May is Older Americans Month. As a church, let’s take this opportunity to consider both our attitudes toward our older members, and also our plans for working with them and with the seniors in our communities as they (and we) age.
Our lives stop being lives and begin to be a series of one-act plays on stages within audiences – since everyone we think should listen is busy on their own stage. Seven billion stages and an empty theater – empty but for God who leans forward, loving what God sees ferociously, leaning forward in his one auditorium seat, with God’s elbows on God’s knees, eyes wide, full of beaming love.
Jodie Foster directs George Clooney and Julia Roberts in a potent indictment of our economic system that has decimated the middle class, increased the number of poor and made a handful obscenely rich.
In an open letter to ACANZP leaders, Bosco Peters calls out the double-standards and hypocrisy concerning LGBT persons, calling out the different ways the debates around remarriage after divorce and the blessing of committed same-sex couples have played out there.
Pope Francis appointee addresses National Catholic Prayer Breakfast saying “All manner of immorality is not only accepted and tolerated today in advanced societies, it is even promoted as a social good,”
At first, I must admit that the change from a beautiful, historic sanctuary to a much more modest one was disconcerting. There’s a lot you lose when you don’t have pews. I miss kneeling during parts of the service. It’s harder to snuggle children close and hold hands with your spouse. Chairs are meant for meetings, while pews invite worship. I’ve discovered, however, that there are some significant things churches gain with those utilitarian chairs.
Why has nobody written a Broadway musical about The Episcopal Church (TEC) or our cherished Book of Common Prayer? Encouragingly, perhaps few outsiders find us sufficiently obnoxious to be fertile soil for humor. Less encouragingly, in comparison to the Mormons, TEC has a lower public profile, our institutions are less energetic, we expect less from our membership, and our liturgies are more common than unique, representing a (if not the) principal root of most English-language Christian worship.
The image from our Te Deum window over the West Doors of the cathedral.. is one I find striking. It is of St. Michael the Archangel.It reminds me of a church and a church history with which I am uncomfortable. Might. Power. Authority (in the midst of deep mystery! Too many theologians are too sure of too much!) Armor. Shields. Helmets. The Holy Spirit uses wind and whispers!
As with any superhero film it’s all about power. It’s all about good vs. evil but this film raises questions somewhere in the middle of those polar opposites. Still, the underlying message to young people especially is, might makes right. That’s not the kind of power Jesus taught.
the Pope said he would name a commission to study the role of women in the early church as deacons to help guide the church in determining whether the order of Deacons might be opened to women today.