[the only place?]

Rachel Held Evans recently said this about the church:

You can get a cup of coffee with your friends anywhere, but church is the only place you can get ashes smudged on your forehead as a reminder of your mortality. You can be dazzled by a light show at a concert on any given weekend, but church is the only place that fills a sanctuary with candlelight and hymns on Christmas Eve. You can snag all sorts of free swag for brand loyalty online, but church is the only place where you are named a beloved child of God with a cold plunge into the water. You can share food with the hungry at any homeless shelter, but only the church teaches that a shared meal brings us into the very presence of God.

(source)

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And I think, yes! and then, I think, hmmmm, maybe church isn't the only place where these things happen....


You get ashes smudged on your forehead while running to catch the subway ...


We sing 40 in a stadium to the light of phone screens...


Someone calls me beautiful in a chat window...

Friends share a meal with Jesus at the local pub....

jesus and "this lot"

How easy it is to ignore the way of Jesus and to find ways to hate people...

[why does god hate me? a short film]

Why Does God Hate Me? is a video of the experience of a boy growing up gay in a very conservative evangelical family.

I share it for a very specific 1 1/2 minute long segment: the part where Matt's parents take him along to protest at a gay pride parade and he wanders off for a few minutes. Watch the expression on his face, both when he talks with a man named Isaac and then when he is back at the edge of the parade a few minutes later.

Click here to see video on YouTube, starting directly at the 8:37 mark.

The section of particular interest goes from 8:37 to 10:06. That having been said, it's a pretty good video overall.

Watch the whole video on YouTube

What are your first impression? What does his expression communicate? How was this an important moment for him?

[key statement by presiding bishop michael b. curry]

“Many of us have committed ourselves and our church to being ‘a house of prayer for all people,’ as the Bible says, when all are truly welcome,” Curry said in remarks he later made available to Episcopal News Service.

“Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all. While I understand that many disagree with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the church today: All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ.

“For so many who are committed to following Jesus in the way of love and being a church that lives that love, this decision will bring real pain,” he said. “For fellow disciples of Jesus in our church who are gay or lesbian, this will bring more pain. For many who have felt and been rejected by the church because of who they are, for many who have felt and been rejected by families and communities, our church opening itself in love was a sign of hope. And this will add pain on top of pain.”

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Bishop Curry's statements were being made in the context of the Primates 2016 meeting at the end of last week, where it was later voted to put temporary sanctions against the Episcopal Church.
Read the entire article here.

key principles

The key principles page is a collection of principles for helping us live in ways that embrace others instead of excluding them.

Click here to access my page of key principles.

Note: because the page of key principles is a "page" and not a "post", this post is being added so that when you select "key" in the right-side list of categories, it will include the link to the key principles page.

coming soon...

... something even better than a lemon blueberry cake!

Perhaps not as tasty, but definitely more challenging, I'm in the last stages of production for a short video introducing "uncertain spaces". Watch for it on this blog in the next week or two.

[to the bride of christ - video]

To the Bride of Christ video.

HT to Chris Roth for making me aware of this video.

merry christmas!

welcoming the baby born on the margins,
outside of the circle, 
the one with arms wide open!

wishing you all a merry christmas 

rob g

[photo session with a twist]

An interesting experiment done by Canon, showing the power of labels...




Link to video 

[the gift of fragility]

Jean Vanier, in Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness, writes:

I am interested in an ecclesial vision for community and in living in a gospel-based community with people with disabilities. We are brothers and sisters together, and Jesus is calling us from a pyramidal society to become a body.

and

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that God has chosen the weak, the foolish, and the crazy to shame the clever and the powerful; he has chosen the most despised, the people right at the bottom of society. Through this teaching we see a vision unfold in which a pyramid of hierarchy is changed into a body, beginning at the bottom. One might ask if that means Jesus loves the weak more than the strong. No, that is not it. The mystery of people with disabilities is that they long for authentic and loving relationships more than for power. They are not obsessed with being well-situated in a group that offers acclaim and promotion. They are crying for what matters most—love. And God hears their cry because in some way they respond to the cry of God, which is to give love.

These quotes are from Chapter 1, The Fragility of L'Arche and the Friendship of God. Read the rest of the article based on chapter 1.

Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness is a new book by Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier.

Find out more about the book on the IVPress website.

winter

Just a quick note to say that there will be fewer posts for a while, as I am working on a new presentation, which I will post here once it is completed.

church of the illiterati

This church declares itself clearly as a place that welcomes and embraces those who can't read.

Well, maybe.  Their sign does raise several questions:

If this really is a church for people who cannot read, what does it matter what the sign says? Or would it be better to call it "the church of non-readers"? Now it is possible, of course, that this church has specifically used the name "Illiterati" to reclaim the name, perhaps similar to the way queer has been reclaimed by some lgbtq+ groups, or like the church which calls itself the Scum of the Earth Church.

And then one might ask, how would someone who doesn't read know this is the church for them? Would some kind of image be helpful? Or would people find out about it via word of mouth and radio ad campaigns?

And does the Church of the Illiterati embrace everyone? We don't know, as they haven't said. And this means that overall, they are still an uncertain space. Except to non-readers. Maybe.

[transgender day of remembrance 2015]

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Read more about the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The 2015 list of people killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.

thesis / antithesis

[red works photography]

redworks.ca profiles the amazing work of Nadya Kwandibens, an Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) from Northwest Angle #37 First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

I love her vision statement:

We, as Indigenous people, are often portrayed in history books as Nations once great; in museums as Nations frozen stoic; in the media as Nations forever troubled. These images can be despairing; however, my goal seeks to steer the positive course. If our history is a shadow, let this moment serve as light. We are musicians, lawyers, doctors, mothers and sons. We are activists, scholars, dreamers, fathers and daughters. Let us claim ourselves now and see that we are, and will always be great, thriving, balanced civilizations capable of carrying ourselves into that bright new day.

Love the photos on her site too! Check it out at www.redworks.ca!