Wearing the uniform.

Pardon the look, today I'm ranting on video.  

Internets are unreliable

I'm talking trash about David. 

Here ends the ranting.   Because I am tired of restarting my camera.  I am also cold and I want to take nice hot shower and go to bed.  . 

I almost didn't post this stuff.   Then I thought about it and I realized that the reason I almost didn't post these videos is because part of me still believes the lie that women hear that they have to babysit and manipulate men into behaving themselves to have good wholesome lives.    I also don't like the way I look in my exercise clothes.   

But this time I'm right.   Femininity might be more attractive than feminism but if a man doesn't think that he's responsible for thinking about hurting me if I'm dress provocatively then he's a bad person that I don't want to find me attractive.      Why don't we spend less time worrying about how to raise pretty but not too pretty daughters and start worrying about raising honorable sons? 

  

Good Fruit

I'm a week or two late on this.   Please don't hate me.  Recently, I barely suppressed squealing in church.  Yes, the woman who doesn't like to clap in rhythm during 'gospel' pieces for choir nearly burst out with a YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS  when she found out her bishop voted to approve a resolution proposing tentative rites for a same gender blessing for the Episcopal Church.   I stifled myself and settled for grinning like my dog when he's just discovered how to open the lid on a trash can filled with things I would prefer he not chew on.

I am reminded of the last time something like this happened in my church.  I'm sure that was worse than this is going to be.  I say that because I figure there can't possibly be anyone who is more offended by a rite for sex couples than the people who were so freaked out by a gay bishop in New Hampshire that they created a splitter denomination.   I can't imagine it.  I hope I don't have to.  Just in case it turns out I do, can everyone who appreciates Bishop Ed doing this click on his name and send him an email telling him so?    The news lightened my load considerably and gave me hope that this good news wasn't going to turn into a diocese wide fiasco.

Good things are hard to do sometimes.  People don't like change.   Episcopalians in particular do not like change.  You should hear what people say when we use other-than-what-we-always-use service music.  I can't sing it, I don't know it, it sounds like a bunch of seagulls screeching in there and did we mention it's different and we actually have to pay attention??    We've always done it this way.   We've always handling homosexuals by winking, nodding, and pretending they aren't there.  We don't want to actually talk about it because then I'll have to confront my feelings on the subject.

I think that's the biggest problem we had when Gene Robinson was approved as the bishop of New Hampshire.   People were forced to confront how they felt about homosexuality because it made the news.  Fox News, in particular, made it sound like we had just approved the ordination of a dirty, overly handsy, parishioner molester priest to the bishopric.   I heard the inside story:  That was only inappropriate touching if the priest is gay.  If that were inappropriate touching the rest of the time, I've been molested by an army of filthy dirty priests and and didn't even realize it.   I suppose if I think back very carefully, a handful of them *might* be gay and I just wasn't paying attention.  People were responding to the words Episcopal Church with:  The gay church?  

Never mind that we had two token gay people in our congregation at the time and even though we were small, we didn't even have 10% of our congregation made up of homosexuals, we were the "gay church".  By this point in my life, I wasn't offended by this except by the inaccuracy of the statement.   My best friend isn't straight.   Many of my college friends were gay.   Gay, and faithful Christians.   I made a snide remark about only having two and answered the question with a yes.  

I heard from other people that it was embarrassing.  That they didn't know what to say when their business associates asked about it.  They didn't know what to say?   I suppose the words "Yes, that's my church and I didn't much like the decision but New Hampshire wanted him as their bishop and General Convention decided to give their consent." never popped into their minds.    They had to confront their own feelings about something that happened in their denomination, and they didn't like it.  We all had to think about what we believe.

I have been in their shoes more than once.   I grew up being taught (though no one much dwelt on the subject) that homosexuality was wrong.  I didn't know why, except that the Bible supposedly said so.   God, finding my intolerance obnoxious I suppose, decided to show me otherwise.   I was confronted, repeatedly, with good fruit from supposedly bad trees.   I saw the Holy Spirit working through gay men.   I saw it and I felt it.  I had spent enough time with the Pentecostal types to recognize it.  I wasn't stupid.  I knew what I was seeing.  I was being confronted almost daily with good fruit from people who were supposedly living in sin.   People who were supposed to be intrinsically disordered to borrow a phrase from the Roman Catholic Church, and doing God's good work here on earth.    It didn't make sense.  Especially since Jesus was the one who put that phrase into my vocabulary:

Luke 6:43“For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. 44“For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush. 45“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

The passage drives it home.  They wouldn't be doing these good things if they were bad guys.  I had to figure  this out.  These men weren't struggling with their sexuality.  They weren't fighting the evil inside to keep from being attracted to other men anymore than I was fighting my own attraction to men.  They weren't good trees fighting off a case of blight and producing fruit in spite of it.  They were good, spiritual fruit producing fruits.


It took me a while to get it but I did.  It wasn't easy.  I didn't like it much.  God won out.  I finally figured out that my feelings, about other woman hitting on me, were misplaced.  No, I didn't understand, but I'm not gay.  I'm not supposed to.  I don't have to.  A friend of mine once told me a fellow parishioner told him that what goes on in his bedroom makes her sick and my response that he should asked her who in the church she enjoyed fantasizing about.   I don't know about her, but I don't go to church to think about sex, and I laugh a little when it comes up because it makes me a little uncomfortable, but here's the thing:  Every single time someone gets married in church, we're bringing God into our sex lives.   Every single time.  Sex is part of who we are.  It's part of that nominally uncomfortable metaphor of the Church being the Bride of Christ.  It shows up in the nativity story when Luke points out that Mary and Joseph weren't living together when she became pregnant.   It's there.  The assumption that there was sex when there wasn't gets made an issue.  Your body is a temple, according to Paul, and a person should be careful what one does in a temple.  How one does it to be specific and with whom.  


So it makes sense that when homosexual people set out to create their own families with their partners they want the Church's blessing.  They want an outward and visible sign of what God has already down in their lives and this is a good thing.   It's a door opening.   It's a way for aunties (me) and mothers and fathers to have something to tell their kids to cool it and wait for something more special and permanent.   This is a good thing. 


A very good thing.  Yes, we're all going to have to confront our feelings about it.  It might be painful.  There will be hurt feelings, foot stomping, maybe even a little embarrassment.   I would suggest not attending one of these rites if that is the case.   I don't suggest leaving either.  We already had a gay bishop in New Hampshire and a woman as our primate.  If a liturgy you don't have an occasion to use being added to the list of things no one is asking you to use or attend or officiate over freaks you out, maybe you need to do some soul searching.   We'll still love you.  
    

The Son of Man was also the Son of a Woman

"But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them."
~Luke 24:11

I know, more feminism. Yesterday I'm defending Barbie and today I'm doing...this. I guess I'm on a roll.

I have never understood certain things about men. One of them is this story. Three women that these guys know come back and tell them that something completely bizarre has happened. They ran into some angels at the tomb of Jesus and they tell them:

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.

These aren't just any women. Nobody mentions that Mother Mary was a drunk, Mary Magdalene smoked too much weed, and Joanna had a few marbles rolled out of her jar. These are reputable people from what I can tell. The gospel writer has the men writing it off as an idle tale like they'd just be telling stories to tell stories. About this? Seriously? I'm starting to understand why Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the risen Christ. She was the only one who hadn't reverted from miracle land all the way back to bland reality already.

But did you notice that even after telling them to stop being silly Peter gets up and goes and looks for himself?

Yes, Jesus was a man. He was the Son of Man but he was also the Son of a woman and I think that went a long way with how he handled things sometimes. It's like that old joke about compelling evidence that Jesus was a woman:

But the most compelling evidence of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:
1. He had to feed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was no food.
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it.
3. Even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was more work for Him to do.

Yup, my Lord understands. He understands more than we care to admit sometimes.

Reasons not to hate Barbie dolls

I think I was 14 when I turned on my Barbie dolls. By then none of them had any clothes. They had all been lost. Ken had a regular harem. (I only had ONE Ken doll.) I made them do 'unspeakable' things out of pure boredom. They ended up where they still reside to this day---naked in the attic at Mom & Dad's house. Abandoned. Dusty. Covered with blown in insulation.

An article I read on Episcopal priest Barbie made me rethink this today. No, not because I admire them because somebody made a "Rev. Barbie". People have done similar things with old Barb before. Personally, I want a Trailer Trash Barbie. It will go nicely with my 'big girl toys'. (Dashboard Jesus & Indiana Jones will have friends!) I even want Ken with a mullet. It would be awesome... but I digress and it's already way past my birthday. I'm NOT hinting guys.

There are reasons to love Barbie. One that I discovered today is that Ken is her accessory and not the other way around. Ken is afterthought. He's even neutered. Have you ever noticed that Barbie is always in the driver's seat? Yeah. She is. She's in the driver's seat because Ken is an accessory. He's about as important as the little plastic purse you lose five minutes after opening a box with a new Barbie in it.

Barbie's boobs are also a subject of controversy. So much so that she is the only fashion model in history to have had them shrunk. People say they aren't realistic. Well, here's the deal ladies and gents, they are. Lots of girls have big boobs and no surgical scars to show for it. I don't know why people feel sorry for the girls with the small ones---they can buy bras places other than the internet. Barbie doesn't zap my self esteem because she has to buy extended size bras---she enhances it! She's made just as good of friends with the catalogs as I have. Considering I've had this problem since high school I don't see why this is a problem. I was getting this problem in grade school---and being mocked for it too. I bet Barbie got mooed at too. It goes both ways.

So she's disproportionate! So she's got plastic feet permanently altered to wear heels! So what! Barbie is a jack of all trades. She's had wings, she's had running shoes, she's had fins, she's been a doctor, a lawyer, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and even the vicar! Lots of women wear lots of crazy hats. Cut her some slack. I bet she even does plumbing when Ken (who doesn't seem to have a job?) isn't around.