Tick tick tick....

I really didn't think it would be this easy to assemble the images.

So here's Lara Logan on "60 Minutes" on Benghazi:

And here's Lara Logan again, on "60 Minutes" on Benghazi:

And, just for grins, here's Lara Logan apologizing for the story the first time, on CBS's morning show:

I think we can safely say we know when the apology that aired on "60 Minutes" was taped; just as we can safely say the apology "60 Minutes" issued through Ms. Logan was much more detailed on the morning show than it was on Sunday night.  Maybe since she'd said it all once that day she was bored with repeating herself.

The first picture is from the original broadcast.  The second picture is from the sorry/not sorry apology.  I don't like paying attention to how people are dressed, especially because sexist and classist and other things, but does anybody think it's an accident Ms. Logan was showing cleavage on the first show (Hey!  A "sexy" news story is SEXY!) and wearing basically a T-shirt collar for her apology appearances?

Yes, her apology was a joke and her motives in the original story are questionable (Wonkette has all the details; and the link to CBS and Fox News via David Rhodes makes this story at TPM seem all the more likely, especially when you add in CBS owned Threshold Editions), and even yes, the second dress is more appropriate for a morning TV show when you aren't a Hollywood celebrity and no, I don't care how Lara Logan dresses for TV appearances, and yes, this is small beer compared to Ms. Logan's "I Want to Believe" approach to Dylan Davies, but...

Does anybody else feel played by all of this, on several levels?

It just seems a little too purposeful for me.  And it makes the whole thing, if that's possible, even sleazier.

He does know we remember this, right?

He's hiding behind more than those glasses....

Ted Cruz is a big fat liar:

"Listen, Jay, I'm one of the many people who was not a fan of shutting down the government," Cruz said. "Throughout this whole thing, I said..."

"Well you looked like a big fan from where I was standing," Leno interjected.

"I said throughout 'we shouldn't shut down the government,'" Cruz said seconds later. "And the reason we had a government shutdown is President Obama and the Democrats said 'we will not negotiate and we will not compromise.'"

Um, what?

 Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says this month's partial government shutdown and his key role in it were a success: They got people talking.

"One of the things we accomplished in the fight over Obamacare is we elevated the national debate over what a disaster, what a train wreck, how much Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans across this country," Cruz told about 600 Iowa Republicans on Friday at the Iowa GOP's annual fundraising dinner in Des Moines.

 He was for it:

Cruz agreed: "A significant amount of Republicans assume, with an impasse, that President Obama will never ever ever give up his principles, so Republicans have to give up theirs... If you have an impasse, you know -- one side or the other has to blink. How do we win this fight? Don't blink." Cruz tells The National Review that Republicans who disagree have Clinton PTSD — they're "haunted by ghosts of shutdowns past."

Before he was against it.  Because it was Obama's fault!

When it was over it was such a good idea, let's do it again!
 

Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who pushed the strategy to tie government funding to defunding President Obama’s health care law, wouldn’t rule out revisiting it in the coming months.

“I would do anything, and I will continue to do anything I can, to stop the train wreck that is Obamacare,” Cruz said when asked by ABC News’ Jon Karl whether he would rule out another shutdown. “The test that matters Jon, is are we doing anything for all the people that are getting hurt from Obamacare?”

And why does Cruz get elected?  Mostly because nobody cares:

To understand Texas politics, an important number to keep in mind is 750,000. In a state of 26 million people, that is how many votes it generally takes to prevail in a statewide Republican primary — which is tantamount to being elected, considering that no Democrat has won statewide office here since 1994.

Democrats have not won statewide office in 20 years because they haven't put up any candidates worth voting for since Ann Richards.  That may change with Wendy Davis, despite that fact Texas voter turnout is around 36%, the lowest in the country.  GOTV is the next big fight in Texas.  Which is why we have the most restrictive voter ID law in the country.  Least popular, too. 

Wendy Davis is 6 points behind Greg Abbott, and the campaigning hasn't even started yet.  Abbott was re-elected as state Attorney General in 2010.  Prior to her filibuster, Wendy Davis was virtually unknown outside of the Texas Legislature.  Can Texas' restrictive voter ID law (which Wendy Davis saved from preventing Greg Abbott and others from voting altogether) be a spark that starts a prairie fire?

Stranger things have happened in Texas history....

REDRUM!

We'll be replacing doors, too.  Why do you ask?

We are painting the living room red. Again.

I am disappointed there is no "Red Rum" color in the paint selections.

I know by the time we're through it will be a popular sentiment around the house.

Is Christmas Over Yet?

Because I'm not doing anything that promotes her new book

I ask because the local strip mall had it's Xmas decorations out in mid-October.  No, that isn't a typo; I typed what I meant and meant what I typed:  mid-October.

Hallowe'en wasn't over before they were up at all the other retail parking lots around me.  Christmas music has already started, too. 

Some years ago I recall hearing about a German store clerk who sued for violation of his human rights because the store he worked in started playing Christmas music in mid-December.  More and more, he has my sympathies, and my wish that such a suit would be recognized in an American court.

Fat chance.

I have no desire to go to war on Christmas, but every year I get closer to thinking about enlisting, if only because the retail observances of it are so insufferable.  Perhaps it is best for me to simply restate my support for Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday and recommend it to all of you for your yuletide reading and pleasure.  We could do worse than recover the Christmas Charles Dickens resurrected with Pickwick and Ebenezer Scrooge.  No tree, no presents, and lots of games and food and family or friends.  Let Thanksgiving be for family, if you must close in.  Let Christmas be for everyone you know who you can gather.

I know; too radical.  We are all beholden to Clement Clark Moore.  Maybe it's time, however, to start loosening those mind-forged manacles, and regain the holiday we have all but lost.

Before Sarah Palin sells it right out from under us.....

Beauty is in the story of the artist....

A good view spoiled.

In my admittedly limited experience with art schools and art courses (including two I took in graduate school, art history, not studio!  You don't want me near an art studio....), I've been surprised by how much the instruction (at least) was tied up with narrative.  My unscientific conclusion is that art teachers are more obsessed with story than English teachers are.  Sadly, this only confirms that for me:

The landscape was originally painted by an artist named K. Sager. According to media reports, it had been purchased at a Housing Works thrift shop months earlier for $50. It reportedly was then altered and mysteriously dropped off on Oct. 29 at a Housing Works location in the city's Gramercy neighborhood.

That's where the story started.  Unfortunately for the charity, it didn't stay there long:

In another twist, Emling also said Bernardo shared with him an origin story of the painting that conflicted with the accounts given to the media at the time of the auction.

"They were in on it all along. They knew. Actually, Banksy's people actually contacted them saying, 'Hey, we're looking for a landscape piece, we want to paint a monster on it,'" Emling said.

"So the whole story about somebody buying it weeks ago and then somebody coming and dropping it off and telling them, 'I need to speak with the manager, you have a very expensive piece on your hands here,' isn't the case," Emling said.

There are denials and no doubt by now counter-denials; but the fact is, this is a "sofa painting" suddenly worth 6 or more figures because of it's story.  And without the story, it's a sofa painting again.

So:  is it art?  Did Banksy actually add value to it, or did the story of Banksy add the value?

Funny what people actually think they're buying; one seldom sees it made quite so plain.

Ecce Homo

Was Jesus tempted in the desert?  Or not?

We can unfold the layers of this:  Matthew and Luke got it from Mark; John doesn't bother with it at all (as is typical of John v. the Synoptics.  There is very little in common between them, in terms of familiar gospel stories.  John doesn't even include a communion meal; his story focuses on Jesus washing the disciples' feet.)  And in Mark it's over so fast that if you blink, you miss it:

And right away the spirit drives him out into the wilderness, where he remained for forty days, being put to the test by Satan.  While he was living there among the wild animals, the heavenly messengers looked after him. (Mark 1:12-13, SV)

Mathew and Luke add narrative to that bare telling; and dialogue.  Tradition adds a lovely legend of the angels bringing Jesus soup from Mary's kitchen after the Devil leaves him.  Still, in terms of the later doctrine of the Incarnation (the generally accepted doctrine of the Incarnation was not settled until the 5th century), this prompts certain controversies.  Was Satan, for example, able to tempt God?  Or was Satan tempting the human Jesus?  And despite issues of hypostasis and homoousias v homoiousias (and the iota of difference between them), it's still a vital question, if you care to ask it.  And we should ask it, because it leads to what is perhaps the central mystery of Christianity:  is it possible to kill God?  (A blunter way of putting the issue Moltmann affirmed:  that God can be crucified.)

I ask because of this:

"Divinity belongs to the post-Easter Jesus, not the pre-Easter Jesus. To think of Jesus as divine actually diminishes him. If he was divine and had the power of God, then what he did wan’t all that remarkable. He could’ve done so much more.  But the classic Christian affirmation about the pre-Easter Jesus is not that he was God, but that he was the decisive revelation of God.  This is the cumulative meaning of the exalted language that Christians use for Jesus: in him, we see what can be seen of God in human life.”— Speaking Christian by Marcus Borg

If the classic affirmation about Jesus is that he was not God before the Resurrection, why have I not heard this before now?  What do you think? 

Which prompted at least 150 responses on Facebook (now I know where everybody went!).   I'm not sure, exactly, just how "classic" this affirmation of the pre-Easter Jesus is; Borg likes to play fast and loose with theology (as do many of the more popular Biblical scholars) in order to affirm his own preferences (I wouldn't quite call them theologies, to be honest); but the nature of Christ (Christology) is a hot topic these days, and what Borg wants to affirm is not that controversial in Christological circles.   On the other hand, since the issue of the nature of the Christ wasn't really settled until the 5th century, it is fair to say there was more than one opinion on the subject for the first 5 centuries of the church.  That's not the majority of Christian history; but it's not a handful of days, either.

On the other other hand, who wants to hang out with a bunch of Christologists?

But to get back to the question:  was Jesus God, or human, in the wilderness?  Or did he swap the two natures back and forth as it pleased him or served his purposes?  Or is it really possible to tempt God with earthly comforts?  Was Jesus always fully divine, and fully human?  The narratives of Matthew and Luke have led us to think so.  But do they?  Gabriel announces the pregnancy to Mary, an angel to Joseph; but what they announce is a miraculous birth, a virgin conception.  They say the child will come from on high, that the holy spirit is responsible for the pregnancy, that the child will be the one to save Israel.  They do not say the child will be fully human and fully God.  And the canon rejected the Infancy Gospel of James, where the notion of Jesus the child as possessing the powers of God is explored, and Jesus' human side clearly exploits the powers of the God side; which raises even more interesting questions about homoousias and homoiousias.

Paul is the one responsible for the idea that Jesus became Christ after the resurrection, and because of Jesus' martyrdom essentially, his faithfulness unto death.  But Paul didn't foresee generations of martyrs, so when Stephen was stoned to death and then the martyrs were persecuted by Rome in the Coliseum after Paul (Luke's story from Acts is written after Paul, too), a reason both for their deaths and for their non-resurrection had to be constructed, and eventually Paul's emphasis on the crucifixion was replaced with the emphasis on the nativity.

And still the questions of the Incarnation are present and important.  Why haven't we heard about all this before?  Perhaps because 150 Facebook comments indicate a strong reaction against Borg's assertions.  Perhaps because we cannot recall ancient ideas in a modern context without stirring up responses we didn't count on.  Perhaps because when everything old is new again, the new is not as attractive as we imagined it would be.

Or perhaps because it's good to think about these things.

A Brief Note to the Junior Senator from Texas

This time I mean it.

Dear Senator Cruz:

I have lived in Texas longer than you have been alive.  I was born here.  You were not.  You recently suggested the President of the United States should not visit Texas:

“President Obama should take his broken promises tour elsewhere so Texans can continue focusing on the solutions that have allowed our state to become and remain the nation’s economic and job creation powerhouse."

May I point out that "economic powerhouse" is leaving 1,046,460 Texans without Medicaid coverage or any health insurance coverage because of the GOP policies you champion?  Which makes Texas #1 when it comes to making poverty even harder on the poor.  That is not a position I am proud of; and neither should you be.

May I point out Texas has a median income $2000 below the national median, and has 17% of its population in poverty, v. 14% nationwide?  Have you ever addressed that sad statistic?  Are you even capable of caring about it?

Economic and job creation powerhouse?  Perhaps for you and your Goldman Sachs wife, or for Gov. Perry, who hasn't held a non-government job in his adult life, yet has gotten quite rich in spite of having been a government employee since he left college.  Perhaps even for the rich you associate with; but for the rest of Texas?  Not so much.

I have friends who have left Texas after living here a lifetime because Medicaid was so stingy they couldn't afford to stay.  They are the Texans we should honor and care for.  You are no such Texan.

I politely invite you to put a sock in it.  You aren't worthy to shine the shoes of the lifelong Texans I know and love.  They deserve better than you, and you certainly don't deserve even the rhetorical authority to deny the President of the United States to come here.  He offers solutions.

You offer lies.

Sincerely,

Rmj

How To Do It

If words are a stain on the silence, sometimes pictures are, too.

The interesting thing about this photo and the scripture they chose to accompany it, is that it fits perfectly with modern Biblical scholars' understanding of the healings of Jesus.  Those acts are, in the Synoptics, dunamis, displays of power.  A display of power might well be a complete violation of the laws of nature; or it might be, the scholars argue, a complete violation of social rules of power.

So the leper (a person with a disfigurement, not necessarily Hansen's Disease) could be cleansed simply by being recognized by the rabbi. (The argument seeks to preserve Jesus' uniqueness, not destroy it.  There were a lot of "faith healers" extant in 1st century Palestine.  If all Jesus did was cure disease, he'd have been a run-of-the-mill wandering minister.)  Isn't it stronger, the modern argument goes, to see Jesus accepting this outcast, this diseased person, as a human being, as fully human and fully deserving of our attention, even our love? (That notion of love will come back to us; it is paramount to understanding what we really see in that photo).

Could it be what we are seeing here is the very imitation of Jesus of Nazareth, if not indeed of the Christ?

Go, all of us, and do likewise.

Oh, Magoo! You've done it again!

Oh, spare me:

 A new study suggests that a person’s views on these subjects predict their religious beliefs. Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban from the University of Pennsylvania found that conservative views on sex and reproductive rights are associated with greater religiosity.

And, to be fair, it's just as bad in the other direction:

So what you’re describing is his moral foundation of “harm,” which liberals tend to feel more strongly about. These are emotions relating to empathy and compassion – measured by the question of how much someone is suffering and how much that suffering is a moral issue to you. How much is caring for the weak and vulnerable a moral issue to you?

It’s not that conservatives don’t feel that emotion, but they don’t necessarily feel it as strongly. They feel other things more strongly. So to Haidt, this explains the health care debate because liberals feel, most of all, this harm-care-compassion thing. Conservatives feel it a little bit less strongly, even as they have this other morality. Haidt compares it to karma — it’s really interesting — where basically, you’re supposed to get what you deserve. And what really bothers them is somebody not getting what they deserve. So the government getting involved and interfering with people getting what they deserve is really bad. That, I think, is the clash.

In the latter case, what we are being told is that science has established there is something we can label "selfishness," and it is bad.  "Are there no prisons?  And the Union workhouses, are they still in operation?"

As Howland Owl said of nuclear physics, this ain't so new, and it ain't so clear.  But to get back to that study of religion:

 As the paper puts it, “these findings run counter to the view that religiosity has a fundamental connection with cooperative morals” (i.e., beliefs about not screwing over thy neighbor). The dominant evolutionary theory regarding religion is that it thrived because “beliefs in invisible, rule-enforcing agents” — whether it’s a bearded white guy in the sky or a bevy of power-sharing gods — “increase believers’ compliance with cooperative norms, that this compliance provides an advantage to groups or individuals, and that these advantages have been crucial for the evolution and current ubiquity of religiosity and large-scale cooperation.”

Uh, yeah; except, not:

 This study doesn’t definitively prove a causal relationship, let alone a causal direction. But Weeden tells me that, based on his research and analysis, the more plausible explanation is that reproductive strategies influence religious beliefs, rather than that religious beliefs influence reproductive strategies. “This doesn’t settle the matter once and for all, but it’s a strong sign that at least some of the causality goes from lifestyles to religion,” he says.

 Really?  Causality goes from lifestyle to religion?  NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!  Is that why more people in Minnesota are Lutherans than are Southern Baptists?  Somebody call Garrison Keillor, we may have some new material for him!

Or did you mean to generalize from American culture to all human culture across the globe and throughout time?  Oh, I'm sorry, but I don't think we can allow that.  Indeed, there are some anthropologists on line 1 who want to speak to you....

The thing is, I want to know how this study defines "religiosity."  I presume it means in the cultural sense of how lay people express their religious beliefs.  'Cause the conclusions seemed to be based on data like this:

It’s not too surprising that a dude who thinks abortion is evil would express stronger religious convictions than a man who supports reproductive rights. Nor is it shocking that a woman who finds casual sex immoral would identify as more religious than a lady who is down with one-night stands.

So "religiosity" is based on self-reporting of just how religious I am.  The only irony here is in the rather well known example of the widow's mite, where the guy who makes sure everyone sees how pious he is in his Temple offering is not necessarily the most "religious" one.  Not to mention all the real world experience with very publicly religious figures preaching against sex or homosexual sex, and being discovered to have engaged in one or both with someone they are not married to.  How "religious" are they, then?  Maybe we could identify a more objective standard for determining one's religious convictions before making causal conclusions about how religion arose and what function it serves.

Or maybe we could even consider that religion serves many functions, not all of them coterminous with others.  Like this, for example; this is a far better example of "religiosity" than how tightly one adheres to the pronouncements of one's church.

And then we can start working on the scientific standard for selfishness.


I'll retire to Bedlam. I really will.

"Greece" is the word....

Our [non-denominational non-sectarian non-deity] who art [or art not] 

in heaven [or somewhere unspecified, or just Ground of Being, or just Being but not Dasien

So I'm listening to this (ignore the comments, they're generally as mindless and annoying as you would expect), and at some point the legal scholar mentions the Supreme Court has approved "non-sectarian prayer" which apparently is prayer addressed to "our Heavenly Father" but not to "Jesus," and I'm thinking, once again:  how can prayer be non-sectarian?  And why, if it is, is it being offered at all?

There is nothing non-sectarian about that example (and whether it is dicta or a Supreme Court ruling, I cannot now ascertain.  It was presented as a ruling in the discussion, but I don't take that as final.).  "Our Heavenly Father" is, in fact, as specifically Christian as "In Jesus's name."  It is a term of address for God found only in the New Testament.  It was Jesus who told his followers to address God as "Abba," Father (closer to "Papa," actually, but let's lay that aside....).

And isn't any prayer a sectarian exercise?  Do I want to attend a legislative session like a city council meeting where a Wiccan offers a prayer?  How about a Hindu?  What if a Tibetan Buddhist stands and whirls a prayer wheel? (I mean no disrespect to Tibetan Buddhists, I'm trying to include the wide varieties of prayer offered in the world).  Would some have to burn offerings in order to make the prayer efficacious?  If we don't let that happen, are we intolerant?  If we do, does it violate the fire code?

I'm quite serious here.  The very notion of prayer as words spoken in public is sectarian.  It presumes a definition of prayer that is hardly universal, and yet in this country especially we pride ourselves on the diversity of cultures in our midst.

I'm not a fan of public prayer, to begin with.  The Senate Chaplain was also quoted in this discussion.  He said he considered the people assembled for his public prayer to be his congregation, and why would he want to offer a prayer that some of them would find offensive?  I wonder the same thing.  I learned early on giving sermons that they are not public speeches to be offered on soap boxes on the sidewalk.  They address the concerns of a particular group of people, and do so by trying to relate the word of God to them.  Obviously that's a very sectarian practice, but it's also very particular to the people gathered.  The church may be (and should be) open to all; but the sermon is addressed to one group in particular.

Public prayer is the same thing.  It is addressed less to a deity than to the gathering.  And the reasons for prayer are multifarious, too.  Is prayer petition?  Is it address?  Communication?  Offering of praise?  Seeking blessing?  Calling upon the gathered to be mindful of their relationship to a deity?

I know the Supreme Court prefers to resolve these issues according to concepts of custom and coercion (Coincidence?  Can't be!), so I'm not making a Constitutional argument; at least not in the terms the Court has set down as precedent.  But I'm really wondering:  what is the purpose of public prayer, especially in a 21st century culture like America's, and why don't we just do away with it altogether?

And then we can get on that reprehensible Presidential speech-tic of ending every utterance with "...and God bless America!"

God bless you, and God bless America.

Christie, we don't want to know ye....

Doesn't that jacket sort of remind you of C-Plus Augustus and his Presidential socks?



I'm hardly the first to notice, but despite the conviction of Chris Matthews (who was absolutely petulant this week with a "guest" on his show who wouldn't affirm Matthew's gospel that Chris Christie is the Republicans Great White Hope and a shoo-in for the White House should he choose (Hah!) to run), but let me say what I was going to say earlier:  Chris Christie will never be President of the United States.


Not because he yelled at a teacher; but simply because he yells.  His answer to anyone who challenges him is:  "What do you people want?!"  That's not the answer of a statesman.  That's not the answer of a President.  This is not the behavior of a leader of the free world.  Anodyne and dull as he was, Mitt Romney inspired more confidence in his ability to take the stresses and pressures of the job than this.  Christie can't help himself.  I don't know what he thinks about what he's doing at times like this, but it is his political doom.

It will sell no better beyond the confines of New Jersey than Rick Perry's braggadocio about how Texas doesn't need the rest of the United States, especially them bureaucrats in DeeCee!

Three years ago, per Crooks and Liars,  Alex Pareene was saying Christie's bullying would win him supporters across the nation.  I don't think so.  I think JMM is right:  "He's a quintessential Northeasterner with a coarse version of the region's regional edge in a party dominated by the South."  Paul Theroux was just on NPR the other day talking about how very polite people in the South are.  We may like belligerence in Jim DeMint or Ted Cruz, but that's because they are belligerent Southerners (they do it politely, and to the right people; never to individuals.  Cruz has even apologized to some groups for the stupid things he's said.  Christie is proudly unapologetic about his bullying.)  Christie is a belligerent Yankee, and that sells about as well outside New Jersey as "Don't Mess with Texas" sells outside of Texas.  (We think it's funny, 'cause it's an anti-litter campaign by the state.  The rest of the country thinks we're serious, and misses the joke.  Draw your own conclusions vis a vis Gov. Christie.)

Yes, as Charlie Pierce noted, Christie is out as NJ governor as sure as 2014 is coming.  But he's not getting any nearer the White House than a public tour.  Stick a fork in him, he's done.

The Way of All Flesh

We hardly knew ye...

I have no particular love for the place.  I've been in it, once or twice; most memorably as a child, when it was new (must have been in the '60's, just after it opened) and exciting and it had a scoreboard that could "animate" because of thousands (millions?) of lights run by computer (!) (Hey, I still remember seeing a demonstration of a computer driven loom weaving patterns into fabric as I watched, at a speed no human could match.  In 1968, at the HemisFair in San Antonio.  I'm old....).  But look at that space.  Better yet, look at the AP photo I didn't want to copy, here.

It's almost a cathedral.

Yes, I know, that's an awful metaphor and an even worse cliche.  But look at it.  It's magnificent in its openness, and in high heat high humidity Houston, it was a glorious place to watch a baseball or football game (I watched one of each there, if memory serves).  The seating was comfortable because it could be, never being exposed to the elements.  The air was cool because it had to be.  The vistas were open because it was a marvel of engineering.  And the grass was plastic, because, well....

No, I've never liked Astroturf; and the early versions were basically green bristle over concrete.  Never understood how football players could stand the stuff.

Yes, sports should be played outside.  But come to Houston in August or September and say that.  Winter down here starts when the temperature drops below 75.  The humidity goes below that on rare days in the year.  Almost nothing in Houston should be done outside.

Maybe it's because the Astros by and large sucked, without ever attaining any of the loser charm of more legendary baseball teams; and the Oilers sucked so bad the owner took 'em to Tennessee, where they sucked just as badly (poetic justice!); and now the Texans have a shiny new stadium to continue to disappoint in.  Yes, the Dome was already abandoned when refugees from Katrina found a home there; and it was shuttered altogether in 2009; but it has been "closed" ever since Reliant stadium was built (with public money) on the promise that a new stadium would set all things athletic right in Houston.  That, and a new ballpark for a team so bad they don't deserve a ballpark.

And the new football stadium is ugly and named for a corporation, not a team.  And it's huge:

You can see the 'Dome off to the right there, looking like an annex, like Reliant's little brother.  Reliant is a big ugly thing and all you can do is play football in it, which the Texans can't seem to do at all.  You could put an 18 story building inside the Dome.  You can't even fit a winning football team inside Reliant.  You could use the Dome year 'round, not just a handful of Sundays a year.  There's even more empty space in Reliant, to be put to even less use.

And now it's going to get emptier.

Maybe the county waited too long (the County owns the Dome; quaint concept, what?).  They let the Dome slip from memory until people probably thought it had already been destroyed long ago.  The county certainly didn't think the Dome was worth spending money on anymore.  I suppose four major sports venues were enough; we don't have room for an ex-venue.

I'll be sorry to see it go.  There's something about awe-inspiring spaces that we should treasure more than we do; but so it goes.  We want our awe on the cheap, and we want it at our convenience.  And, especially in Houston, when we move on, we move right over the past as if it was never even there.

In time of adversity they will decry it...

Trick or Treat!

 One can look at the comments to this article/book excerpt and think:  "Oh, flapdoodle!"

Religion counters our terror of oblivion.  Last night, I was contemplating the moment at which I cease and it is horrifying, however I cease incrementally as I age.  The real horror is to be snuffed when young, when you don't ache in the morning and everything is vivid and fresh.  If we weren't cognizant of our deaths, we wouldn't have imagined gods.
....

One can only contain, control and wall off their young people for so long, but that doesn't stop Christianists from trying.  Children have, if nothing else, a strong sense of justice that will come to the fore sooner or later.

Rather than lament that their precious children have forsaken the church for the world, the parents should be grateful that they weren't murdered in their sleep.
...
i am quite comfortable with the multigenerational stories told in this article; mine firs right in.  summary: less religion is better in every way.

if you don't agree, listen to ted cruze's daddy preach for a while.

Although I pretty much agree with this one:

 Oddly enough, religious folks are just another social group of like minded people.  They are honestly not much different than say environmentalist.  Both groups deserve the opportunity to have input into the political process, we accept his as the divers nation we are.  Funny how the millennials are so un-accepting  of diversity.

Which prompted this response:

 religion is a great threat to government, because, by its  special nature, it demands to be the government.  religion is, therefore, a special case, and should be excluded from the political process.

I've seen many on-line groups as exclusionary and reductive as any religious group is supposed to be, and just as determined to have their way and exclude others from the political process.  The old line about pointing one finger at me, and three more are pointing back at you, comes to mind.

Or even the older line about the speck in your brother's eye and the log in yours; which, as I never tire of saying, is a fine example of the understanding of optics and reflections in curved surfaces.  Objects in mirror are MUCH closer than they appear.

And I like the idea that children have a strong sense of justice; wonder why that hasn't manifested itself by now in society at large?  Maybe because none of us who are old now were ever children?

As usual, the comments never engage the substance of the post; they just provide a springboard for mouthing preferences and prejudices (my commenters, of course, are excluded from this broadside allegation!).  But there isn't a lot of flapdoodle in the article, although "Generation Atheist" is wildly misleading (blame the headline editor, not the authors of the book).  As the set of statistics notes:

It turns out that atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. In a poll asking which of the following groups “shares my vision of American society,” out of a list that included Muslims, homosexuals, Jews, Hispanics, and immigrants, atheists were in last place. Asked if they would disapprove of their child’s marrying someone from a list of minority groups, atheists again were last.

Never, ever, underestimate the power of social approval/disapproval.  And don't confuse (as the article doesn't) atheist with "nonreligious."

As for the article:  it attaches several factors to the decline in religious belief/concern among "Millenialists" (it rarely uses that term, thank goodness):  

Today’s young adults marry and have children later than their predecessors and also enter the workforce later, extending the life cycle phase (the college years) when religious attachment tends to wane. Increased rates of higher education may be another factor. A Harris Poll reported that 86% of Americans without a college education believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, while only 64% of those with a postgraduate degree believe so.

A third explanation for the rise of Americans claiming no religion is the increasing politicization of religion. Michael Hout and Claude Fischer argue that the political right has become so identified with a conservative religious agenda that it has alienated moderates who consider organized “religion” a synonym for an antigay, antiabortion, procivic religion agenda. At the same time, while they may feel disenfranchised from organized religion, many of them remain privately religious or “spiritual.” This reaction against the politicization of religion is seen particularly among young adults.

A fourth important factor, one that has not before been pursued in detail, involves intergenerational transmission: the increase in the number of religiously nonaffiliated parents who raised their children without a religious tradition.

 None of these reasons surprise me.  The first two can be regarded as one because they have, I think, the same root:  college students tend to want to be independent of their parents, and attending church was probably a requirement, not a joy.  There is, however, another possible explanation:  if the church you attended at home was where your friends were, most likely none of them are at the churches near the college.  Church attendance for community, rather than religious, purposes is a force not to be overlooked lightly.  Indeed, there is probably more reason to examine church decline based on disruption in social groups than for any other reason.  I'll try to return to that; if not here, then in another post.

And, continuing the thought, once away from church, especially if you don't marry someone from your church/denomination, it is easier to abandon church.  Time pressures are such now that Sunday, which used to exist exclusively for church and then football (in my childhood, anyway, and Sunday afternoons outside football season were empty, indeed), now competes with soccer games and other activities for school aged kids; and it generally demands a time commitment most people don't have the time for.  When church becomes just another claim on your schedule, it's easy to walk away from it, especially if you are a college graduate chasing a professional career (which is more likely to demand your time beyond 40 hours a week).

And there's also the idea of what church is for.  If it is to secure for you the blessings of God, and you already have them, what do you need God for?  Yes, it works for Joel Osteen; but Joel Osteen also isn't starting a new denomination anytime soon.  He's not gonna franchise that "Gospel of Wealth" stuff.  It's market seems large in one place, but in the aggregate, it's quite small indeed.

The third factor is interesting (especially to the headline writer), but I think is the least credible and most shallow.  There are factors moving here over generations.  Just watching "Good Night and Good Luck" last night, I was struck by how little the vocabulary of political fear has changed.  Sen. McCarthy himself, in newsreel footage (not an actor reading lines) spoke of "terrorism" in a way that would fit very comfortably in 2013; but he was speaking almost 60 years ago.  His allegations of crimes and suspicions were no better grounded than the wildest statements of Ted Cruz, yet nobody calls out Cruz on his lies, either.  Not to his face, that is, where it might count.  The same mendacious journalism was being practiced then, the same market pressures on real news were in existence.  Everything old really is new again.  History didn't start with Jerry Falwell or with the Hippies becoming Yuppies becoming parents of Millenials.

And there is the simple fact that most of the people in churches (I speak from experience) are old.  By now, I'm among them, clearly.  Old and grey and full of sleep, and insisting the church local be run to their satisfaction.  Unless there is a very large contingent of young people in the church, what would attract young people to the church?  Church, after all, walks that line between monastery (full of those committed to the life religious) and social hall (full of those here for the fellowship, and little more).  It is usually dominated by people who "have always done it this way," and that contingent is not inclined to make the church experience (in worship or out of it) more congenial to the "younger generation."  Church is, more and more, a voluntary association (which ties in with the third factor), and why volunteer for the fights church life inevitably engenders, fights usually across generational lines?  I learned from my experience that if I spoke to the younger people in my church, the old people soundly resented it (my sermon inspired after discovering Harry Potter may have inspired the few young people in the church, but it annoyed the hell out of people of my generation and older; granted, they were looking for a reason to be annoyed).  But this leads me to the major concern with the life of the church.

150 years later, we are still discussing the changes that occurred with the rise of historical criticism in Biblical studies.  Many of those changes didn't reach American churches fully until the 1970's (I'm familiar with the story of "Seminex," the seminary in exile, because the professors of Seminex served a portion of their brief exile at Eden Theological Seminary, my divinity alma mater.), so the fights are even more recent than one might imagine.   Dom Crossan and the Jesus Seminar (who are already out of date; Biblical scholarship ages as rapidly as computer technology, and for much the same reasons) barely make a dent in the consciousness of most churchgoers, and if they did, the dent would be a nuclear-blast crater, especially if they were taken seriously.  There isn't any real challenge to historical criticism in Biblical fields anymore, except among fundamentalist "Bible colleges," but there isn't any real acceptance of it in the pews, either.  This is a distinct problem of its own, one not addressed in the Salon excerpt.  But this distinct problem highlights other distinct problems across generations, problems created by an ahistorical notion of history prevalent among most Americans.

One of the claims of the Church, starting with the Catholic church when it was universal, and continuing through even the most anti-Papist members of the Reformed movement, is the awareness of the church as composed of a cloud of witnesses in time and across time.  That cloud grew to societal proportions unseen since medieval Europe in America after World War II, prompting even than an ahistorical assumption that Americans had always gone to church (they hadn't; the post-war church boom was an aberration in several ways, one of them historical).  But that cloud always implied a people located in time and connected across time, if not space, with so man others.  It is almost ironic to mention this only a few days after All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day, days observed by some Protestant churches (Lutheran and Episcopalian prime among them), but by no means by all; and just after Halloween, an American festivity that takes its inspiration from the Celtic belief that at Samhain the veil between this world and the next was thin, and ones loved ones (later to become demons.  What was up with that?) could be near, and should be honored.  We have often been aware of death though not afraid of it (that's a modern predicament, not an ancient one; so the idea that religion is about the fear of death originates, not with neanderthals, but with Freud in Vienna at the end of the 19th century.  There's really not much about Freud's thinking that anybody thinks he got right anymore, but ideas, unfortunately, are bulletproof; especially the silliest ones).  Now we are more likely to fear death so much even the thought of our relatives continuing in a spiritual form makes us think of demons and goblins and other undesirable bumps in the night.  And the idea that we could be connected to believers across time when we don't even think we have that much in common with Grandma and Grandpa (who, after all, didn't grow up with cell phones or e-mail or Facebook!) is implicitly a hard-sell.

Which isn't to say this Salon article gets it all wrong; it is an excerpt from a book, after all, there is doubtless much more to the book than this post contains.  But there is clearly more to the dynamics affecting church attendance or church allegiance than these four factors described.  And we have to look beyond those factors to begin to understand this situation and what it really means.

First, as I say: this is not new.  It did not spring sui generis from the political activities of Ralph Reed or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell.  It is not the result of Millenialists being self-centered or growing up with social media or just generally being better educated than their elders (they aren't; take my word for it).  The roots here are deep, the causes long in developing.  When you can listen to the historic speeches of Joe McCarthy and realize almost nothing has changed in 60 years, you begin to see that everything old really is new again; and it's new largely because we think history began with us, and will end with us, and what little that happens in between (in an historical sense) is all that could ever happen, and it all happens without connection to past or future (at least after the future ends with us).  It's as old as, well, as the description of "hip" "new" Christians in this Amanda Marcotte column.  The common denominator among the five "hip" Christians Marcotte identifies is that they are still peddling that "ol' time religion" that I by and large grew up with, or grew up among (holders of such ideas as "doctrine," in other words):  homophobic; anti-sex; judgmental; what Marcotte aptly labels "...the cranky, judgmental church of old."  It was old (and "of old") when I was a teenager, and that's forty years gone now.  Things change; and then again, they don't.

The Preacher was right:  there is indeed nothing new under the sun.

So the roots of the current malaise actually connect me with the Millenials, rather than disconnect me.  Not that most Millenials would care to hear that; nor would I much care to tell them.  I'll bore my grandchildren with stories of my childhood, when we have to make "long-distance" calls and telephones had "dials" and TV stations went off after midnight, and there were things like "Test patterns."  Maybe I'll even tell 'em about CONELRAD.

The roots of the problem lie in the problem of history; but they also arise from the problem of the church in time, a church that often would rather be frozen in amber, or wants aggressively to be as au courant as possible.  The UCC was the first mainline denomination to authorize the ordination of gays and lesbians; but it doesn't even get a shout out in this Salon post about evangelicals, where the Evangelical Lutheran church is credited with ordaining a gay bishop in 2013 (to be fair, the author seems to confuse the ELCA and the historical term "evangelical" with the more modern designation of a type of conservative Christianity).  The UCC has, for decades, protested Chief Wahoo and the Washington Redskins name; they don't even get a mention in the stories on that controversy now.  The UCC has strained so hard to be on the cutting edge it is often on the bleeding edge, an edge blamed for the bleeding off of members since it was created in 1957.  There is something to be said for respecting tradition.

The problem comes when you start worshiping tradition.

150 years later, and the Church is still coming to terms with historical criticism in Biblical studies?  This is rather like saying science is still coming to terms with the idea that chemistry is not going to answer all our scientific questions, that maybe we should give physics an audience.  (It's no coincidence the longed for Grand Unifying Theory in science is in the field of physics.).  The position is not just hopelessly out of step with the teachers of the church (seminary professors who train pastors for pulpits), it's hopelessly out of step with the present day.  We continue, from the UCC to the most hardshell foot-washing Baptist fundamentalists, to approach the problems of 21st century life with 17th century (at best) attitudes.  I will admit the best music for singing by untrained persons are the hymns of the 19th century (they have the loveliest melodies), and the best form of worship is rooted in medieval and Catholic Europe.  I would still even champion a church calendar based on a year that has no relationship to the solar calendar, retails sales, or school vacation time.  But the best approaches to what it means to be a Christian should be explicable in terms consonant with our understanding of the world and our understanding of the human position in the world.  Karl Rahner should be more common place than controversial (or, more likely, unknown); Rudolf Bultmann should not still provoke either bewilderment or consternation (he is still the particular bête noir of "educated" evangelicals and fundamentalists; that is, the ones who have actually heard of him); the Jesus Seminar and Dom Crossan should be widely appreciated, if not widely accepted, simply because they talk and think the way we do today, and not the way some did in the 16th century.

I love the King James Bible, but can we please stop treating Psalm 23 and the Lord's Prayer as if Jesus and David spoke like Shakespeare?

I don't have the answers to this problem for the church, although I suspect the better course lies with the example of Pope Francis than with that of Pope Emeritus Benedict.  I do know this problem didn't start with Jerry Falwell or the invention of the personal computer. and that it won't be solved by making church "hip" or "cool" (we tried that in the late '60's.  Anybody else remember it?  Anybody remember any lingering effects of it?  Even the folk masses of Vatican II didn't mark a sea change in the declining interest in organized religion we are seeing across Europe and America.)  I do think the problem is old and deep, if only because Eliot identified it in the 1930's.

"New" churches reach backwards, to Calvinism, for their inspiration.  Mars Hill is almost as simplistic as Joel Osteen, just in a completely different direction.  Both have simply surrendered to the world, one the latter by embracing its standards as God's, the former by throwing up its hands and saying God will save you or not, and all we can do is point to your failure.  No, I'm not kidding:

Marianne Esterly, a women's counselor at Mars Hill, says she tries to help women resist the desperation that can come with forgetting that man's chief end is to glorify God, not to obsess over earthly problems. "They worship the trauma, or the anorexia, and that's not what they're designed to worship," she says. "Christian self-help doesn't work. We can't do anything. It's all the work of Christ."

I'm not sure we're "designed to worship" anything, but the bigger problem is the idea that failure is the fault of the individual, is perhaps even (thanks, TULIP!) the will of God.  Do we really need to revive those notions, when there are much better theologies to be pursued?

In the end, of course, this is not the task of one person; and it is not a task the "church" can take on and "win."  Protestant churches no longer have any authority in their realm, because they no longer have a realm.  Once buttressed by society, Protestant churches now exist as wholly-owned subsidiaries of society, anxious to be "responsive" to their members as a sales clerk is in a retail job.  They cannot force new theologies on congregations (nor should they), but they don't seem to be very good at persuasion, either.  I mean, 150 years later and we're still coming to grips with Von Rad in the pews? If we're coming to grips with it at all?

Of course, to emphasize Biblical scholarship is to drain much of the poetry and humanity from the scriptures; but that poetry and humanity needs to wear a new face and speak in a new language.  Then again, we've tried that, too, replace the RSV (which replaced the KJV) with the NRSV, but still nothing momentous happened.   We need to be willing to change our vocabulary, which means we need to be willing to change our concepts about what is central to Christianity and to being a church, and why, and how we can affirm it.

As Eliot said:

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying

within and attacked from without;

For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while

there is time of prosperity

The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity

               they will decry it.

All Soul's Day 2013

The peace of God, which passes all understanding....

I'm not in the habit of recommending books, but based on the excerpt at Salon, I'm going to recommend this one:  Unapologetic:  Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Emotional Sense. 

Auden once described us as living "each in the cell of himself," and I think that is unavoidably true; such is the nature of human existence.  So I seldom recommend books because if they move me, they probably will do so no more; or if they move me, it is for reasons so personal and peculiar even I can't explain it.  I re-read Kierkegaard often, but sometimes it's just to ferret out a memory of what I may have learned.  Upholding Mystery was absolutely my favorite book of poetry, period; and then all of a sudden it wasn't.

So Unapologetic may last through only one reading.  But I still think it would be a worthwhile reading; and if you don't get to Salon often, take the time to read the excerpt there.

I really cannot recommend it enough.*

*Although it's p.o.v. is entirely limited to atheists and Christianity.  Then again, it's a personal statement, not a scholarly one.  Still, the limitation underscores how narrow and even narcissistic this discussion is.

Never say never again

Aw, screw it!  Let's just start lopping off heads!

I never thought I'd see the day I considered Lee Yeakel, a lawyer I always admired, mind you, a "liberal."

Thanks, 5th Circuit!  If I see water running uphill and pigs flying today, I won't be surprised.

I had, and have, great respect for Lee's legal reasoning.  It's just that we disagreed, a lot, on what the Supreme Court said, or should have said.  He was never the champion of Roe that I was (am); and his argument made sense (the "penumbral" right of privacy is a hard one to defend without using Roe to defend it, which is bootstrapping of an interesting kind).  Judges like Antonin Scalia and Priscilla Owen have now set legal reasoning aside in favor of doing the right thing as they see it.  Needless to say, this presents problems.  And it means the ruling of the 5th Circuit yesterday is worse than I thought it was.

Much of the reasoning in that order comes down to "we don't like the conclusion of the trial court, let's try to come up with one more to our liking."  It's fair to say that's often the way of appellate decisions, but this one seems egregiously to be so.  Here, for example, is a bit of legal reasoning:

An increase in travel distance of less than 150 miles for some women is not an undue burden on abortion rights.

That particular piece of brilliant legal insight is based on Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  The language of Casey is not cited, but pp. 885-887 of that opinion are cited to uphold the determination that the Texas law does not place an "undue burden" on the rights of Texas women.  Here is the representative language from Casey:

Whether the mandatory 24-hour waiting period is nonetheless invalid because in practice it is a substantial obstacle to a woman's choice to terminate her pregnancy is a closer question. The findings of fact by the District Court indicate that because of the distances many women must travel to reach an abortion provider, the practical effect will often be a delay of much more than a day because the waiting period requires that a woman seeking an abortion make at least two visits to the doctor. The District Court also found that in many instances this will increase the exposure of women seeking abortions to "the harassment and hostility of antiabortion protestors demonstrating outside a clinic." 744 F. Supp., at 1351. As a result, the District Court found that for those women who have the fewest financial resources, those who must travel long distances, and those who have difficulty explaining their whereabouts to husbands, employers, or others, the 24-hour waiting period will be "particularly burdensome." Id., at 1352.

These findings are troubling in some respects, but they do not demonstrate that the waiting period constitutes an undue burden....as we have stated, under the undue burden standard a State is permitted to enact persuasive measures which favor childbirth over abortion, even if those measures do not further a health interest. And while the waiting period does limit a physician's discretion, that is not, standing alone, a reason to invalidate it. In light of the construction given the statute's definition of medical emergency by the Court of Appeals, and the District Court's findings, we cannot say that the waiting period imposes a real health risk.

The analysis in Casey, in other words, is whether or not the burden imposed by state law "imposes a real health risk."  The 5th Circuit reduces that analysis to:  "Suck it up and take it.  It won't kill you.  Probably."

Charlie Pierce was right:  this law was simply courtroom bait to get a case to the Supremes that would overturn Roe.  Texas started this fight (Roe v. Wade came out of Texas long, long ago); I hope Texas doesn't finish it.

All Saint's Day 2013

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death

The last sermon I gave was at a funeral, a few months ago.  Funeral sermons are not to be repeated; not ever.  All Saint's Day is an almost funereal occasion; it is useful to use it that way, to remind ourselves this time of year should be about death as a part of life, not death as something we have to confront cataclysmically, or only in looking away.  Halloween is about costumes and candy and may demons; All Saint's Day is about....?

It should be funereal, in the best sense of the word:  the living acknowledging their connection to the dead, the dear departed.  What follows is a sermon I apparently actually gave, 7 years ago.  I can't remember the occasion or the reason why I'd be preaching, but it was for All Saint's Day, so it's appropriate for today.

Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10, 13-14

Let us now sing the praises of famous men,
   our ancestors in their generations.
² The Lord apportioned to them great glory,
   his majesty from the beginning.
³ There were those who ruled in their kingdoms,
   and made a name for themselves by their valour;
those who gave counsel because they were intelligent;
   those who spoke in prophetic oracles;
⁴ those who led the people by their counsels
   and by their knowledge of the people’s lore;
   they were wise in their words of instruction;
⁵ those who composed musical tunes,
   or put verses in writing;
⁶ rich men endowed with resources,
   living peacefully in their homes—
⁷ all these were honoured in their generations,
   and were the pride of their times.
 ⁸ Some of them have left behind a name,
   so that others declare their praise.
⁹ But of others there is no memory;
   they have perished as though they had never existed;
they have become as though they had never been born,
   they and their children after them.
¹⁰ But these also were godly men,
   whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten;
¹³ Their offspring will continue for ever,
   and their glory will never be blotted out.
¹⁴ Their bodies are buried in peace,
   but their name lives on generation after generation. 

Ephesians 1:15-23

15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²²And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Matthew 5:1-12

5:1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

5:2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

5:4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5:5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

5:6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

5:7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

5:10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

5:11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Here's the sermon:

How they came to be performing in that little town in East Texas I’ll never quite know: members of the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where I was a student, performing scenes from various plays, reciting poetry and prose. I doubt I will ever forget it. “Come, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad tales of kings….,” they said, they invited us. It would be another few years before I would hear the invitation of Ecclesiasticus: “Let us now praise famous men.” And many years after that before I would realize that those words praised non-famous people, too.

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king

The speech from Shakespeare’s Richard II, that I recalled. “The Hollow Crown” was the name of the performance. I only remember the power of the words, and of their sorrow. No one else can make us feel as mournful as Shakespeare, can make us as aware of loss and death and our own mortality. Funny thing, there is no sorrow in the scriptures this morning; almost no mention of death at all. Odd thing for All Saint’s Day, it would seem; for a day precisely set aside to remember the dead and those gone before. But Christians don’t celebrate death, and we certainly have no reason to fear it. We worship the God of the living, and take in even death as a part of life. It is life Ecclesiasticus recalls us to, and life that Jesus is talking about in the gospel of Matthew. Life and the living are always foremost in our worship and our faith. Our God has conquered death; there is nothing else so powerful in our world, and yet our God has conquered it. It is the repeated lesson of Christianity that we have conquered death, too; and on All Saint’s Day we place that teaching front and center in our worship, and our hearts.

All the Beatitudes can be understood as reversing our view, and seeing how we overcome death by submitting to death. The Beatitudes are about reversing our expectations, our understanding, our knowledge of what is good: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus starts off. Blessed? Really? One translation I know replaces that word with a more contemporary one: “Congratulations!” It catches the flavor of the original Greek, because the blessing is present in this life, here and now, not in the sweet bye and bye. Blessed are you, congratulations to you, if you are poor in spirit; you have the kingdom of heaven, and that is right here, and right now, too. God, after all, is the God of the living, not the dead. So it isn’t a promise for the life beyond, if you are only faithful now. It is given to you here, in this life, in this time. And if you mourn, blessed are you, because in this life, in this time, you will be comforted. If you are meek, don’t struggle to overcome it; the meek, not the bold and the powerful, will inherit the earth. The first will be last, the last first, because when you are No. 1, the only way to go is down. When you are meek, you have the earth already, it cannot be taken away from you. Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Congratulations, you will see it done! If you are merciful, mercy will be given to you; if your heart is pure, God will be visible to you, in this life, in this time. You see how it goes on and on, a cascade of blessings and congratulations to those the world thinks dead already: the meek; the poor in spirit; the mourners; the ones who want justice done; the mercy givers, the pure of heart. The world thinks it preys upon such people; but God says congratulations to them. And who are you going to trust? The world? Or God?

That immeasurable richness Paul writes of, is given to us in this life; and all the saints, the whole cloud of witness which surrounds us, gives evidence of that blessing. Ecclesiasticus tells us that the Lord has apportioned great glory to famous men; but even those who did not leave behind a name, those of whom there is no memory, were godly men; and their righteous deeds have not been forgotten. We remember them, too, on this day. Their names may be lost to us, but their church and their faith and their lessons live on for us. Even Ecclesiasticus knows that what is important is life, not death, and that death cannot conquer God or God’s glory, that though we die we are still part of the living, and the dead who have gone before us are still part of us. Blessed are we, that we can live in the world they made, and make the world more like a place where people want to live. Blessed are we when we live, and mourn, and hunger for justice, and show mercy, and are poor in our spirits; blessed are we because the Lord of the living is with us, and brings us the clouds of witness to remind us of what has been done and needs to be done, and what can be done. Blessed are we for all the saints who from their labors rest, and who pass those labours on to us, so we can carry on their legacy while we are living, and pass it on to the living who come after us. Congratulations! Congratulations to us all! We do not have to sit upon the ground and tell sad tales of kings. The Lord is with us, and with his saints; and in God’s spirit, and the witness of the ancestors, we are all blessed.

Amen.


In the German E&R church calendar, this prayer would come not the day after Hallowe'en, but the Last Sunday of Pentecost, and they would observe it as Tötenfest.

Almighty and everlasting God, before whom stand the spirits of the living and the dead; Light of lights, Fountain of wisdom and goodness, who livest in all pure and humble and gracious souls.

For all who witnessed a good confession for thy glory and the welfare of the world; for patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; for the wise of every land and nation, and all teachers of mankind,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the martyrs of our holy faith, the faithful witnesses of Christ of whome the world was not worthy, and for all who have resisted falsehood and wrong unto suffering or death,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have labored and suffered for freedom, good government, just laws, and they sanctity of the home; and for all who have given their lives for their country,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For all who have sought to bless men by their service and life, and to lighten the dark places of the earth,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For those who have been tender and true and brave in all times and places, and for all who have been one with thee in the communion of Christ's spirit and in the strength of his love,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the dear friends and kindred, ministering in the spiritual world, whose faces we see no more, but whose love is with us for ever,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the teachers and companions of our childhood and yough, and for the members of our household of faith who worship thee in heaven,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

For the grace which was given to all these, and for the trust and hope in which they lived and died,

WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD, AND BLESS THY NAME.

And that we may hold them in continual remembrance, that the sanctity of their wisdom and goodness may rest upon our earthly days, and that we may prepare ourselves to follow them in their upward way,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we may ever think of them as with thee, and be sure that where they are, there we may be also,

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

That we may have a hope beyond this world for all they children, even for wanderers who must be sought and brought home; that we may be comforted and sustained by the promise of a time when none shall be a stranger and an exile from thy kingdom and household;

WE BESEECH THEE TO HEAR US, O GOD.

In the communion of the Holy Spirit, with the faithful and the saints in heaven, with the redeemed in all ages, with our beloved who dwell in thy presence and peace, we, who still serve and suffer on earth, unite in ascribing:

THANKSGIVING, GLORY, HONOR, AND POWER UNTO THEE, O LORD OUR GOD.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE, WORLD WITHOUT END. AMEN.

Hallowe'en

DONE RIGHT!