Skip to main content

Fifty Centuries

Once upon a time, about fifty years ago,
I was a parish pastor in California.
Once upon a time, I was religious.
It worked that way.

Just before finishing my studies,
I was appointed to be a kind of unordained interim pastor
of a congregation in San Jose.
The Church Council members--all male--
would not allow me to go up to the altar during the services
because I was not yet ordained. That is how it worked.

A couple of years later, at my own parish in Fremont,
our Church Council--not all male--appointed
a very fine man to be our Deacon; that is to say,
to be my assistant during church services.

I will call him Ted. Ted was gay.
He assisted, as a Deacon, for several years,
until he and his partner moved to San Francisco.

I have been thinking about Ted, lately,
amazed at how slow and stupid society can be;
even California society, most of it, at least.

A large branch of the Lutheran Church is about to meet
here in Minneapolis and debate whether
they will ordain gay and lesbians to the ministry.

Since I am no longer religious, I am tempted to say
that it doesn't matter what churches do,
except that it is not just a church problem.
It is a societal problem, and I am amazed
at how slow and stupid society can be.

People are not either straight or gay. People,
almost all people, discover themselves to be
attracted to both males and females;
just in varying degrees, ranging from strongly
one way or the other, to something like disinterest.
Most of us like, and love, both men and women;
not necessarily nor particularly sexually,
but attracted both to some men and some women.

(Truth be told, some people aren't very likeable or loveable,
and many of us don't like them, either way.)

Male dominance and sexual orientation are just
two examples of wrong-headed attitudes and ideas.
Racial prejudice is another. So is religious superiority.

I wish I could say that 50 years is a long time.
It is probably more like 50 centuries.
.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more