Blog… Blog like the wind!

If you scroll down you’ll see that we’re trying to blog more starting today. So check out today’s posts below and check back daily for more posts on religious topics and on upcoming happenings at St. Bede’s.

And don’t forget to post a comment when the Spirit so moves you!

Playing God with the Word of God

This is hard to believe, but it’s true. Something called the “Conservative Bible Project” has been created with the expressed interest in producing a translation of the Bible that “satisfies the following guidelines”:

Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias.

Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity…

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle.”

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning.

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story…

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities.

Breathtaking, is it not? This reminds me of the Episcopalian ethicist William Stringfellow and his reflections on how no one seems capable of truly listening anymore–either to their neighbor or to the word of God.

Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance, or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or are debating about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening is a primitive act of love in which a person gives himself to another’s word, making himself accessible and vulnerable to that word.

For the Love of Animals

On Sunday, the same day we at St. Bede’s celebrated St. Francis of Assisi and blessed animals out in our court-yard, Andrew Sullivan wrote a funny and touching reflection about his pet beagle, Dusty. Click here for the complete post. Here’s a taste:

…Then there was the time when two friends came to visit… They came by first and dropped their bag off and we went out to dinner. No one told me that in the bag were two large boxes of Godiva chocolates. They left the bag on the floor.

I came back early (can’t remember why now). When I walked in the entire loft was an explosion of wrappers, ribbons, little bits of silver foil, ripped shards of boxes, in every corner of the room. In the middle of it, lay Dusty, bloated to almost twice her size, with a grin of ecstatic pleasure and satisfaction and chocolate smeared all over her face… I rushed her outside and waited for the puke. No luck. I took her in to phone the animal hospital. And then it started.

It was a beagle Linda Blair – with viscous chocolate liquid projectile vomiting everywhere in sight. I went to grab her to get her outside. She decided this was a game. So yours truly spent the next ten minutes chasing a projectile chocolate vomiting beagle around my loft until every single item of furniture, every rug, and the bed was covered in what felt and looked like chocolate mucus. My low point was actually slipping in some and careening headfirst into a pile of still-warm, and very slippery chocolate goo. That’s when my guests returned, to find their secret busted. But all they could do was laugh at me until they near-collapsed.

Sermon: Youth Group Preaches on St. Francis Day

Are animals as important to God as human beings? St. Francis seemed to think so. He seemed to think that every piece of God’s creation was important and should be treated as sacred, beloved of God.

Francis treated sick and homeless people as his equals. There is a story of Francis giving away his coat to a very sick man on the side of a road and then giving the man a hug.

Francis treated animals as though they were his equals. There is a story of a mule, seeking shelter from the cold, wandering into the old house where Francis and the first Franciscan brothers were staying. Rather than kick out the mule, Francis told the brothers it was time for them to leave and find a new home, that their house now belonged to that mule.

A couple of Fridays ago, our Youth Group got together here to play games and eat pizza. In preparation for this service, we also took some time to reflect on the question of whether animals are as important to God as human beings, asking ourselves: Is an animal’s life as important as the life of a human being?

What do you think?

It’s a hard question. And as you can probably imagine, one in which not everyone can agree. The Youth Group kids do not all agree, as you’ll see.

Sermon: Becoming a Warrior for Peace

What is it about boys and guns?

It is a good question and very hard to answer. And of course we could broaden the question to ask: “What is it about boys and swords and rockets and missiles and bombs and fists and teeth?” And we could broaden it further to ask: “What is it about people—boys and girls and men and women—and the warrior impulse, the feeling that the use of force can be and often is heroic and good?

Here’s the way I’ve often answered that question: I cannot fully explain why little boys are enthralled by guns and other warrior implements. But many boys just are enthralled by guns and many girls are as well. Indeed I would argue that most people possess a love of war somewhere inside.

I grew up in the hippy-dippy Jimmy Carter seventies and my mom tried to keep all manner of toy guns and swords and soldiers and so forth away from me and my brother. But it was no use—since we could turn virtually anything, including, of course, our fingers, into imaginary guns.

One friend of mine, similarly deprived by his peace-loving parents of toy guns, used to use his cat as an imaginary sawed-off shotgun. And he would pick up the back-legs of his tall, skinny, weimaraner-like dog and imagine the dog was a Gatling gun.

As I got older, I grew to love playing tackle football. My mother officially forbade me from playing—in particular, she never allowed me to join an organized tackle football team where I might wear padding and a helmet. But I played tackle football every chance I got anyway, with friends, wherever we might find a bit of grass, and without helmets and without pads.

One of the greatest thrills of my adolescence was the feeling I got from tackling a good friend during a good game of tackle football—timing it just right and feeling his body crumple under my body.

As the psychologist Carl Jung argued, there is a warrior in all of us…

[Click below for the complete sermon.]