Border Episcopalian

Just to make sure there's no confusion with the long post, I'm not sending my online presence up in smoke--I'm just dividing it into Housewifery and Purl & Java.

If you've enjoyed what's been posted on Border Episcopalian, just switch over to Purl & Java. I'll still be posting just as much. I won't be disappearing. (I'm not Rachel Speght!!) This is just a "group" blog with Leander, and the goal is to get him to post more--not to get me to post less. The lack of posts is just an artifact of term paper week for me and crazy-go-nuts-ness week where Leander works.

If knitting and spinning and cooking and apartment gardening and tea/brewing drying and one-sided dialog with 3rd-wave feminism is your sort of thing, I'll be writing stuff about that at Housewifery.

I'm not disappearing, just moving!

At the risk of sounding over-dramatic, I believe that this is going to be the last post on Border Episcopalian.

There has been a lot going on in the "real world" over the past few months, and my and Leander's online presences are just beginning to reflect that. By far the biggest change is that Leander and I are planning to move back to downtown Boston (hopefully, Cambridge) in August or September. For those who know where/how we live now, this is going to be a major change in lifestyle, but I'm ecstatic about it. Living in Nashua has been making me feel 157 years-old, and I'm looking forward to seeing people my own age. I am, after all, supposed to be a college student. I'm tired of not being able to act like one. Just because I'm a Mrs. doesn't mean that I'm not still 21.

Ever since Leander started running EEBN, I have had fewer and fewer reasons to keep up with ye olde church split. My Bloglines feed doesn't reflect it since I switched over to Liferae, but I have dropped nearly all of the blogs that are clearly on one side of the fight or the other--until a few days ago, I was actually reading more Catholic blogs than Episcopal blogs. (Since someone is bound to ask, no, that does not mean that Leander and I are swimming the Tiber.) The effect that this change has had on my sanity is incredible. I cannot even begin to describe how much more free I feel now that I'm not frantically flailing about this whole thing. I'm not happy about the HOB's reaction to the Primates' meeting. I'm not happy that Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Southern Cone are continuing to plant non-emigrant churches in the United States. But the funny thing is, since I stopped reading the Anglican blogs, I suddenly don't have this absolute need for all of the world's problems to be solved today.

This new space in my brain and time on my hands has allowed me to come to grips with the fact that the past three and a half years have actually been very painful for me for personal reasons that have nothing to do with what's going on in Nigeria or 815. Like someone who's been doped up on adrenaline for an extended period of time, I began to be able feel everything about two months ago, and everything started to change.

Leander and I finally ran back to the Advent for Easter Vigil, and the clergy welcomed us back with open arms like we had never left--like Christians are supposed to do for prodigal children, might I add. I knew that I was in the right place when I saw that someone had donated flowers in memory of Dorothy Sayers and Isabella Stewart Gardener, and I had the hardest time not bursting into tears during the Exsultet. I have nothing against Evangelicals or Charismatics, but I think I've decided that I need to be in an Anglo-Catholic parish, just for my spiritual health. Lewis said that Christ came to fulfill the longings of Paganism as much as he came to fulfill the longings of the Jews, and I feel it really strongly when I'm in a church that has forgotten that. The blessing of the new fire stirred something very deep last Saturday.

I thought I coined the term pew potato out of a conversation where we decided that, though God may be calling us to be clergy at some point, He is not opening the doors for us to pursue ordination right now. Once I accepted that, I started feeling very happy being a lay person. The amazing thing is that, as soon as I accepted that, several opportunities showed up to do some real ministry that had been right in front of my face all along--just not attached to a parish. I am actually very happy with the idea of being a pew potato for the foreseeable future.

I've felt free to start having a blast being an academic again, and I've re-opened the idea of pursuing a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature and my theory that this time that we're in is not actually Postmodern but Neo-Medieval.

But I also don't primarily think of myself as an Episcopalian anymore.

I've been thinking that I need to change the name of this blog for a few months now. I've had the odd experience over the past four years of watching myself become more socially liberal, liturgical, and theologically Catholic all at the same time. I've been feeling less and less on the border and more and more just...myself. And I'm OK with that.

Meanwhile, Leander has been trying to have more of an online presence in general. EEBN was a big step for him, and he has since started posting more on Sporadic Expressions. We have decided that instead of just changing the name of Border Episcopalian (again), it's time for us to set out on a joint venture together. As of this posting, it is still under construction, but we are both going to be posting to a shared blog, Purl and Java.

Incidentally, this has also freed me up to pursue writing about another interest of mine--all of the arts that can be wrapped up in the label "homemaking." I have spun all of these things together into Housewifery. It is still under construction, but there is already quite a bit of content up there--at least for two days.

I am also contemplating putting together a project to raise awareness about rape and domestic violence. It has been impressed upon me over the past couple weeks just how much misinformation is flying around about these topics, and I feel strongly enough about it to try to change this. I'm not sure what form this is going to take, but I already have at least two persons definitely wanting to sign on to whatever effort I start, so there might be some kind of announcement coming soon on Purl and Java. I am open to ideas and taking on more volunteers, so see me after class, if you're interested in either of these.

All of these online changes are wrapped up in a major site overhaul of Fremde.org.

I'm not disappearing, just changing my avatar.

Stay tuned.

My diocese posted a Lenten Meditation on the Passion on YouTube.

It's pretty good--very Episcopal Bostonian, which makes sense coming from DioMass. The choir in the beginning sounds a lot like the choir at the Advent. I wonder if it is.

The blogger at Monastic Mumblings has been doing great reflections on what is going on liturgically this Holy Week. His post on Maundy Thursday was so good that I just had to link to it here. If you haven't been watching this blog, I would encourage you to--at the very least through Easter. There be a very talented blogger, indeed.

• Rumor has it a movie about Hildegard von Bingen is coming out sometime in 2008--directed by an experienced German woman director, no less.
• Snow? On April 4th? You have to be kidding me... We were going to try to go to Tenebrae in Boston tonight, but no dice now.
• ThinkGeek came out with 20-sided fuzzy dice.
• I stumbled on this great food site while I was looking for something to do with fiddleheads. The recipe for Baked Fiddleheads was meh, but the rest of the recipes look fantastic. I tried the recipe for Blueberry Grunt, and it was amazing.
• I am, apparently, St. Melito of Sardis (according to the Which Church Father Are You? quiz.) Hat tip, Biblicalia.
• I think that this absolutely made my day: An alternate use for the 1928 BCP.

I don't think I've introduced the blog to Robert.

Robert Lewis is our very spoiled cockatiel, who will be two years-old at around the same time as our two year anniversary in May. We adopted him in July of that year, and he has been very patient with the turmoil in his living situation since then--particularly the move to our new place last year (He very much enjoyed talking to the trucks as they went by) and the move of his cage this year to make room for the Christmas tree, then a book shelf.

No one can say that our marriage doesn't support new life. We are very supportive, very indulgent parents. Just like a little child, he has gotten himself attached to "The Blankie Song" that I absolutely have to sing to him every night before bed, or he punishes me for it the next day. The night before last, he rewarded my dedication by clearly saying, "Blankie bird," as I sang the song.

In payment of our kindness, he has taken it upon himself to fill the role of watch bird--dutifully alerting us to every new noise and visitor within a 50 mile radius of Nashua. Though, we have yet to successfully teach him that car alarms do not constitute quite the emergency that the fire alarm does, he does a nice impression of both... and the beep of the oven timer and the bread machine and the microwave... He definitely has a vocabulary worthy of his pretentious, un-bird-like name.

We usually do not allow him to fly around the house during dinner time. (He actually prefers to eat his own food in his cage while we eat ours nearby at the table, anyway.) A couple of nights ago he was feeling lonely, so we allowed him to join us. I was very glad that there was a camera handy, so I could chronicle his adventures.

On the menu that night was grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and beer. (New Castle--not that they're paying me for advertising space.) Robert learned when he was a baby that humans have the most interesting food after a surprising crash landing on John's wine glass. Since then, he has been very intrigued by human beverages.

He usually leaves human food alone, though. That night, of course, had to be the exception to the rule.

He discovered that he has a taste for tomato soup.

(For a bird named Robert Lewis, he is rather sloppy.)

He also discovered that he likes grilled cheese. Such a little thief...

He was even defensive when confronted!

But he has learned his lesson. He still has the soup stains on his head.

there is a hole in the wind:
the place where the scent of lilacs should be

Nothing
fills the space
with the sweetest perfume--
as if the absence of smell
would be enough
to convince me
that car exhaust is wholesome

the robin ekes a living
out of sand,
eating the worm
that would transform
by taking into itself
the piles of evidence
of the war with winter
into a soft bed for the blades of grass.
the wind blows sand into his feathers
and he looks up at me
pitifully
as if to say,
"don't forget
it isn't spring--

yet I come back here,
year after year,
just in time
to draw out your pity
like a worm
as I hop around,

We're all sick.
a greenish tint in the skin
and a persistent cough
are the only symptoms we allow ourselves
to say,
"all is not well,"

Leander: btw, what did you think of the [Internet Monk] article I sent yesterday? Did you get a chance to read it?
Kristy: it made me angry
Leander: hm
Leander: why so?
Kristy: if I had a prof like that, I would be so happy
Leander: like Michael Spencer?
Kristy: *nod*
Kristy: who took such an interest in me
Leander: mmm
Leander: you'd actually appreciate him
Kristy: exactly
Leander: gotcha
Leander: that's what's so sad about it: we're doing to education in the country what we did to Christendom not too long ago
Leander: and now people are starting to reject it, too
Kristy: now, unwrap that
Kristy: :)
Leander: we've made it into a cultural institution in a particular form that all our kids must be a part of or their souls will be lost forever
Kristy: it sounds like you're talking more generally here than just the anti-homeschooling attitude you had to fight as a kid
Kristy: is that true?
Leander: yeah
Leander: it's like, education is the American Capitalist path to salvation (being, a white collar job with a fat paycheck). Kids are seeing 1. that that's not necessarily how it works; and 2. that the american dream has done fuck-all for their parents' happiness; and 3. even if you do get edumcated, you stand a good chance of ending up poor anyway (so you may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb). I think people are seeing that it doesn't necessarily lead them to what's important in life, and so are not only treating the system like nothing more than an annoyance like speed limits, but redefining 'important' to not include education, just like a previous generation tried to rebuild human spirituality specifically not including Christianity when Christendom went sour.
Kristy: and even if you don't fall prey to 1, 2, or 3 you could end up like [a friend of mine], who killed himself to get through college quickly, got into a high-powered law firm in New York, and discovered that he really hated selling his soul--and is full of regret and doing construction now
Leander: yup, exactly.
Kristy: in the 60s, students were sick of courses that had no connection to reality, so they protested on campus and got the courses they wanted. our generation is going to college because they've been pumped full of empty promises, and our generation protests with our feet
Leander: yup
Leander: or, if our feet isn't possible, our attention
Kristy: exactly
Leander: it just makes me mad...that girl's life screams "I'm not going to waste one more second on the things that my parents think are important; I don't want to be like them and their soul-sucking lives"

I have just coined a new term:

Pew Potato.

Thanks to John for spreading the word about Bum Rush the Charts, the campaign to get an indie band to number one on the iTunes singles charts, to prove that a band doesn't need a huge label to be heard. My poor, malnourished inner-scenester is dancing around with glee.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to participate myself because iTunes still isn't compatible with Linux--which is just further proof that that the big companies need to learn that free, open source, and indie doesn't mean cheap, low-quality, and unpopular.

It's been almost a week since I posted--mostly, because I read over what I've been writing lately, and it made me bored, and I didn't have anything more interesting to say.

But I have lots of excuses, don't worry.

There's...

and...

and...

Funny videos and comics like Medieval Tech Support.

and...

AND...

I've gotten this crazy idea that if I have a good thought, I might want to work on it and develop it and make it pretty instead of taking the easy way out and posting it half-naked on this blog. It's safe to write for a blog. I can bitch and write crap (like this post) and half-convince myself that I'm actually writing. I've been trying lately to get more serious, and part of that is being honest about when I'm actually writing and when I'm just getting myself high on adjectives or the sound of my own voice.

I want to get serious about actually trying to be the best writer I can be, but I don't want to be serious.

I've been confusing, lately, being a serious person with being serious about something. I'm not serious. When I try to be serious it doesn't work. I just get boring. I joined up with the Episcopal Church because of the Cavalier poets (and not too much later Thomas Morton). I got theologically articulate about it months afterward, but, for the first six months or so, I didn't really think about why we prayed "The Angelus" during mass or how I felt about Real Presence or Gene Robinson. I was too busy having fun (and being frustrated) trying to learn how to dance the liturgy. I've been thinking lately that I really wish I hadn't lost that. But maybe I haven't.

Regardless, this post is distracting me from "serious writing" AND from doing my assignments on Frank O'Hara and James Merrill, so I bow out and bid adieu.

I stumbled this morning on a site that claimed to be making an apology for the Episcopal Church for a new generation. I decided that I didn't want to be charitable in my response to it, so I'm not going to link to it or review it. Let it be said that the argument started with Bono and ended with "The Episcopal Church welcomes you!", and enough has been said.

It got me thinking, though: Why am I an Episcopalian?

I stumbled in the door at around the time that many of the people I would have identified with were running at break-neck speed out the door, so why didn't I just turn around and walk back out? Maybe I was oblivious long enough that I was changed by the ambient culture. Maybe I thought I was who I was because I didn't know anything else, and kneeling at the altar rail at the Advent was like meeting myself for the first time.

I could probably list a million little reasons why I'm an Episcopalian. They would include some typical ones like the Book of Common Prayer and worshiping in the faith of C.S. Lewis. They would include some a-typical ones like Robert Herrick and Lancelot Andrewes. Ultimately, those reasons are just sub-reasons under one big reason: God was there.

The church I came from was self-conscious. It was constantly looking over its shoulder to make sure that it was being cool and relevant. When it wasn't doing that, it was jumping up and down begging God for a sign of his approval. We believed that we were saved by grace, but we shouted ourselves exhausted at the altar, slitting our wrists like the prophets of Baal before Elijah, trying to get the attention of a God we believed needed theatrics or he would get bored. The Episcopal Church I found didn't do that. It was much too dignified for that type of behavior: She was the bride of Christ, and that kind of behavior isn't worthy of princes.

I think that the biggest tragedy of the culture war is that it has turned the Episcopal Church into a two-headed, wrist-slicing monster. One head is self-consciously preaching its own merits to the culture it is huffing and puffing to keep up with. The other head spends all its time shushing the other half because it's trying to tippy-toe past the drunk, fire-breathing God of Calvin sleeping on the couch. Neither of those gods is the God of Cramner and Lewis and Andrewes--and it certainly isn't the God of Herrick! They're both idols: asking more and more until they ask for blood of children, and neither is the God I found in the Episcopal Church. I want to hear more from that God, but he's a gentleman who doesn't play dirty. Sometimes I feel like a student in a classroom where the teacher has stopped talking, and everyone is too busy shouting over him to notice.

My dear Wormwood,

I am very pleased at your latest report of goings on in the Anglican Communion, particularly in relation to the petty twittering in the United States that is occupying so much of your patient's time. Continue to preoccupy your patient's mind with the Millennium Development Goals and spreading the Gospel while keeping her from ever doing anything about either. Doing this will undoubtedly ensure that she spends all day clicking around the same three blogs and fretting about things outside of her control while she does nothing to take care of her own needs or the needs of others. They are much more easily molded, my dear nephew, when they are tired and spread thin!

You should be very grateful for the position that you are in. Your work has been made very easy because of the work of Slugbub, Misrag, and Mudmuck, who have graciously agreed to take on key, vocal members of their little parliament. I predicted over 50 years ago that we might someday not have to bother with individual temptation: Call the bellwether and the sheep will follow. That day is nearly here, and you are eating the last, most tender morsels before your ilk are sent to work in the mines. Be careful with your patient, and you won't be among them.

You should pay particular attention to the work being done by Slugbub and Misrag. A novice would miss the great work being done by these two because their patients aren't often in the mainstream press, but their work is some of the most important being done, particularly how they play their patients off of each other.

1. You'll notice how Slugbob keeps his patient perpetually focused on the inner life while being completely oblivious to how his drivel sounds to everyone else. He keeps his patient reading the old mystics, who defended their uncharitable words to others under the guise of keeping themselves pure, and Slugbob doesn't ever let him wonder how he can call himself pure if he only pours out poison on others.

2. Misrag is a prime example of doing the best with what you've got. She knows that she can't encourage her patient to eliminate that nuisance the Prayers of the People from that bloody rite of theirs. To do so would undermine decades of work building up that most wonderful malady, liturgical arrogance, in her patient. Rather, she has rendered the prayer completely useless for anything but a weapon to beat his congregation with every week. She has encouraged him to craft the prayers in such a way that they legalistically true to the Book of Common prayer with just a twist of malice--focused perpetually on the souls of the leaders of the Episcopal Church while picturing a change in their souls to be merely a change of clothes and a hair cut.

3. One of the benefits of having a mostly elderly leadership in a human organization is that most of the leaders have been forced to put up with each other for many years. Feuds that would have died with them decades ago in less advanced societies are allowed to simmer until the whole mess boils over. Time is our greatest ally, Wormwood. The most key ingredient of this diabolical stew is the illusion that everyone involved knows each other even though they have always sat across the aisle from each other and never said more than five words. Because of the work of our mighty three, those humans presume to know exactly how to read each other's thoughts, when they can't possibly be further from the truth.

4. What makes this even more amusing for us is that the feuds are so often based on so very little: Candles, a particular shape of vestments, the similarity of a hat to a natural phenomenon. Our mighty three are perpetually ensuring that their patients have a double standard. They keep each of them grumbling about the "fuzzy talk" of the others while being completely convinced that they engage in no "fuzzy talk" of their own. They insist that the blog entries of the bloggers they like be taken at face value while they engage in cheesy little satires of our correspondence themselves while thinking themselves to be quite innocent.

It takes all of this work and much more to ensure that novices like yourself are allowed to have an easy time of things. The best that you can do for your patient is to make good use of this. Keep her thinking that she's on the front lines of this fight, and don't ever let her ask who cares if she stays or goes.

Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape

This letter was inspired by the third letter in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters with a reference to "Screwtape Proposes a Toast"

So what does a cross, that does not represent a belief in God, or a devotion or commitment to faith mean? What does human kind's most recognizable symbol mean when it isn't a symbol for anything? It represents evil. In its purest form. It represent mankind's innate and fundamental ability to kill. It represents everything the very cross is supposed to stand for. How one innocent carpenter was brutally strung up and crucified by the most unimaginably evil people in the world.. his everyday neighbors..

That's a hell of a symbol to me..

-Eric Brushett

I'm trying to add more commentary on the quotes that I post, but I don't really have anything to add to this. Just, check out this blog.

When March comes in like a lion,
he leaves like a lamb.
This March does not want to leave any doubt
about how he's coming in and going out.

November gives thanks.
December sings carols.
January is the New Year.
February is for lovers.

In March everyone is tired--
but March isn't tired.
He thrives on the curses
being hurled at him by
millions of New Englanders.

He takes it all into his cauldron
and pours it into:
snow on top of more snow in
Maine
New Hampshire
sandy Boston.
Droughts on the ski slopes of Vermont,
icy gray rain in Bridgeport,
and leaky clouds spitting God-knows-what
over the beaches of Rhode Island.

He is indecisive,
Switching by the hour between sun and snow;
snow,
sleet,
and freezing rain
by the day.

He is a tease,
allowing just enough sun to make the world sparkle,
then sending snow and wind
as sledge hammers
to rattle the windows and
to break the mood.

March is cruel.

"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless."

"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."

-An excerpt from "As I Walked Out One Evening," W. H. Auden

I think that this is one of my new favorite poems of all time. The whole thing is more than worth reading, but those two verses were what stood out to me: The nearest thing we have to blessing others is to love them, and we all too often find that our hearts and they are crooked, so that we can not meet each other at all. Still, we must try and embrace the long defeat of it.

There's a tradition at my college that each class begins each term with an ice-breaker question. Usually, the assignment is something like, "Tell us about yourself and one aspect of *insert course description here* that fascinates you. Share it with the class and respond to at least 2 classmates." Usually, I find those questions annoying: How many college students can get themselves worked up into a froth about writing persuasive essays or Medieval art history?

The past two terms I've been blessed. (I say terms because, in my program, there are 6 terms a year where students take 2 classes at a time.) One of my classes was an IT class, and it began with one of my classmates swearing at her the frozen computer she had left in her car all day and making our embarrassed class and poor, put-upon professor listen to a litany on how much she hates the thing he has dedicated his life to studying. In spite of whatever plan he might have previously had, we only went around the room and briefly shared our names, degrees, and expected date of graduation. In my lit class, my prof was creative, and we got to share about a quest that we've been on--which was much more interesting than listening to the same twelve people tell about their degrees and career goals one more time.

I started a new class on contemporary American poetry today with that same lit prof this morning, and the ice breaker question was to describe the view out our window. After writing this, I decided that it might really be worth considering getting out of Nashua:

When I sit at my desk, all that is visible out my office window is the front of two townhouses. The two windows on the second floor and two three-sided windows on the first floor make the building look almost like it is grinning. It is so close to my window that I wondered the first time I saw this view if I would sometimes see someone else looking out one of the windows from their desk. We would look at each other like two children standing between parallel mirrors seeing miniatures of themselves stretching back smaller and smaller into infinity. As it is, all I have ever seen across the parking lot are two eyelids and a row of white teeth--eight windows with shades pulled down. The windows have become mirrors for perfectly cropped evergreen bushes and a leafless deciduous tree, whose two sky-reaching arms were cut off at the wrists, forcing it to ever reach for the sky with no hope of ever feeling the clouds between its fingertips.

It looks like I'm at least a week behind on my Lenten reflection. Call it blogger's block or something. I just haven't had anything to write for this thing lately. I've been doing a LOT of writing, and I have a lot to say, but I haven't had much to say that would be "right" to post here. I hesitate to admit it, but I've really been wanting to write for a LiveJournal again. Just when I thought I grew up, my little teenage angst-ball pops up and says, "It would really be much more fun to be posting the snide little comments you make while sharing that game of Morrowind with Leander," or "Don't you really want to talk about how soul-sucking Nashua is and how much you want to move to Cambridge in July?" That must be where all of my originality is going.

I've been quoting and referencing Chris's blog so much lately that I've been seriously contemplating throwing in the blogging towel and just telling all of my readers to read his blog instead. But then everyone would miss the material that I steal from Chad and Kyle, and that would be no good. I wonder who would win if I went back over my posts for the last few months and counted how many times I reference posts from those three blogs. (Should I?) What I should probably do is stop being so lazy and actually go out and find my own ideas. But using those blogs as a springboard is so much more fun. And every time I think about doing that one of those three posts something that gets me thinking about something different enough that I can't really justify leaving it as a comment, so I make a separate post, and it turns into this long thing like all of my posts do.

Oh well.

Today, it's Chris's turn.

A while ago he posted a video by Craig Ferguson. Since b2evolution won't let me imbed the video, you'll have to check it out here

It has been amazing me a lot lately how two people can hear the same thing and focus on two completely different parts of it. Chris focused on the good-old American pastime of judging people in his post, which is very well written, by the way. When I watched the clip, what stood out to me was what he had to say about being an alcoholic--particularly the part about abstaining.

I went through a phase in high school where I collected C.S. Lewis's books on theology, and I rotated through them. About the time I would get back to the beginning, I would add another book to the list, read that, and go back to the beginning. This all stopped when I, essentially, ran out of books to add and didn't want to buy the books that I had always borrowed from the library. Recently, I've started going back to the Lewis books that are on my shelf. I read The Screwtape Letters a few months ago. Some time last week, Leander and I read "The Weight of Glory" together.

The part that always stands out the most to me in "The Weight of Glory" is this:

We are half hearted creatures, fooling about with drink, sex, and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud-pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The subject of desires is an appropriate one for the beginning of Lent. For some reason or another the subject of fasting has been largely neglected in Christian teaching as of late (with the exception of health warnings), so it seems like everyone has a different idea of what the Lenten fast really is. I've heard a very wide range of interpretations of it. Some people think that the whole idea of fasting is ridiculous, so they make it a point to treat themselves to something that they want whenever they want it during Lent. On the other extreme are people who think that Lent is all about reminding themselves that desires, cravings, and addictions are evil--even the "addiction" to food, and they use it as an excuse to berate themselves for having needs. Off in left field are people who use Lenten fasting as a divine bribe: "I'm fasting for 40 days, God, so you owe me this shiny new toy." Most people are, to a degree, more moderate: Lent as re-newed New Year's resolution. Lent as weight-loss program. Lent as an excuse to try to beat a real addiction through sheer force of will. Lent as an excuse to fall head over heels into an old addiction. Lent as an excuse to feed an already bad case of seasonal depression and wander around the house wearing black and singing 158 different versions of "Miserere, Mei." Lent as an excuse to remind everyone how spiritual/liturgical/high church/low church/saved by grace one is. I'm not a fasting expert, but I am an Anglican (Following Jesus with a slight aire of superiority since 1527), and I suspect a little bit that all of these are at least somewhat adventures in missing the point.

I feel justified in poking fun at (Anglicans and) all of those attitudes towards Lent because I fall prey to them, too. Every time I recognize the error of my attitude, I fall into another one. Leave it to Craig Ferguson and C.S. Lewis to show me the back of my Lenten neck. Craig said that, as a recovered alcoholic, he could not be trusted to drink without falling back into alcoholism. Lewis said that our desires are too weak, and we are much to easily pleased with trash. Just like alcohol numbs a person's sense of how much their life doesn't satisfy, I fill my life with things that numb the knowledge that what I have readily available to me, what I allow myself to want and enjoy, is wanting. What's more, I can't even trust myself to leave the mud pies for a beach vacation when the opportunity is presented to me. The purpose of a fast it seems, at least for me, is to force me to abstain from mud pies in order to at least entertain the possibility of the hope for something better. What that means in particular for me is rather personal, and this is not a LiveJournal, so I'm not going to fly off on a monologue about what I'm fasting from because "what" isn't the point.

Like most (if not all) truths, this idea of turning away from fake desires in order to make room for real ones is very dangerous. It forces me to walk a razor's edge between the two worst extremes of Lenten attitudes and the pride that goes along with them. If I lean too far to the right, I'll fall into the belief that my little fast has made me an expert on the joy that my desires are a counterfeit of. I fall into the temptation of believing that, since I can't trust myself, all of my desires and pleasures are just cheap knock offs of the real deal, and I thumb my nose at the people who don't have the wherewithal to realize that abstaining from their petty pleasures would make them happy. By my extreme abstention, I risk missing out on grace on the one hand, and I risk twisting pleasures that are almost real pleasures into fake ones on the other. If I lean too far to the left, I fall into the belief that the only way to understand what pleasures are good or bad is to try a little bit of all of them, and I happily prance through life with Luther's oft misunderstood quote, "Sin to spite the devil," as my motto. I risk thumbing my nose at the people who are fasting and, thus, missing out on my happiness--like I did to my long-suffering Catholic friends in high school. Meanwhile, I'm just back where I started from: Settling for pleasures that don't really satisfy.

It would be easy to focus on all of the places where I don't meet up, and that would make a heck of a LiveJournal post. As much as keeping the idea that addicts can't trust themselves around certain addictives is important to keep in mind, it would be easy to get caught up in that and miss out on the grace in Lent. Lent is a time for serious contemplation and spiritual discipline, and it is a time for fasting, but I think that it is designed to force us to make room in our lives and hearts and desires for real pleasures. Around now most of us are probably starting to feel the stretch of the fast, and it's hard to forget that God doesn't command us to do something that isn't good or doesn't lead to good. It's the turning from the mud pies towards the holiday at the sea that is important. There is nothing wrong with hope, nothing wrong with a desire for the good things that God has for us--even as he commands us to do without.

And to prove that I can actually post something original (Well, sort of. Leander found it.), here is a thesis that claims that Calvin and Hobbes grow up to be Tyler and Jack from Fight Club. Excellent scholarship and an appropriate analysis of the long term effects of repression for this season of Lent.

*clears throat pretentiously*

Right-o. Carry on.

I tried to post this as a comment on Chad's blog, but commenting seems to be broken, so I'm posting it here:

It rains all around the world, and people convert for a lot of reasons. I think that for every 5 conversion stories--Protestant or Catholic--there is only 1 that doesn't have some bitterness at the root of the decision.

I know several ex-Catholic converts, who converted to escape the domineering fathers that made them go to Mass. The Brethren were full of ex-Catholics, who left because their local Catholic churches made them feel like they were in a sacrament factory. My parish was founded by a group of Russian Orthodox people, who joined the Episcopal Church because there was no local Orthodox one, and they refused to step into a "Roman church." My great-grandparents became Italian Baptists because the local Catholic priest stole money from the collections and told them they were going to hell for being poor--then tore down their new church every night as they were building it with their own hands and paraded icons through the ashes.

When I became an Episcopalian, it took a long time for some of those I love to believe that I didn't convert out of some kind of hatred for them and what they stood for, but I can't honestly say there was no bitterness in my decision. I was tired of listening to men in the Brethren tell me that a woman's place was in marriage to an elder, raising his children while he was off being wonderful. I was sick of Pentecostal prophesies that had no connection to reality, and I was furious at the petty power-plays that lasted for years every time a new pastor signed on.

When I became an Episcopalian, I found the same stuff there, too. The Episcopal Church is full of priests' wives sacrificing themselves and their children before the idol of their husbands' careers. The blogs and pulpits are full of embarrassing, petty Episcopal sermons with no connection to either the Bible or reality. And anyone who thinks that the Episcopal Church has no problem with power must be blissfully sheltered!

I heard a story once about an Anglican, who swam the Tiber and danced around and crowed at all of the people still on the other side because he escaped the problems of the Anglican Communion. A Catholic man said to him, "Yes, the shores are beautiful here. Rest a while from your long journey, but don't rest too long. We're fighting over here, too!" I'm sure that the denominations could be changed to just about anything, and it would still be true. The Church is made up of people, after all.

I've been asked what I think of the documents that have come out of the meeting in Tanzania.

Here are some initial thoughts:

The response has not been what I expected. I was shocked at every turn.

• I expected reasserters to be upset by the draft covenant, but I was shocked that the progressives were upset. I wasn't surprised in the least that the reasserters were upset at the covenant because it didn't say anything that everyone hasn't already agreed to, anyway. What I didn't expect was the hissy fit from the progressives about the covenant reaffirming the 1662 BCP and the Articles of Religion. I thought that stuff was basic; but it is, apparently, a deal breaker for a not insignificant percentage. Personally, I thought that a covenant this basic should not have been necessary, but I changed my mind after seeing the responses. If there are disagreements at this most basic level, it may be necessary to spell everything out. Obviously, there comes a point where the whole Anglican "unity through diversity" thing kicks in, but there has to be something significant doctrinally holding us together. Geography certainly isn't doing it anymore.

• I wasn't shocked at the despair coming from the progressives at the schedule, but I was shocked at the despair coming from the reasserters. There seem to be two basic groups in the reasserter camp right now with most people sitting somewhere in the middle. There are the people who just want the progressives to leave. Period. And right now. In order for them to be happy in TEC, Bishop Robinson and Bishop Schori and all of the bishops who voted for them would have to step down. For the people on the most extreme side of this, Bishop Schori being invited to Tanzania for anything other than discipline was unacceptable.

  No matter what, I think, those people would have been unhappy, and I'm not surprised that they were upset. More towards the middle are people who just want justice. They want to be in a church that preaches the Gospel and celebrates the sacraments and follows Jesus. (I'm pretty sure there are some center leaning progressives in this camp, too. I know there are moderates.) All they want is for the corruption at all levels to be fixed, so they can go on serving the Lord. I would have expected them to be happier at the schedule and covenant. There is a deadline for TEC to comply, and there is enough there for them to comply with that the people who would be a problem with Christian orthodoxy wouldn't be able to sign off on it. I expected them to be happy enough with that, but many think that TEC will still be able to fudge it and get through. I was shocked at the despair, but it sounds like I might not have been cynical enough.

• I didn't think it would be possible to fudge compliance with the schedule until I heard some progressives talking about holding their noses and agreeing to the terms of the September 30th deadline, so they can have a hand in drafting the covenant. I don't think that some rather loud voices are understanding that the terms of staying in the communion aren't some temporary measure. There will be no blessing of same-sex unions and ordaining of non-celibate GLBT bishops in the Anglican Communion without there being a huge split. Those who think that they can squeak that through without the Global South leaving don't really understand how the Global South feels about those things and why. The Global South represents the majority of the Anglican Communion and the majority of the people post effected by the Millennium Development Goals. The progressives should know that you can't really help someone you don't understand, and they have to understand the Global South in order to carry out the MDGs.

As for how I personally feel about it:

My father in-law posted some initial reactions to the documents:

• Ultimatum in a Velvet Glove: Comments on the Report of the Subgroup
• Further Remarks on the Subgroup Report
• Pastoral Dynamics and the Subgroup Report
• Reactions to the Draft Covenant
• Initial Reactions to Communique and Schedule
• The Holy Spirit Brings Things to Light

In my opinion, they are required reading in order to balance out all of the panic.

My feelings line up with his in nearly everything. The only thing that I feel strongly about that Fr. Harding didn't really cover was the issue of interim help for those in parishes/dioceses that will never be able to sign off on even the draft covenant. I haven't asked him, but I'm pretty sure that he would agree that something more specific needs to be fleshed out. I was disappointed that there wasn't a clearer plan about that, but I recognize that what came out of the meeting was a miracle. From vague reports, we very narrowly avoided an international split last week. Praise God that we didn't. I'd rather not have to switch the blog to talking about church split survival strategies. Those who think that keeping the church together "for the sake of the kids" isn't making things any less painful have obviously never been through a church split.

As someone trying to pursue ordination in a diocese that will almost certainly have a hard time agreeing with any covenant, I would like to see some progress on an official means for people like me to pursue education and ordination between now and the time that this is over. There is a severe shortage of priests in TEC right now, and it would be a shame for orthodox parishes to go without orthodox priests for ten years while this thing is hashed out. Even some kind of nod towards the ACN would have been something. Of course, I may be happily surprised at the speed with which this whole "Primatial Vicar" thing gets worked out. I was certainly surprised (both happily and unhappily) by a great deal this week.

Another thing I would like more clarity on is what is to be done about CANA and AMiA. It sounds like Rwanda and Nigeria may need to surrender those congregations back to TEC. Delay on what that means will undoubtedly make things more difficult for those currently litigating in Virginia. I'm hoping that we'll hear more about that soon.

All in all, I'm pleased with what came out of the primates. I'm impressed with the amount of work they were able to get done in less than a week, and I'm hopeful at the future. We have a long Lent ahead of us, but it sounds like it may be shorter than many previously would have expected.

Listening to the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon from Zanzibar, in the Cathedral built on the site of a slave market. Why was the reading about Noah? We had heard about Moses and shining face, and the Transfiguration of Jesus. But Archbishop Rowan mentioned rainbows. There has been so much attention paid to the sexual orientation of people. Appropriately so, as sexuality is the most intricately formed behavior, the most complicated behavior. Suddenly I wondered why a group would choose rainbows as their symbol. What are they shouting to us?

We are inching closer to being able to look at the suffering of children. To open our eyes and, with strength from God, to see clearly that what happens during childhood, and often the childhoods of ancestors, forms the person.

Rainbows: the symbol of life having to be built over again, anew, after being destroyed by the wickedness -- the turning away from the good toward evil -- of humans.

I've always hated that story. I do not see the happy ark so lightly portrayed in children's books and sets. I see the people and animals and plants struggling and drowning in the rising waters.....

And the deluge of rain, rain, no sun.

Why have GLBT(as I see they call themselves) chosen this symbol? Of life having to be built anew after being destroyed by wickedness, the turning toward evil that causes so much suffering to everyone and everything around it.

When we can open our eyes to their suffering, then we may be able to look at our own childhoods and ancestors and see our own distress. As long as we pretend that everything goes, all is ok, nothing hurts, none of us can grow. And the cries for help will get louder, the
behavior more and more outrageous, until someone notices, names it clearly and ministers to us. Tells us that God is more powerful than the past.

Many of us who have been eagerly watching the meeting of the Anglican Primates in Tanzania for the past few days have been sorely disappointed. The Primates meet only once every ten years, and we were expecting firm, decisive action that would leave no doubt where the Anglican Communion stood. The meeting is not yet over, but the documents that have been coming out so far have been disappointing.

I have tried my best to get my mind around the extreme politeness inherent in both African and British cultures that is so foreign for us blunt, tell-it-like-it-is Americans, but I still can't help feeling like Merry and Pippin at the Ent Moot hoping for the ents to move more quickly. From the little I've seen, I don't seem to be alone. Proverbs says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." Many are feeling angry, discouraged, and depressed that things have not gone how they have expected. As much as I didn't expect much from the primates as a whole, I have been shocked to not hear more from Bishop Duncan and Bishop Akinola. Is the new day not dawning, after all? Do we still have to decide between Episcopal and Network? What is going on? It is difficult not to feel betrayed and confused.

In the months proceeding the Primates Meeting we Episcopalians have gone through two phases, and I think that we are about to enter a third. During Advent, everyone was depressed because we were expecting the few months before the meeting to be full of light. We thought that we would see more clearly who was bringing what to the table. We thought that there would be clarity, and we would be able to see our way forward. Advent was full of nothing but quicksand. Responses were mixed to a covenant proposed by Evangelical members of the Church of England, and clues as to what would happen in February were not forthcoming.

During Epiphany, people began jumping to conclusions. We believed that we saw the way forward to Christ in the mists. Surely, the Primates would save us and give us a way forward. People began making plans for the future. They started laying out best and worst case scenarios and deciding how they were going to respond to each. We gathered up as much evidence as we could and read into everything like we could see our fortune in tea leaves.

Two weeks ago, things began to move. We learned that American bishops were being called to testify. Schori was being invited, but it wasn't clear what she was being called for, and both sides were optimistic. The Nigerians gave their support to firm action from Bishop Akinola. The Global South looked like they were ready to take action.

Our hopes were kept up during the early days of the meeting. A couple days ago, things started to go down hill. The light that we expected to shine started to go dim. For many, this covenant has put the lights out. People are leaving. They are falling into despair.

We forgot about Lent.

I don't think it's an accident that the Gospel reading for this week is the temptation of Christ in the desert. These are difficult times for the Anglican Communion, full of darkness and temptations, but God has not left us alone in the dark. Christ faced the same temptations that we are facing now during His time in the desert. He forged a trail ahead for us, and He has left behind instructions for what to do. They are not what we have been hoping for. They are not seeing stones or a map or even a lantern. Rather, they are directions for how we should live while we grope around in the dark now.

1. Don't get comfortable, and don't settle for less than God's best. After Jesus was done fasting for forty days in the desert, the devil came to Him and encouraged him to transform bread into stones to assuage his hunger. Jesus said, "No, man cannot live by bread alone." The rest of the verse that he quoted was, "But by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Jesus had the power to make himself comfortable in the desert. He had the opportunity to numb his hunger by manipulating his circumstances, but he knew that solving his earthly hunger would only be like escaping into drugs or alcohol to dull his pain.

It will be tempting for us to make our home in this place. We could get comfortable here and forget that all things are not how they should be. Christians in all ages have had opportunities to make themselves comfortable in this world, but the saints have not taken it. Those of us who are called to stay Anglicans under the Anglican Communion are called to live in a desert. It is difficult. We hunger for depth and truth and beauty. We could numb our desires and become contented here, settle for stones instead of bread, but that is not the Christian way forward.

The way of Christ is not the way of Stoicism. It is not quiet resignation in the face of evil. It is not despair and acceptance. It is living where the world and the Church are in pain. It is living into that pain and bringing that pain before God in a sacrifice of praise.

But the way of Christ is not the way of the sword. Some of us may have the opportunity to get comfortable here by manipulating the power structures and creating a church in our own image. That is not the way forward, either. God is not interested only in ends. He is interested in how we get to those ends because it is the journey that transforms us. Hurting others to pull everyone forward is not the way of the cross.

2. Do not take the easy way of compromise through. Jesus was then presented with an opportunity to compromise with evil. Satan offered him rule of the earth as long as it was under his authority. God could do what he wanted with the world as long as God was subordinate to Satan. Jesus answered that the right way was to worship God alone.

This is not to say that Christians should be brittle. It does not mean that we should close our ears to criticism. What this does mean is that we should not bow the knee to the Zeitgeist. Christianity can be manipulated into something acceptable, popular, and powerful in this world. It has been done before. The Zeitgeist has always said: "If you will only submit to me on these few particulars, I will let you make Heaven on Earth."

That is wrong. Zeitgeist is a liar. He will take our adoration. Then he will betray us when we aren't looking. Many Christians bowed before modernism and created a counter, Christian version of every new thing that's come along. Now those things have left us empty, but the answer it not to bend orthodoxy to the next attractive thing that comes along. The cycle will only go on and on.

3. Don't test God Lastly, Satan brought Jesus up to a tall building and told him to test God's love by jumping from it. Jesus answered, "No, it is wrong to test God."

I have fallen into the temptation many times, and I know I'm not alone, of telling God: "If you really loved me, you would make this happen." We call it all sorts of respectable names: putting out fleeces, asking for signs, and just being honest about our own limitations. It is really a cover for unbelief.

It is tempting for us to say, "If God was really still with the Anglican Communion, things would happen this way." We can't pretend to know the mind of God. We only know how he has acted in the past, and he has usually acted after we thought it was too late.

When Jesus was dead and in the tomb, we thought the story was over. Only failed Messiahs hang on crosses: "Cursed is anyone who hangs from a tree." What we thought was failure was just the deep breath before the final blow. Holy Saturday was when Jesus tensed his muscles before the big leap out of the tomb.

Christian movements rise and fall. Anglicanism may, in fact, be dying. We don't know what God is going to do. What we do know is that He loves us. Even the death of Anglicanism is not the end. Staking our belief in God's love on how he deals with the Anglican Communion is not the way forward.

As we enter into Lent, the lights on the Anglican stage are out, and it looks like they may stay out for quite some time. This is not the end of the play. After the desert is the wedding. After Lent is Easter. We mustn't get comfortable, lose our integrity, or despair. When the light comes on, all will be seen for what it is.