Archive for February, 2011
the least
I’m not ‘religious’ about reading JIm Wallis’ “SojoMail” missives; sometimes they sit in my inbox, beckoning, until like old lettuce lost in the back of the refrigerator drawer they get purged for the sake of the ‘fresh’ stuff. Today, however, I bit. To shift the metaphor, Sojourners dangled the bait in front of me, a subject line in Outlook mail that said, “What Would Jesus Cut?” And like a fat, lazy bass on the bottom of a safe, still lake, I took it “hook, line, and sinker”!
Asking why I read today’s email-missive, and not yesterday’s, is like asking why “the big one” takes the lure when you jig it to the left instead of the right. When you get a strike on the end of that slender rod, lure-lore fades and all eyes are on the fish.
Jim Wallis wrote:
Right now Congress is considering a budget plan that would make a 9 percent cut in discretionary spending while giving a 2 percent increase for military spending. This would be devastating for domestic programs that provide basic nutrition, health, and opportunity to poor children and international aid programs that save lives every day.
As a country, we face difficult financial choices, but one thing that should not be on the table is to abandon the poor and vulnerable while allowing more military spending.
As Christians we ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” to make sure our actions reflect our deepest held values. So when it comes to decisions about our national budget, we ask, “What would Jesus cut?” …
The biblical prophets make clear that a nation’s righteousness is ultimately determined not by its GNP or military might — but by how it treats its most vulnerable people. Jesus says our love for him will be demonstrated by how we treat the “least of these.”
The scene shifted for me — almost thirty years back in the mid-80s at the start of the Reagan Revolution. I was writing my doctoral dissertation and working as a “crisis intervention counselor” for the Region X mental health association, with services provided from the emergency room of the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville. The stories I can tell. Another time.
What Jim Wallis made me remember, first, was that I lost my job due to Reaganomics. But everything isn’t about me, I’ve learned. So my memory refocused a bit, and I recalled with startling clarity that it may have been “morning in America again” for some, but in the mid-1980s U.S. government services for “the least” of God’s children saw the sun set.
Already state mental hospitals like Western State across Afton Mountain from Charlottesville had disgorged most of their entire population onto the streets of towns and cities, and what had seemed like such a humane beginning turned into the inhumanity of people with chronic mental disorders being left on the street with nothing to take the place of the hospital setting from which they had been ‘mercifully’ discharged.
“Crisis Intervention” many times meant taking care of society’s “scratch and dent” people who had been through so much, had so much to give, and yet were being tossed out to fend for themselves. “Crisis Intervention” was necessary because without the structure of someone simply to help them take their medications, bank their disability check, and pay their rent, many chronic cases started inexorably falling through the cracks, into unending crisis, which for some was like a Groundhog Day from Hell. When “morning in America” dawned in the 1980s for those who made enough to have taxes to cut, the sun rose on towns like Charlottesville, were even the slim resources for people who had been forced into crisis were being cut back or eliminated.
Losing my job wasn’t even a gnat on an angel’s wing for God, I came to imagine; I would get another job, but “the least” of God’s children were going to get the least that America could get away with giving them. So the remainder of the time I lived in Charlottesville, I saw many of my former clients on the streets, slowly devolving into chronic-crisis as a way of life.
I saw their faces today as I read “What Would Jesus Cut?” And all I can say for sure is that, like Jim Wallis, I know what Jesus wouldn’t,
So the question for me now isn’t about what Jesus would do, but “What Should I Do, Jesus?” — knowing what I do, and who “they” are — the most vulnerable of our sisters and brothers, whose faces look, too, like children caught in inner-city drive by shootings, LGBT teens being taunted and bullied, or the millions in the global south dying from the lack of malaria-preventing mosquito nets. Let’s save them, even a few at a time, and add their faces to the balcony at next year’s State of the Union, or to the End Zone at next year’s Super Bowl. It’s “the least” we can do.
No commentsVA Episcopalians OK same-sex unions
I don’t know about you, but I missed this bit of news that not very long ago would have made headlines as if Moses had parted the Potomac. On January 21-22, 2011, the 216th Annual Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia blithely passed the following resolution:
R-2a: Blessings of Same-Gender Unions
Adopted as amended, text pending final approval
Resolved, that the 216th Annual Council of the Diocese of Virginia thanks Bishop Shannon Johnston and the diocesan team for the very fruitful “Listen … And Be Heard” sessions in 2010, and urges our Bishop to “provide a generous pastoral response” by moving forward with guidelines with regard to public blessings of same gender unions.
It may not seem like so much over here in the Bluest-of-Blue DC, but given the fact that the northern part of the Diocese of Virginia sat right on the ecclesiological fault-line that threatened to split the Episcopal Church and darned near split the Anglican Communion (it’s hard to tell how you’d know, to be honest), this is, pardon the shout-out, BIG NEWS!
Perhaps rightly, other LGBTQ-friendly voices were preoccupied with Joel Osteen’s declaration on “Piers Morgan Tonight” just a few days later that homosexuality is (still for him) a sin. I couldn’t agree more with Joe Solmonese, president of HRC, who remarked with notable restraint, that “it’s a real shame that someone of Joel Osteen’s prominence and life experiences would repeat this tired and dangerous statement. It furthers ignorance and discrimination by some Americans and adds a burden to those already struggling to accept their sexual orientation or gender identity. … One would hope Mr. Osteen would use his pulpit, with an audience of over 7 million people, to tell all human beings that they are loved just the way they are. Instead he chose to send a dangerous and irresponsible message.”
But while we wait … and work … for a Barbara-Bush-like change of heart from Pastor Osteen, we still can take some encouragement from the fact that something of equal significance, if not headline worthiness, happened across the river in Old Virginia. It took a while …. admittedly a looooooong looooooooooooong while … but it’s still to be noted and applauded, even as we wait for marital equality someday also to get on their agenda.
No commentsBut how will gay members be protected from chaplains who oppose homosexuality?
Pentagon: No change for chaplains with gay ban repeal
“There will be no changes regarding service member exercise of religious beliefs, nor are there any changes to policies concerning the chaplain corps of the military departments and their duties,” reads a six-page memo about implementing the repeal the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy.
It notes that chaplains will continue to be required to “care for all,” and their First Amendment freedoms will remain unchanged.
“When chaplains are engaged in the performance of religious services, they may not be required to engage in practices contrary to their religious beliefs,” it reads.
In November, the military issued a comprehensive review of the planned repeal and concluded “special attention” should be given to the chaplains corps because of sharp differences on the issue. But that report also concluded existing rules protecting chaplains’ First Amendment rights were “adequate” for the ban’s repeal.
Officials of some chaplains’ organizations have opposed the repeal and questioned whether chaplains who oppose homosexuality will be protected.
The exact effective date of the repeal remains unclear, but President Obama said in his State of the Union address it would occur this year.
… but not all of them were scuffling!
Dozens of police break up brawl at NC church
FLETCHER, N.C. – Authorities say a dispute over leadership at a church in western North Carolina turned from angry words to fist fights.
About 30 police officers from five agencies were called to break up fights Sunday at Greater New Zion Baptist Church in Fletcher, about 94 miles west of Charlotte.
Henderson County Sheriff’s Capt. Jerry Rice says the brawl is under investigation and no one appears to have been seriously hurt.
Rice says there were about 75 people at the church when police arrived, but not all of them were scuffling.
Church members are divided over the recent ouster of the Rev. LeVonia Ray as pastor of the church. The fighting apparently began over whether a vote should be held to reinstate him.
No charges have been filed.
A light in the darkness
This past Saturday and Sunday, The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond, the Canon for Congregational Life in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire was the guest of St. Thomas’ Parish. Charles led a daylong retreat on Saturday attended by more than 60 parishioners and then preached at worship services the next day.
He was “sent on a mission” to St. Thomas’ Parish by his boss, The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, who is also his bishop. Gene, who also is the honorary chair of the capital campaign at St. Thomas’ Parish to finance a replacement for the worship space destroyed by arson four decades ago, offered to underwrite Charles’ time and travel to spend two days with us to help deepen the process of spiritual growth that is at the heart of the growth in the size and health of the congregation that urges us towards a new gathering space.
The retreat was about discerning God’s voice in the midst of the unrelenting “noise” of daily distractions. As participants moved into the process of discussing how to implement what we learned in our daily lives, Charles challenged us, too, to apply it to the ongoing process of discernment and decision-making about the building campaign that is underway for a new worship space for St. Thomas’ Parish (see artist’s rendering above of what this would look like looking north on 18th Street NW + the most recent architect’s perspective from Church Street).
Afterwards, Charles posted this reflection on his visit on his blog www.charleslafond.com, about the challenges he left with us for the future: the seeming impossibility of the undertaking for such a small parish made up mainly of young adults … and the utter impossibility of being faithful to our calling to bring “the light of the world” into the midst of our city without building this new building to be a center for life and renewal and reconciling energy in the nation’s capital.
We’re still spinning from the breeze Charles blew through our lives this past weekend, like tattered Tibetan prayer wheels carrying dreams and visions into the future.
Read Charles words and then join us in whatever way you can to help make possible a civilizing space that shines with the promise of God’s light, that “the darkness will not overcome it for the night will be as bright as the day!”
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