Holiday Music for Austinites

A message for those of you that live in the Austin area:

I have joined Austin’s gay men’s chorus this year, the Capital City Men’s Chorus.

Our primary fall season performances are fast approaching, and if you are considering some entertainment with some really wonderful music this advent featuring music ranging from Handel to Bach to more contemporary pieces where we just plain ole have fun, please consider joining us.  If you have never heard a men’s chorus, it can be a very enthralling thing to participate in as an audience.  Of course, you know we do love our music… 

Performances will be held at Central Christian Church near Guadalupe and 17th on December 8 at 8:00pm and on December 9 at 4:00pm.  Tickets are $15 in advance or $20 at the door.

Click here for more information and to buy tickets. 

j

Happiness

The book I am reading, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, is simply a must read.

I have a lot to say about it, but we are closing out the semester and so I am swamped.

What I will say today is pretty simple but astounding, as is most of the book:

Happiness is important.  I remember once, in high school French class, when you have conversations about just about anything so that you can just practice talking, that we had a conversation about happiness.  We had just learned the word ‘happiness’ in French, and so my teacher went around and asked various people (in French) whether they thought the point of life was to achieve happiness.  It was a question I had never considered.  Obviously it left an impression.

Now I don’t know if happiness is the point of life of not, but it certainly seems to be important.  That seems to be something counterintuitive in our puritan American culture.  I’m talking about true, deep, contentment– not a passing and transitory mood.  True happiness is a state of being.

Unwritten

by Natasha Beddingfield

I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Response to Joint Standing Committee Survey

Read the survey Lambeth has released on the JSC’s response to the HOB’s response to the Primates’ response to TEC’s perceived lack of response to the Windsor report here.

I realize that our ideal governance model in the Anglican world is a relational one, not one that is dogmatic or legalistic.

In my former life as a C.P.A., I would sometimes see clients who would say things like, “I don’t need a formal agreement that plans for hard times in my business with my business partner because we get along so well that we will figure it out no matter what happens,” or the quintessential, “we don’t need a pre-nup…”  Of course we define the legalistic stuff because things are going well so that we agree on how things will go when things don’t go well.

We aren’t very good at legalistic views in Anglicanism, and I think that is a good thing.  I grew up in another tradition, where the church courts were used to settle doctrine, and it seems pretty self-evident to me that defining doctrine relationally instead of legalistically is the better Christian way. 

But this continuing broo-haa-haa wants, as seems to be human nature, a more legalistic definition than will be tolerated in our Anglican tradition.  It seeks to even recast Anglicanism if necessary to make it more legalistic than it has ever been, at least in a global context– in the sense of the “Anglican Communion.”

On joining the Roman Church

I’ve been out of town, and hopefully will have a few moments to reflect on my recent experiences.

In the meantime, please take a few minutes to read Mark Harris’ reflections on the Roman Experience here.

As usual, he writes brilliantly.

j

I can’t hear you…

Please check out the call to action at Jake’s here and contact the Bishop of Southwest Florida.

If we cannot even tolerate listening to other points of view we are in tremendously serious trouble.

j

And on video…

The sermon I posted a few days ago is now available on video…

Google Video is having a few problems at the moment, so it may not work for a day or two, and the audio is poor so be warned.

j

The Holiness of our Fragility

A sermon preached to my Biblical Interpretation for Preaching Class, Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest

Austin, Texas

November 8, 2007 

Proper 27B
Gospel:  Mark 12:35-44

A show started airing on a cable channel last year that I just can’t help myself from watching.  It’s a show that is based in what they call “postmodern humor,” a genre I still haven’t figured out yet.  Most days I think whoever invented that term did not have a really sound basis in postmodern philosophy but rather just wanted to invent an excuse to create humor without any limits.  Anyway – the name of this show that I started watching is The Sarah Silverman Show, maybe some of you are familiar with it.  It is a very “no holds barred, everything is in limits” kind of show.

Well, that is the kind of humor that really does it for me.  It makes me laugh because it brings to light so many of our society’s contradictions, so many of the things I hadn’t realized were ridiculous, or ironic, or horrifying.  I find myself laughing at those situations just for lack of any other productive outlet for the emotions they bring up in me!

WordPress is funky today

Sorry for the problems but WordPress is funky today and not behaving properly.  I guess that support is working on it.

j