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.