If you are going to be an atheist and nihilist, then be one. Only second-raters repeat secular nostrums in a pious guise. Such theology can never possibly make any difference, by definition. It’s a kind of sad, grey, seasonal echo of last year’s genuine black.
A clown embraces humiliation and is supposed to fall down, get the pie in the face, metaphorically be in the dirt. For the audience of a tramp/hobo clown, the clown is a way of living into that humiliation, that humility. It’s funny because we’ve all been there — we’ve all been in the dirt.
The Guardian (UK) offers a fascinating obituary on theologian Edward Schillebeeckx.
Seminarian Karri Backer has been leading contemplative prayer groups for men in a LA Correctional Facility, which houses the most severe offenders.
Bishop Pierre Whalon has recently suggested that TEC put the cart in from of the mule by acting with respect to the confirmation and consecration of +Gene Robinson before we had fully formed or voted for a theological rational for such actions. Sadly we cannot change the past, but we might at this time affirm that in the deliberations of GC and the church over the past thirty years we have done that work and then ratified on the floors of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies.
“Roger,” she said, “that is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith.” Then I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith.
“Even those elsewhere who agree with a full inclusion position do not on the whole support how we have gone about it. While General Convention is the final arbiter of what The Episcopal Church believes, simply relying on bald resolutions and election results does not spell out its teaching.” – Bishop Whalon
The program explores where God is in this devastating tragedy.
The problem of theodicy: In the face of disaster, God is either incapable of acting and is therefore impotent, or God chooses not to act and is therefore indifferent to human suffering. An all-powerful and loving God would not permit such a disaster. Pundits everywhere are pointing either to irrelevance of faith in God or looking for some way to explain why God might want to punish the Haitians.
If my homiletical foot has slipped out of place, or if I have broken a boundary on the way to making some point, I take great comfort that the Creed is there to suggest what is normative. In that moment, the Creed is the remembering of a grace-giving Law.