Puppies!

Well, actually, 8-year-old Corgis. My aunt got two more of them, for a total of three. When we first got the camera out, all three were piled on top of me, but Mooker had a notion to scram, as he has a short attention span.

The funny thing is that the one on my lap is named Cody. He's a total sweetheart, unlike his female feline namesake. The white-furred one is Gizmo. And K's arm is over there somewhere.

I probably look tired. That's cause I was. We saw a lot of people this weekend, and it was awesome, if exhausting.

Oh, the bright yellow thing in my lap is my latest knitting project, a lap blanket for lil'D.

well. we are a mess

I am coughing and sneezing and sniffling and have a mild fever.

DFH's down with a nasty headache.

Thanks, Philly. Or whichever child handed this off.

The book

Real quick, before I run to kerygma…

All you journalists show your faces

As chance would have it, my AP style guide fell open to “religious movements.”

liberal In general, avoid this word as a descriptive
classification in religion. It has objectionable implications to many
believers.

I object!!!

Acceptable alternate descriptions include activist, more flexible,
and broadview.

No wonder we don't get any press coverage. The AP has no idea what to
do with us.

That said, lowercase such words as … goddamn…

.

Oh, neat stuff!

While visiting him in Philly this weekend, my friend Dave ran upstairs
after seeing the Jerusalem cross pendant I wear that K gave me.
When he returned, he handed me a small book and said, “You probably have
more use for this than I do.”

As near as I can figure, it's a 1790 edition of the Book of Common
Prayer, with a wood cover. The front cover is separated from the
binding, and the binding is very fragile, but aside from that it's in
perfect condition.

They spent a little while peeling my jaw off the floor when I set eyes
on it. I wish it weren't so fragile, because I'd like to look through
it more carefully, but in time.. in time…

Trumped by Rice!

Anne Rice is now writing exclusively about Jesus, having come back to
faith in 1998 after a medical scare.

I haven't read a book of hers since deciding that the fourth Vampire
Chronicles book was a big exercise in projection of ego and much
stroking of it. I am curious to see the new book, which media pundits
are quick to christen as “The Jesus Chronicles” or “Interview with the
Messiah.”

As I like to say in my most dry Anglican skeptic tone, “I don't know
how I feel about all that.”

favorite gospel hits…

…so to speak.

Today was Matthew 22:34-46. I was visiting St. Mary's in Ardmore, PA, the parish that welcomed me when I timidly came back to church in 2002-2003, for today's service. Lovely red doors, the embrace of the stone and stained glass nave. A sort of homecoming, with apologies to the other U2 fans reading here.

The first half of this gospel passage is one that still echoes in my head in the Rev. Dr. Boston Lackey Jr.'s voice, rendered in the high archaic language of the Rite I penitential order:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Fr. Tim mentioned that he “felt sorry for all the lawyers” that Jesus used to wail on back in the day, and you couldn't help but laugh at the irony. No one feels sorry for lawyers right? Except in this very passage we are commanded to feel compassion for even the lawyers. It's that kind of love: compassion. The Buddha taught a great deal about compassion and how great a role compassion can play in ending suffering. I am beginning to understand how the Buddha taught me to overcome personal suffering, and now, with Jesus, I walk on the path on easing societal suffering. And yet there are so many parallels to each path, that I now feel comfortable jumping back and forth between them, while always remaining on both!

In the meantime, this important passage is one of the foundation verses in progressive Christianity. Love is a problematic word for me. It's thrown up all manner of attachments–and still does, I'm still human–which lead to Dukkha. The idea of loving EVERYONE is anathema to the sacrosanctity of my close relationships. Or is it? We've talked in past entries about how we perceive our varying degrees of love, but for some reason, today I was catapulted back to when DFH and I were first wrestling with our nascent feelings for each other, and I blurted it out impulsively (how sacrosanct is that?) and he doled it out very carefully. But what he said to me that evening was very important to what grounds our relationship: Love is acceptance. We didn't know each other very well when we'd first started dating, and we'd both had plenty of experience with meeting people and feeling that semi-magical “I've known you forever” feeling. So we went headlong down this love road with a hefty roster of exceptions, footnotes, and codicils. Not conditions, but certainly legal protections.

And we've tested each other on that acceptance. His financial responsibilities have left him little to contribute to the common cause, for instance. And I became consumed with the desire to find a home parish again in June to act on a call that I don't recall perceiving. We've had a number of bumps in the road along the way that often arise from my own stuckness, at times. We all get stuck.

But when I get stuck, I think of the great commandment and the second that is like unto it. When I feel disappointed or annoyed, I don't think of ridding myself of the attachment that is causing me suffering–as the Buddha taught me–but instead, think to put myself in the other party's shoes. And even if I'm totally convinced that my cause is justified or righteous, I don't think about it in those terms when I'm trying to communicate how I feel. Instead, I try to convey the truth that's in my heart so that the other party can put themselves into my shoes, and then we're on some fair negotiating territory. And both of us can apologize.

Loving God, loving yourself, loving your neighbor–a triune responsibility, each important. What of this? By loving God, I learned to love myself, I learned to love others. Not the love that I'd been conditioned to crave my entire life, but something else. Something again with many parts, many colors, many facets that shine in our hearts. And who taught me these things? Humans.

For teaching me romance, I give thanks to Justin.
For teaching me acceptance, I give thanks to DFH.
For teaching me caring, I give thanks to my dear friends in Philadelphia.
For teaching me forgiveness, I give thanks to my therapists.
For teaching me humility, I give thanks to ex-Tim.
For teaching me generosity, I give thanks to Ramon.
For teaching me nurturing, I give thanks to Julia.
For teaching me listening, I give thanks to Lin.
For teaching me respect, I give thanks to my grandmother, Emily.
For teaching me openness, I give thanks to the Buddha.
For teaching me love, once I finally stopped to listen, I give thanks to Jesus.

I know there are others I need to thank. And there will be more to come. As I move into a fuller, deeper relationship with God, it becomes more important for me to find the points where all this love (short of romance, and eros with it) belongs to all my fellow beings. Compassion, to the Lord Buddha. Love, to the Lord Christ. I'm starting to research our Christian responsibility as environmental stewardship in Chapter One of my journey to discover how radical grace intersects with progressive political causes. That journey will bring me before many, many teachers, some wise and experienced, and some young and inquisitive.

And for giving me all these wonderful teachers, I give thanks to God.

I have no idea…

How I'm going to get everything done today i need to get done. Massive accident on 495 just south of 270 made fetching K a two-hour ordeal and then I came home and decided to wrap my head in chemicals and plastic.

Then lunch, then off to meet with Fr. Jim about my nascent religious-writing career. Then off to the vet's to pick up flea treatment and sleeping bags. (DFH's mom works at the vet, and she has our sleeping bags.) Then fill up the car, grab DFH, and vamoose off to Philly.

Okay, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. Oh yeah! I have to pack!

And rinse.

Hee. This makes more than eight months with the same style of haircolor…

Fun with TLA/netspeak homographs.

Had a moment just now with cya. You know, like cya l8r.

Cover your ass later.

Right.

flickr

I'm at http://flickr.com/photos/gallycat/ if anyone else is flickr'ed. There's some pics up from the cathedral explorations I did this weekend, more with that lightplay. fun stuff. take a look, and friend me if you're there.

Thanks to the power of velcro, my camera is fixed, too, so we're back to photo whoring the universe again. I still lack the power of photoshop, but in a way, that's pretty cool too: you get the real deal.

7-11

DFH and I were having a theological discussion on the way home, borne of an argument I got into accidentally on his livejournal. I talked about how I was referring back to an interpersonal conflict not because I wanted to air my beef again but because I wanted to illustrate a point about being open to the idea of being wrong.

The Salty Vicar makes the same argument not with regard to interpersonal conflict but with regard to intrainstitutional conflict, as we face it in the Episcopal Church in this incredibly well written entry.

I'm willing to also say, however, unlike Estes, that I'm willing to be wrong. He, and others, can work it out for themselves, whether pro or con. I'll continue to break bread with them, and my bishop. Estes and the conservatives fear for their souls because God will not have mercy upon them for making a mistake. I have no such fear. I have faith in God, and I have faith that God is the sort of person that will love me for either being righteous if I'm right, or forgive me for being wrong. The scriptures illustrate such a God. And it is because I hold traditional, orthodox, and biblical
views, I can say such with authority.

Then, in a silly online personality quiz we took last night, it posited the question:
Relationships take compromise. Whose? Yours, or theirs?
We were amused by the black-and-white nature of this question. I'm not always graceful at compromising, or admitting I'm wrong. This is especially true when I feel like I've been misunderstood, or wronged in some character-wounding way. A petulant thing said in anger: Who do I turn to when the darkness comes? My friends, family, love, and self. Never Jesus, she said. Such anger. Such anger.

The darkness comes when you cannot save yourself, when you reach out to those around you so much and so hard that your burdens become theirs, that your loves give up on you, your family doesn't have answers, and your 'self' languishes in the empty pit of despair. If you never know that darkness, you may never have need of a direct spiritual experience. God, whatever name you have for it, blesses you.

But that's not what I am talking about here. I'm talking about the reaction this person had, her anger restrained, her tone indignant, defensive, imperious, when all I had meant to do was share my story. I should have just pointed her here, I guess, but she's aware of this journal's existence. She could come here on her own instead of asking me about my spirituality and then bolt in anger when I answer honestly.

I needed that humility check. OK, check. But it made me realize that there are two kinds of people, and they aren't people of faith and people of secular persuasion. They are open people, and closed people. I think of my own experience, when I was the angry one, bolting. I wasn't open. I figured I had all the answers. Buddha taught me that there were no answers. You know all those crazy koans, with their accompanying stories about a monk with a question that demands an answer, and every answer he comes up with, the Buddha laughs and says “You are almost there?” You are always almost there.

Last night in Kerygma we talked about how reading scripture creates more questions than it does answers, and we talked about how that is a cause for joy. Ever-approaching circles, as Jeff put it. The path is the destination, as DFH put it.

We must stay open. To the idea that we might be wrong about something we hold dear. It doesn't mean that we cannot hold things dear. It means we can respect those who don't share our beliefs.

And that can be hard to do some days. Strength and grace, O Lord. Let us do more than see and hear: Let us look, and let us listen. Let us be open, 24/7, like a 7-11. Thank heaven.

Amen.

Goofy test results

That are surprisingly accurate.Especially my complete lack of grace in handling compliments. Dunno about terrific in relationships, though. Terrifying is just as true some days, I think.

The Maid of Honor Deliberate Gentle Love Master (DGLMf) Appreciated for your kindness and envied for all your experience, you are The Maid of Honor. Charismatic, affectionate, and terrific in relationships, you are what many guys would call a “perfect catch”–and you probably have many admirers, each wishing to capture your long-term love. You're careful, extra careful, because the last thing you want is to hurt anyone. Especially some poor boy whose only crime was liking you. Your exact opposite: Half-cocked Random Brutal Sex Dreamer We've deduced you're fully capable of a dirty fling, but you do feel that post-coital attachment after hooking up. So, conscientious person that you are, you do your best to reserve physical affection for those you respect…so you can respect yourself. Your biggest negative is the byproduct of your careful nature: indecision. You're just as slow rejecting someone as you are accepting them. ALWAYS AVOID: The False Messiah, The 5-Night Stand, The Vapor Trail, The Bachelor CONSIDER: The Gentleman, someone just like you. Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid – Free Online Dating.

revgal meming

1. What is your favorite word?
i have to pick?!!?

2. What is your least favorite word?
I can't say it. It's an ethnic slur that profoundly bothers me.

3. What turns you on, creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Truth and beauty.

4. What turns you off?
Compared to truth and beauty, proselytizing and vanity.

5. What is your favorite curse word?
Rafe has inspired me to new levels of creative F-usage.

6. What sound or noise do you love?
The sound of a late summer thunderstorm.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?
People eating.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I'm not sure yet, but it involves faith.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
being the person who calculates what angle spaceships need to hit the
atmosphere and not burn up

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you
arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Good to see you again.

Let's talk about my roots.

I was offline for pretty much four days, so now I'm catching up on email.

You know you color your hair too much when Clairol sends you a birthday card.

The least they could have done was included a coupon.

Dj Mewcat

Cody is standing on the CD player, and every time she tries to tackle pounce the speaker, she hits forward on the CD==it's led to an interesting mix of folk music.

She must have found the song she liked, because it's going now and she is sitting very protectively on the buttons.

Scratch that. (Not literally.) It's patio time.