Long-Hidden Gems: On Revelation and Authority

Well...I''ll leave it to you whether what follows contains any actual gems. But as I was cleaning out a desk drawer last night I came upon a set of diskettes containing all my academic work from seminary two decades ago. One assignment from Systematic Theology was to write a major essay on Revelation and Authority. The topic was timely then and is perhaps even timelier now; hence I am giving it the light of day in this medium that was unimagined when it was written.

I've done only minor editing--punctuation, capitalization, and the like. Temporal references are left unchanged, and clearly date the work from early 1988. For the same class, I also wrote on Soteriology and the nature of Faith/Belief. When I've had a chance to clean them up, I'll post them as well.

Bear in mind that this is an attempt at serious academic theology. I wasn't writing as a pastor or a popularizer, let alone a blogger! It's a different "voice" than than to which you may be accustomed to hearing from me. For whatever it's worth, it may be closer to my authentic voice than anything else.

In this age of computers we have become accustomed to borrowing words from ordinary discourse in order provide a humane technical vocabulary for the electronic manipulation of information. So it is “meet and right,” perhaps, to borrow some terms back from the computer field in order to give some definition to the scope of this essay. We will be speaking here of “hardware,” the utilitarian, mechanical support structure of Christian theology. It is quite necessary but, except for a select company of theological “hackers,” not very glamorous. It will not save any souls or lead anyone to God. It does, however, make it possible to use “software,” that is, to do the real business of theology: reflecting on and articulating the nature of the divine and the nature of the human and how the two relate to one another.

Having said this, I must now acknowledge that I am one such “theological hacker.” The subjects of authority and revelation, scripture and tradition, were the crucial issues in a significant turning point in my own pilgrimage of faith which took place about fifteen years ago. They have continued to command my attention, in one way or another, since that time. The thoughts expressed here, then, are a current distillation of a long-term and ongoing process. It is an activity that has included wide reading from Hooker to Newman to Gore to C.B. Moss to C.S. Lewis and others. This is to say that, while none of the ideas put forth here are original with me, neither can they, with one or two exceptions, be precisely attributed to anyone else. They are, rather, the synthesis of the interplay between my prior thinking on the subject and the more disciplined reflection that has take place in the past few weeks, given shape primarily by the reading of MacQuarrie's Principles of Christian Theology.

I should add at the outset that what might be called “personal revelation”—a particular intense or illuminating religious experience which seems to the recipient as a message from God—is outside the scope of this paper. We will deal here with “revelation” as it is understood in a corporate, public sense. Suffice it to say that any such personal experience, if it is to be judged genuine, must be congruent with revelation as we will define it.

One further introductory note: Without any explicit statement to the contrary, the sum of what will be said here could be construed to be “apneumatic,” or at least agnostic with respect to the Holy Spirit. Let that not be the case. It is my belief that the Holy Spirit invades and permeates all aspects of the revelatory process, including scripture, tradition, and reason. This should be implicitly assumed throughout.

II.

To speak of revelation in an ordinary semantic sense assumes the presence of four constituents: one who (or which) acts as a revealer, that which is revealed (content), the medium by which the content is conveyed, and one who (or which) receives the revelation. In the simple statement “I read in that paper that Gary Hart re-entered the presidential race” most anyone can intuit the presence of these four elements. In speaking of revelation in connection with religious authority, however, the question is clouded by the fact that “God,” by definition, is in some sense transcendent of ordinary human experience. So while one may be able to articulate the idea of divine revelation ontologically (“from above”), one must first approach it existentially (“from below”). We must begin with our own common human experience as receivers of revelation and work, so to speak, backwards through its mediation and content and finally to the Revealer before we can make generalizations about the process as a whole.

The notion of authority is a “hot” topic in the Church today. In some circles the word has taken on a connotation of oppression, of the restriction of personal freedom. I think we must disabuse ourselves of such an understanding, though, and recover a more etymologically grounded sense of authority as simply The Way Things Are, and, more importantly, as emanating from the Author. We tend to apprehend God's authority in the context of the doctrine of Providence, opening up the temptation of ascribing to him malicious intentionality, when we might do better to see it as flowing from the doctrine of Creation. We may have reason to wish the created order were constituted differently than it is, but such wishing will not help us come to terms with it. In any case, no matter how we understand authority, it is axiomatic that to the extent that any revelation of God is authentic, it is authoritative. The question of authority, then, is really one of credibility: What or whom do we trust as accurately conveying the content of revelation?

In the midst of all this, we must bear in mind that revelation is, by nature, not given for its own sake. It has an end, a telos. From a Christian perspective, this telos is nothing less than the salvation of humankind, individually and corporately, along with the entire created order. Underlying this essay is the contention that revelation is rooted in objective truth that is independent of any subjective knowledge. This should not be construed, however, to deny or minimize the salvific intention of God's revelation.

With these considerations in mind, we are now ready to proceed to an examination of the process of revelation “from below.”

III.

(In this section, when I, an individual, speak in the first person, I do so as figuratively inclusive of all Christians, and potentially of all persons.) I first encounter revelation when I encounter a community which claims to bear it. This community, in some way and in some degree, is one of "”faith.” “Faith” is meant here to be understood multivalently: as mental assent or belief (per Aquinas), as total orientation of will and affections (per St. Paul), and as behavior consistent with both. This community, in its life of faith, mediates to me the content of the revelation it claims to bear. The character of this content is such that it provides me with a way of interpreting my own experience, and all of reality, in light of the decisive action of God. Since human language is the necessary medium (at least a necessary medium) for its communication, this content must be expressed, among other ways, in the form of verbal propositions. Now it is (or should be) understood that no proposition must ever be thought to exhaustively convey the reality to which it points. Just as the vocabulary of computer use (“file,” “user friendly,” “menu,” “handshaking hardware,” etc.) is based on analogy with more fundamental human experience, theological discourse is only an approximation and a rather crude one at that, of the reality of God. Moreover, human language is rarely univocal, and every verbal exchange contains an element of translation in which something of the speaker's meaning is lost on the hearer. “We always know more than we can say.” (Michael Polanyi)

It would be a mistake, however, to infer from this that all theological propositions are necessarily tentative. This may be the case from God's point of view, but, alas, it is a perspective we do not share. From a hypothetical satellite on a hypothetically clear day, hypothetically equipped with telescopic equipment, one does not need a map of the world; the real thing is plain view. A map, after all, is only a crude analogy. But to someone lost in the Sahara desert, a map showing the nearest oasis is life itself, and is therefore absolutely definitive and authoritative. It is the experience of the community of faith, the Church, that there are some propositional formulations which, while not in themselves adequate, are nevertheless normative. Any other expression of the same truth would be even more inadequate.

The mediation of this content (verbal and otherwise) to me by the community of faith is a manifestation of paradosis, literally in Greek "giving along", or, as it is usually rendered in English, tradition. The tradition I receive strikes a resonant chord in me somehow—affectively, intellectually, aesthetically, or in whatever way. It engages my attention to one degree or another, ranging from incipient curiosity to complete fixation. It is readily apparent, however, that the revelatory content which has been mediated to me is contingent. It is itself a mediation of a mediation. It draws me back, ultimately, to the faith community at the dawn of its existence, when the content of its tradition was first articulated. The community had been called into existence by a decisive act of God and formed by its own reflection on and interpretation of that experience. If the tradition through which I apprehend the revelation can be called a “contingent mediation,” this primary constitutive experience is an “original mediation.”

One of the ways in which the original mediation becomes part of the tradition is through a written record of the constitutive event. The word is used here in a broad sense, referring actually to a series of events between the Annunciation and Pentecost, and, on a secondary level, going back to the call of Abraham, and the initial reflection/interpretation. In time, the Church recognizes certain of these writings as Holy Scripture, as having authority in the sense described above—that of accurately conveying the content of the revelation. It is necessary, however, to refine this assertion in three respects: First, it must be remembered that it was the Church which recognized the Scriptures as such and it is in that context in which they must be understood. They are neither, on one hand, an independent witness which can function apart from the organic faith community, nor, on the other hand, subject to having their authority and credibility compromised by whatever factual errors and historical inconsistencies may be uncovered by critical scholarship. To elaborate, for example: If it can be conclusively demonstrated that Paul did not write the Pastoral Epistles, this does not subject them to decanonization or in any way vitiate their authority. Second, even while Scripture is part of the Church's tradition, it nevertheless stands in a special relation to the rest of the tradition on account of its place in the “original mediation.” It represents the community's initial response to the event which brought it into being, and, as such, becomes part of that event. It is normative. Third, since Scripture is verbal and, at times, starkly propositional, it is subject both to the promises and the pitfalls inherent in any verbal communication.

The point is that I am not advocating a fundamentalist sort of “plenary verbal inspiration” doctrine. Only now can I think of approaching (theologically, that is) the Initiator of the whole process of revelation, the Revealer himself. The original mediation leads me to God's definitive action within common human experience (cf. MacQuarrie's notion of “classic” or “primordial” revelation,” p.90). The words of the sacred texts are important because they represent one of the crucial defining characteristics of the sort of divine action that we are talking about. It is public and objectively accessible, which is to say that it takes place in history. The quest for the historical Jesus may be quixotic, but there is no doubt that there was a historical Jesus, that he was born under unusual circumstances, that his manner of life and teaching got him in trouble, that he died, and that his rising from the dead was well-enough attested that many thousands of ordinary rational men, women, and children soon thereafter submitted to torture and death for the sake of that proclamation. God's revelatory action is no mystical, private affair. Again, this is not to deny the validity of mystical experience. The tradition itself affirms the reality of personal divine-human relationship. Strictly speaking, however, this is not revelation. We are speaking here of God-as-Revealer, the ultimate locus of Author-ity, knowledge of whom can be communicated.

IV.

We are now in a position to look at revelation ontologically, that is, “from above,” reversing the direction of our inquiry and, presumably, arriving back at our starting point. God, the revealer, acted in human history in a definitive way in the “Christ event.” The experience of this action formed a community, the Church, which immediately engaged in a process of reflection and interpretation. This two-part cycle of action and interpretation can be said to form a unit, a “deed-word event” (I am reasonably sure that I encountered this expression in reading the evangelical New Testament scholar and theologian George Eldon Ladd, but I am not able to make a citation) which constitutes the original mediation of the revelation. It is recorded in a normative fashion in the form of Holy Scripture.

Since the deed-word event has taken place in history, the community which it formed is also a historical entity, and is more and more temporally separated from its primordial constitution. It continues in time as a living paradosis of the revelation. It does not exist in a vacuum, however, and since human experience does not cease, neither does the process of reflection and interpretation. As a result, succeeding generations who come into contact with the Church experience a doubly-mediated form of the revelation. They are separated not only from God's action, but from the original interpretation of it.

Moreover, the “community” in which they find themselves is not monolithic. The more time passes, the longer the process of reflection continues, the more the resulting interpretation is (to speak in a charitable euphemism) multi-faceted. These “complementary insights” (perpetuating the euphemism) into the revelation create sub-groups within the community, each of which sees itself as the center (or as part of the center) of the ecclesial universe, with the other groups inhabiting a series of concentric circles emanating from the center. This creates an environment in which anomalies are the exception rather than the rule (which is itself an anomaly) and in which the notion of authority—defined as that which credibly mediates revelation—emerges as increasingly important—indeed, as crucial.

To extend our Robin Hood approach to "computer-ese" (stealing metaphors from the thief), one might compare the anomalous world inhabited by authority and revelation to a “bug” in a computer program, a situation in which a program sabotages itself with its own logic. The task of the “de-bugger” is to carefully and judiciously—in a manner akin to that of a surgeon—locate and modify the offending link in the sequence of commands. This is usually accomplished by the intuitive common sense of the programmer, and not infrequently involves being illogical, fighting anomaly with anomaly. Care is always taken, however, to disturb as little as possible the non-offending links in the chain; the “de-bugging” process, illogical as it may be, is performed with the primary objectives of the program consciously in mind.

The Christian theologian (which in this instance includes any baptized person who is at all reflective on his or her faith) is at times called upon to be a “de-bugger,” to deal with the
anomalies in the Church's life and in the witness of the tradition. The primary tool in this endeavor is human reason, the critical faculty which can intuit distinctions and categories
that may be sub-verbal (in Polanyi's sense). It must be kept in mind, however, that the function of reason is utilitarian. It is able to critically evaluate the various media which claim to authoritatively transmit the revelation of God in Christ. This takes place with respect both to the “original mediation” and the various “contingent mediations.” But reason must not presume to offer access to the content of revelation itself, much less to the Revealer. It is employed judiciously, and with the telos of revelation consciously in mind. Reason is not itself an authority; it discerns authority.

The ultimate authority, of course, is the Author. God's very ontology, however, is such that we do not share his mind, his essence. This fact creates the very need for revelation, and decrees that revelation is mediated. The task at hand, therefore, is, with the aid of critical reason, to discern what is authoritative, to determine where we are most likely to encounter the mediation of God's revelation. This is a question a good number of brilliant minds have expended a tremendous amount of energy over the centuries trying to answer. There is a real sense in which this is necessary and healthy. Without trivializing the importance and the sincerity of this endeavor, we can suggest a methodology which lends a good deal of focus to it. The manifestation of God's revelatory authority is the community which was formed by it, which is in essence organic rather than institutional, which transcends time, which “gives along” the content of the revelation. Scriptures, creeds, councils, confessions, declarations, encyclicals, pastoral letters and (“as one untimely born”) General Conventions can be of genuine usefulness to the task, but only inasmuch as they are seen as rooted in an flowing out of the organic life of the Church.

Now without a good deal of qualification and nuance, much of the preceding paragraph is a rather naive statement of the obvious. When one is faced with an actual concrete theological issue, trying to discern the mind of the Church is, if one is simple-minded, suspiciously easy, and if one is sophisticated, evocative of despair. It is a telling irony that Vincent of Lerins formulated his famous “canon” as a polemical reaction to one who has come to be recognized as one of the most seminal and (in the west) orthodox theologians in Christian history. So we offer the dictum, “Seek the mind of the Church,” not as a solution to theological quandary, but as the only legitimate starting point in the search.

This is, after all, an essay on revelation and authority, not ecclesiology. But since we have so strongly located the mediation of revelation in the Church, there is an implied notion in the previous paragraph which needs to be made explicit. The Church is an historical entity. Paradosis happens in the context of the passing of time. Even though the “mind of the Church” on any of the controversial issues which she faces today may be impossible to discern, it is quite feasible to generalize about the mind of the Church on the issues faced a century ago. A hundred years from now, the mind of today's Church will be significantly clearer than it is to us now. Even though the expression consensus fidelium may be nearly equivalent to “the mind of the Church,” I would like to suggest a subtle distinction, that is, that the former term is more temporally expansive. An important theological issue is rarely settled within the space of one generation. Indeed, there was a time in the mid-fourth century when the mind of the church seemed quite made up on a crucial Christological question; as Jerome tells us, the world woke up and found itself Arian. This turned out, however, not to be the consensus fidelium.

So the pursuit of the authoritative mediation of revelation is, to put it mildly, elusive. Authority, when it is discerned, must be laid hold of confidently, but humbly, and with faith (in all the semantic richness of that word). In many cases, it is a trans-personal endeavor, because it is trans-generational. As it was with those who worked on medieval cathedrals (enough of computers now!), so it is with theologians: one generation builds onthe foundation laid by another. For any given individual, faith is the assurance that the telos of revelation will reach its fruition. His or her probing of the mystery, moreover, is not wasted effort. Not only does it provide the setting for the working out of one's own salvation “in fear and trembling,” but contributes to the consensus fidelium which will mediate, “give along” the saving content of God's revelation in Christ to those yet unborn.

Another One Swims

As one who inhabits the Catholic end of the Anglican theological and liturgical spectrum, I am not unaccustomed to hearing from time to time about an Anglican taking the step--a relatively short one in many ways for an Anglo-Catholic--into what was once referred to as "the Roman obedience." Precisely because I am a Catholic (in my own mind--full-stop, no qualifiers, upper-case 'C', and all that as an Anglican), I always have an ambivalent response to such news.

On the one hand, I am not without sympathy for the concerns that can lead one to just give up on sustaining the notion that the Anglican churches are a full and integral part of the "Church Catholic," no less so than our Roman cousins. There are so many Anglicans who seem hell-bent on contradicting that very notion that one wonders, along with Newman, "What's the point? Why not just join up with what is clearly the mainstream of Catholic Christianity and let all the Evangelicals and Liberals get on with their "private judgment in gorgeous apparel" (per Cardinal Manning, one of the early Tiber-swimmers) party?"

On the other hand, the news of another "poping" is always disconcerting. It means there is one less ally to contend for Catholic truth and order within Anglicanism. But more to the point, it accomplishes piecemeal and individually--by mere attrition, as it were--what an earnest Catholic Anglican always hopes to accomplish overtly and corporately--that is, reunion with the See of Rome. The best construction one can place on the state of affairs since 1532 (0r 1559, or 1570, depending on how you parse the historical data) is that it is a necessary but unfortunate anomaly that needs to be cleared up ASAP.

But never in my 33 years in the Episcopal Church have I witnessed such a steady stream of high profile Anglican conversions to Rome as has taken place in the past several months. No fewer than four members of the House of Bishops--one long retired, two very recently retired, and one incumbent diocesan--have announced their embrace of Roman Catholicism. The latest, just revealed today, is John Lipscomb, recently retired Bishop of Southwest Florida. All four are prominent simply on account of their status as bishops. But they are not mere abstractions to me personally; I know and have interacted in significant ways with all four. Their departures are big news to me. I cannot help but "take it personally."

The news from Southwest Florida came just as I was perusing a thread on the General Convention listserv this morning. The question on the floor was "How does the Church discern new insights from the scriptural witness in the light of the changing circumstances of human existence?" Here is the response I posted:

Plowing through this morning's HoB/D messages in chronological order, I read ******'s queries right after reading the news of Bishop Lipscomb's crossing of the Tiber. Seeing the two in the context of one another gave me an insight (reminding me of something I already knew, actually) that I think is serendipitous. The key word in *******'s question is "we"--i.e. who is the "we" that should be engaged in "redefining what WE understand..."? My observation after some 33 years in TEC, most of that in some form of leadership, is that the "Catholic" strand in our ecclesial DNA is susceptible to a sort of mutation that leads us to see ourselves more as a microcosm of the whole Church Catholic than as a broken fragment of the whole. This mutation shapes (distorts, IMHO) our approach to all sorts of questions, including the articulation of boundaries for sexual morality. Lee Shaw complains in a recent post of what he considered an over-esteem for the authority of Lambeth I.10, reminding us that the Lambeth Conference is not a council charged with defining doctrine. Perhaps not. Yet many of us in TEC act as though General Convention is precisely that. We behave as though GC possesses the authority of an Ecumenical Council, when in fact it represents only a broken fragment of a broken fragment. Now, to apply this insight to the question on the floor: TEC in entirety--let alone as it is represented by General Convention--lacks the authority to undertake change of the sort advocated by "progressives." Any such re-evaluation of the received moral tradition must be undertaken at a much higher level--yes, a level that does not presently exist in any constituted canonical form. This is why, as Bishop Lipscomb points out, the unity of the visible Church on earth should be of paramount concern, trumping other agendas and causes that may in themselves be quite worthy. We are trying to live and move and have our being with our hands tied behind our back. We are incapable of addressing a re-evaluation of sexual morality (among other tasks) until we have addressed the issue of unity.

My Less-than-comfortable Day

By the definition of the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am an introvert. And I don't pussy-foot around the border; I'm the genuine article. Today was not an introvert's idea of a relaxing day. I will crash hard tonight. But it's the kind of day that makes me know who I am and why I do what I do.

I have a parishioner who's in high school who is really a remarkable young man. He's done a lot for me, so you could say I 'owed' him. But I'm also genuinely fond of him, so agreed to donate most of my morning to driving a van full of theater props from the local high school to one of the local elementary schools, where his theater class was putting on a one-act version of the Sleeping Beauty story. Did I have a whole list of pressing items on my to-do list back in the parish office? You bet I did. But I would not have traded the experience of watching this group of twenty-some young people act--yes, with varying degrees of ability, but every one of them with passion and dedication. And watching the response of the elementary school kids in the audience was equally precious.

No sooner had I gotten to the church office than it was practically time for me to leave again (after dealing with a few emails) for my noon Rotary meeting. Yeah, you read that right--Rotary. For thirteen years in Stockton, I resisted pressure to join Rotary. To quote Austin Powers, "It's just not my bag, baby!" But all the wise advice I have access to tells me that a member of the clergy in a small town should join a service club, so that's what I'm doing. Hard for an introvert--trust me. I sat next to my Presbyterian counterpart from down the street and we talked a little shop before the formal program started.

When I got back to the office, there was a phone message from a man whose wife died last night. He's not a parishioner, but once had a connection to another parish in this diocese. He wanted "last rites" for his wife. Technically, it's a little late for that, but I agreed to meet him and his two sons later at the funeral home for some prayers around the body of his wife.

Then I had a scheduled meeting with a man who is about to be ordained a deacon--tonight, at St Anne's. When went through some liturgical choreography--both for tonight and for our future working relationship--and then sat down literally behind the altar and discussed youth ministry, in which he has long been involved, and which will be a continuing element of the gifts he shares with this community.

I was barely finished with that meeting when a copier salesman arrived. I know what you're thinking--but we had an appointment. We're far enough into the selection process for our next piece of major office equipment that it was time to arrange for a "test drive," whereby they bring in the machine and let us use it for a week before making a final decision. We got several details ironed out.

Then I was off to the funeral home. The deceased was a war bride--a German girl who, at age 17, married an American G.I. who was in her country as part of an occupying force. They were together for nearly 59 years. A couple of months ago, after a long while with difficulty walking, she was diagnosed with advanced leukemia. The end came more quickly than expected--not even time to go through the hospice care phase--but she was in great pain, so it was a blessing. Last night, at home, after asking her husband to fix her a bowl of soup, she died in his arms. A week or so ago, she had thanked him for giving her a good life. Such utter sweetness. What a privilege it is for me to be allowed in to a moment like that in someone's life. With her husband, her two sons, and a longtime friend, we gathered around her body and offered the final prayers for the dying--yes, a few hours late--from the Prayer Book.

Now I'm trying to get this posted before the rehearsal for tonight's liturgy begins. Miles to go before I sleep, but it will be rest indeed.

On the Wisdom of Submitting to Corrupt Authority

I hope you have made it a habit to check out the communal blog effort at which I am a contributing writer. Last night I posted this piece there by Greg Walgenbach, who was a student in a class I just finished teaching in my former diocese of San Joaquin. Greg has an M.Div. from an eminently respectable institution, so he's no theological slouch. I encourage you to check out his fine work. Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

David is grieved at the death of God’s anointed and punishes the offender. His response is penitence at the death of his King and beloved friend, Jonathan. It is the glory of Israel, and hence God’s glory, that is tarnished. Despite his corruption and tyranny, Saul’s death is an occasion for mourning and penance—because he was the LORD’s anointed..

How much greater the mourning now that we serve the Anointed Lamb that was slain, the Son of David who calls not for retribution but for us to love our enemies, who bids us take up our cross and follow him! How much more are we called to be a people who submit to God’s authority given in the shape of the Church and her practices! Such submission is radical for it must trust God’s presence—even in the dark, in His judging absence, as space for the Holy Spirit’s work. We are called, in Reinhard Hütter’s phrasing, to “suffer divine things.” We do so perhaps even knowing that the ‘divine things’ might include suffering and temptation at the hands of malevolent spirits.

Such a reading of Scripture offers strange comfort. It leaves little room for gloating. David’s immediate struggle was ended; yet that ‘victory’ was painful. Yet it does allow us to see Christ’s presence in the structures of authority in the Church, even the corrupt ones. It is this grace that prepares us to see that we were and are complicit in the very structures of authority that killed the Anointed One, Jesus Christ.

Public Nakedness

OK, now I have your attention, right?

But, as you might guess, I'm "playing" you with the title of this post. And the fact that I can do so is precisely the point of this very incisive article. (I'm sure that most of those who look at this blog are also avid readers of Titus 1:9, so I'm doing this for the three or four that aren't.)

Here's a teaser, but I encourage you to read the whole thing:

Reams have been written on the differences between Islamic and Western societies, but for sheer pithiness, it's hard to beat a quip by my former colleague, a Pakistani scholar of Islamic studies. I'd strolled into his office one day to find him on the floor, at prayer. I left, shutting his door, mortified. Later he cheerfully batted my apologies away. "That's the big difference between us," he said with a shrug. "You Westerners make love in public and pray in private. We Muslims do exactly the reverse."

At the nub of debates over Muslim integration in the West lies the question, What's decent to do in public--display your sexuality or your faith? The French have no problem with bare breasts on billboards and TV but big problems with hijab-covered heads in public schools and government offices. Many Muslims feel just the opposite. As my friend suggested, Westerners believe that prayer is something best done in private, a matter for individual souls rather than state institutions. In the Islamic world, religion is out of the closet: on the streets, chanted five times daily from minarets, enshrined in constitutions, party platforms and penal codes. Sexual matters are kept discreet.

As I am finding out more and more, the pocket of America where I now live is lagging a bit. The post-Christian era has yet to acquire significant traction in these parts. Overtly Christian prayer at all manner of public events hardly raises an eyebrow. And I have yet to see any bare breasts on billboards. But I have no doubt that we will catch up.

But on another level, small-town Hoosierland is right in the mainstream. Sure, you can still mention Jesus while giving an invocation at a community foundation luncheon, but ask anyone in the buffet line and you will get near unanimous agreement that religion is essentially a private matter, and if you walked into a co-worker's office and interrupted an obvious time of prayer, it would be nearly as awkward a moment as opening that person's bedroom door at the wrong time.

Does the Islamic world actually have something to teach us?

Singin' the Center Field Blues

I'm inherently suspicious of those who claim to be centrists. We all tend to presume, I think, that the center is the moral high ground, populated by those who are too intelligent to perceive reality wholly in binary terms, or so filled with divine love that they can see the nugget of decency in every person and the kernel of truth in every idea. And the center is in the political high rent district: Anyone who can frame the debate so as to cast themselves as "moderate" (thereby casting their opponents as "extreme") has a palpable advantage.

So, as the battles and skirmishes of the Anglican ecclesiastical wars unfold with sustained drama, it is with some alarm that I find myself precisely in that territory where I have never had any wish to be--in the middle. It is the result of no plan, it is the fulfillment of no desire, on my part that I am a known knuckle-dragger on the HoB/D listserv and among "progressive" bloggers, and as one who keeps company with "Vichy collaborators" in the conservative evangelical corner of Anglican cyberspace. Of course I should add: caveat lector--just because I take fire from both directions doesn't give me extra moral capital to spend. I could still be entirely wrong!

While we await the Archbishop of Canterbury's final (well...not final perhaps, but next, at any rate) word on whether the House of Bishops' work in New Orleans a few weeks ago is an adequate response to the Primates' Dar es Salaam communique of last February, stuff is still happening. This weekend, the convention of the Diocese of Pittsburgh voted by a more than decisive (if perhaps less than overwhelming) margin to amend their constitution in the direction of severing ties with the Episcopal Church. No real surprise here; we all knew it was coming. Next month, my former diocese of San Joaquin will hold a similar vote--only this one will be on the second reading, and could therefore be construed as actually "pulling the trigger." (Although...it should be pointed out that, interpreted in strict grammatical terms, the language of the revised Article II, while it removes specific references to TEC, does not categorically initiate a separation therefrom. Of course, Bishop Schofield plays his cards extremely close to the vest, and I suspect that even some of the elected leaders of the diocese are not yet aware of what he has in mind by way of future provincial affiliation.) Quincy, while appearing to have stepped back just a bit from the brink, is still poised to bolt, and Fort Worth shows all the signs of leaving.

This all makes me very sad--at times, nigh unto terminally depressed. And there is some real longitudinal context for my melancholic state: I have spent thirty years or so watching a steady stream of bright, devout, gifted, energetic clergy and lay leaders in the Episcopal Church reach their own personal omega point and jump ship--mostly to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy. Each individual departure has been grieved and then absorbed and compensated for, and life has gone on. But when I stop to mentally list and count the names, I cannot help but think to myself, "Dear God, if we still had all those people, we may actually be able to make a difference." I'm probably wrong about that, but I feel it anyway.

So, yes, the news from Pittsburgh makes me sad, and I'm fairly certain the news from San Joaquin a month from now will make me even sadder. These are my friends we're talking about here, my theological homeys. These are people I have labored with side-by-side to try and keep the Episcopal Church true to its own theological and moral self. We have largely, so far, failed, and now they are giving up. On one level, I don't blame them. I share their sense of frustration, if not the conclusion of despair that they have reached. I cheer for them inwardly in their public rhetorical volleys with the powers-that-be at '815.'

But I also believe that they are gravely mistaken, and I pray for them to turn back and forswear their foolish ways. What was once a movement configured toward maintaining a vibrant orthodox Anglican ecclesial presence in North America has morphed into something else entirely. I was present, as a voting delegate, when the Anglican Communion Network was birthed. My signature is on its founding document. I stand by what I did then. I would do it again. But I fear that the Common Cause Partnership will turn out to be nothing more than a bastard child of the ACN. The trajectory of the CCP bends clearly in the direction of true schism--that is, a breach within the Anglican Communion--the establishment of an "Anglican-like" ecclesial body that will no longer be in communion with the ancient See of Canterbury, such communion being the sine qua non of Anglican identity. The impetus toward such a move is rooted in an impoverished ecclesiology, a myopic historical perspective, and a simple lack of the Christian virtues of patience and charity.

Even so--God help us--those holding the reins of power in the Episcopal Church seem to be hell-bent on abetting the realization of what they claim are their worst fears--though one wonders. When helping people who have been through divorce prepare for a second marriage, a wise priest will invite them to articulate honestly their own contribution to the breakdown of the former relationship. Casting all the blame on the former spouse is not an acceptable answer. The inability to name and own a share of responsibility for what went wrong is a prima facie sign of immaturity and denial (and therefore lack of readiness to enter into a new marriage). From the Presiding Bishop (witness her most recent letter to the Bishop of Pittsburgh) on down to my leftist friends on the HoB/D, the pervasive level of denial is astonishing. They either don't get it or won't get it--I don't know which--but they are certainly not seeing or acknowledging their own contribution to the breakdown of relationships at a macro level in the Episcopal Church. They insist on shifting all the blame on to the disaffected minority. They rigidly enforce the letter of canon law when it suits their interests, not realizing that, in so doing, they are biting their nose to spite their face. Rather than attempting to understand their opponents--"getting inside their heads," so to speak--they demonize and ridicule. They habitually squander opportunities for reaching out to their opponents in reconciling ways. Have they never heard the aphorism, "You can catch more bees with honey than you can with vinegar"?

So it's an awkward place in which I find myself. My friends are abandoning me (thinking me foolish at best, and possibly disloyal, for not joining them). My adversaries smile and tolerate me, perhaps because I'm a pretty nice guy, but more likely because they know I'm not in a position to do them any harm. They will let me cast my 'Nay' vote because they know the 'Ayes' will have it when the tally is in. Oh, I don't yet have an Elijah-complex. I know there are plenty who have neither left for Moab nor bowed the knee to Baal. But it's getting lonelier all the time.

All Saints' Day

Yesterday was the Eve of "All Hallows"--today is the feast itself. I have written something over at Covenant that I commend to your attention.

While, you're over these, DO NOT MISS this luminous reflection on the practice of prayer by a guest contributor. You will be blessed beyond description, especially if you are a performing musician.

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

When not immediately engaged in the "frank exchange of views" that characterizes the Anglican blogsphere these days, I do manage to reflect from time to time on what might be the meta-issues--i.e. not sex, and not integrity of the Anglican Communion. I still haven't identified the elusive Alpha Issue--an ideological Rosetta Stone that can unlock how anyone in particular will come down on a whole array of questions if you know their position on just one or two. It's fun work, though, and in my copious spare time, I shall keep on trying.

In the meanwhile, I interview an occasional suspect. One such candidate is a document known as the Millennium Development Goals. (Look here to see what they are.) General Convention has pretty much adopted them in toto as the sine qua non of the Church's missionary imperative. But over on the House of Bishops/Deputies listserv today, here comes the Very Revd Benjamin Shambaugh, dean of the cathedral church for the Diocese of Maine, responding to a thread on the success of non-denominational mega-churches:

Perhaps the success of the evangelical churches is related not to their moral strictness but to clarity about their product: A relationship with Jesus Christ.

Somehow we have forgotten that the baptismal covenant begins with the creed, not the five questions that follow. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the MDGs and the radical inclusion and the incredible outreach to the poor of many of our congregations are not the mission of the church. Rather they are signs of it.

Unfortunately, we have not done a good job of saying why we do these things and making the connection back to -- and helping people connect to -- Jesus. Rather than being jealous or spiteful of other's success, we need, in deference to Star Trek, to remember our prime directive. If it is just helping others, I would put my support behind heifer project, habitat for humanity or United Way. These are good things but the church has so much more to offer, if we would only let people know...

(I quote with the permission of the author.)

Now, to my knowledge, Ben Shambaugh doesn't have a reputation as an ideologue of either stripe, which means that he is hardly a card-carrying "conservative" or "evangelical." So what he writes is especially significant. And he is entirely correct. The MDG's are good and worthwhile in an of themselves. I don't know any responsible Christian who could say otherwise. But they are not the mission of the Church.

Watching the Irish Not Smiling

I have never been a particular fan of college football (or pro football, for that matter--baseball is my bag). During the five years I lived in Baton Rouge (1989-1994) I attended two LSU games. Both times the Tigers got their clock cleaned, and they had five fully dismal seasons during my Louisiana sojourn. By that measure, the future does not look too bright for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, because, deo volente, I'm planning on being in the area for quite some time, along with my awesome powers to jinx athletic teams, both those to whom I have a passionate attachment (just ask the Cubs), and those in whom I merely have a passing interest (the Cleveland Indians of recently blessed memory).

At any rate, one of the rites of passage for a new naturalized Hoosier is to experience Notre Dame football, so the Dragonfly and I were pleased to accept an invitation from a friend and his wife to attend last Saturday's contest between the Irish and the University of Southern California Trojans. The friend is a USC alum, so even though he lives in South Bend and controls four season tickets for Notre Dame home games, he was there in his "cardinal and gold" regalia. I attempted to be studiously neutral in my attire, and once in the stands (bleachers, actually, with seat number markings devised in an era when Americans were generally of substantially less girth than is the average today), I decided to root for whichever team had possession of the ball.

During the second quarter, however, I was forced to abandon that strategy, as Notre Dame never kept possession for very long, and their punter was given quite a few more chances to shine than a punter normally hopes for from one game, and his foot is probably still under ice. Late in the fourth quarter, trailing 38-0, the Irish offense (playing, no doubt, against the third-string Trojan defense) finally managed to string some first downs together and produce something resembling a scoring threat. Dragonfly earnestly cheered for Notre Dame, on behalf of "all the players' Moms." But with five seconds left on the clock, the quarterback threw the ball right at at member of the SC defense, and he was obliged to intercept it.

The detail in the experience that will long make me crack a smile, however, is the T-shirt I saw on a Notre Dame coed at one of the tailgate parties we crossed on our way into the stadium: "Catholics have no use for Trojans."

A Sudden Burst of Fresh Air

This just in...from Lambeth Palace. I suppose there is a possibility it is not authentic, but I've now seen it (in the last ten minutes) from two different sources, and I'm going to assume its veracity. It is a letter from His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Bishop of Central Florida, John Howe, in whose diocese a handful of cardinal rectors have recently made clear their desire to move away from the Episcopal Church to the care of an offshore jurisdiction. Dr Williams offers his condolences to Bishop Howe, and speaks pointedly to both ends of the spectrum in American Anglicanism, and does so using the same language. Talk about "economy of means!"

Here's the first kicker:

...without forestalling what the Primates might say, I would repeat what I've said several times before - that any Diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the Communion, whatever may be the longer-term result for others in The Episcopal Church. The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such. Those who are rushing into separatist solutions are, I think, weakening that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing.

And then he drives it home with this:

I should feel a great deal happier, I must say, if those who are most eloquent for a traditionalist view in the United States showed a fuller understanding of the need to regard the Bishop and the Diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the 'national church'.

Now, the immediate objects of his remarks are the incipient separatists in Central Florida. (My former confrères in San Joaquin should also take serious note.) But his point about Catholic ecclesiology--that the diocese and bishop constitute the fundamental unit of the Church, is, I promise you, going to waken the sleeping hornets in the "progressive" General Convention supremacist camp--those who assert the "unitary" character of the Episcopal Church in distinction to any "free association of dioceses" theory.

This may be the clearest word that Rowan Williams has yet offered in this whole saga since he assumed office. I welcome it. It doesn't provide wiggle room to either extreme. It invites them to own their positions honestly, and consider the realistic consequences of those positions. What a breath of fresh air.

New Hometown Pride

During the thirteen years we lived in Stockton, California (population about 325,000), one of the amenities Dearest Dragonfly and I grew to enjoy was the local music scene. We held season tickets to the Stockton Symphony, attended programs of the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music, supported the Stockton Opera Association productions, and, of course, we both, in our own way, were "key players" in the development of the St John's Chamber Orchestra festival.

Consequently, when we were called to our new home of Warsaw, Indiana (population about 15,000), we took it for granted that we would have to get a periodic fix of live music by traveling either to Fort Wayne (38 miles SE), South Bend (50 miles NW), or Chicago (120 miles NW).

Not necessarily so! While we do hope to avail ourselves of opportunities in those venues, we have, to our astonishment, learned that there is a great deal to keep up culturally occupied right here in the Warsaw-Winona Lake area. The most recent such discovery came this past Friday night at the season opening concert of the Symphony of the Lakes. Yes, you read that correctly, a community of 15,000 (OK, a county population base of some 70,000--but still) able to put a full philharmonic complement of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion on it own hometown stage (Grace College's Rodeheaver Auditorium, named for storied evangelist Billy Sunday's song leader, Homer Rodeheaver--do look at this link; the guy is a larger-than-life character).

A number of the musicians were no doubt "ringers" from some of the aforementioned larger cities. And there was a certain roughhewnness to the sound at times (getting a section of even quite good string players to play in tune and precisely together is the bugaboo of all orchestral conductors). Nonetheless, it is a remarkable achievement, and one we never expected to witness a mere ten minute drive from our pastoral pondside home.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, the program was free to the public. There was the usual section of reserved seats for sponsors and patrons, but there was no admission charged to walk-ins at the door. That represents some pretty savvy promotion and financial management. And it was a delightfully family-friendly event, with lots of children present, all of whom were exceptionally well-behaved, even in view of the fact that kazoos were distributed during the intermission!

The theme of the program was "Meet the Instruments." Before the concert, there was an "instrument petting zoo," which was exactly what it sounds like. After an opening number that showcased the entire orchestra (the prelude to Wagner's Die Meistersinger--which I could have conducted myself with barely any rehearsal, so etched is it my brain from high school band days), the brass family was represented by the opening movement of Mozart's 4th horn concerto, but not before a demonstration, using a length of ordinary garden hose, a plastic, funnel, and a trombone mouthpiece, of the french horn's rustic origins. Similarly, before the first movement of the Mozart flute concerto, there was a demonstration involving a six pack of root beer bottles filled with varying levels of water. While the purist in me winces, not at the demonstrations, but at the abridgment of three-movement concertos, I have to admit that, with the shrinking and graying audience for classical music in the U.S., some coloring outside the lines is probably a good thing.

After a percussion-dominated arrangement of Khachaturian's energetic Saber Dance, and the intermission, the program concluded with Bruch's violin concerto (all three movements this time), which was masterfully performed by Albanian-born Winona Lake resident Gert Kumi.

Our jaws are on the ground. Warsaw rocks!

Residual HOB Buckshot

I've already weighed in collaboratively on the work of the House of Bishops last week in New Orleans, and I continue to stand by that analysis. But it seems to be a bone that invites continual gnawing.

I cannot deny that the bishops did not do what I would have wished they would do. I wish they would have said, in effect, "We finally get it that the General Convention exceeded its competence by confirming the New Hampshire election and passing C051 ('within the bounds of our common life') back in 2003, and we have been fully complicit in that inappropriate behavior. We repent, and will do all in our power to influence the next General Convention to abide by the received teaching of the Anglican Communion with respect to human sexuality."

No, I don't see any pigs flying either. That's why I said "wish" rather than "hope."

And neither did they take an action that was very much within their grasp, had they been able to summon the will to hold onto it--to wit: Implementing a proposal floated by one of their own number, Bishop John Howe of Central Florida, and articulated in cyberspace by Dr Ephraim Radner of the Anglican Communion Institute, by which the majority of TEC's bishops would have voluntarily recused themselves from participation in the next Lambeth Conference and erected an infrastructure that would have put actual pressure (as distinguished from protracted nagging) on the Common Cause Partners and their offshore sponsors to cease and desist.

So, the bishops did not do what they should have done (in my opinion) nor what they might have done. Did they therefore fail in their endeavor? No, I do not think they did. I believe that, as a group, they accomplished exactly what was possible--no more and no less--for that precise group to accomplish. They did the best they could, and therefore deserve no censure. They are not bad people, nor are they disingenuous. (OK, one bishop's puzzled look when questioned about same-sex blessings going on in his diocese is a little...ahem...amusing.) Nor are they incompetent. It's just a rather impossible situation.

The Church will have to live with the ramifications of the work our bishops did, along with lots of other ramifications, as this ecclesial crisis continues to unfold. I do wish that all parties to the conflict could "seriously lay to heart the great dangers we are in" by reason of our "unhappy divisions." A lot less rhetorical and political posturing and a lot more willingness to give the benefit of the doubt might not bridge the gap, but would go a long way toward helping us carry this cross with a clear conscience.

A Prayer for Today

One of the marvels of Holy Scripture--particularly, I have found, as I encounter it in the Daily Office--is the ability of an entirely familiar passage to suddenly leap off the page in an astonishing way.

Psalm 80 is appointed for this morning. It is a plea to Yahweh on behalf of Israel, and the Psalmist compares the nation to a vine--planted and tended by God himself, a beautiful thing. Yet, the vine has fallen on hard times:

Why have you broken down its wall, *
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
The wild boar of the forest has ravaged it, *
and the beasts of the field have grazed upon it.

In what I hope is a faithful allegorical interpretation in the patristic tradition, my heart substituted Anglicanism for Israel, and the whole thing instantly became crushingly poignant in these days when the very survival of the Communion seems to depend on what a group of bishops in gathered in New Orleans decides to do. My own soul is so formed by the Anglican tradition that the sight of it on the verge of crumbling before my eyes is, frankly, terrifying. The announcement from the Bishop of the Rio Grande yesterday is just the most recent icon of that terror.

So my petition today is this:

Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine; *
preserve what your right hand has planted.

In the Eye of the Storm

Yes, it's a little risky using hurricane imagery to talk about a meeting that is taking place in New Orleans. I certainly don't want to trivialize the unspeakable suffering that continues to be endured by the people of that great city (which I love from firsthand experience) and the entire gulf coast. But the metaphor is simply too apt to pass up. The eye of a hurricane is a place of eerie stillness following the first onslaught of winds and preceding the arrival of the other side of the storm, with winds blowing in the opposite direction.

Last week, the House of Bishops convened and met for a day and a half with the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with some members of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates' Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council. Only the bishops, of course, are privy to the full substance of what was said in that encounter, but between official press briefings and unofficial leaks we have enough information to know that there was an element of storminess--if not in the demeanor and language of the participants, at least in the sheer inherent angst of the situation. The fate of the Anglicanism itself--the third largest "brand-name" of Christian in the world today--pretty much hangs in the balance.

Tomorrow the bishops--Archbishop Williams now having flown home to Lambeth Palace--will get back down to work, trying to craft a response--a response to the rest of the Anglican world, a response to whatever Dr Williams put before them, but, most specifically, a response to the message that came when the Primates met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania some seven months ago. Will the House of Bishops agree to withhold consent to (we may as well put a real face on it) the election of Tracey Lind as Bishop of Chicago, should she indeed be elected by that diocese? Will they at least express a "mind of the house" that they will endeavor to suppress the practice of formal blessings of same-sex unions in their dioceses, and demonstrate a willingness to hold one another accountable to that endeavor?

And in the event that their response will not be either simply Yes or simply No (and it's a pretty safe bet, IMHO, that it won't), then what will their response be? A couple of proposals--both emanating from the "conservative" side of the Great Divide--are getting a lot of play in the blogsphere, and have met with some cautious approval even from some on the "left." I am particularly drawn to an idea put forth by John Howe, the Bishop of Central Florida, which is itself a refinement of a plan articulated by Archbishop Williams himself more than a year ago in the wake of the 2006 General Convention. Those bishops who cannot in good conscience acquiesce to the mind of the larger Communion on human sexual morality, articulated in Lambeth I.10 (1998), would voluntarily withdraw from the councils of the Communion for an indeterminate time. Those bishops and dioceses that are able to abide by the constraints of the Windsor Report would continue in unimpaired good standing, but (and this is critical) remain within the structures of the Episcopal Church, albeit in a "partitioned" manner, creating a layer of necessary insulation. Moreover (and this, too, is critically important), those clergy and congregations that have come under the authority of offshore provinces would step away from those relationships and unite themselves with a Communion-affiliated diocese. The foreign Primates would relinquish their oversight of any American congregations and clergy.

In the event that something like this fails (and, sadly, I think there is a pretty good chance of that), then Canon Kendall Harmon of South Carolina has proposed an even bolder stroke: All American bishops (presumably including those recently consecrated by African jurisdictions) would agree to stay home from the 2008 Lambeth Conference, as a sacrificial offering for the good of the larger Communion. Failing the adoption of the Howe proposal, I hope the bishops give the Harmon alternative serious consideration.

In the meantime, however, on this Sunday evening, all is quiet. We're in the eye of the storm. The bishops spent yesterday in manual labor, helping with the reconstruction effort in Louisiana and Mississippi. Today they worshiped in various congregations in those two dioceses. They are being prayed for mightily all across this land and all over the world. If Anglican Christianity itself is to survive, they will need to find a way to color outside the lines. The entrenched positions of neither side will bear the freight that needs to be carried.

Today the Chicago Cubs, God's own team, reduced their Magic Number for clinching the National League Central Division title to four--there are thirteen remaining chances for either the Cubs to win or the Milwaukee Brewers to lose. Any combination of those events that totals four and the Cubs have it. If the kind of startling news I and many others are praying for comes out of New Orleans in a couple of days, I believe the Cubs will go all the way to the World Series, and even win it. Conversely, if the Cubs win the World Series, I will be optimistic for the future of Anglicanism. Hey, everybody has to pick their own tokens of hope. Those are mind. What are yours?

This Little Church of Mine

Please look here for the actual essay, which is my response on Covenant to the four-part series by the Rev. Tom Woodward that appeared on the Episcopal Majority website recently.

A Belated Brazil Travelogue

Some people enjoy reading travelogues. If you're not one of them, just skip this post and take a look at the new cooperative blog effort I'm part of, Covenant.

Because our son Jordan and his wife Angela will be ending their Brazilian sojourn in December, and because we anticipated a modest financial windfall from the sale of our house in California (alas, still an eschatological hope), Brenda and I made another visit to the country of my birth this past July-leading-into-August, slightly less than a year on the heels of our prior visit.

July 24 (Tuesday)
We were on the road from Stockton just before 5 AM en route to San Francisco International Airport. Our itinerary called for us to catch a 10 AM flight to Los Angeles, then board a LAN fight to São Paulo (arriving at 7ish Wednesday morning) after a brief stop in Lima, and then catch a GOL (Brazilian domestic carrier--yes, named for that preciously rare event in soccer when a team actually scores a point) flight to Iguaçu Falls. In the inscrutable wisdom of the FAA, however, the aircraft we were going to be on was held in San Diego due to fog, forcing a series of delays. When it became evident that we were in danger of missing our connection in L.A., I hustled down to the United customer service desk, where they booked us on a flight that was technically a "later" one but was actually leaving earlier than our own. Go figure. While in the customer service line, I met another couple with the same issue, as they were bound for São Paulo to attend a wedding.

We landed in L.A. about 12:15, figuring it would be tight, but that we would make our 1:25 flight on LAN. We arrived at the Bradley International Terminal about ten minutes before 1:00, seeing the couple we had met on San Francisco, and who were on the same plane with us to L.A., rushing off to the gate with boarding passes. They evidently knew how to get from the United gates to the international gates, whereas we had to learn by doing. We also then learned that LAN closes their international check-ins one hour before flight time, and they have neither mercy nor flexibility.

I'll spare you the details (ah, did you think I was already giving you details?Not so!), but after consuming gobs of time from an extremely gracious United customer service agent who deserves to be named employee of the decade, we were on a shuttle to the local Motel 6 with two meal vouchers to be used at the adjacent Denny's. We had no choice but to cool our jets. And thank God for cells phones, by means of which we were able to connect with all sorts of people on two continents who were able to help us re-arrange our plans.

July 25 (Wednesday)
Back on the shuttle to LAX (wishing the driver would ax the Spanish-language mariachi station and turn on the A.C.) to catch a noonish flight to Houston on Continental. Everything goes smoothly. When we arrive at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (that's Bush the Elder, just in case you're interested), we find ourselves partially redeeming our misfortune at a wonderful eatery called Papadeaux's, within sight of the gate from which our new flight to São Paulo is scheduled to depart at 8 PM. I haven't eaten that well since leaving Louisiana in 1994--fried crawfish on one end of the plate, crawfish ettoufe on the other, and dirty rice in the middle, chased by sweet potato pecan pie. Mmmmm good.

For me, the overnight flight south was my most successful overseas flight yet, (Brenda has another opinion, but I'll let her share it), thanks to a glass of wine, a blindfold, ear plugs, and a little white pill called Ambien. The next thing I knew, they were waking me up for breakfast, with landing to follow shortly. The only way to fly.

July 26 (Thursday)
We entered Brazil without incident, I on my Brazilian passport and Brenda on her American one, landing not at the downtown airport that had been in the news the previous week due to a tragic crash, but at the international airport some distance from the center of the city. We immediately began scouting our now rescheduled connection on GOL to Iguaçu Falls. It was our first lesson, one that was reviewed several times during the trip, that in order to happily navigate the air transportation system in Brazil, one must be persistently proactive. Again, I won't give a play-by-play. Suffice it to say that delays are endemic, gate changes are unannounced more often than they are announced, and the same employee of the same airline can give conflicting information at different times for no apparent reason. Throw in the fact that Brenda's Portuguese is virtually non-existent, and mine is "weak" to put it generously, and you get some inkling of the level of our frustration.

Our scheduled 12:15 PM departure for Iguaçu Falls leaves about two hours late, and lasts about 75 minutes, putting us down at our destination late in the afternoon. A short taxi ride deposited us at our hotel, which was spacious, gracious, and surrounded by acres of lush subtropical vegetation around which strolled several peacocks. Just outside our room was a coffee tree--pretty exotic for a couple of North Americans. We were able to snap a few photos before the sun rapidly set.

Our original plans had called for us to take a tour of the actual falls that afternoon, but we were able to get that moved to the following morning, as we had plenty of time before our originally-scheduled flight back to São Paulo, which would put our entire itinerary back on the rails. We were, however, able to keep our plans for a churrasco (southern Brazil's version of barbecue) dinner and Latin American "ballet folklorico" sort of show. The dinner was not quite up to the standard we had experienced in Salvador on last year's trip, but it was quite nice nonetheless. I especially enjoyed the chocolate flan on the dessert buffet. The show had its high points (an Argentinian dancer-performer armed with hard balls tethered to leather straps--she bounced the balls on the wood floor of the stage rhythmically, somewhat emulating the aural effect of a team of tap dancers, and probably praying all the while that none of the balls would come loose from its tether and take out a section of the audience) and its low points (pretty much the same cast of dancers and musicians changing costumes to be Bolivian one moment and Argentinian or Mexican or Peruvian or Chilean the next).

It is worth noting at this point that we were cold. Not (yet) insufferably so, but more or less constantly uncomfortable due to temperature. It was winter in South America, of course, and Iguaçu Falls is at a latitude comparable to northern Florida. We both were wearing long sleeves with the equivalent of light wrap, which would have been fine presuming access to heated indoor space. But the restaurant was not heated. We were glad to return to our room, which had a wall-mounted heating unit. We were followed back to our hotel by a multitude of party animal Argentinians who were on winter vacation and had bused up from Buenos Aires, about 1,000 miles.

July 27 (Friday)
Finally, the big event--our tour of the falls themselves and the surrounding national park. Iguaçu Falls is really a collection of 276 individual falls, some of which are dry part of the year. It is neither the highest nor does it carry the greatest volume of water, but it is the widest in the world. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as remarking, "Poor Niagara!" when she saw Iguaçu. In retrospect, we were glad that the change in our itinerary necessitated a change in our tour, and we were able to see the falls from the Brazilian side rather than from the Argentine side as per our original plan. Since most of the falls are actually in Argentina, the view is therefore more spectacular from Brazil.

The walking tour was magnificent enough, but there was also a boat tour on our schedule. On our trip in from the road to the water on some sort of safari vehicle, we were with a large group of Japanese tourists with their own Japanese-speaking guide. So we were assigned our own English-speaking guide, a very engaging young woman who was born and raised right in the area, but who spoke excellent English, but yet was grateful to learn from us the distinction between "bark" and "rind"--as in trees have bark and oranges have rind. In Portuguese, it's the same word for both! This was occassioned by her pointing out wild orange trees on our route. Alas, it was not the season for seeing any of the hundreds of species of butterfly that are native to the park, not the tens of species of snake (no "alas" there). We make a mental not to come back sometime in November, the optimal month for visiting that area.

Now...I was talking about a boat tour, right? Actually, it's an "inflatable"--a raft with rows of chairs and an outboard engine on one end. We were issued disposable rain gear and advised to leave our shoes and socks on the dock. Reluctantly, we complied. This was all because, as we were warned when we booked the tour, we were going to get wet. Very wet. All in a good cause, I told myself. If getting a good close look at the falls required tolerating a little incidental soaking, then so be it. Life is too short to complain about such things.

But I was misled. It was not incidental soaking. It was gratuitous soaking. There was no valid touristic (did I just invent an adjective?) reason for us to drench ourselves. It was purely, "Hey, we're here, right by a huge waterfall, let's get wet!" I would just as soon have foregone the thrill. Brenda's response? "This is fun! Can we go again?" Do you see why I love her?

At any rate, we were already packed, so we headed right for the airport and on to S.P. The weather in Iguaçu Falls was coolish--I would say low 60s farenheit--but bright and sunny. Quite pleasant. São Paulo was another story entirely--completely overcast (part clouds, part smog) all the time, reaching the upper 50s during the day and around 40 at night. Again, not intolerable weather, presuming that one is properly attired and that there is recourse to heated indoor space. We, however, were wearing every long-sleeved garment we brought with us, and had been for the last couple of days. And there was nary a heated building to be found--not our hotel, not any of my relatives' homes, not any the restaurants we ate in, and not the church I went to on Sunday. The only time I felt warm air was upon entering a metro subway station! Apparently, this was a bit of an unusual cold snap for them, and the need for heat is so rare than nobody invests in the infrastructure.

At any rate, as our taxi pulled up to the pousada where we were staying, my sister Nancy and her family (husband, three children, and one son-in-law) from Illinois walked up, along with Jordan and Angela, so it was great to see them. We dined at a very chic and trendy Japanese place (hey--they had outdoor heaters!), and strolled around for a while, dropping in at a two-story Haagen-Dazs store for dessert. (Were we crazy? I think so, but we didn't realize yet how unrelenting the cold would be.)

July 28 (Saturday)
Most of the day was spent at the home of my uncle Efrem and his wife Norma. We were joined by two of their three children (my cousins), along with their spouses and children, along with, of course, Nancy and her clan and Jordan and Angela. So it was quite a crowd, but we had a great time, despite language barriers. (Jordan and Angela are both completely fluent in Portuguese, so they lubricate any social situation.) My uncle and aunt have lived in that same house since the day they were married, more than fifty years ago. The city has grown up around them, but they have stayed put. This is remarkable, given the American predilection for "trading up" every few years. It's a modest house, but American middle-class standards. Yet, they employ a maid more or less full time, who cooks and cleans and does various other odd jobs. Labor is cheap in Brazil. Everybody has a maid. Even the maids have maids. So something that most Americans would consider an unthinkable luxury is taken for granted by Brazilians who live in homes that Americans would consider veritably Spartan. Interesting.

July 29 (Sunday)
In the spirit of the Christian discipline of participating in corporate worship on the Lord's Day "unless for good cause prevented" (per the canons of the Episcopal Church), I stretched my comfort zone and took a taxi alone to the only parish of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil that was in a neighborhood included on my map of São Paulo. Appropriately enough (given the dedication of the parish of which I was still at that time technically the rector), it was the Paroquia de São João--St John's. The early liturgy there is in Japanese. As you might have surmised there is a large Japanese population in southern Brazil. The Anglican bishop of São Paulo is named Hiroshi Ito. But I attended the 10:30 celebration, which was in Portuguese. This was the second IEAB parish I had visited, and it is quite evident that it is a spinoff from the Episcopal Church; the ethos is discernibly similar to what I have come to identify as plain-vanilla middle-of-the-road mainstream Episcopalianism. When I introduced myself to the rector as a priest, he invited me to concelebrate, which was incredibly gracious on his part. But since I felt inordinately grungy and was still wearing the same layered long-sleeve outfit that I had been wearing since what felt like time immemorial, and since I had to leave after communion in order to keep a family engagement, I declined. But I very much appreciated and enjoyed the opportunity to worship. I got to sing "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones" (ubiquitously familiar to Episcopalians) and "How Great Thou Art" (not so familiar to Episcopalians, but certainly well-known to other Christians) in Portuguese, which was great fun. The church was about half full at 50, but the acoustics were good and the music was accompanied by a decent electronic organ. I couldn't understand most of the sermon, but I know it had to do with the gospel reading of the day, and it was delivered with energy and skill.

I then rushed off by taxi and subway to meet Brenda and Jordan and Angela, and get in yet another taxi to, of all places, an Outback restaurant that is one of a half-dozen or so locations in the metro area overseen by my cousin Mauro, who hosted our meal. Did the Outback have central heat? (I actually had to take off one layer.) At least is was carpeted, which is rare in Brazil. Outback and the other American-style chains scrupulously try to emulate both the fare and the ambiance of their American counterparts. Actually, I thought the Bloomin' Onion was better than any I've had in the states.

After a long and leisurely lunch, we repaired to the eleventh floor apartment of my cousin Vania and her husband Eloy. Once again, it was great fun reconnecting with family. Everyone seemed to get a big kick out of the fact that I was born on Brazil's equivalent (roughly) of July 4th, and carry a Brazilian passport, but speak what, at best, can be described as "broken" Portuguese. And once again we were cold!

July 30 (Monday)
After sleeping in our clothes under four layers of blanket, and no bothering to shower, and after wrestling with more delays and unannounced gate changes, we finally arrive in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, some 1,200 miles up the coast from São Paulo (about the latitude of Costa Rica). It was warm! We were met by Sergio, the cab driver that Jordan had arranged for us. He drove us to our hotel--the wonderful Hotel Catharina Paraguaçu in the Rio Vermehlo neighborhood. Not only was it where we stayed last year, but we were given the very same room, which we once again enjoyed immensely. After showering and changing, Sergio took us on an expedition to a church I had voiced a desire to visit. Unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays, so we only got to see the outside. It is the spiritual heart of the history of Salvador (an ancient city--the old colonial capital of Brazil), the Igreja Nossa Senhor Bomfin--Church of Our Lord of the Happy Ending (one plausible rough translation). I have never heard of any other such church dedication. First, this is the only instance I have encountered of a church being under the title of "Our Lord..." of anything. Our Lady, yes (and meetly so, of course). But not "Our Lord." And "happy ending," or "good outcome." Again, to my knowledge, this is unique. To Anglican ears, it is redolent of the Prayer Book petition for a "happy issue out of all our afflictions." It smacks of hope, eschatological hope, even. I love it.

After returning to our hotel, Brenda and walked up to a familiar-from-last-year and very classy pizza restaurant in a nicely re-habbed old building on an historic square on a perfect evening just a block from the crashing surf. It was good to be in tropical territory.

July 31 (Tuesday)
Nancy and her crew, as well as Jordan and Angela, had arrived in town late the previous night and early that morning. After a leisurely morning and lunch in the neighborhood at a "kilo" place, where you pay for your food based on its weight (a concept that has merit, IMHO), we journeyed by bus to the old city center and the touristy historical neighborhood of Pelorihno. We spent some money on trinkets and such, and in a luminous moment of serendipity just at sunset, chanced across a church that was full of people. At first we assumed there was a Mass in progress, but upon a closer look, it was Benediction. Though they were singing in Portuguese, I recognized the tune of the Tantum Ergo, so I knew that the high point was only moments away and was able to be on my knees in time for the blessing with the sacramental Body of Christ. Way cool.

After drinks in an old convent that is (sadly, but beautifully) now a hotel, we once again had pizza for dinner.

August 1 (Wednesday)
Jordan, my resourceful and entrepreneurial son, arranged for a van to take the nine of us about 100km away to the town of Cachoeira, some distance inland, on the Paraguaçu river a few miles upstream from where it drains into the western side of the great Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints' Bay). Cachoeira is nearly as old as Salvador, and figures prominently in Brazilian history as the place where the first shots were fired in the short-lived and half-hearted (from the Portuguese side) war for independence from Portugal. It is not yet a huge tourist destination, however, so we got to experience something of the relatively pristine near interior of Bahia. For lunch, we walked across the bridge over the river to the village of São Felipe and caught a taxi-van up a steep hillside to a ranch-cum-restaurant with a panoramic view now only of the twin towns but upstream to a huge dam and reservoir in the far distance. The grounds were strewn with all manner of exotic (to us) tropical flora, including a cacao tree, from whence cometh...chocolate. I felt like genuflecting.

Back in Salvador, we snacked late evening on acarajé, an Afro-Brazilian staple and a signature element of the Bahian ambiance.

August 2 (Thursday)
What else is worth remembering from this day except an hour spent in heaven itself--a full-body massage on the beach, with the sound of crashing surf in the background, and the sight of coconut palms swaying gently in the tropical breeze, all for the fortune of about $16 USD?

Oh, in the evening we went by the home of my cousin Nicia and her husband Helcio. Various other local relatives were also there. Once again, we had...you guessed it...pizza. Brazilians need a talkin' to about the way they eat pizza--that is, with a knife and fork, and with...I can barely bring myself to say it...ketchup. Yeah...I know.

August 3 (Friday)
More lazing around in the morning. Then a hammock-shopping expedition (we have gifts to bring home, after all, and hammocks can be had in Brazil for a fraction of what one would pay in the U.S.) and another visit to Pelorihno, where we witness a capoeira school in action. Capoeira is part martial art and part dance, and is woven into the fabric of Bahia's Afro-Brazilian culture. Sociologically, it's sort of like ballet or soccer for middle class American families. It's something that even wealthy and very non-African Bahian parents "put" their kids in.

August 4 (Saturday)
Realizing that our travel plans will constitute a "good cause" that will prevent from attending the one Anglican parish in Salvador the next day, I nonetheless want to at least see the joint, so I once again venture bravely on my own in a taxi (finding that I have enough Portuguese to actually make a little bit of small talk with the driver) to the neighborhood of Pituba and the Igreja do Bom Pastor (Church of the Good Shepherd). Now, Salvador is in the Diocese of Recife. In-the-know Anglicans will be asking, "Which Diocese of Recife?" The one under Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti and now under the primatial oversight of Bishop Venebles in Buenos Aires? Or the IEAB diocese reconstituted from what was left after Bishop Cavalcanti was deposed by the IEAB and fled with 90% of his clergy and laity to the oversight of Bishop Venebles? I don't know for sure, but I think it's the latter. Apparently, the IEAB built the building, but they now share it with some Prebyterians, and it was three or four Presbyterians whom I found aound the building on a Saturday morning.

While I'm somewhat on the subject, a note about Christianity in Brazil. It is, of course, historically a Roman Catholic country. Something like one in every three Roman Catholics in the world is Brazilian! Two other significant forces are at play, however. In regions like Bahia, there has historically been a great deal of syncretism, wherein the infrastructure of Catholic piety has been sort of hijacked by evolved form of indigenous African religion. On the surface, Catholic practice looks to be present, but if you scratch very deeply, you find something else entirely. But over the last few decades, and somewhat in response to the rampant syncretism, I think, evangelical Protestantism (along with cognate cults like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses) has made astonishing inroads. All over Salvador, one can see evangelical churches inhabiting large buildings and displaying large signs. There is even one veritable "mega-church" in a gargantuan new structure right across the street from the primary shopping mall of the city. The Romans may have been slow to see this coming, but I have to say that I am impressed with what they are doing in response, even it it's on the late side. Their own preaching and teaching and P.R. has gotten much more...well, evangelical, but in a Catholic way. It is, from what I can glean, very Christo-centric, with comparatively less emphasis on Marian piety and devotion to the saints than one traditionally associates with Latin America. I am, of course, a big fan of Marian piety and devotion to the saints. But even a good thing can get out of hand, and what we are seeing in Brazil is a needed and appropriate mid-course correction. I wish our Roman friends well in their efforts.

We spent the afternoon at the high-rise apartment of Mabel, the widow of my uncle Evarado, who died in 1979 while in his 4os. It turned out to be one of those "Babette's Feast" sort of events, full of surprises in relationships discovered over the course of a meal. I was once again struck, as I was last year, with the blessing of reconnecting with my Brazilian family, particularly, perhaps, moreso in the wake of my father's passing two-and-a-half years ago.

In the evening, we got all dressed up (such as we could) and attended the party following the law school graduation of Nicia and Helcio's son Daniel. It was a very elegant event, held in, of all placed, a derelict water park (Wet & Wild).

August 5 (Sunday)
I got up on the early side, having done most of my packing, and strolled across the road behind the hotel, to the parish church (Roman) of...and how appropriate is this, having been to a St John's the previous week?...St Anne. I had tried the day before to find out the Mass times, but to no avail. I walked in during the Gospel Acclamation and stayed through the Lord's Prayer. The church was effectively full--not jam packed, but no empty pews (about 35o people, I would guess). The liturgy had integrity for its location and culture. The homily was no mere sermonette, but was of fairly considerable length and substance, and related to the readings. The piety of the congregation seemed heartfelt and genuine. I was impressed and blessed.

Then we headed for the airport--back to São Paulo (where it was still cold), then, finally on LAN (which Brenda greatly approved of) to Lima and Los Angeles, and American to San Francisco, arriving about noon on Monday the 6th.

An Attempt to Practice Hope

Hope is one of the "big three" Christian virtues (along with Faith and Love). To some extent, virtues are infused by grace. At the same time, virtues must be cultivated, they must be practiced, especially when they don't seem to come easily or naturally.

In the current Anglican churchscape, "wild" hope seems in short supply, so we need to look to the "farm-raised" variety in order to sustain our lives of...well, faith and love--the other virtues. To that end, I am pleased and honored to be associated with a new communal blog effort called Covenant. It has just gone public in the last few hours, and if you have even a passing interest in things Anglican, I invite you take a look. Then bookmark it and come back frequently.

Covenant is offered from a "communion conservative" perspective, even while attempting to build bridges (rather than burn them) toward Anglicans who may hold "liberal" positions on some controverted questions, but who are committed to an intact Anglican Communion living within the framework of the Windsor Report and the covenant process. I am privileged to have been invited to be one of the regular contributors, along with several minds much keener than my own--some of the best and brightest in Anglican cyberspace today, actually.

It is an act of hope. Intentional hope. Practiced hope. May God bless it.