All creatures great and small

"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All creatures great and small."

Many thanks to Marcia who reminded me of these lines near the end of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". There is certainly something spiritual, if not supernatural, about connecting with the wildlife who live around the house I live in. The skinks (Egernia cunninghamia) are in Fred's rock wall or close by. Some years ago I spent many hours with them, especially with the first adult male who had made tracks over the paddock to come onto the house site after building was finished. The rock had been blasted and the wall begun. A slight tip on his tail had him easily recognised, and we got close. I observed things like the gatherings that happened as birthing was to take place. Since those days (20 years ago?) their fortunes have waxed and waned. We are not always here; I misread the signs of dryness and heat, thinking that this year the garden is growing well after good spring rains. But last year's youngsters are very rarely seen, if indeed those very few sightings are not simply me hallucinating! It is still dry. It has certainly been hot. (The hottest January on record and 4degrees hotter than average.) The animals around us know it. In the heat I do not go out and sit with those who live here on the outside. I miss the stillness and that attitude of prayer that was perhaps in Coleridge's mind as he wrote these lines. Talking and singing with the magpies is the closest relationship, but rather "busy" as well as I sort out sunflower seeds for Caruso, and currants for "Aunty" (the mother) and then disappear quietly inside so that the male can come and take some of the food.

But watching the small birds is a delight and a wonder. Wrens fluffing up in the bird bath and spraying water everywhere. Again, we have not seen as much of their youngsters this year. A clear sign perhaps that this has been an extremely dry January here, and the world is suffering. Even insects seem to be scarce. A couple of weeks ago we were watching the Banjo frog (Limnodynastes interioris) despatching a couple of ants and a beetle and trying to catch a spider at the back door. This week there are very few moths, or anything, attracted to the light at the door. I must cultivate a deeper prayerfulness and attention in these times of loving connection to the denizens of yulungaburra!

"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All creatures great and small."

Four wasted decades

http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2010/01/four-wasted-decades-anglican-inability.html

Colin Coward has a great piece here on the history of the Anglican church's engagement with homosexuality.
I do remember hearing at the coffee table one Synod a comment "now we have let the women in, who is next? the gays?", well something like that. It must have been twenty years ago. So someone in Canberra and Goulburn had started to think about the issue then. <sigh>

Maybe it is time to revisit that crude comment overheard years ago and to ask who is Jesus supping with these days?

Flies in the ointment? scripture and doctrine.

Two flies in the ointment - on inclusivity, doctrine and scripture. A piece by Richard Lambert
http://www.inclusivechurch2.net/index.php?id=12873

This article on The Inclusive Church site seems to me to have more to say than the writer intended. While it speaks specifically to a church in danger of becoming exclusive and putting up the barriers, it talks also of issues that we have been struggling with in the small group I have been in that is thinking about Palestine and Israel and finding out a bit about Christian Zionism. The questions which are raised are what do we do with the bible, with the biblical text, and Richard also asks  "what about doctrine?"

to look at the conclusion first:

"...Exclusivists are not playing games: they really do believe that they have a mission to save the world from the three abominations of secularism, pluralism, and relativism, which they see as co-terminous. And if history tells us anything at all it is that ideologues on a mission are dangerous. The two flies in the ointment are fast growing into an army of locusts."

Yesterday I had a phone call from a young man called Chris. He seemed ok, wasn't asking for money, just wanted to say something. I held on and heard that I was going to hell. I'm a bit sorry that I was about to leave the house when I got the call and simply gave my "christian credentials" to him rather than finding out and talking with him some more. But going the web site he mentioned I find the traditional catholics who know (who know) that the pope is a heretic (will join me in hell no doubt) and that the church has been wrong since Vatican II. (and Anglicans since 1660?) So we shrug our shoulders and let him get on with hopefully meaningless telephoning.

But in the meantime, Ugandans are being stirred up to hate (and murder) homosexuals with the bible on their side (as the men who murdered Matthew Shepard (in Laramie, Ohio) "knew"); and fundamentalists are taking the land that god has given them from Palestinian villagers who have been farming land for generations; and others are planning bombings and any way they can to shake us out of our consumptive (Western) affluenza. <sigh>

Richard Lambert focuses on two problems for the church. One is the ignorance of scripture; ignorance of the status of scripture. What is this text? It is not a science text book, nor is it a (flawed) journalistic account or an English Essay. It is an attempt to understand, spread over three or four thousand years. And that understanding is changing and growing. It is "work in progress". Lambert says that doctrine is similarly being developed.

As someone who is wedded to Anglican liturgical practice I baulk a little (tiny little bit) at this. But then, I remember that I started with the 1927 prayer book with its diocesan amended booklet (All Saint's Ainslie practice in the 1950's and 1960's); moved to a newer prayer book in the seventies (from which turmoil of change Evan Burge's Thanksgiving Prayer translation of Hippolytus' Great Thanksgiving has now entered our tool box); ... I have used three different hymn books (as well as finding jewels in my grandfather's Methodist Hymn book and collecting many song books); soo, "how many Anglicans does it take to change a light bulb?... none, because they don't change". well, it's wrong, we do... It actually doesn't take very long to memorise new prayers in a liturgical practice. The clue is "practice"...

To make this blog less of a rant; where am I going? If I argue with someone about women's ministry or homosexuality then I am often reduced to using their methods of argument, of using proof texts, using the bible in a way that is alien to me.

Richard writes: "Texts about divorce or love of money are seen nowadays as highly flexible, while those about homosexuality or women bishops (being minority concerns) are set in concrete.""

Last Sunday I read the first lesson, Isaiah proclaiming relief to the downtrodden and exiled Jerusalemites. "Your land will no more be called barren... it shall be "married".".. as a proof text it means one thing to a modern Israeli, another to a disempowered, landless Palestinian. But to humanity in this globalised world, it means hope. It isn't simply the way we read a text, it is where we read that text from and what other experience and knowledge we bring to it.

To be an inclusive church is to be a church which has its eyes and its heart open. Wide Open. Open to many thoughts and experiences, polupoikilos... many coloured. Not a church damning us all to hell. But a church inviting us to heaven!

internet nanny?

http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/communications/soa/Don-t-rely-on-filters-be-better-parents/0,139023754,339300452,00.htm?omnRef=1337&omnRef=1337

Canon Dr Ray Cleary writes about the proposed net nanny internet filter. It reflects a conversation in the car this afternoon about who is responsible for road safety? So often these days governments (state governments usually) are blamed for not fixing the road. But you fix the road and we drive faster, so maybe the danger level stays the same! Drive to the conditions is not said often enough.

Dr Cleary is the head of Anglicare Victoria. he writes:

"Some commentators may fear an over-regulated nanny-state or Big Brother scenario, but I fear too many Australians are coming to rely on government restrictions in place of family and community values and expectations.
We demand a progressive democracy, but are shying away from the responsibility of ensuring those around us exercise their rights conscientiously without being exploitative or degrading of other members of the community."

Dr Cleary also asks: "what are the safety nets and accountability structures in place to prevent present and future governments censoring a range of political views, opinions and expressions which they find politically unacceptable...?" This is a question that I also have about ASIO's security findings on asylum seekers. Their adverse findings on refugees are very few, but who do they actually answer to? Does the minister or the Prime Minister have a final say on who is deemed a security risk? Their is no way to appeal the finding, there is no arbitrator. It is a final and terrible judgement.

Religion, power and Palestine and Israel (and the US)

An article in The Canberra Times by Crispin Hull. In the small group I am attending which is looking at biblical issues and Palestine, I am learning even more about English Protestants in the nineteenth century (and earlier). People like my grandmother's great-grandfathers in Cranbrook, Kent. The family there (Dobells and Crofts) were firey protestant preacher types. But be that as it may, Crispin's article raises many issues and the general issue of religion and politics needs to be examined. We need to recognise the power of religious views, and use that power responsibly. Not wielding it like a sledge hammer, but with gentle care and with eyes (and hearts) wide open.

http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2010/01/09/religion-behind-us-military-support-for-israel/#more-9503

Epiphany

There is a sermon and a meditation on our parish web site that might inspire epiphanous thoughts. Jeannette's 2004 epiphany sermon reminds us of the journey, the incredible mind blowing journey that was taken by the magi, and she uses TS Eliot's poetry. Linda's 2008 Good Friday meditation also uses this poem and some others. birth, and death, beginning and ending, alpha and omega...
(Jeannette's sermon) http://stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons/5Jan2004_JM.html
(Linda's meditation) http://stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons/Good_Friday_Meditation2008_LA.html

 The Journey of the Magi

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:

A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.


All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This:   were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

The creative word

http://www.stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons/03January2010_RN.html

Rebecca's sermon for the 3rd of January. She had a great passage to work with, (John1) but brought many ideas to it.

It cut through me like a knife on Sunday. Pushing in the pressure points that release gnarled and knotted muscle. I am still not sure what to do with it though. But at least I've got it on the web now! I should read it again. Or should I just go and act on it?

Rebecca reminded me that the Word (logos) is also dabar; the creative word. I have found since returning from Jerusalem and Palestine last year, that talking about the experience allowed me to process it more strongly and understand more. Conversation, telling of story, created a bigger meaning (and hopefully allowed that meaning to be communicated!) We need to continue to tell those stories. Not just the Palestinian and also the Israeli story, but the Australian settler and indigenous stories, the Women in Black stories and our own stories. Hopefully with conversation, not simply a monologue. or monoblog...

So here is that paragraph from Rebecca Newland's sermon at St Philip's on 3rd January 2919:

The Greek word for Word is "logos" from which we get our word, logic.   In Greek philosophy at the time it referred to universal divine reason.  This divine reason was an eternal and unchanging truth present from the time of creation. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus used the word logos to refer to a rational divine intelligence, which today is sometimes referred to in scientific discourse as the "mind of God."  But the writer of John's Gospel was also well versed in Hebrew scripture and thought.  In Hebrew the word for "Word" is 'dabar'.  "Dabar" is not just a noun, the name for something.  Dabar is a verb and it means something that is active and creative.    So when God speaks at the beginning of Genesis, his words create – earth and heavens, stars and moons, animals and plants and humans. When John writes of Jesus as the Word he is describing Jesus as a creative, generative power.   One way to look at it this passage– and one more in keeping with John's idea – is that if God is the idea, them the word is what speaks the idea.   And this word creates.  If God is love then Jesus is loving and a loving that creates a reality.
http://www.stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons/03January2010_RN.html

Climate change cooperation and fundamentalism

Lord May on the Science Show today (2nd Jan 2010); I think he was talking about Game Theory but also thinking about how religion keeps a society together but how religious fundamentalism arises as we have trouble adapting to changed circumstances. He is actually talking about global warming, but says: "I see the rise of fundamentalism both in the east and in the west, as a reaction to the changes we need."

Furthermore, we need not only to cooperate, but to cooperate in equitable proportion. We need to be coming down to a level of carbon input that across the world would amount to an average of 50% reduction. But that means in Britain, and that's why we set our targets, an 80% reduction. It means we're coming down to it and we're allowing for China and India to move up to it, so more slowly than they're heading.
You've always got to keep that in mind when you hear that someone, the Americans are thinking of maybe doing 80%. That means they're only doing half as much as us, cause they're starting from being twice as bad. Huge inequities. It's not just rhetoric to say that we are already seeing the incivilities that the problems of too many people and too much impact per person are putting on the land....

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2778548.htm#transcript worth reading or listening to!