Gratitude I: Feeling Led to Standing Rock

Richard Hooker - Priest (1600)

The situation at Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota is heartbreaking. Much has been said about it, and I don't know enough to add anything useful to the conversation other than what it feels like to watch it from a safe and privileged distance. Knowing it was probably a hoax, I still participated in the "great check in" on Facebook of over a million people as an act of solidarity, and I was glad to hear it was appreciated by the tribe's leaders even if the real effect was negligible.

I have friends who visited the reservation this week, and heeded the call on Thursday from the Most Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, to pray for the situation at noon local time.

This was my prayer:

”Spirit of God, be for us joy.

I ask your blessing upon the people on both sides of the Standing Rock dispute, that they summon the wisdom and courage to forge an equitable and just solution to the pipeline standoff, respecting the gifts of earth, fuel and water that you made.

Be with (redacted) and all your faithful who heeded the call to stand witness, listen, and comfort the people of Standing Rock, as well as with (redacted) and all who did so from their pulpits, desks, beds and computers.

Make us, I pray, mindful of the impacts of our habits and appetites on all living things now and in the future. Give us insight to discover solutions that are kinder to these fragile systems and beings.

Bestow your blessing upon the Sioux people and all of the first nations of this land, that they know your love through the challenges of these days, and the wounds of our indifference and neglect, for which I repent.

All this I ask in the name of your son, whose love transcends division, assuages pain, comforts grief and shelters joy. Amen.”

Despite my present "statelessness" in the church, I am tremendously grateful for Bishop Curry's leadership and the way the Gospel is being taken where it needs to go and be heard. I hope the Standing Rock Sioux took comfort from the visit this week of hundreds of people of faith. Because of how social media connects us, the story has led people from around the world to go there, including members of over 200 native American tribes. People with no obvious motive to participate are nonetheless feeling compelled to do so. It is not practical for all of us to go there, however. It may not be safe, and it may not even be wanted or helpful.

We are not helpless in this situation, though, even from this distance. The President has said that the Army Corps of Engineers is exploring an alternative route for this pipeline which would (hopefully) avoid land sacred to the Sioux people and honor the treaty with them when so many have been broken before. You can add your voice, as I did, to ask him to do everything in his power to make sure that happens. You can also donate to the tribe if you feel willing or able to do so.

A Crazy Christian for Crazy Times

Jonathan Myrick Daniels - Seminarian, Freedom Rider (1965)

On this day, the church remembers an idealistic young seminarian who lost his life defending a friend from shotgun fire during anti-racism demonstrations in Alabama in 1965.  You can read a biography of him by clicking his name above.

His home church in New Hampshire, St. James: Keene, honored him this past Sunday with a transferred feast.  The Gospel and a sermon, by the Rev. Canon Ed Rodman, can be heard here.

I'm struck by how little we seem to have learned in the years since.  Even as we seem to be making glacial, grudging progress on sexuality issues, there seems to be a tension around race that bubbles much closer beneath the surface than I think I realized even a few years ago.  Sometimes it shows itself in subtle ways, like how people who largely support his policies still won't cut the President a break.  And then there are weeks like this one, where I'm sure -- for those who lived through it --  it feels like Selma all over again.

The nominating committee for the 27th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church released its candidate profile this week and invited members to present their nominees.

Having read the profile, my choice, made quite a while ago, was only more apparent. We have many deeply spiritual and talented people leading us, but yet we continue to be bogged down with apathy and fatalism, and many of our people and congregations have seemingly not overcome their squeamishness about evangelism and offering unabashed welcome. Visiting many churches feels like wandering into a private club whose signs and symbols are presented in a way that makes you feel as if not knowing them means you don't belong.

Meanwhile, outside the walls, the American public continues to equate Christianity with (at best) insipid platitudes and (at worst) attempting to erode their civil rights, fueled largely by the media power of the far-right machine and the politicians it controls. We continue to regard people of color as a threat, mock or disregard those who don't adhere to our expectations of gender and attraction, vilify the poor, and remain largely indifferent to the violence and exploitation going on both here and abroad.

In my admittedly limited experience, there is one person who has spoken truth to these things in a voice powerful enough to be heard over the din. He has, in my mind, the credibility and the charisma to wake this church up and inspire it for true mission, and he does so with grace and self-effacing humor.

For this reason I have informed the Committee that I nominate the Right Rev. Michael Curry, sitting bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina, to lead us forward.

If you are not familiar with Bishop Curry, and haven't seen it the last 4,962 times I have shared it, please screen his sermon from our last General Convention, "We Need Some Crazy Christians". It is, I promise you, well worth your time, and I trust you will understand my enthusiasm.  

And if you've seen that one, watch this one, which was given at the annual Convention of the Diocese of Connecticut.  He addresses the very squeamishness I speak of above and the effect it is having on our ability to reach people.  Oh, and baseball.

If he wins, I believe we need to devote considerable resources to get Curry's message beyond our own membership and to the world at large. We need to support him in this as if our very future depends on it, because it very well might.

While God is Marching On

INDEPENDENCE DAY

It intrigues me that, eleven-score and eighteen years ago, we thought the unfettering of church and state was important enough to start a war over*, and yet we're still arguing about it.

This week's Supreme Court ruling that gives corporations the right to (as near as I can figure it) choose a religious denomination and govern themselves according to its tenets feels completely counter to my understanding of what the Founding Grown-Ups had in mind.  Despite the fact that those holding the pen were all white (presumably hetero and cisgender) males of privilege, I have preferred to believe that they envisioned a place where one person's beliefs would not be imposed upon another, even if it would take far beyond their lifetimes to get there.

Flags inside All Saints: Worcester

Thus the idea that we are now enshrining  a corporate entity with the trappings of a church, and allowing even one opportunity to envelop all its employees under the beliefs of its leadership is troubling.  Precedent is like a leaky roof; you will have quite a mess by the time you find all the unexpected places the proverbial rain water has traveled.  I am waiting for the first time a Jehovah's Witness boss tells an employee (s)he can't have a blood transfusion.  How do you think mandatory Hijab Fridays would sit with those who are celebrating this ruling?

And America yawned. All this is playing out even as an unprecedented number of Americans claim no religious affiliation at all, particularly among young people.  The reality that someone's very real health care needs are conceivably now under the control  of a belief system to which they don't even subscribe should be causing a much greater ruckus than it is.

My only hope is that this ruling can be exploited in positive ways as well.  For those of us whose faith mandates generosity, kindness, fairness and justice, are we now free to impose these values on our employees?

Earlier this week was the feast of Harriet Beecher Stowe. As we celebrate Independence Day under not only the clouds of Hurricane Arthur but this troubling ruling, I strongly encourage anybody whom I have not already badgered into it to watch this sermon, given on that feast in 2012 by the Right Rev. Michael Curry, Bishop of North Carolina, on the floor of the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church as it met in Indianapolis.

In the face of rising disengagement (brought on in no small part by the extremist rantings that unfortunately manage to dominate the public's perception of what it means to be a person of faith), Curry encourages us all to similarly push the limits, but in a positive way.  All of us putting up a hand and politely interjecting "I'm a Christian, too, and I don't agree with that at all!" is the only way we can respond to those who view the church (and the synagogue and the mosque) as a monolithic entity who believes it can and should be imposing its values on even those who have no association with it.  We can and should be refocusing the message back on charity, compassion and community, particularly for those who society deems "the other" or "not good enough" and with the strong underscore that we don't expect you to subscribe to a restrictive dogma to be worthy of those gifts.

NOTE: Yes I am aware that is not all the Revolutionary War was about.