From the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent message (snipped from ENS):
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has used his Advent letter to the Primates of the Anglican Communion and moderators of the United Churches to reiterate that the "Communion matters" to its members across the world and to the mission of God.
"The communion is a gift, not a problem to all such people and many more. Only in such a mutually supportive family, glorifying and praising God in Christ together, can we truly make known the one Christ."
So far, so good.
The Archbishop's letter acknowledged the "numerous tensions" in the communion, but cautioned communion members never to say "I have no need of you" to anyone seeking to serve Jesus Christ. He also used the letter to appeal for "more careful and dispassionate discussion" on such issues as the powers of Primates' meetings as well as calling for "a sustained willingness on the part of all provinces to understand the different ways in which each local part of the Anglican family organizes its life."
Williams also commended the Anglican Communion Covenant "as strongly as I can," stressing that it would neither change the structure of the Communion nor give "some sort of absolute power of 'excommunication' to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body."
"It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled," he said. "It alters no Province's constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function." (1, see below)
He said the fact that the moratoria were being "increasingly ignored" was deepening mistrust "which is bad for our mission together as Anglicans, and alongside other Christians as well. The question remains: if the moratoria are ignored and the Covenant suspected, what are the means by which we maintain some theological coherence as a communion and some personal respect and understanding as a fellowship of people seeking to serve Christ?"
Out of 13 paragraphs, only paragraph 9 comes close to speaking to the mystery of Advent, the child in the crib whose gaze looks to the heavens.
I can't say that this letter is one I would hold up as particularly inspiring in regards to Advent.
+
The letter states (direct quote):
(1) 7. This of course relates also to the continuing discussion of the Anglican Covenant. How it is discussed, the timescale of discussion and the means by which decisions are reached will vary a lot from Province to Province. We hope to see a full report of progress at next year's Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting. In spite of many assurances, some Anglicans evidently still think that the Covenant changes the structure of our Communion or that it gives some sort of absolute power of 'excommunication' to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body. With all respect to those who have raised these concerns, I must repeat that I do not see the Covenant in this light at all. It sets out an understanding of our common life and common faith and in the light of that proposes making a mutual promise to consult and attend to each other, freely undertaken. It recognizes that not doing this damages our relations profoundly. It outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled. It alters no Province's constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function. I continue to ask what alternatives there are if we want to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity. In the absence of such alternatives, I must continue to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can to all who are considering its future.
[end quote]
Obviously our Constitution and Canons does not seem to apply here. I don't know where he gets the idea that a province's constitution will not be altered. And I don't know why one should be speaking of 'damage.' All depends in the eyes of the beholder, methinks.
30 November 2011
Still hanging in there
And I am keeping up with my photoshopping abilities or lack thereof.
29 November 2011
Useful advice for clergy leaving cures
From the Episcopal Diocese of New York
Relating After You Leave
Arrange for change of address and mail forwarding.
After your last day, do not return to the office to check for mail, e-mail, or phone messages.
In all cases, the responsibility belongs to clergy leaving to make clear that the pastoral relationship has ended.
Never be involved with the search process including giving names or offering opinions about candidates.
Avoid getting triangulated with members of the congregation and your successor.
Be clear that it is not appropriate for you to discuss any parish business after you leave.
Make plans to worship with another congregation.
In the absence of a rector or interim pastor, the wardens are canonically responsible for the worship, finance, property, and administration of the parish.
Remember, you have no official or canonical role in the parish you leave and your priestly, pastoral, and administrative functions end on the effective date of your retirement or resignation.
+++
Some think the separation is 'shunning' but it is necessary. Check out the related article over at the Lead.
28 November 2011
A new way of reading the land
mangled guard rails
iron trestle bridges smashed up against the river bank
gravel on the edge of the road
tilting electric/phone polls
white rif-raf (large gravel) on the edge of the road
newly paved patches or complete segments of the road
This all is going to cost a small fortune and it is absolutely amazing that as many of our roads are up and open again. This said, I still did not try 107 from Bethel to Stockbridge today.
27 November 2011
Agatha
26 November 2011
Advent 1B
The public sermon…
The move from the end of one liturgical year to the next is seamless insofar as the lectionary continues to maintain its focus on apocalyptic literature despite the change of gospel. So we move with little distinction from the Gospel according to Matthew to the Gospel according to Mark… from the longest to the shortest gospel. Despite this shift, we remain in a mood of apocalypse.
It is easy even these days to think in terms of apocalypse. Twice this year the world was to come to an end: first in May, then in October. But it did not happen and those who had literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to spread the word of the demise of the world were left, not raptured up but holding the bag, an empty one of empty promises. These folk have taken words of end times literally, almost too much so.
+
The first lesson for today features an extended outburst from Isaiah, in which the prophet decries the absence of God in both public and private spheres, when a sense of violation and the ache of meaninglessness strike deep within. Then we move to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in which he tries to persuade the Corinthians that their lack of collective identity is their fundamental problem. They are too busy building up their individualistic interpretations of life in the Spirit while neglecting their common life together. They have focused on the stronger members of their community while neglecting the weaker members of their congregation.
Then we arrive at the gospel. We stand in a funny place, looking ahead to the end, while circling back to our beginning of our story as Christians.
We look forward, we look backward, we live in the present and all time seems to collapse.
+
The end of the story is also the beginning of a larger picture, like a huge Mobius strip. The end of the story is about the return of the Son of Mortals, the Christ. Jesus tells us about what will happen on that day and which signs we must notice.
In Mark’s ‘little apocalypse,’ Jesus’ warning about the times to come arrives as the last teaching he will give before he leaves for Jerusalem, the site of the Passion. The warning we hear this morning is not only about cataclysmic change in the world, but also for the lives of Jesus’ followers. Jesus is giving his followers and us a heads-up, watch out, here come times you could not have ever possibly imagined happening. The times that are a-coming bring cosmic change, times when heaven and earth will pass away, but the words of Christ will not pass away. The warning is so important that it appears not only in Mark, but also in Matthew and Luke. The end times are serious business — we cannot escape them so we had better be prepared. Jesus’ words remind us: Keep awake! Pay attention!
+
That is what we are supposed to take away from this gospel reading. Not worrying about the end — that will happen in God’s time, whenever God’s time is — but keeping awake and paying attention. How? By watching, waiting and hoping.
Watching, waiting and hoping certainly are major themes of Advent, the all-too-short season that is sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (If I had my druthers, we would stretch it out another three weeks, starting the Sunday after All Saints’.) We, who live in two worlds, will hear from the merchants during this Advent: ‘Spend, spend, spend, buy, buy, buy!’ From the gospel we hear: ‘Be alert. Keep awake! Something big and important is about to happen, but it ain’t about Santa Claus.’ If it weren’t for Advent, we would have little incentive, perhaps, to slow down, pay attention, and be mindful of what is about to happen in our world.
There’s something terribly wrong and tragic that the big box stores opened at midnight Thanksgiving night despite protests even from their employees and that a woman pepper spray other buyers at a Walmart so she could get her X-Box holiday bargain. There’s something terribly wrong and tragic that a man collapsed in another Walmart and people stepped over and on him in their pursuit for bargains. Yet these two events happened this past Friday — Black Friday, as the commercial world calls it. Waiting was horribly lost in these events.
What if we were to watch with care and attention — reflecting on events in our life and in our world, thinking about the past, present and future? What if we tried to reflect on, rather than react to, events in our daily life? Doing so is extremely difficult in this day and age — only a select few seem to be able to live at a much slower pace. Perhaps one thing to try this Advent is to carve out a bit of quiet space and time, even as small as five-ten minutes a day, to watch and reflect on God’s action in our lives and overall, slow things down.
Waiting is another seemingly impossible task for a society that expects the turn-around of information to happen in nano-seconds. I think about how impatient I can get when my computer freezes or crashes, when my e-mail takes five seconds longer than usual to download. How poor is my memory — I used to have to wait a lot longer for things than five seconds. Hanging out, waiting around, just being is one of the hardest lessons gringos undergo when they go to El Salvador; yet when they finally let go of their calendars and their internal time-clocks and just be, they find God’s presence in the people and situations around them in ways that had they been rushing might not have seen.
What if this Advent we were to let go of our desire for instant gratification in all aspects of our life, including in our prayers, for wanting God to fix it (whatever ‘it’) is right now? What if we accepted willingly, not grudgingly, God’s invitation to wait — not only for answers to our prayers (answers that are not always cast in our terms) but also for the Christ child? God’s time is wondrous and mysterious, and often, the answers we seek are not immediately apparent but manifest themselves in surprising ways down the line.
Finally, living in hope (to me the opposite of living with apocalyptic thinking or even optimism; it is active engagement) is another Advent task. Our culture offers an odd assortment of hope — most of it material. How many of us live a neutral hope — a hope that is not filled with fear or dread per se, but that is not filled with joy?
What if, instead, this Advent we tried living in a joyful hope of Christ’s coming? Living in the assurance of God’s inbreaking into this world, even though the inbreaking is awesome and mysterious? Living and knowing that God is with us all the time?
What if by living this way during Advent, hopefully, reflectively and patiently, we could then carry that way of life into the rest of the year? What a marvellous thought!
If that seems like too much, for starters we can at least try to live this way for four weeks. Watch, wait and hope. And, as Jesus in the gospel of Mark reminds us: Keep awake! Pay attention!
+
And the private sermon…
This Advent is a peculiar one because it is the first Advent since 1993 that I have not been involved in preparing, presiding at or preaching about the Advent mystery. All of All Saints’ tide I was caught up in the last days, my own apocalypse, of being priest at Trinity. Now, as Advent begins, I find myself in this liminal place where I revert to life as it was pre-1990, pre-seminary, when I am once again a member of a congregation, but I am not. I am a transient, passing through, worshipping as I am able (that is, as much as my broken heart can bear), before moving to the next congregation. I feel the ache that Isaiah describes.
This Advent is one that will take me far out of the consumerist race because I will need to save every penny I can for an unknown future. As far as consumerist culture is concerned, I will be a poor participant because this year I am totally opting out. I’d be a good candidate for the OWS movement.
Mostly, this Advent is one in which I need to let God do what God will do, yet not wait for or want God to fix my current life situation of being unemployed, without a parish in which to excersise the vocation to which I still feel called. I haven’t figured out how to heal my heart from the past six months so somehow Advent seems the perfect time in which to step back, be still and try to hear God’s voice (which, for right now, seems awfully circumspect).
This Advent is the time for me to live in hope, to believe in the words I have proclaimed so often to others in the past six months (and beyond): All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Yes, this is a very personal hope, though not entirely disconnected from the hope that God will interrupt our daily lives and wake us up. I chose to leave Trinity at the end of the church year so that this crazy period of transition could unfold during Advent, that marvellous period of waiting, possibility and hope.
I may have more than four weeks to practise Advent watching, waiting, listening and hoping but at least I can begin in a time when doing so is totally appropriate. Maybe along the way, God can wake me up in ways I never thought possible. And maybe I can once again be, relearn what it means to be a bearer of hope, that vocation to which I was charged when I was ordained a priest nearly 18 years ago.
Restore me, O God of hosts;
show me the light of your countenance,
and I shall be saved.
In God alone, I cast my hope. And for the Christ, I wait in hope.
The move from the end of one liturgical year to the next is seamless insofar as the lectionary continues to maintain its focus on apocalyptic literature despite the change of gospel. So we move with little distinction from the Gospel according to Matthew to the Gospel according to Mark… from the longest to the shortest gospel. Despite this shift, we remain in a mood of apocalypse.
It is easy even these days to think in terms of apocalypse. Twice this year the world was to come to an end: first in May, then in October. But it did not happen and those who had literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to spread the word of the demise of the world were left, not raptured up but holding the bag, an empty one of empty promises. These folk have taken words of end times literally, almost too much so.
+
The first lesson for today features an extended outburst from Isaiah, in which the prophet decries the absence of God in both public and private spheres, when a sense of violation and the ache of meaninglessness strike deep within. Then we move to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in which he tries to persuade the Corinthians that their lack of collective identity is their fundamental problem. They are too busy building up their individualistic interpretations of life in the Spirit while neglecting their common life together. They have focused on the stronger members of their community while neglecting the weaker members of their congregation.
Then we arrive at the gospel. We stand in a funny place, looking ahead to the end, while circling back to our beginning of our story as Christians.
We look forward, we look backward, we live in the present and all time seems to collapse.
+
The end of the story is also the beginning of a larger picture, like a huge Mobius strip. The end of the story is about the return of the Son of Mortals, the Christ. Jesus tells us about what will happen on that day and which signs we must notice.
In Mark’s ‘little apocalypse,’ Jesus’ warning about the times to come arrives as the last teaching he will give before he leaves for Jerusalem, the site of the Passion. The warning we hear this morning is not only about cataclysmic change in the world, but also for the lives of Jesus’ followers. Jesus is giving his followers and us a heads-up, watch out, here come times you could not have ever possibly imagined happening. The times that are a-coming bring cosmic change, times when heaven and earth will pass away, but the words of Christ will not pass away. The warning is so important that it appears not only in Mark, but also in Matthew and Luke. The end times are serious business — we cannot escape them so we had better be prepared. Jesus’ words remind us: Keep awake! Pay attention!
+
That is what we are supposed to take away from this gospel reading. Not worrying about the end — that will happen in God’s time, whenever God’s time is — but keeping awake and paying attention. How? By watching, waiting and hoping.
Watching, waiting and hoping certainly are major themes of Advent, the all-too-short season that is sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (If I had my druthers, we would stretch it out another three weeks, starting the Sunday after All Saints’.) We, who live in two worlds, will hear from the merchants during this Advent: ‘Spend, spend, spend, buy, buy, buy!’ From the gospel we hear: ‘Be alert. Keep awake! Something big and important is about to happen, but it ain’t about Santa Claus.’ If it weren’t for Advent, we would have little incentive, perhaps, to slow down, pay attention, and be mindful of what is about to happen in our world.
There’s something terribly wrong and tragic that the big box stores opened at midnight Thanksgiving night despite protests even from their employees and that a woman pepper spray other buyers at a Walmart so she could get her X-Box holiday bargain. There’s something terribly wrong and tragic that a man collapsed in another Walmart and people stepped over and on him in their pursuit for bargains. Yet these two events happened this past Friday — Black Friday, as the commercial world calls it. Waiting was horribly lost in these events.
What if we were to watch with care and attention — reflecting on events in our life and in our world, thinking about the past, present and future? What if we tried to reflect on, rather than react to, events in our daily life? Doing so is extremely difficult in this day and age — only a select few seem to be able to live at a much slower pace. Perhaps one thing to try this Advent is to carve out a bit of quiet space and time, even as small as five-ten minutes a day, to watch and reflect on God’s action in our lives and overall, slow things down.
Waiting is another seemingly impossible task for a society that expects the turn-around of information to happen in nano-seconds. I think about how impatient I can get when my computer freezes or crashes, when my e-mail takes five seconds longer than usual to download. How poor is my memory — I used to have to wait a lot longer for things than five seconds. Hanging out, waiting around, just being is one of the hardest lessons gringos undergo when they go to El Salvador; yet when they finally let go of their calendars and their internal time-clocks and just be, they find God’s presence in the people and situations around them in ways that had they been rushing might not have seen.
What if this Advent we were to let go of our desire for instant gratification in all aspects of our life, including in our prayers, for wanting God to fix it (whatever ‘it’) is right now? What if we accepted willingly, not grudgingly, God’s invitation to wait — not only for answers to our prayers (answers that are not always cast in our terms) but also for the Christ child? God’s time is wondrous and mysterious, and often, the answers we seek are not immediately apparent but manifest themselves in surprising ways down the line.
Finally, living in hope (to me the opposite of living with apocalyptic thinking or even optimism; it is active engagement) is another Advent task. Our culture offers an odd assortment of hope — most of it material. How many of us live a neutral hope — a hope that is not filled with fear or dread per se, but that is not filled with joy?
What if, instead, this Advent we tried living in a joyful hope of Christ’s coming? Living in the assurance of God’s inbreaking into this world, even though the inbreaking is awesome and mysterious? Living and knowing that God is with us all the time?
What if by living this way during Advent, hopefully, reflectively and patiently, we could then carry that way of life into the rest of the year? What a marvellous thought!
If that seems like too much, for starters we can at least try to live this way for four weeks. Watch, wait and hope. And, as Jesus in the gospel of Mark reminds us: Keep awake! Pay attention!
+
And the private sermon…
This Advent is a peculiar one because it is the first Advent since 1993 that I have not been involved in preparing, presiding at or preaching about the Advent mystery. All of All Saints’ tide I was caught up in the last days, my own apocalypse, of being priest at Trinity. Now, as Advent begins, I find myself in this liminal place where I revert to life as it was pre-1990, pre-seminary, when I am once again a member of a congregation, but I am not. I am a transient, passing through, worshipping as I am able (that is, as much as my broken heart can bear), before moving to the next congregation. I feel the ache that Isaiah describes.
This Advent is one that will take me far out of the consumerist race because I will need to save every penny I can for an unknown future. As far as consumerist culture is concerned, I will be a poor participant because this year I am totally opting out. I’d be a good candidate for the OWS movement.
Mostly, this Advent is one in which I need to let God do what God will do, yet not wait for or want God to fix my current life situation of being unemployed, without a parish in which to excersise the vocation to which I still feel called. I haven’t figured out how to heal my heart from the past six months so somehow Advent seems the perfect time in which to step back, be still and try to hear God’s voice (which, for right now, seems awfully circumspect).
This Advent is the time for me to live in hope, to believe in the words I have proclaimed so often to others in the past six months (and beyond): All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Yes, this is a very personal hope, though not entirely disconnected from the hope that God will interrupt our daily lives and wake us up. I chose to leave Trinity at the end of the church year so that this crazy period of transition could unfold during Advent, that marvellous period of waiting, possibility and hope.
I may have more than four weeks to practise Advent watching, waiting, listening and hoping but at least I can begin in a time when doing so is totally appropriate. Maybe along the way, God can wake me up in ways I never thought possible. And maybe I can once again be, relearn what it means to be a bearer of hope, that vocation to which I was charged when I was ordained a priest nearly 18 years ago.
Restore me, O God of hosts;
show me the light of your countenance,
and I shall be saved.
In God alone, I cast my hope. And for the Christ, I wait in hope.
18 November 2011
Hands
Two totally different moments today...
Anointing two people for healing,
holding hands with eight other people
around the two who asked for prayers of healing,
looking at the wonderful weave of our hands
surrounding them,
holding them in prayer,
some hands touching them,
others connected through someone else's hands,
but all in all a tapestry of handful prayer.
Three hours later
alone in the sacristy
one of my last quiet times there,
taking the ashes of someone
who will be buried tomorrow
in the memorial garden,
gently pulling the bag out of the
cardboard box in which they arrived
at the church
so that I can put most of them
into the marble box that we
use for everyone
from which we pour the ashes
into the ground,
ashes to ashes,
dust to dust,
yet even at the grave we make our song,
Alleluia, Alleluia.
Healing.
Death.
Resurrection.
The quotidian life of a parish priest.
I am going to miss it
for this season
however long it is going to
be.
Anointing two people for healing,
holding hands with eight other people
around the two who asked for prayers of healing,
looking at the wonderful weave of our hands
surrounding them,
holding them in prayer,
some hands touching them,
others connected through someone else's hands,
but all in all a tapestry of handful prayer.
Three hours later
alone in the sacristy
one of my last quiet times there,
taking the ashes of someone
who will be buried tomorrow
in the memorial garden,
gently pulling the bag out of the
cardboard box in which they arrived
at the church
so that I can put most of them
into the marble box that we
use for everyone
from which we pour the ashes
into the ground,
ashes to ashes,
dust to dust,
yet even at the grave we make our song,
Alleluia, Alleluia.
Healing.
Death.
Resurrection.
The quotidian life of a parish priest.
I am going to miss it
for this season
however long it is going to
be.
12 November 2011
Winding down the clock
Tomorrow, the last 8.00 and 9.00 services.
10 November 2011
Exemplar of a boor
November 10, 2011, 9:56 pm
Cain on Camera Joking About Anita Hill
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR (NYT)
Even as he is facing his own sexual harassment scandal, Herman Cain was caught on tape Thursday joking about Anita Hill, the college professor who lodged similar accusations against Clarence Thomas decades ago.
The exchange between Mr. Cain and a supporter was caught on tape by a Fox News camera at a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Mich. It first aired Thursday night on the network’s “Special Report” program.
According to the video, a person in the crowd mentioned Ms. Hill to Mr. Cain, who responded, jokingly, “Is she going to endorse me?” prompting laughter.
J.D. Gordon, a spokesman for Mr. Cain, said simply that “it was a joke,” and added that the Republican presidential candidate was simply “repeating what a supporter said.”
The exchange comes just a day after Mr. Cain, a former talk radio host, had to apologize for calling former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “Princess Nancy” during Wednesday night’s debate.
+++
That man has shot himself in the foot so many times and yet his numbers still remain high. What is it with people? I don't know which is more discouraging: his sexist remarks or people's blowing them off as jokes.
Cain on Camera Joking About Anita Hill
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR (NYT)
Even as he is facing his own sexual harassment scandal, Herman Cain was caught on tape Thursday joking about Anita Hill, the college professor who lodged similar accusations against Clarence Thomas decades ago.
The exchange between Mr. Cain and a supporter was caught on tape by a Fox News camera at a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Mich. It first aired Thursday night on the network’s “Special Report” program.
According to the video, a person in the crowd mentioned Ms. Hill to Mr. Cain, who responded, jokingly, “Is she going to endorse me?” prompting laughter.
J.D. Gordon, a spokesman for Mr. Cain, said simply that “it was a joke,” and added that the Republican presidential candidate was simply “repeating what a supporter said.”
The exchange comes just a day after Mr. Cain, a former talk radio host, had to apologize for calling former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “Princess Nancy” during Wednesday night’s debate.
+++
That man has shot himself in the foot so many times and yet his numbers still remain high. What is it with people? I don't know which is more discouraging: his sexist remarks or people's blowing them off as jokes.
08 November 2011
Migratory furniture
Art made us the cherry wood Shaker table for our civil union eleven years ago. I was floored when he took us into the guest house at Mission Farm to show us the table that he had made. Art formerly worked for NASA on the shuttles.
All this is getting crammed into a house that is 19x19 feet. Very Salvadoran in size.
Meanwhile, I putter because in the eleven days remaining, I have:
two choir rehearsals
two Thursday morning HEs
two Sunday mornings (one with the usual track race of 8.00, 9.00 and 10.00 and one with only one service)
one last vestry meeting Thursday
exit interview Friday
meeting with the altar guild Saturday
transformational team vision summit next Thursday
wake in the chapel Friday next
funeral and interment Saturday next
saying goodbye to elders in the congregation
and whatever else might present itself
Thursday 17 November will be three years to the date that I moved out of the rectory in Northfield. It all has gone by so quickly.
Never believe the woman
When a woman comes out with an accusation of sexual harassment, the accused always will blame the woman, question her financial motives, her sexual life, basically do everything possible to discredit her.
I am jaded enough to think that these words are posturing because they follow a script we know too well. On the other hand, I don't think people have a clue what it takes to come forward with such an embarrassing truth of having had her personal space violated. Nor do I think people have an understanding of what it takes to have one's space violated. It does not have to be physical; it can be emotional and verbal. If the aggressor consistently brings sexual content into the conversation, that is as much harassment as having someone grope her.
With the accusations coming forward against Herman Cain, the posturing has started and his supporters are attacking her motives, her financial past and her lawyer. It is the usual modus operandi.
All I can say is that despite the occasional accusations that do not pan out (we will never really know the truth about Dominique Straus Kohn in NYC this May), there are far many more who speak an uncomfortable truth. There are far many more who speak out for their sisters who cannot or dare not speak the truth. They speak because they don't want someone else to go through what they have had to endure. Not all of them want recompense. They just want to be heard, to have their dignity restored, to assure themselves that the perpetrator will not be able to continue to violate people's space. One person speaks out and it unleashes the confessions of others because they understand that it is isolating to make such accusations alone and, moreover, if there has been one offense, often there are others.
Most of all, to come forward with such an accusation is not something taken lightly or frivolously. It is far, far too costly to do so precisely because she will be accused of trying to 'destroy his career,' or bringing it upon herself and on and on. To come forward takes guts... and a lot of support so that when the system closes around the accused and spins the stories, the accuser does not feel as though she is losing her mind because the system is going to want to make her think she is crazy.
How many times do we have to go through this — a powerful man (again, in most cases) infringing on the emotional and physical space of someone without power — to get it that there usually is a grain of truth in such accusations? On the twentieth anniversary of Professor Anita Hill (whom I believe) speaking in the hearings against the actions of Judge Clarence Thomas and subsequently being dragged through the mud and then some, things have not progressed at all. If anything, they have gone backward. Pretty sad.
And, in case you are wondering, I will believe the women until proven wrong. Why? Because I have been there, done that, and what I have described was my experience twenty-one years ago. The perp got off the hook, the system closed around him and we were simply worn down and too small to take on the system. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
I am jaded enough to think that these words are posturing because they follow a script we know too well. On the other hand, I don't think people have a clue what it takes to come forward with such an embarrassing truth of having had her personal space violated. Nor do I think people have an understanding of what it takes to have one's space violated. It does not have to be physical; it can be emotional and verbal. If the aggressor consistently brings sexual content into the conversation, that is as much harassment as having someone grope her.
With the accusations coming forward against Herman Cain, the posturing has started and his supporters are attacking her motives, her financial past and her lawyer. It is the usual modus operandi.
All I can say is that despite the occasional accusations that do not pan out (we will never really know the truth about Dominique Straus Kohn in NYC this May), there are far many more who speak an uncomfortable truth. There are far many more who speak out for their sisters who cannot or dare not speak the truth. They speak because they don't want someone else to go through what they have had to endure. Not all of them want recompense. They just want to be heard, to have their dignity restored, to assure themselves that the perpetrator will not be able to continue to violate people's space. One person speaks out and it unleashes the confessions of others because they understand that it is isolating to make such accusations alone and, moreover, if there has been one offense, often there are others.
Most of all, to come forward with such an accusation is not something taken lightly or frivolously. It is far, far too costly to do so precisely because she will be accused of trying to 'destroy his career,' or bringing it upon herself and on and on. To come forward takes guts... and a lot of support so that when the system closes around the accused and spins the stories, the accuser does not feel as though she is losing her mind because the system is going to want to make her think she is crazy.
How many times do we have to go through this — a powerful man (again, in most cases) infringing on the emotional and physical space of someone without power — to get it that there usually is a grain of truth in such accusations? On the twentieth anniversary of Professor Anita Hill (whom I believe) speaking in the hearings against the actions of Judge Clarence Thomas and subsequently being dragged through the mud and then some, things have not progressed at all. If anything, they have gone backward. Pretty sad.
And, in case you are wondering, I will believe the women until proven wrong. Why? Because I have been there, done that, and what I have described was my experience twenty-one years ago. The perp got off the hook, the system closed around him and we were simply worn down and too small to take on the system. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
07 November 2011
Winding down into irrelevance
I was just given copies of the termination of my dental coverage policy, my health insurance policy, and contributions from the congregation to my pension. I don't even know what to say.
All I can think of is Genesis's 'Get 'Em Out By Friday' from their 1973 album, Foxtrot.
[Deleted the repeated photos... didn't remember having already put them up.]
One more chair and two boxes have left the office. Poco a poco.
All I can think of is Genesis's 'Get 'Em Out By Friday' from their 1973 album, Foxtrot.
[Deleted the repeated photos... didn't remember having already put them up.]
One more chair and two boxes have left the office. Poco a poco.
04 November 2011
Here we go again
Packing up the office first... I have to be out of it by the 21st. Books are sorted according to liturgical year. I don't need A or C; B is under the box labelled A. Commentaries that have all three years are in the box labelled A, B, C. I am trying hard to label well boxes so that if I don't see the contents for a year, I know what is in them. I have so, so far to go... in two months... to where? Dunno.
Anyone who comes into my office has to trip over the boxes. It is on purpose.
Three years ago to the date, I was in the process of moving. I wasn't anticipating really on having to move three years later, though the possibility always lurked in the back of my mind.
Am I happy? No. Are the cats happy? They don't really know yet.
[I am getting a lot of the spinnning beachball of death tonight.]
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