Silence

"Have you ever watched the clouds move across the sky when they fly by faster than your eyes can chase them? And when they finally fly in front of the moon the sky is dark for a moment. Your favorite song ends and for 3 seconds there is no sound. You realize that tonight you would much prefer the silence over the noise, and you wish upon stars you can't see that the sky might stay still for a few more hours, or that you could stay still for a few more years. And you find yourself correcting your thoughts - oh, how I'd love to stay still for the rest of time. No movement, no thoughts, no judgment or pain...just silence."

-Christine Htoon, my dear friend.

Sneering, Sniveling Papist Hatred

....Now, there's a title some of you may not have expected from a good 'lil Anglo-Catholic.

But the fact of the matter is, while browsing various blogs this past week, I happened across the Roman Catholic blog circle. Many of them were talking about, well, us.

Because it's always easier to talk about someone else's scandals than your own.
(Cough, cough, and cough.)

It wasn't pretty. Particularly the entries from ex-Anglicans. Heretics, sodomites, sinners - lovely choice words from Rome's finest. (And one Orthodox priest as well - I'm sure that's a different can of worms, though.) I'm not going to provide links to these blogs, they're fairly easy to find if you look. Oh, and depictions of upside-down Episcopal shields seems to be in vogue.

Let me cap all this by saying there are great RC blogs out there and there are even more great RC clergy and laity. But right now, I'm talking about the not-so-great.

One so-called "traditional" Catholic blog describes us as "a pseudo-religion with invalid Sacraments run by immoral perverts." Wow, what a loaded statement. (A bit funny, though. Just a bit.) Guilty conscience, perhaps?

Personally, I'm glad to practice a religion that prides itself on being open to all people, and engages in listening to them. I'm glad that, despite its shortcomings, it condemns real injustices in the world, rather than scrambling frantically to assemble some kind of sexual moral authority based on folklore and poor Biblical scholarship.

I'm proud to be an Episcopalian.

This image has been circulating among anti-Anglican circles lately. I guess I'm interpreting it differently, but I personally love this picture. I think it says a lot about us.

When an Anglican is asked,
"Where was your church before the Reformation?"
his best answer is to put the counterquestion,
"Where was your face before you washed it?"
-Archbishop Michael Ramsey

The Reproaches

(Thanks to Josh for the text) .

The congregational response is silence,

because we have no answer.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
V.

O my people, what have I done to you?
How have I hurt you? Answer me.

R.

. . .

V.

O my people, what have I done to you?
How have I hurt you? Answer me.

R.

. . .

V.

I led you out of Egypt,
From slavery I set you free.
I brought you into a land of promise:
You have prepared a cross for me.

I led you as a shepherd,
I brought you dryshod through the sea;
I fed you manna in the desert
You have prepared a cross for me.

I fought for you in battles,
I won you strength and victory;
Gave you a royal crown and sceptre:
You have prepared a cross for me.

I planted you, my vineyard,
And cared for you most tenderly;
Looked for abundant fruit and found none:
Only the cross you made for me.

Then listen to my pleading
And do not turn away from me.
You are my people: will you reject me?
For you I suffer bitterly.

R.

. . .

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This Is Really Unhelpful, But...

....I crack up every time I see this picture:

Personally, the whole thing makes my brain hurt, but if you'd like to know what's going on...

Info on the latest Anglipiscopal shenanigans here.

Learn about Episcopal loyalists here.

Alternatively, you may wish to take the "other side" - here - at Stand Firm.



(Warning: If you experience "firmness" lasting 3 or more hours, consult your physician and/or priest.)

Can Someone PLEASE Tell Me...

Even if one "doesn't believe in" global warming/climate change, why the bloody hell are they against pro-environment legislation?

Isn't environmental conservation important simply for its own sake? If not, then what are "conservatives" conserving?

Or maybe they enjoy breathing in brown CO2 haze?

Satan?

"Counterlight," posted this statement on MadPriest's blog, in response to the Vatican's crackdown on the "rising influence of Satanism":

Satan's too busy blowing people up and yelling "God is Most Great!"

Rock and the Internet are out; it's all pimply faced loners. He's not interested in rap either; masculine panic and obsessions with wealth and weaponry by the poor and powerless.

Satan is having way too much fun in the religion business these days; power, ambition, fanaticism, theft, rape, destruction, and mass murder all in God's name.

He's almost succeeded in his project to wed religion with capitalism. There are lots of Americans who think that "God helps those who help themselves" is in the Bible. The Great Commandment is replaced with "Nothing $uceeds like $uccess!"

I couldn't agree more.

Who/what/where do you see Satan?

The Only Sense of Time I Have...

...is that it's passing.

Know what I mean?

"Eternity" is such a strange concept - it's endless, we can't escape it, we constantly live and have our being in it - but we can't ever get it back. Not all of it. Not really. Not ever.

Lately, I've been overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia, and a very real, tangible discomfort with my own mortality, and the inability to return to the past - aside from memories and photographs. Every month and day and time period in my life has its own distinct emotional binding, its own music - its own life.

It seems like just yesterday I was happily nestled in my dorm room 200 miles away, snowed in and content with good company and good wine, watching a scary movie before finals week. Or at band camp, shivering as the sun sets beneath the black treeline and feeling that paradoxical adolescent yearning for both freedom and security.

...until I wake up and realize that I'm surrounded by hundreds of cardboard boxes in the cold cement stock room, dreading my next bank account statement and fretting over car payments and student loans. There's no more music. No more snow.

How much longer until I'm relishing the long-past sound of ripping cardboard in an empty, fluorescent stock room?

In the end, what we have are photographs and memories - treasure them. And treasure the "now."

Here are a few of my memories:

Goodbye 2007.