Pray Without Ceasing - You're Doing It Anyway

People are often confounded by the notion of prayer but I think it's very natural and can be quite effortless. Have you ever held your breath waiting for news, hoping it was better than many feared? Wasn't that your body and subconscious saying together, though silently, "My heart is holding this situation in love and I am wishing for the best possible outcome"? And wasn't that a prayer?
Has your heart ever broke open, or even shattered (it seemed) as you considered the agony someone else was experiencing, and in response didn't your tears flow? Wasn't that your spirit touching theirs and offering the blessing of compassion, and wasn't that a prayer?
Have you ever said or even thought "good luck" while truly wishing someone a satisfying experience or a joyful outcome? Have you ever said, "be careful" to someone driving away or leaving for a trip, and was that expressed wish terribly different from asking saints or ancestors or angels to watch over your beloved traveler?
Prayer is part head and part heart,
part logic and part love,
part mechanics and part mystery,
part poetry and part principle,
part faith and part formula,
part humility and sometimes even part hubris,
part courage and part comfort offered by outrageous hope and a sense that life is meant to be good and a realization that we are all, somehow, connected to all that is and all that ever has been.
And in one way or another, don't we experience or engage in one or more of these "parts" almost every moment of our lives?
"Pray without ceasing" may not be so much an instruction as an observation that we are doing that anyway.
I bet you have prayed in the last hour or so. You may not have offered your prayer to a deity, you may not have ended the experience with an "amen," but you undoubtedly have felt hope or gratitude or love or compassion in the last hour, and I would call that prayer. See, it's not so difficult after all. 

--Bishop Durrell Watkins, D.Min.

Don't Dis the Myths

I'm a big fan of myths, but one should be honest when dealing in myth. Myths are beautiful, speak a poetic language, engage the imagination, & point toward realities mere facts hint at only clumsily...don't dis my myths. 

Remind me if you wish that stories of global floods, virgin conceptions, spending half a week in a fish, conversing with snakes & donkeys, giants being angel-human hybrids, & people living hundreds of years are myths, but then let's sort out what the myths can teach us about life. Of course they didn't happen, but how DO they happen in us & in our lives? (dw)

The Bible isn't what most people assume it is.

 The Bible isn't what most people assume it is.

The [Christian] Bible is the Hebrew bible plus a 4th century anthology of mid-1st to early 2nd century literature (New Testament). The Bible is written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and most of the Greek texts were written by Aramaic speakers. It is unlikely that anyone in the NT ever met Jesus (as every NT text is written 20-100 years after Jesus' execution and the earliest writer definitely never met him). The texts are oft' copied and edited and translated, and no original documents have survived. We have translated copies of edited hand copied copies of documents that no longer exist. I love the Bible but for the human product that it is. I do not consider it divine, inerrant, magical, or beyond question or critique. The Bible we have is the result of 4th century church leaders addressing 4th century questions and needs with tales and traditions that are 200-700 years old at that time. The literature was written by Jewish people to Jewish people and was canonized by people who hadn't been connected to Judaism for 4-5 generations at least. These are important things to remember when tempted to say "the Bible says" or the "the Bible clearly teaches"...the Bible isn't univocal, isn't super clear on much, and is the result of a long process involving many voices, agendas, experiences, needs, desires and even multiple time periods, locations, and languages; and, we can't cross reference a single biblical sentence to an original document. Love the Bible, but don't use it as a weapon and don't let it be weaponized against you. It's just not built for that. (dw)

Global Justice Institute TDOR Public Statement

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

November 20, 2024 

TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE 

 

Every year, the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is observed on November 20. The week leading to TDOR is Transgender Awareness Week.  

 

GLAAD states on their website that TDOR is the “annual observance on November 20 that honors the memory of the transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of 

anti-transgender violence.” 

 

An HRC report states that of the 36 transgender persons murdered in the last year, 78% identified as women, 61% were women of color, half were Black women, over 54% were under the age of 35, 22% were killed by intimate partners, and 9% were killed by a friend or family member.  

 

It is clear that Anti-trans violence involves intersections of misogyny, racism, and domestic violence. 

 

When Transgender people are demoralized and targeted by preachers and politicians, it fuels the unreasonable hatred against them. 

 

During this year’s Transgender Awareness Week, according to LGBTQ Nation, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia reportedly threatened to assault Rep.-elect Sarah McBride of Delaware if Ms. McBride were to make use of the women’s facilities at the Capitol. 

When asked if she had indeed made such a threat, MTG, without denying the report, said simply, “I shouldn’t have to” fight someone for using, in her opinion, the “wrong” restroom. 

 

This sort of threatening language makes Transgender people less safe. Sarah McBride is a person, and someone elected by her district to represent them in Congress. She is also a history maker as the first transwoman elected to Congress. Ms. McBride shouldn’t have to worry for a second that she might be bullied by a fellow Congressperson.

 

Today, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced a ban on transwomen using the women’s restrooms at the Capitol. Despite his very recent claim that everyone is treated with dignity and respect on Capitol Hill, this anti-trans bathroom policy seems disrespectful to transgender people in general, and to Ms. McBride in particular.  

 

When questioned by reporters about McBride specifically, LGBTQ Nation reported that the Speaker said, “For anyone who doesn’t know my established record on this issue, let me be 

unequivocally clear: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman.” He wrongly claimed that his view is the teaching of scripture.

 

Mike Johnson is entitled to his prejudices and to his limited and outmoded understanding of gender, but he should not use his biases to discriminate against a duly elected member of the House of Representatives. And for this discrimination against and disrespect of Transgender persons to occur on TDOR is not only insulting, it also illustrates what fuels violence against Transgender people and why TDOR and Transgender Awareness Week are needed. 

 

The Bishops of the Global Justice Institute, under the leadership of Presiding Bishop Pat Bumgardner, call on all people of goodwill, and especially all people of faith to apply the Golden Rule toward our Transgender siblings.  

 

We ask that people who claim to embrace a religious tradition remember that love and kindness are the guiding themes of most religions, and to realize that Transgender persons are no less entitled to kindness than anyone else.  

 

And finally, we call on all supporters of the Global Justice Institute to continue your support during these uncertain and, for many, perilous times, and to join us in praying for the safety of Transgender people and all members of the LGBTQ community going forward.  

 

“…there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul 

 

 

Wishing you blessings of hope and resilience, 

 

 

+Bishop Durrell Watkins  

on behalf of the Global Justice Institute’s Council of Bishops  

 

 

+Bishop Pat Bumgardner, Presiding Bishop & Executive Director 

+Jim Merritt, Auxiliary Bishop 

+Robert Griffin, Auxiliary Bishop 

+Durrell Watkins, Auxiliary Bishop

Theism Isn't the Only Way to Explore the Sacred

 The God of my understanding and experience is a presence and a power, not a person, not a potentate.  

Love at its most perfect; that’s God.

The field of unlimited possibilities; that’s God. 

What’s really real; that’s God.

 

Light and air, water and star dust, and echoes of the big bang all coming together as you and as me; that’s God.

 

The Substance and Fabric and Vitality of life; that’s God.

 

The indescribable More; that’s God.

All-in-all; that’s God.

 

Or rather, those are the ways that I experience, understand, and try to discuss the 

unnamable Something that must be pondered but can’t be dissected, 

 

That can be experienced intimately but never known completely, 

 

That requires awe but not submission, 

 

That inspires love and never cruelty, 

 

That is part of everything but cannot be limited by anything. 

 

And I call that, for lack of a better word, God...

 

We’ve been to the moon. The internet connects us instantly to people across geography and time zones. We transplant organs. We have nano robots that do medical procedures from inside bodies. We cloned a sheep. We fly in the air. Every day.

 

We can live underwater for big stretches of time. 

We synthesized insulin. We can help a lot of people live past 100.

 

There are over 700,000 humans alive right now who are more than 100 years old. There are more centenarians on the planet than there are people living in Denver.

 

We know that homo sapiens (that’s us) have been around for 200,000 years with hominin ancestors going back 5 million years or more (maybe 10).  

 

We live on a small planet in a modest solar system that is one of 400 billion solar systems in a galaxy that is one of 2 trillion galaxies in a vast and expanding universe that is at least 13.8 billion years old and might actually be eternal (always is but never began).

 

The old guy on a cloud passing judgement, pulling puppet strings, deciding when people die, granting favors to the deserving few – 

 

is a mental image we inherited from a world that thought earth was flat and at the center of the universe. 

 

For God to be relevant and real to us, we MUST liberate Her from the middle ages and recognize the divine as part of the fabric of the universe that we actually inhabit. 

 

So, if God isn’t a superhero, but is the air we breathe and the light we see by and the electricity in the room and the love we feel more deeply than we can describe…

 

then we can pray to that God because that God is always with us, exactly where we are; 

we are part of its vastness; it individuates as us. The universe explores and knows itself as us.

 

So, yes we pray. We turn within, because God is there; or we turn outward, because God is there, or we turn to the Great Teachers (like Jesus), because God is there, or we turn to the traditions, because God is there, 

 

or we turn to one another, because God is there. That’s how and why we pray, because there’s not a spot where God is not. 

 

We aren’t calling out across a great canyon, we’re tapping Love itself on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, can I have a hug?” 

The answer is always yes.

(excerpts from Nov. 17, 2024 homily at Sunshine Cathedral)

 - dw