Mary Daly, RIP

Mary Daly is dead.

I first read her in 1989.  She was fun and exhilarating, even though I rejected her absolutist understanding of gender.   Her fundamental sense of joy and her description for a transgressive, destabilizing laughter continues to appeal to me.  And I think she was right that God is more like a verb.

Daly was mistaken about the relationship between technology and feminism: technology has done much to liberate women, allowing them to be economically independent from men.   Her understanding of ancient religion was fanciful, if provocative.   Mythology was a way of concealing violence as much as it was a form of ancient wisdom.  I also think that “patriarchy” is too vague, at some point, to be helpful.

When I was in high school, I was intrigued by her non-response to Audrey Lorde.  I admit, at the time it was proof she was a selective thinker.  But in retrospect, her non-response was done out of respect for her sister, an awareness that the public sphere was not the location for such a fight.

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On the Manifestation

The Epiphany is also called the “manifestation.” the light, represented by Jesus, was shown to the world: the wise men, or the kings. The light, who is represented by Christ, was thus disseminated.

Some may think we are to be like the kings. We bring gifts, show this little baby some magnanimity, and praise the light. It’s like walking down a lane without any flashlight, until you get to the beacon that got you safely there. Maybe you stick around for a while happy that the light exists. You look up at it, like a moth of sorts, just hanging out, perhaps opening your back pack and eating one of the sandwiches you’ve stored for the journey.

But then you’ve got to keep on going. The light still shows you the way, but that’s not what you’re there for.

I think that for many faithful people, the most important part is the light itself. When people assert their religious faith most fervently, they are busy praising the flashlight, the beacon, or whatever tool it is that makes them see. “I believe in Jesus Christ” is like holding up the flashlight and saying, “hey! I’ve got it!”

But that’s only going half way. What good is a flashlight if you aren’t looking around? Maybe asserting one’s faith isn’t as important as just knowing what you see – or how you see.

The story we tell is a way of seeing. One way of seeing: I believe that when we are most vulnerable, is when we might have the greatest opportunity. When we are magnanimous, we will have the greatest reward. In the midst of scarcity, is an opportunity to return to the sources of true abundance.

There are many ways of looking at the world. It’s full of rivalry, envy, fear and loneliness. There is no hope worth having in the world, and we are all doomed to die alone.

But there is another way of seeing. The manifestation that affirms that whatever life we have is worth living, that even in our bare-knuckled, hardscrabble moments of alienation and misery, down the road just a little bit farther, is Easter.

We may not see it now, but at least we’ve got a flashlight. Our job is to keep moving.

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Christmas, etc

I’d like to wish you a Merry Christmas. And a Happy Christmas. I’d also like to wish you a Happy Hannukah and Happy Kwanzaa. And also a Merry Chanukah and a Merry Kwanzaa.

If you are an atheist, then just happy and merry to you.

Happy boxing day, December 26th, which is a day we celebrate our urge to kill our family members the day after, by not killing them, but by just boxing them around a bit. That’s the day we float like a butterfly, but sting like a bee, as a prophet once said.

Have you bought all your gifts? I haven’t bought any gifts yet. I’ll probably wait until after the New Year. It allows me to miss the rush and get to some post- New Year’s sales. I’m waiting for the 90% discount sales at Hermes.

I’d like to support the economy more, but for now, I’m just avoiding the madness. Not because I don’t like madness, and there’s nothing wrong with a little madness, if only because it helps you appreciate sanity. I just don’t want to be stuck in traffic.

Perhaps it is enough to sing some hymns and have a good dinner. Perhaps you will open that Chateauneuf du pape you’ve been saving from last year, when you splurged after a wine tasting one evening. Or you decided to get your ingredients from Whole Foods, including some wild mushrooms and artisenal cheese. Instead of spending a few hundred dollars on that diamond necklace, or getting some extravagant electronic device, you bought truffle oil for your mashed potatoes.

Wise choices. Truffle oil is far more important than a 75 inch plasma screen.

For the great theologian Schleiermacher, the feeling of the love of Christ was best represented by a family singing hymns around a piano after a delicious meal. He did not say it was found by a new camcorder.

Although the Flip is pretty cool.

The story of Christmas actually begins with the story of his return, with His words of peace and reconciliation. It begins with Easter. The body of believers began to understand that Christ’s love overcame the power of the gods who maliciously manipulated the lives around them. When they saw how being loved changed lives into lives that were full of potential, maganimity and creativity, they listened to the stories that were being told about Jesus’ early life, including his birth.

Tonight we celebrate the story of his birth.

And no, there is little historical evidence when or where. But we can recognize a few things within the events, the snippets of the lives told from the religious imagination of the people.

The first is that God is in surprises. The shepherds, Mary, and pretty much everyone, were a bit surprised. God as a baby makes God vulnerable and dependent, which is much different than the God who throws his weight around, making lives miserable. Granted, not all surprises are good, which is why we spend a lot of time avoiding them.

The second is that our life in the spirit is one of engagement. The child is dependent upon his family and the generosity of strangers. We are likewise truly dependent upon each other. And we’ll probably learn more about this as the year continues.

And last, Jesus loves a party. If there is a victory, if love does work, if there is justice at the end of time, if there is reason to hope, then we can afford to be magnanimous toward our enemies, patient in our work, and optimistic in our orientation. It may not get better for us, right here, in our individual lives, but the work we do together does make things better for others, even in the midst of individual sorrow and pain.

Therefore, we have plenty to celebrate about.

This is why the church placed Jesus’ birth square in the middle of Yuletide. Because the pagans had a good idea in holding parties, Christians agreed that the birth of Christ is a pretty good reason to party in itself.

So we’ll see you tonight at some time.

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Money, trust

From last year’s enewsletter around this time

Money.

The automakers are looking for a bailout.

More than half a million people have gone on unemployment.

Endowments – liquidated.

Office parties: canceled.

It’s so sad.

So now what do we do? Can’t afford clothes from Barney’s. Can’t jet off to Paris on that little extra bonus we had. And it would have been nice to see a couple of the office workers dance on the new guy’s desk after a few highballs.

Instead, we might just go home turn on the TV and watch Survivor reruns or that old Caddyshack DVD.

The instinct for people when they are afraid about the future is to hoard. To get overly frugal. To protect the little we have. it’s understandable. Sometimes we just have to curl back into the fetal position and wait for the sun to rise again.

But in the parable of the talents, remember what happened to the servant who decided to put one talent in the ground rather than invest.

He was cast out!

Metaphorically. And then he probably got even more depressed.

Although perhaps investing wouldn’t be the wisest idea right now.

But it’s noted, in a commercial society, that when there is a loss of trust, the proper role of the government is to do the opposite. To encourage people to trust more. By infusing trust into the economy, and people, banks and businesses will respond by trusting more.

Yes, if you haven’t guessed, I am a Keynesian at heart.

Money symbolizes trust. It is an implicit agreement, the foundation of a commercial society. And right now, we’re living in a time when trust has been broken at a level that is hard for even sophisticated bankers to understand.

For good reason: the trust was so subtle, the web of commerce so interlinked and nearly invisible, people didn’t see how crucial trust was for a working economy. What was visible? Getting rich.

Let me say that being rich is not the problem. Wealth is, by and large, a good thing. The scripture indicates that we want wealth, honorably created, through industry rather than through corruption. We prefer economies that are like fishing: through hard work and tenacity; rather than gold-digging – a matter of luck.

But we’ve been living through a time where there was enough dishonesty, ignorance and envy that people made decisions that would later affect our economy. And the system of incentives as such that most people were cheerfully self-deluded by the economy’s seeming resilience.

They were making decisions because everyone else was doing the same thing.

Yet, while there will be misery, fear and frustration as there are more layoffs and less money to go around, we have not yet lost the real source of wealth: our communities.

Yesterday, the Yankees paid more than $160 million for a pitcher. I’ve never heard of him, but I’m guessing he knows how to throw a fastball. Gold plated fastballs, with diamond studded seams.

Of course, by purchasing such players, priests like myself only go to Yankee games when someone else is paying. For everything, including the cotton candy and a bottle of Heineken.

I can barely afford to buy tap water at the new stadium.

We could alternately also decide to form a softball team at St. Barts. The cost? $1000 to join a league. And we get to play. That’s cheap.

Who will be happier? In one, we get to watch. In the other, we get to play. And invite our friends to watch for free. We can bring our own keg to the park if we want. One’s expensive. the other is fun.

The other evening we threw a party where people donated gifts. Many of them were gifts of love. Gary Rogers donated car detailing. I donated salsa lessons and an Indian meal for 4. Sandra offered a fancy 3* dinner for six. Meg offered her amazing brownies and cookies. And people paid money for them. They exchanged goods. Because we’ve got wealth here.

Bill McKibben writes that the real economy that sustains us happens when we are engaged in the workings of our communities. It’s what we have to look forward to.

What is the cost? There is one major cost. And we barely see it.

It’s convenience. It’s work to cook, to teach, and to clean. It’s work to share and be available to each other. It’s work to be a part of a community. It’s inconvenient.

Perhaps, as the economy deteriorates, we’ll realize that the conveniences we have are killing our humanity.

I don’t want the economy to crash. I hope it doesn’t get any worse.

But if it means we have to begin looking to one another for encouragement, help and love, then what we have lost will be much smaller than what we have gained.

Here at St. Barts, we will continue to throw parties.

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On Rick Warren and Uganda

Filed under Late than Never. Warren condemns the Ugandan Law.

There is a good reason people are confused: Warren is speaking to two audiences. First, his own. The homophobes. If he gets too liberal he loses credibility.

Second, non-homophobes who don’t trust him. He wants them to know he’s not an idiot.

Warren is a little different than other evangelicals: gay people are a second or third order issue. For most of the Christian right, homosexual fervor is a way of raising money. For him, his view of homosexuality is a code for “I still have moral authority.”

His own feelings are probably a bit conflicted. He’s committed to the traditional idea of marriage, yes, but he’s honestly not interested in killing gays. He has enough of a conscience to be offended by a law that executes gay people. If he were to change his mind, he’d probably lose 90% of his people. I’d be happy if he just gets them to be distracted by other issues where we can agree on, like climate change or female genital mutilation.

Could he be the person who opens up some space for safety among gays in Uganda? Warren is like a rock star there. His books are second only to the bible. He could pull it off. And I’d be happy if your average Ugandan gay could just not be killed. They listen to him because he’s an effective moral authority for them. Still, it comes at the expense of his desire to have authority here in the US as well.

Maddow, however, does expose Warren’s attempts to have it both ways. Still, the media might not let him. Remember – most of the media doesn’t understand religion as language: they see it as a series of intellectual propositions that have to calculate.

Father Jake discusses: The Ugandan Trade: Death Penalty for Conversion Clause

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The Manhattan Declaration

An obscurantist piece of theological and historical illiteracy, featuring a who’s who of the old time religion, including the man who wants to be the mostests, Fr. Duncan.

God Bless Them. May they be called to repentance.

Hugo says it’s cheap.

The Rev. Dr. Christian Troll is thinking strategically. Fr. Tobias would rather be in the Bronx.

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God Always Agrees With Us

Jesus would do what I do.

You, I’m not so sure. He might not do what you do. But I still like you.

Hat Tip Entangled States.

More Here.

Personally, I think that when Jesus was asking “who do You say that I am,” he was focusing on the “What do YOU think” not the “I am” part.

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The Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool

Talent over Bigotry. Good for LA (although I probably would have voted for the vicar).

Kendall is Disappointed. The Archbishop is frustrated. Fr. Tobias channels Dickens.

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Overturning the Tables

Overturning the tables in the temple was probably the main reason Jesus got nailed to a cross.

The story seems to indicate a severe separation of commerce and church. Money in church? No way! Take it out!

However, I don’t think that the problem of money is the primary message. More crucial was the nature of trust. In overturning the tables, Jesus challenged how and who we are expected to trust.

Nate Silver, the writer in one of my favorite blogs, reports in the General Social Survey that people are losing their faith in everything. Only 20% of people have trust in organized religion – down 10% from 30% in 2000. Just a little more trust than in banks.

That’s not very reassuring if you’re in the organized religion business. And we only forgive sins, not debts.

I don’t think the lack of trust is an entirely a bad thing. Given the number of clergy scandals, even in White Plains, suspicion makes sense. But trust is how we are still called to live.

Jesus was redefining who we are to have trust in.

Overturning the temples was a pretty important symbolic act. At core, following Joseph Schumpeter, Jesus’ act represented creative destruction. Jesus predicted the temple will be destroyed and replaced by a body.

It may undermine the idea that holiness is bought; but Jesus also seems to undermine the ritual itself. When he overturns the tables, it may be that Jesus locates true transformation not first in the temple, or through commerce, but in his body. Transformation is embodied, and participating in the life of God means beginning with your own. It may require creative destruction.

Sometimes an alcoholic realizes they cannot stop drinking after an event of creative destruction. Then they are called to continue rupturing their entire context to keep sober. They stop going to bars; they end their destructive contexts. They begin a long process of recalibrating their habits and renewing themselves. This is hard work. But they can then begin to trust themselves around drink after a time of training themselves differently.

Perhaps this is what we are living through now – this time of creative destruction. out of the broken shards of the old church, a new one will be born. Even in our own parish, people who have left congregations that they could not trust, are rebuilding a new community. And perhaps this church will represent, with God’s grace, the hope of a new generation.

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