Today I’m heading East on business to that lovely vacation spot known as Newark, New Jersey, followed by a quick weekend jaunt to visit the family and a few Goodboys up in Massachusetts. With the temps here in Phoenix today not even getting to 60 (with the 25-mph wind, I actually saw people walking around in coats, if you can believe it!), and expected to drop into the mid-20s tonight, with freeze warnings, I gotta find some warm weather somewhere, right?

Late last week, it looked as if I’d be spending the weekend in Newark due to a huge snowstorm that was supposed to be barreling its way up the Eastern seaboard tomorrow, but thanks to a couple of great weather blogs, it’s been very reassuring to follow the changes in the forecasts that have taken place as my date of departure got closer. I recommend both of them to you: Storm Track (this particular post features one of the most awe-inspiring photos you’ll ever see!), and AccuWeather.com. If you do a lot of traveling, or just have an upcoming vacation planned, you can’t beat either of them.

The talk radio was getting on my nerves almost as much as the lunatic drivers trying to weave their way through the return home, drive-time snail-trail. I thought about running in silent mode, but this commute was going to be a long one, and something that wouldn’t be too distracting to the senses seemed to be in order. Looking through the music I had stashed in my car for just such an occasion, I was surprised to find the collection of Gregorian chant and praise music I had made back when we lived in Massachusetts, during the period I was going through the discernment process for the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

One of the things I love so much about music is its transcendent quality - how a tune, or even part of a tune, can bring you back to a particular moment in time so quickly and intimately that one can recall feelings, people, and senses long since filed away in the subconcious and have them come back almost as strongly as they were at that time. And the feelings were strong as the soft music, and the range of emotions they inspired, washed over me.

What was really amazing is how long ago and how foreign it all seemed - as if it was someone else, not me, who all those memories and emotions recalled. I remember making the tape almost ten years ago, and with each piece of music came a different memory - traveling to and from the retreats I would make to Holy Cross Monastery and SSJE in Cambridge, or the weekly sessions with Don and Eunice Schatz at Life/Work Direction in Jamaica Plain (the first people to affirm my calling), or trips to Boston and the Cowley & Cathedral bookstore to pick up another Thomas Merton or Henri Nouwen book, or the meetings I would have with the various priests and parishioners who helped me discern and focus my calling for the better part of three years.

After our move to Louisville, and during yet another unsuccessful three-year discernment period in the Diocese of Kentucky, I would play the music during the hour-long drives between Louisville and Elizabethtown, where my church was, and where my discernment meetings would take place, and trips between Louisville Presbyterian Seminary (where I attended classes part-time) and my job at UPS.

What I remember most about the music is how it served as a kind-of sanctuary from all the stresses and strains any person who has ever offered themselves up to the Church (mine was the Episcopal, I doubt other denominations are any different) to have their calls to ordained ministry of one kind or another discerned. And as I listened to the music being played, it felt strange to feel so detached from something that was once such an integral part of my life. For it was all still there: all the various obligations and hurdles I had to engage (and at times, endure), all the emotional and spiritual exercises - internally and externally - that became such a part of my daily existence; that strange combination of joy, humility, and terror I remember feeling at learning my calling had been affirmed by those charged with that task; the kind of anguish that only comes when one’s calling is rejected by your diocese and bishop - all of it, still there in my heart and in my head, but now so foreign as to make me wonder if it was, in fact, me who did all that, or someone else who had just borrowed me for that stretch of nearly eight years’ time.

The tape ended just as the traffic finally broke free, and I was once more in the present day - just another commuter heading home from work in the Valley of the Sun. In the quiet of the car, the thought occurred to me: as much as the life I’m currently living seems light years away from those spritually-intense days in Massachusetts and Kentucky, they’re also life years away as well. And there’s satisfaction in knowing that, not only have I survived, but in time have learned to come to terms with it all. For whether in the end I’ll be able to look back and say those years were worth the effort or not, they were nevertheless lived, and to their fullest. And even though I don’t feel like the same person I was back then, it’s somehow comforting to know that that person, and his memories of a time never to be experienced again, can still be found in the music on a cassette tape, played one warm November afternoon heading home from work.

Whenever my friends and I get into a discussion or friendly debate over the merits (or lack thereof) of gay marriage, the arguments they put forth in favor are always pretty much the same:

* Half of heterosexual marriages end in divorce, so what’s the big difference?
* Why get hung up on sexual orientation? Better to have a child grow up in a loving same-sex household than a unhappy heterosexual union or one with only one parent;
* As long as its between consenting adults, what right does the government have to tell people how they should live?

And somewhere in the discussion, I’ll usually come back at them and say, OK, let’s say we allow any two people to marry or enter into a legal union, why stop there? Would you allow three or four people to do the same? At which point, they’ll usually fall back on the argument about unions of two people max being ideal, or better than one, or something along those lines, but to me that’s intellectually disingenuous.

The fact is, once you open the gates to “marriage” or “civil unions” between same-sex couples, it’s a very slippery slope to every out-there activist organization pushing their own bizarre agendas and employing the ACLU to sue for changing the law in their favor. After all, in a free and open society, why not three-person marriages or unions? Or four? Or ten? Or should there be a limit, and if so, why? How about unions with cars or trees? Or unions with animals? (My wife would like that - then she could leave most of her money to her rabbits instead of me! Just kidding, of course, but you get my drift…)

Don’t believe me? streiff at Red State notes that last week, no less than the esteemed Washington Post ran on concurrent days stories sympathetic to non-traditional relationships involving people seeking to hop onto the same-sex marriage argument that gay, lesbian, and transgender activists have been pushing without success over the last few electoral cycles as a way to further their own agendas. He writes:

For those who have ridiculed us traditionalists whenever we raise the usually disreputable “slippery slope” argument in the defense of marriage as understood by most cultures over several millennia these articles should serve as evidence that we are not exaggerating. When viewed through the mawkishly distorted prism of the arguments proffered by proponents of homosexual marriage their particular cases are compelling and if we accept the idea of marriage as some amorphous “human right” they are irrefutable.

My guess is that it’s just the Post’s way of firing its first salvo at soon-to-be-former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon who is keen to enter the 2008 Presidential sweepstakes, but you never know how these things can all of a sudden take off and become such a hot topic in the mainstream dino-media and the cable news channels that the idea actually begins to gain legitimacy.

To me it’s all ridiculous, and just another way the Progressive Left is trying to tear down anything that smacks of the basic fabric that holds this country and society together. Watch them try and turn gay marriage, and then polygamy, into a “civil rights” issue, invoking the ghost of Rosa Parks to try and put their pathetic warped agenda across. What they really want is Rome, and hopefully, more and more states will follow the dozen-plus states who have passed constitutional amendments limiting marriage to that between one man and one woman.

For this country to do anything less is to court both societal and legal chaos and disaster.

How do I know? No, it’s not the foot-and-a-half dumping Vancouver is getting today, or not even the dusting they got in Central Florida last week. Nope, it’s the sad realization that, for the first time this year, we had to turn on the heat this morning after the temperature plummeted to 48 last night. We’re only going to get up to about 72 today.

Get out the woolies!

I’ve been meaning to complete this post for the past two weeks, ever since I read the sermon delivered by the newly-elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC), Katharine Jefferts Schori, at her November 4 investiture at Washington’s National Cathedral. The reason it has taken me so long to put this up is because I usually post what I feel most passionately about first, and put off completing posts I’m less interested in until I get to a point where I figure there’s nothing left to say. So, here it is.

I suppose that in itself says a lot about my feelings about TEC, its new PB, and the sermon she kicked off her tenure with. First off, I do feel it struck a number of right chords both thematically and theologically with its emphasis on personal ministry - feeding, healing, comforting, welcoming, etc. those in our midst and the world we live in - as our own personal expression of “shalom” and “fulfilling the scripture”, as Jesus’ proclamation in the Temple (Luke 4:16-21) attests to …

There’s a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work – shalom. It doesn’t just mean the sort of peace that comes when we’re no longer at war. It’s that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hungry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it’s a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it’s a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it’s a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. …To say “shalom” is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.

..And while she invokes the concept of “shalom” to convey this vision of peace and abundance for all, she could have just as easily invoked the Christian baptismal covenant to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself”, and, to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being” (p. 305, The Book of Common Prayer). No matter, her language still underscores our calling as Christians to transform the world around us by exemplifying the One we call the Christ, the Lord and Savior of the world. The PB’s words also provide a healthy reminder to Episcopalians (and non-Epicopalians) of the Hebrew tradition Christianity evolved out of - something I’m glad to see from the person called and elected to lead our little corner of the Christian faith.

That being said, there’s really nothing here to feel passionate about, nothing any different than you might hear from the pupit of your local parish on any given Sunday. Beyond that, she personally lost me when she reverted to “Episco-speak” by bringing up the Church’s “Millennium Development Goals” initiative - a 3-year program seeking to achieve “global reconciliation” (whatever that means) and relieve global poverty approved at this year’s General Convention (my boldings):

This church has said that our larger vision will be framed and shaped in the coming years by the vision of shalom embedded in the Millennium Development Goals – a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate commitment of each and every one of us. It is God’s vision of homecoming for all humanity.

The ability of any of us to enjoy shalom depends on the health of our neighbors.

Uh huh. Putting aside for a moment the laudable goals of the MDG initiative (goals which, BTW, are not only vague, but unquantifiable, thereby rendering them irrelevant as achievable organizational goals - something any institution worth its salt would understand and never agree to were it success-oriented), I can’t help but wonder if the PB’s passion for “the health of our neighbors” extends to the health of the very institution and its 2.2 million members she has been called upon to lead. And I’m not alone.

When Titus Online, an orthodox blog I occasion from time to time,