Worth pondering

From Ebony

A Woman's Worth
We've come a long way baby
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
By Goldie Taylor

I have been a mother all of my adult life. A single working mother. I put off dating, took menial jobs far beneath my qualifications and baked my share of ginger bread cookies for PTA Night, all so that three incredible children could have better. I chose their lives over mine. I don't have to tell you that it wasn't easy. Unfortunately, my story, our story, is not unique.

We slept in cars, bought groceries with food stamps and prayed for a better day. When that wasn't enough, I put myself through school at Emory University and took a part-time job as a staff writer at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That was over a decade ago.

Along the way, things got better. I've been an executive at two Fortune 500 companies and a practice director at two multinational public relations firms. Today, I own an advertising agency and I've authored two novels. A third and fourth are on the way, God willing. All of this was possible because somebody laid a brick or two on the road for me.
A few weeks ago, I woke in tears. It was my 40th birthday and certainly not a time for sadness. Rather, I cried in joy because for the first time I realized and could embrace the value of the struggle. The bright little girl, who once cried in my arms because we didn't know where we were going to live, was headed off to Brown University. The small boy who had been the "man of the house" far too soon was now truly a man. And the tiny, angelic baby who had come to this world precious and innocent just 15 months after him was now a 16 year old girl headed out to her first job interview.

For all of this, maybe I should be proud of a woman like Sarah Palin. Maybe, just maybe, I should be rejoicing in John McCain's selected running mate.

But I'm not.

I'm not "bed wetting liberal" nor am I a "right-wing zealot." What I am is a working mother. And I cry foul.

I won't, for a moment, denigrate her experience or lob spit balls at her family. I will, though, take issue with what she knows. Or more succinctly, what she does not know. Living in Alaska , I'm not sure how much she knows about the people living in inner city Baltimore. I don't know how much she cares about the 125 murders this summer in Chicago. I have no idea what she believes about HIV/ AIDS and the havoc it wrecks on Black women or the cancer rates in East St. Louis. She has[n't] said nary a word about Hurricane Katrina or the infant mortality rates in Appalachia.

I do know that she's a life-time member of the NRA, a proponent of individuals who wielded the very weapons that killed my father and brother. I do know that she “lives really close to Russia,” but I'm not so certain she is ready for Putin. I know she wanted to ban books for public libraries and sex education in schools, but that her 17 year old is pregnant and preparing for a shotgun wedding. I know that she loves her husband enough to allow him (and probably did herself) use her office to settle a personal score--one that the McCain campaign would now like to cover in under a blanket of Juneau snow. I know that the Alaska Independent Party, and its secessionist platform, was enticing enough for her to attend its conference (and for her husband to become a card carrying member). Does she love her country? I'm sure. Enough to support those who want to leave it.

But I have no earthly idea what she knows (or could possibly know) about national domestic policy or foreign diplomacy. For all of her working class values, she never once mentioned the Middle Class in her diatribe that mocked her opponent's experience. Having been the mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,000 at the time) and governor of Alaska (a state a smaller than the county I live in) for a little over a year, she felt she was qualified to do that. And obviously, so did John McCain.

If she's qualified, then so am I.

But in this country I love, she has been afforded the ability to run. The very constitution she says doesn't apply to the men at Guantanamo says she can. But this is about more than that.

As Gloria Steinem said in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, "Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie."

The good news is thanks to Shirley Chisholm, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angela Davis, Condoleeza Rice, Anita Hill, Madeline Albright, Maxine Waters, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilary Rodham Clinton and a slew of others, there are 18 million proverbial cracks in the ceiling. Our collective political and economic power is due to the strides (and leaps) they, and others, took on my behalf.

I am grateful. I am deeply humbled to stand on the bricks they'd laid before me.

But, whatever our struggle was (and is) that last thing I want is to be patronized. Just as I cannot support just any African American who decides to offer themselves up for public service, I will not toss my vote to someone just because we share the same chromosome mix. To do so would dishonor the vow I made to my children, to myself. I did not vote for Al Sharpton, wasn't old enough (nor would I have) voted for Jesse Jackson and I certainly will not support Sarah Palin. Identity politics, especially in this case, are a sham of the worst order.

When I cast my vote, it will be for people who will lay more bricks for people like me. It will be for people who will put diplomacy before war, challenge us all to provide healthcare for the sick, help another child go to college, and check the special interests in Washington. This fall, I'm not looking for a woman.

I'm looking for a brick layer.

I could care less if that person hasn't spent "enough" time in Washington or can "properly field dress a moose". I could care less if that person likes hockey, soccer, football or table tennis. I could care less if they graduated from Harvard or the University of Iowa. I'm a Christian, but I could care less if they are down with Deuteronomy, Leviticus or Numbers. I want them to uphold the Constitution.

So no, I will not sit idly by as they attempt to suspend habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay, engage wiretaps on American citizens without a warrant, and hide behind executive privilege when they are caught firing attorney generals based on how well they tow the Republican line. I won't let them cost us $12 billion a month fighting a war that should have never been authorized and never been waged. Not while working people lose their homes to predatory lenders and watch as we bail out the financial institutions that created the housing crisis.

I will not, in the name of history, vote for a woman like Sarah Palin who does not share my values.

But here’s what I will do.

I will continue raising money for Barack Obama. I will get on the phone again and call people in distant states I've never met. I will e-mail, call, and knock on doors until the final vote is cast. I do this, not because he shares my skin, but because I admire his principals and he shares my values. I do this because Barack Obama is more than a community organizer, he is a bricklayer. And he sees -- just as he sees the light in Michelle's eyes -- my struggle, my worth as a woman.

Post turtle

This joke is making the rounds on the internet with various manifestations but here's the one that inspired my 'photoshoppie' take.

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old rancher, whose hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid for office.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a 'Post Turtle."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle.'"

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain.

"You know she didn't get up there by herself,
she doesn't belong up there,
she doesn't know what to do while she's up there,
and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with!"

What a pain

Some boxes are sturdier than others.

I packed this full of books from my study, then went to pick it up and the bottom fell out.

La Doyenne finds the mess mildly interesting. I don't. Moving is such a pain.

What is mind-blowing is that I have told the moving company either 17 or 18 November. No longer am I in a rickety go-cart with no brakes at the top of a precipice; I am barrelling full-tilt down to the bottom of a mountain.

I just hope there is some nice thick padding at the bottom of the hill.

[later] It's official: the movers will be here Monday, 17 November. This is so, so hard.

Here's a photo

The PB was in NH this past weekend and, along with several dozen people, participated in a silent witness against the death penalty in Concord, NH. There are two death penalty cases in the state and there is the possibility of an execution for the first time since 1939 unless capital punishment is repealed.

The Episcopal Church has consistently been on record as against the death penalty since 1958 and periodically reiterates this stance with a resolution from General Convention.

The digital archives only go back as far as the 1979 GC, but its resolution, D-004 will suffice:

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That this 66th General Convention of the Episcopal Church reaffirm its opposition to capital punishment and calls on the Dioceses and Members of this Church to work actively to abolish the death penalty in their States; and be it further

Resolved, That this 66th General Convention instruct the Secretary of General Convention to notify the several governors of the States of our action.

A like resolution in 1991, D-056, gives a more accurate chronology:

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That this 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church reaffirm the position taken in opposition to capital punishment by the 1958, 1969, and 1979 General Conventions; and be it further

Resolved, That this 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church oppose federal initiatives to establish constitutional procedures for the institution of the sentence of death for various crimes; and be it further

Resolved, That the 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church deplores the expansion of capital offenses by federal legislative action; and be it further

Resolved, That this 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church support state and local initiatives to establish a range of community sanctions and services offering alternatives to incarceration and reducing recidivism; and be it further

Resolved, That the Presiding Bishop's Open Statement on Capital Punishment be sent to every Parish and Mission of our Church; and be it further

Resolved, That the Presiding Bishop's Open Statement on Capital Punishment and this resolution be sent to the President, the Attorney General, and every member of the Senate and Congress of the United States of America; and be it further

Resolved, That this 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church urge the provinces, dioceses, parishes, missions, and individual members of this Church to engage in serious study on the subject of capital punishment and work actively to abolish the death penalty in their states.

There were two more, A-082, A-083, that came out of the 73rd (2000, Denver) convention.

So for half a century, TEC has been consistent on this contentious issue.

Proper 21A

The reading this morning from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians offers us one of the most beautiful hymns in the bible and for that reason, this morning’s sermon will focus on the epistle rather than the gospel reading.

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians is perhaps his most transparent letter — transparent, because he was writing it from prison, facing perhaps an imminent death. It is not clear whether this imminent death is one brought on by being a prisoner or a missioner — nonetheless, it weighs on Paul’s mind and influences the writing of the letter. Timothy is with Paul, mostly likely in Ephesus in the years of 54-56. If this is the case, his letter to the Philippians is written a mere two decades or so after Jesus’ death — even before the composition of the gospel according to Matthew from which we have been hearing all year.

Despite Paul’s imprisonment, he is not despondent. His imprisonment, though made difficult by the legal charge and the guards, advances the gospel since clearly he is suffering for Christ. Thanks to his example, others have been emboldened — an important character attribute to Paul — to follow his example and preach the gospel without fear. Unfortunately, some have turned such preaching into a competition with Paul, something about which he is not pleased. To him, the preachers do not matter; the only thing that matters is that Christ be preached.

Paul wants the Christians in Philippi to be blameless, to be shining as lights amid a crooked and perverse generation. He wants them to hold fast to the light, Christ, so that he, Paul, will know that his work has not been in vain. Paul wants to know they hold firm in the Spirit, and are striving with one mind for the faith of the gospel. Just as Matthew is concerned about what it means to live as the church, so Paul is also deeply concerned that there be a true community of the Holy Spirit in the church at Philippi.

Sadly, as in the modern church, there appears to be internal dissention at Philippi. Paul addresses three groups of conflict: the case of dissention in the first group is not immediately clear but it would seem that this group reflected conceit and a lack of humility which Paul condemns at the beginning of what we have heard in this morning’s epistle. Indeed, it is against conceit and pushing one’s interest that Paul holds up Christ as an example of self-giving in the hymn about Christ.

Aside from this first group, there are two others: one group consists external opposition to the Philippian Christians that harasses Paul and the Christians in Philippi. And then there are those whom Paul unfortunately calls the dogs — those who are imperfect in more ways than one — the gentiles. (1)

Paul’s letter to the Philippians, then, is a mixture of autobiographical material, exhortations to the community in Philippi to get its act together and, lastly, wonderful declarations about the nature of God in Christ.

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The glorious and daunting hymn to Christ that lies in the middle of the second chapter of this letter describes the ultimate example of what it means to live for one another. Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not think it a prize to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of humans, and being found in fashion as a human, humbled himself becoming obedient unto death. These words, so closely associated with Holy Week — we hear a shorter version of this epistle reading on Palm Sunday — summarise the extent to which Christ gave of himself for us. Though we are not expected to die on the cross, we are expected to practise a life of self-emptying.

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Self-emptying — there's a wonderful Greek word for it, kenosis. What does it mean for us to empty ourselves in the way that Paul asks us to do in this hymn of praise to Christ?

An Anglican hermit, Maggie Ross, whom I got to know when she stayed at the General Theological Seminary, offers some suggestions about what self-emptying can mean for us.

First, we respond to the humility of Christ. We allow Christ’s humility to transform and change us and indwell us. We allow the fire of the Holy Spirit to take from us the desire for status, control, and fixing ourselves up at the cost of our community.

Self-emptying means that we acknowledge our wounds, our brokenness and our sinfulness. Instead, we live in forgiveness, asking and giving it. We allow ourselves to be transformed, inside-out to God’s healing power of love and grace. We turn to God who made us, redeems us and makes us holy and we do so with a genuine spirit.

Self-emptying means we let go of our fear of death. We no longer run from our fear of our mortality, a fear that paralyses us and confuses us. Self-emptying means we give up our control over death because we cannot really control it. Instead, we live each day rightly and fully in God’s grace because we know that anyone of us could be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow. We commit ourselves to live out this rightness and fullness in the time we are given by God. We have choices, take risks, make use of the gifts God has given us and acknowledge where we have gone wrong and ask God’s forgiveness. (2) Self-emptying, in sum, means that at every moment of our lives, we live them aware of God’s presence.

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How do we get the courage and ability to empty ourselves? How do we act not out of selfishness or conceit but in humility? How do we look to the interests of others? How do we have our minds in Christ Jesus?

There is one simple answer: through our baptism… through the vows that we or our sponsors made at the time of our baptism… through the reaffirmation of those vows which happens every time we have a baptism.

Each one of those vows points us toward a life of self-emptying:

continuing in the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of the bread and the prayers of the community;

seeking repentance and asking forgiveness of our community and of God;

proclamating by word and example the Good News of God in Christ;

seeking and serving Christ in all persons, our loving our neighbour as ourselves;

and striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.

Each one of us has embraced these vows at the moment of our baptism and carries them on our hearts throughout our lives. Self-emptying is not an easy life but the challenges of the journey are lessened some by the prayers and joint efforts of the community of faith who encourages us as we come together week-in, week-out. Finally, the challenges are lessened by Christ, our compass point, our north star who became one of us. For that we can gain encouragement and give thanks.

END NOTES
(1) Based on Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1997), 483-501.

(2) Based on Maggie Ross, Pillars of Flame: Power, Priesthood and Spiritual Maturity (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), Part II, Chapter 5, ‘Kenosis: Becoming Sacrifice’, 116-64.

¡¡¡¡Basura pura!!!!

I think McCain said about ten to a dozen times, 'Senator Obama doesn't get it' or 'Senator Obama doesn't understand.'

How CONDESCENDING can you get?? I hope it backfires — sort of the patronising old white guy when facing an African American who dares to challenge his authority.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And now McCain is blinking (in his closing statements): isn't that a sign of lying?

The new reality

This afternoon I took another load of stuff down to the new rectory. For starters, here's the outside.


The rectory shares a driveway with the neighbours' driveway. The front of the house faces due north (I am sort of looking west). It is not on the corner; there's a house between it and the next. I think the lot must be about a quarter acre. The garage has the master bedroom over it. Also funny about the garage is that it has a garage door on the back side as well!


And here is looking east. The room at the end of the house on the first floor is a den of sorts off the living room. It and the garage/upstairs were added on in the 1970s, judging from the baseboard heating. The rest of the house seems to have been built (solidly!) in the 1950s and I imagine that a contractor built it for him(most likely)self.


The living room is long with two windows, an eight-foot opening on one end (in this photo) and a five-foot opening on the other end. The fireplace has 'heatilators', vents that will add heat circulation into the room. The front hall is by the stairs.


Note the cabinets built into the walls between the LR and the DR. The DR has a bay window that looks out into the backyard.


You can see out to the backyard in this photo.


The DR has a built-in china cabinet so I can show off my Limoges china :)


The kitchen obviously (or not?) is off the DR; it is longer and narrower than the current kitchen so the great farm table I have in the current one will go into the master BR.


Not a great photo but it shows the banister and the upstairs hall. The door to the left goes to this pine green (including the ceiling, ay) small room with built-in bookcases and a cedar closet, big enough for a twin bed and perhaps my old fliptop desk. Then there's the bathroom. At the end of the hall are the SW and NW rooms — the SW will become my study; the NW a bedroom. There's another BR and closet that doesn't show in the photo.


Here's the master BR. In true introvert manner, I have set up a nest — the bed, box springs, not my favourite, was already there. Eventually I will get a nice bedframe for the room. I don't know what the splotches are in the photo — something wrong with my camera lens. I bought a HD radio for the room so I am set. Our diocesan convention is in Rutland so this will come in handy, even though officially I won't move until mid November.

So, gradually, gradually I am shifting over in thought.

I'd better; I've got already 17 boxes of books in the cellar!

Fall is a coming

I am going to miss this front porch, even though it faces due west (a bit toasty on a hot July morning). I have read the Sunday New York Times late afternoons and watched the town traffic go by. I will be moving to a dead-end street (which has its benefits because I won't have heavy logging trucks and eighteen wheels jake braking in front of the house). Still, this has been a lovely porch.

The big maple tree at the end of the porch, other side of the driveway, is shedding lots of leaves. All of a sudden fall has come. Tomorrow I will take some more photos of the leaves — the colours are becoming resplendent.

Friday cat blogging

When not yelling at the television with the debate, I have been formatting photos of the kittehs. They will save the world! And they know when McCain LIES.


La Doyenne has her ears down because she and Young Guy have been at it for two months. I don't know who starts the fights but they are loud knock-down battles with tufts of fur left in their wake.


Young Guy decides that hiding in empty boxes is a good idea. He is not happy about all the confusion in the house (or McCain's conneries).


This is one reason, I am sure, for the fights. MABFP scoots into the study and has the audacity to settle down into the hammock. She was by herself and then I brought in Orange Guy (the most mellow of the three) whom she is seeing in this photo.


This morning Young Guy was feeling insecure and after he sat on my lap, he settled into the basket.


I got up for a second and La Doyenne settled down on my chair. Who could move her? For those who haven't been around, she is on a wonderful hooked rug version of an orange cat that a parishioner gave me when Orange Guy's predecessor, Jason, died nine years ago.


Orange Guy always likes to hang his head over whatever it is in which he is sleeping.


La Doyenne sleeps in a perfect ball (today) on the 'LOVE A CAT' towel.


Last but not least, here is MABFP in her busted picnic basket (it's minus its top) that is nice and warm and secure.

Are we nuts or what?

Compa and I are going to watch the debate tonight. Are we nuts?

So she wants to know if we should have dinner before, during or after the debate, thinking that either way we may get sick.

I figure we can just hiss at the screen, as long as our mouths aren't full.


The whole scene makes me cranky.

Of course with all the rain outside, we could lose our electricity and that would make things moot.

Poor Birds

lifted from Oh NOES.

Gail Collins writes: Sarah Palin told Katie Couric on CBS News last night: “Not necessarily this, as it’s been proposed, has to pass or we’re gonna find ourselves in another Great Depression. But there has to be action taken, bipartisan effort — Congress not pointing fingers at this point at ... one another, but finding the solution to this, taking action and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.”

Just what we need — someone else who can't express herself.

Absence of Leadership

Absence of Leadership, NYT Editorial

It took President Bush until Wednesday night to address the American people about the nation’s financial crisis, and pretty much all he had to offer was fear itself.

There was no acknowledgement of the shocking failure of government regulation, or that the country cannot afford more tax cuts for the very wealthy and budget-busting wars, or that spending at least $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to bail out Wall Street and the banks should be done carefully, transparently and with oversight by Congress and the courts.

We understand why he may have been reluctant to address the nation, since his contempt for regulation is a significant cause of the current mess. But he could have offered a great deal more than an eerily dispassionate primer on the credit markets in which he took no responsibility at all for the financial debacle.

He promised to protect taxpayers with his proposed bailout, but he did not explain how he would do that other than a superficial assurance that in sweeping up troubled assets, government would buy low and sell high. And he warned that “our entire economy is in danger” unless Congress passes his bailout plan immediately.

In the end, Mr. Bush’s appearance was just another reminder of something that has been worrying us throughout this crisis: the absence of any real national leadership, including on the campaign trail.

Given Mr. Bush’s shockingly weak performance, the only ones who could provide that are the two men battling to succeed him. So far, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is offering that leadership.

What makes it especially frustrating is that this crisis should provide each man a chance to explain his economic policies and offer a concrete solution to the current crisis.

Mr. McCain is doing distinctly worse than Mr. Obama. First, he claimed that the economy was strong, ignoring the deep distress of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have already lost their homes. Then he called for a 9/11-style commission to study the causes of the crisis, as if there were a mystery to be solved. Over the last few days he has become a born-again populist, a stance entirely at odds with the career, as he often says, started as “a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution.”

After daily pivoting, Mr. McCain now says that the bailout being debated in Congress has to protect taxpayers, that all the money has to be spent in public and that a bipartisan board should “provide oversight.” But he offered not the slightest clue about how he would ensure that taxpayers would ever “recover” the bailout money.

Mr. McCain proposed capping executives’ pay at firms that get bailout money, a nicely punitive idea but one that does nothing to mitigate the crisis. And that is about as far as his new populism went.

What is most important is that Mr. McCain hasn’t said a word about strengthening regulation or budged one inch from his insistence on maintaining Mr. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. That trickle-down notion has done nothing to improve the lives of most Americans and, even without a $700 billion bailout, saddled generations to come with crippling deficits.

Mr. Obama has been clearer on the magnitude and causes of the financial crisis. He has long called for robust regulation of the financial industry, and he said early on that a bailout must protect taxpayers. Mr. Obama also recognizes that the wealthy must pay more taxes or this country will never dig out of its deep financial hole. But as he does too often, Mr. Obama walked up to the edge of offering full prescriptions and stopped there.

We don’t know if Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama will do any good back in Washington. But Mr. McCain’s idea of postponing the Friday night debate was another wild gesture from a candidate entirely too prone to them. The nation needs to hear Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain debate this crisis and demonstrate who is ready to lead.

The morning crankies

Go at the below Mad Libs style and fill in the blank.

I just can't believe how ADJECTIVE the US electorate is.

Meanwhile, I listen to NPR's report on polls and cringe thinking of how Hilary voters are going to vote for Sarah Palin, how hunters are going to vote for McCain, how people are going to go with McCain despite one of his managers getting paid by Fannie Mae, now under FBI investigation for fraud, and denied it even though he was getting paid by them monthly.

But we don't care about our presidents having brains (I don't care if the president is someone who 'is like me' or 'is someone I can relate to') or some shred of honesty, or worry about the Supreme Court, or how a $700 billion (is that right?) bailout of Wall Street with no strings attached, handing all of it over to the Executive Branch and the US Treasury, is going to affect our children's children, a 'crisis' created by avarice. Maybe this really is the sunset of the US empire.

Maybe I am grumpy because I have a painful canker sore in and around the site of my temporary crown. I can only think of Naomi whose chemo gave her such huge canker sores in her mouth so she couldn't eat. I sympathise. This is minor compared to that but does get in the way of swallowing.

Grump.

[later] from the Slate Doonesbury site:

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself."

-- Republican Party platform, 2008

Uhuh.

[even later] Maureen Dowd has a great one-liner about Mooselini: '[She's] the first pure Rovian Republican, grown totally in the petri dish of cultural crusaderism.'

Tuesday night sillies

I don't have words tonight (oh I do but I don't know how to put them down; suffice to say they have to deal with the move and politics…) so I listen to some oldie goldies — Janis Ian and Jefferson Airplane. Meanwhile, these two ICHC tickle my funny bone.


I am going to be ditching at least one rug in this house.


Those laser lights are even better than my photos of the Christmas tree green and red lights of Young Guy's eyes.

Triumphant return

Back in July, I put up photos of our stained glass window as it left the church. Today the window returned and it is glorious. Go back and see what the window looked like and how it is now.


When I got over to the church at 8.30, they'd already placed the lower panels that open into place. The panels weren't totally set; there was a bit of wiggling and chiseling but they basically fit. G, the master restorer, looks back in from his scaffolding.


When I ventured over about half an hour later, they were placing the Mary and Martha panel in. Again, it took them a long time to get it seated properly.


It was a bit nippy this morning and they were working on the north side of the church so they never got any warmth from the sun.


It took many tries to get this in just right. They added in an aluminum horizontal support bar between the middle and top panels so that the top one isn't sitting on top of the lower one as it was before. The window will be that much more sturdy in the long haul.


K shaves off excess leading. They always put on more than needed and then adjust when on site. It's amazing all the tools and their variety they have to use; restoration truly is an art.


After their lunch, they got in the other side.


It is always odd to see an arm coming around from the other side bracing the window as they sit it and then put some nails in to hold it in place. Remember that they are outside, standing on scaffolding. They wanted to know in the morning if they were going to let heat outside of the church and I said no, we turn the furnace off during the week so there was no worry about that.


Mid afternoon they placed the dove panel whose shape is just that of a kite. This panel demanded a lot of fine tuning. You can see their shadows.


Here's a close-up of the dove panel. You can see how they reinforced major structural elements of the leading, thereby distributing better the load so it won't buckle.


Likewise, here is the left panel from the outside. You can make out the extra leading that will support and distribute the weight. You can also see that these panels were extremely fussy with a lot of parts to take apart and relead — just look at the palm tree leaves and all the curlycues up at the top.


Ditto for the Mary and Martha panel. (I love the palm tree branches and leaves.)


The final product is exquisite.


We will rededicate these windows on my last Sunday, the Sunday after All Saints' Day.

Sunday night bonus

Some kittehs to close out the night.


I found this happy scene when I came back from church at noon today. Normally Young Guy doesn't get into that donut but he must have taken over it from Orange Guy.


I am trying to save the church some money by packing up all my books. These three boxes come from the back hall. Believe it or not, but I have also generated about three boxes of books to get rid of.


I don't like it either. The mess is only going to increase, not decrease. La Doyenne is not amused.


Miss Agatha Birch Funky Paws is the only cat I have ever known who likes to roll in dried lilac the way most cats do in catnip (she likes that, too). She got some quality time in the study with no one else around.

Meanwhile I listen to some good cumbia music from El Salvador to finish off the night.

Proper 20A

For the past two weeks, the gospel readings have focused on what it means to live in community — a specific community called the church. Explaining what the church meant was very important for Matthew and so his gospel spends a lot of time on the necessary attributes of those who profess Christ and wish to be a part of Christ’s body. We have heard about the challenges that come with coexisting in this community — the honesty and humility needed to abide together, the necessity for radical forgiveness that far exceeds human measure, and the need for grounded faith. The gospel has reminded us of our prophetic commitment to speak in the name of God and for God. Now the gospel presents us with the unforeseen, yet hoped for, result of living in honesty, humility and forgiveness. In a story that is unique to the gospel of Matthew, we hear of God’s incredible mercy and forgiveness, a gift that can invoke a surprising response that comes from our limited understanding, a response that quite simply stated is, ‘What???’ [Sort of like the Israelites' reaction to the food from heaven, mannah, literally in Hebrew, manhu, 'what is this?']

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The story of the generous landowner in Matthew is so rich that it does not need repeating. It is as confounding a story now as it was to the workers in the story who had been working the whole day. When read in community, as we have just heard it, the story usually provokes a collective gasp which wordlessly says, ‘It’s not fair! How can the landowner do that?’

We do not think it fair because we connect wage and work and the value of one’s worth. If you don’t work, you don’t earn. And if what you do isn’t considered to be work by those in power — like the work of a parent at home or volunteering as a treasurer for a non-profit organisation — you aren’t paid either.

Jesus touches here upon the economy around him. In Matthew’s gospel, he frequently uses economic themes to talk about God’s reign: planting and sowing, wealth and poverty, buying and selling, hiring and firing, the just and unjust and here, the payment of wages. The gospel could not be divorced from economic and religious considerations then any more than it can be now. Jesus wanted to introduce a new social order. In this new social order, comes a new economy, one where the rules of the marketplace do not apply. (1) It is one, instead, where God’s grace is the currency.

Even knowing that in God’s economy our rules do not apply, we are offended by the generosity of the landowner. We are offended by God’s gift of grace so freely given to those we think are undeserving.

The offense lies not in any shady deals — no one has lied and no one cheated. It lies in God’s generosity to others. The offense of grace is not in the treatment we receive but in our seeing that others are getting more than they deserve. To our economically-conditioned minds, forgiveness and grace do not seem fair at all.

But God’s justice is over and above our formal human justice. God’s justice takes into account the greater needs of people, of those who are stuck standing around the marketplace at the end of the day because no one would hire them. God’s justice extends to everyone — including us. God’s justice comes from God’s grace. But sometimes understanding or even accepting that fact comes so hard for us. And it’s really, really hard to get beyond the sheer economics of the parable and miss the point.

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Surely the market is very much on our minds this past week, as we watch the stock market gyrate and worry about if our investments have tanked (even if we personally do not have any, the church does). We wonder if the entire US economy is going to fail the way it did in 1929; we know that the stock market sank to levels in the days immediately post 9-11. That is the market on a large-scale and its impact on us.

In an oddball collection of techno-electronica music I picked up in El Salvador, there’s a song (unknown artist or title) whose refrain says: Too much of heaven, can bring you underground, too much of heaven can bring your life around, too much of heaven, our lives are all hellbound, heaven, the killer makes no sound.

The quasi rap voiceover then states: Let’s talk about money — we’ve got too much of heaven. C’mon friends, let’s talk about money today. We’ve got too much money dependence today; people just keep getting their dollar bill into their pockets; they’ve got nothing else around, no friendship, nothing else, just a dollar bill coming into their bank account. And that’s not the only song on my iTunes collection that talks about our conflicted relationship with money. For, in our society, we still equate our worth in terms of money earned or our net worth. So when someone else who seems to work less than we do, gets ahead of us, it doesn’t seem fair. And that’s where the disillusionments come into play.

There’s the person who has worked for the past twenty years at a non-profit agency, giving of her soul and life to the cause of the agency and whose work largely has been the life-giving energy and creativity of the agency. And yet, when the going gets rough, her job is down-sized and integrated into someone else’s position, and she is now unemployed without severence or barely a thank you.

Or the man who has given his life for the church, and consequently believes that the church will reward him for the money and time he has given. Yet when the church justly says ‘no’ to a privileged request, the man rails against how unfair the church is and why shouldn’t he be rewarded?

In either case, the expectation is one of reward. But the reward is coming from an economy-driven way of thinking. Time in equals inherent worth and status out. When it doesn’t come to us, we get angry.

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How much more difficult it is for us to accept God’s grace freely extended to those whom we think unworthy! Two well-known stories demonstrate our human incapacity to understand God’s grace and mercy given, in terms of last week’s gospel, seventy-seven times, rather than seven times.

Think of Jonah, who got into a snit when he realised that the so-called wicked people of Nineveh actually were going to repent and return to God, instead of continuing in their ways. Instead of the getting a sound and light show of destruction he so wanted to see, Jonah witnesses God’s love for the people of Nineveh, who do not suffer the ultimate judgement. And he is furious.

Or, what about the most classic story of them all, the prodigal son as recounted in Luke? If anyone should be rewarded, it is the son who stayed at home, did not waste his father’s inheritance and, in general, behaved himself. How come he isn’t being rewarded when his profligate brother is? We know the answer. God’s mercy, God’s spendthrift love knows no bounds.

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How many times have we realised, really grasped, that we have received God’s mercy and compassion when we did not deserve it as the late afternoon workers did?

How many times have we gotten bent out of shape because we think we are owed something and someone else gets it?

How many times have we sat in judgement of others, forgetting that we are under the same spiritual scrutiny?
What’s so remarkable is even as we feel gypped by God or by whatever system, God’s mercy has already been extended out to us. As Julian of Norwich wrote, ‘God has loved us from before the beginning.’

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Frederick William Faber’s words of hymn 469/470 are a good reminder for us, hearing the story of the generous land-owner and our miserly responses to God’s mercy:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Saviour, there is healing in his blood.

For the love of God is broader than the measure o the mind:
And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word;
And our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.

As we come to God’s table this morning for nourishment and renewal, let us bring together those times in our lives that we have been like the six a.m. workers, and offer those moments up as symbols of our brokenness. Then, through the sacrament of the eucharist, let us find those moments transformed so that we might be transformed into reconcilers. Finally, let us be mindful of the many ways that God’s mercy has been extended to us, most of all in the gift of Christ, who died for us so we might have everlasting life.

END NOTE
(1) This paragraph is based on Joseph Donders, With Hearts on Fire (Mystic CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1999), 253.

It's ALL about this, folks

Forget about lipstick on pigs or moose hunting. This is critical. Somehow we have got to convince people how much hangs in the balance for the long-haul (not one of our strengths in thinking).

September 21, 2008
Editorial — NYT
The Candidates and the Court

Among the many issues voters need to consider in this campaign is this vital fact: The next president is likely to appoint several Supreme Court justices. Those choices will determine the future of the law, and of some of Americans’ most cherished rights.

John McCain and Barack Obama have made it clear that they would pick very different kinds of justices. The results could be particularly dramatic under Mr. McCain, who is likely to complete President Bush’s campaign to make the court an aggressive right-wing force.

Mr. Obama seems likely to pick moderate justices, who would probably not take the court back onto a distinctly liberal path, but also would be unlikely to create an unbreakable conservative bloc.

Mr. McCain has promised the right wing of the Republican Party that he would put only archconservatives on the Supreme Court. Even moderate conservatives like Anthony Kennedy, the court’s current swing justice, would not have a chance.

Mr. McCain, whose Web site proclaims his dedication to overturning Roe v. Wade, would appoint justices who could be expected to lead the charge to eliminate the right to abortion. The kinds of justices for whom Mr. McCain has expressed a strong preference would also be likely to undermine the right of habeas corpus, allowing the government to detain people indefinitely without access to lawyers or family members.

Mr. McCain’s justices are likely to join the conservative crusade against the power of Congress. They could be expected to strike down, or sharply limit, federal power to protect clean air and water; ensure food and drug safety; safeguard workers; and prohibit discrimination against women and minorities. They would also likely further erode the separation between church and state.

Mr. McCain has voted to confirm federal judges chosen by Mr. Bush who are radicals, not conservatives. One, Janice Rogers Brown, now on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has attacked Supreme Court decisions upholding New Deal laws as “the triumph of our own socialist revolution.”

Mr. Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, has clashed with Mr. McCain in the Senate over legal issues. Mr. McCain backed the odious Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the Supreme Court held to violate the right of habeas corpus; Mr. Obama opposed it. Mr. McCain was a rubber stamp for Mr. Bush’s judicial nominees; Mr. Obama voted against the worst.

Mr. Obama has said he wants justices who have “the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom” — as well as to be gay, poor or black. He has promised to make “preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as president.”

At the same time, Mr. Obama has put distance between himself and legal liberals on issues like the death penalty for child rapists and the constitutionality of gun control. As president, Mr. Obama would probably be more inclined to appoint centrist liberals, like Justice Stephen Breyer, than all-out liberals, like William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall.

Predicting vacancies on the court is difficult. But odds are that members of the liberal bloc, like 88-year-old John Paul Stevens, will leave first. That means that if Mr. Obama is elected, he might merely keep the court on its current moderately conservative course. Under Mr. McCain, if a liberal justice or two or three steps down, we may see a very different America.