A Marriage with the Poor

The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat makes the case that the practice of marriage is crumbling among America's poor and working class, while educated Americans -- liberal and alike conservative -- battle over the definition of marriage
(see The Changing Culture War).

The article is insightful and I like Douthat's columns in general. Beyond that, this essay points up to me that it matters not only what position you take on an issue of the day, but even more so where you are standing -- your friendships and allegiances -- when taking the position. In this case, the article says to me that your position on marriage -- "progressive" or "orthodox" -- is tinged with hypocrisy, at least in the light of Christ's blessings for the poor, if it is not combined with a solidarity with people possessing little money.

Now, I still think it matters deeply to understand marriage in the context of God's good creation, his covenant with Israel, the God-person of Jesus and his coming again. Given this foundation I just can't see marriage comprising any two other than a man and a woman (although that's far from the only aspect marriage!). The lesson I read in Douthat's column is that even this truth can't be divorced from the Beatitudes without becoming something of a betrayal of Christian marriage.

Thomas Cranmer was a Protestant!

This was the realization I had reading The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer. This probably says more about my ignorance of Anglican history than it does about the essays collected in the book, but it was nonetheless, for me, both helpful and surprising.

I base this on some pretty basic information. First, Cranmer inserted this anti-Catholic “Black Rubric” in the 1552 Prayer Book regarding the reception of communion: “We do declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental bread or wine there bodily received, or unto any real and essential presence there being of Christ’s natural flesh and blood.” Second, the essay on Cranmer in The Guide ("Cranmer and Common Prayer” by Gordon Jeanes) summarizes his theology by saying, “Probably he was sympathetic to Lutheran views in the later 1530s, but by the time the Prayer Books were published he was closer to the views of the Reformed theologians like Bucer and Bullinger.”

These two quotes are, of course, insufficient for an analysis of Cranmer’s theology, but they are enough to make clear that Cranmer was not an Anglo-Catholic. That burst my bubble. The narrative I had swimming in my silly little head was that Cranmer was an essentially Catholic bishop given license/ordered -- because of Henry the VIII’s political battles -- to renew the prayer life of the Church in England. So imagined, Cranmer set about to bring a measure of Catholic monastic life to all of England, which is why Anglicans claim a Via Media that sympathizes with some reforms without altogether leaving the church Catholic.

Wrong! Cranmer’s sympathies were, as quoted above, exclusively with the Continental Reformers, I discovered. Reading between the lines, the check on Cranmer’s reforms -- which Protestants in the rest of Europe didn’t have – was the fact that, within England, he was not splitting from the established church but leading it. Cranmer had a substantial existing bureaucracy with which to content, so some continuity with Catholicism would be inevitable given all the priests, parishes, coffers and buildings he was trying to change.

This modest bit of history I learned would be bound to the sixteenth century but for one thing: My ignorance about Cranmer was the starting point for my ignorance about the Prayer Book’s past. I had lionized Cranmer as an Anglo-Catholic (probably in the image of my own priest) and then proceeded to assume that Prayer Book revisions had over the centuries drifted towards Protestantism and then liberal Protestantism.

Wrong again!

The most heartening history I learned from The Guide was that of the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Turns out, it does have some flimsy moves toward so-called inclusive language and the addition of the particularly embarrassing Eucharistic Prayer C, but by-in-large it trends in a thoroughly catholic direction with an overall form drawn from ancient liturgies, recovered early Eucharistic prayers, a lectionary based on the Catholic church’s, a more poetic Psalter, and a renewed commitment to the centrality of the Eucharist for Sunday Worship.

Praise God!

Digging more deeply, the essay on the Episcopal Prayer Book (“The Episcopal Chruch in the U.S.A.” by Lesley A. Northup) credits the inspiration for the 1979 revisions to the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement. As told in another essay (“The Liturgical Movement and Its Consequences” by John F. Baldwin, S.J.), this ecumenical trend of liturgical scholarship and renewal is a thing of beauty. At its core is a set of theologians seeking continuity in worship with the ancient church, and the reforms of Vatican II.

With the Liturgical Movement, I see an important avenue for learning what is good and holy in God’s church. In terms of specific books, one title recurs: The Shape of the Liturgy by Gregory Dix. Poignantly, Johnson quotes from it about Jesus’ command to celebrate the Lord’s Supper:

Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby ampitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of S. Joan of Arc—one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei—the holy common people of God.

Amen. It’s time to read Dix.

Sermon Idea: Holding the Coats of Those Who Kill

Paul said that as Stephen was stoned to death, he (Paul) was "standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him" (Acts 22:20).

What a powerful image of complicity in evil: "keeping the coats."

Holding someone's coat is such a gentile, courteous act and yet in the situation Paul describes it is participation in such wickedness.

There is a word here for us who are American, who have means, even ample means. We would never stone someone to death. That is something we read about in the newspaper, while eating breakfast with a cup of coffee in an air-conditioned room. Stoning happens far away or long ago, in locations that lack air-conditioning.

But "standing by", "approving" and "keeping coats" are things we may well do.

Now we live in a complex world and there aren't stonings in this country. But there are executions of men and women, some of them baptized Christians who have repented of their sins. There are brothers and sisters in Christ -- neighbors of ours -- who live and work in a state of semi-bondage under threat of deportation. There are people nearby -- and maybe you are one of these people -- whose refrigerator sometimes goes bare near the end of the month.

You may well not be directly involved in these situations, but are you "standing by" as they happen? Are you "approving"? Are you "keeping the coats" of those who are directly involved with enforcing such punishment?

Now we live in a complex world and there aren't stonings in this country. And, maybe you think the analogies I've drawn miss the mark. And maybe you disagree with what you take to be my politics, but keep in mind that Saul was "standing by" and "approving" and "keeping coats" in a complex world and for what he thought were all the right reasons.

Saul was doing it until he encountered the risen Christ and his physical eyes were blinded and his spiritual eyes were opened and he was given a new name and a new mission.

Risen Christ, come into our lives. Open our eyes to injustice and persecution. Transform us into disciples of you. Send us off this day with a mission for you.

Timothy Ware's 'The Orthodox Way': A Clear Guide to a Mysterious God

Writing in "The Orthodox Way," Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware is not attempting to highlight the history and distinctive features of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is interested in God. The chapter titles are indicative: "God as Mystery", "God as Trinity", "God as Creator", "God as Man"....

With its divine focus, the book is, in a way, an extended meditation on the Trinity. And in being so, the message is, to this reader anyway, that that is the Orthodox way -- set your heart, mind and soul on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Ware is clear. For example, in the first chapter he gives three broad "pointers" to God common to all humanity -- order in creation, the depth of each person's inner life, and love among people. That's not a bad summary of how man comes to perceive God.

Elsewhere, he describes the relationship among creation, creator and science with these five sentences.

As creator, then, God is always at the heart of each thing, maintaining it in being. On the level of scientific inquiry, we discern certain processes or sequences of cause and effect. On the level of spiritual vision, which does not contradict science but looks beyond it, we discern everywhere the creative energies of God upholding all that is, forming the innermost essence of all things. But, while present everywhere in the world, God is not to be identified with the world. As Christians we affirm not pantheism but "panentheism". God is in all things yet also beyond and above all things.

Near the end of the book, Ware sets out three types of union in the economy of divine love: union according to essence characteristic of the relationship among the three persons of the trinity; union according to hypostasis (personhood) as seen in God the Son being one person, fully man and fully God; and union according to energies as seen in mystical communion between God and a person.

His treatment of mysticism is clear, but not simplistic. He describes the Orthodox tradition of using the Jesus Prayer in contemplation (a contemplative being called a "hesychast" in Greek).

So the Jesus Prayer begins as an oral prayer like any other. But the rhythmic repetition of the same short phrase enables the hesychast, by virtue of the very simplicity of the words which he uses, to advance beyond all language and images into the mystery of God. In this way the Jesus Prayer develops, with God's help, into what Western writers call "prayer of loving attention" or prayer of simple gaze", where the soul rests in God without a constantly varying succession of images, ideas and feelings. Beyond this there is a further stage, when the hesychast's prayer ceases to be the result of his own efforts, and becomes --at any rate from time to time--what Orthodox writers call "self-acting" and Western writers call "infused". It ceases, in other words, to be "my" prayer, and becomes to a greater or lesser extent the prayer of Christ in me.

It is in this mystical territory -- communion between God and man, the life of the Trinity, the overflow of energy from creator to creation -- that I find Ware most helpful. I sometimes hear the Orthodox tradition cited in these matters but in defense of suspicious-sounding theology. However, with Ware, I sense I have a good guide.

'Psmith' Makes a Story

I happened to read P.G. Wodehouse's Leave It to Psmith the same week I saw my cousin's husband Jack for the first time in many years. This was helpful because in Jack I see something of a real life Psmith -- a man of expansive bonhomie who comes from wealth but likes the atmospherics of life more than the accumulation of possessions.

The protagonist Psmith -- the "P" is silent, he lets people know about his amended surname -- has lost his family money during post-World War I England and is unwilling to pursue a safe living in his uncle's fish business. So, he styles himself an agent for hire hoping to hook some sort of intrigue that it is at once adventuresome, well-meaning and profitable. As Wodehouse would have it, Psmith gets just that.

Psmith winds up at a country estate called Blandings Castle in pursuit of the lovely Eve Halliday, with a side mission -- for the best of reasons -- of heisting Lady Constance's jewelled necklace. And wouldn't you know it, with luck and charm, Psmith wins the day.

Psmith's charm -- his optimistic banter like my cousin Jack's -- is the real jewel in the book. When Eve discovers that Psmith lied about his identity in order to follow her to Blandings Castle, he rhetorically turns the deception into proof of his affection for her:

"Consider! Twice that day you had passed out of my life--may I say taking the sunshine with you?--and I began to fear you might pass out of it forever. So, loath though I was to commit the solecism of planting myself in this happy home under false pretences, I could see no other other way. And here I am!"

Eve responds that Psmith is mad to think he can pretend to be someone else while courting her for days and then just brush off the masquerade. Undaunted, Psmith proceeds to ask for her hand in marriage with this qualification:

"I merely say 'Think it over'. It is nothing to cause you mental distress. Other men love you. Freddie Threepwood loves you. Just add me to the list. That is all I ask. Muse on me from time to time. Reflect that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the first time you tasted them. Now you probably do. Give me the same chance you would give an olive."

I think that's funny. I think it sounds like my cousin Jack saying his 70-year-old mother-in-law "didn't have much" when she was practicing the Macarena dance before the family party but that we should go ahead and play the song anyway. Jack can make a party; Psmith can make a story.

The Good Gang: Reflections on 'New Monasticism'

About all I can say in response to New Monasticism by Jonathan-Wilson Hartgrove is, “Amen.”

I say, “Amen,” because he articulates well implications of the Gospel to which I have been persuaded, e.g. pro-life, non-violence, the gift economy, visible unity and the discipline of regular prayer. But more than articulating them, Wilson-Hartgrove is living them with others in the city in which I live. This is what is so convicting about New Monasticism. The book less explains Christianity and more says to anyone who bends its pages: “Come, let’s be Christians, you and I.”

And to think this book could have been bad. It could have been schismatic, but instead cites Benedict and Antony, and privileges the local congregation over the para-church organization. It could have drifted into Utopia and yet it centers the Christian economic revolution in the household (note to self: post on God’s Economy). It could have waxed poetic without prophetic bite but that Jonathan and his wife Leah risked their lives as Christian peacemakers in Iraq during the war. And, there’s the story about how he kept getting arrested protesting the execution of criminals in Raleigh until he got his day in court and made a theological defense of actions that included testimony from Stanley Hauerwas.

Those stories stick in my mind as does this gem of a parable quoted from a man named John Alexander.

He asked people to imagine a gang member. Call him Jimmy. Say Jimmy has been running drugs for ten years and is headed straight for prison or the grave. What does he need? The fundamentalists John grew up with would say that Jimmy needs a personal relationship with Jesus. And they would be right. Jimmy needs a conversion experience and a personal transformation to become the person God wants him to be. But if all Jimmy gets is a sinner’s prayer and a church to go to on Sunday mornings, he’ll take his personal relationship with Jesus right back with him to the gang. And he’ll go on living the same way he has been. So what do the liberals say Jimmy needs? John said they may note that Jimmy is a victim of racism along with his neighbors and they may work hard to build a health clinic in his underserved community. And they would be right. Because if Jimmy stays in the gang, he’ll get shot and need someone to sew him up. But after the doctor saves his life, he’ll send Jimmy home to the same gang. The doctor doesn’t have anything more to offer Jimmy.

“What Jimmy really needs,” John would say at the end of this thought experiment, “is a new gang.”

This is the image I will take away from New Monasticism: Christian congregations as good gangs – fierce, localized, protective of their own, a subculture concerning to the powers that be.

To Be a Priest (or a Deacon)

Individual Christian priests don't exist.

This is a bit of discernment I gained while reading "To Be a Priest," a book from 1975 comprising essays from Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox teachers prompted by the controversy in the Episcopal church surrounding gender and ordination. The bulk of the essays are from Episcopalians, as that is the church of the two editors. Few of the essays directly "take a side" in the debate, although the editors intentionally solicited writers with varied views on the topic (the two editors being themselves split on the issue). The essays do, however as the book title indicates, reflect on the nature of the priesthood.

There are no Christian priests -- plural -- as there is only one great high priest, Jesus the Christ, in continuity with his body, the church. The passage in 1 Peter often quoted by Protestants about "a royal priesthood" refers to Christ comprising all believers into a single priesthood -- his own. More than one essay makes this case and I am persuaded by it.

This understanding has an important implication: One does not pursue the priesthood; it pursues you. Jesus initiated our current priesthood -- a fulfillment of the Hebrew one -- in Palestine two thousand years ago. Since them the Holy Spirit has been snapping up people, by baptism, to be a part of it. The priesthood is by God's design, not man's.

Early on the church came to see distinct ongoing functions within the one priesthood, that is the Christian community. Two of those functions were oversight and service. Oversight was the authority to keep a community going in the way the apostles had passed on from Jesus. Service, it seems, was both an administrative role under an overseer and the tasks necessary to support the church's mission of acting mercifully to neighbors. The latter is the place in the priesthood of the deacon; the former is the bishop.

Interestingly, we still haven't come to what we call today a "priest." That role's antecedent in the New Testament is "presbyter," which seems to have some of the overseeing function. It's translation is "elder" and one essay convincingly finds its heritage in the councils of elders overseeing local synagogues. After the age of the apostles, but still during the early church, the presbyter comes to be identified as something like the bishop's representative at the celebration of the Eucharist. A Catholic theologian writes beautifully about a priest being, essentially, the guy who facilitates the occurrence of the Eucharist.

Some essays in the collection stink. I won't dwell beyond this paragraph on what's not edifying, but one of the editors, Urban T. Holmes, writes about how there are limitations to sociological and psychological description of the priesthood and then goes on to give one himself, using a comparative-religion paradigm the model with an emphasis on a priest's duty to mediate an unspecified "transcendent reality". And then there is, of course, one obligatory essay with the oppression-equality-rights narrative. Such essays don't teach much about the priesthood, but they are helpful in the sense of laying out the diversity of thought within The Episcopal Church.

Most compelling in "To Be a Priest" is the opening essay by Robert Terwilliger, a co-editor of the book. He speaks with a holy authority about the nature of the priesthood with a faithful vision of the church I associate with Michael Ramsey's book "The Gospel and the Catholic Church". Terwilliger writes:

There is only one priest, Jesus Christ. He and he alone can bond God and man because of what he did for us, and because of what he is as the incarnate unity of God and man....

The priesthood of Christ is sent forth into the world. The commission of the apostles is part of the Gospel. Jesus projects what he is and what he does for man into history in the persons of other men. He chooses, definitely chooses and designates, the Twelve to go forth in his name. They are to be not merely teachers and examples but extensions of himself and his divine mission....

It is through this ministry of apostles that the Church is brought into being and built up. They do act as ministers of the Church and in the Church, but they are, above all, apostles to the Church. They represent the continual coming of Christ to the Church and the world.

There's a worldly voice that tells me after reading this book that I should express opinion about the relationship between gender and ordained ministry. And, I can say that the voices I find most instructive tend to see the offices of bishop and priest as male, although not uniformly so. But, I think I'll pass on saying anything more than that. What this book more substantially prompts in is a renewed vision of the expanse, beauty and power of the crucified Christ and his body with its particular functions, membership and mission.

Reading "To Be a Priest" has sharpened my discernment indeed ... about becoming a deacon. Oops, I guess that's a matter for another post.

'Where God Happens:' Rowan Williams' Handbook on Christian Mysticism

The Desert Fathers would not have blogged.

Pre-modern technical limitations aside, the blogger ethos of immediate self publishing and self promotion contradicts the anonymity, humility, patience and self-forgetting espoused in the sayings of these ancient Christian monks. That's my conclusion after reading Where God Happens by Rowan Williams.

Since I haven't read Williams' source material, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (which I must now put on my reading list), I can only assume he "got them right." Further, my lack of familiarity with the Fathers (and Mothers too, Williams stresses), turns my attention to Williams himself. In writing about ancient monasticism and the ensuing tradition of Christian meditation, Williams seems to be in his element -- a contemplative contemplating contemplation.

Some of the themes are monastic classics, expected and wise. There is obedience as a pathway to humility and a greater trust in silence than speech. The stark stability of a monk is coupled with his extreme hospitality to the one who travels to him. Asceticism in various forms is how the monk flees from ephemeral carnal pleasures to the reality of God. In one way or another in the sayings, masters training novices to parry devilish attacks of pride.

(For my own walk, I note that ordination is one such source of pride which the Fathers sought to ward off.)

A theme of the book is a philosophical distinction between the personal and the individual. Citing a theologian named Vladimir Lossky, Williams says the person is unique, a product of God's limitless creativity and a source of holy diversity. The individual is a unit, one of many of a perceived kind. From this Williams crafts a prism of Christian spirituality: contemplation of God leads us away from understanding ourselves as an isolated example of some ideal or fantasy and towards knowing ourselves as utterly particular in our being and our relationship with the Father and one another. He says:

There is no general type of Christian holiness. There is an infinite variety of different relationships to Jesus Christ, which also become relationships with each other.

This territory of Christian mysticism which Williams explores is, for me, charged. My own conscious relationship with Christ came via a path that wound through a type of generalized mysticism with an Eastern flavor (what I would now called gnosticism). Much of my thinking after my conversion was along the lines of, What is "Christian" about Christian mysticism? I can't say I came to a conclusion, although I'm sure it has something to do with the fully enfleshed particularity of Jesus of Nazareth. (I can also say the writings of Father Thomas Keating were immensely helpful.)

So, as I read Where Go Happens, I considered again these questions of self knowledge versus self delusion, cataphatic versus apophatic spirituality, commonalities of human experience versus the particularity Christ. (The specifics of Christ's life seem to be mentioned infrequently in the Sayings; how does that matter?) And again no answer has come in a form that fits neatly in a blog post, but I have found a wise guide in Williams. Because of that wisdom I could, in closing, choose any one of the many profound quotations in Where Go Happens. Hmmm, out of my unique personhood in this particular place and time with constraints of my given relationships, I think I'll choose ... this one:

If the heart contains the love of God, one may wonder where is the danger of being guided by it? It is confusing on the surface, but there is something intelligible behind this contradiction. It was Abba Isidore who expressed strong reservations about being guided by the heart. These reservations have to do with listening to what you think are the promptings of your feelings. He wants us to be clear that listening to these promptings is not a guarantee of getting it right. "How can I be wrong if I am so sincere?" is not a Christian principle.

Giving to God in the Gospel of Luke

Our Bible study recently finished studying the Gospel of Luke. Going in to the study I knew Luke’s reputation as the Gospel for the gentiles and the outcasts. And sure enough in our readings I saw how so many of its heroes – in the narrative in Jesus’ parables -- are women, Samaritans, cripples and others on the fringes of Israelite society.

I also had in mind that Luke is the dreaded (for those of us with wealth) “Give Up Your Money Gospel.” It is. Not only does Luke contain the parable of the rich young ruler (“sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor”) and the encounter with Zacchaues (“half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor”), it also has this blanket mandate: “None of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions” (14:33).

One twist I discovered in our reading of the Give Up Your Money Gospel was in a parable at its midpoint. Jesus is pulled into an inheritance dispute and responds with what my Bible calls the parable of the rich fool. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,” Jesus begins; “for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Then comes the brief story of a rich man whose harvest produced more crops than he could store. Instead of giving away the excess he built more storehouses only to have God tell him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” Next, Jesus delivers the punch line: “So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

What does it mean to be “rich toward God?” This is the question we considered for an evening in our study, and it is the one that sticks with me still.

I’m sure the answer is inexhaustible but where I’d begin is with a kind of holy giving. Zachariah and Elizabeth, to their astonishment, are given John. Jesus is given to Mary and Joseph, and “for all the people,” as the angels tell the shepherds. The marks of Jesus’ ministry – healings, exorcisms and miracles – can be considered gifts. His sermon on the plain could be seen as a list of gifts for those who seem not to get many.

More fundamentally, Jesus’ whole life is as a gift given back to his father into whose hands he commends his spirit. Then after his resurrection, Jesus promises the giving of the Spirit.

The economy of love among the Trinity, overflowing to the church, is its own inexhaustible mystery. My touching upon it is only to show a connection I made in reading Luke these past months with brothers and sisters. The “Give Up Your Money” messages found so frequently in Luke – e.g., the widows mite and Lazarus and the rich man, in addition to those mentioned above -- is woven in with the rest of Jesus’ life and ministry. Giving to the poor is not an isolated obligation. It is an essential part of giving one's life to God as Jesus showed to do. It is a way of being rich toward God.

Fatherly Fondness Amidst Hollywood Kitsch

At around page 200 of the novel Everything Matters! I was thinking how I could pan it: "Ron's Currie's book reads like the fourth season of sitcom with all the wit and pathos used up, he resorts to secret agents, a cancer cure and drug culture references."

What moved the book from "pretty stinky" to "OK" was a vignette in its waning pages when the protagonist John Thibadeau Jr. gets a call from his mother that his elderly father is too weak to get up from the toilet. In the book's second-person voice (a key to its conceit), John Jr.'s encounter with his father is described.

You crouch in front of your father and look into his eyes and what you see there very nearly breaks you. "Dad," you say. "I'm going to pick you up, all right?" He drops his gaze and nods. You slide your hands under his arms and try gingerly to find the best purchase, though there is no gentle way to lift a grown man. Your mother's still on her haunches to the left side of the toilet, ready to pull your father's pants up once he's on his feet. She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand.

John Sr. was moved and so was I. Fatherhood is a theme of this blog and this little moment revealed a little something about it -- the loyalty, the messiness, the heartache and the love.

Outside of that little scene, the book reads something like a screenplay for a stereotypical Hollywood movie. There's a comet coming to destroy the earth. Only one man can save it: the protagonist who from birth is addressed in the second person by an omniscient voice. But, oh no, his foibles lead him into drug addiction and heartbreak; he's lost his way.... But wait, now he's reunited with his old girlfriend and sleeps with her -- there's hope! Then she dies. He's already found a cure for his father's cancer, only to have the father die days later, but the comet is still coming. Cue the special effects ... the multiverse is allowing our hero and his family and second chance!

The whole end-of-the-earth thing is supposed to add a philosophical dimension to the story. What is the purpose of life if it is all going to come to an end some day? John Jr.'s response mostly plays out as addiction and rehab, culminating with the profound conclusion that "Everything Matters!"

Well, OK, that's fine for a sitcom or summer flick, but I'm going to go back to being a dad.

"Resurrectioniness"

It's still spring so it's not too late to make a quip about how (some) mainline Christians mangle Easter.

I begin with Stephen Colbert's word "truthiness." The analogy to us mainliners is via my made up word: "resurrectioniness." Now, I don't hear people using that exact word but I do hear phrases such as "practicing resurrection." Practicing the resurrection sounds so odd to me, like "practicing dying." It's a one-time and final event, so how can you practice it? You can hope for the resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns -- or even prepare for it -- but I don't think you get to rehearse it.

The difference, of course, is in the definite article. "Resurrection" without it, instead of referring to Jesus rising from the dead or the day when God will raise believers, is a churchy way of saying "renewal." Since it's spring it sounds appropriate to speak of renewal and how we should all be cultivating it in our lives. My beef with this way of employing "resurrection" is that it obfuscates Easter by conflating God's definitive and supernatural intervention in the world (the Resurrection of Jesus and promised resurrection of his people) with the natural process of death and new growth (a sort of biological resurrection).

I call this conflation "resurrectioniness" because it parallels Colbert's "truthiness." Colbert meant to say that the Bush administration was not interested strictly in the truth but more in saying things that sounded like the truth. And so we mainliners (sometimes) are more interested in Christian-sounding pronouncements rather than the actual Christian proclamation of the Resurrection.

Lawnmower and Man

No theology here. I am watching my sons play in the backyard. Because it is hot, I filled the plastic kiddie pool for them. After splashing in it for a bit, Levi climbed out and got his mini lawnmower. He pushed it up the side of the kiddie pool and in, which made Samuel laugh. In Levi's brief act -- lawnmower into pool -- I see a kind of performance art about maleness and suburban life. I'll call it "Lawnmower and Man: A Twenty-First Century Performance Art Piece by Levi Todd."

Addendum: Minutes after this post, Levi enacted the encore to "Lawnmower and Man." He peed in the pool and got out.

To Time: Bart Stupak as Christian of the Year

A few weeks ago I heard third hand that Time Magazine was preparing for its 100 Most Influential People issue and was looking for a “most influential Christian”. They weren’t, of course, asking me, but blogs are the great fantasy-indulgers, so I hereby give my unsolicited opinion to Time:

Bart Stupak.

The Democratic congressman from Michigan is my vote for a Christian hero of the year. I know only what I read about him in a couple of newspaper profiles and the numerous reports on the health care drama that mentioned him. As I understand it, he was the leader of the pro-life Democrats in the House who insisted on abortion restrictions in the House version of the bill and then held out for a compromise in the reconciled version of the bill such that he did not get all of those protections for the unborn but ended up with a promise of an executive order that would mandate the bulk of the restrictions. Considering the complexity of health care policy – not to mention all the ambiguity of governing in a representative democracy – that outcome is as about as Christian as I can imagine.

How he came to his vote was just as important. He could of followed his pro-life Republican colleagues and looked for any pro-life imperfection in health care reform as the basis for an excuse to obstruct the process and deny health insurance to those whom the bill would cover (mostly the poor, as I understand it). And of course he could have knuckled under to Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic herself, and invoked realpolitik an excuse. But my impression is that he was acting consciously as a Christian, putting that identity above electability and party loyalty, and, as a Catholic Christian, was submitting to the guidance of his bishop. Oh, that we Christians, would approach all matters that way.

Finally, Stupak probably can't rightly be counted among the most influential people in America, which should probably disqualify him from being on Time's list, but not for Christian. God does not rank people by their power in the world. He calls people out of the world and with them comprises the body of Christ. Each person has a role and a season. God's "heroes," as such, can be unlikely characters who emerge from obscurity and then seemingly fade away -- Ruth, Rahab, Peter. Shoot, Jesus is the prime example. Bart Stupak was not the most eloquent, clever or powerful congressman and yet he tilted the most important domestic legislation of the decade in the favor of mercy. For that, he's my Christian hero of the year -- and should have been one of Time's too.