14 April 2010

A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury

… Your Grace, I have urged you in the past, and I will urge you again. There is an urgent need for a meeting of the Primates to continue sorting out the crisis that is before us, especially given the upcoming consecration of a Lesbian as Bishop in America. The Primates Meeting is the only Instrument that has been given authority to act, and it can act if you will call us together …

I have for some time been an admirer of Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda. He is a genuine leader in the Anglican Communion and is not afraid to speak the truth. You may find the full text of his letter here. (Click on it twice to get the full-sized text.)



Seven Stanzas at Easter

I intended to put this arresting poem by John Updike on my blog at Easter. Better late than never, I suppose—and it is still the Easter season. Christ is risen!

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules 

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers, 

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled 

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart 

that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then 

regathered out of enduring Might 

new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping transcendence; 

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, 

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us 

the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel, 

weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, 

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen 

spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.


© 1961 by John Updike (Written for a religious arts festival sponsored by the Clifton Lutheran Church, of Marblehead, Mass.)

02 April 2010

Good Friday

Here is a lovely musical rendition of what we celebrate on Good Friday:

01 April 2010

An interesting perspective...

Here is an interesting video to bring you up to date on the world we live in today: