In about a month or so I will be starting a new 'blog on roughly the same themes. To be able to read it, you will need to request the URL from me. I will continue to post my articles on this website, and perhaps some public musings.
As you may have noticed, I have curtailed my more personal reflections for reasons mentioned in previous postings. I'm going to find a forum where I don't feel that inhibited, even if I lose readership.
I need a haven where I can unleash my profane voice, quest for the sacred, and inveterate curiosity again.
I used to post ideas about politics, relationships, sex and parenting with joy, a taste of a little provocation and a tincture of "something to get you thinking."
The joy is gone-I don't like the person I become when I have to choose my words.
So soon I'll find another place to publish-and hopefully be a little wiser-liberty with restraint.
The rest of you-I'd love for you to be a part of the new adventure! Contact me with a request for the title and URL if you wish to join me.
Cheers, Elizabeth
lundi, mai 28, 2007
dimanche, mai 27, 2007
Lancaster editorial by me
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA -
The great gulf that has long separated evangelicals and liberals on issues of societal concern has been narrowing, offering unprecedented opportunities for collaboration and real change.
The question: Is anyone paying attention?
Whether you are evangelical or Orthodox, a member of a mainline congregation or a megachurch, Pentecostal or Roman Catholic, it is hard to avoid becoming either a participant, a statistic or an innocent bystander in the culture wars playing out in American religious life today.
I should know. As an Episcopal priest, I have a ringside seat. Or maybe I'm one of the gladiators. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
For a tiny denomination (somewhere between 2 million and a 2.5 million members, depending on who's doing the counting) we manage to grab a disproportionate share of national headlines with our endless sexuality squabbles and sordid legal disputes.
Episcopalians aren't slugging it out alone. Debates over the issues of ordaining practicing homosexuals and blessing gay unions are taking place among mainline Presbyterians, Methodists and Lutheran congregations and judicatories.
Whether they are in the majority, or, as in the Episcopal Church, a vocal and often well-endowed minority, conservatives have found a voice, and are now raising it in an angry roar of protest against actions that they see as direct assaults on Scriptural authority.
Amid all the media speculation of schisms and defections in the older and established denominations, it is easy to miss the fact that moderates, and dare we say liberals, in the evangelical ranks have also found their voice.
If they are so enmeshed in their internal disputes that they are not paying attention, mainline Protestant leaders may be missing a powerful opportunity to build bridges across some of America's most well-worn religious divides.
In recent years, a diverse group that includes educators, megachurch pastors and evangelical activists began to speak publicly about issues like global warming and human rights here and abroad. Although it probably was not their intent, the effect was to break the public facade of ironclad unanimity that served conservatives so well in the past.
Ironically enough, it may have been their access to the Bush administration and status in the halls of Congress that allowed concerned evangelical Christians to take positions that might once have resulted in being cast out of the fellowship.
The ferment in the evangelical community, and the creative alliances with other organizations have been ongoing for a number of years.
Sharing their cause with humanitarian organizations, evangelicals have for quite some time been advocates for a stronger, more proactive American stance toward places where Christians face persecution, as in the ongoing genocide in Darfur.
But in 2004, the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that claims links to 60 denominations and about 45,000 churches, came out with a broad agenda in their statement "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility."
Arguing that evangelicals had an unprecedented chance to shape public policy, the NAE document made a bold case, replete with multiple Scriptural references, that "sanctity of life" involved advocacy for human rights, for creation and for the poor as well as against abortion.
Last year a group of 86 educators, megachurch pastors (including best-selling author Rick Warren) and aid group leaders backed a major evangelical initiative to press for federal legislation to combat global warming.
In March the NAE endorsed a statement against torture written by 17 academicians and human rights activists.
Such moves toward a more inclusive idea of the sanctity of life have not come without protest from conservative evangelicals.
Focus on the Family chairman James Dobson and other evangelical leaders had demanded that the NAE board consider getting rid of vice president for governmental affairs, the Rev. Richard Cizik, because of his activism on behalf of the campaign against global warming. Conservatives have argued that evangelical activism that embraces issues more traditionally associated with liberal churches is not only distracting but threatens to split the strength of the movement.
At the March meeting, the board of directors not only affirmed his work, but in an implicit rebuke to the conservatives (none of whom are NAE members), reaffirmed their earlier document on public engagement.
In a March article in the evangelically centrist magazine Christianity Today, Institute on Religion and Democracy vice president Jerald Walz was quoted as criticizing the NAE's endorsement of a document opposing torture because those who helped write it and the original signers were mostly from the evangelical left.
Ten years ago, who knew (besides Sojourners activist Jim Wallis) there was an evangelical left?
Evangelical activists have not abandoned their commitment to conservative positions on such hot-button issues as abortion. When it comes to civil unions and gay marriage, they are still much more likely to be found cooperating with the old guard on the Christian right.
But the fact that there are now openly competing voices among American evangelicals offers parties on all sides of the theological spectrum a chance to collaborate on addressing social problems, like poverty, and potential disasters, like climate change, that don't discriminate on the basis of whether you think Charles Darwin was evil or the Virgin Birth was a fraud.
Whether our religious leaders will stop fighting with their denominational brothers and sisters long enough to notice there are workers ready to toil in the vineyard for the cause of the Gospel is a whole 'nother question.
So far, to use an admittedly pagan metaphor, the omens don't look too promising.
();
The great gulf that has long separated evangelicals and liberals on issues of societal concern has been narrowing, offering unprecedented opportunities for collaboration and real change.
The question: Is anyone paying attention?
Whether you are evangelical or Orthodox, a member of a mainline congregation or a megachurch, Pentecostal or Roman Catholic, it is hard to avoid becoming either a participant, a statistic or an innocent bystander in the culture wars playing out in American religious life today.
I should know. As an Episcopal priest, I have a ringside seat. Or maybe I'm one of the gladiators. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
For a tiny denomination (somewhere between 2 million and a 2.5 million members, depending on who's doing the counting) we manage to grab a disproportionate share of national headlines with our endless sexuality squabbles and sordid legal disputes.
Episcopalians aren't slugging it out alone. Debates over the issues of ordaining practicing homosexuals and blessing gay unions are taking place among mainline Presbyterians, Methodists and Lutheran congregations and judicatories.
Whether they are in the majority, or, as in the Episcopal Church, a vocal and often well-endowed minority, conservatives have found a voice, and are now raising it in an angry roar of protest against actions that they see as direct assaults on Scriptural authority.
Amid all the media speculation of schisms and defections in the older and established denominations, it is easy to miss the fact that moderates, and dare we say liberals, in the evangelical ranks have also found their voice.
If they are so enmeshed in their internal disputes that they are not paying attention, mainline Protestant leaders may be missing a powerful opportunity to build bridges across some of America's most well-worn religious divides.
In recent years, a diverse group that includes educators, megachurch pastors and evangelical activists began to speak publicly about issues like global warming and human rights here and abroad. Although it probably was not their intent, the effect was to break the public facade of ironclad unanimity that served conservatives so well in the past.
Ironically enough, it may have been their access to the Bush administration and status in the halls of Congress that allowed concerned evangelical Christians to take positions that might once have resulted in being cast out of the fellowship.
The ferment in the evangelical community, and the creative alliances with other organizations have been ongoing for a number of years.
Sharing their cause with humanitarian organizations, evangelicals have for quite some time been advocates for a stronger, more proactive American stance toward places where Christians face persecution, as in the ongoing genocide in Darfur.
But in 2004, the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that claims links to 60 denominations and about 45,000 churches, came out with a broad agenda in their statement "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility."
Arguing that evangelicals had an unprecedented chance to shape public policy, the NAE document made a bold case, replete with multiple Scriptural references, that "sanctity of life" involved advocacy for human rights, for creation and for the poor as well as against abortion.
Last year a group of 86 educators, megachurch pastors (including best-selling author Rick Warren) and aid group leaders backed a major evangelical initiative to press for federal legislation to combat global warming.
In March the NAE endorsed a statement against torture written by 17 academicians and human rights activists.
Such moves toward a more inclusive idea of the sanctity of life have not come without protest from conservative evangelicals.
Focus on the Family chairman James Dobson and other evangelical leaders had demanded that the NAE board consider getting rid of vice president for governmental affairs, the Rev. Richard Cizik, because of his activism on behalf of the campaign against global warming. Conservatives have argued that evangelical activism that embraces issues more traditionally associated with liberal churches is not only distracting but threatens to split the strength of the movement.
At the March meeting, the board of directors not only affirmed his work, but in an implicit rebuke to the conservatives (none of whom are NAE members), reaffirmed their earlier document on public engagement.
In a March article in the evangelically centrist magazine Christianity Today, Institute on Religion and Democracy vice president Jerald Walz was quoted as criticizing the NAE's endorsement of a document opposing torture because those who helped write it and the original signers were mostly from the evangelical left.
Ten years ago, who knew (besides Sojourners activist Jim Wallis) there was an evangelical left?
Evangelical activists have not abandoned their commitment to conservative positions on such hot-button issues as abortion. When it comes to civil unions and gay marriage, they are still much more likely to be found cooperating with the old guard on the Christian right.
But the fact that there are now openly competing voices among American evangelicals offers parties on all sides of the theological spectrum a chance to collaborate on addressing social problems, like poverty, and potential disasters, like climate change, that don't discriminate on the basis of whether you think Charles Darwin was evil or the Virgin Birth was a fraud.
Whether our religious leaders will stop fighting with their denominational brothers and sisters long enough to notice there are workers ready to toil in the vineyard for the cause of the Gospel is a whole 'nother question.
So far, to use an admittedly pagan metaphor, the omens don't look too promising.
();
samedi, mai 26, 2007
PS
I'm considering starting a private 'blog, and keeping this one for occasional, more public musings. If you are interested, please post a comment to me (I moderate them and I won't make it public) with a private email where I can contact you. I'd like to see how much interest there would be in making such a switch. Naturally, that would require my readers contact me and reveal something about who they are.
I'm not sure how effective that would be, but it's one option under consideration.
Don't we live in interesting times? I suspect the motives, and the emotions are the same-only the means are new.
I'm not sure how effective that would be, but it's one option under consideration.
Don't we live in interesting times? I suspect the motives, and the emotions are the same-only the means are new.
Gutter language
I went to the Home Depot last night to pick up a few gutters, some elbows, and a couple of garden hoses. Sounds simple, don't it? The problem is...well, the problems are manifold.
I started in the gardening section. That wasn't a tough decision. After all, doesn't everyone? I'm buying plants this season as though I was starting my own little conservatory. I think it has something to do with all of the illness around me-a way of adding color and life, and a method of forcing me to push the chair against the desk and walk outside. My little outside garden gets the full force of the sun most of the day-which is great for sun loving plants. Unfortunately, it appears that some sun loving plants are midnight snacks for deer.
So, back at Home Depot, I'm standing amidst perhaps 20 different kinds of hoses, trying to figure out whether its alright to buy two different brands, and how to connect them should I do so. Who knew there were so many ways of connecting plastic tubes, hoses to faucet, hoses to sprinklers?
Finally, I make my choice (turns out I've bought way more hose than I probably need, but that is alright)...and head to back to the gutters, where I belong...
TBC
I started in the gardening section. That wasn't a tough decision. After all, doesn't everyone? I'm buying plants this season as though I was starting my own little conservatory. I think it has something to do with all of the illness around me-a way of adding color and life, and a method of forcing me to push the chair against the desk and walk outside. My little outside garden gets the full force of the sun most of the day-which is great for sun loving plants. Unfortunately, it appears that some sun loving plants are midnight snacks for deer.
So, back at Home Depot, I'm standing amidst perhaps 20 different kinds of hoses, trying to figure out whether its alright to buy two different brands, and how to connect them should I do so. Who knew there were so many ways of connecting plastic tubes, hoses to faucet, hoses to sprinklers?
Finally, I make my choice (turns out I've bought way more hose than I probably need, but that is alright)...and head to back to the gutters, where I belong...
TBC
vendredi, mai 25, 2007
I had dinner with a friend last night by the lake. Over chicken wings (his) and a vegetable whole wheat wrap (mine) we talked idly about our careers, love lives, and families. After a brief walk in the woods, we came back into town and joined the throngs waiting for sundaes and softserve and floats. Our talk drifted back to relationships between men and women, as it usually does.
The challenge, I said to him, is to learn from mistakes you made in prior relationships. A number of guys (and women) still seem to be reliving their old ones, and have not been able to move on to new ones. That's why you see all kinds of dos and don'ts and "noli me tangere" in the online portraits, we agreed-because lots of people haven't been able to see what was good about their prior relationships-and even learning through suffering. My friend quoted Captain Kirk on the subject-something to the effect of claiming one's pain.
What struck me afterwards was how much our generation refers, not to books, but to movies. When I was younger, I had a multitude of quotations from famous and notorious poets and writers, in an untidy, often misfiled pile in the back of my mind somewhere. (Perhaps I should take one of those "organize your memories" classes). Now we are as likely to refer to movies as to books for our wisdom. Once, I suspect, it was the Bible. Now it is Kirk, or Yoda.
I wonder what our children's standard resource will be. Gwen Stefani's newest song? Maroon Five's latest opus? Ah, don't I sound cynical, and old. They will find their wisdom and it will be as useful as is ours.
The challenge, I said to him, is to learn from mistakes you made in prior relationships. A number of guys (and women) still seem to be reliving their old ones, and have not been able to move on to new ones. That's why you see all kinds of dos and don'ts and "noli me tangere" in the online portraits, we agreed-because lots of people haven't been able to see what was good about their prior relationships-and even learning through suffering. My friend quoted Captain Kirk on the subject-something to the effect of claiming one's pain.
What struck me afterwards was how much our generation refers, not to books, but to movies. When I was younger, I had a multitude of quotations from famous and notorious poets and writers, in an untidy, often misfiled pile in the back of my mind somewhere. (Perhaps I should take one of those "organize your memories" classes). Now we are as likely to refer to movies as to books for our wisdom. Once, I suspect, it was the Bible. Now it is Kirk, or Yoda.
I wonder what our children's standard resource will be. Gwen Stefani's newest song? Maroon Five's latest opus? Ah, don't I sound cynical, and old. They will find their wisdom and it will be as useful as is ours.
jeudi, mai 24, 2007
Who are you-really?
I had an unpleasant surprise yesterday. I casually emailed my editor at one of the publications for which I write and found that I had an editorial due-yesterday! After some posturing (emails flying back and forth in which I said I didn't know and he saidoh, he was sure he had told me) we negotiated today as the new deadline. Once again, I realized that I am occasionally organizationally challenged (see yesterday's post on washing the kitchen floor). If that is the case, then I need to institute safeguards, like keeping a calendar on which I pen when articles and other minor neccesities, like bills, are due.
If anyone has any clever ideas on how to manage deadlines in a way that is not too demanding or painful, please post them for the rest of us!
For some reason, I began to think about the gulf in the selves we present to others and the persons we allow ourselves to be at home. Surely you have a work persona and a home persona. But is there a gap between the person you are with your wife/husband and kids and person you are when you log on to your computer at 1:00 in the morning? How far do you let it go? I thought about this when I got one of those pop-ups on the kids computer yesterday, telling me that I needed a drive cleaner to get rid of all the adult sites I'd visited-and how to get rid of them so no one else would know. Before I took a few minutes to think about the reality, which is that I don't visit adult sites (partly because I have no desire to be plagued by endless stupid ads with half naked women), I felt a wave of panic. How did they know? Imagine how you would feel if you really did spend a lot of time surfing Internet porn.
Which is why, over and over again, I try to be the same person in public as I am in private. Sometimes my dear ones want me to be a little less...authentic.
How about you? Is there something you are hiding- a secret someone that only comes out late at night and flees reality for fantasy? Perhaps you might consider prayerfully laying that person down at the foot of the cross. It must be a terrible burden for you to carry.
Perhaps you don't wish to link your early morning alter ego with your regular life... reality can be so much more rich, complicated, and risky.
If anyone has any clever ideas on how to manage deadlines in a way that is not too demanding or painful, please post them for the rest of us!
For some reason, I began to think about the gulf in the selves we present to others and the persons we allow ourselves to be at home. Surely you have a work persona and a home persona. But is there a gap between the person you are with your wife/husband and kids and person you are when you log on to your computer at 1:00 in the morning? How far do you let it go? I thought about this when I got one of those pop-ups on the kids computer yesterday, telling me that I needed a drive cleaner to get rid of all the adult sites I'd visited-and how to get rid of them so no one else would know. Before I took a few minutes to think about the reality, which is that I don't visit adult sites (partly because I have no desire to be plagued by endless stupid ads with half naked women), I felt a wave of panic. How did they know? Imagine how you would feel if you really did spend a lot of time surfing Internet porn.
Which is why, over and over again, I try to be the same person in public as I am in private. Sometimes my dear ones want me to be a little less...authentic.
How about you? Is there something you are hiding- a secret someone that only comes out late at night and flees reality for fantasy? Perhaps you might consider prayerfully laying that person down at the foot of the cross. It must be a terrible burden for you to carry.
Perhaps you don't wish to link your early morning alter ego with your regular life... reality can be so much more rich, complicated, and risky.
mardi, mai 22, 2007
I like to think of myself as someone who can be trusted. Recently, however, I've had cause to wonder both about the meaning of the word 'trust' in various contexts, and about how other people parse it. A few months ago a fellow I corresponded with for a while told me he didn't trust what was said in emails. Since I pride myself on telling the truth as far as I see it, I didn't take kindly to what I saw as a personal criticism. But time, and a little emotional distance, has helped me realize that it might not have been personal.
I've been hurt when people don't trust me right off the bat, but I also know that trust has to be earned. It's just too bad when one doesn't get a chance-on the other hand, perhaps the bar is set so high with some people that it would be soul-crushing to try to jump over it.
It is probably wise to be cautious about believing what people you don't know tell you. On the other hand, I suspect that my friend isn't of a trusting disposition to begin with. I tend to think well of people, looking for the good in them.
Eventually, I realize that some of them are not trustworthy-but I'd rather err on the side of acceptance than of suspicion.
Besides, I can imagine circumstances under which others would feel that I'm not totally trustworthy.
Yes, I am a a faithful friend (most of the time). Yes, I'm grounded and have common sense (every other day). But you can't trust me to iron my clothes, or cook cakes from scratch, or to wipe the kitchen floor every week, whether it needs it or not. I guess you can trust me to be honest about my shortcomings. I hope that compensates for not being repentant.
I've been hurt when people don't trust me right off the bat, but I also know that trust has to be earned. It's just too bad when one doesn't get a chance-on the other hand, perhaps the bar is set so high with some people that it would be soul-crushing to try to jump over it.
It is probably wise to be cautious about believing what people you don't know tell you. On the other hand, I suspect that my friend isn't of a trusting disposition to begin with. I tend to think well of people, looking for the good in them.
Eventually, I realize that some of them are not trustworthy-but I'd rather err on the side of acceptance than of suspicion.
Besides, I can imagine circumstances under which others would feel that I'm not totally trustworthy.
Yes, I am a a faithful friend (most of the time). Yes, I'm grounded and have common sense (every other day). But you can't trust me to iron my clothes, or cook cakes from scratch, or to wipe the kitchen floor every week, whether it needs it or not. I guess you can trust me to be honest about my shortcomings. I hope that compensates for not being repentant.
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