rules and clouds and birthday cakes
Adventure this morning, out to a couple of places, well, four places including Busy Bee at PCB for birthday cakes, and here we are home again for the day. We allow ourselves "one thing a day" which means one outing, though may include several stops. The rule seems to be helpful.
Yesterday in, it must have been The New Yorker online, I read an article "Why Do We Obey Rules?" actually talking more about norms, folkways, customs more than mores, morals, laws. Rules that are accepted by members of a society that make for orderly, civilized living. Differ from place to place. Someone who'd lived there told me that no Saudi Arabian driver would stop and wait at a traffic light if no traffic was coming the other way, simply because the light was red, he would consider that nonsensical.
Rules in the Church, we have canons and rubrics to make for constancy and order. Contrary to impressions I may have given over my years as a priest, I'm not for disobeying the rules, but when they interfere unacceptably with a pastoral or worship situation at hand I ignore them.
But I don't always contemn the folks who make the rules. Or who won't agree to changing rules that I think need changing. So-called "open communion" for example. That isn't going to be done at General Convention this year. Maybe some other Time. There are earnest, sincere, and good people in the Episcopal Church who have their own, to them, right and good and proper reasons for holding to the canon that says "No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church." It's tradition, and there's an orderly path to the Communion rail that includes being Baptized first. Apparently, most folks, or the wisest, or most influential, or whatever, believe that the tradition ought to hold.
And I'm okay with letting the rule stand as long as it's not enforced against those of us who don't agree.
I'm also of the view that such things in the church are not appropriate for waging a campaign until we get enough votes to "win", because the lovingkindness of caring about each other is more important than any rule or fight or contest. The Episcopal Church doesn't have to be like the American society in general, a nation bitterly divided and each faction seeking victory against the hated others.
Which is one reason we don't usually hear partisan political and social issues preached from our pulpits.
I've been on both sides of all this, leaving the church in anger for a while back in the 1970s when the church fought bitterly over adopting a new Book of Common Prayer. Found my compatriot rebels consumed with hatred for what they felt the church had done to them. I didn't need that, and so returned to stay. Life's too short to waste any of our Time on hatred. Psalm 90, "so soon passeth it away, and we are gone."
Anyway, General Convention convenes tomorrow, July 8, in Baltimore. Let us see what happens. Baltimore: if I were there I'd be more interested in eating crab cakes and Chesapeake oysters than in discussing proposed church resolutions.
Lovely clouds this morning ...
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
Looked at clouds that way
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all
The dizzy dancing way that you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way
And you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away
From give and take and still somehow
It's love's illusions that I recall
I really don't know love
Really don't know love at all
To say, "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way
And they shake their heads and they tell me that I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
I really don't know life
I really don't know life at all