... especially the second stanza.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation;
O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation;
all ye who hear,
brothers and sisters draw near,
praise him in glad adoration.

Praise to the Lord, who o'er all things so wondrously reigneth,
shelters thee under his wings, yea, so gently sustaineth:
hast thou not seen
how thy heart's longings have been
granted in what he ordaineth?

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee:
ponder anew
what the Almighty can do
who with his love doth befriend thee.

Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him!
all that hath life and breath, come now with praises before him!
let the amen
sound from his people again:
gladly for ay we adore him.

Joachim Neander 1650-80, tr. Catherine Winkworth 1827-78 and others

The greatest risks are spiritual and intellectual. How else do we take a chance on God? In a piece in Christian Century, Barbara Brown Taylor of Columbia Theological Seminary bets her life on it. Where she lives, in North Georgia, she says that " no Episcopalian goes anywhere without being asked for his or her position on homosexuality."

... The problem I run into [...] is that I do not have a position on homosexuality. What I have, instead, is a life. I have a history, in which many people have played vital parts.

I love the Bible. I have spent more than half of my life reading it, studying it, teaching and preaching it. While I do not find every word of it as inspiring (or inspired) as some of my fellow Christians do, I encounter God in it reliably enough to commit myself on a daily basis to practicing the core teachings of both testaments. When I do this, however, a peculiar thing happens. As I practice what I learn in the Bible, the Bible turns its back on me. Like some parent intent on my getting my own place, the Bible won't let me set up house in its pages. It gives me a kiss and boots me into the world, promising me that I have everything I need to find God not only on the page but also in the flesh. Whether I am reading Torah or the Gospels, the written word keeps evicting me, to go embody the word by living in peace and justice with my neighbors on this earth, whatever amount of confrontation, struggle, recognition and surrender that may involve.

In this way, I have arrived at a different understanding of what it means to follow the Word of God. The phrase has become a double entendre for me, meaning not only the Word on the page but also (and more crucially) the Word made flesh. If Jesus' own example is to be trusted, then following the Word of God may not always mean doing what is in the book. Instead, it may mean deviating from what is in the book in order to risk bringing the Word to life, and then facing the dreadful consequences of loving the wrong people even after you have been warned time and again to stop.

These days I guess everything sounds like a position, even a confession like this one. I do not know what is right. All I know is whom I love, and how far I have to go before there is no one left whom I do not love. If I am wrong, then I figure that the Word of God will know what to do with me. I am betting my life on that.

"Where the Bible leads me", by Barbara Brown Taylor. Christian Century, 9 February 2004

These words are from a lecture by the Revd. Dr James Alison. Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. He is the author of Knowing Jesus (London: SPCK 1992), Raising Abel (New York: Crossroad 1996), The Joy of being wrong (New York: Crossroad 1998), and Faith beyond resentment: fragments Catholic and Gay (London: Darton Longman and Todd 2001; NY: Crossroad 2001).

... For the moment, the twin forces of the non-acceptance of the anthropological reality of gay people, and the obligation of celibacy serve to create a deeply ambiguous place, a severely queasy mentality, and one which would, I hope, put off anyone who was honest. But the solution to the problem lies in the recognition that the virtue of chastity, which is arduously acquired singleness of heart, and which I take to be an indispensable part of what the reception of salvation looks like in any Christian life, means learning "my body given for you" rather than "your body taken for me" in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, over time. For gay people just as for straight people. That is all. In short, getting the Church's teaching made adequate to discovered reality is a necessary first step towards making of the priesthood an honest profession.

... No Christian can ever justify their dishonesty by blaming power. Our religion is specifically about someone who gave his life so as to make the truth shine in the midst of the mendacity of power. Not to be able to stand up for truth may be understandable, and for many of us, learning to be able to tell the truth at all has been a slow and painful process. But not standing up, over time, for what you know to be the truth can never be justified. And in any case, it is important that we remember that in the light of the death and resurrection of Our Lord, the worldly power which works by scapegoating and mendacity has been shown to have been overcome. ...

[I]t is by standing up for what is, enduring the Cross and despising the shame, that we get to make the truth resplendent, confident that loss of job, of reputation, of security and so forth is not an optional extra, but is just part of what being Christian means. If we are to be a minister, either we will be one of Christ, or one of the machine, but we can never blame the machine for not allowing us to be a minister of Christ. Rather we must laugh at it, tolerantly, and with a certain debonair quality as we go about the task of trying to give a soft landing to those it has trapped into being unable to imagine how loved they are, and who fear to receive that love. Then we will be able, after all, to share together in the great rejoicing.

Quoted from: Being wrong and telling the truth: a gay perspective, by James Alison. Millennium Lecture, St. Joseph's in the Village, Thursday, May 30, 2002. Centre for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry Lecture Series.

Ce qui est simple est toujour faux,
ce qui est compliqué est inutile.
What is simple is always false,
what is complicated is useless. (Paul Valéry) (I've also seen this quoted so:)
Tout ce qui est simple est faux,
mais tout ce qui ne l'est pas est inutilisable.
Everything simple is false,
but everything that isn't is unusable.

Valentine's Day today, and we went to a concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra led by the brilliant and beautiful Richard Tognetti (pic.). They played Haydn's Symphony no. 49 in F minor 'La passione', Tchaikowsky's Variations on a Rocco Theme, Symphony in F (W.183/3) by CPE Bach, and Schubert's Symphony no. 5 in B flat - great music, played superbly.Life has become so crammed, that I'd forgotten the joys and solaces of fine music. This concert reminded me to take more time out for music this year and to get some really good CDs.A small aside in the concert's progam caught my eye. Speaking of Joseph Haydn's creative freedom, Alexandra Cameron commented that, "a fundamental element of creativity is novelty but with value in a given context." That is what I pray for in my own researches.

Last night James and I gathered with friends for a 'reunion' of our local church's Alpha team. We were so encouraged as we chatted about the course we ran last year.The Alpha course has become a way for people in all kinds of situations to think about Jesus and Christianity in a friendly, non-confronting way. All Saints' Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills CA have enjoyed Alpha for the gay community. They have written about it in the The Witness.

... in the words of Judith Wright, whom I believe to be Australia's greatest poet.

Request to a year

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great-great-grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,

who, having had eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland,

and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice-floe,
drift down the current towards a waterfall
that struck rock-bottom eighty feet below,

while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
and with the artist's isolating eye
my great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.

Year, if you have no Mother's Day present planned,
reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.

Another poem by Judith Wright, that is real in my own experience.

Reason and unreason

When I began to test my heart,
its laws and fantasies, against the world,
the pain of impact made me sad.
Where heart was curved the world ran straight,
where it lay warm the world came cold.
It seemed my heart, or else the world, was mad.

Could I reject arithmetics,
their plain unanswerable arguings,
or find a cranny outside categories,
where two and two made soldiers, love or six?
My heart observed the silence round its songs,
the indifference that met its stories;

believed itself a changeling crazed,
and bowed its head to every claim of reason;
but then stood up and realized
when work is over love begins its season;
each day is contraried by night
and Caesar's coin is paid for Venus' rite;

and knew its fantasies, since time began,
outdone by earth's wild dreams, Plant, Beast and Man.

Judith Wright, 1962