Sheila's LiveJournal

Musings on why descriptions of destruction and obliteration appeal to us:

http://www.nebulaawards.com/index.php/guest_blogs/the_fascination_of_apocalypse/

Last night I went with friends to an old-fashioned tent revival/folk festival/sacred Eucharist held in a Hilton Hotel ballroom at the Anaheim Convention Center. It was one of the most moving and inspiring ceremonies I’ve ever attended. It didn’t hurt that Bishop Gene Robinson presided, or that Retired Bishop Suffragan Barbara Harris preached the sermon, or that the ceremony included Afro-American spirituals, breathtaking singing from the choirs of All Saints Church, Pasadena, traditional South-African and Kenyan chants, Teresa of Avila’s words set to music composed by the Taize Community of France, and Spanish and Latin responses.

All that and incense too!

By now (especially if you’re Episcopalian) you’ve figured out that I went to an event at the General Convention, hosted and presented by Integrity USA to be an inclusive celebration of the LGBT community in the Episcopal church. My friend estimated there were at least a thousand people attending, and when they all got carried away by Bishop Barbara’s firebrand words and yelled “Amen!” (Or, “You tell it, Sister!”) the rafters shook. What a fantastic speaker she is! I wish I had a transcript of her words. And such a tiny woman too. Hearing her, joining the singing of beautiful music, and being in the presence of Bishop Gene (one of my heroes), was almost overwhelming for me.

Episcopalians (at least most of them) have come a long way from the stuffy Country Club image I remember from when I first encountered the church over here (I was “C of E” at home, naturally). And it didn’t hurt that the ceremony was preceded by a no-host cocktail party. One glass of wine does wonders loosening up the stiffest Episcopal joints and voices! But sadly, the church does have dissension in its ranks over issues such as the ordination of an openly gay bishop (Bishop Gene), the ordination of women, and – of course – the biggie: Gay marriage.

I think last night’s joyous celebration was a portent of the future where all nationalities, all creeds, all genders and sexual orientations, must come together if the Human family is to survive.

Unbelievably saddened today by the California Supreme Court's cowardice in not standing up for their initial vote to approve gay marriages. They have tacitly allowed the majority to strip a minority of its rights under the constitution of the state.

At the heart of every religion I've ever studied is one commandment "Love your neighbor." When are we going to obey that Golden rule?

I'm too angry to post more. Tonight I'll take part in a protest rally and learn what the next steps are -- because of course this can't be allowed to stand.

It's an eerie feeling, sitting in a darkened theatre, watching various parts of Rome explode or erupt in flame ("Angels and Demons") when an earthquake hits.

Wow, those Illuminati sure are still powerful!

I liked the movie, but I see several reviewers were disappointed. I thought "Angels and Demons" was a better novel than "The Da Vinci Code." Easier to follow, in any case. I really admired the fact that Dan Brown observed Aristotle's rule (and the movie followed it too): the action should take place in a 24-hour time span; it makes for a tight drama. If nothing else pleases the viewer, then at least the shots of Rome are spectacular, all the more so when you consider that the Vatican wasn't cooperative (surprise!), and a lot of footage was filmed in England.

(And Ewan McGregor is great eye-candy.)

As for the earthquake (which we felt), I arrived home to find a lot of stuff on the floor and pictures hanging crazily on the wall, but no real damage.

I've mentioned before that since I retired from full-time college teaching I've been volunteering three mornings a week at a local hospice. Once morning a week, I take the dogs in too. I love doing this work; the house is a warm, friendly place, full of laughter and music and good talk and two resident cats. I learn a lot in the time I spend there. But this morning, I suddenly realized something that I think is important: Hospice is a place where we get to tell all our stories once again for the last time.

Everybody has a story to tell, but over the course of a lifetime we've probably worn out our listeners – family, close friends – from the repetition.Yet the stories remain important and powerful for us, and we yearn to tell them one more time. Or else there are family tensions that prevent the stories from being received – or received without blame and recrimination. Sometimes, a lonely soul will not have any one who ever wanted to hear the stories, or else everyone who matters has passed on already. What a burden it is to the soul to have life stories that have to go untold!

But in hospice there are loving people taking care of us and listening to us. And above all, there are volunteers whose sole job is to do whatever we need, and if that means listen to stories, they'll listen willingly. One of my favorite hospice patients was a ninety year-old gentleman who frequently said, “Oh, you wouldn't want to hear my boring stories!” But when he was assured I did, he gave me hours of wonderful yarns of growing up on a poor Illinois farm, living in a rooming house with other unmarried young men in Chicago and shyly courting the young ladies at social dances in the Roaring Twenties, running errands for the local Mafia, riding the rails like a hobo out to California to work in the (now non-existent) beanfields of Orange County, serving in the Navy during World War II. He seemed to have a need to put his whole life in perspective one last time, and I was happy to give him the permission, as it were, to do that.

I've heard stories about being a female impersonator in night clubs, a gay prostitute in Hollywood, the first Black, female mathematics teacher in her school district, a collector of semi-precious gems. I've seen photos of beloved pets and heard their stories. I've heard family anecdotes and family traditions, funny and sad. I've heard family ghost stories and strange experiences. Every day, it's something different.

And I see a great peace settle over people when they've had the chance to tell these stories they've been keeping inside their hearts, just one more time, or maybe for the first time ever.

If humans are language making animals, as Lewis Thomas calls us, then I would add that we are story-telling animals before anything else. It's a great privilege for me to share some of the vast stream of human experience through these stories.

Every week, the treatment team at the hospice (nurses, social worker, bereavement counselor, dietician, administrator, chaplains and yours truly -- the volunteer rep) go over the files of half the patients. We always begin with a short moment of reflection or inspiration offered by one of the chaplains. This week, a chaplain had just come back from a workshop in which she'd been exposed to a recording of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross speaking these words. I found them very moving, especially hearing Kubler-Ross's voice, but maybe the printed version will appeal to some of you too:

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

"Look forward to your transition. It’s the first time you will experience unconditional love.

"There will be all peace and love, and all nightmares and the turmoil you went through in your life will be like nothing.

"When you make your transition, you are asked two things basically:
How much love have you been able to give and receive, and how much service have you rendered.

"And you will know every consequence of every deed, every thought, and every word you have ever uttered. And that is symbolically speaking, going through hell when you see the many chances you have missed.

"But you also see how a nice act of kindness has touched hundreds of lives that you’re totally unaware of.

"So concentrate on love while you’re still around, and teach your children early unconditional love. So remember, concentrate on love and look forward to the transition.

"It’s the most beautiful experience you can ever imagine.

"Vaya con Dios!"

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, MD.

Well, the Vatican has just demonstrated once again – in case we hadn't noticed this before -- that it's seriously out of touch. A senior cleric in Rome has just defended the excommunication of the doctors and any others who supported the abortion performed on a little nine year-old rape victim in Brazil. (The rapist was her stepfather.) Never mind the fact that the doctors said that at her age her body was too immature to carry twins to term and she would've died without the abortion – the babies too, most likely. All that matters to Rome is that the fetuses died now instead of later.

A few weeks ago, the Pope welcomed back into the arms of Mother Church a bishop who'd been excommunicated because he denied the reality of the Holocaust. (The Pope's excuse? He didn't know about that!) Add to this the Vatican's Stone Age doctrines about homosexuality, women's place at the altar and other reactionary opinions coming out of Rome lately, and it's no wonder a lot of Roman Catholics are feeling very uncomfortable about their faith.

The question, as the Fundamentalists like to say, is “What Would Jesus Do?” Somehow I can't see him condemning a little girl to death, can you? Or denying the rites of his church to those who in good conscience helped her.

Once a month, on a Tuesday evening, my church (St Luke’s Episcopal) offers Taize prayer based on the practice that evolved in an ecumenical monastery in Burgundy during WWII. The sanctuary is lit only by the glow of dozens of candles (people with aging eyesight like yours truly should remember to take small flashlights to follow the order of service!) and what happens is more like a musical meditation than a regular Sunday service. The hour begins and ends with the soft chiming of hand-bells. St Luke’s great church organ remains silent and no hymns are sung, but a small group of musicians playing piano, guitar and flute lead the people in a series of simple, repeated chants, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in English. There’s no sermon, but a couple of short readings and both community and silent prayer. There are lots of silent interludes between things, inviting contemplation or meditation.

I find it a very moving experience, a peaceful contrast to the hectic life of the day. Sometimes it’s hard to sing with the lump that develops in my throat. And I realized last night that the reason I took so many years off from my Anglican roots was to allow myself time to explore the wisdom to be found in Eastern mystical traditions, especially the powerful healing to be found in chant and meditation. Taize seems to bring everything back together under one roof.

Eight o’clock this morning – cloudy and raining. But the greys have to go out. One of the biggest inconveniences of living in a condo (and maybe the only true one) is that you can’t just open the door and shoo the dogs outside. So I dragged on clothes and shoes and we went out.

It wasn’t so bad really. The air was fresh and cool and the dogs enjoyed all the new scents we encountered by taking a different route. And actually, it wasn’t raining so much as misting. But, being only human, I grumbled about rain on my glasses (I like to wear transition lenses when I’m out in the bright light) and the time it was taking as the dogs stopped again and again to read the doggie news.

At one point, we passed a red-robed monk from the Tibetan Buddhist temple not far from where I live. I did my best imitation of an all-purpose reverent bow (learned from my Tai Chi master), hands on top of each other, brief head nod, difficult with two leashes in my hands, and on we went. We probably did a mile and a half today, far from our record, and had turned the last corner on the homeward stretch. And there was our monk again, almost back to his temple.

This time I dredged up the Tibetan greeting I’d learned in Lhasa. “Tashi Deleg!” I said as we passed each other. “Oh! Tashi deleg!” he said, looking surprised. And his face opened in a big smile.

Coming into our warm condo, I agreed with the dogs. That walk was a nice way to start the day.

... is the title of my new posting at the Nebula blog site:

http://www.nebulaawards.com/index.php/guest_blogs/cymbals_and_ceremonies/

Barack Obama has chosen a woman, the Reverend Sharon Watkins, to preach the sermon at the National Prayer Breakfast in DC, and a gay bishop, Gene Robinson, to lead the inauguration prayers.

I don't know much about Sharon Watkins, but Gene Robinson (Episcopalian)is a very spiritual man in a committed relationship. These choices make me happy.

[with apologies to Lewis Carroll.]

One of the great joys of grandmotherhood is getting to experience a lot of wonderful things all over again with the younger generation. This weekend, Amy's eighth birthday, I took her and another granddaughter, Autumn, to see the Nutcracker Ballet in Long Beach. I was delighted that the ballet was the same weekend as the birthday, because I wanted to make sure Amy's day didn't get lost in the great Christmas hustle and bustle; I wanted to celebrate it right. Autumn's mother, April, brought both girls into town on Saturday evening, and we were joined by a third granddaughter, Shannon, for dinner at a favorite pizza house. Then the birthday girl, Autumn and I went to see the ballet.

The Long Beach company always puts on a good show, with a gloriously expanding (and flashing) tree, a flying horse and sleigh, flying fairies, huge golden snowfalls, cannons and fireworks popping and dazzling all over the place – oh, and some pretty good dancing. In my childhood in London, we always went to the pantomime at Christmastime, but since that's not an American tradition, we've substituted the Nutcracker instead. (One year, we did The Glory of Christmas at the Crystal Cathedral, and that was spectacular too.) I think the girls enjoyed the Nutcracker; I know I did.

This morning, Amy's actual birthday, April came back into town and we celebrated the Fourth Sunday of Advent at St Luke's. I love the Advent ritual at my church, the seasonal decorations, all those great old pre-Christmas carols. April used to go to Sunday school at St Luke's, and Laurel, Amy's mom, was baptized there, so it's really "in the family." Then after the service, Shannon joined us again and we went for Sunday Brunch on board the Queen Mary. Almost like being on a cruise! The waiter served champagne for the grownups and sparkling cider for the kids, and Amy opened presents. The ship was decorated for the holidays – although it seemed to us that it was all for Amy's birthday.

Now the family has gone to their respective homes, and the dogs and I have a quiet evening ahead to relax in.

Oh, wait – I still have gifts to wrap!

I have another blog up that I wrote for the Nebula blog site. But not for long, so catch it while it's hot! (This makes number four. I didn't realize I had much to say until I started.)

http://www.nebulaawards.com/index.php/guest_blogs/the_persistence_of_the_numinous/

So we finally come to the end of the election season – a period that has lasted far too long, exhausting all of us. I hope you don't feel too exhausted to go and vote tomorrow.

This is a message for those of you in California in particular. Consider that you have a chance to vote against the last vestiges of prejudice and discrimination by striking down Proposition 8.

What is it that we heterosexuals fear by allowing gay couples to marry? In my volunteer work, and at my church, and where I live, I've come to know dozens of gay couples – law-abiding, Christian couples, many of them in committed relationships that have lasted longer than my marriage to my husband.

Don't be misled by the threats made by the Yes on 8 campaign. No church is forced to marry anybody, even now. If you aren't a member of the congregation, the minister will probably tell you he won't marry you or baptize your children. This isn't going to change. And I really doubt gay couples would insist on being married in a hostile church anyway. Why should they? Many churches, the Episcopal church among them, support their gay parishioners. Gay marriage is no threat to straight marriage; rather, the opposite is true. We should all hope for more committed, stable marriages for the good of society. And no, domestic partnerships don't give the protection and the rights marriage does; otherwise, maybe we all should forgo the ceremony and register as domestic partners.

The material you may have seen on TV about heterosexual families being forced to let their kids learn about gay marriage in school is also vastly overdone. I'm not going to go into the distortions about that book one child's parents objected to, or the lesbian wedding other kids went to (by the way, most of those parents angrily denounced the ad, saying they were asked and were happy to let their kids attend). But even if the schools do teach about homosexuality, so what? How is that a threat to anyone? (It's not a life-style choice a child is going to consider making, but something they're born with, like left-handedness or blue eyes.) Either God created everyone – and that includes homosexuals who have existed in stable percentages of the world's population across the centuries – or there is no God and so why does it matter?

“Separate but equal” was struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States many decades ago. Shouldn't we hesitate to go backwards and legislate discrimination against a group of our fellow citizens? Please, vote NO on Proposition 8.

One of the saddest stories to come out of California's upcoming battle over the issue of gay marriage appeared in my newspaper yesterday.

Obscene amounts of money have been pumped into the “Yes on 8” proposition seeking to amend the California state constitution to deny marriage to any but heterosexual couples. Most of this money has come from fundamentalist churches, with the Catholic and Mormon churches the biggest contributors. That's not surprising, given the richness of their coffers and the narrowness of their religious views. But the story I read yesterday was different.

A middle-class family with a stay-at-home mom and five children between the ages of three and twelve, living in modest circumstances in California farm country was persuaded by Mormon church appeals to withdraw $50,000 out of their savings to donate to the fight against equality for gay people. That's a huge chunk of their children's college fund, their hedge against future medical needs, vacations, home improvements, whatever. Apparently, they've been persuaded that allowing gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples is a huge threat to their family's well-being, far more so than depleting their financial safety net. You may find their decision monumentally stupid, and I wouldn't argue with you on that, but I also find it very sad.

When are humans going to get beyond the tribal response of “Us” and “Them?” This isn't just the bigotry exposed in the gay rights versus straight rights argument, old as that may be; we see its ugly presence in the rhetoric of hate being spewed in the presidential campaign against blacks, muslims and anyone with more than a high school education. “We” are – of course! – hard-working, patriotic American citizens, but “They” are terrorists, or have terrorist friends, or else “They” are commies and layabouts who rely on welfare and handouts. “They” caused the financial crisis by wanting to buy nice houses they couldn't afford.

Maybe this was an important defense mechanism in humanity's pre-history on the African veldt, but we've surely outgrown the need for it today. The ancient tribal way of fearing or even hating people whom we perceive as being fundamentally unlike us leads ultimately to excesses of violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Jews weren't like the good Germans; the Tutsis of Rwanda weren't like the Hutus, and thus deserved to die. Matthew Shepherd, whose brutal death we remembered recently, had it coming.

“God will send you all to hell!” the angry-faced preacher bellowed through his bullhorn at the passing Gay Pride Parade. But either God created everybody, not just – to appropriate the anti-gay slogan – Adam and Eve but also Adam and Steve, or if not, then there must be no god at all, so why the pious concern?

All nine Episcopal Diocesan Bishops in California have come out against Proposition 8, and that's a good thing. But I'd like to see more. I'd like to see ordinary people everywhere crying “Enough is enough!” I'd like to see an end to hate and hate-filled speech in my lifetime.

There's only one tribal response that truly makes sense in our increasingly crowded and diverse world: “Love one another.”

The Church of England today apologized to Darwin, almost two hundred years after the fact, for getting his message wrong. Good science leads to good religion, they've finally decided. Phew! I'm glad that's settled. And a couple of weeks ago all the Episcopal bishops of California came out against the proposition to ban gay marriage. Good news to set against the ignorant messages of the fundamentalists.

On the other hand, it wasn't good news at all when I had a battle trying to find a way to communicate my problem with Symantec/Norton. They've been sending me a pop-up for over a month that my subscription has expired and I'm not protected. Yet way back in July my credit card showed a payment to Norton for my renewal. You'd think that would be no problem, right? A simple error, easy to fix once I'd alerted them to the situation. I waited, but nothing happened except the regular appearance of the annoying pop-up.

The Norton web site is designed to break down anybody trying to use it to report a problem, but a week ago, after hours of playing their silly games of  “choose an option” none of which ever apply, I found my account and saw the credit card's expiration date was wrong. So I fixed that, and lo and behold, the next day I got an email confirmation from Norton. Case closed, right? Wrong. The message of no protection continues to pop up every time I log on. So I sent the email complaint to the customer no-service department (in Bangladesh as usual) and got a nice gentleman named “Raj” who told me what to send in as proof  I'd paid up. I did that – and got the exact same letter in return. So I sent the info again, and you guessed it – got a carbon copy of the first letter -- all three purporting to be from my friend Raj. Then I spent another hour on the web site trying to find a phone number for the head office (Hah! As if they'd give that out!). Finally, Google gave me an 800 number which I'll try tomorrow. Please keep your fingers crossed.

So I'm basically surfing the web naked. But at least the Anglican church made some progress into the twenty-first century. Ah well, you can't win 'em all.

An article appearing in today's Osservatore Romano, quotes the Reverend Jose Gabriel Funes, Jesuit Director of the Vatican Observatory, as saying that the Pope feels it doesn't conflict with Roman Catholic doctrine to believe in alien life forms elsewhere in the universe. Ruling them out, Father Funes says, is to put limits on God's creative freedom.

Well.  I'm glad that's settled.

That leaves the Vatican with the problem of whether or not aliens, when we meet them, will turn out to have experienced the Fall, for which I refer His Holiness to the scholarly work of one James Blish.

I went to a memorial service this week for the son of an old neighbor, someone I'd lost touch with over the years. I'd been reading the local paper and his name jumped out at me from the obituaries. He was a year younger than my oldest daughter, a year older than my second daughter. In other words: in his forties and far too young to die. The obituary listed no cause of death, no wife, no descendants, just parents and siblings and far-flung family members. Something rang a bell in my head, reading that.

It was a Catholic memorial service, and as such not too unfamiliar for an Episcopalian. At the appropriate moment, the priest delivered the eulogy and I suddenly felt very cold. The priest rambled all over the place, mostly about people he'd known who'd taught him life lessons. Where was the young man who'd passed away in all this? We learned how his parents had loved him and that it was nice that so many people showed up for the memorial to support them. And that more people should volunteer to help the needy. But the young man himself – and his life that we were supposed  to be memorializing? Well, it slipped in that he'd been homeless for some  part of the last three years. And then we got to the point. Sometimes, the priest said, we wonder what we did wrong, what we did or didn't do that caused our children to go off the track. And the bells rang in my head again. I'm willing to bet the young man had been gay. Volunteering at the hospice, I've seen families who loved and supported gay sons dying of AIDS, and also those who couldn't bring themselves to accept it even at the last.

Fast forward to this Sunday. My church (St Luke's Episcopal, Long Beach) is busy planning its participation in the coming Gay Pride celebrations, manning a booth at the festival, taking part in the parade next Sunday. We have a fairly large contingent of lesbians and gays in our parish, some with small children they've adopted to make their own families. And in the midst of the announcements about the Eucharist to be celebrated on the ocean bluffs before the parade, and useful advice on how to get to and from the parade on city buses because parking will be a mess, I wondered how many carried the secret sadness of parents who couldn't accept their children for what they were, as they were  made by God.

On Mother's Day, that has to be a very sad thought.