy asked. And then he spins a story illustrating that your neighbor can really be anyone, even the person you passively distain, or the person you actively hate – or who hates you. Or, in my case, the person who pushes your buttons without even trying.
Who is your neighbor?
The Courage of Martyrdom
This week’s prayer (the collect for proper 10), distilled says:
God, give us knowledge & understanding of what we’re supposed to do, and give us grace & power to do it. Amen.
According to the Abridged & Practical Diction of Sare Liz, Knowledge def.: practical know-how. Understanding def.: the deeper wisdom of why. Power def.: the ability to make possible things happen. Grace def.: the divine ability to make impossible things happen; from the Catechism: ‘Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.’
So, let’s talk, then, about Christian Courage, or if you will, the Christian courage of martyrdom. It’s a cause & effect chain reaction. Because I (if I use myself as an example) understand deep in my bones that I am loved, holy, and safe, I can step out in courage and hope, having hog-tied my fears just the moment before, to say challenging words of compassion and love to a world that embraces violence and rage, fully knowing that the world’s gut instinct will be to kill me, and if not to kill me, then to disgrace and impoverish me, consigning me to the margins of poverty and shame, but that I no longer care – not a whit. And if I, using myself as an example, speak love and compassion to a violent and rageful world, it does not matter if I fail or succeed by anyone’s measure, even my own, because I already know that I am loved, holy, and safe. This thing I do is in response to that understanding – it is in no way an action meant to earn such a blessing that might, in the event of failure in someone, anyone’s eyes, fail to earn the blessing. The blessing (being loved, holy, and safe) is unearned and precedes all. Failure to understand that cause and effect relationship is a failure to understand the good news of Christ, the gospel of Christianity, the deepest and most prevalent point of this global religion, and indeed, the joy of God.
Maybe. I could be wrong.
But even if I am, God, give me the knowledge and understanding of what I’m supposed to be doing, and give me the power and grace to actually do it, because I suspect that just because the world needs to hear it, doesn’t mean large swaths of the world are going to love it. Or maybe they will. But give me strength, if they love it or if they hate it, to bear up under the scrutiny. Amen.
Enlightenment, One Bite at a Time
Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything, by Geneen Roth, was loaned to me by a friend. Normally I’m terrible about books that anyone but Logan loans me, because mostly people don’t understand my tastes of what I actually read. (Or to say specifically, read quickly. Okay, devour. Mostly people can’t tell the difference between a book I would intellectually enjoy reading at some point in my life and a book that I carry around with me to cram reading into every free moment.) And shame on me for not setting clear boundaries. A simple,’No, let me just take the name down, because I don’t know when I can get around to reading it right now,’ might actually work wonders in this area. I’ll work on that. In the meantime, I was actually loaned a book I wanted to read for the first time in ages.
::glances guiltily at the stack of unread, borrowed books that she really needs to get back to people::
Anyway. It was an excellent book. Allow me to tell you why that is. Continue reading
Theology of Erotica: Let’s Be Real
So, I was talking with two out of the four other members of my CREDO small group today, and it dawned on me that a lot of the questions that my dear friend Cristopher was posing were the best sort of questions: loving, hard, no-nonsense and very, very real. And when I asked him, “Cristopher, what are you thinking about all of this?” I knew what I was asking. I was asking the man who does not like to be pigeon holed into boxes like ‘conservative christian’ or ‘liberal theologian’ but who can fly under just about anybody’s radar and bridge into everybody’s camp, I was asking him what he thought of the discussion that Jennifer had been so vocally supportive during our Skype conference call, and in which he had been largely (entirely?) silent.
The conversation… well, yes. You’d want to know that, of course. It’s the whole, ‘I’m a priest, and I write erotica,’ conversation, which was the first time they’d heard it. Hilary hasn’t at all yet (poor Hilary – we’ll catch you up soon), and Greg’s already read some of the Magnum Opus that is The Day The Earth Stood Still, in which I, after the fashion of every fanfic writer in twidom, right the wrongs of Ms. Stephenie Meyer. But anyway. So, I suppose you could say that I came out to another group of clergy colleagues. And you know, I’m a priest and I want to publish a whole host of things; Theology, Liturgical Studies, Romance, Biographies, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Children’s books, and yes, Erotica. But you know, it looks like the erotica is going to get published first. Maybe. Possibly. Who knows, really, but it’s likely. And then comes the question of integrity: do I use a pen name, or do I publish under my own name? Do I tell the publishing house that I am, in fact, an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, canonically resident in the Diocese of Western New York? My integrity is really clear about what I need to do. The only question is, am I couragous enough to do it?
And yes, all seven or eight thousand people who have read/are reading The Day The Earth Stood Still are all very aware that I’m a priest, and many of them have written to me and given me more feedback, better feedback, feedback that reflects a deep touch on their life, feedback that reflects a changing perspective on the world that I helped to shape… than I get on my sermons. It’s clear to me that I already have touched way more lives in a positive manner through this one story than through five years of ordained ministry in the Diocese of Western New York. And the people whose lives I’m touching? I don’t have statistics, but I know from the little feedback I’ve gotten (perhaps 8k people have read the story, perhaps more, but on 35+ chapters I’ve only 3500 reviews, so that’s actually a rather small portion we’re dealing with… but I love it – make no mistake, I love it) …from the feedback I’ve gotten, I know that the lives I touch aren’t just people who go to church. I get feedback from a lot of people who are totally unchurched, church alums, or who bear the scars of their touches with Christianity. I get to deeply touch the lives of the very people that my church wants to evangelize, at least in theory and on paper. If we (the Episcopal Church) really wanted to do it, one imagines we would be, all of us, en masse. Since that isn’t happening en masse, I can only imagine that we’re lying to ourselves… but that is another blogpost for another day.
So, this is the first in my Theology of Erotica series. Some of you may hear things you’ve heard before. Really, I’m just trying to engage with these questions in a way that seems to have integrity for me, which also means doing it in the public/semi-public sphere of my blog where all y’all get to weigh in, give your opinion, and ask more questions if you feel so moved. And today I will be discussing… “Why Erotica?” Continue reading
Three, Two, One…
So I’m at my colleague group this morning and we’re doing what we do: talk about the scripture readings for this Sunday, talk about what we may or may not preach about, bounce ideas off of one another, but also we’re doing what we do: talking each other down from the ledge of killing particularly annoying, destructive, and toxic parishioners as an act of charity for the rest of the community. (It’s the killing that is the act of charity, or so we sometimes assume.) One of my colleagues in particular referred to a parishioner as ‘Grendel, Eater of the Dead.’ But this is besides the point, because we’ve already acknowledged that this Sunday we’re all asked to do the impossible: Explain the Trinity.
You see, last Sunday was Pentecost, which means that this Sunday is Trinity Sunday.
Ah, the Trinity. Every metaphor you can think to use to explain what it is falls short – some fall short sooner than others. Sometimes we just take refuge in our actual experience of God: It’s mystery. It’s ineffable, meaning there literally are no words that explain it sufficiently. We can describe the effects and affects of that momentary encounter, but that’s all shaded and colored by our own understanding of the world – our culture, our history, our baggage, our issues.
I was sitting pretty, thinking and talking and taking a few notes on my customary index card, but all the while I thought I didn’t have a gig this Sunday. I don’t mind preaching on the Trinity, but ::cue snicker and giggle:: I didn’t have to! After the meeting I actually checked my calendar and realized that I did have a gig (for which I’m grateful, as I do enjoy paying my bills, ykno?) and so now I’ve got to do some hardcore thinking about this whole Trinitarian-Unitarian thing.
There was a lot of conversation, some of it blissfully heretical (because really, what is a theological conversation without a little fun-loving heresy? Honestly, people. Everyone needs to have a favorite heretic. Mine is Pelagius…) but the place I came to (with a little help from my friends) that feels the best today goes like this… Continue reading
