Aiya Iluvatar

Becoming a Cheese Head Monastic...

This next week I am heading up to the Order of Julian of Norwich in Wisconsin on retreat. Such retreats are important for clergy, as they feed us so that we may in turn feed the people of God. Many people are surprised to learn that the Episcopal Church has monastic orders. Indeed, Henry VIII abolished the monasteries and convents after nationalizing the Church of England. It was only with the renewal of interest in the catholicity of the church in the mid-1800s that monastic orders within the Anglican tradition began to be re-formed.

There are approximately 168 Anglican religious orders throughout the world, of which 38 have a presence in the United States. All of them share forms of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Order of Julian of Norwich is unusual in that it is a “double order” containing both monks and nuns living in the same monasteries. The “Members Regular” (monks and nuns) take vows of complete poverty, celibacy, and obedience to the order. They wear traditional monastic vestments including a habit and wimples for the nuns. Their worship is from the 1979 BCP with particular additions and changes. All liturgy is in contemporary language.

OJN is a contemplative order, meaning that they consider their major work to be prayer for the world. A typical day includes at least four offices (Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline), the Holy Eucharist and additional seasonal services. The rest of their time is spent in silence excepting necessary communication. Much of their teaching and liturgy centers on the writings of Lady Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic. She was one of Thomas Merton’s favorite writers, and much of my theology is based in her writings.

In addition to the “Members Regular” there are “Oblates” who take modified versions of the vows (A tithe rather than total poverty and chastity rather than celibacy) but live in the world. “Associates” round out the membership, made up of people who wish to be affiliates with the order but need more flexibility. I will be “installed” as an associate on the 5th. This three-fold system of membership is pretty typical for religious orders and makes for a diverse community of prayer and service centered in a cloistered, monastic heart. The advantage of a monastic community is that you know however un-prayerful your day may end up being, there is a community holding you up in prayer.

David+

Technorati Tags: anglican, Anglican religious orders, Anglo-Catholic, christianity, Church of England, episcopal, Henry VIII, Julian of Norwich, Lady Julian of Norwich, monasticism, religion, Thomas Merton

Communion Goings On

I've been watching with interest reports on the meeting of the "Southern" Anglican churches in Africa. The most interesting thing has been their demand that the Episcopal Church send someone else to the Primates' Meeting instead of our Presiding Bishop-Elect due to the fact that many find her theology objectionable (Although I tend to believe this has a lot to do with gender - her theology is not very different from her two predecessors.) It's a time of discernment for Anglican leadership. Do we have the ability as autonomous Anglican provinces to tell one another who can and who can't be sent as a representative to meetings with no binding power? If so, should we start protesting the Primate of Nigeria's participation on the basis of his stand on civil legislation that denies basic human rights to GLBT people in his country? His stand is in obvious violation of Lambeth 1.10 and the Primates' Communique that claims, "The victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us."

Historically, Anglicans have claimed that our Instruments of Unity do not have the authority to formulate dogma (What MUST be believed). Only a fully Ecumenical council does. The claim that issues of sexuality are enough to break communion implies that they are at the level of dogma. Otherwise, it seems to me that "ordinary" doctrine is trumped by Jesus' own prayer that we be one. If we are claiming that the decisions of Lambeth and the Primates' meeting have the weight of Dogma, then both Gene Robinson's consecrators and Peter Akinola are heretics, as is anyone who disagrees with any teaching on the far-reaching decisions by various instruments. I suspect that makes every Anglican a heretic at one point or another.

I simply don't think that exclusion is either called for or helpful. Our Anglican Insturments of Unity are simply not vested with that much power. They are consultations. If someone decides they don't want to be part of a consultation, that is their option, but to insist that others be excluded is a bit too far. Hopefully, Rowan Williams will stick to his guns on this. If we start appointing primates to represent minorities within provinces, we will soon have the liberals in the CofE clamoring for their own alternative primate. Where does it end?

Williams has called for a careful discernment process on our relationships and structures in the Anglican Communion. I hope that he will not abide this latest attempt to short-circuit this process and reach a foregone conclusion. In an age where communication in instant and vituperative, I think it is time for us to back down from the blogs, meet each other face to face, and work on a solution.

Can we honestly say that Jesus expects anything different from us?

David+

Technorati Tags: anglican, christianity, Ecumenical council , episcopal, heresy, Primates' Meeting, ecclesiology, religion

Care to live in the Shire?

Now it appears that you can live in the Shire - although I would guess it carries a pretty hefty price tag. The Shire of Bend, Oregon is a housing development that has Tolkien-themed elements. From the web site:

"The Shire is a development that borrows its basic design concept, styling and features from an era where the sense of community, the beauty of the land and the interaction of the residents with the land had high value. The Shire brings the spirit of a great age to daily living. The Shire has many flavors of eighteenth century English architecture and landscaping chosen because the style of the period was enchanting, evoking good feelings of a simpler lifestyle than the present. The Shire is a place where just the beauty and charm of the grounds and the structures make you relax, smile and be happier. We set out to create a lifestyle rather than a subdivision."

There are a variety of styles available, including the above one that looks more Anglo-Saxon Rohan than English countryside Shire. They use specialty shingles to re-create the thatching. There are even "Hobbit-Homes" in the development that are actually storage sheds:

Very interesting, if a little too commercialized...

David+

Technorati Tags: housing, Rohan, shire, tolkien

Awesome Game!

We've been playing a new game at our Friday night "Dinner & A Movie" gatherings at Canterbury House. In the past, we played the Nuclear War series of games as well as Illuminati (Nice choices for student ministry, I know.) Fluxx is a game from Looney Labs. The most intriguing part is that it starts with only two rules, 'Draw One, Play One" and no goals. New rules and goals are played as cards, so the entire game changes with every play. You play "Keepers" on the table, and if at any time you meet the current goal, you win immediately. The games are short and it's highly addictive. We've played about 2 1/2 hours every Friday.

In addition to the basic deck, there are Christian and Jewish booster packs available, as well as Eco-Fluxx and a Family Fluxx that is simplified for children. (There's also a Stoner Flux which deals with marijuana legalization, but I don't think I'm going to pick that up.)

What becomes obvious as you play is that serious strategy beyond a turn or so is pointless. It is actually a game about art. How intriguing will your turn be? How Byzantine can you make the rules? How can you blow the minds of the other players?

I can't recommend this game enough - it's the most interesting board/card game I've picked up in a long time.

David+

Technorati Tags: games, fluxx

R.I.P. Yogi

We had to put our dog Yogi to sleep today. Yogi was a special guy - we got him from DARE (Dachshund Adoption, Rescue & Education). He was completely blind in one eye and had a detached retina in the other. His right front leg's bone density was shot from an earlier injury sometime in his life and he had some digestive problems. Every time we took him to the vet, we wondered if we would be bringing him back out. This time, we took him in because his back legs weren't working and he was dragging them around. The vet diagnosed it as a ruptured disk, meaning that his spinal cord was being pinched. He was not in pain, because the pain nerves were not carrying signals, but neither were the motor control nerves. He was trying to walk, but the signals weren't making it to the legs. In effect, total paralysis from the mid-back down. The only solution would be very risky surgery with an uncertain outcome. Considering how many other things were wrong with him, it just didn't make sense.

We only had him for about two years, but it was worth it. He was the sweetest dog - he always had a cheerful disposition and was extremely tolerant of the unintentional ill-treatment our toddler could dish out. He had been abandoned at the vet before DARE picked him up and was scheduled for euthanasia at the time. We gave him two years of comfortable living with a lot of love. I hope we made up for the neglect and abuse he suffered before we adopted him.

I consider dog rescue a ministry. Dogs are bred for traits that sometimes makes their long-term health chancy. (The vet once speculated that Yogi might have been a failed attempt at a double dapple due to some spots on his coat.) They are then sometimes discarded when the genetic wheel dosen't spin perfectly. I feel that organizations like DARE are making atonement for human abuse of God's creation, and I am proud to be part of it.

We will never be able to replace Yogi, but we will probably take on another adoption some time next year.

David+
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President Saruman

This week in politics has been particularly amazing for me to witness. I have never seen a better-staged attempt to turn C*** into diamonds in my life as the recent press conference where president Bush admitted to the existence of the secret CIA prisons, and then tried to put a "positive spin" on it by letting us know that they were now empty and the last 14 transferred to Gitmo. I especially liked how he used 9/11 families to get a standing ovation.

How is this supposed to make me feel good about America? We captured certain persons, moved them to secret CIA prisons so that we could use more agressive interrogation techniques than permitted by the then very-permissive Army field manual. We've now gotten everything out of them we can by those means and can transfer them to Gitmo, where they will receive slightly better treatment, even though the Red Cross has expressed concern over that place as well. While there, he proposes to try them using rules that will allow them to be convicted on the basis of secret evidence - something the military judiciary itself has questioned. I'm no pacifist or super liberal. I watch Mail Call and am a registered Republican for God's sake. But when will reason return to our government? Time for a Tolkien metaphor....

In the Lord of the Rings, Saruman starts in the right place. He is a istari, kind of an angelic figure sent by the Valar, of which the others are Gandalf the Grey, Radagast the Brown and Alatar and Pallando the blue. Saruman became infatuated with the lore around the rings of power. As he studied the work of Sauron, he became corrupted and eventually began to covet the rings. In an interesting passage in the Fellowship of the Ring, Saruman tries to convince Gandalf to help him:

"As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have os far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means."

Some think that Saruman is manipulating Gandalf at this point. I think Saruman is saying what he honestly believes, and that is what is truly frightening. He honestly thinks that he would be a better steward of power than Sauron. Gandalf, of course, rejects this. There will be no compromise with evil. The ends cannot justify the means because eventually the means will BECOME the ends.

The Geneva Conventions give us two options with people captured under arms. The first is to declare someone a "prisoner of war" and accord them all the rights that accompany it. The second is to declare combatants taken out of uniform as "saboteurs." Under the Geneva Code, saboteurs can be executed. Instead, the Bush Administration has attempted to make up it's own category, "Unlawful Combatants." They don't have the rights of a prisoner of war but we're not going to summarily execute them because that would be politically unpopular. Instead, we send some to Gitmo for aggressive interrogation and send others to secret prisons for torture. When we torture someone in a secret prison without any outside supervision, we lose all moral credibility. How can we criticize islamic extremists for kidnapping and torturing when we do the same thing? The only difference is that we are supposedly the "Good Guys" and they are the 'Bad Guys." Of course, that's our definition and the rest of the world doesn't necessarily see it that way. I guess they don't all watch the same cowboy movies we do.

What we can learn from Saruman's example is that if our methods become the same as those we oppose, we quickly become what we formerly loathed. I do not doubt President Bush's intentions. I believe he really does think he is making America safer. But whether or not he is effective, he is doing this by eroding away the moral high ground that America once stood on. He has spent all the international good will that poured our way after 9/11 and more. It could be possible that we are safer - but have we done so at the cost of our national soul? As Ben Franklin once wrote, "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. " I cannot help but think that future generations of historians will look upon this period of American history as a very dark one, when we placed the lamp of freedom under a bushel basket so that the "bad guys" couldn't see what we were doing, throwing the people in the world who were desperately moving towards the light back into darkness.

Seizing the ring, even for good, will eventually turn to evil.

Frodo: "Will you not take the ring?"
Gandalf: "No!" cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. "With that power I should have power too great and too terrible. ... Yet the way of the ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good."

David+

Technorati Tags: bush, ethics, politics, tolkien

National Nitwit: Village People Add Episcopal Bishop to Band

Came across this through Technorati:

Village People Add Episcopal Bishop to Band Lineup

"(New York) Disco group The Village People, seeking to update their look, announced Wednesday that they will be adding an Episcopalian bishop to their cast of gay-themed characters. "

Hilarious!

David+

Technorati Tags: anglican, episcopal, humor

Review: ECP

Church Publishing released their first foray into publishing for handhelds this week: eCP (Electronic Common Prayer).

"eCP: electronic Common Prayer is a downloadable application for PalmOS handheld devices that puts services of the Book of Common Prayer and Daily Office readings at your fingertips. The calendar screen shows today's date; the current liturgical season and color; the commemoration of the day; hyperlinked collects, prefaces, and full texts of Daily Office lessons, psalms, and gospel readings. The hyperlinked BCP services give you flexibility for hospital calls, outdoor celebrations, camp and daily personal devotions."

I downloaded the program and paid the $29.95 since the program does not have a demo mode and won't even open without a registration code. I frankly have to say I am pretty disappointed. I already had a BCP in iSilo format on my Palm and the downloadable daily office from the Mission of St. Claire. I also use a Palm OS Bible from Olivetree software. The first thing that is noticeable about eCP is that it is SLOOOOOW. I have a Tungsten T5, which is actually a pretty speedy little device (It can play video, after all.) The program (which takes up 10 MB of memory) took over a minute to load. It looks like the program is written in Java, which may account for why it takes so long to run. Inside the program is a BCP, a calendar, a daily office and a bookmarking function.

What I was hoping for was a daily office function that would ask you some basic questions (Which invitatory? which Lord's prayer? etc.) and then generate a file with the entire text of the office so that you could read it straight through - kind of like what the Mission of St. Claire site does, but on a random-access basis. Unfortunately, the office in the eCP is simply a text of the BCP with all the rubrics and options left in and hyperlinks to the psalter and office readings. If it's not Eastertide, there's really no point in having to scroll past the Easter opening sentences or the Pascha Nostrum every day - a computer program should be smarter than that. The links to the psalter and readings are to those modules (not to the readings for the day) so you still have to set bookmarks and all of this works at a snail's pace (might work faster on a Treo - hard to say, but it's still a lot slower than the iSilo BCP). If I was reading the daily office with people who were using a traditional BCP, I would fall behind.

I like books. I am comfortable with nice ribbon bookmarks. If I am going to adopt a technology, it needs to have advantages over the existing technology of my Daily Office book and Galley's The Prayer Book Office. In the case of a Palm program, it needs to be more flexible and useful than the free resources I already have and use. With eCP, I can't say that either of these criteria are met. I hope that future versions might leverage more of the advantages that can be gained with an electronic resource, rather than simply being an enhanced e-text.

David+

Technorati Tags: anglican, BCP, eCP, episcopal, Palm, PDA