US churches debating LGBT Issues

for those in the USA: glaad have a tidy run down of the Protestant denominations exploring LGBT inclusion and justice issues, including dates of their conferences over the summer. followed by an article about pat robertson that'll warm the cockles of your heart*... :-x

Summer Heats Up with Churches Debating LGBT Issues


LB

*don't look at it too long. might make your blood boil

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yup. good people...

pete has this analogous thing (for something philosophically useful but i can't remember what it is right now) where he talks about falling in love. it goes something like this:

you can have a list of characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests you want in a person and you carry it around looking for someone who'll fit the bill. but that's not what you fall in love with. you fall in the love with the person. that is, the human that is made up of those characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests and maybe a whole lot of other stuff besides. maybe you fall in love with someone other than what you thought you wanted or needed, who doesn't match that list you were carrying round at all. when it happens, whether they match that list or not, the list doesn't seem to matter much anymore. you can't fall in love with a list of characteristics. what you love is a whole person.

as i see it, what you love is the ineffable them-ness.

and sometimes i get to wondering if community, or indeed church, is no different...

HFASS keeping it absolutely Real

for as far away as they may be, i'm glad Nadia and her people are there. for they tick many boxes on the list. and then there's the them-ness.

everytime i think i'm done with it all, i am reminded of what matters most...

LB

MARCH OF SOLIDARITY: PUBLIC INVITATION

from the irish times online,

Victims of child abuse in church-run institutions will today hand over a petition to the head of the Conference of Religious of Ireland.

After a silent march through Dublin children’s shoes will be left at the Dáil gates and white ribbons will be tied on the railings outside Leinster House as a mark of respect for those who suffered clerical abuse.

Christian Brother Kevin Mullan and at least one representative from other orders named in the damning Ryan report have accepted invitations to attend.

The organisers of the march Christine Buckley, from Aislinn, John Kelly, Survivors of Child Abuse in Ireland, Noel Barry of Right of Place and former Fianna Fáil Mayor of Clonmel Michael O’Brien will lay wreaths, two black and two white, outside the Dáil.

A spokeswoman for the organising group, Survivors of Institutional Abuse Ireland (SOIAI), said: “The silence will be broken only when survivors intone the names of the 216 institutions as the petition is being handed to Sr O’Connor and Br Mullan outside the Dáil.

“Then 108 white balloons and 108 black balloons, representing the living and the dead of the 216 institutions, will be released into the skies.”

The demonstration begins at the Garden of Remembrance at noon, travels down O’Connell Street and over to Kildare Street.

Organisers urged people to attend and said those who wish to show solidarity should wear a white ribbon and sign and post the Petition of Solidarity, available on the SOIAI website www.irishsolidarity.com

from bunny boilers to dumbledore and various gendery things in between

new day, new look. i was getting tired of the old colour scheme. dunno if the template will stay but anyways,

here's a corral of lost'n'found snippets from the last 24 hours...

::

elizabeth wortzle ranted on a new film, and traces a brief history of the "crazed woman" archetype in cinema.
it brought to mind a fairly detailed and disturbing account of the violently misogynist changes that were made to Fatal Attraction (in response to test screenings) in Backlash by Susan Faludi.

::

i'm finding the work of charlie white, the girl studies (2008) curious and a little unsettling. andrew womack has an interesting take on the provocation. i find the, "teens and transgender comparative study" interesting and quite beautiful on initial viewing, but i'm not sure how to read the rest of his work in this project. i find the "ammerican minor film stills" uncomfortable. which is probably the point.

::

more gender related stuff, of a more troubling kind, and closer to home: i received an email from a friend regarding an upcoming conference exploring (read: encouraging) faith based reparative therapy for those "suffering" SSA. said friend asked, what can be done?
my guess is: turn up, listen, ask pertinent questions, peacefully protest... i note they do welcome those who disagree with them to attend and listen, as long as they don't disrupt proceedings.

for details of the event, see the hyperlink to a pdf in the line,

Jeffrey Satinover, 2004, 10th Edition. Dr Satinover to visit Northern Ireland June 19 and 20 2009

on this page

seems to me these folks are trying to keep the event pretty quiet by not having the ad more visible on their site.

i'm conscious looking at the related sites for this event what a definitive language shift has taken place here in less than a year - out of the theological and into the psychological. although that reflecting a wider international shift, i can't help but feel that from an NI perspective this is a rather strategic response to the iris robinson debacle of last summer.
in 2009 it seems it's not okay to call LGBTQ persons an abomination, but it is okay to talk about compassionately sharing their struggle with them while inferring that their struggle is like the struggle against nazi-ism. <-- i don't know how else to interpret that *bizarre* juxtaposition on that FAQ page.

i found it rather curious that under the heading, Manhood for Today, on one the conference hosts' site, was the following line,

Laocoon was a seer in Greek mythology who is famed for trying to persuade the Trojans not to take the famous wooden horse into the city and for doing so his sons are killed, but not before he tries to save them. He did what was right and did not shy away from the consequences; he engaged in the fight. We need to get active in the lives of our young people.
I love that line in Harry Potter when Dumbledore is speaking to him and says, “the time is coming Harry, when people will have to decide between doing what is right and what is easy...
This statue [of Lacoon] represents for me a man engaging in the struggle for the life of his sons (children). For me this is the struggle that we as men all should be involved in for all our children (boys and girls).

i'm pretty sure j.k.rowling herself said dumbledore was gay. huh.

::

on a more positive note,

i hadn't realised Changing Attitude Ireland had changed their website. i encourage folks to walk with them at the 2009 Belfast Pride parade on Saturday 1st August. i was very glad i joined their ranks for the 08 parade and stood alongside church reps who hold no truck with the kind of stuff outlined above...




must get on with some dull necessities and wave my parentals goodbye, who are armed with gifts and bound for Ontario to visit the fam...

hey ho

LB

beyond abstraction

i've spent much of the morning thinking through and writing some thoughts in the aftermath of the death of dr tiller.
for the second time in a month i had received contact from someone asking for my thoughts related to abortion. both openings for conversation came from people i care about, both far away, and whose perspectives in conversation are always not only welcome, but valued, for their substantive and typically compassionate intelligence. and yet, i am struck at how challenging it is when, at such distance, you can't have such conversation in bodily presence, even with folks who know something of the measure of one's heart.

for that very reason, i remain unsure if i am comfortable exploring my views here on the blog, despite having given a lot of committed thought to it of late, (along with the Ryan Report, which is no less troubling), such is the deep sensitivity of the issue. i cannot read your body language and you cannot read mine and we do not necessarily know one another's story.

i am deeply conscious that when i go back to academia in the autumn this will be a curriculum issue for class discussion and probably one of the only feminist conversations i feel actively cautious about having to engage in - such is the need for that sensitivity, especially when one does not know the stories of those with whom one will be expected to debate.

but i will go so far as to say, i think these three offerings are worthy of our time and our consideration... i believe we need a lot more of this kind of nuanced and measured approach in the public square, where up to now there has been so much violent and hate-filled speech:

frank shaeffer on rachel maddow show
andrew sullivan on keith olbermann
and

regina spektor's laughing with - which Pád independently sent me as i was writing my thoughts and, although nothing to do with the issue, it was some kind of artistic salve.

in the aftermath of dr tiller's murder, i find myself once again praying for humility and wisdom - in my listening as well as in my speaking.

i have only once before (briefly) mentioned abortion in these pages. as i said then, it does not occur in a vacuum. and nor do our values or beliefs. or our lives.

LB

"terror is easier to face than confusion", he said

i've been reading the analysis of dick cheney's speech to the AEI last week. wondering at the horror of the torture committed in afghanistan, abu ghraib and guantanamo. at the attempts to justify it, deny it.

and feeling powerless despair. we call it inhumane. but it was humans who did it. authourised it. legal-eased it. and there seems nothing but silence with which to respond. wordless in the face of images indicting us with just how far we humans will go to prove our might, our power, our authority, our triumph over the will of another. and as we rob the other of their dignity, strip it, beat it, break it, we lose our own...

i think of my infant nephew and feel the conflict of welcoming him into this world. for there is goodness and beauty but there is so much else besides. so many whose lives are marked by sadness, pain, suffering, horror. for whom this place is hell. i see the images of naked men, hooded, taunted by dogs, leashed, bound, and i think of this tiny boy starting out on his journey and wonder at what he will make of this world. wondering at what his life will be for... and if we can only tell him and his sister that we are present to a kingdom of beauty if we look the other way....

i think of the persisting scandal in the british parliament threatening to topple a government and i think of the abuse of so many at the hands of the irish church, of mass rape and mutilation of girls in Africa, which ilke enhanced interrogation appears to threaten no one. i can't help but wonder that the expenses scandal is but distraction. and matters more to people because it came out of their pocket but does not affect their conscience. it's perhaps not ethic that drives us but (love of) money. ethic should not be found on a sliding scale but this seems disproportionately scandalous... perhaps we choose our outrage by what we are willing to face. by what we are willing to pay attention to.

and in truth i fear all this is little more than a distraction from other things more personal that are pressing in unexpectedly and rubbing at wounds i thought i'd moved past. i feel the all too familiar claustrophobia setting in and i've been struggling not to resort to counting the hours 'til i can run. retreat to safer soil and be away from the triggers currently setting off tiny explosions of grief. it's not funny how the total degradation of strangers never cuts quite as sharp as the mere slights of others against us. even the words and actions we choose to see as slights, whether intended as such or not. and usually not.

but it feels upsetting to feel oneself regressing and in need of retreat. especially when surrounded by lovely, beautiful people. and then grace comes in and i don't know what to do with it either. feeling close to the brink, with it all caught up in my chest, trying to mask the twist of feelings keeping me from breathing easy...

i got to be at tuesday group last night. the unexpected chance to see mo and lynn's soft smiles was balm. we sat and read tobit chapters 3 and 4. tobit and sarah both pray to YHWH to have their lives taken from them, believing it better to be dead than bear the insults of others. both pushed to the brink by scorn and shame. and like them, i pray. in tears. because sometimes tears are the best prayers we have next to silence. i pray perhaps not for death, but for release from shame and anger and hurt.

when i touch the tiny wooden cross at my throat, i think, this is what we do... and i am no different than the rest...

LB

lots of dark, tiny signs of light

bit of laundry list this. stuff that caught my eye and ear inbetween to-ing and fro-ing... i'd write more on what i've been thinking on all of this but the tops of my fore and middle fingers on my left hand had an accidental encounter with a razor blade and so typing is proving awkward.

from the daily dish:
i've gone back to this video several times. an arresting juxtaposition of happy people and angry voices...

li wei's amazing *not photoshopped* images:


















After Wars, Mass Rape Exists an important highlighting of an issue that has had pitifully little attention given its severity. and a not uncontroversial report by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT of the same - the comments are provocative.

it's been a troubling week for being part of Christendom on this part of the world...
there's good coverage of the 'gay debate' at the Church of Scotland's general asssembly over at sunday sequence and william's blog, including the big question that now hangs over CofS's daughter church, the presbyterian church in ireland. none of it entices me to return to the fold of the denomination.

sunday sequence yesterday gave most of the programme, unsurprisingly, to the 3000 page report on child abuse in the Catholic church in ireland published last week. the debate: will there be justice for victims? made for powerful and at times deeply uncomfortable listening.

i had a job a few years back typing up statements from victims of abuse in church run institutions. i'm not sure there's ever going to be anything to say as adequate response to the horrific history brought unequivocally into the light. the challenge lies in what should be done, rather than said, in response. with two more reports yet to come this summer, the role of, and extent of power given to, the roman catholic church in irish society is now severely under question.

on a (perhaps, slightly) more positive note, william had a very interesting conversation with susie orbach last Sunday about her new book, Bodies. the interview is no longer there but there's an Observer review here.

LB

Easter

happy easter... as i write the bells of the local church are pealing.

last night after a lovely meal and company hosted by Pádraig, he, Willow, Mark and i headed round to Clonard for the Easter Vigil. Will Crawley was there to film the vigil for an upcoming BBC programme on religion in Northern Ireland, and i'm pretty sure the cameraman must have been pretty delighted with the scenes on offer.
the vigil began outside the church with a fire being lit in a brazier from which the Paschal candle was lit. from this in turn the candles held by the congregants were lit and then the light passed from candle to candle throughout the crowd as the people followed the Paschal candle into the darkened church.
inside, a traditional Irish litany was sung by a priest and when the congregation sang the refrain of praise the candles were lifted up high. it was beautiful. each time the candles were lifted it was as if light was being breathed into being. it wasn't til after a reading of the entire creation story in Genesis that the electric lights in the church were slowly turned on to reveal Clonard's rich interior. we later relit our candles for the baptism of a South African man, Philip. the congregants were invited to renew their baptismal vows and once Philip had been baptised several priests moved through the church with bowls of holy water, dipping evergreen branches, ("palm leaves" from Palm Sunday) into the water and annointed the people. i've been in Clonard and masses in general enough times to not mind that i can't remember the entire liturgy. the vigil was a feast for the senses. but i left the service with a sense of incompleteness and questions, lightly held, but suspended within me and seeking resolve...

to have been raised in what were for the most part ecumenically minded Presbyterian congregations i am used to communion being preceded by a very intentional welcome to all. what i write here i write without rancour or resentment and i know enough about the monastic community at Clonard and its ecumenical activities to know that had i chosen to receive communion i could have done so without fear of reprisal or judgment. i was present several years back at a Presbyterian communion at which one of Clonard's priests took his first public communion in a Protestant church - it was a *deeply* moving occasion of ecumenical friendship. so this is not about Clonard or its people. but as the liturgy unfolded i was struck by the absence of the explicit welcome i expect to find weaved into the liturgy...

the Roman Catholic liturgy does contain these lines,

Priest: This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.
All: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

in conversation after the service, Pádraig noted these lines as being the basis of welcome, that i could have participated, and i had heard them. but i wasn't the only one in our group who heard the absence of the welcome we are used to our own traditions. i believe that not sharing in the Mass was my choice. i did not desire permission in order to partake. through lack of belief in transubstantiation, or feminist principle, or as one who is divorced, i might have found various reasons to not partake. but it came down to this... to have come from a denomination in which one can measure the theology of the church one finds oneself in by how the welcome is phrased (and in my own tradition were it absent or delivered in a way that inferred exclusiveness, i would not take it) last night, not being on 'home turf', i found myself not being one of the 'welcoming' but one seeking explicit invitation as a visitor.

i have shared communion, although not in recent years, non-attending backslider that i am, in both the lowness of Presbyterian tradition and high Anglicanism. the mass liturgy is no different from these in showing the limitations as much as the rich beauty of liturgy.

i haven't taken mass when at the midnight Christmas eve vigil in Clonard. but this Easter vigil... something was different. it mattered in a way that it had not before. i left the church, grateful to have been there but with a sense of there being a gap... there was something i did not receive. the choice was mine to not step across that threshold, and so i write all of this, not to criticize but to question... what does it mean to feel welcomed to the table? what were the words i needed to hear?

i hold these questions lightly. they do not feel like a burden. perhaps they are an invitation of their own... to understand better what belonging at the table means to me...

::

today, Easter Sunday, marks a moving from orthodoxy of the vigil to what some might call heresy and others think of as theodrama. as i sat in the church last night i contemplated several times on what is to come in the ikon gathering, Judas. Pete's been recording the reflections, which Jonny's going to mix with music and then they'll be posted online. he recorded mine yesterday morning.

i believe in G-D as the ear that hears all human hearts... and is witness to both our suffering and our resurrecting
the homily delivered last night sealed for me why i feel complete peace with what we will be exploring. for the boundaries we are pushing at, the story we are trying to break open... even though some of my own words might be recieved by some as a kind of blasphemy...

here it is, paraphrased... (how to spot the Presbyterian in a congregation: the one taking notes in the sermon ;) )

when we move from self-centredness and focussing on our own happiness to giving to others,
resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when hopelessness and despair turns to hope, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we are released from addiction into freedom, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we find a way through to heal dispute, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when in chaos, we find meaningful sense, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we are suffering and we find a place of acceptance and even meaning, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
in survival of hardship, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.
when we find purpose, meaning and happiness in unexpected places, resurrection is happening. new life is emerging.

find resurrection in your life. and share it. with those you love. and perhaps even with those you might hate.

if you are still at Good Friday, still at the cross, then hold onto trust, that Christ is risen and brings new life.

Judas has remained in a perpetual Good Friday... his legacy - a long anguished cry throughout history, as the one who is scorned as betrayer and does not live to see resurrection. i believe in a G-D of welcome and invitation. who stands with Judas and all others in pain of Good Friday, and who being outside time is waiting on Easter Sunday, inviting us to be surprised by resurrection. to hold on to trust... that all things are possible. to have hope in darkness for what is always to come. G-D is both the cross and the empty tomb. and i believe we are held wherever we are. and perhaps in truth, we are all of us living in Easter Saturday, in the place inbetween for much of the time. neither there nor here. i believe in G-D who is present in that inbetween - in the vital wrestling space between endings and beginnings. the space of daily resurrection. where we might defy death with hope, however fragile. On Good Friday, there is an Easter Sunday that never ceases to be coming, just as we are always emerging...

may we hold on to trust... and may we emerge into welcome... to allow those parts of ourselves and our lives that are caught, like Judas, at the place of suffering to be heard, so they might be healed.

LB

harsh and delicate

from Sunday: Will and Stox discuss the CFC legacy on the Northern Irish music scene with Stewart Bailey on Sunday Sequence. surreal way to start one's Sunday. were it not for the listen again button i'd have thought i'd dreamt this conversation while dozing. (see the highlight from latest programme Hidden Sermons...)

::

from today:
bravo to Vermont. another significant step in the right direction for gay rights in the US. let's hope 2009 proves to be the year that Ireland achieves marriage equality for all its citizens.

(might as well celebrate something good, since news today is now shifted from the tragic scenes in Italy to be dominated by the brutal emergency budget. the next couple of years will be lean. as if on cue, the weather has turned brutish and we're being blasted into the night by driving wind and rain. just to add to the mood. it's being called the toughest budget in the history of the Irish state. but will the government fall? time will tell.)

another welcome thing: nathan phillips has sent me a lovely gift of his new cd, Postcard. (couple of tracks at that link). i'm gonna curl up under the duvet for the first listen and pore over the lyrics. i think nathan's voice is like dandelion clocks in slow motion. aaron & whitni roche and julie lee feature. it's gonna be good.

you are giving it up
to the one in the rough
of the Cyclamen, violets and thorns
there is life to be won
there are things to be sung
so you pull down the guard
and lift up your voice
to know your not all alone

high on the hill
where you are in the sun
peace comes to you
where you are in its beams
through the sky, over the trees
leaps in patches along the leaves

- where you are, nathan phillips, on Postcard

LB