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.
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.
Betsy, Greg, Liz, and Ricardo discuss what makes pop music so appealing and how it can teach us to share our authentic voices in our ministries.
This is my beef, the up-dated language of the Church. The Episcopal Church in particular. For years, the 1928 Prayer Book in beautiful Olde English prevailed. The language may be archaic, but it is beautiful.
And yet, today, I acknowledge that I cannot cast off my belief in God, even in the face of disapproval. In spite of the pressure for me to believe in God, I kind of got used to the idea of having the freedom to choose an irreligious life for a long time…
The truth is, however, I couldn’t stop believing in the existence of a higher power.
I wonder about the use of the word “my” before the word “peace.” It seems that just leaving us with “peace” would have been a good gesture in advance of Jesus’ lift-off. But Jesus seems to own the brand. Jesus has a kind of peace that is not like the peace offered by “the world.” And what we know about the term “The world” in John’s gospel and in the early church writings is that “world” does not refer to the planet on which we live, but to the noise in which we live.
This week’s review is ‘Confirmation,’ the currently playing HBO “docudrama” about the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. This is a film about integrity, conviction, truth, race, gender bias and all the promises we make in our Baptismal Covenant.