tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post1911585173417396510..comments2024-02-15T03:32:25.686-05:00Comments on Preludium, Anglican and Episcopal futures: The current State of Affairs in the USofA and The Episcopal Church.Mark Harrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06871096746243771489noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-76620727012849189612012-05-20T12:33:50.378-04:002012-05-20T12:33:50.378-04:00The phantom root veggie sounds a lot like Brad the...The phantom root veggie sounds a lot like Brad the Troll! He posts the same things over and over, like a stuck phonograph record.Brother Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06333089314994730330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-27400617515479991352012-05-16T23:55:41.202-04:002012-05-16T23:55:41.202-04:00If you don't wish to be called a savage, Lewis...If you don't wish to be called a savage, Lewis, don't act like one! My countrymen have become a disgrace to the world at large, trampling the poor, glorifying capital, grasping a bestial vision of Randian law-of-the-jungle. <br /><br />One has to be civilized to recognize a savage. Savage people with no regard for their fellow humans don't recognize their lack of civilization. <br /><br />One other point of correction, calling an individual a savage by clumsy inference is apparently fine.MarkBrunsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16971990948866488080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-86244099804995225652012-05-16T23:46:03.878-04:002012-05-16T23:46:03.878-04:00I think you chose the wrong lyric.
Well, he went...I think you chose the wrong lyric.<br /><br /><br />Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />Well, he's just an excitable boy<br /><br />He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />Well, he's just an excitable boy<br /><br />He took little Susie to the Junior Prom<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />and he raped her and killed her, then he took her home<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />Well, he's just an excitable boy<br />After ten long years they let him out of the Home<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones<br />Excitable boy, they all said<br />Well, he's just an excitable boyThe Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10933699070255566501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-69869184937004512912012-05-15T13:09:59.254-04:002012-05-15T13:09:59.254-04:00You claim to love the poor but you work for a chur...You claim to love the poor but you work for a church that's over 95% White and middle/upper middle class. You live in a quiet suburb.<br /> You either don't really like poor people or you somehow think that preaching about the non-white and poor will help them.<br /> Your church is under 2 million and shrinking. Its membership's median age is 56 and rising. Average Sunday attendance is shrinking quickly.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-56700468785728062862012-05-15T10:48:21.117-04:002012-05-15T10:48:21.117-04:00Hmm. Calling specific people fools, &c. gets ...Hmm. Calling specific people fools, &c. gets you bounced, but calling an entire nation 'savages' is OK. (BTW, I ssume that Mr Brunson isn't a member of TEC, or hasn't been for very long. it obviously hasn't had time to work its 'civilizing influence' on him.)<br />Douglas LewisDougas Lewisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-58103123122985162342012-05-12T09:10:10.096-04:002012-05-12T09:10:10.096-04:00You call it a "nervous breakdown." I cal...You call it a "nervous breakdown." I call it "mission creep". Until I start to hear some proposals for restructuring that model equality and parity between the two houses, I will be suspicious of its motives. <br /><br />And, I won't stop talking or writing about it.Elizabeth Kaetonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06787552280232329081noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-25107017891390749642012-05-10T05:18:38.011-04:002012-05-10T05:18:38.011-04:00America has become a nation of savages, and TEC is...America has become a nation of savages, and TEC is one of the very few civilizing influences left.MarkBrunsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16971990948866488080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-74253790035020980562012-05-09T11:44:04.922-04:002012-05-09T11:44:04.922-04:00Thanks. I prefer Donne's excellent handling of...Thanks. I prefer Donne's excellent handling of this relationship.<br /><br />And. Doctrine is preciously about living in him. There is a LEX credendi that issues into a LEX orandi.<br /><br />What a funny age we live in. Schleiermacher won, as our famous Rabbi (Harold Bloom of Yale) told us in his expose of American Gnosticism.<br /> <br /><br />MsgrMsgrnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-25230431574901125932012-05-09T09:28:17.786-04:002012-05-09T09:28:17.786-04:00Msgr...No the debate over homoousia was not a matt...Msgr...No the debate over homoousia was not a matter of poetry, but we don't worship with such limits, even though we define with them. <br /><br />Doctrine is not a bad thing at all, but doctrine about the Lord Jesus Christ is not the same as living in him. Doctrine, even about essential matters, is grounding, but I would submit not nearly as grounding as the experience of the real presence in sacrament and in experience.<br /> Still, we are grounded by what we are grounded by and perhaps we simply live in different spiritual towns.<br /><br />Being literal - that is meaning exactly what is said, on this or that occasion - is a fine art and worth the effort. Literalism, which is applying the notion of literal meaning to a whole body of material, is just plain crazy. <br /><br />Poetry, and poetic sensibility, is not a complement to essential literalism, it is a complement to linguistic constructions that are meant to be understood literally. So, I suppose, "LIKE as the hart desireth the water-brooks : so longeth my soul after thee, O God" could be stated in some literal way without the comparison the the hart. Bu why would we want too? In this little snippet I can image myself "like as the hart" coming out of the woods, hesitant, watchful, but so thirsty that I am willing to be exposed, almost trembling with desire for the water. This is not embroidery on an essential literalims. This is what it is - a longing for God that is almost pre-human - and yet known by me at odd moments in my life when I hear the words and am one with the writer of the Psalm, the deer, the longings in all beings, etc.<br /><br />I suspect you and I are both attracted to statements that can be taken literally when we need to, but convinced by more poetic statements when we allow ourselves to be so directed.<br /><br />But then, perhaps this is just me.Mark Harrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06871096746243771489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-8143687181131438572012-05-09T09:04:49.594-04:002012-05-09T09:04:49.594-04:00Amen to that.
--oh, and thank you for your servi...Amen to that. <br /><br />--oh, and thank you for your service to the greater church. Thank. You. I, for one, have been grateful to know that you have been serving in the 'higher' councils. I shall miss your presence there.it's margarethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13577280471100732619noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-57790699766426448432012-05-09T08:22:26.974-04:002012-05-09T08:22:26.974-04:00Was the sustained and life-or-death debate over on...Was the sustained and life-or-death debate over one word (homoousia) a matter of poetry? It affected every aspect of how we think about and give ourselves over to Jesus Christ. It is fashionable in the chic US of today (and a good deal of fun) to speak of doctrine and literalism as bad things. Other generations in other places saw them as life giving, liberating, and necessary.<br /><br />Poetry at its best is the complement or embroidery on an essential literalism. <br /><br />See J. Donne on 'Thou art a literal God' (Expostulations).<br /><br />MsgrMsgrnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-88468406752613136762012-05-09T07:20:54.549-04:002012-05-09T07:20:54.549-04:00Margaret...not mysticism directly, but rather a ch...Margaret...not mysticism directly, but rather a church in which belief, doctrine, faith statements, are made in language and ideas that suggest and prod and tease and provoke larger possibilities than words can specifically signify. For example the careful formulation that says that the "Holy Scriptures..contain all things necessary for salvation" is open to "poetic sensibility," in that the heart and mind have a great range of ways in which to apply that statement. And it is poetic sensibility or imagination that opens us to just how Holy Scripture accomplishes that task, and how we might come to salvation in other ways.<br /><br />But more generally I view poetic sensibility to be the basis for doing something other than logic chopping with such wonderful phrases as "Oh you winds and snows, glorify the Lord, praise him and magnify him forever." Some belief and theology and worship are meant to be sung, and to hell with the precise meanings. Thereby we put away the need to ask just how snow and wind glorify, etc. and settle into profound grounding in the joyful truth of it all.<br /><br />It would be good to be a church of poetic sensibility and not too literal, etc.Mark Harrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06871096746243771489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-51488187712441190092012-05-09T00:43:15.488-04:002012-05-09T00:43:15.488-04:00Mark, thank you for this. It is so relieving to ha...Mark, thank you for this. It is so relieving to have someone name the condition we are in: "nervous breakdown" describes it very well. And I agree that poetic imagination is the golden thread that could lead us out of this accursed place. Have been wanting to respond to your important post of March 9 ("Look to the Tyger and Anglicanism Again") which pointed in this direction as well. William Countryman's book 'The Poetic Imagination: An Anglican Spiritual Tradition' is here beside me. I will try to write to you on this topic as soon as time permits. Meanwhile thank God for Blake, for Ginsberg and for so many other poets who point us toward the world of Spirit which is not remote but here with us and in us and among us.Mary Claranoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-55001402782004840012012-05-08T22:40:34.021-04:002012-05-08T22:40:34.021-04:00Mark, what I like about your posts is the candour....Mark, what I like about your posts is the candour. Reality is always a good therapy - enabling us to emerge from the chrysalis that we tend to inhabit in defence of our own version of The Faith. In fact this enterprise is God's work, and we either cooperate or we do not. It often seems that the way ahead is murky - needing some definition, and yet, God is at work in it all.<br /><br />Like you, I see this in our grandchildren, small, mischievous and incredibly hopeful. In their future is our hope (or is that the other way round?)<br /><br />The words of Jesus "Suffer the little children to come unto me", reminds me that we need to get back to our first innocence - Let go, and let God, might be the way forward for all of us.<br /><br />Blessings on the TEC General Convention. Our Covenant is with Christ - there is none other.Father Ron Smithhttp://kiwianglo.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10326675.post-62954649066407492752012-05-08T21:08:23.101-04:002012-05-08T21:08:23.101-04:00Mark --you do write plainly --and I sense no fear ...Mark --you do write plainly --and I sense no fear in your words.<br /><br />As to a church poetic... is this a call to mysticism? <br /><br />Just wondering....it's margarethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13577280471100732619noreply@blogger.com