Midlife Meditation

                           They came to St. Louis hoping to win hearts and minds as liberals always do: through love, prayer, empathy, compassion, witness, dialogue, building relationships, scriptural principles, appealing to the better angels of humanity. And as is almost always the case, they lost to cold-hearted power mongering. Liberals wave the banner of hope; conservatives count votes and bargain away principles to consolidate and preserve power. It's how Donald Trump was elected president, how Mitch McConnell is stacking the Supreme Court, how Benjamin Netanyahu is staying in office, how Brexit passed and is still the law of the land, and on and on. Time and again, conservatives have demonstrated through their actions that principles are a commodity. That's how it was in St. Louis, as United Methodists from around the world gathered to decide, once and for all, if one of the world's...

These boundaries go better with seat cushions. So much gray hair. That was my first thought walking into a sanctuary with 120 of my fellow United Methodist clergy for the "Healthy Boundaries" workshop I was grudgingly giving up a Saturday to attend. Many--most?--of the middle-aged and older ministers (there were perhaps three under the age of 40) filling the pews were there because, as the workshop leader acknowledged in her opening remarks, our presence was mandated. We'd all received letters and emails telling us that, to remain active in ministry, we had to attend. Now, I'm no longer a parish minister--my status is "honorably located," and as a public school music teacher, I'm under no supervision at all--but the waiver I would've had to sign to skip the workshop, stating I would not engage in any  of the tasks of the pastoral office, was so broad (it included "teaching," for instance) that I decided to grit my teeth and go. ...

Dr. Strange combing through possible futures. Avengers: Infinity War  is a movie that is long on action, overstuffed with characters, and is very short on plot. It also has a surprisingly shocking conclusion (less surprising when one remembers this is just the first half of the story it's telling) that has genuinely moving moments. At the heart of this colorful, constantly moving slugfest is a single profound moment, upon which the inevitable redemption of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (coming in 2019) rests: mystical magician Dr. Strange's clairvoyant trance. For less than a minute, his image blurs, he appears to have multiple arms, his head buzzes back and forth like that of Fox Mulder caught in a flying saucer's tractor beam. He comes out of it announcing to his super-teammates that he has just analyzed more than a million possible outcomes to their confrontation with cosmic villain Thanos, and there's only one that saves the countless trillions of souls that ...

Jumbotrons somehow manage to make Annual Conference look even more conventional. Thursday night reminded me why I used to love going to Annual Conference. I was there for the annual memorial service, when the conference lifts up the names of clergy and clergy family members who've passed away since the last conference session. I was there to honor my father. This was yet another in the long line of observations of Dad's passing that will culminate next month with the scattering of his ashes. I was prepared for the reading of his name, for the singing of traditional hymns, for the extended sermon by a retiring clergy person. What I wasn't ready for was how much it felt like coming home. In so many ways, it was if I'd never left: all those faces I recognized, so many of them coming up to me before and after the service to warmly greet me, share their condolences, wish me and my family well. Participating in the service was like putting on an old shoe: every...

1925: the Ku Klux Klan marches on Washington, their faces fully exposed. Brace yourselves, boys and girls. It's going to be a bumpy ride. This week, the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church affirmed Rev. Frank Schaefer's reinstatement to the ministry. Schaefer had been defrocked for presiding over his son's wedding to another man, reinstated on appeal to a higher church court, then had that appeal appealed by the board that originally defrocked him, putting it in the hands of the denomination's extremely cautious highest court. True to form, the Judicial Council's decision was based entirely on procedure, doing all it could to avoid setting anything resembling a precedent: the Board of Ordained Ministry had used incorrect procedures to punish Schaefer, therefore its original decision was void. There is nothing here to protect him, or any other pastor, the next time a Methodist-minister-blessed gay wedding takes place; in fact, next time there'...

One of these people is gay. I had no idea. Correction time: I said in my last post that I didn't really befriend a gay person until I was in my 30s, and serving a gay-friendly Reconciling Congregation. That was only partly true. In fact, I did have a close gay friend, but I was completely ignorant of his orientation. In fact, I only learned he was gay at our 25th college reunion, in 2008. It's not that strange that I didn't know this about him when we were classmates, living in the same dorm, part of a clique we called The Group. Scott dated women, belonged to a fraternity, and was, the last time I saw him before that reunion, engaged to a woman. Then he moved to North Carolina, and I heard nothing from him for about fifteen years. Then came the reunion. We met at an alumni mixer at which we only knew each other, got out of it as quickly as we could, and went out for a beer. There, Scott just mentioned in the conversation that he had a partner, and call...

"We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history." --Judge John E. Jones III, in his opinion striking down Pennsylvania's version of the Defense of Marriage Act I started my last post with this quote, but didn't really address it. The occasion of its writing was a cause for great celebration, as marriage equality is now the law of the land in nineteen states. Of the remaining 31, discriminatory marriage legislation has been challenged in court in all but one, and given the perfect victory record of every previous challenge, it is just a matter of time--months, perhaps--until gay and lesbian couples can enter into civilly recognized marriage contracts throughout the United States. (It might take a little longer in North Dakota, the only state without such a lawsuit in progress.) This is, as I just said, cause for celebration. It's been a long time coming, and now it's happening so quickly!...

I waited ten years to become an elder, and fought hard to obtain that status. To an extent, it cost me my first marriage. Four and a half years later, I stepped down from my appointment, going on what has become a permanent leave of absence. Ultimately, ordination in the United Methodist Church just didn't work out for me. Increasingly, my former colleagues, particularly those in the Western and Northeastern Jurisdictions, have found the strictures of ordination an uncomfortable fit for them. Some of them have voluntarily surrendered their orders rather than continue to submit to church discipline with regard to the full inclusion of sexual minorities in the ministry and mission of the church. Many others have found themselves put on trial for disobeying that discipline, performing weddings for same-sex couples or openly acknowledging that they are, themselves, self-avowed and practicing gay men or lesbians. Meanwhile, I am still an elder, honorably located (translation: happily ...

Sure took you long enough. United Methodist bishops have been paying lip service to inclusiveness for decades. Many have played a convoluted game of pretending not to know some of the pastors they are appointing are gay or lesbian, despite knowing their same-sex partners well: just as long as the pastors don't officially come out, using precise language, to the Bishop or his or her representatives, the charade can go on, much to the disgust of the conservatives who crafted the church rules banning these persons from ministry. It's harder to work around the restrictions on performing same-sex unions, whether they're legal marriages or liturgical commitment ceremonies with no legal standing. The Discipline  prohibits any United Methodist minister from performing any kind of wedding for a same gender couple, and does so in language that cannot be worked around. The best a gay-marrying pastor can hope for is that word won't get back to the Bishop, that somehow this bl...

You may have heard the term "cheap grace" before. It was coined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a prophetic German theologian executed by the Nazis just before the end of World War II. Here's a brief definition, from his book The Cost of Discipleship: Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. I yesterday became aware of a corollary cheapness in the form of a courageous-sounding open letter from a Bishop. The occasion for the letter was the defrocking three days ago of Frank Schaefer, a Pennsylvania United Methodist pastor convicted of performing a same-gender marriage ceremony for his son. The conference board that administered the punishment was acting as required by the Book of Discipline, a set of laws govern...