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   Saturday, August 03, 2002
Happy Endings


We're watching The Scarlet Letter on the VCR - the PBS version, not the Demi Moore version where they changed it to have a happy ending. I refuse to watch The Scarlet Letter with a happy ending. However, for people who actually like the idea of giving The Scarlet Letter a happy ending, I have a few suggestions of other classics that can be modified:


  • Wuthering Heights: It was all a mistake. When he goes to dig up Cathy's grave, Heathcliff discovers that she never died after all. Heathcliff is reunited with his beloved.
  • Moby Dick: A heroic tale of the hunt in which Ahab gets his whale.
  • Anna Karenina: Anna Karenina realizes that she truly loves her husband after all, and returns to him, and they live happily ever after. Or, if you prefer the less moral version, her husband surrenders her child to her, and she and Vronsky and the child live happily ever after.
  • Madame Bovary: Emma's husband Charles becomes a brilliant and successful doctor, and Emma is never even tempted to adultery.
  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Angel realizes his mistake and returns in the nick of time to Tess, getting to her before Alec.
  • Jude the Obscure: Jude makes a lot of money, and he and Sue and the children move to America, where no one knows them and they can start a new life.
  • The Crucible: John Proctor's arguments carry the day, and all of the Salem witches are freed.
  • Frankenstein: Frankenstein returns and helps his creation. After appropriate education from Frankenstein, his creation becomes a popular lecturer.
  • Kafka's Metamorphosis: A female cockroach arrives, sweeps Gregor Samsa off his feet, and they run away together.

Guadalupe, a Quaker library, and Quaker canon lawyers


On the street, outside the office building in Santa Ana where we meet, stood a small crowd. One man held a white banner with a picture of Guadalupe, and another a crucifix. I couldn't help thinking, as I looked at the banner, of that comeback to Protestant complaints about Catholic statues: "Oh no, we don't worship statues any more; now we worship banners." Guadalupe stood out vividly against the white. After I had gone upstairs, to the library and my committee meeting, I could hear them still from the street, speaking in Spanish, and at one point shouting many things beginning with "Viva." I've only learned to read a bit of Spanish, not speak it, in my time in California, but I suppose it must have been a celebration of the canonization of Juan Diego.


The library has, alongside the Quaker books, an eclectic collection. The words of the Dalai Lama sit side by side with the Book of Mormon. There are shelves devoted to Christian spirituality, general spirituality, peace, ecology, even (though none of us on the Library Committee is sure why) a small collection of cookbooks. In the last month or so, our collection has been expanded by the addition of more Bibles and Bible study aids, and some books on Judaism and on Messianic Judaism. Since I am to lead a Bible study on the Sermon on the Mount, I was glad to find what I think is a new addition, a book by Clarence Jordan on the Sermon on the Mount. Clarence Jordan founded Koinonia, a community in Georgia, in the days of segregation, which was integrated and farmed together. He also put out his own set of Cotton Patch translations of different books of the New Testament (I remember that Peter is "Rocky" in the Cotton Patch version). I am interested to see what he says of the Sermon on the Mount.


While we were discussing the disposition, on the shelves, of our collection of Faith and Practice books (each Yearly Meeting has one, and revises it every decade or so, so between our own and those of other Yearly Meetings we have a collection), I thought of an analogy for what Faith and Practice is, which seemed to fit. They are, I said, our version of catechism and canon law. Of course, both the process for producing them and the result are rather different, but the function is similar: Faith and Practice tells what we believe, and also lays out the rules we use to conduct our business. So, given that analogy, here is what the nearest Quaker equivalent to a canon lawyer is like.


She is a frail, elderly woman, either what's known as a "birthright Friend" (born to a Quaker family and raised Quaker) or else a very longtime convert. Perhaps she is known to a wide circle of Friends Meetings, on account of her work, past or present, with the American Friends Service Committee. Or perhaps she is simply known within her own Meeting: it is she who has organized the library, or who faithfully plays the piano on Sunday morning before Meeting for Worship. Sometimes during Meeting for Worship, she is moved to speak. It may be about what she learned as a child, growing up in a Quaker Meeting, from her parents or uncles and aunts. Or she may, from her deep knowledge of early Quaker history, have a story from the lives of early Quakers. Perhaps it is the tale of that Quaker who, dozing through a Quaker Meeting many years ago, was startled by the words of a woman on the bench across from him, who rose and spoke of comfortable Friends, who came regularly to Meeting and left none the wiser. In Meeting for Business, everyone knows that if the clerk is ever at a loss as to the correct process to follow for any decision, whether it can be acted on right away, or must be referred first to committee, or laid over a month for seasoning, she will have the answer. And her answer will invariably be in accord with Faith and Practice.



Non-blogosphere news


Checking email, I see that a friend from my former Meeting who has been making regular trips to volunteer in the Balkans is thinking of putting together an inter-Balkans Alternatives to Violence Program series in mid-May to June of next year. And I have to make up my mind about whether I'm going to take the first year of Education for Ministry, at a local Episcopal Church, next year. On the Yizkor book front, we found out one section of the book has 18 pages of names of people who died in the Holocaust; it is queued to be next to be translated, once one of our volunteers for translating Hebrew is done with an assignment or we get a new volunteer. And tomorrow I get to start my Bible study group on the Sermon on the Mount. So I've been reading and rereading the Sermon on the Mount the past few weeks (and also took a look at what various people had said about it - from Spong to Bonhoeffer to Aquinas's Catena Aurea), trying to decide how I am going to lead this one.




Rowan Williams


I meant to end the blogwatch about Rowan Williams last week, but I keep seeing interesting articles about him. Such as this article, by Nathan Lott (who also has interesting commentary on the Middle East), in which he reflects on Rowan Williams and the future of the Anglican Communion, or this article in the Boston Phoenix (thanks to Holy Weblog for the link), which argues that Rowan Williams is at the forefront of religious thought today.


Other Blogwatch


Several bloggers are linking to Kairos for the article on the word "if," and I will, too. I can't seem to link to the article itself, but if you scroll down to Thursday, August 1, it is there. I found it a useful reminder because I do tend to do a lot of "if only" thinking. Father Jim links to an interesting article in the Washington Post about research on a gene which may show some children are better able to recover from child abuse than others. Sean Gallagher has been summarizing some remarks by Professor John Cavadini on the current scandals in the Catholic Church (again I can't seem to link to his archive, but you can scroll down until you find "John Cavadini and the Situation", or you can go here to read John Cavadini in Notre Dame magazine), while Peter Nixon summarizes an article by John Allen about his experience visiting a hospital in Guatemala filled with children misshapen by malnutrition and Fr. Ron Rolheiser's questions for conservative to ponder. Lots of other interesting things out there, but this is all I have time to post about this morning.




Today's Quiz Results


I am Friday's Child

What day are you?






What Psych-Ward do you belong to?




   Thursday, August 01, 2002
UK papers have the coolest obituaries


Such as this one. Link from Mike Hardy.


The Tablet on Rowan Williams


Peter Nixon of Sursum Corda had a link to this well-informed and temperate article in the Tablet about the state of the Anglican Communion and what can be expected of Rowan Williams.




Back at the Catholic Worker House


I was back at the Catholic Worker house yesterday. I didn't describe the house itself, last time, so I'll describe it. On the front door is a crucifix, then you enter a hall which has a bookshelf, mostly full of children's books. There's the kitchen, and a pantry with large refrigerators and more food, in bulk, and there's a couple of rooms that get used in food preparation. One, between the kitchen and the hall, is where the bread is brought and cut, and the other, to the left of the hall, is where the salad and fruit salad get made. Then there are a couple more rooms filled with bedding and mattresses, where people sleep, and the Catholic Workers who live in the house sleep upstairs.


Yesterday was pretty typical. When I came I helped in the kitchen, first with the onions and then opening cans. Then a group of high school kids showed up, this one of moderate size (seven boys and two teachers). But the food hadn't arrived, so a few boys got sent to help in the kitchen, and the rest of us chatted outside on the porch. When the food arrived, we all went in the room to the left of the hall to do the salads (I peeled and grated carrots). This room has a fireplace and a piano. It's decor sometimes changes, but now it is simply full of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She adorns the mantle, she hangs on the wall, and she is on most of the votive candles on the mantle. Also on the mantle is a sacramentary; I believe, though I haven't been at the right time, that there is a priest who does Mass at the house on Tuesday evenings.


I grated the carrots and talked with an older woman, from Sicily, about the canonization of Juan Diego, and then about saints in general, while one of the teachers talked with some of the boys about a movie which shows Native American code talkers during World War II. Then I had to leave for work. A good start to the day.


How Did You Know?


My college roommate, a gay man, told me he was out to himself at thirteen, and out to his parents at sixteen. He never remembered being attracted to a woman.


I, though, am in some ways like the woman posing the question on DykeWrite: I found my way to the lesbian community after a certain experience (in my case it was not a rape, but rather being forcibly groped by a man I had thought was a friend), and, like her, later chose to marry a man (to whom I have now been married for fourteen years).


So was that forcible grope (or even the longer term sense that too many men wanted to pressure me beyond my limits), my only reason for being drawn toward women? Not exactly. Certainly the lesbian community was for me a refuge from sexual pressure, and a place where I felt safe from sexual violence. But I had had emotional attachments to women, even some level of sexual thoughts, before, and perhaps, too, a certain slowness of interest in the opposite sex, as a teenager (I remember lots of other girls becoming interested in boys in junior high, before I could bring myself to share the interest), might suggest that I was somehow less straight, to begin with, than the average girl.


I defined myself as bisexual, open to either sex, though devoting more of my active seeking to women, because of my bad experience. And what happened was, that I became involved with a man anyway, whom I loved, and he died. Well, what woman should be asked to compete with a man's ghost? Or what man, for that matter? And what would I have to offer anyone, in a romantic way, feeling so keenly the ways in which I had failed the friend who had died? For years, I did not so much as kiss another person, man or woman. Not that I was isolated: I socialized with college friends and people from work; I was active with my Quaker Meeting and the local Urban Ministry; I made friends. I simply kept those friendships platonic.


One day, at a housewarming party for my old college roommate (the same gay college roommate, in fact, who begins this story), I met Joel. Across a crowded room, I saw - well, actually, across a crowded room I saw a lesbian friend of mine, of several years acquaintance. (As I've said before on this blog, no matter how goodlooking you are, until I've actually talked to you, you're less important to me than the person I've already spoken to.) Anyway, she was already talking with Joel, and a roommate of his, and they were all talking about death. And as I joined the conversation, it became apparent right away that Joel understood my grief, that he did not think it strange that I wasn't over it after two and a half years. We kept talking, first about death, then about his ambivalent feelings about the Catholic Church, about the time when he'd considered becoming a Trappist monk, about contemplative thought, and in all of this conversation, I felt understood. We were engaged a few months later, married a year after that, and are still together after being married for fourteen years.


Some years later I was, for a while, on a mailing list for lesbian or bisexual women who were married or otherwise in committed relationships with men. Some of us were clear on intending to be faithful to the men we were involved with, but there were others who said that, however much they loved the men they were with, they weren't sure that they could give up women. For some reason, this hasn't been a source of strain in my marriage. If anything, infertility has been a far greater strain, for me, than any attraction to other women.


So does that mean that I've changed? Or that I never was really that gay to begin with? I don't know. I do have thoughts and feelings about other women sometimes; I simply set them aside. You're always going to be attracted, some of the time, to someone other than your husband, right? Marriage is about being faithful anyway. I know well that there are some people who would never be suitable for heterosexual marriage, but I don't seem to be one of those.


I'm a sucker for quizzes: the kind in women's magazines, the kind at Beliefnet, the kind that give you cute symbols to stick in your blog, or any web site quiz. Not long ago Joel found me a web site full of quizzes: how cruel you are, or how pure, and so on. One quiz after another told me I was a saint to rival the Little Flower: kind, honest, pure, and all the rest. (What's the deal with that? Is everyone else at that site going out of their way to try to test as wicked, for fun, so that someone taking the test normally looks fit to be canonized? I should never have scored as that pure, with all the things I admitted to.) Finally, I got to the "Are you gay?" test, and took it as a heterosexual woman. You are 51% gay, it told me. Now why would it tell me that? Was it the hiking boots I wear regularly (jeans or corduroys and hiking boots for workdays, long embroidered dresses for Sunday going to meeting clothes)? My lack of makeup and unshaved legs? The fact that I hadn't kissed a guy till I was seventeen, or the fact that I had danced with, and kissed, a woman? Here I am, fifteen years with one man, and the quiz still says I'm mainly gay.


Still, when I hear his laughter from another room, it cheers me up, and his arms are like no one else's. After all, isn't that what most of us want? Certainly it's what I want.


The Real Problem with Condoms


Amy Welborn links to this article, which describes the real problem with condoms: people don't (expletive deleted) use them. Just as people don't (expletive deleted) abstain from sex till they marry, people don't (expletive deleted) use the protection that their behavior would seem to rationally require. The fact is, people are pretty darn wayward about sex, no matter what standard they're supposed to be trying to meet. And AIDS has no mercy on our waywardness.


Christianity as Metaphor?


The Goliard Blog wonders why anyone would stay in a church, after ceasing to believe in key doctrines, like the Virgin Birth, or even the Resurrection. First, if you want to understand people who consider themselves Christian while reinterpreting the Resurrection, I think it's Bishop Spong you want to be reading, not Father Richard McBrien or Garry Wills. (I see, looking today at the followup to yesterday's post, that someone did direct him to Bishop Spong. OK. In answer to today's question, no, I don't at all see McBrien, Wills or Greeley as the same as Spong. But for understanding what someone would be about who stays in the clergy while doubting a bodily resurrection - not at all Greeley's position - Spong would be your man). Personally, theologically liberal though I think I am, when it comes to the Resurrection I'll side with C.S. Lewis over Bishop Spong. Still, I have some ideas on why someone, ceasing to believe in a traditional way, would stay.


Can you picture not believing in a bodily resurrection, but not wanting to let go of the image of resurrection as renewal? I can. To me it seems that Christian stories and images can speak so powerfully about how a life can be transformed, that it's easy for me to see why someone would want to hold onto the metaphors, and look for some way to rationally reframe what the reality behind the story might be.


And the liturgy is compelling - not, obviously, for everyone (as a Quaker I've had occasion to meet people who don't relate to smells and bells) - but for some. It's easy to satirize the liturgical sensibilities of I Can't Believe It's Not Roman Catholicism!TM (in one of my gaming groups I was assigned an "Anglican Hun" to roleplay, and did my best to supply him with a proper love of ritual - his craft was "Make Vestments"). But at the same time, I don't think it's just a sense of aesthetics that makes people, somehow, keep resonating to a liturgy after they've found that they doubt the thing that they understand the liturgy to represent.


Maybe it's some natural appeal in what the liturgy represents, or maybe it's simply a tie to upbringing or tradition. But the resonance can linger, even after belief has faded. My father told me a story when I was younger. I don't imagine it was ever an actual event - probably originally it was simply an expression of the attitudes of one side, about the other side, in the Greek Civil War that followed World War II. But my father told it to make a point about how people can be held by what they learn when young, and I think, in that way, it makes emotional sense to me. The story is that a young man has ceased to believe in Orthodoxy, and has become an atheist and a Communist. For some reason (the explanation for this I don't remember well), he goes to receive the Eucharist, and pockets the bread and brings it out of the church. And his Communist friend says to him, drop that on the ground and step on it. And he can't do it. His mind may tell him that it's only an ordinary piece of bread, and he may be embarrassed before his friend to treat it otherwise, but something inside him won't let him dishonor it.


For me, that resonance meant that when I stopped believing in God, as a teenager, I wanted by all means not to partake of Communion; it mattered to me that I not do that without believing. For others, though, it may mean that they want to hold onto that practice, even if somehow they have to reframe what they mean by it.




   Tuesday, July 30, 2002
Baptism on TV


Amy Welborn doesn't care for the way Sex and the City handled the baptism of Miranda's baby (not a huge surprise, though I've only seen one episode of Sex and the City myself, and this one wasn't it). Well, I can't comment on that episode, but the discussion did remind me of a different baptism, on another TV show, which I found well done and dramatically effective. The TV show was East Enders, and the episode was some years ago. A nominally Catholic woman and an equally nominally Anglican man agree to have their baby baptized in the Church of England, with similarly nominally Anglican characters standing as godparents. As the episode with the baptism begins, the prospective godmother is planning to run away with a married man, and so there is this thread, running throughout the episode, of how various events bring her to reflect on her decision. Finally, toward the end of the show, comes the baptism, and as the baptismal promises are made, you can see in the godmother's face her second thoughts. Right after the baptism, she tells the married man that she is not, after all, going with him, and makes an end of it. The show itself I usually found pretty secular, but that didn't prevent them from handling the baptism well.


Unfavorite TV story line dealing with religion (also some years ago, but bizarre enough to stick in my mind): This one on a different soap opera, which shall remain nameless because I have, in fact, forgotten its name. There is a Catholic priest wrestling with celibacy (naturally, he's a Catholic priest, so he must, for the sake of TV drama, be wrestling with celibacy). But he can't wrestle with celibacy in the ordinary way that any priest might, oh no. In his case, it turns out that he has been injured, suffered from amnesia, and completely forgotten that he was a priest. While suffering from amnesia, he fell in love, and later found out that he was, after all, a priest. After I had figured out that this was the story line I was walking into, I decided it was just too weirdly far-fetched for further viewing.


Gay and Lesbian Music


Andrew Sullivan remarks that an appreciation of Helen Reddy is almost the only common ground between the musical culture of gay men and lesbians. I don't know if I'd go that far, since my own introduction to women's music came from a gay man I was rooming with. But it could be he's the exception to the rule. I'm some years out of date on what's popular in the gay and lesbian music scenes, as, indeed, I am with music generally (I guess I am now an old fogey). But what I remember from my younger days is that music by gay men tended to be more humorous, while music by lesbians was somewhat more serious. Gay men had, for example, the self-mocking, "What Kind of a Self-Respecting Faggot Am I" ("I don't read magazines like GQ, and leather makes me break out in a rash ..."). Lesbian music seemed to have the larger supply both of serious political songs and of serious love songs.


And then, on the other hand, there is Phranc. Phranc had her serious songs, but she also had humor, both about the world in general and about lesbian life. There is, for example, her song about a comic book coming out about Pope John Paul II ("Move over Captain America, step aside Incredible Hulk! Make way for the caped crusader, the one they call the Pope." I don't know how this one would go over with St. Blog's, but I found it funny. Anyway, the facts in it about John Paul II were benign; the humor was the contrast between him and the usual comic book hero.) Or, for another example, her song about the effect on her life of her crush on the muscular Carolyn ("Carolyn, all my friends ignore me, cause I go for the gym, instead of a drink. And I've started to wear polyester, so I cannot blame them for what they think."). I wonder whether anyone at DykeWrite can think of any other really humorous lesbian singer.


Rowan Williams


Nothing new today at Anglicans Online, but I have time to read some of the articles in the past few days that I hadn't read yet. Here's one, in the Guardian, called "The Rowan I Knew," which talks about his origin in a small Welsh mining town, his "turbulent and creative mind," his preaching eloquence, and his love of the Desert Fathers. In the Independent, Nicholas Pyke reports on the divided church that Williams will lead, including the comments of an evangelical priest, a gay priest (one of the only two vicars in the Church of England in a publically acknowledged same-sex relationship), an Anglo-Catholic priest, and a woman priest, while Andrew Brown discusses Williams' potential clask with the UK government over a possible US invasion of Iraq. In the Opinion, Christopher Howse discusses Rowan Williams' ideas "on being creatures."


Elsewhere on the Web, Planet Out expresses its pleasure at the appointment of the first gay-positive leader of a major faith.


I think the press coverage on the new Archbishop of Canterbury may be winding down, so this will probably be my last Rowan Williams press coverage roundup for now. You can always look at Anglicans Online for more.


Locust Eater


Stranger in a Strange Land had a plug yesterday for Locust Eater, so I checked it out, and it does indeed look like a cool Christian blog. Locust Eater's name refers to John the Baptist's diet, and the way in which he jarred the status quo. Here is how they describe themselves:


"Christianity in the U.S. has become little more than a civil state religion. We find this to be a bad thing. Many conservative Christians practice an idolatry of the Bible. Many liberal Christians practice a contentless, feel-good spiritiuality. Neither position is helpful; both end up nullifying much of the good Christians could otherwise do in the world.


"Us? We draw on both; we are critical of both. We are not conservatives. We are not liberals. We are Locust Eater."


Right now Locust Eaters includes articles about Bush's Middle East policy, the arrest of ten per cent of the population of the small town of Tulia, Texas on charges of cocaine trafficing, a former Lutheran pastor who is living off other people's trash, and James Dobson, along with others.


Stranger in a Strange Land also recommends Urban Onramps; I'll take a look at that site sometime later this week.




   Monday, July 29, 2002
I won't have much time for extensive posts till after I get some scripts working, so for now it is blogwatch.


The Beam in Your Own Eye


Mike Hardy had a good post last Tuesday about the problem of arguing against homosexuality in bad faith: going for the cheap shot against gay people which will bring a visceral reaction, rather than presenting the principles of sexual morality you are relying on in a way that might actually challenge practices that are widespread among straight people (such as birth control and divorce). Father Jim Tucker followed up Saturday with a post called The Greatest Treason in which he basically agreed with Mike on this point:


"If we're willing to avoid discussing the principles of sexual morality (which are, after all, why we believe that same-sex marriage in God's eyes is not possible) and to use the cheap shots to win the fight, what do we achieve? At best, an external compliance with a list of permissible and forbidden actions. But are the hearts of the complying persons turned to Christ and transformed by the values of Christian sexual ethics?" (See Father Jim's blog for the rest.)


Rowan Williams


Tolle, Blogge has some posts giving positive thoughts (despite some misgivings) about the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I'm having trouble with the archives at this site, but the posts can be found on Wednesday, July 24th. Thanks to Father Jim for the links.


Tolle, Blog also links to an odd take on the new Archbishop of Canterbury at Ship of Fools.


The Church of Nigeria has issued a press release expressing appreciation of the new Archbishop and trusting that he will be too well-informed a theologian to promote an unscriptural sexual ethic. And Anglicans Online has more articles from the British press which I don't have time to read or summarize just now.


Pacifism


Another interesting post about pacifism at Tolle, Blog, this one a description of an article in First Things that critiques a particular variety of pacifism. This one on July 19th.


Scandal Response


Some interesting discussion about how ordinary Catholics should respond to the sexual abuse scandals at Amy Welborn's blog. She also has some good articles about World Youth Day.