Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Thank you to the commenters on yesterday's post; I'd like to draw people's attention especially to the posts that Jake suggests; they are very good. I think I need to clarify something, while the discussion goes on: if the American church were to backtrack AT ALL on its positions vis-a-vis homosexuality, inclusiveness, or ordination, all bets are off, as far as I'm concerned. My remarks about reconciliation assume that Griswold and the Episcopal church are going to remain steadfast, and to slowly and gracefully move forward. I think this is what Rowan Williams assumes as well, and I think we can be fairly sure that he supports that in his heart, for what it's worth.
I have learned from experience that reconciliation takes two. If the fundamentalists refuse to maintain a dialogue, or to remain in communion with us, there is no way that we can force them. This has been the path even in New Hampshire, where our bishop offered the one dissenting church everything they asked for, including pastoral oversight by a conservative bishop - it was still not enough, and they walked out, leaving their keys to the church on the table. Their bottom line was "repentance", admission of "sin", and the bishop stepping down. This is, to those of us who believe in God's love for all humanity, unacceptable.
What distresses me about the current dialogue is the readiness to divorce that seems to be coming from both sides. I expect it from the conservatives. But I expect better from the liberals.
If we go down that road, we will end up with partitions and walls, entrenched ideologies, and self-righteousness triumphalism that is, at its heart, lonely and partial. In our hearts, I think we know this. There is such a tendency in the world today toward the black and the white, toward separation into "red" and "blue" America, into those who are "for us" or "against us", into the Muslim world and the Christian world, into Jew and Palestinian, Hindu and Muslim, fundamentalist and progressive...however we divide ourselves. We speak about "the price of unity", and this of course must be considered. In the present conflicts over homosexuality, for example, what is the price of splitting for the African churches who are struggling with the AIDS epidemic, if they are cut off from funding from the western world? What is the price to gay people? What price is any one of us willing to pay either for clinging to our ideologies, or waiting for justice? It is quite a serious question, and I certainly don't have the answer.
In my personal life, I divorced once, because it was completely clear to me that there was nothing to be gained for either of us by continuing; we needed to be set free. My present marriage has endured for 25 years, not without conflict, because being together was always a greater good than being apart. That doesn't mean it's been easy, and the greatest requirements have been patience, and a willingness to stay at the table.
I don't know what the future of the Anglican Communion is, or should be, but I do know that when people stop talking, you might as well say goodbye to hope, because it is over. In a world like ours, where this is increasingly the choice we make, every breakdown of communication feels to me like a further blow to my sense of what God asks of us in saying "love one another". If Gene Robinson, who has endured more than anyone else at the eye of this storm, can say he is willing to stay at the table and seek reconciliation, then so can I.
Friday, October 22, 2004 Windsor Report, part 3: Unity, Truth, and Love
For someone who dislikes conflict as much as I do, to be reading the barbs being flung in both directions by so-called Christians over the Windsor Report, and trying - having - to write about it, is enough to make me curl up miserably under the bedcovers. Nobody in the opposing camps got what they wanted - and what a tragedy that was, for now both sides can continue to act like children. Yesterday and today I've read rants from conservatives who were outraged that the report didn't set up a new Province and throw out the liberals. Meanwhile the liberals are busy ridiculing the conservatives and complaining about the lack of courage shown by the Anglican commission in not standing up strongly for gay ordination. Interestingly, and not surprisingly, both extremes keep saying exactly the same thing: the report puts "unity" over "truth".
Doesn't all of this miss the point? Forgetting for a moment our opinions about whether the Anglican Communion is an outmoded institution or not, the Eames Commission was charged with the unenviable, but quite relevant, task of studying how a group of people worldwide might continue to live together despite our differences. It was not charged with delivering a "verdict" for one side or the other, nor could it do that and fulfill its original charge. Isn't this conflict over the rightness or wrongness of different ideologies, most of which are actually cultural, rather than theological at heart, exactly the same as what we see played out in countless venues across our world? Can't we look a little deeper?
Let's take a deep breath, substitute "love" for "unity" and see where we are. Can we say that love is ever more important than truth? I can, and I am a great lover and seeker of truth. The point the bishops were trying to make, and which I have encountered again and again in most of the moderate to liberal-but-not-strident leaders of the church, is that agreement right now on such a volatile issue is simply not possible. But does that mean yet another division, another wall, another self-righteous and permanent separation into we-and-they? If we look at the nuance behind the Report, we can see that what they suggest, and what is required is patience, continued talking, forbearance, greater attempts to understand one another, and an increased emphasis on working together on the other, much more pressing needs of our world that religion, at its best, is called to address. It seems to me that this is the real message of the Gospel, as well as the difficult, fractured times we live in, and it pains me that so many good people are so squarely in the "my way or no way" camp.
The Windsor Report suggested - did not "order" - concessions from both sides, trying to rein in the most flagrant and most destructive behavior. I'm quite sure it was clear to the authors that the American and Canadian churches are unlikely to stop moving forward toward the full inclusion of gay people, and that the conservatives would not stop their ultimatums about schism, but it also was clear to the commission that something greater is at stake - and that thing is not merely the preservation of the Anglican Communion, which could, frankly, be seen as a secular concept. What’s at stake is the model of love and forbearance, in spite of difference, that is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching, and which is so desperately needed in our world.
We are all asked to break bread together, figuratively and literally, week after week. When you actually do that, throughout a lifetime, with real and wonderful and annoying, even infuriating people, it changes you. This is what “staying in communion” means. It is not an abstract idea, it is a practice.
I saw the same arguments played out in my own parish, over similar issues, and although I was on the side of the progressives, I tried very hard to listen to the conservative point of view, and particularly to the pain of the people in the middle who just wanted to worship and to work on outreach or youth ministry or care for the sick. As much as anyone, I am concerned about justice and equality for all people, but I cannot believe that the point of the Gospel teachings is for one side to crush the other and then triumph over their victory; it is to learn to live together. We need to continually ask the question: is my attitude leading me closer to loving all people as God loves us, or further away from embodying that kind of love?
Recently a friend sent me this quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu's 2004 book, God Has a Dream. I found it helpful:
"The endless divisions we create between us and that we live and die for - whether they are our religions, our ethnic groups, our nationalities - are so totally irrelevant to God. God just wants us to love each other. Many, however, say that some kinds of love are better than others, condemning the love of gays and lesbians. But whether a man loves a woman or another man, or a woman loves a man or another woman, to God it is all love, and God smiles whenever we recognize our need for one another."
One of the lessons of my adult life is that I now know that I have great need of people who differ from me. I don't want to be surrounded only by people who think like me, act like me, look like me, because that means I will not be challenged to grow and change. And when I pay close attention, I recognize that the times when I have been transformed by that universal love which I call "God" are not when surrounded by friends who it is easy to love and understand, but in the unexpected and miraculous moments of closeness that transcend profound difference, where nothing is supporting the connection but an invisible hand.
Thursday, October 21, 2004 Parc la Fontaine, Montreal, two days ago
Windsor Report, part (2)
While there are many parallels in language and style of attack, personally I’m not so sure about how the ordination of gays and lesbians will play out compared to that of women. (It should be noted that we're talking mainly about bishops; openly gay men and women have been ordained as priests in our denomination for some time now and are serving in many parishes, although there is still resistance and prejudice.) The reactions are so much more visceral in the case of homosexuality, and easier to maintain: one can shut oneself off from relationship with homosexual persons for a lifetime, if that is what one chooses, but very few people are able to do that with women. In practically every household in the world, men and women have to try to get along with each other. Certainly they do it in different ways, based on cultural mores and expectations, but women worldwide have not stayed still or passive; there is hardly a place on earth where women have not begun to press for greater equality in all areas of life, and the right to be seen not as embodying shame or sin, but as equal human beings in the eyes of God. It is no longer possible to shield women anywhere from knowing about the rights and freedoms enjoyed by others, and the desire of human beings is always toward freedom, and against oppression. No wonder knowledge and education are so dangerous. If one’s wife - whether in Alabama or Iran or India or Saudi Arabia - doesn’t press for equality and fairness, probably one’s daughter will. Rebellion and persistence among one’s closest relations has a way of eventually wearing down stereotypes and resistance, and forcing reconsideration.
So sexism, probably because it involves fifty percent of the human race, is gradually breaking down. Racism and ethnic conflict persist largely because people are able to wall themselves off from those who are different from themselves, and governments and institutions everywhere, including religion, contribute to those walls (which are in some cases even literal) and divisions.
Hetereosexism will continue to persist because separation is possible and even seen as desirable. Like racism, heterosexism can exist in society and in the church long after gays and lesbians are “accepted” or even given equal rights, if people fail to enter into genuine relationships with those they consider to be “other”. While claiming a desire for unity, the conservatives in the church continue to use contamination language with regard to homosexuals and those who support them, refusing to sit in the same room with Gene Robinson and his supporters, to stay in the same hotel at the meetings of the House of Bishops, or to share Communion, the most central sacrament and symbol – “breaking bread” – of common life together? For the most conservative, one reason that has been given (since this practice of exclusion for some originated with the ordination of women) is that they cannot share the Eucharist because the bread may have been touched by a woman priest. Clearly that fear is extended to “contamination” by homosexual priests as well.
The fact, therefore, that the Episcopal Church has decided to opt for openness and inclusivity is a major problem for those who refuse to change. Openness requires discussion both of sexuality and of honesty: is it moral, for example, to allow gay bishops who are closeted, while banning those who are open about their orientation? And inclusivity is deeply problematic not only because it forces relationship in the same way that racial integration did, saying that all people are fully human in the eyes of God, and entitled to full participation in the life of the Church, but because it calls us to go deeper into the meaning of loving one’s neighbor that is the central message of Jesus’s life and teaching.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
MORE on "The Ambience of Words"
An enormous merci to Language Hat for quoting my final post about my father-in-law and initiating a most interesting thread of comments on Arabic pronunciation, al-Mutanabbi, and other diverse topics. Please read the comments; they're fascinating.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 I've been following the release of the Windsor Report by the Eames Commission, a study group appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to try to offer recommendations about how we might preserve the unity of the Anglican communion despite major theological differences worldwide. Bishop Eames is Primate of All Ireland (how's that for a title!) and was the chairman of a similar commission appointed in the wake of the first women's ordinations back in the mid-1970s.
I've also been monitoring the initial reactions to the report; all this is important to my book and I'm trying both to figure out what exactly the report says, and how it will be acted upon - or not - by both sides in the conflict. Over the next few days I'll post some of my first thoughts about this; it's helping me to try to write them down in some sort of coherent fashion, so I hope even those of you who find all of this tedious and irrelevant will bear with me.
Meanwhile - I had a good experience at the Canadian eye doctor's today, and managed to negotiate the purchase of new glasses with a retailer who didn't speak any English at all; she and I liked each other and ended up quite amused. The other exciting event today was my first purchase of a whole fish, which I managed to fillet and cook, and it was delicious. I had no idea what happens when you buy a whole fish; I figured they just hand it to you. Well, they ask you what you want done with it. I said "couper la tete", and they asked "grater", which I gathered means "scaled". I said yes. When I got home and looked, I had a fish that had been cleaned and scaled, but still had its head. Being a former fisherman, I managed. A whole new world of fish cookery has just opened up.
But now, back to the so-called "fishers of men":
Yesterday at noon, the long-awaited report and recommendations on the issue of homosexuality and the Anglican Communion were released at Lambeth, England. The “Windsor Report”, whose conclusions have been speculated upon a great deal in the press - even two days ago the Washington Post and the London Times offered widely diverging predictions about what would be revealed– in the end came down on the side of unity and eventual reconciliation.
It calls on the American Episcopal Church to apologize for its consecration of an openly gay bishop, and for a moratorium on consecrations of other gay bishops and blessings of same-sex unions. The report chastises both the Episcopal Church and the Canadian Church (British Columbia has been allowing the optional blessing of same-sex unions by parishes who wish to do so) for caring more about their own paths and their own theological interpretations than the “interdependence of the Anglican communion” and the “need for unity”. It asks the Episcopal Church and the bishops who participated in the consecration of Gene Robinson to issue a statement explaining their reasoning, and says that the statement “must be based on Scripture”. What the Report does not do is to recommend harsher “punishment”, such as the most conservative Anglican bishops in Africa, Asia, and the United States have called for, such as a reversal of Gene Robinson’s consecration, outright “excommunication” for the American or Canadian Churches, or, particularly, establishment of an alternative North American Province by the Archbishop of Canterbury in which the conservatives who want to break with the Episcopal church could have their own interpretations and their own bishops. The report also chastised those conservatives who have tried to set up alternative structures and forms, such as the “flying bishops” scheme in which conservative, often retired, bishops from other dioceses and from abroad come into US dioceses to perform major functions, such as confirmation, as a protest against the oversight of the diocese’s legally elected bishops who are more liberal. One of the bishops who has participated in these actions is, interestingly enough, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, who recently performed confirmations in the Diocese of Virginia; hr is much mroe conservaative than the current A of C, Rowan Williams. One further recommendation is that all the churches in the Communion sign a "core covenant" stating the core beliefs.
I was surprised, frankly, that the report (which was unanimous among the Commission members, who included some very conservative voices) was as measured as it turned out to be. It’s a very long document, some 100 pages, and I certainly haven’t read all of it. In striving to preserve unity, the report will probably please those who don’t want to split the Communion and who are willing to allow, as is the traditional Anglican way, for wide variations in scriptural interpretation and theological opinion. But from my experience, listening to and watching the conservatives, I doubt that they will accept these recommendations or be satisfied with a slap on the wrist and an apology: nothing short of an about-face and “repentance” will satisfy them. The initial reactions bear this out: conservative church groups in Britain and the US have called it “toothless”. On the other side of the issues, the Americans and Canadians have already said they regret the problems their actions have caused, but that they will continue as they have been. I doubt very much that the "core covenant" idea will be acceptable to the progressives, either.
As the Report notes, we still have areas of the Anglican Communion which refuse to allow women to be ordained while others have moved on from that issue decades ago; but while there is “impaired communion” over the ordination of women, the dire predictions of schism over that issue have not in fact been borne out. Implied in the recommendations, it seems to me, is the hope that in time the same thing will be true over the issue of homosexuality, and that we can limp along together without any consensus. It buys time, and calls for patience.
More tomorrow on what makes the issue of homosexuality so volatile.
I've spent most of today working on the report released at noon by the Eames Commission with its recommendations for the future unity of the Anglican Communion around the issue of gay bishop ordinations and the blessings of same-sex unions. It's actually interesting to be doing that from Canada, since the Canadian church was also chastised in the report, and there's been quite a lot on the radio about that. Tomorrow I'll start posting about this, but I thought today maybe it would be nice to just have a picture - like this one of the blue eyes on rue Gilford, near Papineau, whose gaze stopped me yesterday as I rode by.
