The day after

Not as in the 1983 film, 'The Day After,' which was supposed to scare the pants off us, but the day after a good December snowstorm. It looks more like February outside than December, epecially if one compares this year's snowfall to last year's.

Compa took this photo of our (leeetle) house at sunset this afternoon (sunset comes at 4.10 or so). She has spent a good portion of the day clearing the driveway with the snowblower. What you see is the entire house with a glimpse of the outside woodshed at the far end. Compact. Efficient.

If you look hard to the right, you can see the godawful monstrosity of a house that our neighbour built on the property line (that is, as close to the setback as possible). We managed to build a house at the end of a dirt road only to end up feeling as though we are in suburbia a few years later when that thing went up (in 10-acre zoning no less).

As an aside, last Monday was the earliest all year the sun sets; each day henceforth it sets a little later but it's the sunrise that also is a little later each day so that we end up with the shortest day of the year Friday. It's not until 2 January that the sunrise starts going in the opposite direction. I am so glad to have heard what I have known all along: it's impossible to get up in the morning in January because it is so, so dark out.

Blogging may get thin between here and Christmas but I think people will understand.

Advent 3A

The three lessons this morning all demand of us the resolute trust that the nature of God is to bring life from death, light from darkness. Words of patience, restitution, hope, and heavenly messengers all point to God’s mercy.

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‘Be patient!’ How many times have you had to say that to someone — for whatever reason? I’m sure all of us can come up with examples of telling someone those words — even to ourselves. The ordination process to the priesthood for me became an exercise in patience because I realised that I could not control the timing — if I were to be ordained, it would happen in God’s good time, not mine. Yet over the nine years it took — from first conversation to a priest about God’s nudgings to a bishop laying hands on my head for the transitional diaconate — I had to tell myself off and on to sit tight and be patient.

I take consolation, therefore, that even in the early church, leaders had to tell their followers these very same words — Be patient! Wait!

The Letter of James, written in the last quarter of the first century, is the most socially conscious letter of the epistles. This morning’s reading follows on the heels of a particularly severe admonition to the wealthy in James’ community. Having warned them about getting lost in temporal riches (sound familiar?), the writer then turns to the rest of the community — those who do not have a lot of material possessions but do have their faith in Christ’s coming, the divine advent. James does not directly answer when this coming will come but he advises his people to be patient because he trusts it will indeed happen. The words ‘patient’ and ‘patience’ appear at the beginning and end of this passage, as well as in the middle. At the same time, they are coupled with references to God’s coming.

To make his point, James refers to the practical wisdom of farmers. Farmers sow the seed, knowing that they simply have to wait until the richness of the earth and the life-giving waters from the sky bring forth the precious crop. Nothing they do, out of anxiety or impatience, can change the cycle of nature.

So it is for the Christian community who must wait for God. The waiting must be done as a community, not as individuals. Together, the community can bear perplexing ambiguities, sufferings and uncertainty. Equally important, the community must not grouse at its members during this period of waiting.

As incentive for waiting, James equates patience with promise. If the promise is true, the waiting is bearable. In the case of his community and of ours, the promise of God’s pardon, mercy and love helps us endure.

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Waiting for something, someone, for God, is a universal human experience that transcends nations, peoples and time. Whether it’s for the change of season or justice breaking into a seemingly intractable situation, or even riding out the craziness and uncertainty that is going on in our Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, waiting implies a certain hope and expectation that the desired outcome is possible.

The dry season in El Salvador is pretty impressive. The dust that swirls around makes eyes water, sinuses get infected, skin cracks and even hard drives on laptops crater. It’s no small wonder that if one goes out for a long drive, one takes lots of bottled water along, lest one break down somewhere and have nothing to drink. Riverbeds go dry, fields are barren. The people do not despair, however, for they know that come May, the rainy season will arrive and their barren landscape will suddenly become fecund, bursting with the brightness of flowers that have lain dormant all those previous months. The beauty of the outside world reminds the people of God’s abundant love of life that overcomes everything. And so people wait patiently for the rainy season, because they know it will come, just the way we wait for spring to arrive after our eight month-long winter.

Another patient waiting of many people in many lands is a much harder one, a waiting whose outcome is far less expected or dreamed possible. That waiting lies in justice being rendered to those who have been victimised by their society, their government, or the forces that surround them. The families of the disappeared in countless Latin American countries, Palestinian and Israeli families alike, the Lebanese, undoubtedly the dirt-poor of Afghanistan — all wait for some justice to break into their hopeless lives. Sometimes, as Desmond Tutu puts it in his book No Future without Forgiveness, in the fullness of time — in God’s time, justice and mercy break into our dry, parched lives.

God’s holy way, God’s highway, does not always make sense to us. Why, for example, should the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa have dared to pardon those who so grievously sinned against their neighbours? Why should they, at the same time they gave justice to the oppressed, also set the prisoners free?

Because, as Tutu writes, ‘God does not give up on anyone, for God loved us from all eternity, God loves us now, and God will always love us, all of us good and bad, for ever and ever. [God’s] love will not let us go, for God’s love for us, good and bad, is unchanging, is unchangeable. Someone has said there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, for God loves me perfectly already. And wonderfully, there is nothing I can do to make God love me less. God loves me as I am to help me become all that I have it in me to become, and when I realise the deep love God has for me, I will strive for love’s sake to do what pleases my Lover.… We can never give up on anyone because our God was one who had a particularly soft spot for sinners.’(1)

Truly God’s love for sinners — you and me, all of us — is the Good News breaking forth in the desert, the water running through the wilderness. Knowing God’s unfailing grace enables me to confront those weaknesses and empty, dead, or shattered places in my life. Seeking God’s pardon for what I have done wrong sets me free, opens my eyes, and lifts me up.

When I am truly set free, only then can I be open to the life that courses from God’s love. Only then can I understand that God does not desire we live in the shadow of death — it was for this reason that God sent Jesus to live and dwell in our midst, to take upon him our mortal frame.

In the eight days that remain between now and the Christmas celebration, may each one of us be patient, knowing that this patience springs from a promise given, and the expectation of a hope greater than we can possibly imagine. May each of us hold onto the glimpse of that promise — God’s unfailing love.

END NOTE
(1) Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999), 85, 84.

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I was not supposed to preach this morning but knew last night that the person slated to preach would not make it so I dusted off this sermon from six years ago (I figured that if I didn't remember preaching it, the congregation wouldn't remember hearing it). And, then, because only 2 people showed up for the 8.00, and 11 for the 10.00, I turned it more into a conversational sermon though I read the quote from Tutu. The photo was taken after my toned-down open house, just as it started sleeting on top of the snow, oh joy.

Late Saturday night shuffle

Here's music to accompany me as I tidy up a sermon I may or may not preach tomorrow — but it's best to be prepared in case the preacher, a lay woman from the other side of the mountain ridge, can't make it.

Where is the Dream of Your Youth (1969) • The Strawbs
Bleecker Street • Simon and Garfunkel
Mujeres y niños • Rumilliajta
Beside You • Dougie MacLean
Mother Song • Krishna Das
Riding the Scree • Genesis (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway)
St Valentine's Day • The Dream Academy
Air (Bach) • Richard Stoltzman
Mull River Shuffle (Live) • The Rankin Family
Yellow Rose • James Taylor

The Strawbs were such a good group with complicated music. Someday my all-time favourite of theirs, Grace Darling (1974) wil crop up. S & G are always good late at night. The Rumilliajta comes from a collection, Alma del Sur, mostly New Age renditions of South American music. Doubie MacLean my brother introduced me to. Inside the Thunder, MacLean's latest album is very good. The Dream Academy has a few Pink Floyd folks in it; they were mostly active in the mid-to-late 1980s. Stoltzman can make anything played on the clarinet sound good. The Rankin Family was a really good Celtic folk group from Nova Scotia (with a nice clear soprano). Sadly about three or four years ago, the brother who played a wicked fiddle was killed in a car crash along with his son. This song is pretty funny about a bunch of people getting tanked after taking in the hay in the late 1800s. Lastly, a little bit of JT to close up the night.

Profound question

How come in the weekly address (of which All Things Considered mercifully only includes about 15 seconds) does Dubya always sound as though he is talking into a tin can?

As Maddie would say, have at it.

For your entertainment

Sarah, over at Going Jesus, has her second Calvacade of Nativities (or dreadful ones). Herewith is an example to entertain you while I terrorise the cats and myself with a mongo vacuum cleaner, getting the house ready for the open house tomorrow that may not happen because of the impending nor'easter.

Mary and Joseph Cat look as though they were...

• subjected to a month in the US Senate as the Repubs block everything that might improve the common good and let through anything that will further the mess in Iraq and sock it to the middle class

• forced to read multiple missives from Cantaur

• see multiple photoshoppies of the former bishop of San Joaquin (Clumber's most recent one is perhaps the most, ahem, disrespectful)

• hear about Mukasey's refusal to give the House Judiciary Committee info about the destruction of the CIA tapes of waterboarding

• hear about the US obstructionism at the Bali Conference on global warming

• what else? That is just this morning's news

While I clean (not my favourite activity) and row (didn't yesterday so I have to make up today), I will come up with some other examples.

Quote for the day

From the comments at Fr Jake Stops the World, from Justin:

Anglicanism at its finest makes it very, very easy to fall in love with God.

How well said. Thank you. [Actually it is a adaptation of something Urban Terry Holmes said. Ah, no wonder I like it.)

This is as I grumping about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent letter to the primates... he just doesn't understand The Episcopal Church and for its LGBT members, I can't say there is much hope (quoi de neuf — so what else is new?).

Despite it all, I can't imagine being anything else.

Friday Cat Blogging

A bonanza of photos to make up for last week's absence.


First of all, let me introduce this year's holiday boarder, Miss Funky Paws. Her story is quite long and involved, but the short version is that someone in town I know does cat rescues (she works with the local feral cat community and also will rescue cats from abuse or neglect). She got a two year-old long hair calico cat a month ago, took her to the vet to have her checked out and when she went back, this was the cat they gave her: we have no idea how old she is but we think she is probably about 8-10 years old. She is no two year-old calico.


This all so upset the cat rescuer that I said I would take the cat and let her hang out in the suite. So here is Miss Funky Paws: a polydactyl whose two thumbs curl back inwards. She has a very sweet nature but I can tell that not only was she neglected but she was abused. I think she is coming out of her depression though I have yet to see her groom herself.


Meanwhile, Young Guy and La Doyenne KNOW there is someone else on the other side of the door. Look at Young Guy's poofed out tail as he pokes at the door.


Orange Boy discovered the Nahuizalco basket. This is a first.


And here he is on stacked baskets, moved to get the lint out of the drier. On the wall above the washing machine is a photograph of my great-grandfather's commercial laundry in the 1920s.


I got this pillow this summer and couldn't figure out where to put it so finally decided the rocking chair, Young Guy in front of it makes the pillow cat look ever more cross eyed than it is.


Orange Guy was on the bed first and along came La Doyenne and plopped herself on top of him.

Halfway there

OK, I am halfway there; I hit 100K today. I have 10 days to finish another 100K; if I do 15K a day (about 1h10 minutes), I can knock it off quickly.

I've got a good collection of bachata music that keeps me entertained while I row.

I am sure you all are fascinated by this and are hanging on my every stroke :)

However, this rowing is a form of prayer and a way of keeping myself sane. The CREDO seminars encourage clergy to engage in regular exercise not only as a way of staying healthy and fit but also as a way of staying centered. It is true — the days that I don't, I do feel guilty and a row reinvigorates me as much as a nap, though I love my naps.

Besides, rowing is a way of allowing for free-thought time. Perhaps it's my pressure-cooker valve that keeps me from completely exploding from anger at the stupidity of the world (like hearing that the senate voted down the farm reform bill) and the sadness and frustration with the current difficulties in the church.

Rowing (i.e., the foot saga continues)

A shot taken in an ancient mirror and intentionally unclear (I don't really want to show off my thunder thighs and piano legs)... taken at only 85K. I've got 115K to go in 12 days. It seems as though every year I lose a week to colds, work, travel and simply losing track of the time. I did row today despite the head cold and did OK.

The left foot saga continues, however. Despite rowing with orthotics and new shoes (as seen on my right foot, Merrills), my left posterior tibial tendon cramps up on the inside of my foot. I know that it has been stretched out but the orthotics haven't strengthened it nor has the nodule in the middle of the arch shrunk any. Given that the arch cramping does affect my rowing, I decided to tape it today. I can't say if the tape helped any.

If I can't row, then I really am up a creek activity wise. I'll keep rowing but it's yet another nuisance.

Thought from Henri Nouwen on peace

This appeared in an emailing from the Episcopal Peace Fellowship:

Love Your Enemies

Here we touch one of the greatest dangers that face peacemakers: that peacemakers themselves become the victims of the evil forces they are trying to overcome. The same fear of "the enemy" that leads warmakers to war can begin to affect the peacemaker who sees the warmaker as "the enemy." Words of anger and hostility can gradually enter into the language of the peacemaker. Even the sense of urgency and emergency that motivates the arms race can become the driving force behind the peacemaker. Then indeed the strategy of war and the strategy of peace have become the same, and peacemaking has lost its heart.

One of the reasons why so many people have developed strong reservations about the peace movement is precisely that they do not see the peace they seek in the peacemakers themselves. Often what they see are fearful and angry people trying to convince others of the urgency of their protest. The tragedy is that peacemakers often reveal more of the demons they are fighting than of the peace they want to bring about.

The words of Jesus go right to the heart of our struggle: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly" (Lk 6: 27-28). The more I reflect on these words, the more I consider them to be the test for peacemakers. What my enemies deserve is not my anger, rejection, resentment, or disdain, but my love. Spiritual guides throughout history have said that love for the enemy is the cornerstone of the message of Jesus and the core of holiness.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen in Peacework

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We might do well to apply this thinking in the current angst.

Be scared, be really scared

"The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity,” he said. “And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior… I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

That comes from Huckleberry Hound, who in 1992 said that gays (and lesbians? probably not — they never figure on these people's radar screens) should be locked up or quarantined... you know, they're so promiscuous that they all have HIV/AIDS.

[update: OK, since my putting up a cute Bassett hound has produced a whimper in the comments, I add this photo, again too cute.]

Aguacero

This photo of a Hawaiian downpour will have to do until Padre Mickey can give me a photo of a Panamanian aguacero (smile).

In any event, this perhaps too graphically illustrates what my head feels like today.

Quelle journée de néant. What a day of nothingness.

I have all this stuff to do — get the house picked up and cleaned for my open house on Sunday, get ready for vestry tomorrow (figure out how we're going to close a $24K gap between income and expenses — it's about a 28% gap), deal with a lot of miggly paperswork and so forth.

Instead, I didn't actually get up until 10.45 (!!!) and then took an hour and a half nap this afternoon.

Quelle paraseuse... que perezosa... what a lazybones.

Organised but cluttered

This photo of my father's cellar workbenches, with all the useful stuff, neatly boxed, labeled, hanging from pipes and who knows what else, on top of workbenches he made, somewhat represents my brain tonight... the thoughts are organised somewhat but cluttered.

Mostly, I have a head cold, thanks, I think, to the person who runs House of the Redeemer. It's not horrendous but I am not at 100% either. Better now than Christmas.

I spent four hours RT and $700+ to get four new snow tires for my car, special super-duper windshield wipers and an oil change. Whatever thoughts I had about getting small somethings to go along with the donations I am making in people's names for Christmas has temporarily gone out the window. At least I don't have to worry so much about the champagne-snow we've been getting.

Early on in the day, I got an email from a college classmate saying that another was going in for surgery with the possibility that it might be cancer. Demos gracias a Dios, the tumour removed is not malignant. Meanwhile, I spent the day in the presence, memories of the women who were so much a part of my college years.

Lastly, I am undertaking the arduous task of picking up and cleaning the rectory in anticipation of my annual open house this Sunday. Mercifully, a parishioner is preaching so I can spend Saturday still running around.

I am not impervious to what has happened on the other side of the country in San Joaquin but many other blogs are tackling that theme that whatever I have to offer would be redundant.

For now, bed time to try to get rid of this cold.

New York Times editorial for today

Editorial
Caving In on Hate Crimes
Published: December 10, 2007

Congressional leaders, who have disappointed frequently this year, have done it again. This time, the House leadership has failed to find a way to get a bipartisan law against hate crimes passed and signed into law. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities have waited long enough. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to do more than just express her support for the bill; she must find a way to make it the law.

The Matthew Shepard Act would expand the definition of hate crimes and make important improvements in the federal response. To categories already covered by federal law, which include race and religion, it would add crimes committed because of the victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender or disability. It would also broaden the federal government’s authority to investigate these hateful acts.

The bill has been a top priority of civil rights groups since Mr. Shepard, who was gay, was beaten to death in Laramie, Wyo., in 1998. It also has strong support from law enforcement, including the National Sheriffs’ Association and the National District Attorneys Association. The House passed it 237-180, with significant Republican support, and the Senate passed a similar bill by voice vote, after a 60-39 cloture vote.

President Bush has suggested he would veto the bill. It’s an unfortunate threat, but one he is certainly capable of carrying out. House and Senate leaders planned to get around that threat by attaching it to a Department of Defense Authorization bill, which Mr. Bush would have had trouble vetoing. But House leaders decided last week that since some liberals did not want to vote for the defense bill and some conservatives did not want to vote for the hate crimes bill, they could not piece together a majority to get it through.

Ms. Pelosi says she is still committed to getting the Matthew Shepard Act passed, perhaps early next year. That’s nice, but it is time for her to explain how she intends to do it — and then to make it happen.

Advent 2A

I’d like to begin with two images that come from very different places and atmospheres.

First snapshot: The Camino de Santiago de Compostela (and the Chemin de Saint Jacques, albeit to a lesser extent), take the walker through one vineyard after another. The pilgrim meanders through field after field of low scrubby grapevines. Lots of times the vintner has planted poppies as a means of keeping the weed population down. Hence, one sees alternating green and red rows. Most of the time the tendrils are attached to horizontal wires that create the effect of looking at a low-lying forty-fifty foot-long wooden rope. The old vineyards, the ones that are in between one cultivation and the next, don’t have the loving care given them. The tendrils rise and then fall over to the side. In all places, little shoots of green arise out of incredibly gnarled trunks. The grape vines are an amalgam of lava-looking knots and peeling bark. Overall, the effect is mesmerising, especially after walking past one fields day after day. (The reward, of course, is being able to sample the wines that emerge from all these vineyards!) The further south one gets, one finds olive trees mixed in with the grapevines.

Second snapshot: Olive groves in Palestine are more than a family’s source of income; they are a source of pride and joy. A parent will pass onto his or her children the vineyard. As Mitri Ghneim, a Palestinian Greek Orthodox, said in a film about the Jewish settlements in Palestine, O Little Town of Bethlehem, the olive groves are their children. People of that area care for each olive tree as though it were a beloved child. In many ways, the tree is. He states that the olive trees in his grove have been in his family, passed down from one generation to the next for the past 400 years. I suspect that amount of time is difficult for most of us to comprehend.

Today, a road, located within the wall that delineates Israeli and Palestinian territory, separates this man from his olive trees. He has lost not only his source of income but also his sense of identity and history. He hasn’t given up fighting to regain access to his trees but he also weeps.

I thought about these two images as I found myself in a completely different scene yesterday afternoon. I walked down Fifth Avenue in New York City, trying to wend my way through the hordes of people doing their holiday shopping. The closer I got to Rockefeller Center, the crazier it got. Imagine that the line for Abercrombie and Fitch, went out the door and around the corner, down the block! And I wondered what people were finding in their hearts as they went running after material things. What new growth was going on inside them? Where was there any room for new shoots to pop out?

Even as I dodged around people, I reflected on the meeting I had just attended: the Standing Commission on Anglican and International Peace with Justice Concerns of the General Convention. Our task is to advise the Presiding Bishop, General Convention and Executive Council on policy relating to the areas of peace and justice throughout the world. Doubtless most people in the pews have no idea that such a commission exists, but you are graced by having me go to these meetings (!). Our three-day discussion was rich, covering many areas of the globe: Israel and Palestine, Haiti, the Philippines, Malawi and Central America. Our topics were equally rich, leading to deep theological and philosophical discussions. We talked about water supply and access, human trafficking, gangs, immigration, hospitality to the stranger, just war and peace-making, and the church’s witness in the world.

‘What has this got to do with me?’ you might ask. ‘What does the Middle East or Asia have to do with me?’ Lots. I believe we are all deeply interconnected and intertwined. If one part of the world is troubled, then all parts are. In Jewish thought, people focus on the tikkun olam: the reparation of the whole world, or making the world a better place for all creation. The phrase tikkun olam is included in the prayer that Jewish people recite three times a day in which they pray for the day when all humanity turns away from false gods, so that the perfectness of the world will be restored. The Tikkun Community includes (in their words) ‘all those whose deepest values lead them to challenge the ethos of selfishness and materialism that has led people into a frantic search for money and power and away from a life that places love, kindness, generosity, peace, non-violence, social justice, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation, thanksgiving, humility and joy at the center of our lives.’

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It is this vision of a new world that the passage from Isaiah evokes. Isaiah invites us to take the risk and dream God’s own dream for the world. In that divine dream, all of our own longings are articulated. Justice, equity, righteousness, harmony and knowledge of God are all there in ten verses. In his own day Israel’s monarchy was weakened, the nation was at war with a mighty enemy, its moral fabric tattered. Isaiah shares God’s own dream in order to defeat hopelessness and empower determination.

Isaiah (like John the Baptiser) is a breath of fresh air, a spirit, a wind that blows God’s Spirit across the land. Isaiah recalls the shalom vision as defined from the biblical perspective that is core to all of world history: ‘All creation is one, every creature in community with every another, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature.’ Walter Brueggmann, who gave the preceding definition, reminds us that in this vision, none shall hurt or destroy, all will be in balance, all creatures and creation so interrelated and harmonised as to result in healthfulness and wholeness. Martin Luther King Jr relates Isaiah’s vision to our Christian hope: ‘At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that in the universe there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and in history.’

These words bring us a wonderful vision of hope. But here’s where John the Baptiser comes into the picture: namely, we are not mere bystanders to God’s in-breaking into our world: we are critical participants in bringing about God’s shalom and the tikkun olam. John gets our attention by telling us that we absolutely have to get our act together, reprioritise our lives and turn around and back to God.

John invites us to ask: So, what are you and I going to do about it? How are you going to turn around your life — not just during this too-short season of Advent but always? After what are you chasing to fill the holes in your life that only God can? Conversely, from what are you running? Most of all, how are you going to bring about God’s shalom and the tikkun olam, the restoration of the world?

Isaiah's words remind us: Don’t feel overwhelmed by it all. Don’t take it all on at once. But do find a chink in the wall of hopelessness where you can begin to tear it down, where you can see a better future for your sister and brothers near and far. Do acts of kindness, mercy and charity. Contribute to the well-being of this world.

While Advent is a time to engage in quiet meditation about where one needs to turn around and repent, it is also a time to re-engage with the outside world.

God needs us as (in most recently Desmond Tutu’s words) co-partners to bring about this restoration. For, if we do, we might glimpse for a moment the day when ‘there shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.’ And like those gnarly grapevine stumps, we’ll also see little shoots of green emerge as a sign of new life… which is what this season is also about.

[photo: Camino de Santiago, Torres del Rio, Spain]

More scary times

December 7, 2007
Editorial
The Crisis of Faith

Mitt Romney obviously felt he had no choice but to give a speech yesterday on his Mormon faith. Even by the low standards of this campaign, it was a distressing moment and just what the nation’s founders wanted to head off with the immortal words of the First Amendment: A presidential candidate cowed into defending his way of worshiping God by a powerful minority determined to impose its religious tenets as a test for holding public office.

Mr. Romney spoke with an evident passion about the hunger for religious freedom that defined the birth of the nation. He said several times that his faith informs his life, but he would not impose it on the Oval Office.

Still, there was no escaping the reality of the moment. Mr. Romney was not there to defend freedom of religion, or to champion the indisputable notion that belief in God and religious observance are longstanding parts of American life. He was trying to persuade Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Party, who do want to impose their faith on the Oval Office, that he is sufficiently Christian for them to support his bid for the Republican nomination. No matter how dignified he looked, and how many times he quoted the founding fathers, he could not disguise that sad fact.

Mr. Romney tried to cloak himself in the memory of John F. Kennedy, who had to defend his Catholicism in the 1960 campaign. But Mr. Kennedy had the moral courage to do so in front of an audience of Southern Baptist leaders and to declare: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

Mr. Romney did not even come close to that in his speech, at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, before a carefully selected crowd. And in his speech, he courted the most religiously intolerant sector of American political life by buying into the myths at the heart of the “cultural war,” so eagerly embraced by the extreme right.

Mr. Romney filled his speech with the first myth — that the nation’s founders, rather than seeking to protect all faiths, sought to imbue the United States with Christian orthodoxy. He cited the Declaration of Independence’s reference to “the creator” endowing all men with unalienable rights and the founders’ proclaiming not just their belief in God, but their belief that God’s hand guided the American revolutionaries.

Mr. Romney dragged out the old chestnuts about “In God We Trust” on the nation’s currency, and the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance — conveniently omitting that those weren’t the founders’ handiwork, but were adopted in the 1950s at the height of McCarthyism. He managed to find a few quotes from John Adams to support his argument about America’s Christian foundation, but overlooked George Washington’s letter of reassurance to the Jews in Newport, R.I., that they would be full members of the new nation.

He didn’t mention Thomas Jefferson, who said he wanted to be remembered for writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia and drafting the first American law — a Virginia statute — guaranteeing religious freedom. In his book, “American Gospel,” Jon Meacham quotes James Madison as saying that law was “meant to comprehend, with the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

The founders were indeed religious men, as Mr. Romney said. But they understood the difference between celebrating religious faith as a virtue, and imposing a particular doctrine, or even religion in general, on everyone. As Mr. Meacham put it, they knew that “many if not most believed, yet none must.”

The other myth permeating the debate over religion is that it is a dispute between those who believe religion has a place in public life and those who advocate, as Mr. Romney put it, “the elimination of religion from the public square.” That same nonsense is trotted out every time a court rules that the Ten Commandments may not be displayed in a government building.

We believe democracy cannot exist without separation of church and state, not that public displays of faith are anathema. We believe, as did the founding fathers, that no specific religion should be elevated above all others by the government.

The authors of the Constitution knew that requiring specific declarations of religious belief (like Mr. Romney saying he believes Jesus was the son of God) is a step toward imposing that belief on all Americans. That is why they wrote in Article VI that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

And yet, religious testing has gained strength in the last few elections. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has made it the cornerstone of his campaign. John McCain, another Republican who struggles to win over the religious right, calls America “a Christian nation.”

CNN, shockingly, required the candidates at the recent Republican debate to answer a videotaped question from a voter holding a Christian edition of the Bible, who said: “How you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you. Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book?”

The nation’s founders knew the answer to that question says nothing about a candidate’s fitness for office. It’s tragic to see it being asked at a time when Americans need a president who will tell the truth, lead with conviction and restore the nation’s moral standing, not one who happens to attend a particular church.

In a few words, 'J'en ai marre' (I am fed up).

New York, part 2

Yesterday I had the surprise of being able to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge in a gentle snowfall. It is so hard to choose just one photo of the bridge, so here are a bunch.

My great uncle way back when used to help change the light bulbs on the bridge.

New York City, part 1

Photos first, then comments later. These are all of Saint Paul's Chapel, site of a massive relief effort after the collapse of the World Trade Center.


Five months ago they removed the pews and moved the altar to the centre. It's beautiful but one loses a sense of the scuffed up pews that served the responders post collapse.


One of the displays in the church/museum.



Looking over to World Financial Center and World Trade Center 7 (rebuilt)


The graveyard looking over to the Deutsch Bank building.



Looking back at Saint Paul's from the graveyard.


May the souls of the departed rest in peace
and rise in glory.

Rhetorical Question

Why when a woman writes about peace-making, it's called 'passionate and emotional'

but

when a man writes about war-making, it's called 'deliberate'?

[some Irish Celtic peace doves to accompany this question.. so you know my bias.]

It's not what you think

He's really flipping us the bird...

... with his insistence, despite the NEI report to the contrary, that Iran is building nucular bombs.