St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

Today a fast mass at 6:30 with Bishop Herbert Donovan, and a barbecue afterwards.

Here's a little bit about St. Bart from Catholic online...

St. Bartholomew, 1st. century, one of the 12.

For many people, the priest is the person who tells people how to regulate their lives. For most people, this means sex. Abortion and homosexuality are aspects of this. Abortion becomes a way of regulating women's sexuality, and restrictions on homosexuality is a way of regulating men.

Alain Badiou is a continental philosopher who wrote an interesting little book on Paul a few years ago. It's a plain reading, without any particular "hermenutic" or rule of interpretation. He was interviewed in the journal Philosophy and Scripture.

Finally finished the newsletter: both the paper and the electronic one. The electronic one goes out pretty regularly. I've been finding a nice "flow" with this more recently. Did some reading on the book of Kings for this Sunday's sermon.

Obama gave his speech in Germany. Inspired, but a little fluffy. Appropriate, enough that it conveyed a sense of being presidential.

.... So the unfolding of the universe - biotic, and perhaps abiotic too - appears to be partially beyond natural law. In its place is a ceaseless creativity, with no supernatural creator. If, as a result of this creativity, we cannot know what will happen, then reason, the Enlightenment's highest human virtue, is an insufficient guide to living our lives. We must use reason, emotion, intuition, all that our evolution has brought us. But that means understanding our full humanity: we need Einstein and Shakespeare in the same room.

"“All I can suggest to the mystic and the theologian is that our gods have been too small; they fill the universe. And to the scientist all I can say is that the gods do exist; they are the eternal, connected, and aware Self experienced by all intelligent beings.'"...

Read it all

I find this a much more orthodox (and correct) understanding of God-consciousness than the Anthropomorphic, Calvinist understanding that pervades what passes for contemporary Christian thought.

Today I did a memorial service for the parents of two friends and parishioners at their summer house in Franklin, NY. They were atheists, fun-loving, British. And I have a lot of fun with the family.

As I was leaving, the brother of one of the deceased said, "I want you to know that I'm an atheist, but I appreciated what you said. I think he would have as well. But both of us, you know, we got the stick, and religion never held. We both got the stick. Perhaps if we hadn't gotten it... both of us got the stick a lot... but we both didn't find religion." He shook my hand.

Three is a magic number,
Yes it is, it's a magic number.
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number.

The past and the present and the future.
Faith and Hope and Charity,
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number.

It takes three legs to make a tri-pod
Or to make a table stand.
It takes three wheels to make a ve-hicle
Called a tricycle.

Every triangle has three corners,
Every triangle has three sides,
No more, no less.
You don't have to guess.
When it's three you can see
It's a magic number.

Over the last two weeks, two events have happened that are worth examining through the religious, or spiritual, lens. what I mean is that people are doing things that are irrational - they have little utility in themselves. They are responses to a feeling of being face to face with the transcendent, the infinite, or God.

Yes- it's my birthday. I make promises to blog a little bit more, but my parish is growing and my secretary reminds me that we need to build things to take account of that. My friend Heike has a birthday today as well.