Preaching At The Church Center

Vigil of All Saints/Halloween
Chapel of Christ the Lord, Episcopal Church Center, New York, NY
Luke 14:1-6

The last time Miguelina asked me to preach, I got sick, so last week I started taking extra doses of Vitamin C. When she invited me to preach today, we both commented on the irony and the appropriateness of the staff person for Children’s Formation preaching on Halloween.

I grew up unchurched, for many reasons that aren’t particularly important here. Halloween was always a big deal. We planned for weeks ahead of time, because we always made our own costumes. There was no discussion in our house, or our neighborhood for that matter, about the origins of these customs or the appropriateness of participating in them. It was simply a time to dress up and run around the neighborhood collecting candy.

Flash forward a few years, when I had just started putting my foot back into church, and we started learning about the pre-Christian roots of All Hallows’ Eve and how the Celts believed that at this time of year—their festival of Samhain—is one when the borders that separate our world from those of the faerie and the dead become very thin. We also began seeing the pattern of how the Christian hierarchy renamed and took over many pre-Christian celebrations to aid the spread of their faith. And so Samhain and All Hallows’ Eve became All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

A handful of years later, after coming back to the Episcopal Church, and every year since then, this season brings conversations about the secular culture’s commercialization of Halloween and discussions about whether or not we should be promoting participation in what is essentially a non-Christian festival.

So when the question finally comes around, “Does dressing up and going trick-or-treating endanger our children spiritually?” My reply is often, “Does bringing an evergreen tree into the house around the beginning of Winter and decorating it endanger our children spiritually?” That usually brings the conversation up short.

Ultimately, however, we should be listening to our children. Children are innately spiritual, and children are not stupid. As they leave the shelter of the family home and enter into the neighborhood, the community, and the world, they see and hear things. We cannot shelter them forever. And they will ask questions. It is their questions we should be listening to and discussing. And frequently, as Jesus does in today’s Gospel reading, the best way to answer a question is to pose another question.

So today, my question to all of us is: Do we teach our children to be rigid like the Pharisees, or do we teach them to follow Jesus?

Amen.

Where I Spent--And Didn't Spend--My Weekend

Early Friday afternoon I packed the car, filled the gas tank, and headed up Route 8 to Becket, Massachusetts. Over 130 lgbt, and a handful of straight friends, gathered for the Lavender Country and Folk Dancers Fall Dance Camp at Chimney Corners. Lisa Greenleaf was the caller, and the Groovemongers provided the music. I came home late Sunday afternoon with sore feet and ready for bed.

I did not attend the reunion activities of the Darien High School Class of 1978: the Homecoming game and the gathering at Wee Burn Country Club.

While it would have been fun catching up with my classmates after 10 years (we have not been together since our 20th reunion in 1998), the Dance Camp community is more important to me. I have missed only two camps over the last 15 years. These are the people I share common interests and values with. These are the folks who nurture me. These are the friends who accept me as I am. This is the community that renews and refreshes me.

For some reason, this camp turned out to be a bit different for me personally. I was not self-conscious about my body. I'm a good dancer, and that's what counts on the dance floor. I'm a good person and friend, and that's what counts with this community. It was also freeing in other ways. I found that I was not my usually shy self. If I wanted to ask someone to dance, I did, and was only turned down if the person had already been asked to dance for that dance. I flirted with several people when we weren't on the dance floor. It was like I was fully present for the first time in a long time.

This dance community is the people I am growing--and growing older--with. The DHS Class of 1978 is frozen in time, in snapshots taken in 1978, 1988, 1998, and now 2008. If the class' next reunion and Fall dance camp fall on the same weekend again, I know where I will be.

Peace,
Jeffri

That's So Teenager

When they renovated our office space at the Episcopal Church Center they consolidated the Church Center offices. As a result we had two-and-a-half floors available to lease. The Ad Council currently occupies that space. Their employees have come to a couple of our Community Gatherings, and we were invited to an open house in their space. Many of us on the Church Center Staff also subscribe to one of their mail lists.

Today we received an email highlighting some of their campaigns. The first one was the Think Before You Speak campaign sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. The email featured three short videos from the campaign. The first one features Hilary Duff.



The second features Wanda Sykes



And here's the third one.



Having grown up with a brother who used "gay" as interchangeable with "stupid," this obviously isn't a new issue. I haven't heard him use "gay" for "stupid" in many years, and I haven't heard his kids use the word that way either--at least around their Uncle Jeff.

Maybe there's hope.

Peace,
Jeffri

A Week By The Lake

I spent last week in Burlington, Vermont at the Bishop Booth Conference Center meeting with the Episcopal Council for Christian Education (ECCE). I drove up, which was a nostalgic experience. We spent some of our family vacations in Vermont while I was growing up, so I drove by a lot of familiar places--if only the names. The Conference Center sits on the shores of Lake Champlain.

ECCE meetings can exhaust me, but once I recover from the meeting itself, the experience energizes me. These folks--two representatives from each Province of the Episcopal Church--are my network, my "peeps," as my nephews would say. They keep me sane in the ever-changing mess that seems to be the Church Center these days. These people, along with their peers across the church, are the reason I have not walked out the door these past six months. They do incredible work, and I am proud to be their colleague.

At every ECCE meeting we try to provide a development component. This time a former ECCE member did a four hour workshop over two days on the Enneagram Types. The organization he works with is the Enneagram Institute. If you want to find out more about what we learned, you can visit their web site. I am Type 6 - The Loyalist. And this surprises us how? I know people get very caught up in this kind of thing, as also happens with the Myers-Briggs typing that runs rampant through the Episcopal Church. These are tools we can use to help understand ourselves. But each is only one kind of tool. They are not the be all and end all. Not every tool works for every person. Here endeth the lecture.

The ECCE meeting ended at lunchtime on Thursday, and three people heading to the Los Angeles for another meeting were staying over until Friday morning. Ruth-Ann and I stayed as well so that we could spend some time with them to prepare them for the meeting, which we are not attending due to travel restrictions based on budget issues. Before that meeting, however, we needed a break. Even in as lovely a setting as the shore of Lake Champlain in the Fall, you need to get out and have a change of scenery.

Our first stop was the Vermont Teddy Bear Company's Factory and Bear Shop.



We did the tourist thing and took the picture. This is Cindy from the Diocese of Olympia, Nancy from the Diocese of Northern California, me, and my friend MerLynne from the Diocese of Minnesota.

We took the tour.

This is the stuffing station.

We saw lots of bears and outfits.

This is a Renaissance Bear in the custom workshop.

Ruth-Ann bought a bear as a Christmas present for her grandson.

And yes, I came home with a bear.

How could I leave him there? He's purple. (Well, they call it amethyst, but he's purple!)

After a short stop at the cathedral bookshop, we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering up and down Church Street, which is pedestrian street in downtown Burlington. We had dinner at Three Tomatoes and then drove back to the Conference Center to have our meeting.

Friday was a travel day, which for Ruth-Ann and me, consisted of a 5 1/2 hour drive back down to Connecticut. Ruth-Ann the continued on the Port Jefferson Ferry to Long Island. It was a beautiful day for a drive, but when I got home, my body pretty much said "you're done now," and I slept for 12 hours Friday night.

Tomorrow, back into the... office.

Peace,
Jeffri

A Picture Is Worth $700 Billion

One of the blogs I read regularly is Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin (aka Digital Roam). Dan recently published a book by the same name that everyone who uses PowerPoint ought to read before doing their next presentation!

Today I happened to page down and rediscover his post of September 15 titled "Careful, Senator, your politics are showing." He talks about a workshop he recently did for the heads of staff for the Democratic Senators.

Whenever I give a workshop, I ask in advance for a sample problem relevant to my audience, so that I can demonstrate the power of pictures in a context drawn from their real-world experience.

In this case, Doug supplied me with a thick set of economic data comparing eight years of the Clinton Administration with eight years of the George W. Bush administration.

Once drawn out, the results are shocking.

Go take a look for yourself.

And if anyone tells you that Bush had to deal with a Congress controlled by the Democrats for a good part of his term, remember that the Republicans controlled Congress for most of Clinton's term.

Peace,
Jeffri

Ding Dong The Bells Are Gonna Chime!

While I won't be getting married in the morning, nor any time in the near future, same-sex couples will be able to legally marry in Connecticut soon, probably as early as next month. In a case resulting from a suit filed by 8 couples against the state Commissioner for Public Health after being denied marriage licences by Madison town clerk, the state supreme court ruled today "In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry."

Many headlines in newspapers around the country and throughout the blogosphere read much like this one from The Boston Globe: "Connecticut Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage." As a friend of mine pointed out,

The Connecticut Supreme Court did not legalize same-sex marriage but rather said that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry because marriage is a fundamental right. Gays and lesbians are a group who have a history of being discriminated against and therefore heightened scrutiny (California went one step further and said strict scrutiny) must be applied to any law which negatively impacts them. The Connecticut Supreme Court based their ruling on equal protection in the Connecticut constitution. Everybody deserves the equal protection of state law.

Essentially the court found that Civil Unions, which Connecticut has had for a couple of years, create a separate and unequal category of citizens.

If you are interested, here are the Supreme Court's decision and the three dissenting opinions:

• SC17716 - Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health
• SC17716 Dissent - Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health
• SC17716 Dissent - Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health
• SC17716 Dissent - Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health

How far we have come in the last 25 years since I returned to Connecticut after college and graduate school in the Midwest. Marriage was the last thing on our minds when the Connecticut Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights worked toward passage of civil rights legislation. In fact, it was the issue of marriage that essentially fractured the organization after the passage of the so-called "gay rights bill." A number of members felt that marriage was the next logical step, while others saw marriage as an institution that had long outlived its purpose. While the Coalition fell apart, with a small remainder limping along, other organizations grew out of the fight for full marriage rights for same-sex couples. It became THE issue for a large number of lbgt activists, and for many conservatives, who used it in attempts to solidify their hold over our society.

This decision is a great stride forward for lbtq folks, but the struggle is not over. There is a question on the ballot this year in Connecticut, one required by the state constitution to be put before the people of the state every 20 years:

Shall there be a Constitutional Convention to amend or revise the Constitution of the State?

There is also the issue of clergy acting as agents of the state for conducting civil marriage. Not to mention the ongoing struggle in our religious institutions regarding the blessing of those marriages.

A lot of education, advocacy, and hard work remains, but for today, let us celebrate a tremendous step forward.

Peace,
Jeffri