Seven whole days

The appointed psalm for this morning is the text of one of my favorite bits of choral music, this gem by Josquin. If you are fortunate enough to be in a place where the choir will sing this during mass, think of me whilst you’re listening.

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Today many Anglicans remember the one day that didn’t make the cut in Holy Women, Holy Men. Our sanctoral kalendar will probably soon include those who renounced their Christian faith and Jews, among others. (Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing but positive appreciation of Judaism, which is why it makes no sense to me theologically to posthumously add Jews to our Communion of Saints, which presupposes Christian baptism.) For reasons unknown, the good people on the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music did not include Charles, who is commemorated today in England and by many Anglicans around the world. In fact, I would guess that of all the blessed ones considered for inclusion in the kalendar, Charles is the only one with an active devotional society — both in the England and in the US.

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There are people in the church who imagine that were Jesus to return today, he’d walk around in Birkenstocks and linen robes, shunning technology in favor of agrarian living. Bah! Jesus was cutting edge in his day, and so was Paul — using the language, techniques, images, and technology of the day — to reach people wherever they were. James Martin, S.J., writing in today’s Washington Post gets it right:

It starts at the beginning. In the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth is peripatetic in the extreme, always moving from one town to the other, going to where the people are. (And for anyone who loudly laments the “speed” or “immediacy” of the new media, and prefer the slower–and therefore, theoretically, more reflective and so better–pace of the older forms, they should remember that Jesus often does things “immediately,” a word used over 40 times in the Gospel of Mark.)

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Back in 2002 when Bishop John Bryson Chane became Bishop of Washington, he got lots of cool points because he’s a grad of Yale Divinity School. OK, that was just for me. For everyone else, he earned many cool points because of his band, The Chane Gang. Then he did all sorts of bishopy things, and people variously decided he was fantastic or heretical — usually with not much of a middle ground.

This morning at the convention of the Diocese of Washington, Bishop Chane announced his intention to retire as bishop, with the ordination of his successor to take place in autumn 2011. That will mean lots of things, but one thing’s for sure. Now is the time to order your copy of his latest album, before it goes out of print. Oh, yeah, and it would be a good time to pray for Bishop Chane and the people of his diocese.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has an article about Bishop Chane retirement and tenure as bishop.

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This year’s Trinity Institute has concluded. The keynote speaker was Rowan Williams, who spoke with a stellar line-up including Sir Partha Dasgupta and Professor Kathryn Tanner. All the plenary talks, discussion panels, and the opening Eucharist are available as video on demand. Anyway, Archbishop Rowan has written a short piece for Newsweek summarizing some views shared at the Institute. Here’s a snippet.

But we must hang on to the idea that not everything reduces to one standard of value. Treat economic exchanges as the only “real” thing that people do, and you face the same problems confronted by the evolutionary biologist (for whom the only question is how organisms compete and survive) or the Freudian fundamentalist (for whom the only issue is how we resolve the tensions of infantile sexuality). Traditional religious ethics—traditional ethics of any kind, in fact—do not require you to ignore the hidden forces that may be at work in any particular setting. Being human is learning how to ask critical questions of your own habits and compulsions, and it’s learning how to adjust them against a model of human behavior—an idealized truth about the purpose of our humanity.

As I said before, I was one of two official bloggers for the event, along with Professor Catherine Mann. I watched the conference from home and posted reactions to each speaker, engaging in conversation with Mann as well. Go have a look at the blog. I will take several days to process fully what I heard during the conference. Let’s just say we religious folk have a lot of learning and work to do as we engage the public sphere to build an ethical economy.

Next year’s program looks pretty interesting too. You can learn more or sign up here.

Photo ACNS/Scott Gunn from the Lambeth Conference 2008. More here.

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Hey, you might notice the Christian Century graphic over on the right sidebar. Click that, and you’ll end up at the Christian Century blog network site. Seven whole days (or 7WD as people in the know call it) is now a member of the network. That means that posts from here will show up there. I plan to join fully in the network, visiting other blogs when I can and posting comments. You’ll probably see more content from the CC blog network appear here.

By the way, Christian Century is a fantastic bi-weekly print magazine. If you don’t read it, you should. It is especially useful (and thought-provoking) for anyone who preaches regularly. Go subscribe now!

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I knew “Matt Kennedy” couldn’t be a real person. After all, most of the people who bloviate at his favorite stomping ground post under pseudonyms (not that I blame them, considering much of what they write). Anyway, I posted a very scriptural account on 7WD last week of God’s opinion about shrimp, and how it’s an abomination to eat it. Just like men lying with men. And yet “Matt Kennedy” posted a comment trying to say that one bit of Leviticus is the inerrant word of God and another part can be tossed out like so many Long John Silver’s wrappers.

Laura Toepfer, investigative journalist and priest, has unmasked the real person behind “Matt Kennedy”. It’s not pretty. Well, actually she is. Her name? Ms. Beezle-Bubb.

Obviously very attractive, she takes care of herself, but is not vain–no, of course not. That’s why she wears the heavy glasses. She only wants what’s best for you, my dear, and anything she says is there to help you understand. She’s particularly clear about grammar because grammar has very clear rules that anyone should be able to follow. Mostly, she hates it when you disappoint her, sweetie, because she knows you could do so much better than that. If you really tried and put your mind to it. Really, she just wants what’s best for you.

Next time someone named “Matt Kennedy” visits your blog, just say, “Get thee behind me, Ms. Beezle-Bubb!”

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We are a nation at war. You could be forgiven for not knowing that, given almost no reference to our war in the State of the Union. Iraq is somewhat visible (because of oil?), but Afghanistan remains hidden. There aren’t many front page stories about Afghanistan these days, unless a suicide bomber kills several Americans. This is not acceptable.

We are urged to continue “business as usual” while our fellow citizens are overseas in harm’s way. What’s worse is that most people in the service (because we don’t have a draft) are poor. So we have sent our poor to do our national dirty work. In other words, the burden of sacrifice is thrust on a small subset of our nation. My firm belief is that if we are going to go to war, we need to practice shared sacrifie. It should be costly to our whole nation, not just to a few. Taxes, if needed, should go up so that we can equip our soldiers and sailors with outstanding armor and provide the best possible health care to them when they are wounded. A national draft — with few exemptions — would ensure that the children of presidents and senators are on the front lines, not just the children of the poor.

I will continue to post about Afghanistan on this blog as long as we are there. I will continue to pray for our soldiers, for the people of Afghanistan, and for the Taliban every day. We cannot forget. Business is not usual.

Go look at another beautiful and disturbing set of photos on the Big Picture blog. And then pray. Lord, have mercy upon us.

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This doesn’t need much of an introduction, and I couldn’t add anything that Neil Postman hasn’t already said.

Note: due to language this one is “PG-13″ or so.

Wave of the ActionLiveNewsTeam microphone to Jan Nunley, who posted this on Facebook.

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The Oatmeal offers many delights. Today’s installment features examples of how NOT to be a friend on Facebook. If you are a Facebookie, you will laugh. Otherwise, move along. Here’s a preview.

I will confess to being at least one of the character types in this post, and I have friends (or perhaps I should say “friends”) of all of these types. In your comments here, please change names to protect the innocent or to at least avoid excessive shame for the guilty.

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The Trinity Institute is under way in New York at Trinity Church. The opening address by the Archbishop of Canterbury is now online, along with this afternoon’s talk by Professor Kathryn Tanner of the University of Chicago. I encourage you to watch both. Professor Catherine Mann and I (the two official bloggers for the conference) are having a lively conversation over on Trinity’s website. I hope you visit, and please do comment on our pieces. As I am merely a parish priest whereas she is a professor, please be generous with me whilst asking her hard questions.

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Did you watch the State of the Union address? One of the first things I noticed was that everyone, or at least all the women, were wearing purple. Everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Michelle Obama and seemingly every other woman was in some shade of purple. Was there a memo on the subject? Why would they do this? Hint: it probably wasn’t to look like these people or these people.

Here’s my theory. Someone figured out that purple is the new…neutral. I’m guessing the thinking went like this: Hey, America is divided into red states and blue states. I better not wear red or blue. Green makes me look too radical. Yellow suggests caution. Brown could be construed as politically unpopular. White suggests allegiance to  the ruling party. Oh, dear. What to do? I know! I’ll wear purple! It’s a little red and a little blue.

Yes, my friends, we have seen sartorial choices reduced to the same least-common-denominator thinking that dominates our political system. Below the fold, I give you some other options that would have shown genuine creativity, if not leadership. Perhaps at the next State of the Union, we can look forward to a new day in American leadership of wardrobes that unite.

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