Provinces, Peace, & Prayers

A UK friend asked my take on the recent development in the Episcopal Church, here in the States. I've been asking myself the same question for quite awhile now. Long before, really, the Province finally was set up. For those of you less inclined to checking out links: Wednesday, 3 December 2008, a new province was formed in America which will seek recognition both as a province of the Anglican Communion and (unavoidably) in opposition to the current province resident in the US (TEC).

I am not so happy as I should want to be over the matter. Something seems amiss - as several unused drafts of a much-laboured reply muse - but I am not sure what it is. Have spent a great deal of effort in writing out - then deleting - my thoughts now, both in that reply to my friend and in this particular post. Hours, if you must know. Days, at this point, housed now under trails of snippets saved & even a couple of posts themselves, parked as drafts, complete with titles.

I have long thought that schism is the only direction possible now. Communion is a matter of being able to break bread together. Time once was when a desert rule mandated that if you broke bread together, betrayal ceased to be an option.

We eat together a bread that is broken on our behalf at the altar; a bread which represents something far more than bread, but - perhaps because it resonates with that act which made brothers out of wayfarers when shared - likewise makes family of those who meet at our altar: communion is a shared brotherhood; a shared life - not of my allowing you to think whatever you choose while I do likewise.

If we are for any reason unable to meet at that altar, we are not in communion. And places there are - and have been - from the origins of our meeting (first century) at that altar that constrain those with whom we meet - those with whom we share this broken bread. Lot of people in the present day don't like that. Lot of people would prefer that God's love (to make the necessary jump) come without strings attached.

In one vital sense, it does. But like all ‘free gifts,’ a hedge attends. The Giver waits in expectant watchfulness, for the ‘proof’ of your having received the gift – more, the proof of who you are (which is what the gift is about, really, for it is the Very Best Gift Possible To Be Given – a gift which changes who you, the receiver, are) – is in what happens after.The 'proof' of our having received that love remains whether we love in return. And the love of God - like His peace - is not made of the stuff of modern faery tale. It is not, I’m okay, you’re okay.

The good news is, you wouldn’t really want it to be. The bad news is, in the current read, we are no longer able to understand that.

I prefer peace. Over the several days, however, of attempting to organize my thought on the matter, I have had to confront what a preference for peace means. What 'not taking sides' represents. Because our Lord Himself said, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword (Mt. 10:34). I could proffer several other items He said which go in the same direction - and Biblical illiteracy being what it is, perhaps I should.

But maybe I can merely posit that we take the words of the Master too lightly now, and leave it at that. Isn't that the ready consequence of too much Bible 'scholarship?'

I have thought for awhile now that breaking away from the Episcopal Church (TEC) is the only recourse - but am concerned now that remaining in the Anglican Communion itself may be problematic. If the entire Communion could be brought to that schism - perhaps then things could be rallied.

For those who know me, that is a profound statement, because I as yet remain committed to being a portion of a communion that has 'voting rights at Lambeth.' [Further comments on the exact status of that 'commitment' are not suitable for the present post. I do not at present attend church.]

Perhaps, of course, not even then. But I don’t see it happening, anyway, so no need to fret over it.

Though I do see the reason why it must. As others have stated, it is not possible to be in communion with people who are saying that a new revelation has been received that invalidates centuries of received Christian thought & belief.

That remains the problem at large. Anything else is watered down, at best, and what it is at worst we will not state here. It is not properties or arguments or differences in maturity or opinion! Not a matter that - if we wait long enough - will all go away!

Beyond that, however, watching the unfolding as it happens - something seems amiss. May have something to do with a perceived rigidity in the new Province – almost as though it is choking here & there on its own version of the truth...

The sort of thing which will always disturb me. Some sense of the different ways people need to both hear the truth & worship God - the different ways people need to live in order to respond to how they are able to hear God...when people start to proclaim their reality as the only truth, it bothers me. I do not mean by that to put more weight on anything other than the reality that God will always take us where He finds us.

The distance between the necessity to legislate – to both give form to & protect – what was handed down, in contrast to what I have sometimes termed a ‘wild card element’ of the Spirit, tends to encapsulate the reality of how God meets humanity. Some sense of the two being irreconcilable. Some will pursue truth with all that is in their heart to pursue it. Others will not be able to get past rigidities (remember, the Spirit is like the wind; Christ often spoke of the ‘hardness’ – like tables are hard, as I like to illustrate – of the human heart) in who & what they are; one is left, like C.S. Lewis, looking for the places wherein all Christians can agree, and resting commentary there.

Places are, however, where such is suitable – and places where it is not. But that grave division between Spirit & that necessity to govern what is entrusted to us remains (i.e., that sense of the freedom of the Spirit vs. what - for mere purpose of illustration - must be regarded as its opposite). [I addend this after first posting: I take very seriously the charge of our Lord regarding blasphemy of the Spirit. Please do not misread what I have attempted.]

The new province is open to orthodox, traditional reads that include both those who accept the ordination of women & those who do not – so that is not an item which troubles me as I think over this new development. They have said the new Province is a movement of the Spirit - if so, it will do what is needed, and that will be all that should be said on the matter.

But I am not so certain the final outcome of this is going to make things right. In such a tremulous undertaking, timing may prove to be of great weight. If many churches would leave TEC now, the wave could carry. Without it catching on at large, the hope that it is of the Spirit becomes more tenuous.

When the Spirit moves, it happens at large. We hear His Spirit.

That is how (one way) we know we are His...

In and of itself, however, even a movement that seems His Spirit cannot be known to be His simply because it catches on in great numbers. The last days have been the time frame since the Incarnation. A ready sense, however, because of the small minutes and hours of the created universe, in which ‘last days’ refers to a smaller frame that better fits the lifetime that is all each one of us can know.

In that more confined sense of last days, a delusion will come over the earth in those days, with false signs, false miracles and touting a false defining of Christ by those who come in His Name (i.e., Christians) – one might even find the growing lassitude of our day in a verse which describes the love of the elect growing cold (see Mt. 24)…

In such a day, I am not so certain that numbers can prove or disprove a work as of His Spirit.

My own take on the matter is that everything that is happening in the world at large has carefully been set in place and represents a work that is centuries in the making. A great many things, really, cannot be said now – a woman is eliminated from serious consideration the moment they are spoken.

Too many Episcopal folk are unable to accept miracles – even those noted in the book of Acts: it is not so far a jump from miracles to authorities…

Whose war is this? Are we fighting each other? Seems so. But as was pointed out two thousand years ago (and likely under a similar sense of would you please just get it), we are actually fighting against principalities...that is, against angelic forces who have rebelled against God.

I have aforesaid comment regarding Episcopalians & miracles on the best authority: I heard it said myself (and by more than one parishioner) during a class on the book of Acts. Some concede to not even buying those that are reported in the book of Acts. If you can't even recognize the validity of a miracle when you read about it, how are you going to grasp angelic forces - dominions, legions, princes that rule this country or that - this age or that - that pretty notion of the 'spirit of an age' - why do you think history can be divided into trackable trends, if not because a mind is behind history - a mind which belongs to an angelic being that has a power even now over the events that are playing out around us?

St. Peter's admonition noted above is worth reading. It warns of men who would have no respect for authority...and in that particular commentary (research the Greek terms used), he did indeed mean dominions...angelic powers. [I would encourage readers to visit a most excellent Greek study site and read their long (& short) definitions for the words used for authority, angels, glorious ones, etc., in 2 Peter 2:10-11.] [Addendum: Both St. Paul & St. Peter wrote on the subject of angels - it is in my mind that St. Paul wrote 'not against flesh & blood - but against principalities...;' my research at the present moment, however, is weighted by the last hours of a long day...please get out your concordance and research the subject.]

Not a good time to be meeting any day without prayer - and armour. When I was a young mother, teaching my wee ones at home, we studied Scripture. I used to wonder what the coming delusion could look like. Tended to think in terms of the reach of history and man’s inhumanity to man – and woman: what could be worse than what has been known?

Some envision the horrors in terms of genocides – which must indeed be a portion of it. But even genocide cannot dilute the inhumanities recorded through the eons…some sense of equal weight there – mere ounces dividing.

But if one sifts back through the past two to three hundred years looking for mechanisms which reveal a coming shift in thought – from Christian to post-Christian thinking - the literature, the science, the scholarship, the history, political thought, psychology & moral determination - even the theological disciplines & recent discoveries - if one begins to tally these shifts and compare them to the timetable of the present moment…

Two things immediately become of note. The one, that (as mentioned above) the precision & forethought behind all that is being formed now requires a mind that can devise & implement with centuries to execute…

The arch of the centuries and all that they have contained is too big for mere humanity - but only humanity could have the hubris to think the ideas taking control of all now are his own...

But the other item of note is how rapidly things are happening now...

A mere ten, fifteen years I could still ask questions no one would posit now. The answers are all about us. Put the items that track the shift out on a timeline and then add even this past year - even this past six months - things are happening too fast now.

How do we live when it is too late?

Carefully...

I think even if the 'green wood' is gone now, we still have to seek - and proclaim - and defend what we know of truth. But it must be defended now against the reality that one day, we will not be allowed words. Against the reality that, already, the very words we use are being redefined.

Against the reality that our interpretation of a matter is pre-set by the attitudes & understandings of each age – our interpretation of the faith that has been handed down is likewise constrained.

It will become even more difficult as things in the world about us are legislated to particular views at present on the horizon. We already observe rumblings – ‘belonging’ is so vitally a part of our make-up; how to withstand the press of an age? We are styled sheep for a reason – we want to belong – we need to belong, and that mandates going with the spirit of this age, crooning us to sleep with its lullaby of 'inclusiveness' and ‘tolerance’ and ‘love’ and divers other things – even when we know better, a lullaby is a lullaby and it's very easy to fall asleep...

Many on the firing line now are hurting - second-guessing themselves, weighted down & grieving… tugging on the robe of the Master wanting Him to remind them they've got it right - like a wee one tugging Dad's house robe while he's on the phone talking to the boss - just needing to have him pat us on the head, say, there, there. It’s okay, little buddy…

John the Baptist did the same thing. Not tug Dad's house robe – I would have a hard time seeing such a saint in those terms, not because of any failing on the part of those of whom I speak – may God turn His face to them - but rather, recognition of what was inherent in Christ’s commendation of the man.

John the Baptist, however, sent his disciples over to ask Jesus if He was the One.

He'd known it. Prophesied when Christ was coming out of the waters, baptised...

And then that dark night in prison, not really having known what any of it was...

Are You the One...

Should we wait another.

The game wasn't quite going the way they'd expected. And what we hear in either the closet or that mountaintop, anyway, will always fade when we hit the marketplace - become there like a dream.

Puddleglum – as any would remember - spoke to that one. If it be but dream - better dream than this reality.

John the Baptist clearly didn't get what was happening - and insofar as his part in it? Wasn't he supposed to be a winner, here?

I proffer herein that the time for winning may be ending – and that we must learn now how to work in a time wherein Christ Himself said work would not be possible.

(For those who might ask how I could contradict the Master so, remember that some warnings merely use an image to indicate degree, not reality. They are illustrative, not literal.) (That said, He may indeed have spoken to a specific time wherein - work would not be possible.)

And as He said later, if they do this in a green wood, what will they do in a dry…

I have read that denominations across the board (even the Baptist, who at least have held - like the Bereans - to knowledge of Scripture as formative to Christian identity) are losing membership. I am not one who sees a ready cause-and-effect between that surge and the theological issues which are at present rearing their heads.

The surge that is indeed keeping a great many now out of the pews - and it is - is not fully & completely caused by the present redefining of what Christianity is.

The two items are separate threads - separate initiatives, if you will, of a planned assault. Lassitude – as noted above - another assault line being laid out by the enemy.

But I return (as one must) to the points with which I started. I must, I am afraid, choose sides.

That is what I have hoped to not do – to be, as St. Paul lamented none could – all things to all people. Or – if you prefer modernspeak: thought open-minded. Wee bit more journalist (old school) in me than is good, I finally come to find. It remains one of my pipe dreams – if I could have been made of something other than what I am, traveling the world as a reporter who is right there where history is being made at that exact moment would have been the ticket for me.

But that was just a random aside. Because in the framing in which I must come to terms with the sword of the Beloved, ‘open-minded’ is not (as those educated by the spirit of this age like to pretend) the opposite of ‘fundamentalist.’ Or, really, ‘narrow-minded.’

It is indeed, however, the opposite of being sober-minded…

One last thought, which goes back to the reality that this is a work of both centuries and breadth: the new framing (i.e., reinterpretation of what it is to be holy) is across the board and making inroads into all major denominations; even Roman Catholicism (which I will list as a denomination in spite of a preference for dividing Christianity at large into three realities: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox & Protestant) has been targeted.

I have other thoughts on both the matter at hand and how we can work toward understanding some of the things we are up against. I am not able to examine things on the level of canon law or expectation – my thoughts are more simply framed, and attempt merely to help us see clearly some of the wiles of the enemy.

For we have one, regardless of whether ‘educated’ folk are able to recognize his existence or not. Insofar as the new Province goes, I’m left saying again that the usual parameters for recognizing it as work of the Spirit may not be present in a dry wood. But I have long suspected that prayer figures greatly into when that day begins…

Prayer and expectant watchfulness…

In the meanwhile, a post-Christian world puts us up against a global society wherein the admonitions of an older day to not lose heart gain a greater weight. As does that need for armour…

God be with us.

Moratoria, Manifesto & Other Holiday Topics: That Miscellany of Words

Balancing three blogs under three separate voices/niches (i.e., names and/or personalities, all of them housed within the one me) is not quite so difficult as Stopping the Process to Clean the Apartment - a trifle of a thing, as my dad has pointed out before, that could be cleaned merely by tying a broom to my backside...

It's the energies thing, if I may - or perhaps better - the introspective life vs. that of a more active living. To say nothing of the disasters inherent in an apt. that is Seldom Cleaned. Can't fit into the closet, so after a hard day, where do you think my clothes go?

Books?

Papers?

And all that dust ..and the dishes...if I can scarce discipline myself to stop to eat, where do you think cooking - then washing dishes - figures in?

And please, don't mention my poor kitty!

But back to the smaller matter. It would amuse me, if it did not irritate quite so fully, the way people think I (or you or the man in front of you at Starbuck's) can just blithely settle down to a life of introspection and get up and go out into the world and join the corner game of marbles.

Some may.

But the key is perhaps in - not just how deeply an individual creative 'settles in' to the introspection & reverie & putting thoughts together necessary for the better work - but what that seeker finds when he begins thinking.

Which is merely to say, if the chatter of the everyday is all that resides in a particular writer - if they reside merely in a house of window panes set at angles in that house of mirrors - sitting down, getting up & marbles all have the same empty resonance.

But I am perhaps in a bad mood. I'd managed to make great strides over the recent holiday to begin to organize & clean - it put me into quite the active mode. Really, I enjoyed the heck out of delicious in playing house - I was always good at playing house, even as an adult.

Just don't expect any responsibility out of me on the matter. Responsibility is this thing called computer + words...

Because I had to go back to that day thing, you know, out there in that world called rent & storage - ha, did you think I might include food & utilities...

Part-time work does not really allow such things.

But standing on tip-toe in that adult world - that is, trying to stay focused on coming back home to clean a little bit more...

Mandated above noted moratoria on the several blogs. And I look up & it's been almost a month since I posted at passeres!

Ai-eee. Posts being somewhat requisite, here in the blogosphere, I think to address the matter. But devolve to working on the packaging (i.e., playing with the site design again).

The woman for whom I am fictional representative has a thing about packaging.

Has a novella, to be sure, written around a particular theme that - umm, examines the emptiness of packaging in a world wherein packaging counts for more than the contents inside the box...

But last night I noted in my journal that packaging is like tone. We read tone in a person's writing to determine how they mean a thing, much like we read tone (though with much less perfection, especially in this multi-cultural world, where the hugeness of distance between various cultures stuns at least this one individual), to discover what a person is saying...

On a website, to be sure, packaging operates in more subtle ways, too, as I discovered (rather an un-subtle occurrence) when I went from very quiet, restrained colours on the site at large, to - umm, tropical. I've changed a great much here at passeres since that time and will likely continue to do so. Been wasting a great deal of time, in fact (though prior to the recent run on brain-cells-that-control-cleaning), looking for widgets...

But - a post, a post! Somewhere in the snippets & miscellany/cacophony of hoarded words, a post to proffer in way of apology, perhaps, because I do hear the next cleaning project calling...

That which aboundeth
Stories abound, you know, hoarded or otherwise. Escaping them can be difficult. Back when I could still afford public transportation, walking to the Marta station to get the train to work, pages of copy dribbling through my mind like a ball incessantly tapped out against the court before shooting the hoop—perfect in rhythm, perfect in pace, perfect in delivery...

Then gone. Seasoned enough in the writing process to know why you sit at a computer every day. And experienced enough in the dayworld vs. that sublime thing we know as a call of the wild to remember staying there is the stuff of dream.

You write. (Or those long days then weeks then months—can we stop there? when you don't.)

You get up.

You walk out the door. And if the words are still coming...you walk out anyway and they are gone. When you can finally get back into that thing called 'discipline' (don't edge too close to me with that one, please)--. Well yes, ahh. Because then you are again like a well-tuned machine and as long as you don't accidentally turn the motor off, you're good for eternity...

See? All else becomes the distraction from the Matter at Hand - you're on, you're good, and life is mere interruption in the process.

Umm. Ever try to hold down a job when you're not there? Oh, physically, to be sure - you did clock in & sit down at your desk.

But you are not there. You are still in that other world where the creativity resides - lives - moves & has breathing...don't know 'bout you, dear, but this saint has not yet managed to live in two places at one time.

Nonetheless, stories are everywhere - the blog/memoir/social commentary sort. But they crumble like sand & I crunch through them knowing writing is the process of returning sand to rock.

But that is the easy part.

It's the rest of it. The distractables. The life that is lived - that must be lived - until you can get to the place where...

You don't have to go away. Now, what would that look like, really? Earning my keep by my words, for starters. Owning my own time & personhood. Belonging to me! Such sweet bliss!

And earning enough to have insurance - because really, that looms as the one hugeness that, even were the others met, could derail any dream.

And managing somehow to have enough time to write in the best hours yet stop to clean & cook (hey, and even eat) by the later hours of the afternoon...

But I dream. Kinda fond of fiction, here. Likely one reason I write it (those places that I do).

Reasons there are which begin and end with a world that makes sense only in fiction. I don't know that I will ever really adjust to the inability to know or to trust. One downside of the 'wisdom' that comes with growing older is I see things no one who loves faery tales (a form of fiction, no?) should ever see.

In fiction, things have to follow a preset configuring. That lovely notion we always dangle about life imitating art—or art life...would that life could imitate art!

Life will never gain such pristineness.

But I think I have indeed slipped. Reverie to dreaming. Again, again, again.

The grasshopper once more
The reality remains that, in a world such as the one in which I must walk as the dead for the present moment, art skitters about as the low life creature of the sewage pipes: first thing tossed when money gets tight. And I've had it hammered enough into my head that my writing - my words - my art - are not important.

What is 'important' is those hours life has held this long while like a knife to my throat...

Someone said once that when he had money, he would buy books. And if he had any left over, he would eat. Some, I think do better relying on the mercy of friends than I am comfortable. Yet a life devoid of writers - or artists - or musicians...

Strips life down, really, to an empty stall in a public restroom. The paper is white, harsh, scratchy. The walls & flooring are small tile squares - some off-white colour made more tolerable, perhaps, with an alternate that pretends styling.

What made me think of that? Who knows. That next cleaning project, perhaps...Tomorrow, one of the last days hoarded from that thing called 'vacation' will have ended & (clean apt. or no) I will lurch back out into Atlanta's streets & head to work...

But back to that place I started. Three blogs, three niche/voices. Because for all that I accept the necessity that the one me house all three voices (time there was when Wren was not allowed voice - a lifetime, in fact & then one day, there she was, fully formed) and can indeed traipse between them, slipping in & out as though they were mere wisps of garment I cover a summer evening in - slipping in & out from all three on a daily basis is no more possible than for midnight to be bright as day (in spite of what city-dwellers know of the matter)...

But so it is. Time to address that project in the apt. behind me that has been callling in that whisper soft voice...

But before I go
One thing to remind me - this one's for me - it concerns someone who doesn't really care much for responsibility - whimsy is more his preference, and I cheer him on & will do so until the day I die; please God, keep the whimsical here on the planet; may we ever have Pied Pipers to go for us where we may not get to go...

My son cuts words from magazines. He puts them in a bag and pulls them out one by one. Pastes them on a pristine sheet of white paper. Mayhap three words, naked in all that bright white. That bright purity of white. The expanse of all the words not said hovering there in its pristineness. These only will I give you! And the magic of the interconnectedness (or perhaps the simplicity, in spite of it all?) of the created world in which we live & move & have our breathing—for you have a poem! Three words at random and the mind forms a poem. And only, really, the reach of centuries can do it. The generations of literature as building blocks to allow the form of what is possible now...Just as, only the essential underpinning of everyone using the same tired words (cliché) can allow a language now writ in acronyms—only a world of primary cliché could reduce to mere acronym. So very far apart (the multicultural inability to speak the same language) but nonetheless the same words to express...So very much piped there—yet only three notes...that symphony of possibility from a mere three words...

But I dream, even against such pristineness. Dream of art, and identity, and that place where life proffers robes suitable for the weather...

What are you dreaming?