New baby on planet earth

Thanks be to God.

Beatriz was born in Lisbon, Portugal yesterday, Wednesday, November 28. She is well and so is her mama, my elder nephew's wife. She is their second child and first girl -- my brother's first granddaughter and my parents' first great-granddaughter. It's a momentous event for her big brother, who is no longer the only child (he's almost five years old), but apparently he is delighted in these first days.

Great-Aunt Jane here is happy for everyone, and tickled that we have a new girl in the family: the last time was over half a century ago when Great-Aunt Jane was born. We were due! Welcome to the world, little Beatriz. We'll try to take care of it so that you have a safe place to grow.

November 28: Kamehameha and Emma of Hawaii

Many thanks to Padre Mickey de Panamá and to James Kiefer for their respective reflections on Kamehameha and Emma, King and Queen, Anglican Christians, who loved and served their people and God.

Chrysostom, wealth, and poverty

In honor of yesterday's feast of St. John Chrysostom, here is a thoughtful piece from the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, "St. John Chrysostom and the Problem of Wealth".



To enlarge the icon to the right and see more of the color and detail, click on the picture.



The home page of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship website is here.

Monet's winter magpie

Soon and very soon

It's been too long since I have posted music.

In honor of the feast of Christ the King, and in happy response to Grandmère Mimi's post on Andrae Crouch's "Soon and Very Soon We Are Going To See the King," here is a version of the song. Thanks to Mimi for posting this link to Andrae Crouch in her Comments section.

At St. Columba Catholic Church in Oakland, we ROCKED it with that song, the whole congregation, on our feet singing and clapping with the wonderful choir under the director of Rawn Harbor, one of the great African American liturgical musicians. St. Columba was the last RC parish of which I was a member before emigrating to the Episcopal Church, and it continues to have a special place in my heart. I still have friends there and return to visit when I can.

And now I am going to be obnoxious and quote myself.

In my book When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life (several years out of print thanks to the neglect of HarperCollins, but soon and very soon I will have good news about new life for this book, and we won't have to wait till the Parousia for that one) I have a chapter called "Pronouns, Poets, and the Desire for God: Language and Prayer." As you can imagine, much of the chapter is about gender and the language of prayer, but the chapter is about the broader issue of God-language in prayer and also addresses questions of the images of light and dark we use as well as all the "king" business that causes so many preachers headaches on this feast. (Kevin, our Chaplain at St. Mary's House, Greensboro, alluded to this problem with the king-word today at in his sermon.)

Here is some of what I wrote on the latter topic, and it's related to this song and to my friends of the St. Columba community.

Sometimes context makes a difference: language does not sing or grate in a vacuum but in a social setting. For three years now, I have heard and sung the Andrae Crouch gospel hymn "Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King" at St. Columba. I used to be uncomfortable with it: royal images of Jesus and God have never sat well with me as a woman or as an American, though I understand the irony in the Gospels, where Jesus tries to explain to the befuddled disciples that his kingdom is not the one they expect, but a realm of a different order. But "king" takes on a different meaning in a community of oppressed people -- oppressed in their ancestral uprooting and enslavement, oppressed by economic barriers and racist attitudes and institutions today. This king of whom we sing at St. Columba in Oakland relativizes the rulers of the world --which of course is one of the purposes of the Catholic feast of Christ the King (one of the days, in addition to the Sundays in Advent, on which we sing this hymn). No king, emperor, president, kaiser, duce, führer, prime minister, or secretary general has ultimate power over our lives - only God. Now "power-over" claims our allegiance, but rather the revolutionary love-power of Jesus.

**************Jane Redmont, When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, 172. (Published in 1999, but I wrote this sometime around 1998.)

"Renewal" - film on religious communities and the environment

While in San Diego at the American Academy of Religion meeting, I had the pleasure of seeing a preview of "Renewal," a documentary about the religiously-based environmental movement in the U.S.

The movie has eight stories in it. One can view them separately, but it's heartwarming to see them all together since they are about varied communities and parts of the country. I can imagine that the segments would work well as part of a series for congregations, classes, and community groups. Not sure when the movie is coming out, but you can keep in touch with the project and its various roots and offshoots here. The producers have teamed up with Active Voice, an organization that uses documentaries as community organizing tools, so there's the film "Renewal" but there's also the related Renewal Project. Have a look.

I won't be surprised if this makes it onto public television, but it's meant for distribution and community conversation and action. Let me (and each other) know what you think.

The noose, the cross, and the lynching tree

On "Bill Moyers' Journal" this weekend on PBS.

But I've also put up a link online on the other blog, and you can watch the whole show there if you miss it on television.

Bill Moyers interviews Dr. James Cone on this powerful television show.

Humor and social justice

If you're going to tell someone the truth, you'd better make them laugh or they will kill you.
**** ****-- George Bernard Shaw, as quoted on today's Tavis Smiley Show (the one-hour radio version) by Morgan Spurlock, on the show with Bill Talen, a.k.a. Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping to talk about the Church on Buy Nothing Day and about the new movie What Would Jesus Buy?

As Rev. Billy would say, Change-a-lujah!

In honor of the holiday shopping season

A roundup of pertinent internet resources:

Buy Nothing Day (today!) brought to you by Adbusters.

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.


If you must (but not today):


The Heifer Project (addressing hunger and poverty through long-term solutions - donate bees and buffalos!), online or via their beautiful catalog.

MADRE (human rights for women and families). Make sure you have a look at this one.

Ten Thousand Villages (shops --all over the U.S., we have one here in Greensboro-- practicing fair trade, selling objects from local artisan groups).

Or give the produce or products of your local artisans or growers. I have (mostly) stopped importing my coffee from California, where I loved my local bean freaks (Blue Bottle Coffee) and have been purchasing from the excellent Larry's Beans. North Carolina people, that makes a nice present.

So does goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy. If you're in California, of course, there's Redwood Hill Farm. They export to other states, and I still buy their yogurt at my local food co-op (they export it out of state; the fresh goat cheese, however, doesn't travel) but it's nice to go for sustainable (i.e. mostly local) eating and giving.

Speaking of the food co-op, I have taken to buying gifts there in late December when scrambling for a few little things. They have adorable finger puppets, mostly animals, made by a women's collective in the Andes. Not exactly next door (the Andes, I mean) but it's a fair trade set-up and you would be amazed how many adults just love having an animal finger puppet on their desk, sitting on one of their pens in the pen and pencil holder, ready for a conversation. I give them to children, too, but don't forget the grown-ups. (The photo is not my hand, I trawled the web and found the very puppets of which I speak. I gave one of those rabbits to someone not long ago.)

My favorite olive oil, which has been in the foodie column to the right since I began blogging, is Bariani in California. They make their own balsamic vinegar too.

Another discovery from my California years (the coffee and olive oil people sell at the Berkeley Farmers' Market and other Bay Area farmers' markets, and so do these folks) is Juniper Ridge. Incense, soaps, sachets, and a few edible goodies, all sustainably picked, a.k.a wildcrafted. I am particularly fond of the desert piñon incense (which Padre Pablito does not need since he is right in that territory) but the cedar is wonderful too, if a little intense. The soaps and jellies make nice house gifts. (Pictured here: the soaps.)

If you buy from any of those folks, tell 'em I sent you.

Then of course, there's your favorite cause or organization...

Don't forget your local children, your battered women's shelter, the food bank, your local Catholic Worker house of hospitality, and the still rebuilding Gulf Coast after Katrina.

For you Episco-folk and anyone else interested, there's Episcopal Relief and Development.

Not into churchy organizations? Try the Seva Foundation. [Note: I added this item a few hours after the rest of the post.]

A postscript: Kristin reminds us in the Comments section about Global Exchange. How could I forget? Thanks, Kristin. (They have a vast Fair Trade online store at the website, but for those of you in the Bay Area, there's a Global Exchange store at 2840 College Ave. in Berkeley.)

Even Newsweek has a "Do-Gooder" selection in its holiday gift guide. (Here online but also in the paper version of the magazine.)

I could go on and on but it's Buy Nothing Day! (And I have not a dime left --seriously; I'm down to $2.50, so that's a few dimes, but that's it for the rest of the month!-- after my trip to Europe where the dollar dropped against the Euro and my college only paid the transportation, not the food and lodging. Akh!)

Note: None of the above-mentioned merchants or organizations have asked me or paid me to write about their good work.

Note also: This is meant as a resource to offer some ideas, not as a guilt trip.

I'll post another reminder or resource sometime in December. Ideas and suggestions welcome. We can start a thread in the comments section if people are interested.

Janinsanfran knows of some good projects related to water in Central America.

Bear in mind that systemic change is less glamorous and sexy but more long-lasting than direct service, though both are necessary

Above all, be mindful, be grateful, remember we are all bound together in one web of life.

Jenny Plane Te Paa on indigenous relationality (and the Anglican Communion)

Jenny Plane Te Paa and I were in a seminar together, "Theologies from the Underside of History," about 12 years ago, early in our doctoral studies. This talk of hers is from the Inclusive Church "Drenched in Grace" conference taking place in England this week.

The Inclusive Church blog also has the audio of addresses by Lucy Winkett (whose talk the blog describes as "a rhetorical tour de force") and the wonderful Louis Weil.

For those of you who don't know, Dr. Jenny Plane Te Paa is Ahorangi or Principal of Te Rau Kahikatea, The College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand. Since her appointment in 1995, she has been the first and only lay, indigenous woman (she is a Maori -- a daughter of the land of Te Rarawa ki Ahipara) ever to be appointed as head of an Anglican theological college.

In 2001 Jenny was appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve on the Inter-Anglican Theological Doctrinal Commission for a 7-year term and in 2003 she was also appointed to serve on both the Commission on Theological Education for the Anglican Communion and the Lambeth Commission. She belongs to the International Anglican Indigenous Network and the International Anglican Women’s Network. She is Convenor of the Steering Committee for the International Anglican Peace and Justice Network and a member of the World Council of Churches Commission on Ecumenical Theological Education and Ministry Formation. She also serves the Church in Aotearoa New Zealand on both national and local commissions and is a Lay Canon of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland.

(For a Maori version of the Lord's Prayer on the Holy Trinity Cathedral website, with translation and commentary, see here.)

Happy Thanksgiving

And for reading material, see the post below.

The World Turned Upside Down

A Cornfield (Edward Curtis, 1908)

On Thanksgiving Day, it is appropriate to read writings about and by Native Americans. This is a book I used in my "History of Religion in America" class this year, at the recommendation of my friend and colleague, Elizabeth P. Rice-Smith, a historian who is also a United Church Christ minister and clinical psychologist. The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America is edited by the head of Native American Studies at Dartmouth, Colin Calloway, who is a Scot.

I am going to re-read a passage or two from that book and from another book that my friend recommended and I used for the course, The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America, ed. Allan Greer.

I'm also going to have a look at a book I own but have not yet read, Native American Religious Identity: Unforgotten Gods, edited by Jace Weaver (Cherokee).

Exhibit of * just-planted Native American cornfield, Henricus Historical Park, Virginia.

Yes, I am also going to enjoy a fine meal with close friends. L'un n'empêche pas l'autre.

Watanabe Emmaus

Long before there was the Chinese artist He Qi, there was the Japanese artist Sadao Watanabe, long one of my very favorites. Here is his Emmaus image.

A Thanksgiving icon: Martha, Mary, and Jesus

I know, the Rublev Trinity is the ultimate hospitality icon, but I posted it recently, and it occurred to me today that the Martha and Mary household with its visit by M&M's friend Jesus, a regular guest, would do nicely for a scene of a shared meal. I also looked for a good icon of the Emmaus story but didn't like the He Qi painting very much; it seemed dashed off and hasty and the two travelers were male, which isn't at all clear in the story. (New Testament scholar John Donahue, S.J. has argued convincingly that one of the Emmaus two was female. He's not the only one.)

Remember, though, not to let Martha and Mary play competitors in your head. For a reminder, see here.

Home again, fall colors, deer, and a bit of bird blogging

Back late last night, not because my flight was late --it was early!-- but because it takes two flights and a lot of hours and time change to get back from the West Coast.

I didn't see our local deer (we have a whole family living in the woods behind this little group of houses and they often come out mid-evening and hang out on the lawn) but I did check in on the fine folks at Greensboro Birds, and they had a deer sighting on their side of town, along with a few birds for the day, all in one post. Check it out and enjoy feeling local. Greensboro, North Carolina local, that is.

Miss Maya Pavlova, the dancing cat, did well under the care of two of my favorite and trusted students and was only moderately peeved at me. She sits curled against the fax machine right now having a noonday snooze.

Now for a quiet Thanksgiving with time for contemplation and yes, some catch-up posts on Belgium and France. All in due time.

Safe travels, all, and safe home.

Goa fish curry

Someday this blog will return to publishing my sermons and reflections on saints and such, but while I am on the road or overworked in the academic salt mines, it's hard. Not even the catch-up foodie posts from Paris are finished.

What I can say is that after a long day of meetings and interviews, I had supper with a good friend and had Goa fish curry. That's Goa, India, and the curry was light, fragrant, and lemony, which didn't come from lemon but from tamarind.

As for the interviews: interviewing candidates for teaching posts here is a kind of academic speed-dating. You see people for 30 minutes, which is more like 25 because you walk them to and from the little booth where you sit with members of your department, and you try to be warm and hospitable while lobbing strategic questions in their direction in a curtained cubicle similar to those in the emergency room of a U.S. hospital, except that the curtains here are purple. My colleague refers to the warren of interview cubicles as "the purple labyrinth." Both of us are relatively new in our jobs so we remember being the interviewees just a few years ago.

It is amazing what you can find out in 25 minutes, though, and how people's demeanor does not always match their dossier.

Eventually we bring three finalists to campus, and then the interview lasts for two days.

Among the meetings and seminars today: a very good one on Latina theologies.

Yesterday: found out interesting and encouraging information about the Bible study at the upcoming Lambeth conference.

Many old friends. Not enough time. Horribly expensive coffee and food. (The land of the nine dollar tuna sandwich. No, I didn't have one.) Clement weather. Much walking back and forth between large concrete buildings and big hotels to get from one meeting to another. Lost a beautiful chiffon scarf on the way to brunch because it was so light it blew right off my shoulders.

I still think downtown San Diego looks like a cardboard movie set.

I may be turning into the online Samuel Pepys. Heaven forfend.

Surreal

is what this feels like. A week ago I was in Belgium in a place that looks like this and this. Tonight I am in San Diego, nine time zones West of there (after four and a half days back home, two-thirds of the way here) and it looks like this:Only more so, and very (post)modern and "built." Concrete, concrete everywhere, and even the palm trees look like someone plunked them here five minutes ago.

The human body is not made for living in this kind of environment.

Off to San Diego

If any of you are going to the American Academy of Religion, Society of Biblical Literature, or pre-conference meetings of the Feminist Liberation Theologians Network (I'll miss the first half of that one due to plane schedule) and the Society for the Study of Anglicanism, let me know. I'll be checking e-mail.

Blessings, all, from travelin' Jane.

More international news: Italy and Turkey

Old and new Rome (Rome and Constantinople, a.k.a. Istanbul) are involved in a new set of dynamics, more political than religious.

No, this is not turning into a news blog, but I do periodically post news and social analysis, as regular readers know. I just received this interesting link to an article about the Italy/Turkey dynamics which happens to be (not coincidentally) by my brother.

Have a look.

The "manner of life" quotient

The merry folks at Anglican Underground have a series of good posts on what they call the "manner of life quotient."

Merry but serious, once in a while. And they are (mostly) Southerners. Check 'em out.

North Carolina folk: an important symposium in Chapel Hill this Friday-- how do we remember our slaveholding past and its prominent citizens?

More info at Race, Justice, and Love.

Meanwhile, back in Paris...

There is a major strike which has completely disrupted the city. Read about the practicalities and the politics here. Thank you, BBC.

Guadalupe in Belgium

Here is a not very good photo of a lovely fresco at the Benedictine monks' in Leuven. It is part of a long series of frescoes on the life of Mary painted right after WWII by (if I remember correctly) a relative of one of the monks' whose father or brother had been ambassador to Mexico. Thus Guadalupe! All the other paintings trace the life of Mary from her birth to the Dormition, but this one has a little Mexican touch. The artist also incorporated buildings from the city around the monastery (a recent building, turn of the 19th/20th century, so only a hundred years old, and HUGE - there were a lot of monks in those days; not so today) and in one case a picture of one of the relatives. If my memory serves, it is the bearded man on the right in this fresco.

Bad photo because I didn't take my own camera along, just a cheap, light, disposable camera (mea culpa, Mother Nature) and took this photo with it, with a flash, in the dark of the early morning on my way through the cloister walk from my room to breakfast. The day I arrived one of the monks had shown me all the frescoes in detail, with commentary.

Click on the photo to enlarge. Fuzzy, but still interesting.

Catching up

I have a long transcontinental flight on Friday, and unless I am fast asleep, I am going to write all manner of catch-up posts about Europe (including some matters Anglican) on the airplane on my now-fixed work laptop. I can do this in word processing and then cut and paste -- and illustrate-- when I arrive in San Diego. Fear not, faithful readers (unfaithful ones too), foodie reports are coming. And more.

Héloïse and Abélard lived here

I had been here before, by chance. This time I went looking for it. I only had a cheap disposable camera with me on this trip, but this picture turned out all right. I have a thing about Héloïse and Abélard, and I teach their story and their writing.

The sign says that this is where they lived in 1118 and that the house was rebuilt in 1849. So it's not the original, but it is the very place.

It is on the Ile de la Cité on the Quai aux Fleurs. Notre-Dame is nearby. Héloïse's uncle Fulbert was a canon there.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Dinner the last night in Paris (Saturday): Les Editeurs

Let's see -- I'm back, I have had a good night's sleep, I was in the technology office three times in the first 18 hours I was back (including straight from the airport) because of the wiggy laptop, and I have had two meetings with teaching assistants, taught two classes, held office hours for two hours, and started to catch up on my Guilford e-mail.

What I really want to do is blog.

What I have to do is run an errand and then have dinner and spend the rest of the evening at a little meeting at which we will go through a stack of applications for the open position in our department because we have to contact people tomorrow to tell them whether we are interviewing them at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting this coming weekend in San Diego. Yes, more airplanes.

So, till I have time to write the promised foodie updates (I actually took notes for them on the plane!), here is the website of the restaurant where a couple of friends took me on Saturday night. It's a rather more trendy place than they or I tend to frequent, though not the trendiest in the neighborhood (that one was, they noted, the place across the street) but it was great fun and delicious. As you will see, it is called Les Editeurs (which means "publishers," not "editors") or rather, since they spell it in trendy lower-case, les éditeurs, and there are books around (probably good p.r. for the Parisian publishing houses, whom the menu thanks for their books) and a general literary theme. Mostly people were eating, not reading, since it was suppertime, meaning 9 p.m. Have a look, even if you don't read French you will get a feel for the place via the pictures; click your way around. There is already a cookbook by the chef. Someone is into marketing here.

That said, the food was delicious.

I am writing on a loaner laptop. Godde bless the IT office; they are taking good care of me.

"Pope's College" (Pauscollege) in Leuven

Named for the Belgian pope, Adrian VI.

Back from rainy Belgium with broken laptop screen

so I am once again on a borrowed French keyboard.

The conference at Leuven was intense --not even a daytime moment to buy chocolate for my students-- but it was excellent and we had some free time in the evenings. I am back in Paris and about to change for dinner with friends here. I fly back to the States tomorrow Sunday.

Belgian weather was cold; it hailed one morning! There is, however, very good soup in Leuven. Also, of course, the famous beer.

It was fun hobnobbing with the international theological crowd. There were people from 25 countries!

Blessings to all. More posting when I have the technology situation worked out.

Grotemarkt, Leuven, Belgium.

The exhibit I had to miss

It opened today, November 6, but this was a friends-and-family kind of day and in the morning I decided rest and sleep and not rushing were in order, especially since there was going to be much socializing later on. A good choice, but here is what I missed: the new exhibit on the Phoenicians (the seafaring merchants who brought you the alphabet) at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute), which fortunately I have already been to but where a return visit would have been nice. Next time. And I want to learn more about the Phoenicians, whom I have always found interesting but who did not leave a lot of written records, alphabet or no alphabet.

The length of the foodie report I plan to write is growing in my head, but I must get some sleep. I leave for Brussels in the a.m. and my subway ride to the station is nearly as long as the Paris-to-Brussels Thalys ride. Thalys is one of the rapid trains, specifically the France-Belgium-Netherlands-Cologne (Germany) one. Would that we had these in the U.S. I will not go on a rant about U.S. [lack of] rail transportation planning and technology and the attendant [lack of] political will, because I had a very nice black-currant sorbet (again, but this time with whole currants in it) on top of an Italian meal with an excellent Montepulciano d'Abruzzo with three very dear old friends and I do not want to ruin either my digestion or my sleep.

Yes, I have had chocolate mousse. Homemade and not fattening at all. I got the recipe, too.

A good thing people are feeding me because the dollar is dropping against the Euro, more each day; another big dip today. I am not sure how much we are on our own for the meals at the conference (beyond the bed and breakfast and a final banquet for which we must pay in Euros) but it could be a lean rest of the week.

More from Belgium if I can. Not sure what the technology will be like where I am staying. Are Flemish Benedictine monks wired for internet? Stay tuned.

Jane, Girl Reporter

Culture vulture

This was a two-museum day. Time here is short (I leave Wednesday for my conference in Belgium) so one must make haste, slowly, to get a little kultchah.

After lunch I found myself heading to the Cluny museum, which was just minutes away and where I'd been thinking of going since yesterday. Or longer. I don't think I had been during any of my adult visits. It's Paris's medieval museum and also is adjacent to the ruins of the Roman baths --you visit the one on the same ticket as the other-- and since I now teach histor