Boys, bugs and blue blankets

I am the only girl in a family of four children. My three brothers and I — to our consternation and amusement -- still occasionally play out disputes that arose in our childhood. That has made watching my two grandsons negotiate the shoals of siblinghood very interesting. I keep wondering which of their disputes will reappear in their adulthood.
Curran was two and a half when his little brother was born. He was pretty thrilled about the baby finally arriving, because he had talked to Gavin through his mommy’s belly button for months.
But he was a little shocked to find that Gavin was coming home from the hospital with Mommy, and, indeed, was going to live with them.
When we all arrived at their home from the hospital, I watched Curran walk all through the house, looking worried.
‘What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Well, Gramommy, we don’t have a bedroom for Gavin. He’s just going to have to sleep on the porch.”
So his mommy explained that Gavin was going to sleep in the same room as Curran, in the crib that he, Curran, had left when he moved into his “big boy” bed several months before.
“Remember? The crib is a baby bed, and Gavin is a baby,” his mommy said.
Curran agreed that that would work, and he volunteered to watch over his baby brother and “keep him safe.” Then he pinched Gavin to wake him up so he could tell him that.
Gavin is now two. Their relationship, like that of most siblings, alternates between heartwarming sweetness and outright violence.
Once when a teething Gavin was fussing and very unhappy, Curran offered him his [Curran’s] beloved blue blanket. Talk about a gift of love! Curran’s “bu bankie” is his beloved refuge, his comfort when he’s upset, his security as he sleeps. His mother has to time the laundering of the “bu bankie” very carefully indeed. So his offering it to his unhappy baby brother made all the observing adults tear up a bit.
Gavin was an early talker. Before he was two, he had mastered the phrases necessary to any little brother, as in ‘Mine!” and “No!’ and ‘I do it myself,” and, of course, the most essential sentence of all -- “Curran did it.”
He and Curran both think the funniest word in the world is “poop.” Indeed, they can sing songs that contain only that word. I think this is a boy thing.
Curran, now four and a half, does indeed try to keep Gavin “safe”, usually by issuing orders in a very grownup voice. He teaches Gavin all manner of things, including words that Curran is forbidden to say. Then when Gavin dutifully repeats the “bad” word, Curran tells on him.
But he also tries to explain the world to him and I’ve learned a lot from listening in. I learned that Curran knows that the smallest bone in our bodies is in our ears – he learned that at summer “camp.” I learned that Curran knows that some bugs turn into butterflies and some turn into moths, but that other bugs are just bugs – they don’t turn into anything. As Curran put it, “They’re just bugs ‘til they die.”
I watched as he showed Gavin “roly poly” bugs (also called pill bugs or sow bugs). He told Gavin they were teensy tiny armadillos – and you know, that is exactly what they look like.
But all is not sweetness and light.
Whenever the crawling Gavin did something Curran didn’t like, he would tell Gavin he was a “bad baby.” Try as they might, his mother and father could not get him to stop doing that.
But what goes around comes around.
Both my grandsons have red hair, and they have the quick tempers that often accompany such fiery locks.
Once Curran lost his temper at Gavin and hit him. I put Curran into “time out,” which means Curran has to sit on a chair in the room off our living room for several minutes. So as Curran is sitting there, Gavin toddles to the door, leans in, points at Curran and proclaims, ‘Bad baby! Bad baby!”
Take that, older brother!
But Gavin didn’t leave it at that. A couple of days later Gavin got mad at his mommy. He looked her right in the eye and said, “You a bad baby.”
His mother nearly fell down she was laughing so hard.
From that time on, whenever Gavin is mad at one of us, he tells us we are “bad babies.”
But now he does it because he knows it makes us laugh.
Gavin is learning to stand his ground and defend his toys against his big brother, but he also is quick to stand in solidarity with Curran against the grownups. If Curran is negotiating for a Popsicle, Gavin is his loyal backup, ramping up the cuteness factor by the bucket load.
But if Curran finishes his Popsicle first and tries to grab Gavin’s, Gavin will defend it with as great vigor, screaming, “Mine! Mine!” until an adult intervenes.
They are surrounded by adults who adore them, but both Curran and Gavin have figured out that my husband, their “Da,” is their greatest ally, since he dotes on them and never disciplines them. As a grandfather, he is a total and complete pushover.
That’s why, when one them gets in big trouble at either our house or at home, they announce, ‘I want my Da!”
They know when to bring in the big gun.

Gavin enjoying his cake

Gavin on his 2nd birthday.

Dream Cars

There may be no better way to spend a lazy Texas-hot summer afternoon than going to see a movie in a frigidly air conditioned theater.
It’s even better when your 4-year-old grandson goes with you.
We saw Cars.
Curran loves all things with wheels these days, and I’ve loved cars all my life, so this was the perfect movie for the two of us. Once again, Pixar Studios works its magic. The story of the redemption of racecar Lighting McQueen is enchanting, funny, poignant, and just exactly silly enough. Anyone who has ever sworn her car has a personality will love this movie. Anyone who has ever sworn AT his car will love this movie.
I think a love of cars is in my genes.
My paternal grandfather loved cars. When he was flush he owned big expensive cars and bought them for his sons when they went to college.
My father loved exotic cars all his life. He raced sports cars in amateur road races put on by the Sports Car Club of America. At various times he owned Jaguars, an Aston Martin and that pinnacle of every car lover’s dream -- a Ferrari. It was red, of course.
He infected all four of his children with this love of cars. When we are all together, the talk inevitably turns to talk of cars. More exactly, we talk of driving cars.
There is something sleekly satisfying about driving a splendid machine that does what it was made to do very very well. I will never forget driving my dad’s Ferrari on a deserted stretch of a long straight West Texas highway that allowed me to reach a speed I will not divulge, but which caused the telephone poles outside to flash by so fast they disappeared. Inside the car, however, everything was smooth, calm and quiet. This car was simply doing what it was made to do.
My father taught us all the importance of driving well and driving safely. He also taught us to care for our cars, however mundane or exotic they might be. He was able to afford expensive cars, but he loved driving almost any car that ran well. It was the experience he loved, I think.
Since people in West Texas have to drive long distances to get just about everywhere, I guess it was a good thing he loved to drive. In the early days of his medical practice, he had to drive 60 miles one way to the nearest hospital. He and my mom thought nothing of driving more than 300 miles to El Paso for a party, only to come back the next day.
One of my nicest memories of childhood is of sitting in back seat while my parents drove for hours through the night, my little brother sleeping beside me. My parents’ voices drifted back to me as I gazed out the window at the dark landscape and the bright night sky.
The moon often was so brilliant that the mesquite trees threw gnarly moon shadows on the road. In that sparsely populated part of West Texas, the stars were so bright they could hold their own even against a full moon. I would gaze at them and make up stories until I got lost between waking dreams and sleeping dreams.
And always, there was this otherworldly sense of being safely contained in this car moving across a sleeping land, our small band of travelers heading somewhere in another time, another place, another life. Anything was possible.
And I think that’s why I love cars. They embody for me the possibility of adventure. Within them is contained the potential for heading out to somewhere new, somewhere wonderful.
All you have to do is get in, and drive.

Feeding on the Bread of Anxiety

At the end of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, it came down to this:
We tried to create a “diverse center” by throwing aside the dignity and ministries of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered sisters and brothers.
We tried to build a bridge to Lambeth on the bodies of LGBT Episcopalians.
We tried to “create space for healing” by throwing some of our brothers and sisters out of the boat.
We tried to become “Windsor compliant” instead of focusing on being Gospel compliant.
And all of this because we were force fed the bread of anxiety and became agents of fear instead of agents of hope. There was way too much talk of “sacrifice” and “crucifixion” and none at all about resurrection.
From Day One, a small number of noisy conservatives were pumping fear into the Convention as hard as they could. English archbishops were flown in from England to add to the pressure. When the British bishops weren’t there in person, they were issuing letters of warning, which were quickly passed around by the conservative minority.
It almost didn’t work. This Convention was very clear that it did not want to go back on human sexuality justice issues. Finally on the last day the presiding bishop used the ugliest kind of coercion and distortion of process to get what he wanted and thought he needed.
In his address to the joint session of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, Frank Griswold tried to anger “the center” by telling them that “the fringes” had manipulated them. He made it clear that the “fringes” included LGBT people who are participating fully in the life and ministry of the church and want to continue to do so.
We-have-to-do-this-or-we-won’t-be-invited-to-Lambeth became his ultimatum. Then he brought out his biggest gun of all, Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori. Give Katharine what she needs to be at the table was the plea. The bishops caved.
And when Jefferts Schori was invited to speak to the House of Deputies, the deputies caved.
Fear triumphed over hope, appeasement trumped truth, bullying replaced leadership.
It was spiritual violence – to my LGBT sisters and brothers, to the bishops, to the deputies.
And all for what?
Within minutes, conservative Episcopalians were saying it wasn’t enough. To their credit, they had also said this on the floor of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies. All along, they’ve said it wasn’t enough. In fact, nothing the General Convention could have done short of stripping Gene Robinson of his office, throwing him and all LGBT people back into the closet and locking the door, and then handing the leadership of the church over to Peter Akinola assisted by Bob Duncan would have satisfied them.
Why are we surprised? Appeasing bullies never works.
We had a chance to say, “We in the Episcopal Church value being part of the Anglican Communion. We love it and wish to remain a vital part of it. However, we are not of one mind on the issues presented in the Windsor Report. We are working out our own consensus on this. Please give us grace and time in which to work this out in the context of our polity. And then let us bring our lived experience in dealing with these painful issues to the Communion as our gift.”
That would have been the truth.
It would have shown respect for the Anglican Communion and for the decisions the bulk of people in this church support. It would have shown respect to the shrinking number of conservatives who are in pain over the direction of The Episcopal Church and it would have shown respect for LGBT people and their allies.
If Katharine Jefferts Schori walks across that bridge to Lambeth, I pray that she will say this to the rest of the Communion.
The Episcopal Church’s struggle to extend the life of the church to all the baptized is a gift.
Let us celebrate that struggle, work to live into it, and give witness to it in the larger Anglican Communion.

Remembering Alan

Sunday, June 18, is Father’s Day.
I know, because the ads for Father’s Day are everywhere.
They are in my e-mail, on billboards, on the side of buses, in store windows, in magazines, in newspapers, on television, on the radio – there is nowhere one can hide from reminders of Father’s Day.
And every one of them feels like a stab in the heart.
My father, Dr. Alan Sherrod, died last summer, one month after Father’s Day. He was 89 and had been becoming more and more frail. Still, against all reason, his death caught us all by surprise. He was such a monumental figure in our lives that I guess we expected he would be there forever.
He had eluded death so many times. During World War II doctors told my mother to take him home to die when he contracted TB in the Army. But he fooled them, just as he fooled all the doctors who told us time and again to come home, because he was about to die from various heart problems, or cancer, or an aneurysm. He practiced medicine for nearly 50 years, played saxophone in a jazz band, raced sport cars, traveled the world with my mother and loved life to the hilt. He cheated death for so long that I guess we thought he always would.
As we’ve moved through the months since his death, grief has traveled with us. The journey is a familiar one to any person who has lost someone they love – the first day after the death, the first week, month. His birthday. Their wedding anniversary – it would have been their 63rd year together. The first Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter without him were especially hard.
At the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music has offered prayers and rites for remembering the departed among Liturgies for Rites of Passage, saying, “The service for The Burial of The Dead focuses on the bereaved, offering a public gathering in which to lament. It also opens the prospect of growth in the hope of resurrection. . . Our Christian faith assures us that death does not sever the bonds of love, but that our relationships live in faith and hope until the day when we will see God face to face in the presence of those we love who went before us.”
The prayers and collects are “for particular anniversaries making the journey of grief’s healing.”
There are prayers for a week, a month and year after death; for Coming Home Without a Departed Loved One; for Giving Away Belongings of a Departed Loved One; for Visiting a Graveside; for The Birthday of a Departed Loved One; On Visiting the Site Where a Loved One was Last Encountered; On Grieving a Violent Death; and For a Child Who Dies by Violence.
With the exception of the last one – which I also appreciate – my mother and my brothers and I would have benefited from these prayers as we moved through our grief. It often is a lonely journey. We would have felt comforted by the thought that the Church was moving with us.
These prayers will help make that happen for all grieving families.
As for my family, on July 12, we will pray this prayer:
A Year After Death
God of the living, you are the Way, the Truth and the Life; we have lived a year without Alan.Throughout the time of the turning earth, sun and moon, you have shown us signs of your wonders: the Christmas star of Bethlehem, Easter's empty tomb, and the tongues of Pentecost fire, which speak of your glory and goodness to all creation. We have counted days of sorrow, laughter and endurance in our journey through grief's stages. Now we declare that even though we still feel bruised by the pain of our loss, life continues. You give us yourself in moments of grace, transforming us through your love. We thank you for the distance you have brought us during our year of healing, and ask you to help us become ever more whole in years to come. Keep Alan present in our hearts, and may we honor his memory, embracing each new day with courage and faith, through Christ, in the Spirit, we pray. Amen.
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http://episcopalwomenscaucus.org/

A Bowl of Appeasement

Written for RUACH, the journal of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus.

One of the things I love most about the Episcopal Church is the Baptismal Covenant. At the Easter Vigil and each time we have a baptism in my parish, I savor the words as we all reaffirm our baptismal vows.
These sentences and responses are the living trellis on which the vine of my days can grow up toward the light. Rooted deep in the Gospel and fed by the wisdom of the Hebrew Scriptures, these several sentences are among the supports on which I lean as I struggle to discern the best path through life’s challenges, large and small.
They are among the strongest calls to prophetic, even revolutionary actions I have ever read. I believe it is this Baptismal Covenant that has impelled the Episcopal Church ever forward on its slow and painful journey to include all the baptized fully in the life of the church as it continues the struggle to overcome the sins of racisms and sexism, and most recently, heterosexism.
A button from 1976 acknowledged this: “Either ordain women or stop baptizing them.”
Short, powerful and to the point. Either we are marked as Christ’s own forever, or we’re not. Either we are brought fully into the life of the Church, or we’re not.
Today that button might read, “Either ordain LGBT people or stop baptizing them.” Or perhaps, “Either bless committed unions of LGBT people or stop baptizing them.”
There are no asterisks in the Baptismal liturgy, no place where the priest announces, “I baptize this person in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit . . .unless, of course, he or she turns out to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered.”
This reality is acknowledged in One Baptism, One Hope in God’s Call, the report of the Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. But in the end, the recommendations of the report betray that reality. I believe that is because the premises upon which the Special Commission was charged to base its work are flawed.
One cannot read the report without realizing the huge amount of hard work that went into it and acknowledging that the intentions of those who did that hard work were the best.
Indeed, the report is exactly what it was designed to be – a response to the Windsor Report. But the Windsor Report itself is a seriously flawed document. Andrew Linzey, a Senior Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, has pointed out that the Windsor Report “failed Anglicanism. Instead of embracing comprehensiveness and diversity, it pursued fictions of ‘unity’ (interpreted as uniformity), ‘interdependence’ (meaning ‘not giving offence’), and championed ‘instruments of unity’ (fostering centralized control), and proposed a future ‘covenant’ (to implement canon law worldwide).”
The Windsor Report offers a ridiculously inaccurate history of the ordination of women, and it fails to acknowledge that the Episcopal Church has been “doing the theology” of human sexuality for more than 40 years. Worst of all, in no place does it even suggest the Holy Spirit might have had a role in these 40-year-long discussions.
That is because it is a document devoted to institutional preservation, and as such, it buys into the worldview of those who are most loudly threatening the institution. Most significantly, it buys into the idea that the worldwide Anglican Communion is in need of being doctrinally purified, something it says can only be accomplished by establishing a centralized curia with powers to punish and exclude those who do not conform.
These ideas are most decidedly un-Anglican. Indeed, they threaten to destroy the genius of Anglicanism, a communion based on relationships, not law, on common worship, not doctrinal purity.
The Windsor Report sells the Anglican birthright for a bowl of appeasement, and anyone who has ever dealt with bullies can tell you appeasement never works. It only goads them on to more demands as they sense weakness.
This same appeasement resides in the several resolutions offered by the Special Commission to give General Convention a place to start its discussion of how to respond to the Windsor Report. Worse, One Baptism, One Hope in God’s Call undermines its own integrity by not acknowledging the faithfulness of LGBT people in the face of blatant abuse in the Anglican Communion since Lambeth ‘98 and the 2003 General Convention. In some parts of the Communion LGBT people are being arrested and killed.
Resolutions A160 (Expression of Regret), A161 (Election of Bishops), and A162 (Public Rites) are especially offensive. Resolution A160 not only introduces language of repentance that implies the actions of 2003 were wrong and sinful, but it also says outright that the Episcopal Church is guilty of not consulting with others in the Communion. That is simply inaccurate.
Listening to and hearing the arguments of those who disagreed with the actions on GC 2003 is not the same thing as agreeing with those arguments. Consultation does not mean capitulation. And to express repentance for the actions of 2003 insults the painstaking prayerful work of that Convention in its decision-making, and worse, implies a turning back from a prophetic work of inclusion and justice.
Resolution A161 is offensive in that it seeks to interfere directly in diocesan episcopal elections. It offers a criteria of winnowing out those candidates “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church” that could eliminate all female candidates as well as those who drink alcohol. The Episcopal Church’s process for electing bishops works. Don’t mess with it.
Resolution A162 is the worse of all. It essentially tells our LGBT brothers and sisters to move to the back of the church – indeed it practically opens the closet door. We will welcome you in our churches, and we’ll even be nice to you in private but we won’t publicly pray for you. Can someone explain to me how this honors our vow to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”
And then there is Resolution A166 (Anglican Covenant), which supports our participation in a process to develop an Anglican Covenant. I agree we want to be at the table at any such discussions.
But our role should be to steadfastly make sure any such Anglican Covenant is based in historic Anglicanism, not in a desire for a centralized doctrinally pure church so narrow it has no room for the Holy Spirit. Appeasing bullies never works.

Crying Out

My husband and I were guests at the recent Passover Seder at Temple Beth-el in Fort Worth. It was a lovely joyous evening, filled with thought-provoking reflections on liberation.
One of the readings was a quote from the Hassidic Rebbe of Gur: “The sigh, the groan and the crying out of the children of Israel from the slavery was the beginning of redemption. As long as they did not cry out against their exile they were neither worthy nor ready for redemption.”
Our host, Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger explained that in quoting this, Menachem HaCohen is reminding people “that redemption begins when we recognize oppression.”
This is neither fun nor easy, especially in the midst of our affluent and comfortable lives. But unless we acknowledge that people are living in pain not only around the world, but possibly next door, redemption cannot happen.
Perhaps even more importantly, recognizing our own oppression is the key to liberating ourselves from whatever person, system, or cultural artifact keeping us from freedom. No one can move from resignation to resistance to redemption without this recognition.
Another reading at the Seder, Waitings, a poem by Stanley Chyet, dealt with this process:
The waitings which make up the life of a slave;
first he waits for a spokesman
and for plagues
to plead his cause,
then he waits for the waters
to open before him,
then he waits for the desert storms
to name themselves,
then (being a slave) he asks in his heart:
why did I wait for the parting of the waters?
why did I wait for all this uproar and these burnings?
then (being a slave) he waits for answers.
It is this process that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood so well as he shaped the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The Women’s Movement understood it and developed “consciousness raising” groups to help women work through the process. Lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgendered people have been dealing with it by “coming out of the closet.”
As these various liberation movements have matured, their adherents have come to realize that all oppressions are linked – racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism -- all are linked. One cannot truly fight one without fighting the others.
But even though it defeats the purpose of any liberation movement to bog itself down in “my oppression is worse than yours’ kind of arguments, we see it every day. Most recently we’ve seen it in the reaction of some African Americans to the demonstrations by Hispanics against draconian immigration laws.
How dare they use the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement? And if you think resentment resides there, don’t even ask what many think of lesbians and gays comparing their struggle for full civil rights to that of African Americans.
I do not mean to pick on African Americans here. We all have been guilty of this lack of compassion for the struggles of other oppressed peoples, and white folks like me have offended most often. It is a way to distance ourselves from the pain of others.
Worst, it is a way to avoid taking responsibility for challenging injustices and working for change.
Until we “cry out,” until we stop the waiting for “rescue” and acknowledge our own oppression, we cannot have compassion for the sufferings of others. We dare not “see” them lest we see ourselves reflected there.
But once we have, there is no “unseeing” it. It changes one forever.
So do not be patient with oppression. Do not sit quietly and endure.
Cry out. Come out.
And live.

Hardening Off

Spring always comes early in Texas, but because we barely had a winter this year it has come particularly early.
So I’ve spent much of Lent getting the garden ready for summer -- which will probably be here the day after Easter.
This entails the usual post-winter cleanup – no small job, because there is an acre-and-a-half of garden. But most of all, it means moving all the plants I wintered over in the greenhouse back outside.
This is a slow process. Plants cared for in the greenhouse all winter have to be “hardened off” gradually.
Plants sheltered in a greenhouse are very different from plants that live outdoors all the time. Outdoor plants have thicker cuticles, a waxy layer in the outer skin of a plant that helps keep the plant from drying out. The thicker it is, the better protection a plant has from dehydration. This is important in a climate as stressful as ours. So greenhouse plants have to be given time to grow thicker skins.
Plants that live outdoors also have more robust stems and are generally sturdier than those babied in a greenhouse. When hothouse babies move outside, they have to be given time to gain strength to withstand the often violence weather of a Texas spring.
Texans joke that if you don’t like weather, wait five minutes and it will change. We’ve already had temperatures as high as the mid-90s and as low as freezing – and that’s just in the last month. It’s not unusual to have a 50-degree separation between the day’s high temperature and the low. So plants have to be able to withstand sudden changes in temperature.
And then there are the winds. Friday we had 50-mile-an-hour winds in Fort Worth. They were carrying so much West Texas dust the sky looked brown. The next morning the whole garden was filled with thousands of brand new baby leaves ripped from the tops of the towering oak and pecan trees on our property. All the plants were covered with a thin layer of dust.
Days like that remind me of why I have to move so slowly and carefully with the plants from the greenhouse. It’s a wonderful Lenten discipline. Eager as I am to have the garden all “done” and looking its best, I know if I go too fast I will end up with a mess. And so I learn patience, moving plants out into the light for longer and longer periods each day over three to four weeks.
In the meantime, I prepare the beds for the plants that will go into the ground, and clean the containers for those that will be potted. This means making dirt.
Yes, making dirt. Our soil is thick red clay that, when dry, has the consistency of concrete. When wet, one could probably throw pots with it.
So I have to add heaps of organic matter – compost -- and lava sand and cotton burr mulch and all manner of other good things to break up the clay and help the plants thrive.
So for me, a gardener, this is my Lent, because while I’m working with my plants I’m also working on myself – hardening myself off to be ready for the Light.
This involves cutting out the spiritual dead wood so new healthy growth can start. It’s preparing the bed of my soul for the possibility of new insights, new blessings. It means cross-pollinating by listening to those with whom I disagree. It’s opening myself to the winds of the Holy Spirit, even though it’s more comfortable to remain safely curled up out of the draft. It means digging deep spiritual wells to be ready for the times of drought.
It’s gathering up the courage to say, once again, “Here am I, Lord, if you need me,” and really meaning it.
Gardening isn’t for wimps.

Where are MY bumper stickers?

It’s disconcerting to be invisible.
Anyone listening to the rhetoric coming from the right in our very polarized nation might reasonably conclude that people like me don’t exist.
I’m pro-choice because I’m pro-life.
I oppose the war in Iraq because I support our troops.
I support same-sex marriages because I’m a Christian.
I’m a liberal because I’m a Christian.
Let’s start with abortion.
I am pro-choice because I know what happens when abortion is illegal. Women and girls die. I witnessed it personally in the 1960s in high school in West Texas when friends and acquaintances of mine went to Mexico for abortions and came home maimed or dead.
I am pro-choice because of my Christian faith, not in spite of it. Regardless of what the Roman Catholic Church of my birth says, the Bible does not condemn abortion. As my friend the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale says, “Let me look, with you, at what the Bible actually says about abortion.”
Pause.
“OK, we’re done.”
She points out that the Bible does not address abortion and indeed, does not address human gestation at all. Anti-choice folks love to quote verse 12 of Psalm 139 -- “For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” – as proof that God is anti-choice. They never quote verse 14 of the same Psalm that says, “My body was not hidden from you, while was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth,” which would seem to indicate we are grown like potatoes.
Psalms are not medical texts. They are poetic songs of awe and wonder about God.
I want abortion to be legal, safe and rare, so I vote for pro-choice candidates. I also work for good sex education; good pre-and-post natal care for all women, affordable day care and family friendly workplace policies.
The War in Iraq
I oppose the war in Iraq because the lives of the men and women in our armed services are much too precious to be placed in harm’s way unless there is a very real threat to our nation. Such an argument could be made for going into Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden.
Iraq is a very different matter. Contrary to what our leaders told us, there were no direct ties between Saddam and 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and the UN inspections were working. In no way does it meet the criteria for a “just war.”
It was not waged as a last resort, it was not waged to redress a wrong suffered by the US, we have not established peace since we “won,” and we apparently do not have any idea how many civilian casualties we have caused. Now the most optimistic reports put Iraq “on the brink” of civil war while others say it’s already mired in it.
Our troops were sent into Iraq undermanned, undersupplied and with leaders who had not been given any clear plan for what was to happen after we “won.”
So, yes, I support our troops. I support them by voting for political leaders who are working on ways to salvage the situation in Iraq so we can get them out of there sooner than the 18 to 20 years predicted by Senator John McCain. I support them by voting for politicians who will not cut veterans’ health care or education benefits.
And I wonder why, three years after 9/11, Osama is still free.
Same sex Marriage
I support gay marriage because I am a Christian. People are coming to our states saying, “We want to be in a lifelong committed monogamous union” and we’re saying “No.” They are coming to our churches asking for the blessing of their unions and most are saying “no.” We bless dogs and cats, we bless houses, we bless boats, but we can’t bless two people seeking to be in a lifelong monogamous union? What kind of sense does that make?
Jesus of Nazareth never mentions homosexuality in the Gospels, but he speaks often of the importance of truth, honesty and integrity of a person’s life. He has much to say about those who judge others while ignoring their own sins.
Yes, Paul clearly condemns homosexuality in his letter to the Romans (Romans 1:26-27). But many theologians believe he is not speaking of homosexuality as we understand it today. Paul also urges the acceptance of slavery and expects women to take a secondary role in the church and in society. Yet we condemn slavery and our society and most churches do not model the discrimination against women demonstrated in Paul's letters. Why, then, must we accept Paul’s First Century understanding of homosexuality as critical to Christian morality?
In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 in the Hebrew Scriptures, there are prohibitions of male
homosexuality. It is part of a “holiness code” and what Scripture says about holiness always is filtered through the customs and norms of a particular time and place. The prohibition and penalty for male homosexuality occupies a very small place in this Levitical code. Why lift out this prohibition and ignore the rest of it? Christians blithely eat cheeseburgers and wear blended fabrics, things also forbidden in Leviticus, yet we do not condemn this.
Liberalism
I am a liberal because I am a Christian. I take seriously the marching orders Jesus gave us in Matthew’s Gospel. We are to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole mind. That last part often gets forgotten.
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. This means not just the neighbors we like or the neighbors who look and think like us, but all our neighbors. We are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, take in the stranger, and visit the sick and imprisoned.
My experience has been that it is the leaders who are derided as “liberal” who most often support policies that accomplish these things.
Yes, people like me do exist, even in Texas. And we vote.

Moving Toward Columbus

Written for RUACH, journal of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus


Moving Toward Columbus

I have been pondering the concept of productive waiting.
It is a concept with which most women will be familiar. God knows women and our male allies working for change in our church have had to learn patient and productive waiting or go mad in the process. We have learned that productive waiting is as action-filled a process as it is a reflective one. It allows us time to think before we act, an increasing rarity in these days of instantaneous Internet hyperbole.
Our church is now moving through what many describe as a time of turmoil. There are those who are working hard to keep things as stirred up as possible in the wake of the prophetic actions of General Convention 2003. One tool they are using to great effect is the Windsor Report. They make loud and repeated demands that The Episcopal Church “submit” to it and use disinformation to stir up as much anxiety as possible.
It is at times like these that The Women’s Caucus’ gift of being a calm presence is most valuable. This has been especially true at recent General Conventions, when the hysteria of a few privileged white males threatened to infect usually calmer folks.
So how to turn the remaining time until General Convention 2006 into a time of productive waiting instead of a time of anxiety, name-calling and fear? Information is our best weapon against the fog of words being put out by those threatening schism.
Here are facts some are trying mightily to obscure:
* The Anglican Communion is not a church. It is a fellowship of highly autonomous provinces.
* Lambeth has no legislative power. In “The Study of Anglicanism,” John Booty and Stephen Sykes wrote, “The Lambeth Conference has remained a deliberating body convened solely at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whatever the respect according to its deliberations, it has no canonical or constitutional status.”
* The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meeting were first grouped in the 1997 Virginia Report which preceded Lambeth 1998. In that report these entities were called “World-Wide Instruments of Communion” in a chapter discussing ideas that the bishops at Lambeth might choose to explore. The authors of the Windsor Report introduced the term “Instruments of Unity” for the first time in 2004.
* The Primates have met regularly only since 1979. At that first meeting, the Primates themselves defined the meeting’s purpose as “not being a higher synod but a clearing house for ideas and experience through free expression, the fruits of which the Primates might convey to their churches.”
* Who decides who is a member of the Anglican Communion and who is not? We might look for an answer in the Canons of the Church of England. Rule 54(5) of the Church Representative Rules provides that “if any question arises whether a Church is in communion with the Church of England, it shall be conclusively determined for the purposes of these rules by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.”
And as for the Windsor Report itself, it is a flawed document that focuses so tightly on Institutional Preservation that it leaves no room for the workings of the Holy Spirit.
It does recognize that The Episcopal Church and the Canadian Church acted within the bounds of their Canons and Constitution, but after that, it goes downhill.
The WR is not a piece of legislation, it is a report that seeks to start a discussion, not end one. It contains a laughably inaccurate account of the history of the ordination of women and its reception in the Communion, and skates very lightly indeed over the way the Communion historically has dealt with anyone other than white males.
Worse, it proposes a completely un-Anglican confessional document and calls for a highly centralized non-elected authority of clerics to run the Anglican Communion. It also calls for a convoluted process by which all Episcopal elections anywhere – and one assumes appointments in the places where bishops are appointed, not elected – would have to be approved by the entire Communion, as would other controversial matters. One assumes this unelected Curia would get to decide what is “controversial” and what it not.
It calls on The Episcopal Church to impose indefinite moratoria on the episcopal election of any more gay people living in committed relationships and on same-sex unions, quite offensively placing the entire burden on one small of group of our sisters and brothers in Christ.
The General Convention is the only body in The Episcopal Church with the authority to respond to the Windsor Report, so no matter how much sturm und drang the Schismatic Gang tries to arouse, nothing can happen with the WR until General Convention meets.
But events are overtaking the WR, and by Convention the whole thing may be moot. Many Primates already are dismissing it as inadequate and ignoring its request that Primates not interfere with the business of Provinces not their own. Meetings in Cairo and Pittsburgh are making clear that many already have decided to split from The Episcopal Church no matter what.
In the midst of all this, Caucus members may find it helpful to remain focused on our vision – that of a church that honors and rejoices in the ministries of all women. We know that such a church will honor and rejoice in the ministries of all people.
All people.
We will not sacrifice our lesbian sisters and gay brothers on the altar of false unity in a centralized communion that handcuffs the Holy Spirit in the interest of institutional preservation.

Dreaming Our Children

The most heart-rending description I’ve ever heard of a mother-child relationship came from a grown woman struggling to articulate why she always felt so estranged from her mother.
She had felt disconnected from her mother for as long as she could remember. Her mother had had to work hard, and seemed to be always tired.
“But it wasn’t just that. It was . . . it was that my mother never dreamed me,” she said.
“My mother never dreamed me.”
What a powerful phrase.
I felt upon hearing this story that this woman is not alone, that there are many grown children out there who were never “dreamed.”
They appeared in their parents’ lives, and their parents “loved” them. But they never valued their children as separate, unique, creative entities, capable of immeasurable feats of discovery and growth. They were, instead, bodies to be fed, bodies to be clothed, tummies to be fed, bottoms to be swatted, noses to be wiped. They were a duty to be performed, a responsibility that came with the title “parent.”
If you told these parents that their children felt a sense of loss, an inchoate longing, they would be puzzled, and even angry. Why, they never neglected their children! And, by the world’s standards, they had not.
So how does one “dream” one’s children?
It has to do with seeing childhood as the womb in which we prepare for adulthood. Just as we grew in the womb in preparation for the world outside our mothers’ bodies, so does the potential for the next stage gradually develop within us during our childhood.
We need psychic nurturing during this time just as we needed the physical nurturing of the earlier womb. Without it we risk dying stillborn, or coming through still undeveloped.
Even in a “good” birth from childhood to adulthood, the new being is fragile. We still need guidance and some protection while we gain strength and confidence. We still need psychic nurturing.
Psychic nurturing has to do with basic respect for the individuality and dignity of this separate human being. It has to do with the willingness to be a guide at first, and then a companion, in an exploration of intellectual, emotional and spiritual terrain. It has to do with the willingness to listen, with respect, to young ideas and fantasies.
It has to do with being able to provide continuity while honoring the ambiguities of this newly emerging human being. It has to do with being able to “play” in many different ways.
It means being willing to let answers come in many forms – to let a body find an answer in dance, or a hand find the knowing in a piece of clay, or the voice discover wisdom in a song. It is being willing to accept that your child may find love in different ways and in different people than you do.
It means being willing to let the child explore new patterns, to learn in different ways, to head for the hills when you are sure the safety is in the desert.
It means being willing to wait while the child lets the song come or the clay take shape, or the dance happen. It means stillness while the answers search for your child.
And when the answers come for your child in a language you cannot understand, or even hear, it means understanding that that is all right. The answers aren’t speaking to you; they are speaking to your child.
Perhaps the most important thing about psychic nurturing is knowing that “creation” does not mean “novelty.” Otherwise, our child may create something wonderful in herself or himself and we will be blind to it, simply because it isn’t “new.”
If we are indeed created in the image of God, then we, and our children, must possess within ourselves tremendous powers of creation.
Psychic nurturing means letting the creation go on, wherever it takes the child. And then celebrating it.
That is how we “dream” our children.