Tackling the complexities of theology, one church program and sharpie at a time.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
love poem from mary magdalene (writer’s group poem, prompt: persona poem from controversial figure)
hallelujah to your carpenter’s hands
hosanna to the wide calluses which have evened out
the wear of my fleshshalom in the stained shadow of your temple
there is rest for the weary pooled in your lips
i am no Samarian but let me drink
from that well,
again.praise be the naked slope of your back
glory to that plank of cedar with its
sand colored dip
holy is the scent of your
breath in the evening
drowned in the Galilee
the way it colors your voice
olive branch
each exhale a peace offering
tell me
how many doves are caged in your chest?is there room for a raven?
amen, in your arms
amen, i am the half strung harp of the psalmist
amen, teach me hymn or heart breakamen, i am a cracked clay vessel
amen, i am brimming with
over-expensive oilamen, its heady scent is a burgundy carpet of
myrrh rolled out on my tear soaked tongue
amen, there are no love poems for
love made manifest
amen, my mouth has known the blood and wine
of your crucifixamen,
amen
i say againamen.
So my mom and I watched the Canadian tv show Slings and Arrows recently and quite enjoyed it! There are a lot of interesting faces in the show so I decided to waste some time doing these watercolor doodles of some of my favorite characters. Most of these are from the main cast, but some have much smaller roles — I just like them.
Characters from left to right:
Oliver Welles. “You’re talking to a ghost! Wake up and smell the coffin!” — Geoffrey Tennant. “You stay in the theater because you don’t wanna starve to death? Now that is irony.” — Ellen Fanshaw. “Oh God. And I’m alone, just me and my dehydrated chameleon.”
Darren Nichols. “Life is just fucking nuts, isn’t it?” — Richard Smith-Jones. “Darren! Everyone cries when they’re stabbed. There’s no shame in that!” — Maria. “Because all stage managers are pot-smoking lesbians, right?”
Frank and Cyril. — Anna Conroy. “Sometimes it’s best to just work through the tears. That’s what I do.” — Jerry.Nahum. “I must confess — I love drama!” — The Mortimer Brothers. “We’ve never removed a head before.”
Other reasons to watch call the midwife: Sister Evangelina. Woman has her priorities in order.
TV Non-Sequitur
Ok so I just need to ramble about Call the Midwife a little bit, specifically Chummy. So Call the Midwife really suits a lot of my tastes so I can’t review it very objectively, but oh my god can we just appreciate the fact that the one character who has the least socially accepted body type is the one that gets the really adorable, romantic love story where the main source of angst is NOT CENTERED ON HOW SHE LOOKS. And not only that but once she starts seeing the guy it’s apparent that she’s comfortable with her sexuality and in her body and it’s just a really cute romance you guys.
So I competed in a haiku deathmatch tonight and to sort of not really at all make up for my absence here was my favorite spiritual haiku of the night:
A cross is just a
shaky kind of ladder, he
said so don’t look down.
Okay so random updates I recently got a new computer and am trying to figure out how to hook it up to my scanner which is why there has been no black out poetry for a while.
Also tonight, my girlfriend and I are going to see Oedipus! the Musical which was directed by my chaplain’s boyfriend and then tomorrow we are going to a dialogue about scriptures shared by Judaism and Christianity. Just, I don’t know, if you wanted a sense of what I’ve been up to my plans for tonight pretty much sums that up.
Greek Pantheon Asks
Aphrodite: What do you find attractive in a partner?
Apollo: Favourite song?
Ares: If you had to fight someone in a duel, what would be your weapon of choice?
Artemis: Favourite animal?
Athena: Do you have any special talents?
Demeter: Favourite food?
Dionysus: Favourite drink?
Hades: If you could meet a person from history, who would it be and why?
Hephaestus: If you could learn a skill instantly, what would you choose?
Hera: Do you want to get married and/or have children?
Hermes: Where in the world would you most like to visit?
Hestia: Where do you most want to live?
Poseidon: If you were shipwrecked on a tropical island, what would you want to have with you?
Zeus: If you ruled the world, what would you change?
Faith comes and goes. It rises like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is presumptuous to think that unbelief will.
Flannery O’Connor (via thedappledthings)
So I’m going to an Episcopal student leadership conference this summer and one of the people going started sending an email around so we could do introductions.
In her bio she says she is a Harvard Divinity student, interested in gender justice who likes to go camping with her wife.
GEE I WONDER WHY I WOUND UP IN THIS DENOMINATION
Many conservative Christians are willing to acknowledge that the Scripture reflects the cultures of its time when it comes to social and economic issues, but seem to be unable to see the same influence of long-gone culture on attitudes towards sex and sexuality. They will sometimes find ingenious ways of sheltering the latter from a social or cultural critique or amendment, such as asserting that some things are creation ordinances while others are mere management of human weakness — which doesn’t hold up well on examination, since some of the commands issued at creation have since been eliminated or ignored; or by claiming that the Law of Moses can neatly be divided between “civil” and “sacred” matters — a notion the theocrat Moses would have found to be very odd indeed.
It is fine to say that the church should not bend to the culture of this age, but also fair to point out that the church need not bend to the culture of some former age, merely on the grounds that the culture in question was dominant at the time the scriptures were recorded.
