One unexpected and helpful addition to my Lenten prayer schedule has been Susan Stabile’s series of daily meditations, with a weekly podcast of her remarks to students who are doing this “Lenten retreat in daily life” as well. Worth checking out if you need to jump-start your final week of Lenten prayers.

The best thing I’ve read about Lent this year is a brief essay by Jacob Berendes in his monthly newspaper Mothers News. It’s not at all religious, but it’s funny and a great piece of writing. In exchange for being able to quote me saying “The best thing I’ve read about Lent this year,” Jacob graciously agreed to let me reprint it, below.

HOLIDAYS IN MARCH

March has two big “revelry before the end of the world” holidays–Mardi Gras, aka Fat Tuesday, is the day before Lent. All during Lent you don’t eat pancakes, and on Mardi Gras you eat the Holy Hell out of a serious stack of pancakes, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. In some parts of the world you also dress up like a sexy clown or insane bird on fire. In any event we are talking about buttering the bread with so much butter it’s borderline nauseating. St. Patrick’s Day is similar: it’s the day you celebrate a guy who drove the snakes (pagans) out of Ireland, and you celebrate by wearing snake colors, standing in a long line, and getting reptile-minded in a cave or cavern. Both involve putting your flag in the air, although St. Patrick’s day has more waving like “Hi, I see you, you’re wonderful”, and Marti Gras has more of a different kind of waving. REMEMBER that Marti Gras forms a holiday diad with Lent–you can’t just debauch all week and then go back to like whatever–it’s a wild life-affirming parade followed by a mild, life-affirming stretch of austerity, then springtime resurrection, THEN whatever. What will you give up for Lent this year? Netflix? Milk? Chairs? Peeing indoors? Nothing against hedonism as a method or “the eternal yes”, buy you’re not really “doing everything” if you deny yourself denial. Everything in moderation, including moderation.

L’Osservatore Romano did not like Avatar, some suspected due to alleged pantheism. But the philosophy therein was not really pantheism, but can be more accurately described as panentheism (as my friend Dr George Zachariah of the Mar Thoma Church taught): finding God in everything; finding the image of the divine in everyone. I would have to struggle if I had to deny this as Christian.

[...] Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries [...]

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The scene was indicative, where the scientist Dr Grace Augustine presented her results about the synaptic nature of the biosphere on the planet Pandora, and the businessman Parker Selfridge dismissed her thus: ‘what have you been smoking!’ Science is only accepted when it conveniently serves the imperial–rationalist exploitation: at all other times it is dismissed. As Dr Lawson pointed out (and echoed by the Reverend Dick Wolff), this has been going on in the climate-change debate: ‘If you are a committed free market fundamentalist, you will never accept the climate change facts, as they are incompatible with your ideology.’

I will be going to the Conference of the Green Party of England and Wales this Saturday; expecting Green hugs.

Here are some highlights from each the speakers, with links to their texts for the gentle readers’ perusal over Christmastime:

Grand Mufti of Syria:

So, let us build a new generation that believes that the civilisation of mankind is a common work and that the most noble of all is mankind and freedom – after God, of course. If we would like to see peace in the world, let us start from the land of peace: Palestine and Israel. So we can tell people, as the Pope said years ago, rather than building the wall, let us build the bridges of peace, because Palestine is the land of peace. Considering how much it costs to build that wall, we could actually allow Christian, Jewish and Muslim children to attend the same school and to live as brothers and sisters in a school of peace.

Dr Asma Jahangir:

In my opinion it is important to start at an early age with getting acquainted with the approaches of your neighbours or of other religions. This would not necessarily need to involve long-distance travel, but, for example, could be organised by setting foot and meeting people at your local church, mosque, synagogue, temple or other places of worship. The size of the groups – especially for grass-root interfaith meetings – should not be too big, in order to give the interlocutors an opportunity to speak and to get to know each other personally.

The Ecumenical Patriarch:

For Orthodox Christians, the icon, or image, stands not only as an acme of human aesthetic accomplishment, but as a tangible reminder of the perennial truth. As in every painting – religious or not, and notwithstanding the talent of the artist – the object presents as two-dimensional. Yet, for Orthodox Christians, an icon is no mere religious painting – and it is not, by definition, a religious object. Indeed, it is a subject with which the viewer, the worshipper, enters into wordless dialogue through the sense of sight. For an Orthodox Christian, the encounter with the icon is an act of communion with the person represented in the icon. How much more should our encounters with living icons – persons made in the image and likeness of God – be acts of communion!

The Chief Rabbi:

What is a covenant? A covenant is not a contract. A contract is made for a limited period, for a specific purpose, between two or more parties, each seeking their own benefit. A covenant is made open-endedly by two or more parties who come together in a bond of loyalty and trust to achieve together what none can achieve alone. A contract is like a deal; a covenant is like a marriage. Contracts belong to the market and to the state, to economics and politics, both of which are arenas of competition. Covenants belong to families, communities, charities, which are arenas of cooperation. A contract is between me and you – separate selves – but a covenant is about us – collective belonging. A contract is about interests; a covenant is about identity. And hence the vital distinction, not made clearly enough in European politics, between a social contract and a social covenant: a social contract creates a state; a social covenant creates a society.

The Dalai Lama:

As a human being I believe – and for a number of years, many of my friends have agreed with my views and feelings – that in modern times there is too much emphasis on the importance of material values. We have somehow neglected our inner values. That is why, in spite of materially being highly developed, I have noticed there are still a lot of people – even billionaires – who are very rich but are an unhappy on a personal level. So one of the most important factors for happiness or joyfulness is very much to do with peace of mind, a calm mind. Too much stress, too much suspicion, too much ambition and greed I also think are factors which destroy our inner peace. So therefore, if we wish to achieve a happy life, there is no point in neglecting our inner values. These inner values are not necessarily what we bring from religious teaching, but I feel they are a biological factor we are already equipped with: warm-heartedness or a sense of responsibility, a sense of community.

By the way, the latest issue of New Left Review (number 54, November/December 2008) has a symposium on Robert Brenner’s book The Economics of Global Turbulence, also mentioned here earlier.

It was Mike Benedetti who got me interested in the Apocrypha. I remember that summer nearly ten years ago, sitting in a hotel room in Iqaluit, Nunavut, tired from hiking, but discussing Bel and the Dragon (and, incidentally, also Thomas Aquinas) with some enthusiasm. It is quite a blessing that the early Councils of the Church gave us four Gospels rather than just one ‘consensus version’. I recall that there were a few quarrels about the Letter of James, and (common with Judaism) Song of Songs. John Calvin did not write a commentary for the Revelation of John. And my New Revised Standard Version, in its table of contents for the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books, had entries such as:

(c) in the Slavonic Bible and the Latin Vulgate Appendix
2 Esdras (= 3 Esdras in Slavonic = 4 Esdras in Vulgate Appendix)
(Note: In the Latin Vulgate, Ezra–Nehemiah = 1 and 2 Esdras)

So, unlike people who claim that the Bible is somehow divine data (à la the Book of Mormon) that has to be interpreted literally word-for-word (I overgeneralize), I am glad to have inherited a Bible with fuzzy edges. This does not make me take the fuzzy-edged Bible less seriously – in fact, one has to take the Bible more seriously.

Look at it this way. The Acts of the Apostles (‘Episode 1’) is a sequel to the Gospel according to Luke (‘Episode 0’). And now we are at about Episode 21, in the 21st century. And Paul, when he wrote his letters, probably did not expect all Christians in the last 20 centuries to agree with him on every single point! He probably would be surprised if everything he wrote were to be taken as timeless truths. I now see the Bible as a collection of stories alive and constantly inspired by the Holy Spirit; one that is still being written. Kanye West had it right: If the Bible were written today, he would be in it. We all would be in it.

But with such standard, the arrow of history (of the Christian Church) points straight at my nose – and yours. Do we live our lives worthy of inclusion in the stories of the saints, not just those in the Old and New Testaments, but down the last 20 centuries as well (and those to come)? Do all my text messages and email to sisters and brothers stand up to the calibre of Paul’s? Faced with these questions, I can only work out my salvation with fear and trepidation (and lots of joy!).

So, here is my Bible with fuzzy edges, which comes with a big arrow pointing at my nose and a big cloud of witnesses.

(For a good set of sequels, see Justo L. González (1984) The Story of Christianity, 2 volumes. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-063315-8 and 0-06-063316-6. I am also looking forward to my friend Diarmaid MacCulloch’s ambitious project History of All Christianity Everywhere with the British Broadcasting Corporation.)

Since then, I have attended the United Reformed Church’s General Assembly in which the Reverend Roberta Rominger was inducted as General Secretary of the Britain-wide denomination. I have also attended two induction services (on neighbouring Saturdays): of the Reverend Tanya Stormo Rasmussen to the chaplaincy of Mansfield College, Oxford, a college historically related to the United Reformed Church; and of the Reverend Carla Grosch-Miller to my own church Saint Columba’s. A pattern emerged: all three of them are from the United Church of Christ!

So, gentle readers west of the Atlantic: if in a month’s time you feel an eerie urge to move hitherward, you know where you are sure to find a welcome. But for now, work hard to make yourself comfortable at home for the next few years!

Ian Paisley: ‘We must all, in our own way, do what we can to help one another to get some way through this very dark hour for our nation. I know that there are many beliefs in this House; my belief in God is well known and my religious convictions are known. I trust that our whole nation will turn in repentance and cry to God for an intervention so that the calamity will not come on our children and on the babes in their cots.’

Gordon Brown: ‘And that is why we back the work ethic; we support effort and enterprise and responsible risk-taking. These are the morals markets need.’

It is well known that ‘presbyterians’ is an anagram for ‘Britney Spears’. By the way, sorry for the long hiatus from me. Let me know if you want to hear about my recent adventures – things like encountering a Georgian (as in Tbilisi, not as in Atlanta) baptist archbishop, and entryism into Britain from Barack Obama’s church – please let me know.

from Kevin Ksen Polka
(copyright 2008 Nat Needle)

Oh, lots of folks love soccer, they play it every day
But Kevin loves his soccer so, it carries him away
He butts his head, he kicks his legs, and if by chance he falls
The women rush the field so they can play with Kevin’s balls

CHORUS: Oh…
Kevin Ksen, he’s the sexiest of men
Kevin Ksen, he’s the sexiest of men
Kevin Ksen, he’s the sexiest of men
And if you don’t believe him, he will tell you once again
And if you don’t believe him, he will tell you once again

(Happy birthday, Kevin!)

• First Congregational Church, Long Beach
• Saint Basil’s Catholic Church, Los Angeles
• Central Christian Church of the East Valley
• Historic First Presbyterian Church of Phoenix
• the chapel at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport
• La Placita Church at the Mission of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels
• Pasadena Presbyterian Church
• the chapel at London Heathrow airport

I took Communion and participated in the imposition of ashes at First Congregational; Communion and witnessed a baptism at CCCEV; participated in an elder/deacon ordination at Historic First; caught the last of the Mass at La Placita.

First Congregational is a self-described liberal church. Seldom have I visited a church which is more liberal than I. Here, people do not say “Lord” except when singing in Latin; there has been some trouble decades ago about the divinity of Jesus not preached from the pulpit. “Blessed be”, an imperative without a noun, seemed to be enough for this congregation. There was a banner in the front of the sanctuary with a quote by Martin Luther King Junior: “The principal objective of all nations must be the total abolition of war.” I was generally pleased, but I did wonder what they have to say ultimately, when all has been stripped away like this?

On the other end of the “spectrum” is CCCEV. It felt like a theatre with no natural light, but dry-ice smoke-throwers and air-conditioning. The sermon – or shall I call it the one-man theatrical monologue? – delivered from a swivel-chair, was full of popular-culture references (even a sitcom clip on the projection screen!), complete with fill-in-the-blank sermon sheets. The preacher dissed Kanye West, ignoring that he is one of the most influential Christian artist these days, who is biasedly-committed to the Poor, and can get his Jesus Walks played on the radio. Who are you to diss Kanye, man? The whole thing fit snugly in a critical analysis of the Spectacle in the Situationist school. The bookstore had about a hundred copies of the Bible, but only in three versions: dominantly NIV, NLT, and The Message. Suitably, we went to Wal-Mart later that evening.

I note curiously that neither of these two churches actually let the Holy Communion work itself out well enough, sad to say.

Slavoj Žižek (2000) The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Is Worth Fighting For? ISBN 978-1-85984-770-1.

Terry Eagleton (2007) Jesus Christ: The Gospels. ISBN 978-1-84467-176-2. This is the New Revised Standard Version of the Gospels introduced by Eagleton and edited by radical cleric Giles Fraser. It is pretty cool that Verso is following the Gideons. On this note, I might mention that recently, I bought the Revised English Bible and the New Revised Standard Version. My copies of both of these are with the Apocrypha (though the collection there is different), and the NRSV is the ‘Anglicized’ text; both are published by the Oxford University Press. I thought each of these represented very wide (as wide as allowed in the current climate) ecumenical English-language translation work in either side of the Atlantic.