Eclectic Amateur

Caught up

As both of my long-time readers can tell, I’ve converted Eclectic Amateur back to Blogger. Hopefully, Bloogle is better now than when I gave up on it in disgust. Oh, and despite certain

snarky comments, I’m turning Haloscan comments on.

How many rocks did CBS have to turn over to find a case of “homeschooled” kids dying from neglect?

How much coverage have they given Terri Schiavo?

And which one of these stories is front page right now at cbsnews.com?

Screwtape and friends must be working overtime.

God have mercy.

Creative Income Sources

Punjabi, the Indian puppet has some great ideas on how to turn

lemons into lemonade:

Interviewer: Punjabi, I know you’re from India. Did you study with a yogi?

Punjabi: Oh, no, no. I came to this country to study mathematics at the University. But people thought that because I was from India, I must meditate. They all asked me to teach. I said to myself, “What the heck? You just close your eyes.” I supported myself through college.

Interviewer: Really? So you don’t meditate?

Punjabi: I do now.

Read The Whole Thing™.

Education: Not Entirely Wasted

This is probably only hysterically funny to people who’ve read (or

memorized, like I had to in high school English class) Chaucer’s

Prologue to the <a

href=”http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm”>Canturbury Tales:

The Sacramento Tales

Whan that Septembre with his shoures sote

Summers droghte hath percéd to the rote,

And bathéd Napas vynes with swich licour

As makéth Gallo Brothers shayre price soare;

Whan al vacacioun tyme is used and gonne

And beaches emptye lye beneath the sonne,

Whan freeways clogge with workers offys-bounde

Whyl scole-buses mak roade rage all arounde.

Whan harlots on the Strippe crye to be payd

By Englishe heart-throbbes crusyng for rough trayd

(Whom Nature hath anon depryved of braynes!)

Than longen folk to run polityckal campaygns

And pollsters for to scanne ye publick moode

By telephoun and questionnaire intrude.

And specially, from every countys ende

Of Golden State, to Sacramento wende,

The Governour's fyn castel for to wyn

And dwel with powre and glorie ful therein.

Derb should be kept busy “translating” this new find — I think that

Chaucer had less pilgrims than California has candidates.

Victor Lams Goes Off His Meds …

… due to

overexposure to Marty Haugen:

So before Mass today Herr Gottesdienstfuhrer approaches the microphone and says that today there’s “something familiar — and a little different” which in Liturgical Director speak means “bend over — and this time, no lube”.

Really, Victor, don’t hold back — tell us how you really feel.

Actually, buck up (or should I say “offer it up”?), it could be

worse. You could be <a

href=”http://www.anglican.tk/”>Episcopalian.

Time to live up to the blog name

It was not my intent to turn Eclectic Amateur into the “All Gene Robinson,

all the time” channel. It’s done (<a

href=”http://mcj.bloghorn.com/74″>dissembling by Frank Griswold to the

contrary), and there’s nothing to do but mourn. And wait to see

what the October meetings bring, but that probably won’t matter to me,

no matter what the Primates decide or what happens to ECUSA.

On to other topics!

Yes, I was here when The Lights Went Out™. Minor adventures,

finally got my generator working but not in time to save most of the

freezer items. Nothing serious. Detroit did not spontaneously

combust or otherwise descend into chaos, much to the chagrin of

newshounds worldwide.

NOAA has a very nice page with <a

href=”http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s2015.htm”>images of the

blackout from space. Here’s an annotated view:

<img

src=”http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/nightlights/blackout081503-7hrsafter-text.jpg”

alt=”big dark sky image”>

I’m impressed at the lights in Albany; must be from the generator that

Senator Clinton had running.

Also, I found an <a

href=”http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/departments/emergency_management/em_05052003wallcloud”>article

and online picture of the <a

href=”http://www.zfrey.com/blog/030505.html”>wall cloud sighting

that I blogged back in May:

<img

src=”http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/departments/emergency_management/assets/em_05052003wallcloud”

alt=”not a tornado, but it sure looks like one”>

Comments have been eliminated, because (a) I never got Haloscan

properly integrated with Blogmax anyway, and (b) I never got any

comments anyhow. I’ll hope that’s because of (a) and not because I’ve

never written anything comment-worthy.

Well, they did it. General Convention confirmed the election of Canon Gene “New Easter” Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Along with approval of the development of rites for blessing same-sex “unions” and urging more embryonic stem-cell research. About the only thing that didn’t happen was the appointment of our first openly-Muslim bishop. (Give it time, give it time …)

Whoever granted Wendy Griffith her press pass to anything remotely Episcopalian must be kicking themselves right now. She’s hit two grand slams in the last week. First, she gets Frank Griswold to do his best deer in the headlights impression:

Wendy Griffith, a reporter with the Christian Broadcasting Network, asked presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold about Bishop-elect V. Gene Robinson, who was confirmed Tuesday as the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop. He is divorced and lives with his male partner.

If, the reporter asked, a divorced male bishop could live with a man to whom he was not married, what about a divorced heterosexual male bishop living with a female lover?

“Or,” she added, “is being outside marriage only OK if you are gay?”

“The Episcopal Church honors holy matrimony,” Bishop Griswold said, “and certainly if a male were elected bishop and was living with a woman without benefit of clergy, that would be a significant problem.”

“So there’s a double standard, then?” Miss Griffith asked, at which point church spokesman Jim Solheim abruptly ended the press conference.

I’ll just bet he did.

Then, she gets to do her special reporter jujutsu on V. Gene himself (via MCJ):

CBN reporter Wendy Griffith asked Robinson how he reconciles the gay lifestyle with the Bible.

Griffith asked, “How would you interpret Romans 1:26-‘For even the women exchange the natural use for what is against nature, likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the women, burn in their lust for one another; man with man committing what is shameful.’ How do you reconcile that?”

Robinson suggested that the Scriptures are out of date.

“Uh, when those Scriptures were written in both the Old and New Testaments, everyone was presumed to be heterosexual, so to act in any other manner would be against one’s natural inclinations. The whole notion of sexual orientation is only about a hundred years old. So to take the concept of homosexuality as a sexual orientation and to read it back into an ancient text, uh-is very shaky ground to be on.”

Proving that not only is V. Gene ignorant of Scripture, he doesn’t care to know squat about history, either.

But Griffith isn’t done with V. Gene just yet —

Reporter Wendy Griffith asked him,

“Is Jesus Christ the only way, as Jesus says, ‘I am the Way, the Truth
and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except by me?'”

Robinson’s reply: “I would be the last person in the world to try to put God in some kind of a box.”

I don’t care if V. Gene was laser-beam straight. If he can’t answer that question with a simple “yes”, he has no business as a bishop. Or priest. Or Sunday-school teacher. Janitor or mechanic, maybe. At least then he’d be doing some honest work.

Welcome to everyone following Mark Shea’s link to my little screed on “tolerance” and “respect for diversity.” Oh, and on behalf of the citizens of the great State of Michigan (and my mortally offended wife), I’d like to offer an apology to the delegate from Holy Cross who was so “tolerated” by the delegates from Michigan. (Really! Not everyone from Michigan is rude!)

Also, thanks to Dale Price and CaNN for their links.

I don’t have much more to offer today. While I am glad that the Bishops have put off their final vote on the election of Gene Robinson, the allegations
against Gene Robinson are extremely troubling. My semi-random thoughts:

• Of course, this will be chalked up to a “smear campaign.”
• I fully expect that hagiographies of “Gene Robinson, Slandered
  Saint” are already in the writing.
• I almost hope this is a smear, because the alternative is
  too awful.
• I almost hope this is not a smear, because if it is, no voice
  for sexual orthodoxy and sanity will get a hearing in the ECUSA for as
  long as it continues to exist (or until 2008, whichever comes first).
• The pathetic thing is that it would take this to make the
  bishops reconsider confirming this man as a successor to the
  Apostles. Apparantly, breaking your vows before God to be faithful to
  your “marriage partner” (or can we stills say “wife”?) and claiming
  that God called him to do this is not enough to disqualify him
  utterly.

David Mills has a fine essay: Be
Fair to the Liberals: How Worldview Affects Communion It’s not
written specifically about the current General Convention, but it’s (sadly) still quite relevant. (Linked from Episcopalian.org.)

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

–Gideon J. Tucker

“To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in
the making.”

–Otto von Bismarck

The Episcopal Church of the United States of America’s General Convention is in session. Even more so than usual, it’s impossible to watch if I want to retain respect.

Apparantly, some Michigan
delegates decides to share some “tolerance for diversity” with a South
Carolina delegate on the way. God bless us all, isn’t it great
how we’re honoring the dignity of every man, woman, and transgendered
muddle, as long as they’re not “intolerant”?

This goes, for me, into the category of those who natter about racism (and make the claim that anyone who believes that Jesus means what He said might as well be a cross-burning sheet wearer), yet entirely disrespect the opinions of real, live Africans as “ignorant” and “superstitious”. (You listening, Bishop Spong?)

Went with the whole family last Sunday to the open-air service and picnic afterwards at our old parish, St. Martha’s on Joy Road in Detroit.

While it was good to see the old place again, and to catch up with family and friends, it was a bit unsettling at the same time. On the grounds of St. Martha’s, everything is mostly the same. The signs of physical decay are subtle — a large tree fallen from some storm, and obviously not dealt with for some time. Grass starting to grow in the cracks of the sidewalks and parking lot. The cement chips from the crumbling in the east entrance that nobody ever uses any more (and that have been there for years now anyway). The furniture on the sidewalk from the tenant they had to evict from the old rectory, and knowlege that the deadbeat S.O.B. has left the church with a remodelling bill they can’t possibly afford to pay.

Nothing much, really. Certainly not compared to the blight that is the surrounding neighborhood. That’s pretty much the same as it was, too. Oh, a couple of the storefront churches have new paint jobs, some more buildings are empty, a few have changed hands, the usual. The sign by the open field at Southfield and Joy is by now a cruel joke — this is where the Herman Gardens housing project used to be. Now, there’s grass, and the tall trees that used to line the streets are still standing. That, and the “Herman Gardens Revitalization Project — Coming Soon” sign behind the fence that’s been there since the demolishion back in 1996 or so. (See this Freep article for some of the story behind the housing project delay. Meanwhile, I wonder what happened to the people living there when they decided to tear it down and (not) start over.)

I found an image of the old project apartments titled Row Houses at Herman Gardens. This is pretty much how I remember them:

The other signs were not encouraging, either. Some of the old regulars are still there (but so few, so few!). Some of the little kids I remember are now unrecognizable teenagers. The numbers are still depressingly low; there are not nearly enough in this parish to support such a facility, especially given the age of many. The most hopeful sign was to see that there had been Vacation Bible School that week, and to learn that the Sunday School was still operating.

There was mention of the current controvery which is fully expected to consume the General
Convention starting tomorrow, other than a generic prayer for wisdom and unity which studiously avoiding any appearance of taking sides. Whatever. I could not help but wonder how St. Martha’s could possibly survive if there is a general implosion of the Anglican
Communion in general, and the Episcopal Church in particular, this year if the advice
of the Archbishop of Canterbury is not heeded and the General Convention insists on triggering full-scale schism in the church. (So much for “dialog”. Or respecting the opinions of the Africans.)

Remember that tree I mentioned? Its fall has left a gap in the windbreak on the east side of the church grounds. Now that it’s gone, the minaret of the next-door Islamic Center of America
is clearly visible, looming over the parking lot:

It was not a hopeful omen.

(Images of St. Martha’s and the Islamic Center are from DetroitYES – The Fabulous Ruins of
Detroit, a wonderful and heartbreaking site.)