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Book Notes: Feminism Without Illusions
2007-08-07 15:35:00
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Feminism Without Illusions : A Critique of Individualism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).This book by the late lamented historian would have saved me from becoming a Republican had I discovered it when I was in college (1989-93, so it could have happened). Fox-Genovese rejected the entire way that the "canon wars" were framed at that time, and argued that "potential lies not in the repudiation of [gender] difference but in a new understanding of its equitable social consequences." (p.256) Conservatives in the 1990s defended the universality of Western Civilization, and its democratic-individualist ideal of knowledge that could be approached on equal terms by everyone, regardless of "race, class and gender" (the Holy Trinity of political correctness in my youth). The liberals at that time often sounded like determinists, reading texts only through the lens of the author's, or their own, biological and ...
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Support Mthatha Mission in South Africa
2007-08-05 22:10:00
Jesse Zink, a young man who grew up in our Episcopal parish, preached an amazing sermon today about his upcoming stint as a missionary in South Africa . Jesse will be working at the Itipini medical clinic in a shantytown outside Mthatha, which was the capital of the largest apartheid-era black "homeland" and is still one of the poorest parts of the country with one of the highest rates of HIV and tuberculosis. You can follow his progress (and make donations) at his blog Mthatha Mission. In his sermon, he reflected on the mixed history of Christian missions and how the word "missionary" can be reclaimed for a less colonialist, more service-oriented way of living out the gospel in a foreign culture: I read the Bible as a whole, a complete piece of divinely-inspired literature that ? while contradictory and confusing in many places ? tells a couple consistent messages throughout. The message I hear most frequently is evident in this morning?s Gospel. Jesus says, ?one?s life does not con...
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A Saint of Emotional Intelligence
2007-08-04 11:11:00
Today is the feast day of John-Baptist Vianney, about whom James Kiefer at The Daily Office writes: Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (better known as the Cure' d'Ars, or curate of Ars -- now Villars-les-Dombes) was the son of a peasant farmer, born in France in 1786, three years before the beginning of the French Revolution. He wished to become a priest, but his studies were hindered, first by the poverty of his family, next by the anti-religious policies of the Revolutionary government, and finally by the wars of Napoleon. He was not a particularly bright student, and struggled hopelessly with Latin. He was 29 when he was finally ordained, his superiors having decided that his zeal and devotion compensated for his "academic underqualification."He was sent as curate to the small and obscure village of Ars-en-Dombes (now called Villars-les-Dombes (46:00 N 4:50 E),about 30 kilometers northeast of Lyon (formerly Lyons, 45:46 N 4:50 E), where he proved an unexpectedly brilliant preach...
More About: Intelligence , Bible , Emotional Intelligence , Saint , Emotion

Desktop Inspirations
2007-08-01 17:12:00
Glimmer Train, a leading magazine of literary fiction, asked in a recent survey for the inspirational quotes that their readers have tacked up on their desk to motivate them to write. The full list is here (PDF file). Some of my favorites: "If you can't piss people off, why write at all." (anonymous)"I write to discover what I know." (Flannery O'Connor)"The hard is what makes it great." (Tom Hanks in the movie "A League of Their Own")"One reason for writing, of course, is that no one's written what you want to read." (Philip Larkin)"Have the courage to follow your talent to the dark place." (anonymous)"A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well." (G.K. Chesterton)"Start writing -- the answer will come to you." (fortune cookie; I have this one taped to my computer too) Quotes from my desktop: "Concentrate not on protection, but on reducing your vulnerabilities." (an...
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God's Honor and the Atonement
2007-07-31 12:47:00
From the April 2007 archives at The Thinking Reed comes this insightful post on how we misread the Atonement as a legal formality demanded by a proud, wrathful God. Actually, one could interpret it as God subverting the human zero-sum model of authority that must be shored up by another's punishment, by collapsing all distinctions among the offender, the judge and the victim into the Person of Christ. Lee writes: Anselm?s account of the atonement is rooted from first to last in his understanding of the divine nature, and he reworks the notions of honor and satisfaction accordingly. [John] McIntyre argues that a, if not the, key to understanding [Anselm's Cur Deus Homo] is the concept of God?s aseity. This is theological jargon referring to the idea that God exists in and through himself, utterly independent of anything else. There is nothing ?external? to God which constrains him to act in certain ways. Thus, there isn?t an order of justice that has to be satisfied by God bef...
More About: Bible , Honor , The A , Tone

Proud Anglicans of the Week
2007-07-30 11:14:00
Here's a roundup of some great Anglican "via media" blogs I've discovered this month. All of these folks are thoughtful Christians determined to hold together the compassionate, progressive, dynamic spirit of the church's liberals and the respect for tradition, truth and theological sophistication of the conservatives. They give me hope that the current fundamentalist-secularist impasse won't last forever. Christopher at Betwixt and Between offers a spirited and GLBT-friendly exposition of the Incarnation in his wonderfully titled post A Shitting God. (Hint: If this offends you, you're exactly the person who needs to read it.) We don't want our God to come to us as flesh and blood, bone and sinew. But he did, not deeming equality with God something to be grasped at as did our first parents, but rather relishing simply to be an earthen one--"a shitting god" as one rabbi put it, became truly one of us in all of our comical glory, with our orifices and pleasurable bits, goin...
More About: Bible , Week , Episcopal , Anglicans , Proud

Nannette Croce: "The Box of Cereal"
2007-07-28 11:04:00
  It's turning into The Rose & Thorn appreciation week here at Reiter's Block. R&T editor Nannette Croc e's story about a man facing the brokenness of his relationships is well-paced, heartbreaking, and worth your attention. Here's the beginning: Hi, this is Richard Drake. I?m either not home, or I?m busy creating some ingenious piece of software. So leave a message at the tone, and I?ll get back to you ? honest.?Richard, are you there? Are you there?? I thought it might be my boss, but it?s Gwen. Ever since the suicide, she has this new voice, high-pitched and loud, even more of a teeth-grinder than her old one. ?I need to talk to you. It?s important.? At the word ?important,? I reach for the phone. Then I remember that there is nothing important left to tell me, and I relax back into my chair. ?Richard. If you?re there and you?re not picking up....? There is some dead air. The machine clicks off. Maybe I?ll call her later. It doesn?t r...
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An Anglican Hero: William Reed Huntington
2007-07-27 17:59:00
In the Anglican church calendar, today is the feast day of Episcopal theologian William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), whose achievements include spearheading the 1892 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and formulating what became known as the "Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral," the four-point statement of Anglican/Episcopal identity that is still used today. Huntington cared deeply about Christian unity. His intent was to articulate a few core beliefs that made the church distinctively Christian and Episcopal; beyond those, the church should make room for a wide diversity of views. Those four points were the Holy Scriptures as the word of God; the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds as the rule of faith; the sacraments of baptism and communion, as ordained by Christ; and the historic episcopate (bishops who traced their lineage back to the apostles). Bryan at Creedal Christian provides a nice overview of those principles and their implications in today's post.James Kiefer, who writes the ...
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Anne Caston: "A Man, Returning, Will Not Be The Man Who Left"
2007-07-27 11:26:00
A world view: for months and months before he leftfor war, he'd spoken of it as if to be without onewas to be godless. And then the planes. Four.Forget a world view. What she wants today is a table solid enough to set things on:a lamp, a pitcher, a bowl of lemons.She wants a dress the color of brandy.She wants a black lace shawl.A silk slip. A locket. But Love, that tenderest tyrant of all,fastens its necklace of flame at her throat and she gives herselfover again to the lesser glory of who she iswith him: the glory of a bent spokeand the rut it fell into.She imagines him sometimes now as he must have been thenin that other kingdom of men:his doll-like face in its little uniformof death; his shuttered eyes, opening, closing;and, underneath the ribs,in place of an actual heart, the far-offknocking of the guns that opened him.Reprinted by permission from the website Why Are We In Iraq?  
More About: Left , Anne , Turn , A Man , The Man

Why Not Church?
2007-07-26 12:08:00
  Yesterday I wrote to a friend who heads my women's Bible study group:   It has become quite clear to me that fear of sin is one of the things keeping me from church. The current cultural landscape is such that I will eventually end up offended by something I hear either in the conservative or the liberal church, and I am afraid of being unlikable and conflict-causing when I offer a different viewpoint. Since the whole point of being a Christian is the grace not to be driven by fear of sin any longer, this is obviously a problem. She wrote back:I too feel if I went back to [the evangelical church], I would be screaming You people are crazy don't you see that I am right and you are wrong and if I went back to [the liberal church] I would be screaming You people are crazy don't you see that I am right and you are wrong Once I put that down in writing, it gives [the liberal church] a less compelling pull on me. If I'm likely to be a screeching lunatic wherever I go, migh...
More About: Church , Episcopal , Why Not

Caron Andregg: "The Thursday Night Trap Club"
2007-07-26 12:01:00
We're skeet shootingthe potter's seconds.The catapult slingsskewed plates, crackedvases in erratic arcsacross the dry creek canyon.Each Thursday eveningwe obliteratethe week's mistakes.When the pellet-spread connects,explodes a shrapnel starit's an absolution.Lucinda's been castingreproductions of Egyptianbowls with tiny feet.One seems near perfect;but when I set iton the trap-box edgeit lists, daylight gleamingbeneath the toes of one foot.When wet and formingit must have restedon a warp, somethingnot quite level in the firing.It seems somehow unfairthis small, lame thingwound up in the slag-boxdestined for buckshotjust because it totters. And it strikes mehow much easier it isto love a flawed object -the supplicant's posturelike a pair of cupped hands;the sloped bowl tilted in offering;its little feet of clay. Caron Andregg is co-editor of the fine journal Cider Press Review, which is accepting submissions through Aug. 31. They also sponsor a poetry manuscript prize open for ...
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The One-Room Schoolhouse
2007-07-23 19:00:00
My church is beginning the rector search process, and already we're feeling sorry for this person because of the conflicting expectations he or she will have to manage. We want a firm administrator who's also a gentle pastoral caregiver; someone who can address the unique needs of the elderly, singles, young families, Sunday School kids, and college students; someone to balance our budget without disrespecting any of the programs that our strong lay leadership holds so dear. I'm sure this dilemma is common to any church that can boast of a diverse congregation and a large menu of activities. St. Paul addressed it in several epistles with the reminder that we are members of one body, with Christ as the head. The issue preoccupying me right now is how people who are at different stages of religious commitment can worship together. It takes a skilled minister not to direct his entire attention to one of these groups and treat the others as an obstacle to his agen...
More About: Room , Episcopal , Ouse , The O

Trinity, Atonement, and the Coherence of Doctrine
2007-07-22 21:38:00
Years before I found Christianity believable (or truly understood what there was to believe), I found its coherence as an intellectual system immensely satisfying. Now too, the more I learn, the more I appreciate how its core concepts are inseparably entwined. Take away the Resurrection, for instance, and the Crucifixion goes from triumph to tragedy. However much disbelievers in miracles try to recast Jesus' death as an inspiring martyrdom, if the story ends there, it really isn't all that inspiring -- just another tale of how good guys finish last. Similarly, Bryan at Creedal Christian points out in a recent post that the doctrine of the Atonement would seem barbaric without the Trinity . The objection is commonly heard, "What kind of father would be so wrathful that he could only be appeased by the death of his son?" Isn't that the essence of human sinfulness, after all -- that there must be a doer and a done-to, a consuming ego and a devoured other? That power struggl...
More About: Tone

Poetry Roundup: Smith, Backer, Roeske
2007-07-19 21:11:00
Some favorite picks from recent browsing of online journals. I've just quoted a few lines of each for copyright reasons; visit the journals' websites for the whole poem.Character Studyby Patricia Smith ...He was scarredby every change I?d made, every strike-through, cut/paste, backspace, delete, all the unleased betrayal that roars through prose. I built himfrom a knowing of adjectives, piled on detail and declaration, and now he is overdone, draggingall that weight and wheezing when he breathes.The boy patiently loads his pockets with stones, bottle caps and jagged pieces of glass, waiting for the moment when the skin of my neck is exposed.Only 11, he scans me with man eyes and says it, claiming my nights, advancing the plot in a way that can?t be undone. He says: Give me a name.   Read the whole poem, plus an interview with acclaimed performance poet Smith, at Torch, a journal of creative writing by African-American women.****The Fourth Nestby Sara BackerIt hurts t...
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Signs of the Apocalypse: Product Placement for the Dead
2007-07-18 22:17:00
This week's Springwise business trends newsletter reports on Eternal Image, a maker of coffins and funerary urns customized with your favorite sports or product logos: In a lively new twist on what you might call a dead industry, Eternal Image is bringing licensing to the afterlife?through branded caskets and cremation urns. Now lifelong supporters of select sports teams and other brands have the option to take their loyalty all the way to their final resting spot.Eternal Image has licensing agreements with 30 Major League Baseball teams (urns and caskets will available late 2007), the Vatican Library, Precious Moments?and there are even special urns licensed by the American Kennel Club and Cat Fanciers Association to preserve the ashes of beloved pets. More than just a gimmick, Eternal Image products are made with high-quality rot-resistant composite materials and are designed to be tasteful representations of a person's interests. The company continues to seek new partners and ...
More About: Product , Signs , Dead , Apocalypse , Lace

"This New Armada" by Conway
2007-07-18 01:04:00
My correspondent "Conway," a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who's serving 25-to-life under the state's three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods, reports in his July 13 letter that conditions have improved since his transfer to a new facility. He now has a job as education clerk, grading GED's, and access to a typewriter and a library of donated books. (Unfortunately, I have no way for readers of this site to send him books without revealing his name and location, which he's asked me not to do; instead, if you are so moved by this post, donate some quality reading materials to a prison in your area.) Here's one of his latest poems, written on the back of a news story from several years ago about brutality at Corcoran prison:This New Arma da I never understood this loss   till cuffs were locked behind my hands;I should've seen it comin along   slidin past my hourglass' sands.Inside heaped stones, heavy of time  &n...

Why Church?
2007-07-17 16:53:00
I've always managed my personal life on the theory that a bad relationship is worse than none at all. Ever since I was a very little girl, my fantasies revolved around falling in love and getting married. (Well, that and saving the world from evil.) Because I cared so much about being in relationship, I actually didn't date a whole lot, and never got serious with anyone till I met the man I eventually married. I just didn't have the time to waste. At least when you're alone, you know you still need something. Like those annoying people who leave a shopping cart in a parking spot at the supermarket, filling that void with a lesser form of intimacy blocks the space where the real thing could enter your life.As a Christian, it's part of the deal that I have to be in fellowship with other believers. The church is the body of Christ. The Bible is very clear on this. Like marriage, this is my ideal. But also like marriage, there are worse things than being alone. I won't s...
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Support Soulforce Campaign for Gay Marriage in NY State
2007-07-14 02:28:00
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has introduced a bill to extend equal marriage rights to same-gender couples. Over the next two weeks, interfaith gay activist group Soulforce will be sponsoring GLBT youth to travel to the districts of key "swing vote" state senators and assembly members to tell their personal stories. Soulforce will hold townhall meetings, attend community events and church services, and speak with state legislators and their constituents about same-gender marriage. You can volunteer to participate or support them with your donations here.
More About: Site News , Marriage , Gay Marriage , Campaign , Support

35 Books for my 35th Birthday
2007-07-14 01:59:00
The list below is something of a self-portrait in books. Most of them reflect, and in many cases helped shape, my current worldview. I recommend them for their beauty and wisdom, and the originality of their vision. They're the books I reread while hundreds of their newer siblings languish on the shelf.Poetry and FictionT.S. Eliot, Four QuartetsElegance and coherence of Christian ideas revealed in poetryKatie Ford, DepositionContemporary poet chronicles via negativa in thorny yet beautiful languageJack Gilbert, Refusing HeavenPoems shine with hard-won affirmation of lifeGerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur and Other PoemsMystical joy explodes normal patterns of meter and syntaxMark Levine, Enola Gay20th-century poetic ApocalypseC.S. Lewis, Perelandra trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength)Christian science fiction; CSL shares his beatific visionWalter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of SorrowsBarnyard allegory of the gospelWal...
More About: Site News , Books , Book Reviews , Birthday

Beauty in Absence
2007-07-11 21:37:00
Why do encounters with beauty often make us sad? Along with euphoria, I experience pain as I become more aware that my limited senses and attention span cannot fully comprehend or exhaust the possibilities of the sublime reality before me. As Edna St. Vincent Millay exclaimed, "World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!" Yet that pain is, in its own way, sweet. Brett McCracken reflects on this fact in "The Aesthetics of Absence" from Relevant Magazine: The climax of watching the sun set is knowing that in a scant few minutes, it will be gone, consumed in the revolving horizon. And we feel this tension of impending loss?as joy, as tragedy, but above all as beauty.And the more I think about beauty?and art?the more I realize how central absence is. What hits us the most?what goes beyond our senses and touches our souls?is not what is present, but what is absent. For good or ill, the state of being hungry and seeing some delicious food is undoubtedly more thrilling than con...
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Adnan Mahmutovic: "Integration Under the Midnight Sun" (excerpt)
2007-07-10 21:17:00
The latest issue of The Rose & Thorn e-zine features this lyrical and heartbreaking story by Adnan Mahmutovic, from his collection Refugee. "Integra tion Under the Midnight Sun" offers a glimpse of female refugees from the Bosnian war now living in Sweden, and the varied ways they come to terms with their memories of lost loved ones. For three years I have been embalmed, but there is faint thunder under my ribs. I wear the same outfit in which I left Bosnia: a blue oversize cardigan somebody wrapped around me that night I was shoved into a bus to Sweden, a pink shirt and a white bra with laced edges underneath, a short corduroy skirt and mismatching colourful stockings like the ones of Pippi Longstocking.I bask in the midnight sun, which is colder than usual. The polar circle is gliding down to this village. I do not want to go to my one-roomer. I have nothing there but two half-withered plants called Adam and Eve, sheltered behind metal shutters, cut off from all the temptation...

Pride NYC: June 2007
2007-07-09 20:42:00
I was in NYC the last weekend of June for the Pride March, which I watched from the steps of my former church. The Church of the Ascension is on Fifth Avenue toward the end of the parade route. I was very moved to see members of the parish, in T-shirts reading "Proud Episcopal ian," spend hours passing cups of water to the marchers.  Too many heads in the way for me to get a photo of them, unfortunately.The parade seemed more family-friendly this year than the last time I attended, five or six years ago. Despite the perfect weather, few bared all. I think there were also more religious groups, especially Episcopal ones. One of the grand marshals was Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, where my parents and I used to attend High Holy Days services. If you're ever in NYC on Shabbat, check out CBST -- Rabbi Kleinbaum gives the best sermons around. (Our family is at least three stripes in the diversity flag all by oursel...
More About: Site News , June 2007

Know Your Audience (A Little Too Well)
2007-07-08 18:05:00
From yesterday's Boston Globe, word of an unusual book-signing planned in Waitsfield, Vermont: At The Tempest Book Shop, the paperback books won't be the only things without jackets Thursday.A "clothing optional" book signing event will be held by nudity author Jim C. Cunningham, with customers invited to leave their clothes at the door."The reason for this is to 'put our bodies where our mouths are,' living what we preach," Cunningham said. "The public are invited to express their solidarity with our message by also donning their birthday suits upon entering the book store."The event is scheduled for 6 p.m., which is after the shop's usual closing time. And there are rules: Everyone who plans to strip must bring a towel, and there's no gawking....Cunningham's 596-page "Nudity & Christianity" book contains no pictures. It's packed with biblical references to nudity and other citations that support his view that nudity is natural, not erotic, and that clothing -- generall...
More About: Audience , Litt , Well

Steve Almond on How (Not) to Write About Sex
2007-07-05 00:11:00
Fiction writer Steve Almond is a master at combining eros, comedy and tragedy in such books as The Evil B.B. Chow. Venturing for the first time into this dangerous territory myself, I found his advice in this article from the Boston Phoenix newspaper quite helpful, and entertaining to boot. Along with specifics like "never compare a woman's nipples to Frankenstein's bolts," he reminds writers that good erotica is about the ways in which sex reveals characters' personality and emotions. A humanizing dose of comedy lends realism and sets your writing apart from mere porn.Following Margaret Cho's philosophy that the best thing to do with an embarrassing moment is to broadcast it over the mass media, I'll share this incident from the writing life: Last weekend I finally forced myself to write the all-important first sex scene between my novel's pair of male lovers. My longsuffering husband comes into our studio and begins asking me a home-repair question. "Not now, ...
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J.T. Milford: "The Dream Pond"
2007-07-05 00:06:00
Sitting on the marshy bankwith maiden cane and water hyacinthsI watch a yellow leaf floatin aimless circlesof stillnessa summer-like stillnessAnd feel a sudden windthat moves ripplesacross the waternear a willowa brown-green willow And without apparent cause, it stopsAs I gaze across the pondI am overtaken by a dreamthat the marsh pond is stillwhen death is nearwith feelings of joy and lonelinessA wild sort of reveriewith cormorants, marsh marigoldand dark woodsFor a dream starthat sits on the eye of the    pond's lighthas awakened me to the    possibilityof an early nighta winter's nightThe kind of darknesswhich offers no escapeAs I am awakened by the changing lightdarkness slowly falls upon the still    marsh pondand in a sudden sweep of windthe willow surrenders its leavesdown to the eartha sad weeping earthRead my critique of J.T.'s poem "Under the Arbor" at WinningWriters.com.
More About: Pond , Dream , Milf , The Dream , The D

Signs of the Apocalypse: The Jews Killed Mickey Mouse!
2007-07-04 00:52:00
Today's Morning Intelligence Brief from the geopolitical news service Stratfor (subscription-only; well worth it) offered this tidbit about how Palestinian militant group Hamas is trying to establish its legitimacy as a political party: Hamas has arrested the spokesman for the Army of Islam, the group that is holding British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent Alan Johnston in Gaza, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Monday. The arrest comes exactly two weeks after Hamas publicly announced that it would free Johnston from his jihadist captors "using all means necessary."Hamas' recent actions are part of its Gaza leadership's strategy to illustrate the group's political legitimacy in the wake of its June 15 takeover in Gaza. This also explains why Hamas recently killed off the infamous Mickey Mouse look-alike character that urged Palestinian children to kill Israelis in a children's TV show aired on a Hamas-owned station. After getting serious flack for using a Western Di...
More About: Jews , Signs , Apocalypse , Kill

Second Life Versus New Life
2007-07-03 16:42:00
Rich Braaksma at Relevant Magazine muses on whether anything like the Incarnation of Christ could happen in the multiplayer virtual reality game Second Life . Most of the piece is rather fluffy, but he touched my heart with the conclusion: As much as we may wish to escape our world and its harsh realities, it is this world Christ joined and engaged. We may wish for a new family, new friends, a new place to live and a body that won?t age. But God?s great mercy is that He didn?t come to save the best version of yourself that you can muster?He came for the just plain, fallen, real you. I have such trouble going through the day simply as myself, experiencing the present in all its awful contingency and overwhelming vitality. I prefer to be lost in thoughts of my novel characters, abstract arguments, the ice cream I might have after dinner -- my own version of Second Life without the cumbersome technological interface. To be exposed to my own awareness is to be exposed to God. As if ...
More About: Versus , Econ , New Life

Sydney Lea: "Ghost Pain" (excerpt)
2007-07-03 03:10:00
This poem from the Winter 2003-04 issue of Image Journal is too long to reprint here, but here is a characteristically lovely excerpt:A dear friend down south has gone; his church?s prayer chain couldn?t hold him. Not this time. People die. The stars outdoors are sharp as razors, and Orion the Hunter huge and bold above    the river? as if he could send an arrow flying right    through us here. All manner of things fly through the no-fly zone elsewhere, the homeless huddle under cardboard, all the brutal rest, and no, since you inquire, we can?t account for it. It?s Pearl Harbor Day, hours of light down to nine, to fewer. If God be for me, whom then shall I fear? Easy enough to say, the mockers might say,    from in here. I might be out there among them were the world not served, we have to believe, in there being one more safe tiny place amid the    great unsafe. Read the whole poem here, and visit Imag...
More About: Ghost , Sydney , Pain , T Pain

Naeem Murr: "My Poet"
2007-07-02 17:03:00
This surreal satire of the literati's psychological foibles can be read in full at Poet ry magazine. I may be a fiction writer now, but clearly I'm still a poet by temperament. Highlights: I live with a poet. Her boyfriend before me was also a poet, and published a book called Crane, in which all the poems are about her. She looks like a crane?the bird kind. I often find her standing on one leg, leaning against our bookshelves, very still, staring into a book as if for a fish to snatch out. Crane upset her. I remember her tearing up one of the poems, shouting, "Want to publish a book: write poems about your goddamn miserable sex life!" The poem, titled "Interdiction," was about him having a real hankering for all those things in the Bible you're not allowed to eat?particularly bivalves. What this has to do with The Colonel and Mrs. Whatsit, I can't imagine. But then I've never understood poetry. You see, I'm a fiction writer. If my Poet ever appears in one of my books...

Anglican Absolutism
2007-07-02 16:29:00
Chris at The Eternal Pursuit notes with sadness that the conservative breakaway parishes and clergy within the U.S. Episcopal Church, who seek to put themselves under the authority of foreign bishops who oppose homosexuality, are asking for more than freedom to follow their own conscience. It's an all-or-nothing strategy that would delegitimize the existing Episcopal Church in America, thus undermining two mainstays of our 400-year-old Communion: the authority of bishops and the ideal of fellowship among Christians with different views. Chris writes: There are certainly real issues that lead people of faith to disagree. Some of these issues, particularly those around human sexuality, are especially difficult. Some find the scriptures to be very clear on these issues. Some argue that the overarching message of the Bible seems in conflict with a few particular passages. On all fronts, some argue that the Bible alone is the sole authority, and others seek a me...
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