Bishop Robinson's Inaugural Prayer

Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...

Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

Think about it

Went out to pre-paid dinner which included wine and water.

Drank lots of water, although not enough.

Drank no more than a sip of wine, so that I could taste the "newness" of it.

Didn't really enjoy my food, was a little bored with my company, drove home, ready for bed.

Would dinner have been better with libations?

Would it have mattered more who I was sitting with?

Would I ever have thought these thoughts, as opposed to simply drinking a lot of wine, if we didn't have the stringent drinking and driving rules that we do?

Huh.

meeting together, looking away to Christ

This quote from A.W. Tozer came from Milton's Blog, Don't Eat Alone.

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become "unity" conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.

Milton was writing about the Communion of Holy Eucharist, and I agree whole-heartedly. I'd like to think this is the theology behind contemporary worship. I'm not sure. I think the key phrase is "looking away," as my experience in contemporary worship is that it is a "looking in."

Sometimes I wish I had a greater audience

Advent Conspiracy

'nuf said

PANTS!

Will I ever be timely with the Friday 5?

Last week's was on habitation:
5 places I have lived: what did I like, what kind of place was it, did anything special happen there.

1. I spent most of my life in one house, 211 Lincoln Road, Lincoln, Mass. I loved my growing-up house. I remember when we first moved and I couldn't see over the bathroom counter to the mirror and one day seeing my head in the mirror. I remember hiding in the large cupboard next to the stove, and climbing (with apparently prehensile toes) up to the top of the refrigerator, for whatever it was that my mom stored there. I remember the hot stillness of the crawl space before my mom renovated it into a master suite and the cool creepy basement with the coal chute, wood pile, and dark room. I think I thought all houses looked like mine, even when I knew plenty of houses that didn't.

2. From 9 on, we spent our summers in Westport, Mass, the town of my ancestors and where my mom now lives. I am rooted in my sense of place there: farms, fens, estuary, ocean. Westport was the perfect combination of cool trees, tall grass, balancing stone fences and water: river water that pulls in one direction or the other, slurping water in the shallow boat pond, salty water with the potential for jellyfish. I loved the sound of the waves lapping under Kate's boathouse and the smell of hot flowers: roses, rosehips, day lilies.

3. The room I lived in my senior year in college was papered in flowers. Posters, postcards, wallpaper strips - every wall had flowers and photographs. I also had 3 enormous windows with shutters. My room jutted out over the security office in the basement and it was almost as if it were it's own building. The ceiling was high and the windows went all the way up. I had a modern oak desk and a bed with drawers under the mattress. I fell out of my bed several times and sometimes slept on my futon. My desk was for show rather than work, as I had a carrel in library, but Felicity, the American Girl from colonial times, perched on top. That room was a sanctuary and I think I try to recreate it a little bit in every house we live in.

4. For 3 months Joe and I lived in a hotel suite in California, while he was going through his basic school for the Civil Engineer Corps. I can remember learning to make creamed corn and hanging out with my new Navy-wife friends. It wasn't so much of a place to remember as a time to remember: newly married, newly on our own, forging our own identity/ies. I also kept meticulous files!

5. I loved our house in Rhode Island. It was a raised ranch with few closets and little that charmed. But the landlady had the wall-to-wall ripped up and the entire living area was hardwood. There were ceiling fans in all the rooms and windows on each wall. The sunlight streamed into that house, especially the living room with its blousy white curtains. Ironic, isn't it, that I so disliked actually living IN Rhode Island?

**I've also lived in Brookline (when I was small); Nicaragua, where the rain pelted the tin roof and I could literally hear the cows come home past my window; Guam, more rain and a baby; California, where I tried my hardest to imbed myself in the ecology of the place as much as I was a part of my childhood homes; Indiana, where to my surprise I found I liked the Midwest, and had another baby; New Jersey and the absolute stillness of 9/11; Mississippi, where my home wasn't the address on my mail but the church building that bolstered me, buffered me, and made me see the world differently; and Sicily. I consider some friends' houses home, as in places where I have learned more about myself and who I want to be/am. St Anne's undercroft and choir room was my home for much of my elementary and jr high years and I was well-loved and cared for there. I consider some museums and the rehearsal space beneath Jordan Hall a type of home, as well. Being able to call more than a house a home prepared me well for a life that requires me to move.

6 Degrees of...

Perhaps it's not fair when the degrees include the Navy and the Episcopal Church, but when they also include cake?!

The post below is from Cake Wrecks. Now, I don't know this woman personally, but I think she's funny and I like her dedication to cynicism in the kitchen. Sometimes I disagree with her - the post with the head-stealing eyeball dolls is a great example.
Aren't they great? I.MUST.HAVE.THOSE.CAKES.

Ahem. The eyeball people have NOTHING to do with degrees of separation. Well, there is some separation going on there, but it doesn't have anything to do with my post.

Back to Cake Wrecks. I like Cake Wrecks. I also like my friend Nancy. I was going to put a photo of her right here ** but I can't find any. I'm rather distraught, because although I am not the world's best correspondent, I do pride myself on being able to keep track of friends. I do have several very blurry photos of her younger daughter, but that's not quite the same thing, is it?

Nancy and I were neighbors in Rhode Island. We moved around the corner, she moved to Japan. She came back for a short visit, we picked her and the girls up on one end of Rt 91 and drove them back to the other...and then we moved to Sicily and they moved, well, from Okinowa closer to Tokyo.

Nancy sends great emails. She has put her quirky sense of humor and master's in French literary criticism to great use in detailing for us Americans the Japanese way of life.

A few months ago I received an email from Nancy telling me, and the rest of the recipients of her emails, that she had set up a blog. Big Harmony. (I don't get the title and I always look at it in my blogroll and think, "Do I know any polygamous families?")

Go on. Check out Big Harmony.

And scroll down on the right a little bit.

What's that you see? Cake Wrecks?

What a small world it is!

Ciao bella, Nancy!

(And, please! send me a photo!)

Far Out Man

This photo comes to you via Grand Foret from Cake Wrecks and was created for the 2007 Kentucky State Fair by a woman named Heather.

Look at the photo I found

I really need to send in my digitals to get printed - but I found this just floating around the desktop:

The Tao of being me

Doesn't the tao teach that language is imperfect? That you can know something to be truth, but when you try to articulate it, it is no longer as true? My knowledge of Taoism is somewhat shaky, to be sure!

Well, that's what I always thought the Tao taught. And that's my problem right now. There's lots inside my head, but nothing in my fingertips!

I did make terrible bruscetta last night. How does one mess up bruschetta?! I don't know, but I managed it.

Off to dinner out in town, maybe something will zing through me at the table and what's inside my head will gel into words on the page.

For Di, as a lover of Paul

Here is the epistle appointed for this Sunday:

²⁰It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death.

²¹For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. ²²If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. ²³I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; ²⁴but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. ²⁵Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, ²⁶so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.

²⁷Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, ²⁸and are in no way intimidated by your opponents. For them this is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God’s doing. ²⁹For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well— ³⁰since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.

Without the benefit of historical analysis, we'll have to put off a discussion of what Paul meant by his "desire to depart." Was he ill? old? I can tell you that the majority of folks in my church on Sunday would say that he wanted to be with Christ for the End Days because this world is Evil.

But Oh! That first line: "...I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body..." Let us all speak with Boldness, believing that Christ is exalted through us!

Paul might prefer to die and live in Christ, but being Here and Now isn't such a bad thing. He doesn't whine or moan or talk about his bunions. He is convinced that he will remain in the flesh and continue to work for Christ with the people - sharing in their boasting of Jesus Christ. I tend to think about boasting about Christ as a particularly fundamentalist philosophy that forces the eschatology of Christ over the creation of Heaven on Earth.

It's the last paragraph that I like the most: put aside what is to come and LIVE NOW: stand firm in "one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel" and "in no way intimidated by your opponents." Be bold!

And now we're at the last line of the reading, and I would have to graciously disagree with Paul. I don't see where God says that we have "the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well." Yes, Jesus says, "Pick up your cross." But he doesn't say what that cross is, only we, as individuals, can say that. Yes, Jesus says that we must give up everything and follow him, but he doesn't ask us to suffer, just to follow. And, if in one place Jesus says that we must give up our families, in others he acts on behalf of suffering families: Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Jairus' daughter, the Syro-Phoenician woman...which speak loauder? Actions or words? Paul has just told us to "live your life in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ." Not to read or to write our lives but to LIVE them.

thinking

Just as we are many people called to worship through one prayer book so might we be many people called to one ordination process. As I make the rituals and prayers of the Book of Common Prayer my own, might I not also make the ordination process my own?

Here’s where the analogy breaks down: We are called the People of the Book. Everything we do, as the people of God, on a Sunday morning is written in that book. I was once told that I could pray in any way I wanted on a Sunday morning, as long as the whole congregation had the same prayer in their hands. It is our communal actions in worship that define us as a community.

The ordination process is hidden. Its rubrics are only seen by the chosen few. We as followers can’t make ourselves in its image because we can’t see the image – we can’t even imagine the image. To hide the process away, like pre-Vatican II priests turned away from the congregation, creates a hocus pocus effect on the transformative nature of the Sacrament of Ordination.

After a year of worshiping in a non-denominational chapel, I know the value of knowing what comes next. The Book of Common Prayer is the skeleton that allows us freedom of movement. Wouldn’t it make sense that the ordination process be the same?

Wade in the water

God's gonna trouble the water...

I love that gospel hymn. We used to sing it on Wednesday evenings at St Patrick's. I love it because it is so simple and yet confounding. At first it seems an invitation to play (at least to these beach-raised ears), but why invite someone into troubled waters? When I sing it, not very often anymore, I find it tantalizing. Where are the waters that are still that will be troubled? All around me? My home life often seems still, or like a river, fast-moving but smooth. Lakes, at least the lakes of my New England childhood, are dark on the bottom, and unknown, even as the surface is mirror-still. My church life has always had the assumption of the stillness of a large lake - it's so large that nothing can stir it up too much.

For the past 13 years the reality of my life, home and church together, has resembled nothing so much as the ocean. We move often, change the pieces a bit: where we worship, where we learn, what we eat, like waves constantly on the shoreline. Sometimes a neap tide sweeps out and leaves what we thought to be hidden, airholes and slime trails and the imprints of waves. As a child I spent summer nights in a boathouse, where the river met the Atlantic. Spring tides, the opposite of a neap tide, would wash right up to the foundation, to the base boards! The house would rock, gently, secured in it's concrete moorings. On those sticky summer nights the spring tide felt gentle and soothing, certainly not troubling! But most frequently, the waves are just there, rolling in and rolling out.

Surely we know where this analogy is leading? Neap and Spring tides are a constant, occurring month in and month out. But hurricanes are out of the ordinary. The waves of a hurricane break foundations and change shorelines, both under the water and at the water's edge, forever. My beloved clapboard St Patrick's, where I first learned that God invites us into the water and invites us into the trouble, was washed away by a hurricane.

I don't want to speak for the people of St Patrick's, as by the time of their trouble, we had already moved on - the current of Navy life taking us away. But from afar, the troubled waters of Katrina, of homelessness, of government ineptitude were what showed that the foundations of the community of St Patrick's are solid, drilled deep in the sub-strata, and while shaken, unbroken.

In community, we all live in waters that can be troubled: by the policies of our government, the choices of our church leadership, the actions of our neighbors.

But what about as individuals? A few weeks ago the Gospel lesson from Matthew showed Peter stepping out on the smooth water, to be like the apparently calm Jesus. Peter steps out and the waters are troubled, he falters, and Jesus catches him. I'm not going to take the time to go into the normal exegesis of this passage. Rather, I was caught by the discussion at RevGalBlogPals about the troubling of the waters that occur when someone steps out of the boat. Peter steps out, towards Jesus yes, but away from his fellow fishermen. That rending of relationship causes waves. I'm not advocating NOT rocking the boat. I'm struck by the truth of the fact. We need the people who travel with us in our boats; in our boats we can weather the troubling waters.

Church people get this, on many levels. I've sat in many churches, particularly those on the eastern shore, whose ribbed naves (the very word means ship!) mirror the boats at rest in the harbor. Church people believe in communal worship and fellowship "to give us strength and courage to do the work You have given us to do." BCP p. 365 In the tradition of the social gospel, being together in worship allows us to walk into the waters of the troubled world and be the change that troubles complacency.

The Episcopal Church takes the water analogy even further. The Episcopal Church encompasses many people who are called into worship through the Book of Common Prayer. It is our communal actions in worship that define us. I was once told that I could pray anything I wanted, as long as all the congregants had the same prayer in front of them. We believe that we are made members of the family of God at baptism. We are the one member of the Anglican Communion that creates a covenant with each member at baptism. Baptism transforms us from ordinary individuals into the body of Christ, able and affirmed to do Christ's work in the world. The rubrics of our prayer book instruct that when a priest baptizes, it must be with the whole congregation as witnesses. Only in extreme need may we baptize in private. Everyone in the congregation repeats the baptismal vows together, and we repeat them again at Easter. Each time we repeat them, we firm up our boat a little more. And we compel that boat further out into the waters of the world.

My own little boat seems to be leaking a bit. I haven't had the gracious good fortune to share in a baptism or repeat my covenant at Easter in a long while. I am not buoyed enough to brave the troubled waters of our society, nor am I brave enough to delve into my own complacency.

Lord, help me to find the waters that I can wade in and be with me in troubling.

young michael phelps

Apologies - I have no idea where this came from, but I love it.

And on a different note entirely

From the Way of the Fathers

You’re St. Jerome! You’re a passionate Christian, fiercely devoted to Jesus Christ and his Church. You are willing to labor long hours in the Lord’s vineyard, and you have little patience with those who are less willing or able to work as you do. Your passions often carry you into temptation zones of wrath, lust, and pride. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

don't let me forget

Here's my reading list, for whenever it is that I get around to reading critically:

Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism, Astrid Henry
ManifestA: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Jennifer Baumgarder, Amy Richards
Third Wave Feminism: Expanded, second edition, Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie, Rebecca Munford, eds.


I feel as though I am struggling against my own 2nd-wave feminist upbringing as well as the very traditional culture of the Navy. Neither of these communities are unloving, they just don't get it.

Girls with Croziers

I've been searching for the photo of the women bishops from Lambeth. I've found it, but it belongs to others, so I am going to have to link you forward. Not a bad thing, as I've really enjoyed reading her blog immensely:

Please go to Allie's Lambeth Steward blog.

You'll have to scroll a bit and the photo's awfully tiny...but I can't help but smile when I look at it.

In the larger, all-bishops + some photos that are also available (Mark+ of Ohio, also Dave Walker's Cartoon Church) the bishops are smiling, frowning, waving (in Mark's case), looking bored...

I love to look at Bishop Wolfe, laughing and Bishop Cate with her hair in her face - both women have led dioceses of mine - they are all clearly have a great time just BEING THEMSELVES.

And for that, I praise God.


Thank you, Allie!

twice in one day?

Couldn't help it - ran across this list and had to follow-through:

This is from something called ‘The Big Read’, from the NEA came up with a list of their top 100 books and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I've bolded the ones I've read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most of them, anyway)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

But what about Candide? What about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? Ivanhoe? Moll Flanders?

Why Da Vinci Code?!

I guess I have a list to take to the library with me :)

Tarot?

I have never believed in, listened to, or read tarot cards. But I was intrigued after reading Snow on Roses' post.

This just sums up being me - unbelievably, but truly:

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.