Corrupt Churches

Those of us in liturgical churches in the U.S.
Have much to complain about to God.
"See here, You have made a frightful mess,
And it's up to You to straighten it out!"

The Roman Catholic Church has been bankrupted
In settlements of the psychic damages caused
By the predations of pedophile priests.
The faithful are still faithful, but to what?

Churches are closed and sold off.
Seminaries no longer attract celibate candidates.
Rome refuses to ordain women priests.
And the war against abortion consumes all attention.

The Episcopal Church is now a gay church,
Announces the Bishop of New Hampshire.
Its presiding bishop rides a broom as she swoops down
To depose rebellious clergy from their priestly functions.

She and her hatchetman insist that diocesan bishops
Sue the rector and vestry individually
For daring to separate from her apostate church.
Assets are seized and doors are barred.

The Presbyterian church has split into factions.
The Lutheran church already was divided into rival synods.
The largest has now inspired another schism
In the debate over the role of homosexual clergy.

So far the Methodists are holding together
But the forces of divisiveness keep pressing issues
That will eventually corrode the denomination
In the same way as their brethren churches.

Is there no end to these bitter factional quarrels?
Where does theological truth lie?
We need another Great Awakening
To put things right in God's house.

Closing Prayer for Discussion Group

Almighty God, today we studied your Word.
Today, and tomorrow, and all the days thereafter,
We must practice what it means to be Christian
In a troubled and difficult world.

We must love God with all our heart,
We must love our neighbors as ourselves,
Jesus tell us to do so in our daily lives,
By following the directions He has given us.

To be an example, to be a witness
To the revealed truth that makes us free.
To tell the good news to all who will listen,
That his grace makes us pure in heart.

So that we can bear any burden, endure any suffering,
Obtain the strength to carry on in life's tests,
And celebrate the joys we have on earth,
Until we achieve eternal joy in his kingdom.

Opening Prayer for Discussion Groups

Dear Lord, as we gather together
To better understand Your Word,
Help us to keep our minds open
During our discussions.

Remove the barriers of ingrained assumption.
Make us listen to all who contribute insight,
And thereby appreciate how Your love
Permeates diverse points of view.

We meet to expand our knowledge of You,
To find pathways by which we may exercise faith in action,
And spread your Good News to those
Outside our circle of faith in this room.

We are scholars, we are sinners, we are neighbors.
Shine your light upon us
As we seek to become fuller Christian
In thought, word, and deed. Amen

Holy Mother Church

Once, at The Church of The Holy Spirit in Orleans, Massachusetts,
David preached a sermon in which he referred to us as "Holy Mother Church."
On the way out, I told David that I left HMC a long time ago;
He said Holy Mother Church never left you!

Now, in October 2009, the mountain has come to Mohammed,
That is, HMC is reaching out to co-opt and ingather traditional Anglicans
By offering to receive Anglican parishes as "discrete bodies"
Into the arms of the Holy Roman Empire, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church.

Little do the Vatican officials who hatched this plot
Realize that they have opened the door to cataclysmic change in their Church.
Heretofore, they have received only individual Anglicans, who "swim the Tiber."
Including married Anglican clerics who are retreaded as Catholic priests.

When they get a whole bunch, nothing but trouble will result.
Their own clergy will begin to demand the right to be married, too.
Their bishops will have to deal with fractious vestries,
Who are used to functioning independent of church hierarchy.

Anglican parishes call their own clergy, subject to diocesan approval,
And do not hold still for having someone assigned by outside authority.
Anglicans do not accept theological precepts they do not agree with,
Certainly not from a foreign-born bishop in a palace in Rome.

No doubt the Vatican is looking for substantial revenue from affluent Anglicans.
They will find all such funds specifically reserved for pet causes of donors.
Anglicans are a stiff-necked people, who will not behave like Catholic sheep,
Who bend the knee, bow the head, and reach into their pockets.

Revolt will spread.
Free thought will infest the Catholic faithful.
The specter of women's ordination will arise
To haunt the planners at the Vatican.

General Convention 2009

From Anaheim in Lotus Land,
The Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.
Sailed off on a lavender cloud
To an unknown shore of religious practice.

Parting from the Anglican Communion,
Firmly engaged in the post modern culture
Of changing beliefs and mutable standards,
TEC leaves behind their brethren of centuries.

Will the newly enlightened church be able
To withstand the pressure for continuing innovations?
Will they find a bedrock of Truth,
Or engage in an ever changing exegesis of the Word?

What becomes of those in TEC
Who cling to the faith of their fathers?
Will they be forced to accept practices they abhor
Or be drummed out of membership?

A rival Anglican province lurks in the wings,
Ready to sweep up the outcasts.
But supposed we do not want to transfer
From a melting ice floe to a strange new island?

This once was ours, this failed experiment
In encompassing a wide range of Christian theology.
Its rationale is no longer relevant;
We must take sides in a quarrel we did not begin.

Death and Resurrection

A Church dies; a Church is born!
The Episcopal Church implodes.
The Anglican Church in North America commences.
Two Anglican provinces occupy the same territory.

The curtain in the temple is rent asunder again,
As schism divides worshippers into two armies of God.
One calls itself progressive; the other traditional.
Labeling their opponents revisionist vs. reasserter.

The media ascribes the split as to whether homosexual mores
Shall be accepted in all offices and rites of the Church.
Scholars say it is a struggle for truth, for the revealed Word,
As being fixed, or open to reinterpretation in changing times.

Alas, there once was a dear old church, formally known
as The Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.
We were proud that it functioned as a big tent,
Encompassing a wide range of theological differences.

The rector of the parish was called mister,
Wearing a cassock, surplice, and stole,
Conducting Morning Prayer with its canticles and psalms.
Celebrating Holy Eucharist monthly with prayerful preparation.

We were known as God's frozen people, The Republican Party
at prayer,
The movers and shakers, the country club members.
Guilty of the great sins of pride, arrogance, indifference
and snobbery.
We enjoyed the majesty of the prayers, the beauty of the hymns,
and chatting at the coffee hour.

The Presence -- A science ficton tale

At the far side of our galaxy lies a planet as big as Jupiter.
We can't see it, of course, although many "exo-planets"
have been identified which surround stars that we can see.
Astronomers look for occlusion of the light temporarily
from a nearby star, and attribute it to the passing of an
exo-planet. They can even calculate the period of
revolution around the "sun" of that planet.

How do we know that an exo-planet exists that we
cannot see? From The Presence, which is its life form.
The Presence occupies its whole planet in an unbreakable
blanket similar to early microbial life on Earth. There
is no individuality, only the intelligence of The Presence
as a whole. No, he, she, or it. The Presence can monitor
living organisms on other planets, by a process we do
not understand. And has been sensing us for the very
short time that intelligent life has existed on earth. We
do not know how long the The Presence has existed.

What The Presence finds on Earth is appalling. Our
organisms are in a constant war with one another,
particularly the sentient beings. So much so that The
Presence has tried to establish a lasting sense
of goodness among us. First "they," if we may call
them that, identified a small, obscure band of nomads
in the Middle East who developed an idea of The
Presence almost four thousand years ago. However,
their actions hardly suited the guidance that The
Presence tried to communicate to them.

So they morphed into a man in the normal process of
gestation on this planet, and gave him the power
to teach their understanding of how eternal goodness
could be spread on earth. During a short period, their
representative on Earth taught all who would listen,
and performed acts of healing to demonstrate his
power.

But he was so alien in his concepts to those in
authority that they contrived to put him to death.
That would be the end of him and his disruption
of the power that they exercised over others. Then,
a few days after he was duly killed, he appeared
to people who had followed him, not as a spirit,
but as a conscious being. He was already part
of The Presence, and therefore his life could not
be ended.

He was integrated back to The Presence on his
home planet, but still he watches over us on Earth.
He tried to get us to understand, and sometimes
intervenes in our lives to get us to follow a better
direction than we could on our own. It is a fierce
struggle, one that seemingly never ends. But it
will end some day, when The Presence absorbs
those of us who have followed his teaching, into
an eternal life of love and goodness.