You May Not Like This Answer

(WSJ graphic)

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has prompted a stream of commentary unrivalled by the death of anyone this century. While such commentary has covered a wide range of topics and opinions, WSj columnist Peggy Noonan is one of the few who spent time on the oft-criticized Christian phrase, "thoughts and prayers."

During recent national traumas we’ve heard the side argument over “thoughts and prayers.” Something terrible happens, someone sends thoughts and prayers, someone else snaps, “We don’t need your prayers, we need action.” They denounce the phrase only because they don’t understand it, and give unwitting offense. (I always hope it is unwitting.)

Prayer is action. It’s effort. It takes time. Christians believe God is an actual participant in history. He’s here, every day, in the trenches. He didn’t create the universe and disappear into the mists; his creation is an ongoing event, he is here in the world with you. When something terrible happens and you talk to him—that’s what prayer is, talking to him, communicating with concentration—you are actively asking for help, for intercession. “Please help her suffering, help their children, they are so alone.” “Help me be brave through this.”

It’s active, not passive. Catholics, when they’d pray over and over or with friends, used to call it storming heaven. It isn’t a way of dodging responsibility, it is (if you are really doing it and not just publicly posing) a way of taking it.

So pray now for America. We are in big trouble.

One of the first questions we ask in Sunday School is, why didn't more Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? After all, love is the answer to everything.

It's only after we have lived life for a while that we understand why comparatively few listened to Jesus. They wanted God to answer their prayers, but on their terms. The ancients understood the Messiah to be the conqueror who would drive out the Romans and be David reincarnated, the mighty King of the Jews. They refused to consider evidence that this wasn't going to happen.

The parallel today is the wish for a strong leader who will remove hundreds of milliohs of firearms from society, thereby solving gun violence. If that's the answer we want God to give us, then we are not really open to listening, nor or we submitting ourselves to His will, and we will mock "thoughts and prayers" as a shibboleth. The human heart was, is, and ever shall be the true battlefield.

Pontification in a Good Way

The saints were not angels. They were sinful men and women whose "greatness was shaped by forgiveness." Forgiving others is easy to say when one is a disinterested observer; when one or one's family member is grievously wronged, it's very tough to forgive. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

The New Testament does not conceal the errors, conflicts and sins of those whom we venerate as the greatest Apostles. Their greatness was shaped by forgiveness. The risen Lord reached out to them more than once, to put them back on the right path. Jesus never calls just one…

— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) June 29, 2025

St. Ambrose

To the left as one faces the altar there is a side-chapel in which parishioners often stop to say a prayer after communion. The prayers can be about anything--gratitude, repentance, a plea for help--but most often they are to remember loved ones.

Votive candles have been placed next to the kneeler and are lit one at a time by each supplicant. The light can symbolize Jesus, who is the Light who entered the world, or the soul of a loved one.

At eye level is a portrait of Ambrose, the 4th-century saint for whom our church is named. St. Ambrose was the bishop of Milan and his speeches influenced the thinking of St. Augustine, who was 25 years his junior. Ambrose is credited with the saying, "When in Rome do as the Romans do."

Ambrose is not as famous as the saints mentioned in the Bible, nor is he in the top tier of post-Biblical saints (Francis, Augustine). But he did lead a virtuous life and forsook personal riches to help the poor. The founders of our church chose its name wisely.

The Father Brother Encourages

Under an exchange program with the Church of Our Savior in Mill Valley, its rector, the Reverend Brother Richard Edward Elmer, was our priest today.

Father Elmer, or as he jokingly referred to himself "Father Brother," is a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory (BSG), a community of friars in the Episcopal Church. The BSG calls its members to service and prayer, and because it is the season of Lent, Father Elmer focused on the "Daily Office", that is, the services of Morning, Noonday, Evening, and Compline prayer, all of which may be found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

Pre-1979, Episcopal services alternated between Holy Communion and Morning Prayer. Beginning in 1979 Holy Communion has been the norm nearly every Sunday. The morning prayer service, in fact the BCP itself, is used infrequently in the modern Episcopal Church.

Father Elmer encouraged us to engage with as many parts of the Daily Office that we can. If we don't have a prayer book at home, the Daily Office may conveniently be found online.

His words struck a chord. The time may be right to give it a try.

Christmas: Paring Back

At the beginning of the Christmas Eve service the priest walked around the altar waving the thurible in a pendulum motion, and the smell of incense permeated the air. Many "low" Episcopal churches honor their Catholic origins during the highest-ranking liturgical days like Easter and Christmas.

The local church consolidated the afternoon family, midnight Christmas Eve, and morning Christmas Day services into one.

The reasons are connected: the church has chosen to reduce the number of in-person gatherings; volunteers are down; and attendance has fallen. We will be lucky to have normal attendance on Sunday, the day after Christmas, so perhaps two services this week are enough. Like other areas of life, we are paring back to essentials.

The Christ Child was not the Messiah that the Jews were expecting. Our own expectations have similarly been upended: two years ago we did not anticipate that we would fear meeting with friends and strangers, traveling, or even just going to school and work.

Not as mighty as we thought we were, our prayers float up to heaven on clouds of incense, trusting that there is Someone who is listening.

A Dead Language: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti

Gaia is an icon of modern environmentalism and
has influenced the feminization of God

The Episcopal Church has gone through many changes in the past half-century, e.g., the ordination of women and gay priests and an overwhelming tilt toward Progressive politics, and it appears that another dramatic change is in the offing--the re-gendering and non-gendering of the Christian God:

In some seminaries and university religion departments, “Godself,” [in place of "Himself"], though somewhat awkward, has become second nature; professors are even known to dock points from papers that use “he” for God...

The 2021 language guide of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) recommends titles such as “Mother,” “I Am,” “Hen” and “Woman.” In 2018, the Episcopal Church’s 79th General Convention, while stopping short of authorizing a full revision of its 1979 Book of Common Prayer, encouraged liturgical experimentation, including with “inclusive and expansive language and imagery.” And more casually across mainline Protestantism, it’s not uncommon to hear God, and especially the Holy Spirit, referred to as “she.”

To baby boomers these developments aren't new. In the late 60's and 70's, priests in college towns rattled theological comfort zones by introducing new religious forms and concepts to young mainline Christians. At Catholic and Protestant services, for example, I heard God referred to as "She" and prayers to pagan deities such as Gaia. In college I first experienced the folk mass while then-exotic varieties of bread were served at Holy Communion.

That's what college was--a place where one could experiment with new things, question the assumptions under which one operated, and try out different religions. But we always knew we could go back to our home churches, if we wanted to lead a mainstream though possibly boring American life.

Over the past 20 years, I've noticed--infrequently, to be sure--that some Episcopal priests sneakily insert words and phrases, including feminine pronouns, for God. This phenomenon occurred long before the 2018 General Convention "encouraged liturgical experimentation." I use "sneakily" because those words and phrases are certainly not consistent with Anglican theology.

If revolutionaries are going to change the venerable and venerated words that constitute one of the bases of faith for the overwhelming majority of congregants, they ought to explain why such change is necessary. Why is "God the Mother" or "God the Sexless" truer to Christianity than "God the Father?" Why is the Holy Spirit feminine, especially when He impregnated the Virgin Mary, or is the Immaculate Conception nonsense, like the rest of the Nicene Creed?

I hope the Episcopal Church doesn't plop the rumored new Book of Common Prayer in our laps and say "Use this, sheeple." It could be enough to make some of us Catholics.

Well-written Prayers

(Image from adventisthealth)

If one is a musician, athlete, or scientist, mastering one's calling requires studying what has gone before. Even the most creative revolutionaries usually have a solid grounding in the fundamentals, structure, and history of their respective specialties.

And so it is with prayer. Extemporaneous prayer seems to be in vogue these days, but even one as skilled as our interim minister believes spontaneity has limitations:

Does God prefer our casual and spontaneous prayers over formal word-smithed pieces of art? I’m sure the answer must be “both”.

Formal well-written prayers are, of course, meant for God’s ears but they also have an effect on us as we pray them. There’s an old Latin paradox taught in Liturgy studies – “lex orandi, lex credendi”. It’s tricky to translate but basically it means “we pray what we believe, we believe what we pray”. Carefully sculpted prayers shape and guide our beliefs as much as they elegantly express them. They expand our voice; they train us into a broader understanding; and they offer the beauty of poetry as much as they offer the sentiments those words carry with them. For example, we could just say a casual “Do It!” at the end of every prayer, but we find the ritual formality of an ancient language more elegant so we say “Amen”.

As a musician, I’m not much of a composer. When I try and ‘improv’ I end up with limited musical phrases. So, I play a lot of Bach. To me, Bach is the musical Bible. He has such beautiful complexity beyond my limited imagination. His music shapes me; takes me places spiritually I could never have imagined on my own; his music transforms and heavily influences my own limited musical offerings. For me, prayer is like music. I don’t want to keep playing my own same limited childish song over and over every time I communicate with God, or my voice would hardly grow. I want something bigger than me, deeper and more profound than my own limited expression to shape my own voice.

Even in the most laissez-faire societies some structure is necessary for that society to function. For example, if contracts were not enforceable through the state, then private parties would resort to some form of hostage-taking of property or even people to make sure that both sides live up to an agreement. Operations may continue, but at greatly reduced speed.

Ordered worship, more specifically prayer, can stimulate beauty and creativity; the wisdom is in the design of the lattice, just enough to stave off chaos without stultifying creativity. One of the most recited and admired prayers in Christendom is the Prayer of St. Francis, an example of something "deeper and more profound than my own limited expression."

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.


O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

Pax Vobiscum

Throughout your humble blogger's childhood the 1928 Book of Common Prayer dictated the structure and wording of all Episcopal services.

(Image from ancient faith blog)

The 1979 revision to the BCP was much thicker than its predecessor; not only did it retain most of the original 1928 prayer book, it offered contemporary wording for those who found the sound of thees and thous to be as discordant as clanging cymbals. One insertion was permanent, however. All four versions of Holy Communion now had the Passing of the Peace.

It is initiated by the celebrant, who says, "The peace of the Lord be always with you." The people respond, "And also with you." The ministers and people may greet one another in the name of the Lord (BCP, pp. 332, 360). Any appropriate words of greeting may be used in the exchange of peace that follows between individuals (BCP, p. 407). The gesture of greeting has been expressed in a variety of ways, including a kiss on the cheek, an embrace, a handclasp, or a bow. The peace is also known as the kiss of peace and the Pax (from the Latin, "peace").

The Peace is a two-thousand-year-old tradition that had been eliminated by the Anglican Church in 1552, 18 years after its founding. Now that the Peace has been restored, it's difficult to imagine services without it.

John Danforth, Episcopal priest and former Missouri Senator, and Matt Malone, Catholic priest, believe that something as simple as passing the peace can reduce the polarization of American politics:

John Danforth

This may sound fantastical or naively optimistic, but a common element in the traditions of both our churches may provide a practical model for reducing polarization. It is called the exchange of peace, a simple act of reconciliation before beginning the most sacred part of the liturgy. We turn to one another and say: “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” This practice should go beyond our sanctuaries. Imagine if Americans began to exchange the peace with their political opponents. In a secular setting they could simply say, “I am your friend.”

This would transform the tone of politics. Treating opponents as friends would be more than a nicety. By showing that we are disposed to listen as well as speak, it would make possible real dialogue.

Matt Malone

It would be a step toward bridge building and away from confrontation. Christians have a mandate to take up such a ministry of reconciliation—to help heal this country. For in the Christian tradition, truth is ultimately a person, the one who is “the way and the truth and the life.” Truth, therefore, is someone encountered in love, not something wielded as a weapon. No opinion, however passionately held, can ultimately be called truthful if it isn’t spoken in charity. That is precisely what St. Paul meant when he wrote: “Though I speak in the tongues of angels, but have not love, I am a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

For Christians to embark consciously on a ministry of reconciliation would be a profound gift to America. This would be an ambitious ministry requiring dedication, imagination, persistence and interfaith coordination. But with prayer and imagination, we can find countless ways in countless situations to exchange the peace.

Face-to-face contact makes it more difficult to hate the person with whom one is so engaged. Such contact is forbidden in the year of the coronavirus and makes it all the more urgent that religious services be resumed.

There is a disease that can yet kill thousands, but there is a different disease abroad in the land that can kill the entire body that holds everything together.

Give Me the Power, Lord

Seven years ago I blew the kitchen circuit in the 1950's-era building at the Lutheran church. I called Jerry at home--it was his parish--and he rushed over and showed me the control panel in one of the downstairs classrooms. Never operate two appliances at the same time, he said.

Lessons don't last, and one of the reasons is that memories fail. After activating the dishwasher tonight, I turned on the microwave to reheat a cup of coffee.

Oops. Everything in the kitchen shut down. The families at Home and Hope needed clean dishes, not to mention a working microwave in the morning.

I grabbed the only set of keys they left me. Would they work on the classrooms downstairs? Could I find the control panel, which I dimly remembered was in a back closet? Would I be able to find the switch and reset it? Yes, yes, and yes.

As the Baptists say, PTL (praise the Lord).

The New Book of Common Prayer

The 1928 BCP is still sold on Amazon

We're going to have a new Book of Common Prayer in twelve years; trials on a draft version will begin in six.

The General Convention, the chief governing body of the Episcopal Church, met in Austin last week and passed Resolution A068. A summary from Episcopal News:

The resolution directs that any future revision will “utilize inclusive and expansive language and imagery for humanity and divinity” and will “incorporate and express understanding, appreciation, and care of God’s creation."

I have attended Anglican services in many parts of the U.S. and the world, and I have never seen anyone turned away; apparently, however, the sexist language of the 1979 BCP makes people feel unwelcome. Well, let's fix some of that language at the margin (probably at the cost of excising more of the beautiful phrases that have comforted both men and women for decades, if not centuries). We will alienate more old people, but to be honest, they're not the future of the Church.

But gender-neutral references to the faithful are not the major change. Did you notice the "expansive language [for] divinity"?

I have attended a few services where a lady minister would reference "God the Mother" and use the pronoun "She". In another vein, especially when the topic was the environment ("care of God's creation"), priests have called upon Gaia, who is the Greek goddess commonly knows as Mother Earth. In this way they could strike a blow against both patriarchy and monotheism in one fell swoop.

Part of me wants to encourage this project because it's time the Church resolves whether "God the Mother" is consistent with its theology. However, we know the result before it's even started; the cultural Marxists in charge of my church know that changing the language is a prerequisite to changing thoughts.

Note: one source of amusement is the translation of gender-neutral English into Romance languages, where gender is all-pervasive. Here's a Quora thread where Spanish-speaking natives weigh in. Excerpts from different contributors:

this issue is an excellent example of how English speakers love to impose their world view/cultural grid on other cultures. With regards to Spanish, the battle for gender inclusivity is very real in places like Mexico and Spain, both countries in which I lived for a number of years. In Mexico for example, official government publications must refer to “los mexicanos y las mexicanas.” Many ordinary Mexicans, however, feel this is a pointless (and perhaps American-influenced) distraction from real issues that affect the lives of millions of women, such as domestic violence and female indigenous disempowerment.

To truly respect the cultures associated with Spanish and French would be to learn the languages the way they are spoken, written, and taught today and then to engage respectfully in an ongoing dialogue with native Spanish and French speakers and teachers about how to reconcile your Anglo-Saxon political convictions and worldview with the languages that are being shared with you.

nobody who speaks Spanish as a native would care. It's you trying to impose your values in other people. Hundreds of millions of people are not going to change the way they talk just to accommodate you.

It'd be like a native Spanish speakers expecting English native speakers to use three different forms of you: an informal one for singular, a formal one for singular, and a form for plural. Why? Because that's how it works in Spanish, so you and every person that speaks English should change.

"the overwhelmingly gendered nature" of the Spanish language refers to grammatical gender, so if you have any troubles with that, you could think about it as a silly bourgeois convention unrelated to what your mind actually believes of a person's gender or lack thereof.

PS: your teacher is probably trying to teach you Spanish, not impose any kind of socially normative prejudices, so please let him/her/sher/zer/them/whatever do the work. Thank you.

This is a terrible non-issue you are making out of your stubbornness to impose your north american-centric view of culture and the world on peoples who don’t really care. These are things that really don’t make us latin americans at all concerned. Spanish speakers don’t lose sleep over the existence of “gender neutral nouns”. WE DON’T HAVE THAT CULTURE. WE DON’T CARE, AND WE DON’T MIND. WE USE LANGUAGE AS IT IS.

Resolution A068 mandates that "all materials be translated into English, Spanish, French, and Haitian Creole, following the method commonly called dynamic equivalency". I doubt that any objections by non-U.S. Episcopalians will slow the process down anyway, because it's impossible for the Church, which inveighs against colonialism incessantly, to engage in cultural imperialism.

Diet, Exercise, and Pray

(Graphic from Brainy Quote)

After the Florida school shooting on Valentine's Day impassioned protestors marched on the State legislature in Tallahassee. Statements like these were typical. [bold added]

“We’ve had enough of thoughts and prayers. If you supported us, you would have made a change long ago. So this is to every lawmaker out there: No longer can you take money from the NRA. We are coming after you. We are coming after every single one of you, demanding that you take action.”

No, this is not a post about gun control or gun rights; it's about prayer.

Denigrating prayer is, er, all the rage these days, especially by those who don't engage in it much. Your humble blogger prays at least once a week--in church on Sunday!--and has grown up with the tradition of saying grace before meals and to pray as soon as I can for those in extremis.

Prayer is a worthless undertaking if there is no One listening at the other end. And even if there is a One, he/she/it may not answer, or answer in the way we want. So what good is it?

Prayer seems to be good for one's health. [bold added]

A number of studies have shown associations between attending religious services and living a long time. One of the most comprehensive, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, found that women who went to any kind of religious service more than once a week had a 33% lower chance than their secular peers of dying during the 16-year study-follow-up period. Another study, published last year in PLOS One, found that regular service attendance was linked to reductions in the body’s stress responses and even in mortality–so much so that worshippers were 55% less likely to die during the up to 18-year follow-up period than people who didn’t frequent the temple, church or mosque.

...prayer has been shown to be powerful, in at least one way. It triggers the relaxation response, a state of mind-body rest that has been shown to decrease stress, heart rate and blood pressure; alleviate chronic disease symptoms; and even change gene expression. This state is typically linked to activities like meditation and yoga, and research suggests it can also be found through praying.

For the overwhelming majority of people who don't have the misfortune of being in an airplane crash or a school shooting or a raging firestorm, prayer seems to increase the odds of a longer life, specifically 33% to 55% higher. The science is settled.

Afterword:
Cynics may say that prayer was not helpful to the 17 people who died in the 2018 Valentine's Day massacre. Putting aside the question of how many of those murdered prayed during their last moments and whether their prayers were helpful in a spiritual reality that may exist, the rest of the 3,000 students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School did live.

How many of the 99.4% who survived prayed also? How many think that their prayers were answered? Have they come to some decisions about the rest of their lives? Are they enraged or grateful or both (though anger and gratitude don't often co-exist)?

I'd like to hear more from the silent survivors, but I doubt that we will, because to reveal any thoughts or emotions that deviate at all from the current angry narrative opens oneself up to social opprobrium, and no high-school kid needs that.

Something Memorable

Last week your humble blogger listed Kate McKinnon's SNL opening as an example of comedians' Freakoutrage over the election, but that categorization was unjustified. Her performance was inspired, though it certainly was a deviation from the sharp comedy that typically leads off the show. The subdued applause reflected the audience's confounded expectation.

Dressed in her Hillary outfit, Kate McKinnon sang excerpts from Hallelujah, one of Leonard Cohen's (d. 11/7/2016) most famous songs. As she warbled "And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah" Kate's Hillary turned into a tragic figure, her lifelong quest turned to ashes partly through her own human weakness.

Christians are instructed to say "Hallelujah (Praise the Lord-PTL)" in bad times as well as good. Hillary Clinton, the lifelong Methodist, knows this, though people with only a popcorn understanding of Christianity typically don't understand how one can PTL in the midst of tragedy. For a moment SNL cast off its clown outfit and produced something memorable.

The Journey, Not the Destination

The Chartes labyrinth design

The popular definition of labyrinth is maze. That venerable meaning harks back to Greek mythology, which describes how the Minotaur was trapped in the Labyrinth, a prison with branching paths and dead ends.

There's another ancient meaning which is gaining purchase among enthusiasts worldwide. In a unicursal labyrinth the wanderer traces a meandering but singular path to the center, then exits by retracing the path.

At its most basic level the labyrinth is a metaphor for the journey to the center of your deepest self and back out into the world with a broadened understanding of who you are.

The traveler doesn't get lost in the unicursal labyrinth; he empties the mind of the world's concerns and "finds" himself in the center, then slowly returns to the world.

(Your humble observer/truth-seeker has walked both labyrinths at Grace Cathedral but has found that the mere act of walking [but yes, I can chew gum at the same time] makes him too distracted to meditate. Labyrinths don't work for me, but perhaps they can work for you, dear reader.)

The $500,000 labyrinth comes with a 300-ft-long fieldstone wall (WSJ Photo)

In America, the land of going overboard, it's possible to spend up to $500,000 constructing a labyrinth on one's property. For homeowners on a budget The Labyrinth Company sells paver-brick kits ($4,000-$28,000) for the back yard.

Happy Trails!