The people of Alaska speak

My sister-in-law (who does not live in Alaska; she got them from somewhere I know not where) sent me these photos with the following:

W o w! Look at these pictures of a great bunch of people, carrying home-made signs�

ASK YOUR TV STATIONS WHY WE DIDN�T GET TO SEE THE BIGGEST RALLY IN ALASKA?

Enjoy� Pass it on!

[The] Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage. Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men. I had no idea what to expect.

The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It's probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally "a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots," and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received some nasty, harassing and threatening messages.

I felt a bit apprehensive. I'd been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it's a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren't sent by Eddie Burke, we'll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing "socialist baby-killing maggot" haters.

It's a good thing I wasn't tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody's trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest p olitical rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn't happen here.

Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn't be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.

So, if you've been doing the math� Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin's rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy the photo gallery. Feel free to spread the pictures around to anyone who needs to know that Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans. The citizens of Alaska, who know her best, have things to say.

Priceless Original

Look! An original Jackson Pollock painting done especially for you. Note the careful splats at appealing distances. It is without comparison.


Last night the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through. All night long, it was blamity-blam-blam-blam, bangity-bang-bang, thump, whump, ping, ping, blam. The cherry tree that hovers over the house has had a bumper crop of little cherries (in the same vein as the bumper crops of blueberries, blackberries) and the 40 mph wind gusts had them falling all night, hitting on the metal roof of the house. It was really, really hard to sleep.

When the cherries landed, they splatted and so now the side of the house is covered with little red splotches (along with the deck). Even the garage which has its own cherry tree nearby has red polkadots on the doors.


Meanwhile, one of the six rosebushes I planted this summer is thriving and has three more blooms on it.


In 1995 I planted a MacIntosh apple tree in memory of my namesake who had died that May. I never got around to planting another tree so it never produced any fruit. This year, for the first time, there are apples thanks to something pollinating it. I picked one and will enjoy it greatly.

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Far away, the son of a parishioner struggles with the remnants of Ike — he lived on a small island by Galveston and according to reports from people there, he has lost everything — his brand new business, a nursery, and his house. He is homeless without a job and no idea what to do next. And there are many, many, many more like him.

Proper 19A

Sometimes it seems that the Sunday cycle of readings gets stuck in a rut. Or maybe, it is a less a case of the lectionary being stuck, than the gospel from which the readings is taken, repeating an idea or a story so that we will get its point. This Sunday is the third Sunday in a row that in one way or another the gospel has focused on forgiveness and restitution. It is sheer coincidence, of course, that we hear these words a few days after the seventh anniversary of the September 11th attacks that changed our own world-view. Yet I think there is a God-given wisdom in our having to hear such hard teachings about true forgiveness.

This gospel story presents a troubling tale. Jesus tells a story about a king who settles accounts with a debtor who cries out for pity. The king writes off the debt. The one who receives restitution turns around and throttles a servant who pleads for similar patience for a much smaller debt. The king, hearing of the incident, renounces the one he had forgiven and has him tortured until he repays. Jesus concludes that his Father in heaven will do the same.
So what happens to the seventy-times-seventy with which the teaching begins? The king’s sentencing the debtor to torture hardly seems forgiving, especially after one failing.

The key lies in radical unforgiveness or lack of forgiveness. It’s as though the refusal to forgive locks us into a tortuous cycle. Once we become unable to forgive another, we have sealed ourselves off from the very experience of pardon. If we cannot feel pardon within ourselves we cannot extend it to one another. The more distant we grow from forgiveness, uttered in words like, ‘I could never forgive him or her for that…’ the more distant we grow from the very One who forgives endlessly. Our hearts are sealed off, we can treat the other as an object and not a human being and we fail to see Christ in one another. As we get stuck in that vicious cycle, our hearts harden and reject love.

When Jesus answers Peter’s question with a number of seventy-times-seventy, he is not suggesting our keeping track of forgiveness; rather he is using extreme numbers to suggest the unbridgeable chasm between a forgiving and unforgiving heart. The question is: are our souls so hardened that not even a kind and compassionate God who forgives endlessly can touch us?

Jesus never promised that this life of Christian discipleship would be easy. I think extending and receiving forgiveness might be one of the most difficult but life-giving tasks we have. Forgiveness must be a mainstay of our Christian journey.

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Occasionally someone will say to me post sermon: Sounds as though you were preaching to yourself. I’ll let you in on a secret: every sermon is preaching to the preacher. The words that follow are words borne from experience, thoughts gleaned over the years of walking with people as they struggle with forgiveness. We like to focus on the mandate to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves,’ but sometimes fail to realise that part of that loving is also forgiving, by far the harder piece.

I invite you to think about a situation that needed forgiveness and how you handled it, or a situation that is ongoing and listen in on the conversation I have had with others and myself, practical words about how to begin living a life of forgiveness, a journey that is never ending.

The work of forgiveness — which does not happen overnight — I know from experience — is acknowledging the anger, the desire to have the other person ‘pay for it,’ and then finding a way to move beyond it. Sometimes it takes a short time, sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes years... sometimes never, though that sort of grudge can be death-giving to the soul. (The death-eaters in Harry Potter, these ghostly beings that chill the atmosphere and swarm over someone and suck their soul out of their body, always seemed an apt image of grudges and hatred.)

For starters, I would say that anger is a natural, understandable reaction to a perceived injustice. Feel it, let it be. But then, how to move on? It feels so good sometimes to gnaw that bone of anger, hatred and self-righteousness. But God really tells us to drop it, let go of it, move on. It’s not doing us any good.

Sometimes moving on means forgiving before we feel the emotion of forgiveness — in twelve-step parlance, ‘Act as if…’. Forgive the person even if you are still ticked at them. Then live with that statement, ‘I forgive you.’ Eventually the raw emotions will abate and the heart actually can move toward true forgiveness.

Or a lot of times it means simply praying through it, starting first with the prayer: ‘God, I don’t really forgive this person yet, but I know you have, so I place this person in your hands because that’s the best I can do right now.’ Sometimes it is just saying the person’s name, again, knowing that by placing the person in God’s hands, that is all you can do. You can offer that person or persons or situation up at the offertory on Sunday, knowing that you are giving them, you and the circumstances over to God. Receive communion, Christ within you, and trust that that presence can give you comfort. (Know that all times you are already forgiven and you are God’s beloved child even as you haven’t forgiven.)

I do believe that forgiveness also means accountability, when it can be sought. But, the fourth step of any 12-step program (‘make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves’) emphasises that the only person who can be accountable is oneself and sometimes one just has to let go of figuring out why someone else did what they did and holding them accountable.

Another thing is to ask someone else to hold you in prayer as you struggle with forgiveness.

Believe me, forgiveness is one of the hardest things we are called to do! I can’t tell you how many companion strugglers there are in this area.

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It’s idealistic perhaps to say this but what if we became a nation of forgivers? Life could be quite different. To arrive there, forgiveness has to start with each one of us and then ripple outward. Still, our collective life could vastly improve if we operated from a stance of forgiveness rather than retaliation or fear.

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Saint Francis’ prayer reminds us: ‘It is in forgiving that we are forgiven.’ It is in forgiving that we find healing and in healing we experience God’s grace. For grace, healing and wholeness are what we all seek. And by extending grace, healing and wholeness we bring God’s kingdom that much closer to us.

Tonterias

Use where appropriate.

Ça commence

Laser eyes Young Guy oversees the beginning of the dismantling of the house. I am starting out with closets. The boxes to the left come with me; the ones to the right go to recycling. And there's more to go... ay.

Interesting what I am finding, though, before pitching. To my dismay, there are some newspapers in there from ten years ago, including Episcopal Life and, guess what?, the headlines are about the same as now: San Joaquin votes to leave TEC, Traditionalists believe split is imminent (paraphrased). Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I took to recycling on Wednesday 18 years of all my teaching notes, preps, homework papers and text books. I realise that I am never going to teach French again so what's the point of lugging that stuff along? I couldn't, however, throw out my grad school notes... yet.

Absolutely clueless

Bob Herbert in today's NYT nails it. Fifty-two days, people. We have got to expose this cynical choice for what it is.

She’s Not Ready
By BOB HERBERT

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

“Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?” Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, “In what respect, Charlie?”

“Well, what do you interpret it to be?” said Mr. Gibson.

“His worldview?” asked Ms. Palin.

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

The economy is in a tailspin. The financial sector is lurching about on rubbery legs. We’re mired in self-defeating energy policies. We’re at war. And we are still vulnerable to the very real threat of international terrorism.

With all of that and more being the case, how can it be a good idea to set in motion the possibility that Americans might wake up one morning to find that Sarah Palin is president?

I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

To burnish the foreign policy credentials of a vice presidential candidate who never even had a passport until last year, the Republicans have been touting Alaska’s proximity to Russia. (Imagine the derisive laughter in conservative circles if the Democrats had tried such nonsense.) So Mr. Gibson asked Ms. Palin, “What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?”

She said, “They’re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska. From an island in Alaska.”

Mr. Gibson tried again. “But what insight does that give you,” he asked, “into what they’re doing in Georgia?”

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

More on Mooselini

A sister priest sent me this article from Salon. The language is ahem but right on target.

Pissed about Palin
McCain's running mate is a Christian Stepford wife in a sexy librarian costume. Women, it's time to get furious.

By Cintra Wilson

Sep. 10, 2008 | Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain't no woman.

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

I don't want Sarah Palin being the representative leader and custodian of my rights, my Constitution and my country any more than I want polygamist compound leader Warren Jeffs baby-sitting for my preteen goddaughters.

As a woman who does not believe what Palin believes, the thought of such an opportunistic anti-female in the White House -- in the Cheney chair, no less -- is akin to ideological brain rape. What this Republican blowup doll does with her own insides in accord with her own faith is her business. But, like the worst and most terrifying of religious extremists, she seems very comfortable with the idea of imposing her own views on everyone else.

I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime. I thought it was like polio, or witch burning -- an inhumane error that had already been corrected. But after eight years of Republican hegemony, and now the potential ascendance of this sheep in ewe's clothing, I am so mortally offended I feel like it is really time for women to be angry, hardcore and disgusted again. Not just with old white Christian patriarchs and their hopelessly calcified, religiously condoned misogyny, but also with the self-abnegating, submissive female Uncle Tommies whose ambitions and eagerness to please the powerful males of their tribe are so desperate that they would sell out their sovereignty over their own bodies. And yours too.

Republicans have -- in a P.T. Barnum, sucker-born-every-minute kind of way -- successfully framed themselves as the custodians of Christian ethics and conservative family values. This stance successfully masks their wholesale class war against the majority of their supporters, who continue to vote blatantly against their own economic interests in thrall to this deliberate emotional manipulation. It was the media critic Douglas Rushkoff who pointed out, several years ago, that Republican politicians were employing marketing techniques perfected by Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille, broadly paraphrased, introduced a theory that approximately 80 percent of all decision making is done at the level of the limbic system -- our lowest, most colorless, reptilian emotional level. Republican strategies are consistent with a belief that the voting process, for most people, is full of feelings -- but devoid of reason.

Sarah Palin, in this light, makes so little sense that she makes perfect sense. She speciously represents a new power paradigm of the Nice Mommy: the opposite of Hillary (the Mean Mommy), the opposite of Oprah (black, and therefore foreign), the opposite of Martha Stewart (another Mean Mommy). In her support for women on women's issues, she has done everything but volunteer for her own circumcision. She tacitly promises a roll backward into old-fashioned sexual roles -- like Old Testament-style old. Her morality is fixed, predictable and inflexible. There are those who will find comfort in the fact that they will know exactly what can be expected from Palin: Free will subordinated to obedience of an airtight, evangelical interpretation of the demands of God, country and Republican men.

The choice of Palin represents what the Christian right is really saying to the women of America. The subtext: It's a Faustian bargain, girls. To elevate your sex to power and respectability, you must first give us the keys to your chastity belt.

It is unsurprising that the morally compromised fraternity of corruption-infested Republican robber barons and war profiteers came up with this stunt, but we must regard it in the same light as the rest of their treasonous, criminal behavior. We must regard Sarah Palin as the Carmella Soprano of the GOP -- an enabling wife of organized crime, who sees, hears and speaks no evil of the boys in her old-boy network for whom she does this ideological lap dance.

It is a kind of eerie coincidence that Sarah Palin is being sprung on the public at the same time as the bimbo/frat-boy titty comedy "House Bunny," which features a poster of a beautiful young lady with Playmate-style bunny ears, big, stupid eyes and her mouth hanging open like someone just punched her.

Sarah Palin is the White House bunny -- the most nauseating novelty confection of the evangelical mind-set since Southern "chastity balls," wherein teen girls pledge abstinence from premarital sex by ceremonially faux-marrying their own fathers.

Sarah Palin is the sexual front of the culture war and the embodiment of the bold social engineering stance of the new authoritarianism that Republicans have been employing ever since they stole the election in 2000. As a result of conservative Republican policies, America has proved itself to be too rife with fraud, bureaucratic constipation, self-inflicted economic calamity, cronyism and incompetence to effect any positive movement anywhere at all, even at home.

But, the Republicans seem to be saying, at least we can offer you the hope of putting women back in their place.

Bristol Palin will no doubt be a fine example as a first teen, particularly now that her mother is inflicting an old-fashioned shotgun wedding on the hapless, horny, condomless youth who impregnated her.

The Republicans are, in effect, saying: We're not going to win this race on the basis of being the better candidates. Barack Obama is going to make you think. You don't like thinking. Here's an It Girl vice president who is easy on the eyes, you stodgy old white baby boomer. She's like a grown-up version of Mary Ann from "Gilligan's Island." She embodies the raw conviction that everything the Republicans have ever done has been right. She'll make you feel better about yourself for voting for Bush. Twice.

Relax: The war is God's plan. (Or whatever.) Women, even if they are vice president, can always look pretty, worship their husbands in the fear of God and never, ever resist invasions from unwanted sperm.

Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.

She is dangerous. She is not just pro-life, she's anti-life. She is the suppression of human feeling and instinct. She is a slave to the compromises dictated by her own desire for power and control. Sarah Palin is untethered from her own needs and those of her family, which is in crisis, with a pregnant daughter, a son on the way to Iraq and a special-needs infant.

She should, however, be a galvanizing point for women everywhere. Not to support her candidacy but to rebel against the Republican Party and take back the respect and equality so hard-earned by the women's liberation movement in the 1970s.

We've been shanghaied. This is sick. We need to slap the face of our bad frat-boy date and walk home from this drive-in movie. Sarah Palin may put out to be popular, but the rest of America's women don't need to do the same.

If not, what the hell? John McCain should go the whole Hugh Hefner route and have eight V.P.s that all look exactly like Sarah Palin.

It's McCain's world, girls: You'd just live in it.

Another biggie

Just talked with a parishioner whose family (part of it at least) has left Galveston and headed north and the other part is hunkered down a bit more inland but is already getting soaked. The Galveston family runs a nursery and her son-in-law, the owner, trying to look on the light side, figures lots of people will need their yards and gardens put back together post hurricane. She said it's a slow moving storm and so wide, which means they will get even more soaked.

The five-day forecast has this suckah travelling uptoward Illinois. So when does it reach us in New England?

A public service announcement

Having gotten this email twice, I figure it is worth posting.

Friends, compatriots, fellow-lamenters,

We are writing to you because of the fury and dread we have felt since the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party. We believe that this terrible decision has surpassed mere partisanship, and that it is a dangerous farce on the part of a pandering and rudderless Presidential candidate that has a real possibility of becoming fact.

Perhaps like us, as American women, you share the fear of what Ms. Palin and her professed beliefs and proven record could lead to for ourselves and for our present or future daughters.

She is against sex education, birth control, the pro-choice platform, environmental protection, alternative energy development, freedom of speech (as mayor she wanted to ban books and attempted to fire the librarian who stood against her), gun control, the separation of church and state, an d polar bears. To say nothing of her complete lack of real preparation to become the second-most-powerful person on the planet.

We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent, and altogether devastating choice for Vice President. Ms. Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers so fiercely fought for, and that we've so demonstrably benefited from.

First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She does not demonstrate or uphold our interests as American women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket could win over women voters. We want to disagree, publicly.

Therefore, we invite you to reply here mail to:womensaynopalin@gmail.com; with a short, succinct message about why you, as a woman living in this country, do not support this candidate as second-in-command for our nation.

Please include your name (last initial is fine), age, and place of residence.

We will post your responses on a blog called Women against Sarah Palin which we intend to publicize as widely as possible. Please send us your reply at your earliest convenience. The greater the volume of responses we receive, the stronger our message will be.

Thank you for your time and action.

VIVA!

Sincerely,

Quinn Latimer and Lyra Kilston
New York, NY
womensaynopalin@gmail.com

Friday cat blogging returns por fin

After a hiatus, the fabulous felines return. How fitting, too, that this should be post 1000!!!!!!!


Find the cats... there are three in the photo. Soon this peaceful scene will be dismantled, ay.


Here are some buddies. They do nap together and these cool nights I've had all three with me.


Something got their attention and they leapt to the window.


The whazzit turned out to be a whodat because this Siamese hangs out around here but I don't know to whom it belongs. Pretty cat though. The photo is fuzzy because I took it through the screen door.


I brought a feather in and the cats had fun playing with it. Orange Guy has red vet tape around his neck because he so scratched the scar from his May surgery that the spot was furless and bloody.


I came back from my interview and dropped my prayer book and collar down on the kitchen table. There also was a clean shirt on the table. Silly Young Guy decided it would be comfortable and so he settled down between all these objects. Didn't look too comfortable to me.


Another threesome. Miss Agatha Birch Funky Paws wanted out of her suite so I said fine and she walked straight over the study (she knows how to get there). Then she had a stare-down with the two who were already there. I don't think she'll ever be integrated because the others don't like her and if someone comes into her suite, she lunges at them. So she'll have to be in a one-cat home. It will be hard to find a home for her which is why I don't even want to think that she can't come.

What is WRONG with this country?

from a recent Maureen Dowd column:

Rick Davis, a top McCain adviser, said: “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”

If I hear one more white voter say that they like Palin because they can 'relate' to her, I am going to throw a rock at the radio. I was non-plussed when people said they liked Dubya because he was someone with whom they thought they could share a beer. How many beers has he had with people? And what does drinking a beer matter when you've got someone running amuck in the Middle East?

Is this electorate so STUPID that they are going to vote for someone because she seems 'just like me'? You bet.

It's pathetic.

Obama should be miles ahead of McCain. But, alas, not only is there the issue of people voting for someone if they like the person, but racism is alive and well. All Things Considered did a piece last night on voters in York, PA. A white woman said despite solid evidence, she still believed Obama was Muslim and she didn't 'trust' him. When the interviewers did a straw poll, the people of colour were all for Obama and all but one of the whites were for McCain. When asked if perhaps race was behind their vote, they initially denied it. But after a long discussion, they acknowledged that race did influence them.

I am so, so disgusted.

Seven years later

In lieu of participating in what undoubtedly will be a jingoistic, rah-rah USA memorial service down on the town commons, I prefer to sit quietly, watch the setting sun (something I will no longer be able to do once I move), and think.

I grabbed this photo off the New York Times website. It's of the 'Towers of Light' as engineers tested the beams last week (night? — I need to go back to the article). In March 2002, the blue light beams shone every night for a month. It's a gentle memorial, epherial and simple... sort of along the lines of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, composed in 2002 and finally recorded in 2004. [Saint Paul's Chapel is located at the bottom left of the photo; the World Financial Center is to the right, and beyond it, the Hudson.]

The twenty-five minute piece, described by Adams as a 'memory space,' 'superimposed pre-recorded street sounds and the reading of victims' names by friends and family, also pre-recorded, on live performances by a children's chorus, an adult chorus, and a large orchestra.'

'Although the opening of the piece sounds like a sound collage, Adams does not mingle noises, words, and tones randomly. He sets them in a careful, therapeutic course from the secular to the sacred, leading to a vision of redemption when the sonic chaos converges to form a vast carillon. First we hear only street sounds, as if the walls of the concert hall had been blown away. In place of Adams's usual percussive groove a taped boy's voice repeats the word, "missing," a verbal heartbeat that gives the unformed sound of cars and footsteps a rhythmic undertow. The chorus (at first wordless), strings and harps enter, playing slowly rocking lines that sound like a medieval chant. Are we in the street, a concert hall, or a cathedral? The choral syllables slowly become stammered words and phrases: "re-mem... re-mem... re-member," "you will... you will... you never...." Noises, words, prayers for ten minutes the music seems to drift uncertainly and in fragments on memories of Ives's The Unanswered Question, in which a distant trumpet poses the enternal question of existence. Over undulating ripples in the woodwinds the children's chorus picks up the gentle rocking lines of the opening with new words that are at once journalism and incantation: "I see water and buildings." Without warning the orchestra blasts a sustained chord of anguish, announcing a move to the next level of contemplation. The music becomes simpler. The two choruses repeat the words, now in full sentences of fathers, mothers, sisters ('The daughter says, "He was the apple of my father's eye'"), intensifying at the lines "I wanted to dig him out. I know just where he is."

'The orchestra again erupts, this time in mounting waves that lead to the long-awaited answer to the question posed by Ives: their voices transformed, transmigration, into human chimes, the choruses sing out the words "Love" and "Light" over and over, fortissimo. Very gradually the music subsides to the sound-on-sound texture of the opening, but with a new feeling of calm. Orchestra and choruses fade out; a recorded woman's voice, in an unidentified accent, repeats the words "I see water and buildings." The street sounds return us to our everyday lives.'

[from the liner notes by David Schiff and first published in the April 2003 issue of the Atlantic Monthly.]


This is the visitor's pass I received when participants in the ninth class of the Clergy Leadership Project went to NYC and visited Trinity Wall Street's senior warden who was CEO of Fiduciary Trust, located on the 94th and 95th floors of WTC 2. The view from up there was amazing. I didn't take my camera to the city that day so have no record other than this pass. Many people from that office died seven years ago today.

But there are other 11 Septembers out there and we shouldn't forget them. Consider Chile's 11 September 1973, when the Allende government was overthrown by the Chilean military, a coup that our government helped. Charles Horman and another US citizen were rounded up after the coup because they knew too much. So as we remember our own, let us not forget the others.

PRI's The World had a good interview with a woman who was hidden just after the overthrow in September 1973. It's worth listening to.

Another change

While in my interview last week I learned that Saint Helena's is going to sell their Vails Gate property. OSH can no longer sustain the maintenance of either the Manhattan or Vails Gate convents.

I have been going to OSH, Vails Gate since 1985. In 1988 I became an associate of the order. Saint Helena's is where I went right after the parish discernment committee told me, 'No, not yet for ordination to the priesthood,' it's where I went to write my aspirancy application; it's where I have gone on Lenten and Advent retreats and where I spent Holy Week during my sabbatical (my last time there). And even when I wasn't there, I knew the sisters were there in a space I know well, praying. And for Christmas this past year, the parish sent money there for me to take a retreat some time this year. I thought, great, I will be an hour closer by moving south and to the west side of the state. Well, it's too late.

For more info, you can read about the decision at their home page.

I am absolutely stunned... feeling probably the way the congregation does with the news of my leaving... I really am bereft because I have lost one of my anchors.

[The photo is of the cross and three rocks that one can see from the dining room.]

Sobering

It's kind of sobering to realise that the count-down to the election (57 days) is just two days more to the count-down to my last service here (55 days). I hadn't really wanted to know that but it's a connection I can't help but know.

I can only pray that the countdown to the election turns out right, that we do NOT elect McPalin and we delete the possibility of the continued rightward swing of our gummint.

Then I will be able to continue on in my own countdown.

The one thing that is certain in life is change...

OK, now I can finally say what has been going on.

I will be moving mid-November from here to Trinity, Rutland, Vermont, to become priest-in-partnership starting in November. My last Sunday here will be the Sunday after All Saints' (2 November). This all came about quickly: I interviewed Wednesday, the bishop called me Thursday, Friday I signed a memo of intention and Saturday I told the vestry. Yesterday I told the congregation, the World's Best Cat Sitter, Naomi's family, and today I told the kitties' fan who brought Agatha into my life.

I will be working 80% so that I can continue my involvement with El Salvador and Executive Council.

Of course I have to rip out deep, deep roots before I leave. Fourteen years is nothing to sniff at. Moving a packrat out of a house is equally daunting.

I can't say much more now because I am emotionally exhausted.

But now I can explain why things have been kind of quiet on this front. They may continue to be so as life cranks up.

Say prayers for the beloved people here and for the ones who will be receiving me.

End of summer bonanza

Look at what I brought out of the garden yesterday. Wow! How am I going eat all the tomatoes? The photo doesn't even include the big heirlooms I also picked and had to do some surgery on (cutting out slug holes and UGH even having a earwig crawl out, UGHHHHHH).


So I made a huge bowl of salsa for dinner last night. I'll be eating a lot of nightshade veggies for a while. Depending on how my system is, I may or may not break out in a rash but it is oh so worth it.

After taking the photo, I also went out and dug up some potatoes.

Meanwhile, the pellet stove for the rectory is being delivered on Wednesday so I absolutely have to clean out the shed so that they can store it in there until the chimney is properly prepared.

Work??? ¿Qué es eso?

What gives?

What happened to MSNBC's cojones? This business about claiming that the network is biased toward the left shouldn't be met with yanking the anchors. After all, Faux Noise is incendiary, full of lies and mistruths and people take them at full face. And never mind that they are so far to the right that they are off the map.... Bring on Jon Stewart. Grump.

MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat
By BRIAN STELTER

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”

But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

The employee, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not permit it people to speak to the media without authorization. (The New York Times and NBC News have a content-sharing arrangement exclusively for political coverage.)

Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. His program “Countdown,” now a liberal institution, was created by Mr. Olbermann in 2003 but it found its voice in his gnawing dissent regarding the Bush administration, often in the form of “special comment” segments.

As Mr. Olbermann raised his voice, his ratings rose as well, and he now reaches more than one million viewers a night, a higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network. As a result, his identity largely defines MSNBC. “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said.

In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.

But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat.

“I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Olbermann said that moment — and the perception that he is “not utterly neutral” — restarted months-old conversations about his role on political nights.

“I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue,” he said.

Appropriate for a Sunday night

Beyond Grotesque

Courtesy of the World's Best Cat Sitter...

Proper 18A

For the past several weeks we have been hearing from the Book of Exodus and the story of the Israelites’ journey toward finding God. This morning’s reading seems very out of season because it takes us back to Maundy Thursday when we also hear about the Passover of the Lord. In all the readings of the past weeks, we have been grappling with what it means to be a refugee, dislocated in place and time and how one manages to remain connected with God.

Our story intersects that of Moses and the people of Israel who have been refugees. Remember that he grew up in the courts of Pharaoh (evidently as big as twenty football fields), and was a prince among the people. But there came a day when he recognized his heritage, his people, and saw that they were suffering under the oppression of the rulers of Egypt, rulers who had forgotten Joseph. Moses killed a royal guard one day when he saw him abusing one of his people. For that reason Moses’ life was in jeopardy and he had to flee as a refugee to his family’s tribal area. There he lived safely tending his father-in law’s sheep and goats.

As Moses fled Egypt and hid out in the land of his forebears, he met God anew. (We heard this story last week.) Looking out over the flat wilderness where his father-in-law’s flock was grazing, Moses saw a kind of sagebrush burning in the hot sun that was never consumed by the fire. For a moment he forgot his troubles and suffering and went to explore this curious phenomenon.

He heard his name called out: “Moses, Moses, do not come any closer to this bush. Take off your shoes, for you are on Holy Ground.”

The voice Moses heard told him that it was the voice of the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, Moses’ ancestors. And Moses hid his face, for he was trembling with fear. This God who spoke to him issued a command.

Moses was being asked to return to Egypt and help to liberate his people. “I have heard the cry [of my people]… and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians…” said God.

Moses was not too excited by this prospect. Egypt for him was a place of threat and danger. He wanted nothing of it and gave a number of reasons, flat-out excuses, for which he was not the right person to go.

Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

God answered, “I will be with you… “

Once more Moses tried to stall. “But if I go to the people, whom should I say is sending me? They will want to know your name.”

+

This was turning point in the religious history of the people of Israel. Up until this point, the people did not know God’s name. God was safe from the manipulations of the people. God guarded the divine name, and did not share it.
God said to Moses, “My name is Yahweh,” that is, Adonai, a name so holy that it cannot be uttered, which could be translated, “I am who I am”, or better yet, “I am here with you; I am present. Tell that to the people.”
An ancient Rabbi once said that God shared his name with Moses and has not had a quiet moment since.
Not only was Moses taking a risk, but so too was God.

And therein lies the crux of the book of Exodus, the core story of the Israelites from which comes the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. God encounters humankind on the way, changes us, reveals Godself to us and saves us.
+

Bruce Feiler, whose video we saw this summer about the lands of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, writes in Walking the Bible, ‘Exodus is more than an event, it’s the seminal demonstration of how God involves himself in the daily lives of the Israelites, exercises control over other nations, and ultimately changes the course of history. Exodus is also living history, referred to over 120 times in the Hebrew Bible, reenacted every year by Jews at Passover, and recalled by Christians at Easter. It’s also a living metaphor, as leaders from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Jr. have invoked the plight of the Israelites and the plea of Moses, “Let my people go!” (1)

Feiler continues, ‘The Israelites have been wandering, from Mesopotamia, through Canaan, to Egypt…. They must now become active participants in their own story: actors, not just reactors. God makes the meaning of this transition clear: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months,” he says. All Israelites shall sacrifice a lamb, he exhorts, and put its blood on their doorposts. Also, in the first instance in which God seems to address the readers of the Bible, not just the participants, he says the Israelites should mark this passage forever in the ritual holiday of Passover, by eating unleavened bread for seven days as a sign of how they left Egypt in haste. In other words, we should mark this moment in time and relive it every year…’ (184). ‘God’s lesson here is clear: only by entering the stories ourselves can we truly understand its meaning’ (420).

+

So what does it mean to enter into this story of journeying and of walking with this God whose name is I AM WHO I AM?, this God who speaks to us in a quiet still voice sometimes and other times in a burning bush? How does the story of Exodus become our story?

First, as a community, we embody and live the stories of our forebears. We remember each Maundy Thursday the Passover. We hear again and again the holy stories of our salvation — not just at the Easter Vigil, though that most holy night is when we are exhorted to listen to the record of our salvation — but when we come together week in, week out. In these encounters, we are reminded of God acting in our lives, in the lives of those who have gone before us and those who will come after us.

Second, we can recognise that we are all to one extent or another journeyers. We all travel on distinct paths in our own lives and on a path together as a community. Our paths become us. As the Buddha said: ‘You cannot travel on the path before you have become the Path.’ We create the path by walking and it is best to walk together in community.
Third, God helps us rise to the occasion or task set before us. The Holy One will give us the wherewithal to deal with whatever twists or turns form our path.

Fourth, we can recognise that God is always with us. The divine name, Adonai, means, ‘I am here with you; I am present.’ In other terms, ‘when two or three are gathered in [God’s] name, [God] is in the midst of them. As we gather together today, next week, we evoke God’s presence that is already within us.

So as we journey our own Exodus story, take comfort in the knowledge that God journeys with us, assuring us that all will be well.

END NOTE

(1) Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible (New York, NY: Perennial, 2002), 174.

Truly swamped

My mother just called from Connecticut to say that the basement has flooded and has an inch at least of water in it. My father and brother are out in the yard trying to unplug the drain that leads from the cellar. (It always gets filled with tree roots.) Then they'll try to clear the water out of the basement. They have not as of yet lost electricity. All this rain is thanks to Hurricane Hanna. Photos will follow.

Mind you, this is peanuts compared to what Jane has gone through — the photos of her destroyed former house are something — and what la bonne Grandmère has endured.

But if my big bro weren't there, it would be my almost 84 year-old father out in the trenches unplugging tree roots.

I've got, got, got, got no time

Hey you all... I am still alive, I am just swamped by work.

Eventually (?) the dust will settle. I've got kitteh fotos to post, and little ditties to post but right now I have to write a sermon for tomorrow.

Yertle the Turtle will eventually emerge out from under the pile. But not tonight.

Too much going on

There's too much going on to put up a decent posting. Suffice to say that I am back from three days and two nights on the Long Trail, escaping all the work that is here. We have now walked 65 miles of the LT, about 22% of it.


A photo to whet your appetite: Chittenden Reservoir from up on high as we saw it through the trees on the Long Trail. It's a great place to canoe.


This is the Rolston Rest shelter, 5 miles from Route 4, northbound, built in 2004 to replace an older one. It's a nice post-and-beam but even with it being the LT, people have written all over it and carved in their initials. Cheez.


Bed time in the shelter (at 8.30 PM) — I am reading the log book that had gotten chewed somewhere along the line by porcupines. The mice in the shelter were audacious, too. We had the whole place to ourselves whereas a few nights prior there were 10 people there.


Don't ask why there is a chewed-on moose antler at the Bloodroot Gap sign but there is. It gives you something to write home about.

After this marker, the LT levels out and is easy to walk on all the way to Brandon Gap where, once you've crossed the road, it goes back up again... but that's for another hike.

Next posting will be on Thursday.