Barkings Of An Old Dog

An alert out to all… blogger down over here… needs some help from all of us!!! NOW!!!

Help! I’ve got a problem that I seem powerless to overcome… Sudoku… anyone else have the problem? The day isn’t complete without doing 3 or 4 of them, it seems… It all started when my brother gave me my first fix book of puzzles, and now I can’t stop doing the darn things. It’s been a year and a half now, and I thought in time I could control it, it would fade, but it seems to be getting worse… anyone want need to start a Sudoku Anonymous group? Anyone?

Oh, don’t click on the picture!

Well, April seems to be my time to delve into the “dark side” of Anglicanism.

After finishing Marcus Borg’s book, I tackled John Shelbey Spong’s book. Some will try to fit the 2 authors into the same place, which seems unfortunate to me. Mr. Borg’s book is like a painting done by a master, with great finesse in the strokes, poetry in the composition, and great care taken to provide hope and encouragement in seeing the Bible anew. Some will say that he has, in fact, just written one book in his life, but he’s done it again and again. Perhaps that’s true, but perhaps I need to read what he’s written again and again. I find his thoughfulness and nuances to be refreshing, like a person painting with a very fine brush, working with precision, care, and attention to detail.

Bishop Spong uses a spray can to get his points across. Again, there are those who say he’s only written one book over and over again, which may in fact be true as well. This one brought back to mind the Firesign Theater’s album “Everything You Know Is Wrong!”. 12 Apostles - Wrong! Miracles of Jesus - Wrong! Entrance into Jerusalm - Wrong! Crucifixion as we portray it in the Bible - Wrong! Like a graffiti artist, pehaps some of this is done to shock, perturb, and slap us into thinking about what we “know”. Where Dr. Borg says that the historicity of the Gospels may or may not be accurate and what we need to do is reach beyond to see deeper meaning, Bishop Spong says the historicity is clearly hokum to him and he sees no reason to keep going back to it, that we need to toss the whole thing out and create anew. I think this broad brush painting style (perhaps roller painting style is more acurate!) is done deliberately to get people to think about the meaning of Jesus beyond the texts.

All in all, worth the time, but I may think twice about reading another edition of the Spong series. I’m not a big fan of graffiti. I think Jack’s an agent provocateur who likes to see what happens when you hit a sleeping dog. On the other hand, Dr. Borg continues to be creative and sensitive to seeing afresh the meaning of the Gospels for us in the 21st century.

For all you real theologians out there snickering at my reading choices, keep in mind, I’m an old dog… and sometimes you just have to follow your nose to find the right path…

For those who have been following along, I’ve had another experience of a sort of “house church”… our priest, in his utter wisdom, has started an Easter thing whereby we gather together, have a shared meal, sing a few songs, and then celebrate a simplified Eucharist together. For some reason the simplicity of this whole thing just makes it one whole lot of fun. We end up by giving each other the bread and cup, and the smiles when it is over seem to indicate that everyone is really into the small, intimate nature of the gathering. There’s a whole lot of laughter during the evening, and we all head off feeling slightly better than when we came. Nobody’s shouting, prophecying or endlessly drumming. A giant wag of the tail out to our priest, possibly the best in our dioese, including what’s his name with the big stick… keeping it simple, meaningful, and true to Christ.

Well, I guess the folks at the Episcopal Café knew perfectly well what they were doing… you don’t want to hang out with dogs in purgatory!

Shunning seems to be my lot in life…

Either that or they are not fans of PhotoShopping (and I wouldn’t blame them!)… see, that’s why I had to start the Anglican Pub, so I’d have someplace to hang my head and drink my bowl of ale.

Impossible to show my joy at this moment, but here’s a cousin’s joy which will give an approximation of my own elation!

A wag of the tail goes out to MadPriest…. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

In one of my last posts or comments I made some reference about taking the fun out of fundamental, and it caused me to stop and ponder. (Are you pondering what I’m pondering?)… why are those people over there so seemingly joyless? We have this plethora of thoughtful virtual pubs like MadPriest’s and BC’s and Mimi’s Étouffée Stand and St. Pat’s and Dennis’s Wine Bar and PseudoPiskie’s and Ann’s and Susan’s and the Diocese of Wenchoster as well as joints like Mark’s and Jim’s and Elizabeth’s and Barbara’s and the Admiral’s and Jake’s and Wormwood’s Doxy and Padre Mickey’s and Nina’s Deli and Jane R’s and Fr. Matthew’s and toujoursdan’s and Eileen’s and (insert your name here… yes, you, do it - sorry I’ve missed so many others, but consider yourselves named and admired !!!!), each and every one imbued with a sense of humor and zest that colours the reflections they put down in bits and bytes.

Why is that?

They have sites with names like… well, you know the names. They’ve seemingly sucked the joy out of this adventure of life we’re on. Somebody order them up a cooling drink and tell them to laugh a little. They may think they’re headed to a different place than us, but even an old dog knows better. Tell some jokes, laugh with Jesus, buy us all over here a round. Grab a hammer or a frying pan, there’s work to be done in the world - we have a kingdom to build up, and laughter will make the jobs easier. Come on, you know you want to. They’ll be plenty of time to fight later.

You have my permission.

Perhaps this should have gone in my “weird list”, but through the magic of Bloglines, I keep up with some of the more “fundamental” blogs (seems to me they’ve sucked the fun out of fundamental, but that’s another story). Yesterday I ran into a story posted by the Lovely and Caring Matt+’s wife, Anne+ in her blog (nope, no links from me to there, find it yourself if you care to) and in it she says:

As all rumors, it led a fleeting and exciting life, flying all the way round town, through the other 9 Episcopal churches, so that every Episcopalian in town was able to nod slowly and say, ‘oh yes, of course, Matt Kennedy, what an evil jerk’.

I can assure Anne+ of 3 things.

1. The rumor did not fly through every Episcopal church in town.
2. The vast majority of Episcopalians in town could care less what Matt+ is up to.
3. When you say every Episcopalian in town thought of Matt+ as an evil jerk, you are wrong. I’ve never heard anyone call him evil.

And I believe there are only 8 other churches in the district.

There, I think we’ve corrected the story.