Reflections on 9/10

I have been reading commentaries on the Gospel for 9/11/11, Matthew 18:21-35, amidst the growing thunder of the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. For most Americans, their Bible reading is bits and pieces called pericopes that they get on Sundays from their denominational lectionary. The Church's teaching, catechisis, has become so dismal that even the most regular church goers may not know that the readings on Sundays are pericopes not a contiguous reading of the Bible, especially the Gospels.

Another group of Americans, are member of Bible study groups/denominations that can tear you with quotations from the Old Testament and the New Testament excluding the Gospels. That is what I find fascinating, as Christians why would we base our foundation in that which has been completed, fulfilled the Old Testament or the implications/result of an encounter with the living and active Gospel as told by individuals in the New Testament, i.e. the letters of Paul (actual and attributed) and Revelation.

A third group of Americans I the group that believes they have read the Bible because they have been given decontextualized verses and teachings, usually by the above mentioned group two. This group is where the Gospel in it's unabridged, uninterpreted power is liberating. People are thirsting for the spirit quenching drink of the well of love that Jesus taught - not the oppression of the teaching contained the secular religion of the American Way.

See, I was in NYC on 9/11 and this anniversary is not about America and it's way of life but about forgiveness and love. All of creation, including all of humanity, has been forgiven. All of creation, including ALL OF humanity, is loved by God. God is love. That is the 10th Anniversary story in a nutshell - no politics, no self righteousness, no justice, no hatred, but only our call to love and forgive.

Peace, mitakuye oyasin

Trying the iPod Blogger App

I have never been a true blogger, whatever that is, nor have I claimed to be one. I do think that there is place for reflection, comment, editorial in a communication plan, which is how I use my various blogs.

Part of the problem that I have had is with the lack of a truly mobile way to communicate, I should say write, blog entries. This is why I would never claim to be a blogger, writer because I do not sit and write as a job like activity. I write when things need to escape from the limited confines of my brain.

Social Media, facebook and Twitter, has provided a very limited outlet for short bursts of that brain stuff. Social media is OK but it is limited both in content and coverage size. For me it is also dangerous due to the built in snarkiness contained in either 140 or 500 characters.

So here goes another attempt at communicating through the bloggersphere. I eagerly await the native iPad app from Google Blogger which hopefully will have link capabilities and other functionality.

Content and Consistency

I have been very delinquent in using the format of blogging to communicate with the world. I need to continue to decide how, why, where to communicate what to the outside. Consistency is not one of my virtues, if I have any virtues. I have found that in order to blog, use a web page, etc. that one has to have two basic things:

1.  Content. Stuff to use as resources in your blog, on your website, etc. This then forces one to decide on the purpose of the blog, website, etc. because one can become immobilized by the amount of potential resources available. 
2. Consistency. Using a blog, website, etc. to communicate to the world is only as compelling as your last post. Consistent posts creates the allusion of pertinent and new content/communication. 

For Bishop Whipple Mission the search, the desire for effective communication continues. I am reaching some discernment points in my ministry - hopefully they will result in more Content and Consistency for this blog and the community

Vacation Thoughts 1

I have been trying to get prepared to switch from preaching through the Gospel of Mark to the Gospel of Luke (Revised Common Lectionary [RCL]Year C). While in Washington have I have been reading the Bible: The Gospel according to Luke, "The Social World of Luke-Acts" edited by Jerome Neyrey and "Reading Luke: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Third Gospel" by Charles H. Talbert plus my continued descent into the contextual commentaries on the culture, context, reality that Jesus and the early movements that evolved into Christianity existed. I am interested in the concepts of oral performance and social memory in preaching, especially in an Injun church.

I think I have found one of the texts that I will use for New Testament in the BWM Christian Formation curricula - "Jesus in Context: Power, People, & Performance" by Richard A. Horsley. I am plowing through it to get the themes and will reread in depth this winter. I have to get serious about this Christian Formation curricula, time is slipping away.

Windy and rainy once again here in Stanwood, WA on one of the bays of the Puget  Sound. Yesterday outta nowhere it hailed for about 3 minutes - little bitty, teeny weeny hail stones.

Trying again

Here is an attempt to recommit to writing or more appropriately reflecting through the blogs: Native Mission Ministry Reflections, Bishop Whipple Vicar and dakotarez. I have discovered that the social networking environment has a stratified atmosphere that again I do not or will not understand. I think that if I go to blogging school, pay attention and do my homework - my blogs maybe the way to go.

Why?

Let me count the ways. First and foremost, is that the blogs are under my control: it is my content, it is my opinions, it is my response to myself and the stimuli that I encounter, and only those that want to read them, will read them. Second, is the fact that I am only accountable to myself which is more than enough. I do not have to explain, justify, qualify my posts to anyone but myself since I am the only one that reads them anyway. Third, I am not responsible enough  for public discourse. Fourth, I am lazy and do not want to change my evil ways.

What are the blogs and their intentions. Probably the most benign is Bishop Whipple Vicar where I will post, reflect on, discuss things about Bishop Whipple Mission/St. Cornelia's Church. The content is based on the local context of the Vicar of an historic Episcopal Church mission to the Dakota people remaining and residing in the Lower Sioux Indian Community of southwestern Minnesota along the ancient River Warren now known as the Minnesota River.

A little more self reflective and antagonistic but still focused on Indian country Christianity is the blog Native Mission Ministry Reflections. This is the beginning of the explanation of why I will never make it to heaven - I definitely have an us/them, me/you, mine/theirs view of the world where names are used and processes accused. Sometimes self-righteousness is the dominate attitude in the posts in this blog but done with sufficient sarcasm, irony and Dakota pessimism to make it readable and tolerable. Anyway, that is the intent of the content.

Last but not least is the loosest of the three blogs dakotarez , where it is a blog free for all, full of free flowing, stream of conscience type of content about anything Indian, Native American, American Indian, Amerind, Indigenous, First Nations, First Nations, Fourth World, People of the Land, First Peoples, Aboriginal, etc. It is a blog full of personal, tribal, cultural contradictions, contraindications, inflammatory commentary, and delicate philosophical ditties about all things spatially contextual. Metaphorical conflicts of epic proportions flow across, through the posts - totally out of context and place. Nothing is sacred but all is filled with spirit. It is my favorite blog without a purpose.

So there you have it - so long social networking, its been fun to know ya.

Annual Meeting - Joy Pleasure What

I have been contemplating the Bishop Whipple Mission 2008 Annual Meeting as directed by the Canons of the Episcopal Diocese of MN, Governing Rules, and tradition. The intersection of Canons and tradition is where my heart lies because that is the place where the rubber meets the road.

We gather as community, family, and church to elect members to the Bishop's Committee, the Region/Diocese delegation, and one Officer, the Junior Warden. This place of rules, that have evolved and changed, and Bishop Whipple tradition, which has not evolved or changed as much as the canons, is called the Annual Meeting where it was/is a mediated access to the leadership of the church. This leadership was not the same as the tribal government leadership or tribal leadership. These are nuanced but significant differences in role, authority and power.

The modern institutional church has a lack of clarity surrounding role, authority and power. I should probably move lack of clarity to the category of confusion, bewilderment or/and control. I have spent an inordinate amount of time locked in the throes of the meaning, implication, and outcome of the this lack of clarity. The only outcome that is definite and identifiable is the distraction from the call to discernment and discipleship God has continually and consistently laid before me.

So January 20, 2008 is the Bishop Whipple Mission Annual Meeting, where the lack of clarity will attempt to distract us from our walk through God's creation as Gospel Based Disciples.

Tata - that all folks.

Words Words Words

I have been thinking about words. Words with power. Words with power to create. Words with power to divide. Words with mythical power. Words with with power to create reality.

Sets of words that fascinate me today are: you/me; us/them; we/they; any pronouns that set division, fissure in place. These sets of words and their relatives take on many forms in the daily conversation that surrounds me in my family, friends, and community creating divisions that define me and my relationships, actions and reality.

These words define power, create power, use power in the modern world (oops postmodern) in which we live. Combine this fact with the post colonial environment in which I exist, a small Indian community in SW MN, and the power of words explodes with devastation and annihilation of mind and spirit.

I have come to a point were the issue is the word power. The word power indicates a commodity, a resource, a desire, a need, a tool, a lack of belief. Word power is a privilege that those who believe (confused yet?) in power exercise with many forms of finesse and prowess.

I was at the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota (SmokyWater) Convention were the perceived exercise of power was in the finesse and prowess one used in front of microphones and in clusters of us/them in the hallways and corners. It was a picture of lack of belief and scramble for salvation - Power. Some of my brothers and sisters described being exhausted following this exercise of word power. For those that live daily in this onslaught of words of inclusion/exclusion, of fissure, of division, of have/have nots the Convention was another walk in the park of truth, somewhat tiring due to the walk but nothing extraordinarily strenuous. In fact for those on the them side of the word sets, this particular walk in the park of truth was kinda pretty, we now have new friends on our side of the fissure, they just don't know it but oh do they feel it - can we say exhaustion?

Words, words, words. See, how easy it is to use the word sets of power in confusion with belief, righteousness, truth. I have been challenged by my naive awareness that words should be about the inclusion of God's incarnate love. God's desire is for us to supersede/predicate our truths, our reality with the love of God and neighbor, the filter of all our human words, our human creation.

The kicker for me was the RCL Gospel appointed for All Saints YearC (Luke 6:20-31). Beginning at verse 27 the action picks up, "to you that listen, Love your enemies. This was followed by do good to, bless, and pray for all varieties of "them". Then, here is the punch line, "Do to others as you would have them do you." This is not a philosophical platitude but a call, as disciples, to action. Do to others, is not a thought but a deed. The philosophy could enter into as you would have them do to you but that is a modern (oops post modern) cultural tendency not what the gospel says because for Jesus it was core of the Torah (another cultural tendency), the love of God and neighbor, that is what we would have them do to us (a proper use of us/them).

I have to leave for a Department of Indian Work Clericus.

Tata and Peace.