Seven whole days

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. In today’s 24-hour news cycle driven world, two years ago is practically medieval. While most of us sail along merrily, as if nothing ever happened, Haiti continues to be a humanitarian disaster.

People displaced by the January 2010 earthquake sleep inside St. Ann’s church in Port-au-Prince, on September 16, 2011. Haiti’s government is focusing on redeveloping the countryside to relieve strain on its over crowded capital. Officials are hopeful that the lure of new jobs and housing will help to evenly distribute the country’s population. (Reuters/Swoan Parker)

This photo comes from In Focus, which has a stunning set of photos. There’s another at Big Picture.

I’ve written several posts about Haiti on 7WD, most notably this one about the developed world’s complicity in the problems of Haiti. We have continued to fail spectacularly.

Want to do something? Help rebuild the church in Haiti.

I love the church, but at times it seems intent on doing dumb things. So that’s why, every now and then, it’s good to look around and realize that some organizations are even dumber than the institutional church. Take, for example, the TSA. For my non-US readers, this is the Transportation Security Administration, the people who menace travelers with arbitrary rules, but without any of the entertainment value you might expect from security theatre.

Case in point: it seems that cupcakes have been deemed the threat the national security. Yes, that is fact, not satire. Now, it seems, the TSA is defending its decision. It’s not the only example of lunacy from the TSA.

Slate gives us other (actual) examples:

TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl’s purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it’s a “replica weapon.” TSA confiscates a liquid-filled baby rattle from airline pilot’s infant daughter. TSA confiscates a plastic “Star Wars” lightsaber from a toddler.

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Mainline church attendance is declining in the US, not just in the Episcopal Church. People are trying all sorts of things (that is, the people who aren’t sticking their heads in the sand). The Christian Post brings the story of what is to me a surprising strategy:

The Bridge, a non-denominational church in Flint Township, Michigan, recently opened a tattoo parlor within its building. Church members say “Serenity Tattoo” is showing people living alternative lifestyles an avenue toward the gospel. It’s just one of many unusual ministry efforts that the congregation believes is helping to increase the church’s attendance. It’s their way of evangelizing.

I’d actually like to know how this works. If they say, “Hi, alternative lifestyle person, let us tell you about Jesus!” then it won’t work. That approach isn’t generous, but seems callously to use a gimmick to get “new members” in a scheme motivated by fear of decline. But if it’s a sincere engagement based on a love of God and of the world, coupled with meeting a community need, then I’m intrigued.

Back in the day, lots of churches had bowling alleys and coffee houses. So why not tattoo a few people? (Of course, Leviticus doesn’t forbid bowling like it does tattoos, but we ignore plenty of that stuff anyway.) Certainly there’s no room for complacency as our church watches the world sail by, increasingly relegated to irrelevance. Is ink the answer to the red ink of decline?

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We’re only eight days into this new year, though it seems as if it’s been months since Christmas Day. Each year for the past few years, Forward Movement has published a book of meditations for use through the year. These meditations are not linked to the lectionary like Forward Day by Day. In these books, authors have freedom to connect the stories of their lives, of our lives, to the life of following Jesus. This year’s book is called Walking with God Day by Day: A Year of Meditations.

You can get the book as a…regular paper book. It’s also available as an ebook for Kindle or Nook. Of course, part of my reason for telling you this is that I’d love it if we sold zillions of copies and Forward Movement had additional resources for new initiatives. But the bigger reason is that the meditations are really great. They might be helpful to you. Authors include some folks you might know from the blogosphere, including Penny Nash, Tim Schenck, Heidi Shott, Lauren Stanley, and yours truly.

To give you a flavor, here is today’s meditation by Betsy Rogers, a Christian education leader and editor from Belleville, IL. She also serves on the Forward Movement board.

The meditation for January 8:

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If nothing else, Americans like big things. We drive giant cars. We live in big houses. And now we can have a big cup of coffee. A really big cup of coffee. This one leapfrogs even the efforts of Starbucks to coin ridiculous words to describe ever-larger cups of brew.

Let the buyer beware. You’ll have to monitor your consumption carefully, since only a few of these monster cups will kill you. Each one of these babies holds 20 regular cups of coffee, so make sure you know how much coffee it takes to kill you. I don’t think there’s a website to find out how much coffee it takes to make your eyes go gaga like the dude in this photo, but be wary of that too.

Consider this cup. It’s ridiculously large. It’s impractical. It’s potentially fatal. In other words, it fits right in with American patterns of consumption.

Buy yours at Archie McPhee. Wave of the coffee filter to Likecool.

Blog note: my archnemesis is always going on about coffee on his blog, and I didn’t want him to have an advantage. By my count, we’ve each written eight posts (mine, his) devoted to coffee. Until now. This one puts me ahead.

This stunning image is “The Baptism of Jesus” by He Qi. If you don’t know her work, go browse her online gallery. Prints are for sale at quite reasonable prices.

Here is some music for the day: the appointed psalm (Psalm 29) followed by the hymn “Christ, when for us you were baptized” from Washington National Cathedral. Enjoy!

Not long ago, a Facebook friend wrote that the General Ordination Exam is “the most idiotic thing” in the Episcopal Church. I disagree. Last year I wrote a blog post in which I asserted that the GOE, while imperfect, is useful. Anyway, in the comments on the Facebook post, I suggested some other things more flawed or broken than the GOE, trying to prove that it’s not “the most idiotic thing” around. Among the items on my list, “deanery meetings.”

As a result of this conversation, which went on for several comments, a colleague sent me a list of ten broken things in the Episcopal Church, each of which is considerably more problematic than the GOE. So, dear reader, I’d like to know if you agree with this list. What would you add or remove? What is broken — and how can these things be fixed? By the way, I mention all this because I think we have to be honest about our shortcomings. Many of these issues are easily addressed, and doing so would make our church stronger.

Anyway, here’s the list. Her list is in bold and my comments follow.

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Big news out of the Church of England this week: they have announced a competition to design new chairs for churches. I am not making this up. Stop snickering. This is NOT the time the make jokes about the Titanic and deck chairs, and the rearrangement thereof. Some people might suggest that this kind of thing is a bit of whistling past the graveyard. (On this side of the Atlantic, we stay tightly focused on mission and never waste our time on silly things.)

Now, it might be said that there are plenty of fine chairs already available. But fine is not fine enough any more. This competition demands chairs of the “highest quality design”. The creators of this contest want good chairs, because they say that too many people who rip out their pews are left unhappy because of lousy chairs. News flash: the unhappiness is not because of comfort or chair design. People are sad because their pews, or the rickety old chairs they knew and loved, are no longer there.

Since I’m not English, I can’t enter the competition. But I thought I would use 7WD to establish that there are, in fact, plenty of good chairs already out there. No need for new stuff. After all, if any place in the world wants to avoid new stuff, it’s the church.

Pictured here is the basic church chair. Why make anything else, really? It is comfortable enough to tolerate for a bit, but not so comfortable that parishioners will fall asleep during particularly, er, thorough sermons.

But wait, there are more. Read on.

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No words. Marvel.

Lyrics:

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Happy Feast of the Epiphany! In my parish ministry, I always read the Epiphany Proclamation at our services on this day. It’s old fashioned, to be sure, but it nicely sets out the year to come. Since I’m not in a parish, I’ll post it here on 7WD and read it to my dogs.

ear friends in Christ, the glory of the Lord has shone upon us, and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return. Through the rhythms of times and seasons let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation. Let us recall the year’s culmination, the Easter Triduum of the Lord: his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial, and his rising celebrated between the evening of the fifth day of April and the evening of the seventh day of April.

Each Easter – as on each Sunday – the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed by which Christ has for ever conquered sin and death. From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, will occur on the twenty-second day of February. The Ascension of the Lord will be commemorated on the seventeenth day of May. Pentecost, the joyful conclusion of the season of Easter, will be celebrated on the twenty-seventh day of May. And, this year the First Sunday of Advent will be on the second day of December.

Likewise the pilgrim Church proclaims the passover of Christ in the feasts of the holy Mother of God, in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints, and in the commemoration of the faithful departed.

To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and history, be endless praise, for ever and ever. Amen.

The initial letter D dates from the fifteenth century and can be found here.

The Lens at the New York Times has a fascinating collection of images entitled, “Iconic Scenes, Revisited and Reimagined.” Here are famous photos, but without the thing that made them famous. Recognize this one?

Of course, it’s the photo of “Tank Man” who stood up to a line of tanks in Beijing during a government crackdown. Click the link to see the original photo.

These photos are engaging on their own — both the reimagined versions and the originals. But I also think they could be read as metaphors of our church today.

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In my previous post, I wrote about the disturbing phenomenon of priests wearing billboards instead of clergy shirts. A closely related problem can be found in sacristies and chancels in more places than I care to imagine. The examples shown here are actual chasubles for sale today. I have spared the vestment company by not linking to them here. (I worry that the posting of these seems dangerously close to putting me in the company of curmudgeonly priests and bloggers.)

This Advent chasuble has four candles on the front. Do you see the problem? Are you, like me, imagining four candles somewhere with little pictures of chasubles on them? Where does it end?

It’s enough to provoke a nightmare, which I’m hesitant to post lest some marketing genius from Almy catch wind of it. Imagine a candle-chasuble with LED lights. Each Sunday, as the celebrant enters, a new light pops on. Then, perhaps just before the Collect of the Day, she or he could push a button on the chasuble and a little recording of “O come, O come, Emmanuel” could play, kind of like a greeting card. Hey, we’re headed that direction. You read it here first.

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