Oh my gosh, this story made the home page of cnn.com this morning!

Isn't it strange? Perhaps millions of "us" are looking at pictures of them, and they know next to nothing about us...

People who have never seen other people?

Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil.
(BBC World Service)

The Brazilian government flew over distant parts of the rainforest to photograph "uncontacted" tribes living out there, in order to make the case for preservation against loggers and miners, etc.

I can imagine them saying, "What the heck is THAT??"

They call these tribes "uncontacted." I'm not sure if this means they have never seen a person from beyond the rainforest, or if there has never been sustained contact with the outside world? But it's interesting, the article says: "More than half the world's 100 uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru, Survival International says." There are 100 tribes in the world who live outside of contact with "civilized" people.

The people in the photographs in Brazil look like they come from a movie about ancient tribal people. The person painted black looks kind of spooky to me... shiver! They think this person might be a woman -- perhaps a kind of priestess/healer/witch? But they are just human, living their life, protecting their families. What did they have for lunch? And I wonder what the children look like, since they were ostensibly hiding in the lodges.

Trying to drive away the airplane with bows and arrows. (And witchcraft?)

This next shot shows how beautiful the neighborhood is:

I wonder what their lives are like. I wonder what if they'd seen an airplane before. I wonder what they believe. And I wonder if now they're paranoid about what that flying thing was, who those foreign people were, and if they're coming back... and to do what?

More details, if you're interested.

The hunting window

My cat, Lilith, in an indoor cat. But this spring, she's been hunting birds from the window behind my headboard.

She'll sit here for hours. She watches, makes little crying sounds. Her head will snap back and forth as the birds fly around outside. She'll even sleep on the floor RIGHT under this window, at her post, keeping vigil.

Unfortunately, as part of her "hunting," she's been tearing holes in the screen. I've actually heard her fall off the window ledge a couple times, ostensibly because she's thrown herself against the screen, trying to "pounce." So, I've had to start closing this window, leaving only a couple inches open, so she's doesn't make a hole big enough that she falls out one day.

Sorry, Lilith!

A priest's sacristy

For the non-Anglicans among you, a sacristy is the room where a church's liturgical "stuff" is kept, and where folks prepare for the liturgy. Sometimes the vestments are also kept there, often there is a sink to wash the chalices (cups) and patens (plates) in, sometimes there is a safe to lock the silver (and sometimes gold) in. I visited a church a couple weeks ago that not only had a sacristy, but also a priest's sacristy. (Sorry, all these photos are washed out with the flash! Argh, I hate flash.) Voilá:

Some of the folks who read this blog will recognize this sacristy. I love the church where it's located (it's beautiful!), and I love the priest there (she's amazing). I have a feeling she doesn't really use this sacristy, at least in the way it was built to be used.

It is medieval, sort of magical, and GORGEOUS. This was the place the priest would come to prepare himself (and back then, it was definitely HIMself) for Mass. There are beautiful closets that would've held the chasubles, stoles, maniples, and all else. He would've opened one of the closets...

(what are those in gold? a bee hive? an eagle -- for the gospel of John?)

...chosen vestments to match the liturgical season, and prayed as he put them on. He might then have knelt to pray or meditate in front of this painting of the Virgin Mary, flanked by a bishop, two monks, and... a dandy???

or this stained glass window, showing many things priests do:
(say evening prayer, celebrate the Eucharist -- note he faces East, away from the people -- and walking the streets with the poor, in his cassock and biretta)

or he might've just chatted with the acolytes and deacon for a while (let's allow him to be human!), But they would've dressed in the regular sacristy, which sadly, I have no pictures of (silly me!). So, he could've kept himself separate, if he wanted to.

Perhaps this was nice? As I prepare for church each week, there is not much space for prayer, meditation, or any kind of quiet! We liturgical ministers gather in the back hall: the choir is chatting and laughing, the chalice bearers are searching for albs that fit, the acolytes are also searching for albs that fit and asking if the candles were lit by the other acolyte yet?, the ushers have questions, I'm greeting people in the narthex, and I can't find my hymnal or a bulletin.

But, perhaps there is something in this holy chaos at St. Benedict's... I would feel strangely separate if I was in a private sacristy, saying prayers and adjusting my chasuble, alone. (Or, I might be tempted, depending on how I felt about my sermon that week, to escape up those twirly stairs!)


No priest's sacristy for me. But it is an interesting monument to a different time, a different attitude about clergy as a vocation set apart, and it is a beautiful room.

Art in the mail

During Lent this year, in March, I got a mysterious envelope in the mail at the church. I blocked out the return address, although you can still see that it came through the Louisville, KY post office. It had a teeny-tiny label with St. Benedict's address on it.


I opened it, and did not expect to find what was inside... it was full of color-copies of paintings and collages -- which looked like they'd been done by hand. They were all done to present a pro-life message. Without getting into politics here, I want to show them to you -- they are intricate and (to me, anyway) quite mystical, if sometimes strange, to my understandings of theology anyway.

There was a huge amount of paper in this little envelope: Partly images, partly poems and diatribes in tiny type, folded in odd ways.

I tried to get iPhoto to enhance the colors so you could see them better, but for some reason, the edits aren't transferring to blogger... argh. (See below for a link to the more colorful versions.) There are messages like: Milky Way Chromosomes; Pro-Choice Serpent, Modest Dress Stops Lust, Big Band and Creation Inside God's Rainbow Heart, and glowing pictures of people ID'ed as Ghandi, Buddha, and Mohammed and his wide Fatima. An attempt at an interfaith message?

This says, "Smile Stem Cell -- God Loves Us!" And also: "Stem cell Jesus communion is a celebration of the first supper the Incarnation," [sic.] "Jesus had his first supper of egg yolk," and "By the power of the Holy Spirit we shall breathe in stem cell Jesus now and forever more in the name of zygote Jesus."

Someone put A LOT of work into all this. I've thought about trying to frame all this. I mean, whatever I think about the messages, I do think it's art. And powerful without being gross or pure propaganda.

What do you think?

Here's the album on Picasa... with the color enhanced: Art in the Mail.

Feverish rantings

I don't understand. I give my body lots of sleep, water... and still, nothing. What do you want from me, o Fever? What else can I give you? I'm just bored of being light-headed, flushed, and overly-warm / chilled all over. My brain is all fizzy.

Tried to go into work today, and succeeded for about an hour. Then I had to come home and get under the covers again. But I lay in bed and 10,000 delirious ideas about church go through my head. I try to watch them and let them go, like the way Zen masters talking about meditation being like watching goldfish swim by or something. You'd think counting goldfish would put me right to sleep, but I made the mistake of drinking coffee this morning, thinking I was better.

Tonight, Adam is putting on a U2charist at the church where he's done his internship. He's been working on it for months. And I'm going, even if I have to sleep on a pew cushion in the back!

Ok, I'm going to try some green tea and a grilled cheese sandwich. More OJ. More water.

Gas is cheap

A great article on why the cost of gasoline is really still very inexpensive... courtesy of slate.com.

Four dollars a gallon is outrageous! We should be paying much more.

Who is my neighbor?

"But wanting to justify himself, [the lawyer] asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
Luke 10:29

I've been home with a fever-y flu the past two days. And I've been following the Sichuan earthquake news. Over 50,000 dead, the BBC says. Those numbers are just so huge. Sometimes I try to imagine individual people. I have an image of a woman, walking along a road in a grey place, and her child was killed when his school collapsed, and her husband is missing, and she doesn't have anywhere to sleep because her house is a broken heap. Maybe she is walking to the next village, to look for her parents? And then I try to multiply her by a couple million. Whoa.

What is it like to lose so much? It must be lonely -- to be surrounded with so much destruction, and not know what will happen to you next, and yet overwhelming -- because millions of people around you are in the same situation. The cyclone in Myanmar is exactly the same. And disasters like this happen again and again.

The world is so full of so many people in great pain, I really really don't understand. It feels weird, being safe in my apartment -- having the luxury of lying in bed for two days, trying to get better. I don't pretend it's easy to believe in God.

Maybe the world is just too big. If it was smaller, it would be easier to take care of our neighbors -- if they all lived down the street, we could bring them casseroles, hug them, let them sleep over. Ah, the fantasies of a fever. Because if they lived down the street, the disasters would just happen to all of us.

I'm going back to sleep now.

Decorating for Pentecost

Saturday night, some of our kids and their friends helped us decorate the sanctuary for Pentecost! It was awesome. Unfortunately, a lot of the balloons didn't stay quite so perky overnight... But we still had a wonderful service today -- and let go all the balloons so they lifted up to the ceiling.

I love Pentecost. Almost everyone wore red, we had red tablecloths, red bulletin covers, a red potluck, complete with Jello, Twizzlers, Red Velvet cake and cupcakes, taco dip, strawberries, red candies, watermelon... next year, one of our guys suggested Bloody Marys? How Episcopalian.

Red wine and Cheetos

When Adam (my fiancé) and I first started dating, we learned that we had different eating habits. Some of my favorite foods are olives, Indian food, 2% milk, and unsweetened breakfast cereal. Adam's favorites include tiramisu, Cheetos, diet Pepsi, and baked French toast in caramel sauce. Notice some differences? Admittedly, I've cheapened this a bit -- Adam has a broad palate that includes Thai food, cooking classes in Florence, Italy, and a great nose for good, cheap, wines. (I like all those things, too.)

Now, I grew up with parents who were food purists: we hardly EVER ate anything pre-prepared, and almost EVERY dinner consisted of: good meat, a starch, a vegetable, and a green salad. If it didn't, it was because we were eating quiche, homemade curry (a la 1974), lasagna, or beef stew -- i.e., the vegetables were already in there. My family had grown up eating foods quite plainly, too -- not much salt, not much added seasoning or accoutrements. Broccoli, green beans, and lima beans were steamed. Maybe a little butter, pepper, and salt, but that's it. Starches were things like mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, rice. Fresh, homemade, tasty, but plain plain plain.

Sometimes, I would be horrified by things Adam would tell me he wanted to make for me. One was called "Pasketti." It was spaghetti, cooked and pressed into a pan, with spaghetti sauce, cheese, and slices of pepperoni on top. Another was the aforementioned caramel French toast (which by the way, I did eat because I really really liked him...). Yet another, was little pastry tarts with pan-fried pork sausage mixed with Ranch dressing powder baked inside. I would phone my parents and tell them both how wonderful Adam was, but also would report these foreign and shocking eating habits.

And yet, perhaps the most shocking, was Adam's confession that he sometimes like to eat Cheetos with a glass of red wine. I think I visibly winced. Ugh. (Adam would want me to tell you that he only eats BAKED Cheetos, by the way. He would remind me that the package says, "A smart choice!" A priest we know quipped, "A smart choice compared to what???")

A long time ago, when I was dating someone who wasn't good for me, my brother said to me: "You know, when you are in a relationship with someone you tend to become more and more like them." Soon after, I broke up with that guy. And mostly, I am very happy to become more and more like Adam.

Tonight, I came home from the office. Turned on NPR. Poured myself a glass of red wine. And begin looking around my kitchen for something to snack on. All of a sudden, I noticed that I was eating Baked Cheetos and drinking a glass of red wine. And I was both horrified, and satisfied. And I had to take a picture and tell you this story.

Is this a public blog?

Yes and no. When I was interviewed for that news story, I thought about giving the reporter my blog url. I'm glad I didn't -- this blog is still a part of my seminary blog, and while there is nothing that I think is inappropriate there, this isn't really "the official blog of the Church of St. Benedict" or something I want to advertise as such.

And yet this blog has the church's name, my name, the diocese's name, and my fiance's name very clearly attached to it. This is not a private blog. And yet when I write here, I am also very aware that what I write is attached to the name of my church, and I am careful about that.

It's a hybrid, I guess. But sometimes I wonder if I should break it off and make it a separate entity from the old "Anglicamp" blog I kept here while I was at Seabury...

Obama = Reagan?

A comment from George Will that I thought was an interesting comparison (article here):

Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness — the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

I'm not going to do much political commentary here -- at least not about political candidates -- but I'd never thought about Obama in this way and I thought it was worth sharing.

National Day of Prayer

I am very uncomfortable with the National Day of Prayer.

From the website:
"In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress, signed by President Truman, declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, the law was amended and signed by President Reagan, permanently setting the day as the first Thursday of every May. Each year, the president signs a proclamation, encouraging all Americans to pray on this day."

This year, the Day is May 1, this Thursday. (Which, for Catholics and Anglicans anyway, is Ascension Thursday -- which makes me wonder if this is a pretty Protestant-centric event? The concurrence isn't mentioned anywhere on the website, that I could find.)

Here's what I REALLY don't understand. If the website says this:
"The National Day of Prayer belongs to all Americans. It is a day that transcends differences, bringing together citizens from all backgrounds. "

...how can it also declare this? --
"The National Day of Prayer Task Force was a creation of the National Prayer Committee for the expressed purpose of organizing and promoting prayer observances conforming to a Judeo-Christian system of values. People with other theological and philosophical views are, of course, free to organize and participate in activities that are consistent with their own beliefs. This diversity is what Congress intended when it designated the Day of Prayer, not that every faith and creed would be homogenized, but that all who sought to pray for this nation would be encouraged to do so in any way deemed appropriate. It is that broad invitation to the American people that led, in our case, to the creation of the Task Force and the Judeo-Christian principles on which it is based."

If Muslims, in particular, are going to be so explicitly excluded, I can't, in good conscience, believe that it's truly a *National Day.* Or a day that can united us as a country. Or a day that God would be very happy about -- Muslims are also a people of prayer after all: they formally pray FIVE times a day. Together.

My wardens agree with me, and so the Church of St. Benedict is not participating.

Wow

Foreclosure Bus Tours in our neighborhood...

I am horrified, and yet I also wish I had enough savings for a down payment.

More about Anglicanism

I'm carrying a comment from my friend, Jon, a Presbyterian, over to a new post...

"I thought the mention of Luther, Calvin, and Aquinas was insightful. It may be that Anglicanism, lacking a theological "founder," has more flexibility about doctrine and belief. I doubt there's a default theologian that all Anglicans read."


Thanks, Jon. Right: we don't quite have a default theologian, although Richard Hooker comes close. People often define Anglican theology by a "three-legged stool" metaphor -- one leg is scripture, one leg is tradition, one leg is reason -- that gets attributed to him (it's a metaphor that can be drawn from his writings, but not directly) but few have actually read him! I've read a couple essays.

You could say our default theologian is simply the Book of Common Prayer. Everyone reads that. And we tend to say often: "As we pray, so we believe," or "Praying Shapes Believing," as one of our prominent liturgical theologians, Leonel Mitchell, called one of his books.

"I do think it's not quite fair to claim all English authors as Anglican. Julian, for instance, is before the split."

Well, Julian was an English Catholic -- and, I would argue, more English than Roman. And Anglicans (Western ones, anyway) celebrate her all over the place. She has 2-3 canticles in one of our most-used liturgical supplements. We have a co-ed monastery called the "Order of St. Julian" up in Wisconsin. She's barely mentioned by RCs, perhaps because of her feminine imagery of Christ and her sensual mystical language. So, I'm going to continue to claim her as Anglican, or at least as one of the mothers of Anglicanism.

Here's one of those canticles, where God AND Jesus are seen as female:

A Song of True Motherhood

Julian of Norwich

God chose to be our mother in all things *

and so made the foundation of his work,

most humbly and most pure, in the Virgin’s womb.

God, the perfect wisdom of all, *

arrayed himself in this humble place.

Christ came in our poor flesh *

to share a mother’s care.

Our mothers bear us for pain and for death; *

our true mother, Jesus, bears us for joy and endless life.

Christ carried us within him in love and travail, *

until the full time of his passion.

And when all was completed and he had carried us so for joy, *

still all this could not satisfy the power of his wonderful love.

All that we owe is redeemed in truly loving God, *

for the love of Christ works in us;

Christ is the one whom we love.

"And in the 19th c. at least, as many people were attending nonconformist chapels on Sunday as were at Episcopal churches. I'm not sure how things stand today. ... I wonder what the Catholic/ Anglican / Mainline / Evangelical split is."

That's certainly true. The United Kingdom has never been monolithically Anglican. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian, of course, and Catholicism and Methodism (I think) -- and now, Islam and evangelical Christian expressions -- are strong communities of faith in England. There has been a strong Jewish community in England, too. I don't know the exact demographics, but I do know that England is one of those Western European countries where worship attendance is way down.

And yet, Anglicanism is the national church. I met a priest from Manchester at my conference in Vancouver who said they're always having people show up to be married, have kids baptized, or bury their loved one at "our church." Whether you attend or not, the local church belongs to you. There is no membership, really. The parish belongs to the people of its community. I really like that.

"Was Blair's conversion a big deal?"

I don't know much about how this went over in England. It wasn't much talked about over here, at least in the circles I run in.

"How tight do you think the Episcopal connection is to England?"


The Episcopal connection to England is strong in terms of nostalgia, I'd say. Not much else. Many of us are Anglophiles. Parishes like to plan choir tours or sightseeing trips. We use old Anglican terms like vicar, nave, close, canon, lady chapel, vestry. And we pepper our liturgical calendar, still, with old English religious days like "Ember Days" (these come three at a time, four times a year, and are days for people in the ordination process); Rogation Day (the sixth Sunday of Easter, when the English used to process around their parish, blessing the earth and farms); Whitsunday (Pentecost). We use English-style vestments and choir robes. But we don't really pay attention to how the Church of England does things anymore. I mean, the Queen and Parliament pick their bishops! (See comments for a correction on this.) We just like "the pretties," I'd say.

The Lambeth Conference is somewhere in between. Lambeth is a gathering of Anglican bishops from all the provinces all over the world at Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the "ABC" (cute, huh?). Anyway, it's not a legislative session, because the ABC has no real power over us. He's kind of like the Queen -- a symbol that we sometimes love and sometimes get very annoyed with. So, Lambeth is sort of like a retreat, a meeting, or "tea at the Palace" for two weeks in July, every 10 years or so. It's a powerful symbol. Gene Robinson, the only openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church is not invited. Many other bishops are refusing to come because other Episcopal bishops are coming, and they believe we should be punished for allowing Robinson to be consecrated.

a blur of purple...

So, it's just "tea at Lambeth Palace" and yet, it means a lot to many folks, especially clergy, who are a little more interested in the national and international church, as a rule. So, sometimes, England is very important.

What he said

WARNING: Anglican dorks only. All others, proceed at your peril.

The [insufficiency of the] Quadrilateral (as in, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, circa 1870).

This is a similar argument to my previous post, in a much more intellectual, historical way, by a much more studied, lettered, and established priest than moi (Warden of Trinity College, the University of Melbourne, a Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, author of numerous articles).

Thanks, Adam!

What is Anglicanism?

WARNING: This is a Anglican dork post... if this sort of thing bores you, please do not read on.

So, I was putting together a post for my church's website about the new movie, "Prince Caspian." I wrote something like, "this is a movie that comes out of our Anglican heritage." And I wanted to post a link to a site that might say a little more about that. Instead, I found a lot of really boring sites about Anglicanism. Like:

on The Episcopal Church website: What Makes Us Anglican?
(yawn.)

Wikipedia: Anglicanism
(booooring)

Church of England: What it means to be an Anglican
(all Christian jargon)

on The Anglican Communion website: Anglican Communion Information Service
(and you may think, in trying to prove a point, that I've selected the most boring page on the AC website... but THE WHOLE SITE IS LIKE THIS! It's: the Instruments of Communion, the Provinces, the Creeds, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, the Berkeley Statement, a dozen news services, blah blah blah)

I'm longing for something more than creeds, theological catechism, or dogmatic statements. I'm looking for something that might actually drawn someone in... that might make them fall in love with Anglicanism, the way I did. (Nice essay about such a falling in love here.)

Those are not unimportant -- but when I think of Anglicanism, I think of something Brian McLaren, the author of A Generous Orthodoxy, said about Anglicanism: that it is the expression of Christianity that celebrates the "beauty of God."

Where's the beauty, folks???

--Our church is centered around a book of beautiful, poetic prayers.

--Our church emerged in Tudor England, where the Benedictine monastery had been a center for spirituality, education, and community. Also from monastic life, we inherited an emphasis on the cycles of the day (morning prayer, noonday prayer, evening prayer) and the year (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost), still central to our worship life.

--We have more prominent poets (Donne, Herbert, Eliot), mystics (Julian of Norwich, Nicholas Ferrar), and fantasy writers (C.S. Lewis) than theologians. And even the theologians (Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Butler) were more liturgists, preachers, and ethicists, than theologians per se. And all their books and essays were quite short!

--We're a church centered around the mystery of the bread and wine -- every Sunday, we lift up those things and share them together. We celebrate them as precious and sacred, ordinary things that become holy, extraordinary, and transcendent.

-- The student whose article I linked to above, about falling in love with Anglicanism describes feeling "[an] inclination towards an intuitive truth that is believed and understood rather than 'known' and towards a greater appreciation for uncertainty and grayness -- which is, of course, a defining characteristic of Anglicanism as a whole." (Although I don't want to say this isn't true of other mainline denominations, but I think it's more characteristic of Anglican theology historically than it is of say, Calvin, Luther, or Aquinas, for instance.)

And so, a movie like "Prince Caspian," that explains theology and the Christian life through a story -- a fantasy! -- set in a beautiful land, with fanciful creatures, with a theme of faith and perseverance, and WITHOUT a dogmatic message so thick you could choke on it, is essentially Anglican.

Hopefully, the movie won't be a dud.

Heidi in the news

Here's the link to the (front page!) story about yours truly. I'm flattered by it. Not everything is totally accurate (we have a Giving Sunday once a month to receive food for a local food pantry, but I'm not actually personally responsible for it), but for the most part, it's right on target!

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/bolingbrooksun/news/900791,6_1_NA18_PASTOR_S1.article"

(And that's Peg, one of my faithful blog readers, holding the gospel book in the photo! Go Peg!)

Front page news?

Gosh, I made the front page of the local paper -- the Bolingbrook Sun. I was interviewed and photographed back in December... and I thought they'd forgotten about me. Now suddenly, I'm a headline. (Must've been a slow newsweek?)

I can't find a weblink, or I'd post it. I actually haven't even seen the article yet, just heard about it from a parishioner and our church secretary. I haven't been in the paper since I was Jesus in the Passion Play at my church in 6th grade.

But I'm excited to share the mission of the Church of St. Benedict with the community!

A haircut and a wedding mag

I got my hair cut yesterday... picture forthcoming! I went to one of those cheap chain places, and had a fun and chatty woman tell me about putting off school so she can raise her little girls, and all trials and drama she's had with her own hair.

I read a wedding magazine while I was there, which always is delightfully shocking: the opulence, the obsession with details (a whole wedding done in 1940s South Florida colors and themes!), the fairy-tale princess-ness of it all. But then I always start to get a stomachache. I don't understand how this is a foundation for a marriage. What does it mean that your wedding theme is 1940s South Florida? What does that have to do with marriage?