papal aliens

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:36:26 -0400

Where does the Earth sit in light of itself and in the scheme of what we think of the skies? The biblical narrative threw sand to the stars as it compared them to Abraham's projected prodigy. The Greeks bent the heavens to birth their gods and eternally connected struggle with heroism. Early shipmen routed themselves with starry nights to place what water wet where in concordance with both vessel and the shores they hoped to find again. (We know too of the star that stumbled over some rocky cloud and sunk low, marking out the old place for the wise to aim: god on foot.)

So, does the Earth run around the Sun or the Sun the Earth? It’s an ancient question that traipses back to Archimedes (Eureka!). The response is huge - or was - because the first claims the Earth as center of the cosmos and the second suffers it to one of several planets hinged onto the sun's blessings and curses. When these new hypotheses entered the discussion, they hurled expletives on Aristotelean tradition. What did the Church do? She didn't move. “Damn both Copernicus and Galileo as they pay lip service to ignorant popes and then roll around in the heather of their high science.”

How deadly it was to anchor the Sun and free the Earth. And along with it, to free the Scripture from being strapped down like some Shellifed beast trying to give life where it never intended.

But Joshua made the Sun stand still? Doesn't it say that the Lord's name will be praised from the rising to the setting of the Sun? How can these things be if the Sun is the superstar and not the Earth?

Nevertheless, with the help of Kepler, Galileo threw physics into the heavens and made it stick as truth. Now, there was not only a shift in planetary motion but even in religion, as Kepler held Jesus at heaven's gates four years longer than originally thought (he corrected the calendar). Meanwhile, the pope and his newly founded Jesuit order concerned themselves with retrieving what Martin Luther unwound. And whether you reform or counter the reform, it has always been the work of the Church to look into starry mountains and war-torn valleys and redeem everything she touches to God's side. Worship rots when rationality debunks mystery.

So, tripping onto a dispute with Galileo proved a lesson to the Church: she cannot strong-arm her god into scientific realms by pontifical decree or arguments concerning biblical accuracy. Yes, the papalized man was slow to stoop down in contrition, but Pope John Paul II in the latter part of last century sent apologies to kneel at Galileo's memory:

Another lesson which we can draw is that the different branches of knowledge call for different methods. Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. ...In fact, the Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning. There exist two realms of knowledge, one which has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition. The two realms are not altogether foreign to each other, they have points of contact. The methodologies proper to each make it possible to bring out different aspects of reality.

These episodes are based in reason and facts. Should Scripture mark out the skies and its laws? In their enlightened state, could mathematicians chart out planetary rotations and distances? Can hypotheses reach conclusions with sheer evidences divorced from any faith? Does that make the Church hunter-gatherer, not of divinity but of tangible remains and proofs to substantiate their faith?

Today, most everyone trusts science to call the shots on planets and comets and trips to the Moon. Most of us frequent the doctor and take in diagnoses much easier than church discipline... if that even exists anymore. We fertilize, filterize, and standardize based on the scientific measures and warnings of chemists and biologists or medics or pharmacists. Some would even give up the fight for or against Evolution. And many more are holding their cell phones far from their heads given the recent FDA report. None of these things are necessarily wrong, but the effects might ripple into errors. Because in general religion gets robbed of its mythology while science injects every step we take and every flame-retardant pillow we lay our heads on.

To some degree, the Church works against qualifying every answer with the gravity of reason. She hosts feasts for dead saints and makes the body and blood of Jesus substantive to the flesh and spirit of her congregants. Monastic communities do nothing else but pray for the world (and brew beer). Her parishes are decorated to alarm the senses to what's beyond and above. She believes in the devil and his angels and the unseen fight that rages with Gabriels and Michaels right in front of our noses. And, centrally, she believes in the bodily resurrection of Jesus who was born of a virgin and held magic in his hands.

Now, the Church believes in the possibility of aliens. (What! Startled?) It seems far-fetched considering the suspicious proof in the science community and the fact that nothing is supported in the Scriptures for life forms set in other planets. In fact, no mainstream discussion has ever occurred in the Church on the subject. The Scriptures talk about a new Heaven and a new Earth, but there is no accounting for new stars. The sun does go black and the moon turns red at some point and the stars do drop to earth like figs in a strong wind (they may also be hit by a dragon's tail), but all that is a little desperate to site.

But we know that galaxies upon galaxies sit just beyond the visible stars. Were they made only for humanity to play under and send rovers to explore? Is an aftereffect of Galileo dislodging the Earth the knowledge that maybe humans fight wars and find love in a more finite space than once perceived?

Perhaps.

And Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory, has given us more to think about. "How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he said in a recent interview. Even further, these potential space creatures may be more powerful than humans according to Funes.

"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said.

I guess if a Wells-like invasion materializes, the Pope will cross himself while wearing his big hat and bless his extraterrestrial brothers. Maybe... yes, possibly... he even received that gauntlet as an abduction gift and... his task is to seed the world for the coming of the mother craft!

Whatever the reasoning for inviting aliens into the Christian imagination we can be sure that it's more about the belief of God as creator. Perhaps he has never stopped his six days on-one day off routine. The Church holds to an omnipotent Lord and King of all creation, both what we see and what we don't, both what we know and what we can only imagine in a galaxy far, far away.

(I just hope these aliens don't wear red shoes.)

(To read the article and Funes and extraterrestrials go to: www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/14/news/vat.php)

8 June 2008

horton meets stein

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:51:58 -0400

An animated elephant and a foil named Ben Stein. One finds a spec, the other play on hype. Both get ridiculed but only one holds a truth worth dying for and that’s Horton... who hears a Who.

I’ll get to Horton after we weed out the intelligently designed garden that Stein advocates.

According to Stein, the universe is ordered and purposed, aka a creator made it. But there’s a problem. A standing army of white intelligentsia has sent this idea and its carefully boxed god over the cliff to rot with Gadarene pigs. What to do... what to do. I’ve got it! Let’s demonstrate the flaws in their stalemate hypotheses about the origin of life and the makeup of the universe. What better way than a documentary film that proves the scientific world can be unjust to naysayers even with the “greats” saying things like this (from Einstein) -

The harmony of natural law... reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

You go Einstein... and since you’re not around, we’ll listen to Stein. Expelled tries to support god-in-code-language in a realm that outthought him (God, that is) years ago. Why? Because what’s the point? Science and religion aren’t after the same ends. One seeks to develop a vocabulary and premise that keeps the heavens where they currently sit - the upper atmosphere of the earth and beyond, held there by mutual gravitation. The other holds that the heavens have dropped down and continue to stoop in order to give us a story, not a set of facts. The former will never invite the latter to supper and the latter should not prove its saltiness by identifying salt as a crystalline compound, sodium chloride, NaCl, for example. The proofs fall by the waysides of faith. Salt is a non sequitur with light as much as God is to any proofs fashioned by warrants. So, in the end, Stein’s hunt is lost because it’s never found and hardly founded.

In contrast, Horton Hears a Who tells the story of a civilization in peril that needs rescuing. Horton, a crazed elephant, happens upon this small world which he discovers on a spec when he hears faint voices. Despite the ridicule, Horton is convinced of this silly conclusion, and he is compelled to believe and protect the spec from the dangers all around it... dangers that only Horton knows completely. Rejected in his newfound belief and subsequent mission, Horton could easily stomp out the world and be done with the humiliation, but a person’s a person no matter how small, you see? That’s the whisper of the work. Finally with the chant, “We are here, we are here” performed by every Who down in Whoville (even the “Smallest of all”), there is a breakthrough. The kangaroos and monkeys believe. “‘How true! Yes, how true,’ said the big kangaroo. ‘From now on, I’m going to protect them with you.’”

Intentionally putting aside political interpretations of the 1954 story for the wider frame of the 2008 film adaptation, it’s interesting what we can glean from Horton. We have a world that exists yet it’s origins are unknown. One day the mayor of Whoville hears Horton through a broken drainpipe. He learns about the insignificant size of his world, the cause for several disastrous tremors, and what might be a dreadful end if Horton is unsuccessful. What can the mayor do? Without only inferences, he must convince the Whos to look into the sky and sing. He must tell them about his conversations with an elephant, about the miniscule size of everything they hold familiar. In the end, it is only hearing the voice of Horton in the drainpipe that motivates the town to action.

Here’s what we believe. God is the Almighty maker of heaven and earth. Jesus, the only begotten, was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin Mary. He became man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day. Now he sits on God’s right hand. We believe in the Holy Spirit and one holy catholic church, and one baptism for remission of our sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and life in the age to come.

Guess what? We believe that belief makes us who we are. We didn’t make it but it’s making and remaking us. Ask about conclusions built from evidences and you achieve a faith harnessed by validation and not scandal. Try proving the world was crafted by an intelligent designer and you shrink that designer to an artificial need of a post-Enlightenment age that wants facts and ration, not faith and miracle.

God is the grand magician and one of his tricks is to hide. Set the Sabbath and make a check list, think to know the mysteries of why the skies are wired shut and the ground can't seem to jump, search under every watered-down hole in your soul and you will never get out of the shallow end. Science can’t assess the who, only the what. It is imagination that establishes curiosity and curiosity faith. If we start with the hypothesis that God can be found we will be looking wrongheadedly. However, if we give up the hunt and reconcile God mysterious who completes all earthly myths through his son, we will not need reason as a guide but rather a support in our efforts to evaluate the visible and invisible, the spec in hand and the galaxies above.

8 May 2008

new bodies

Fri, 4 Apr 2008 23:07:33 -0400

The nineteenth century stomped into the the twentieth with full guns ablaze, ready to roll out the marching orders of greedy capitalists and domineering socialists. They had set their philosophical stages to make possible the most brutal century in human history, rightly predicted by G.K. Chesterton: “Men will more and more realise that there is no meaning in democracy if there is no meaning in anything; and that there is no meaning in anything if the universe has not a centre of significance and an authority that is the author of our rights.” The century on-hand will likely offer violence that invades the territories of people much more than maps, guising technology in usefulness and medicine in necessity. Natural human functions will not provide stimuli enough for you to either live comfortably nor accomplish the demands wrought by society.

Take, for example, a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Be Everywhere Now.” It addresses the omnipresence of students. The author explains that students are nearly always in seven places at once and never any place wholly. With buds in their ears atmosphere gets textured into a Hollywood movie. Glued to laptops, screen layers flatten the world to a pancake. Language is econofied through phones and hand-held devices while blue teeth attached to ears enables the talking to fruit or wind commonplace.

Competitive sports demonstrates a similar effect. Physical ability is hardly the way to accomplish untouched success nowadays. Superheroes are what sell tickets and break records. Like our machines, we want greater performances, faster action, and new legacies. Who cares about that fat-ass Babe Ruth, anyway? We now have conditioning by pyramiding science and talent, gym candy and ability.

The doctor’s office may tackle transfiguration next. Did you see the CBS story on regenerative medicine that aired Easter Sunday? (Here’s a link.) It reported on a man who, after losing the tip of his finger in a work accident, sprinkled on the wound a powdery substance made from pig intestines. The finger grew back in four weeks. The scientists think they can trick the body to repair itself instead of nubbing off serious injury. Who’s behind the research? The military. Think eugenics... backwards. They hope the technology can reproduce skin cells and whole limbs, blood vessels and complete organs. Wearing out may be optional in the future.

Even better, maybe you can download your memory and knowledge onto a hard-drive in the future and upload yourself into another body.

Why not? Isn’t it true that the body is a mere shell served by the soul for a handful of years and then discarded? Aren’t we jars of clay made in our mother’s womb and pushed out into air? True, our soul is weaved into the hair of our head (for God says he knows the count), but is it dependent on it? (The bald would say no.) Aren’t we immortals with eternity carved into carnality?

It proves that humanity never forgot the serpent’s promise: “You will be like gods.” Cut off the flesh and affix to an eternal source... Epistasis!? No. Upostasis!? You no longer need to be caught between skies and gravity.

Death, where is your sting? Where, O death are your plagues? And grave, where is your destruction?

Here’s the catch: it’s all softly spoken and wears the mask of innocence.

Why not grow back your limb or down a pill to make your world normal? It avoids both lengthy hospital stays and checkins at the asylum.

Why not artificially inseminate your womb? It beats suffering through prayers like Hannah and Elizabeth even if it’s necessary to thievishly pry open a window in heaven?

“Because Heaven should know better; God should too. Doesn’t he know what we're all suffering down here?”

Isn’t that what you’re really asking? Can the Unknowable really understand the knowable? Can the Maker of souls tap your interworkings or did he simply set your course? Can the timeless dip into time for you and me?

But there are other questions. A prominent one begins with “God gifted the hands of the surgeon and equipped her/him with knowledge to do this, so...” I only buy this to a point. It hinges on what your qualifying or justifying. Surgeons are equipped to give sex changes but that doesn’t make it right. Does it? How about breast enhancements? Or grandma on an oxygen machine? Are these okay? Maybe, maybe not.

If science is able to alleviate death, does the church have a role in society? Chances are, the promise given in Eden will circle back and science will figure on a way to make new habitats for memory and knowledge. Where is the soul? The Hebrews thought the liver, earlier Christians said the heart, and today we name the head. Science supports the contemporary theory: all veins lead to it and all functions, including the conscience, extend from it.

Yet, I wonder if the soul can fit inside the brain. Perhaps, if it is purely essence it doesn’t matter. The soul inhabits the big toe as much as the pancreas as much as the ear lobe. Certainly this is true to a point. There is no spare room on the soul’s house; you can’t compartmentalize it out. But, perhaps here is where transubstantiation - that act of bread and wine turning to Christ body and blood by a priest’s invitation - serves a powerful conclusion. God inhabits soul and flesh. You are mini-christ not only because of what you believe but who you are down to the cartilage. Remember that Jesus ascended in the flesh with all the scars of his earthly experience. And Scripture says your soul will reunite with your body when “day” loses its hooks. This is principally why Christians have disdained cremation. (Naive? Or are we more gnostic?)

Modernity put on the clothes of Nietzsche’s superman and our era is supplying flesh and bone. What we do with these new technologies matter. Jesus says he came to give life more abundantly. Science is preaching the same message. Jesus’ abundant life ends in death; there is no avoidance. Each day we die and at the end of our lives we die again. That’s the only way victory is afforded by the divine. Science hands out a different scenario. It loves life so much that it seeks to protect it at all costs. And one day it may shut up that gapping flaw in life’s structure: temporalness. The temptation is the same as Eden. Just remember that if you find your life you will lose it; give it up and find it again.

8 April 2008

sexfest at church

Mon, 3 Mar 2008 14:30:28 -0500

Sexfest at church. Why not? God said he’d supply our needs in great abundance. And besides, these marriage conferences are as dry as dirt. But, sexfest? That’s the stuff of mud wrestling.

So my mind fills up with all kinds of images. Our church has a fair amount of 30-somethings but the majority of our membership are older than the hills. That’s one image. Lots of wrinkles. Another image is historical - the temple prostitution circuit of Rome and Greece. I guess the pagans figured out the simple logic of making promiscuity a religious pursuit - a sacrifice to the gods. And now we have jumbo-trons to enhance the focus even more. All eyes on the stage.

I also imagine the scowl on Augustine’s face. And Martin Luther surely regrets his rebel-rousing.

What is happening? Relevant Church in Tampa, Florida is challenging their members to participate in something they call the 30-Day Sex Challenge. The premise is for married couples to have sex every day for 30 days. From their site - “People are not having enough sex. An epidemic of breakups proves the needs that lead to a great sex life are being overlooked. Dirty dishes, frumpy clothes, and a lack of authentic connections are killing the romance. A great sex life is a challenge and takes focus, determination, and planning. Some say it’s an unrealistic goal, but we disagree. We believe you can have a great sex life, in fact we believe God wants you to have a great sex life.”

Okay, so it’s a little more purified than the prostitutes in pagan temples. But the focus on sexual appetite is the same. The challenge comes with a calendar that I suspect you sticker with shiny gold stars. They also supply readings from Song of Songs primarily - “Take me away with you - hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers.” Maybe this helps if you need to roll play.

The challenge sounds very chauvinistic to me. As ABC commentator Harry Smith said in an interview with the Pastor Paul Wirth, “I’m trying to think what the downside could possibly be to trying it...” I bet my wife could name a few things; I could as well. It puts both people in an awkward place by demanding a sexual performance because of a church commitment. I may be flying solo here, but I don’t want the church anywhere close to my bedroom (missionary position or not).

All of this focus on your family and now sacramental screwing is bothersome. The Bible seems to stand somewhat removed from both subjects. Yes, procreation was a command in the garden and there are references to sex all through Scripture. It is usually about sexual infidelity tagged with other issues. Abraham lacked faith, David - humility, Solomon - satisfaction. When we get to Jesus, he directs adultery inward, but there is no direct references to marriage let alone sex in that relationship. He changes water to wine at a marriage feast (which might encourage drunkenness with sexual activity), and he mentions bridegrooms in parables. And Paul has little to say (he might ask women to cover their heads) while Peter sees marriage as the representation of Christ and his church. It’s as if marriage and marriage sex is assumed and not hyped up.

It’s really just another gimmick along the Purpose Driven Life push and Debunking The Da Vinci Code nonsense. But we shouldn’t be surprised. One of the core values of Relevant Church is “to be as current as today’s newspapers.” And Relevant Church is launching this during the holiest days on the church calendar. Isn’t Lent more about abstaining from indulgent behaviors rather than erecting additional ones?

Maybe Relevant Church has figured out that you can add “under the sheets” to rock-n-roll Christian chorus music too. Maybe they even sell KY lubricant and WWJD thongs in their church coffee shop. I hope not.

8 March 2008

carter baptists

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 23:22:46 -0500

The week bumped up against the start of Lent. We began our road trip to Atlanta which sits a few hours north of us. The air felt crisp and expecting. Uneventful, we drove to the outskirts, parked the car, and tracked in by way of MARTA. The heart of the city. The air now carried a whip. We walked headlong in between goliath-sized buildings and into the sprawl of convention center land. The Georgia World Congress Center.
We were an odd threesome: a short widow, a tall preacher, and an average 30 something.
Carolyn’s feet don’t reach the floor when she sits down so she carries a wooden briefcase to prop them up. She had it with her on our trip. I never saw what was inside, but I imagined the notes and pins and reading materials had a certain wizardry about them.
Bob felt at home in the land of tall buildings since his scalp nearly scraped the tops of doors. He is 50-ish with a full head of hair and a faux leather notebook that gives that familiar appearance of studious note taking. He never opened it.
I followed this stilted man and shrunken woman, charmed to be part of a canterbury pilgrimage sharing our tales with each other on the way.
Oh, me? I’m a forgetful character in my five-eleven, thinning hair, and Scottish nose way. I carried a camera to make an attempt at capturing the throngs of people or document one of the celebrity encounters. Both would help justify taking a full day off from work. I wanted something tangible, visible, noticeable. Like Bob’s notebook, I left with no real photos.
In the guts of this giant beast of a building more than 15,000 Baptists roamed. This, I thought, would be a sight to behold. I had always taken Baptist exposures with trepidation and only in small doses. Overdue it, I said to myself, and you might become one of them. Yes. One of them -- one of those strange creatures that roam my childhood, going door-to-door and asking neighbors what they’d say to Jesus if death swallowed them up that very night -- one of those absurd dancing preachers that wouldn’t shut up until the Holy Ghost prompted some young schmuck to walk up front and be born again -- one of those double speakers who doled out friendship as a way of winning souls. One of those. But now, just before the penitent season, I faced a golden horde of Baptist faithful in a winding labyrinth that placed exit doors far out of my reach. I was stuck.
The simple history of Baptists is categorized by hatred - of them and by them. If you trace back to the Anabaptist movement, it infuriated papists, Lutherans, and Calvinists alike as John Leyden’s gang ripped through rituals and sacraments. If you don’t carry their history to that age, even as an anti-establishment movement against state sanctioned churches in England in the 1600s, the Baptist roots are divisive. In America, they have served as instigators of abolition and promoters of slavery, members of the suffragette movement and staunch supporters of women as a second class, pro-wine and pro-tea. As you may know, the Southern Baptists broke ranks with the Triennial Baptists in 1845 in a ardent decision to support slavery. Since then, the Southern Baptist Convention has grown to nearly 20 million. And, I should say that since those early years of wrong decisions about slavery, the SBC has contributed to a wide amount of good. For example, they promoted high levels of missionary work around the world and created one of the printing operations to circulate Bible study curriculum.
The noted controversy that leads to my recent excursion to Atlanta is the Fundamentalists takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s. What were their fundamentals? What triggered a battle of control and qin-styled absolutism? Here are some reasons. First, they were appalled to hear that creation may not have happened in seven days and evolution carried some noteworthy possibilities. They didn’t appreciate the Bible being held in the hands of higher critics in an effort, as they saw it, to defame the truth. They hated those pious professors in Baptist seminaries that wouldn’t stop exploring the nature of God and questioning the practices of the church and qualifying a place for science. So Paige Patterson, W.A. Criswell and Adrian Rogers started working the system to ring out those watery liberals from their group. They did. They fired the professors who liked Socrates. They bound women in Pauline servitude to men. They birthed a fourth rung of the Triune God by placing the Bible as Inerrant Plus. And they told homosexuals to go f--k themselves and enjoy it now because hellfire draweth nigh. And, as a further isolationist tactic, they pulled out of the Baptist World Alliance because it leaned too liberal for their taste. Now the Southern Baptist Convention lives in a house all by themselves where they play their own games with their very own version of Jesus.
This separation grieved many people including Jimmy Carter. For more than a decade, he has encouraged dialogue and resolve, not in a push to make cookie cutter churches and congregants, but with the desire to find commonality and, centrally, love for each other. So, Carter instigated the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant that would invite all Baptists in North America to a large meeting in Atlanta, January 30 - February 1, 2008. The meeting would carry no set agenda aside from a general hope to prompt unity, dialogue, and love among Baptists. The discussions: obligations to peace and care for the world’s disenfranchised. The list of attenders would include more than 30 Baptist organizations. However, the effort paid to officially invite the Southern Baptists would fall on common rhetoric.
“I will not be part of any smokescreen left-wing liberal agenda that seeks to deny the greatest need in our world, that being that the lost be shown the way to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord,” shouted SBC President Frank Page in a May 30, 2007 press release.
Cut back to inside our Atlanta labyrinth, the short widow, tall preacher, and average joe weaved in and out of sessions and exhibitions that intensely presented the Gospel of Jesus and all its layers. One layer that seemed to fade into a promising rainbow was the color of skin. In a mix that felt natural and not paraded, black, brown, and white worshipped and celebrated the unity and diversity that are hallmarks of the Christian faith from its earliest days.
Celebrities didn’t make appearances but they made appeals to love more than respect, unite more than critique, and serve Christ more than politics. On Thursday (the day of our experience), we heard author John Grisham share perspectives from his childhood in a narrow-minded Southern Baptist church as opposed to his church today that counters that history in important ways. We also heard pastor Julie Pennington-Russell about the need for honesty and something more than simply respect. There were many other notable sermons and presentations over the three day event. ...Bill Clinton talked about withholding judgement of others because we only know in part, quoting St. Paul. Tony Campolo and Marian Wright Eldeman advocated that poverty can be eliminated as we work out the love of Jesus. Al Gore pointed to our stewardship of the earth as a keen priority and responsibility. Jimmy Carter and Bill Shaw brought home the ideals of peace with justice. The list goes on.
By the time we left, Carolyn looked a few inches taller. “This is the way it used to be,” she said, “Like family. Everyone like family.” Bob took Carolyn’s wooden case and politely gestured a b-line to the door, sideways through the throngs of people. I think he realized the late hour and remembered he had to preach on Sunday, both at the same time. It had started to rain so we walked briskly to the MARTA stop rethinking what we had heard, seen, and now knew in a more profound way... that is, what it means to claim an identity with Baptists.
I still wondered what magic spells and stories filled Carolyn’s little wooden case. Perhaps it held the secrets to bring together the Lutheran Missouri Synod with Evangelical Lutherans, United Methodists with African Methodists, and even the Orthodox with Catholics.

8 February 2008