Like Cinco De Mayo, but in July

Tales of the City

Watching the original series, Tales of the City (1994), I remember so much about why I love San Francisco; so much about why I don’t live there now. Brodie asked me once if I could move there (or NYC) and without hesitation, the reply was “Yes”. The unhealthy things that SF drew out of me would not be there now - not because SF had changed, but because I had. So, watching Tales, one wonders what SF would be like now.

Blisters

Reposted from a long time ago…

In the fall of 1984, my friend Anne showed up at NYU. She and I, along with her roommate, Linda, were prone to doing (and fond of doing) street theatre. ONe night we did the Balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet: Linda was studying R&J and Anne thought it might help her if she could read the scene with a man. I thought it might help her if she could read the scene with a man who was several stories below… So, Linda stuck her head out of their tiny, 4th floor room in the (then) Judson Hall Dorm (next to the Judson Memorial Baptist Church). And I wondered across W4th Street to the edge of Washington Square Park.

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Clicking the Ruby Slippers

As I blogged a while ago, reading Dom Gregory Dix’ Jew and Greek, I was confused and surprised by his dual assertions that:

A) When meeting Gentiles, Jewish ideas about Jesus’ divine power needed to be expressly stated by assertions of Jesus’ divinity.
B) Nothing much changed as the Church evolved from a sect of Judaism to a mostly-Gentile movement.

But it makes sense, from a cultural standpoint. Even today, we hear about Rabbis who are especially holy and maybe even the Messiah. But we never hear of Jews saying Rabbi X is the Son of God and God Incarnate. Such concepts arise from Gentiles and from a Gentile reading of the Old Testament (and, specifically, from a Gentile reading of a Greek Translation of the Old Testament). Here is the original post on the topic from 2007. Read the discussion and you’ll find a link to part II. I’m most thankful to Fr E, William Tighe and Chris Jones for profound contributions to that discussion. (Rereading it for this post was a sheer joy!)

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Happy Canada Day!

In Honour of Canada Day, I present this special report from McLeans:

Special Canada Day Report: How Canada stole the American Dream The numbers are in. Compared to the U.S., we work less, live longer, enjoy better health and have more sex. And get this: now we’re wealthier too.

And don’t forget to read the part on sex!

After more than 20 years of talking about sex, Johanson knows that the stereotype of the Canadian as frigid northerner — who prefers ice hockey to other, more steamy pursuits — is far from true. The numbers agree: compared to our American cousins, Canadians have more sex, with more partners, in more creative ways. But the numbers also tell us that we have fewer teen pregnancies and we’re less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)… [snip]… All in all, it seems we have more sex with fewer negative consequences because we’re less afraid of it. According to McKay, “countries with more liberal attitudes to sex tend to have lower teen pregnancy and STD rates.”

And here’s one of my favourite episodes of Cute with Chris

A discussion of voting

Is taking place in parts of the Catholic blogosphere:

But I am not, nor have I ever been, an absolutist when it comes to voting. I find both positions problematic: to insist one has a duty to vote or to insist that Christians may never vote is to elevate voting to a level of importance that it does not deserve. Indeed, voting is mostly just a game. Rhetoric of “change” is simply that: rhetoric. As the saying (sometimes attributed to Phillip Berrigan) goes, if voting could really change anything, they would make it illegal.

And they point us to an interesting book on the political theory of Not-Voting

Myths and Doctrine

I was in Toronto this weekend past, and so I didn’t get a chance to write my weekly meditation on the lectionary texts. But I happened to notice that today was the Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul (transferred in the Anglican tradition). And so, with supper tonight, I dug around in the texts and found the following:

For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

I don’t want to delve into which is which, or which idea may be “true” and which one “false”. But I think it interesting that the Greek words for “myth” and “doctrine” both refer to oral teachings:

mythos is “a speech, word, saying, a narrative, story.” didaskalias is a “teaching, instruction”.

But we are to like one and reject the other. We are warned about people who reverse those.

I find it interesting to note that, for some, it is stories of God, at all, that are “just myths”. For others conservative theology is based on “myths” which are taken as literal truths. For still a different groups of people, it is those who accept fabulous tales or miracles and the like that are following myths. For St Paul it’s possible that the words of St Luke’s Gospel, combining stories of Jesus with ancient, Pagan stories, were mythological.

Again, I don’t need to get into which is which: but it’s clearly a case of cultural identification. When the one side of an argument says the other is following myths - we need to know where the author gets his definitions. In the case of this writing in 2 Timothy, we instead read in our own understanding - and we do so at great peril.

Excursus: Eucharistic Sacrifice

We continue with the serialised posting of Rick Fabian’s Worship at St Gregory’s, with the permission of the author and the publisher.

Editor’s Note: In the print version of Worship at St Gregory’s, the following text appears between the passages discussing the Preface and the Great Thanksgiving. I Have moved it forward one step, as it were, so that the theology of the act is presented here, before the discussion of the liturgical action begins. For the reader, Fabian’s discussion of our evolving understanding of Jesus’ life and death may be present strong challenges to deeply-held assumptions about Christianity, but it is important to know the ideas from which the actions flow. I find it interesting that, in this theory, it is our pagan ideas of sacrifice, outside of Jesus’ Jewish context, that have influenced our understanding Jesus’ actions.

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Kiss of Peace

We continue with the postings from Rick Fabian’s Worship at St Gregory’s, with the permission of the author and the publisher.

When the Procession hymn finishes, the Presider announces the Kiss of Peace: the clergy kiss the table, and all embrace each other throughout the church, saying “Peace be with you!”

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Tripudium Procession to the Table and Transfer of Gifts

We continue with the postings from Rick Fabian’s Worship at St Gregory’s, with the permission of the author and the publisher.

Now the Clergy lead the people to the altar area, singing a hymn and marching together in the ancient Tripudium step: three steps forward, one step back. This dance survives in Luxembourg today, where it is still used for the offertory procession at Pentecost, and the Benedictine scholar Godfrey Diekmann taught it to St Gregory’s congregation in 1980. It serves a great many hymns in the Episcopal Hymnbook, including most of those in duple or quadruple meters, and even other meters that provide four downbeats per line. We explain the step quickly, ask all to place a hand on the shoulder of someone ahead of them, sing, and start marching once the hymn is underway.