Povey Prattle

These stories made my blood boil today: http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-world-middleeast/20090404/ML.Iraq/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/04/taliban-flogging-inquiry-pakistan My blood boiled because of the regressive and hateful role of religion in our world. I allowed it to boil since I have been a practitioner of the Christian religion for at least 50 of my (almost) 65 years. I began my (lay) Christian preaching as a religious conservative in the Plymouth Brethren. Having moved away from their nonsense I became an Anglican yet was still theologically a conservative. As I have grown up, so I have become more and more biblically astute and radical, both in theology and politics. I have learned to rejoice in the fuller inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the Episcopal Church leadership; and even more as I delight of the ministry of women as Deacons, Priests and Bishops. But some in my Church (the Episcopal Church) are still opposed to the full inclusion of women, a...

I have not written much in recent weeks about Resurrection House, the day shelter for homeless people at which I serve in SRQ. This is mostly cos I have not been there so frequently in recent weeks. We have been inundated with “snow birds” - winter residents of Florida - from such American States as Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, and from the Province of Ontario in Canada. These snow-birds have been more than anxious to volunteer. So much so, that in recent months Res House has had too many volunteers! So I have taken a wee break. These northerners will return to their homes quite soon, and then I’ll be back at my usual joyful tasks. Nonetheless I have been at Res. House for the weekly prayer service which I facilitate. I never “preach at” our guests at this service (the whole fundamentalist world is more than active in “preaching at” them). So I facilitate a quiet time in which my homeless friends can be certain that someone will listen to them, and not preach at them. Th...

The concept of Monarchy has its own mystique. A commentator on a British TV station said today “there is something almost sacred about the Monarch” I am reminded that sacred and scared have the same 6 letters! Queen Elizabeth II of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (to give my homeland its full moniker) has achieved a semi-goddess status partly because of her longevity – she is 82 years old and has been Queen of the UK since 1952; and partly because of the myriad of protocols and courtiers who protect and encourage her Royal Mystique. She has worn well, and I suppose that most U.K. subjects (yes, folks are subjects in the U.K – not citizens) regard her with a benign affection. I do. I also suppose that most of those people resent the “flunkery” and flummery which “protect” the Royal Household. I do. We certainly know that the Dutch and Scandinavian Monarchies survive well without the flunkies and the flummery. Many, if not most Americans have a strange devot...

See http://www.cpg.org/clients/retiredclergy/vintagevoice.cfm (Please cut and paste this url)

I like to be cranky. I wrote this on my facebook wall today: “Cranky thoughts: I don't have a puppy - I have a dog. I don't have kitties - I have cats. People don't have kids - they have children.” This did not come out of thin air. My Dad hated the word “kids” as it applied to children. He was clear. “Goats have kids”, he would say, “but people have children”. Dad was cranky about speech. He would sometimes pretend to trip, and then explain:- “I tripped over the consonant you dropped” (e.g. a “t” or a “d” at the end of a word.) I was raised in the same school as Dad. It was the school which said “take care of the consonants and the vowels will take care of themselves”. But “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of tiny minds”. Dad was not foolish, nor consistent. He persisted in pronouncing the “aitches” at the beginning of words such as “honour”, or “honest”. I am happy to have inherited my father’s crankiness and inconsistency!

Penny is an utter darling. Here we are at Ben Morse's home

The Revd. J. Michael Povey at All Angels by the Sea, Longboat Key, FL Jeremiah 31:27-34; Hebrews 5:1-10; John 12:20-36 In 2007, the first full year of my retirement it was mid-way through a Wednesday morning before I remembered “my goodness, this is Ash Wednesday”. For more than 30 years I had, as a parish Rector, been obsessively aware of Ash Wednesday, as one of the important lodestars of parish life. I had often wondered why the Church was not filled on that incredibly important day. In 2007 I got the answer to my wonderings – people were not in Church on Ash Wednesday because they forgot! On March 17th of this year I made a comment on my Facebook “wall”. It read “I think that most Lenten disciplines are bogus”. I wrote this in part because I have never been skilled in keeping a Holy Lent, (after all I did forget Ash Wednesday a few years ago); and in part with my tongue in my cheek. One of my peers wrote back asking “are you getting crotchety in your old age?”, to which my r...