The following was the sermon I wrote for tonight's English church service at our parish. Needless to say, there was a lot of suppressed chortling and WTF looks, which is just the way I like it. :-)

---

Sermon for Easter Season/Ascension(Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11)

The Easter season has, for the untrained yet modern eye, a lot of odd things going on. On Good Friday we have a rabbi being falsely accused and executed for saying we should be nice to each other. Then he comes back from the dead. Then, as we heard at the last English service, he does a vanishing act after walking along with some of his disciples – he breaks some bread and »poof!«. And now today we have Jesus doing his very own forerunner of »Beam me up, Scotty«.

Now I’m not going to remotely suggest that Jesus Christ went up to some Starship Enterprise waiting on him. But that’s what the text of the first reading sounds like at first glance: Jesus is »taken up into Heaven«, as if Jesus is up there in the stars and galaxies swirling above us, doing warp eight. Maybe the two guys in white are the landing party. As for us, we even use the word »heavens« as if the sky – or outer space – is indeed where Jesus went when he left his disciples.

Jesus’ words in the Gospel make it sound like that as well: He’s returning to the Father, going to Heaven, leaving the world. Live long and prosper.

The name of this particular season doesn’t help: Ascension Day. Christ »ascends« into heaven. The German word is even worse, Himmelfahrt, as if Christ gets into a car or spaceship and – zoom! – off he goes.

That’s not really what is happening, so I’ll stop weirding you out with that. I’ll weird you out with something else: Merry Christmas!

You may not see any Christmas trees or greenery, and the weather sure doesn’t look like a White Christmas outside, but today we celebrate Christmas – or more exactly, the fulfillment of Christmas. You see, Christmas is when God became incarnate. He walked the Earth as one of us. That says a lot about God and a lot about us.

To paraphrase from a sermon I once read, let’s say we heard that there was a cat that had died and then came back from the dead by God’s power, and used that power to do great things to help other cats. We’d know two things: One, that cat was pretty special, and two, God thinks cats are worth saving, because after all, He sent a cat to help kitties all over the place.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t a cat or a dog or a fish or a cow, but a human being. God sent His son to be with us and to show us the Way. He cares about us: as the Bible says, »for God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son«. Not only that, but because God became human, God knows what it’s like to be human. When we suffer, or go through rough times, it’s reassuring to know that God isn’t just putting us all through this, He went through it Himself, even death. God loves us very much and knows just how we feel.

So on Ascension, this Christmas incarnation stuff comes full circle: Jesus returns to His Father, and the cycle is complete. Not unlike the spinning of a galaxy coming full circle. Life is a series of cycles, of things coming to fruition. Ascension is the completion of such a cycle, just as our own lives are smaller cycles inside far greater ones.

Ascension is thus a reminder: First and foremost of God’s love and transcending power. But also of ourselves and our need to keep moving, to keep growing, to keep learning, as Time’s Arrow pulls us on and on along life’s path. What kind of a path, though?

The path of Ascension is not about is physical laws or literal senses of direction. Christ did not take a celestial elevator and certainly did not get beamed up. To think in such terms of »where is Heaven« is to fundamentally misunderstand the whole story of salvation. We can’t fly to Heaven any more than Jesus could.

There are, however, yet again hints of a journey in Jesus’ words, of travel. Over and over again, Jesus uses motion and travel to express what He is about. »I am the Way and the Truth and the Life«. Indeed the Christian Church itself in the early days was simply called »The Way«.

So Ascension is a story of progress, of growth, of achieving higher states of being. Not in a literal sense, as if taller people are closer to God than shorter ones. Rather, we reach a higher spiritual plane, of traveling higher and higher within ourselves to discover more about us. The more we explore and improve ourselves and shine light within the darkest recesses of our minds, the more we see and learn, the closer we get to God. Most importantly, we pass on the knowledge and insight that we find on to the next generation, and the cycle begins anew. Each of us has been given the power to ascend, to get ever closer to Truth.

Today’s archaic-sounding liturgy is also a reminder of that journey. Ancient people went before us, and we follow in their footsteps. As an old Anglican once said – Sir Isaac Newton – we stand on the shoulders of giants. As we recite the same prayers our forebears did, we remind ourselves of the Way of Christ. By looking backwards, we also force ourselves to look ever forwards. We learn.

Thus the Church is The Way. As we sit here together, sharing Communion with one another, teaching and learning from one another as well as from the wisdom handed down to us over the generations, we walk on Christ’s Way – a path that leads ever upwards, higher and higher, until we can reach the proverbial stars. Amen.

[THE SCENE: Ethelred is talking to BoE about a woman he got to know online who is coming over for a visit.]

ETHELRED
As it happens she's in the vicinity to pick up her veil at the cathedral in $NEARBY_CITY and wants to stop by and visit.

BoE
Veil? What for?

ETHELRED
She wants to be a consecrated virgin.

BoE
Sounds interesting. How's that work?

ETHELRED
Well, it's a bit late for you.

BoE
Not really. You don't count.

I was invited to a friend's birthday bash. She's a treehugger (though she's not the militant type and doesn't take it that seriously, but unfortunately some of her friends are) and she likes to have an annual theme for her birthday parties, so this year it turns out it's a vegetarian cookoff, with people bringing their own vegetarian creations. She sent me an invitation announcing this via e-mail. My response:

Hmmm...vegetarian?

1. You are what you eat.
2. Cows eat plants.
3. Therefore cows are plants.

I'm bringing beef (sorry, bovine plant) chili and bovine plant steaks. :-)

Keep an eye on the Hannover news to see if there is a small riot of environmentalists in a couple weeks. ;-)

[THE SCENE: Ethelred returns home from grocery shopping, where he spots a copy of Pocahontas on special on DVD. Since the Confessor has been asking a lot about Virginia lately, Ethelred seizes the opportunity. However, BoE generally dislikes Ethelred's impulse purchases...]

ETHELRED [producing DVD from behind his back]
Surprise!

BoE [looking squinty-eyed skeptical]
What's that?

ETHELRED
It's a bit of Virginia history!

BoE
Uh-huh.

ETHELRED
I got it just for the Confessor!

BoE.
Uh. Huh.

ETHELRED
And she has a nice rack!

BoE
Really. Well, I'm calling your mother.*

ETHELRED
You wouldn't!

* - You see, BoE has the rare advantage of having her mother-in-law always on her side, so she gets to complain about me to a sympathetic ear all the time. Further evidence that women-folk are just generally incapable of understanding my greatness.

I give myself five stars.

Roasted turkey breast with bacon and stuffing
Glazed carrots
Au gratin potatoes
Spoon bread*
Gravy
Cranberry sauce (kindly provided by a guest, homemade)
Cucumber and bell pepper salad
Pumpkin pie

Aside from the pie (BoE did the crust, I did the filling) and cranberry sauce, that was all me in the kitchen. Keep in mind the lack of mixes here for typical American foods (i.e. everything was entirely from scratch). I was in the kitchen yesterday for five hours. Yeesh.

But the family and guests seemed to like it all... ;-)

* - I couldn't find my old recipe for it, so I went online to find one. There are some serious WTF recipes out there for spoon bread, let me tell you. Hint: All it's supposed to be is just boiled cornmeal, milk, eggs and salt...but I found a good recipe and it turned out pretty well.

Already wrote this in Tammy's blog, but saving it here for posterity.

When BoE and I were still studying, we would occasionally drive from the town where we lived at the time to where BoE's family lives. The route took us over land and through a number of small villages, one of which had a fairly large house at the main intersection (the town was just a wide spot in the road) and with a parking lot in front, conspicuously with cars only having out-of-town plates.

Once my parents visited us, and BoE and I were driving them to visit her family. Naturally we drove through that town, and my dad (who tends to be amazingly naïve sometimes, and who likes to vocally point out anything and everything of remote interest to him) pointed at the house and said, "Ooooh, look at the purty red lights!"

BoE and I sniggered while my mom asked him through clenched teeth if he knew what the red lights were for. He was utterly mystified.

Of course, in his defense the house otherwise looked pretty innocuous -- obviously an old half-timber farmhouse that had been converted to the purpose, and there were no obvious signs other than the parking lot and red lights. If you didn't know what red lights mean, you could have taken it for a restaurant or club or even a private home with too many cars. Even so, whenever my parents are here and we're out for a drive, invariably "look at the purty red lights" comes up.

The funny thing is that Hannover has a big bordello (link semi-SFW) that even advertises on taxis, street signs and the radio. That kinda blew my circuits when they started up.

And yes, prostitutes have to pay taxes on their income. It is considered a regular profession. It used to be that prostitution was technically illegal (or in a legal grey zone), but prostitutes had to pay taxes anyway. But some years ago they just fully legalized it, removing the last major bars from doing it.

One other fun bit about prostitution in Germany: One fairly traditional way of doing it was (and still is) for individual prostitutes to buy an old trailer, RV, or camper, park it alongside a country road and that was their place of business. If you see her sitting at the wheel, she's open for business. If not, she's...occupied. (If the RV is rocking, she's really occupied.) You see them once in a while, though not too frequently. But the funny part was that last year we drove to Wolfsburg with my parents to visit the VW factory (they have a snazzy experience museum). I had never been on that stretch of road before, and it was packed with those RVs.

And once again my dear old dad innocently wondered what all these women were doing parked on the side of the road. :-D

Last week, Gloriana had her routine checkup at the pediatrician for her second birthday. BoE took her there (I had to take the Confessor to a different appointment and couldn't go) and told me about what happened.

The doctor had her do some tests to check on her development, and Gloriana kept exceeding expectations rather wildly. One in particular was pretty funny -- she was going to ask Gloriana to make a tower out of some bricks, but she'd hardly finished asking when Gloriana was already half-done.

On a similar note, for her birthday last week one of her godmothers gave her a puzzle with cutout animals, supposedly appropriate for two-year-olds (well, she did turn two). Gloriana unwrapped it, dumped out the pieces, and promptly put them right back in exactly the right spots without batting an eye. The godmother grinned and suggested eBay. :-)

Meanwhile it's become a running joke about how Gloriana leaves a trail of socks behind her wherever she goes. From all the grannies whose socks she charms off. Gloriana likes to chat them up, is all smiles and giggles, they coo over her and her blonde curls and big smile, and pop their socks are off, and off to the next granny she goes.

Somewhat oddly, lately she seems more interested in baseball than the Confessor. If the Braves aren't on, he won't watch (or only grudgingly), but she'll curl up next to Daddy and watch anyway, and gets into it.

That's my girl. :-D

Naturally I'm already having her fitted out for her chastity belt and constructing the high tower to lock her away, being a good father and all.

I mentioned in my previous blog entry the German conservative politician who wanted to introduce intelligent design into biology classes in Hessen -- then announced she was a lesbian. OK, that's a pretty unexpected thing, which makes my head spin a little.

But some time ago, I was shopping at a new big grocery store downtown for the first time, where they have a large fresh fish counter. I was walking up to the fish counter sort of absentmindedly, noting that the fresh fish selection looked pretty extensive. The attendant was standing there with his back to me, sharpening a knife or something, and I didn't pay much attention to him. I just stood there, scanning around to see if they might have catfish (which is getting easier to find over here, much easier than it used to be).

Then he turned around abruptly and spoke to me.

Now three things hit me all at once about this person at this moment.

1. He was Turkish.
2. He was wearing lots of makeup and dangly earrings.
3. He was speaking with an outrageous gay lisp.

Any of these things, taken individually, I would hardly take notice of (if at all). Two together, I might mildly take note of, but no big deal. Put all three together, especially when caught completely off guard like that, and my mind went SPLODE and I stood there, with my brain trying to catch up to all of this. I managed to stammer something to the effect of "uh, thanks, just looking" (which was a half-truth, as I was looking at his...quite remarkable earrings) and made my way to the frozen section, where BoE was waiting. I related this to her, and she of course was highly amused at my expense.

This is, of course, why she married me -- I supply her with endless such entertainment with my moments of weakness.

I had ordered a DSL bandwidth upgrade last month, and my telco had sent me a new DSL modem (my old one had done its service for some years and apparently wouldn't be able to handle the new bandwidth). I hadn't gotten around to installing the new one yet, though. They had told me the switch would be day after tomorrow. But this morning I booted up my computer, and the router was claiming it couldn't get a DSL connection.

Thinking this was odd, I decided to go ahead and install the new DSL modem to see if maybe that was the problem.

It was:



LUDICROUS SPEED!

Best part is that I'm still paying the same price for it that I was before -- international flat rate phone plan (i.e. no additional cost for calls to North America and Europe), 16 Mbit DSL unlimited bandwidth and no time limit, for EUR 55/month. Still blows me away how different things are here compared to the old days of the government monopoly...

On Multiply, I'm definitely getting targeted as a resident Bible-thumper by its admuncher, and in particular an ad for this load of hooey keeps coming up.

That has to be the most outrageous waste of time and money I have seen in a long time. WWJD? Tell the morons demanding the money for such pie in the sky to give it to the poor instead and not inflame passions in the already unstable Middle East by planting a big freakin' cross in the middle of a bunch of Muslims.

Un. Be. Liev. A. Bull.

Dear Mutiply Advertiser: Your advertising dollars are being thoroughly wasted on my eyeballs. On second thought, please continue to waste them on my eyeballs so that some unsuspecting gullible sap doesn't see it and actually contribute to your heinous cause.

Since our priest is still on short-term leave due to the arrival of their third child, I ended up planning tomorrow's service and writing a sermon on the fly, though he will at least lead the service. Here is the sermon, translated into English.

Sermon for readings Genesis 18:20-32 and Luke 11:1-13

In the readings today from the Old Testament and the Gospel we have two apparent opposites. Both are examples of prayer. In the first story, Abraham is praying for mercy for the just people in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; in the Gospel, we see the words of the Lord's Prayer, as Jesus teaches it to us. In the first story we have the wrathful God apparently about to destroy whole cities; in the second, we have the loving God who seems to tell us we can have anything we pray for.

The opposites go further. Abraham prays for others -- he prays for the people in Sodom and Gomorrah, whom he wants to save from the wrath of God. But Jesus teaches us to pray for ourselves. »Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you«. Abraham talks to God; Jesus Christ is God. And so on.

But both stories have a common message. God keeps His word. God keeps His promises. He does what He says. He is faithful and He is merciful. He would rather spare the many wicked than harm the few innocent, and He hears what Abraham says to Him. This is what Jesus is referring to when He says, »Ask, and it will be given to you«.

This asking, knocking, seeking: These are all parts of initiating a relationship. I don't like to talk of God's Will too much and there aren't many places where I think I can say for sure what God's Will is, but this is one case where I feel pretty sure: God wants us to build a relationship with Him. Ask. Knock. Seek. Have faith in me. I am here for you.

And prayer is the spiritual tool with which we build that relationship. So we speak to God in the depths of our hearts. It isn't the dry recitations of set pieces of texts. For I don't believe that the Lord's Prayer was meant to be recited exactly as Jesus said it in the Gospel. Rather, it was meant to inspire us to similar ways of prayer. This is why Jesus moves on to make his parable of the friend and the loaves of bread, to take up the idea of our "daily bread".

This is why I'm such a fan of the Celts. They had countless prayers that were poetic and rhythmic, almost musical. They effortlessly made up new ones, and you could almost dance to each one. The closing blessing we'll use today is one such example. Prayer should thus give wing to the heart and mind, so that we come closer to God and each other. It is more than mere dialog: it is sensuality.

In closing here is one such prayer:

The hand of God hold me
The love of Christ in my veins
The strength of the Spirit bathe me.
The Three guard me and aid me,
The Three guard me and aid me.
The hand of the Spirit bathes me
Step by step, the Three aid me. Amen.

I stumbled across something that had my jaw drop. (No pun intended.)

JawTheShark (ha! there's the pun!) mentioned fountain pens in his blog. Thing is, way back when, almost ten years ago when I was still working for an ad agency, I had to do some projects for Pelikan, makers of fountain pens here in Hannover.

One of them is still online. The homepage is somewhat modified for some daft reason (and not in a good way) and the page renders a bit weirdly in Safari, plus they replaced the forum I originally did (which is actually a good thing, since it was a major hack). But the page is still there, with my old design largely still intact, from 1997 or 1998 (I don't remember the exact year).

Even crazier, they link to it right from their corporate website homepage. *boggle*

Ho. Lee. Shit.

Here is the sermon I wrote for last week's English service, which also may change what non-believers think about Christian prayer and our understanding of the Bible (and act as an antidote to the misconceptions that Falwell & Co. create). Indeed our "high church" Anglo-Catholic way of looking at the Bible and prayer might be recognizable to Buddhists or Taoists -- there are certainly some parallels.

---

Sermon for Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

(based on reading Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)

There is a sentence in today’s Gospel reading that really grabs me whenever I hear it: »I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning«. That is an astonishing, amazing, poetic sentence, but also one that is frightening, jarring, unsettling to our postmodern ears. We are unaccustomed to talking about Satan or sin or indeed forces of nature in that immediately present way. And we are unaccustomed to that kind of spiritual encounter. How did people think of spirituality long ago?

As it happens I am a history junkie. I love to read about history, in particular medieval history, most especially about the so-called early Dark Ages period in the British Isles, when the Romanized Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Vikings vied for control of those lands. They too had that same way of writing about nature. It’s a beautiful way of writing that is nearly lost to us today. J.R.R. Tolkien, of »Lord of the Rings« fame, tried to revive it, of course, but even he only managed a pale imitation of what the originals managed to conjure up effortlessly (and Tolkien knew it). That phrase in the Gospel is a classic example. »I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning«.

To give you a small example, here is a short Celtic prayer:

As it was,
As it is,
As it shall be;
Evermore, O Thou Triune of grace!
With the ebb,
With the flow,
O Thou Triune of grace!
With the ebb,
With the flow.
Amen.

You will notice the rhythm and repetition of that prayer suggest movement, water, cycles, and so much more in just a few words. So much is said with so little. When you read it aloud, you can almost dance to it – it’s entrancing. I don’t think many modern prayers can do that.

So what does this way of writing or speaking tell us about ourselves today?

Before we answer that, let’s look at another aspect of today’s Gospel. The disciples are being scattered on the four winds, two by two, to spread the Good News that Jesus has to tell us. There is an air of expectation and optimism. Nature itself submits to the disciples in the form of scorpions and demons and that flash of lightning. The message, I think, is that the power of our belief takes away our fear of the power of Nature itself.

The thing is, our modern industralized world has removed us from the immediate interaction with Nature, so we don’t feel that same sort of confrontation with the forces of Nature itself. We see a scorpion, we get the bug spray. We see someone »possessed« by inner demons, we call a psychologist or the police. We rationalize things. To use the psychological metaphor, we have moved far from the creative animalistic right side of the brain to the logical left side, and have lost touch with the more vibrant multifaceted world our forebears saw around themselves.

I’m not saying we should go back to blatant superstition, of course. But those symbols and charged atmosphere, those flashes of lightning, were bits and pieces of a spiritual toolbox that our forebears used to unlock deeper secrets in themselves and their understanding of the world in a very different way from what the rational logical world has to offer.

Prayer is the beginning of that path to rediscovering that toolbox that many of us have lost. Most of us, unfortunately, think of prayer as reciting set pieces of long, precise texts – like the Nicene Creed or the Lord’s Prayer. But the best prayers are short, spontaneous, highly personal, symbolic and heartfelt. The texts we see should inspire to new ones, not be dully recited. And they bring us inner peace and certitude – a kind of meditation or contemplation.

So in closing, I would like to offer another short prayer along these lines:

God with me lying down,
God with me rising up,
God with me in each ray of light,
Nor I a ray of joy without him,
Nor one ray without him. Amen.

To continue on with the previous article, I'd like to talk about the central element of Christian practice in the Catholic (and Anglican) tradition: The Holy Eucharist.

To understand a Christian in that tradition, you really have to understand the sacrament of the Eucharist, or as it's also known, Holy Communion. There is a lot about the Eucharist that is misunderstood or even downright shocking to non-Christians, considering that it is, after all, a very bloody affair. Indeed much of the imagery from the Middle Ages, not to mention Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, is -- let's face it -- very distressing:



You will wonder how on Earth any sane person can celebrate something like that. When I had my period of emotional distance from the Church, I wondered about it, too. Much of Eucharistic theology will sound repulsive to some, even many. But I think it's important to try to understand it.

Some people also mockingly wonder about how many pieces of bread it takes to make a Jesus; some time ago, Smooch posted a picture similarly poking fun at the notion of God being a zombie and then turning into bread and we eat it and we're saved and "yeah, that makes sense".

But the thing is, we in our modern age have to remember some things about ourselves to understand what the Eucharist is -- things we've forgotten. It is understandable that we forget them, because they aren't pleasant or comfortable, but once you get used to them and make peace with them, they actually fall into place to make a very vibrant, dramatic picture of humanity.

Eucharist comes from the Greek word εὐχαριστῶ, "I give thanks". When we participate in the Eucharist, we Christians give thanks for someone dying -- Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That sounds harsh and brutal and sacrificial, and in a way it is. But in that same sense we also give thanks for His life, because life and death are inherently linked together. As Christians, we believe that Jesus was not only the Son of God, he was God -- God took mortal form, walked this Earth, lived, loved -- and died -- like one of us.

This is one of the things that is different about Christianity compared to many other religions, the idea that our God literally died like one of us, to be like us and share our fate. I find that to be a very touching message -- God sharing our mortality.

Thus the first seemingly unpleasant thing we remember in the Eucharist is death -- Christ's death, but in a way it foreshadows our own deaths. It is a reminder to live our own lives to the fullest while we can -- a very positive thing, actually.

The second seemingly unpleasant thing is sacrifice. The whole structure of the Eucharist is a deliberate echo of Jewish sacrificial ceremonies -- the altar, references to Jesus as the "Lamb of God", and so on. Yet sacrifice is a good thing. Even if you don't believe in God or if you believe that the "historical" Jesus was a poor deluded sap, it still leaves the fact that He was willing to let himself be killed in the hope of sending a message to us idiots that we should just love one another. A remarkable sacrifice, one that motivated many to do great works of good (if tragically also motivating some to do great works of evil as well). We also all do sacrifices all the time -- the soldier who sacrifices to protect others, the parent who sacrifices for his or her children, the friend who sacrifices for a friend in need. And the point of Jesus' sacrifice was to be a sacrifice to end all ritual sacrifices, a final cleansing.

When we do this, it's intended to make this sacrifice imminently present in us, so that we carry it with us in ourselves -- in the hopes that we sacrifice ourselves for others with that same generosity that Jesus once had for all of humanity.

But that other name we have for this sacrament -- Communion -- shouldn't be forgotten, because it too has a special meaning. "Communion" comes from the Latin communio, in turn coming from the Greek κοινωνία, "fellowship". The word has the same root as "community" -- which is no coincidence. When we participate in a Holy Communion service, what takes place is more than just a mere mumbling of words, but we try to establish a Community -- literally the Kingdom of God -- for a little while, a place of peace and harmony. The whole structure of the Communion service is designed to move people into this feeling of unity, peace and harmony until the moment where they are ready to receive the consecrated bread and wine.

In our own services, we even make a point of standing in a circle around the altar while the Eucharistic prayers are spoken and sung; usually the bread and wine are then passed from person to person. Indeed the title of the altar book I designed for the Old Catholics (the illustration was done by BoE based on a medieval illustration) illustrates the idea perfectly:



The illustration shows the Holy Spirit (which in Christian theology consecrates the bread and wine) descending as a dove with the bread, while the rays in the middle represent the spirit radiating out from the bread to the apostles gathered around at Pentecost, after which they were moved to carry out the Gospel to the world in peace.

What actually is in the bread and wine isn't all that interesting to us, though we do treat it with due reverence and care. But the central aspect of Communion to us is locked up in those two words -- thanksgiving and fellowship -- and not in the finer points of Eucharistic theology. Once you appreciate the bonding with your fellow human beings there as you share the quietude, the feeling of peace, the sharing of community and the thanksgiving for the person who set it all in motion, the thanksgiving for your own life to have enjoyed it all in the first place, then you begin to appreciate that that bloodiness isn't so bad after all -- it actually makes you appreciate it that much more.

Iamthefallen made a pretty remarkable statement regarding the debate between atheists and believers: "To understand the believer, you should probably understand his beliefs first."

To that end, maybe it might be interesting for me as a believer to lay out some bits of my beliefs, in particular with respect to other religions -- which may well be as effective a rebuttal to some of Dawkins' statements as I can think of.

As most of y'all are no doubt aware by now, I'm a Christian, specifically an Anglican (or, as we're known in America, an Episcopalian). I grew up in the Episcopal Church and was baptized as an infant, had First Communion as a small child, and was an acolyte in my teens. I also attended an Anglican boarding school for my freshman year of high school, then went to a non-denominational private school (albeit one that was dominated by fellow Episcopalians, since it split off from an Episcopal school) for the rest of my high school years.

Then in my college years I drifted away from the church and wasn't very much into belief at all. I would go back for Christmas and Easter, but didn't really have much particular strong feelings for the church, though I was still highly interested in church history.

Meanwhile, throughout my childhood I was interested in science, particularly in cosmology and geology. I grew up watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos series on TV and was hooked. My elementary school also had the rare bonus of having its own observatory, and I was an avid stargazer (one thing I miss about being in urbanized Germany -- the light pollution and haze is horrible and I can't stargaze). I had lots of star maps and magazines about the Big Bang and formation of galaxies. I also got to go to Virginia Tech's geology section a lot on field trips.

I also, as I alluded to in the discussion in the previous entry, grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt. Lots of Creationists, Pentecostals, Baptists, you name it. As liberal somewhat high church Episcopalians, we were very much the exceptions in that area. Once in a while Chick comics would float around, too. So I very much understand the feeling of being an outsider because of my beliefs.

Once I came to Germany, my interest in church history -- now that I was in easy reach of all those historical sites -- kicked into higher gear, and I went on a lot of "pilgrimages" of sorts, most especially to England in 1994 to places like Lindisfarne, Jarrow, Glastonbury and Wells.

Gradually I started to reconnect to my own feelings about the church, but didn't find any parishes here that appealed to me or that I could agree with for various reasons. I didn't want to go to a Roman Catholic parish, there were no Anglican ones nearby, and the Lutheran and other ones didn't appeal to me at all, either (generally just old people and mostly empty).

Eventually I found out about the German Old Catholics -- who are more or less the German equivalents to and partners of the Anglicans -- and that they had a parish in Hannover. Once we found them, we started going to services, and was delighted to find that they more or less thought the same things I did, the priest is my age and is very much of the same mindset, and so on. I had finally found a spiritual home. BoE was also delighted and, after having formally left her church for many years and being a registered non-believer, she became an Old Catholic and was confirmed a few months ago.

So what were my feelings, and why did I only go to Christian churches, and not other religions? Did I consider the existence of God, or the lack thereof?

I actually considered the "proof" of God for years, even as a teenager, once I found out that Sagan -- my old hero -- was an atheist. I didn't know what that was, so being a good bookworm I looked it up. A friend was a bit of a non-believer himself and we talked a lot about it, pretty endlessly, in fact.

At about the same time, when I was 17 or so, I attended a class called "Physics as Metaphor" (based on the book by the same name) taught by the book's author, Roger Jones, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota. That course also nudged me into thinking about belief a lot and how it intersects with science.

The thing is, I reached the conclusion pretty quickly that God's existence isn't a scientific question. Science is a creature of logic, which (I reasoned) was, like all other laws, a part of this Universe that was created with the Big Bang. Just as the entire Universe would be entirely different if the simplest physical constant was changed, so too could everything be changed if logic itself worked differently. I'm sure many people would be horrified at the thought, but I'm sure logic is just as much a prisoner of our Universe as we and our physical laws are.

Yet God is, almost by definition, outside this Universe (He must be if He made it), perhaps interacting with it, but maybe not (we just don't know and can't know). Thus He is independent of logic, just as He is independent of Time and all our physical laws.

Whether or not you accept this particular line of reasoning, you do however begin to see how logic starts to disintegrate as you approach God, no matter how hard you try. At any rate, I got to this conclusion when I was 18 or so.

In the meantime, my thoughts have continued on these lines, based on ideas from the Bible -- notions of the infinite, eternal God as possible philosophical answers to "what made God", for example, or the Trinity as a possible model for explaining the philosophical problem of the multiple aspects of God that we seem to perceive in various religions.

I've also since read Orthodox Christian ideas about the nature of God, where their explanations -- unfortunately too long to write here -- are endlessly fascinating, even while they are counter-intuitive and often maddening. Sometimes the whole point of seeking God, though, is to never find Him, but to continue searching.

So why Christianity? Why go back to it and not, say, Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam?

The answer there is neatly provided by the Roman Catholic Church, post-Vatican II. In its essence the idea is that all religions may provide some idea of the trueness of God, but some religions provide a better image than others. If you imagine each religion being a camera, some cameras focus better than others or may make a finer image, while others may just be a pinhole camera, but all likely show images of the same God. The question is, which camera is the right one?

Well, which one would you choose, if you felt the need to have a camera? If you had one you were comfortable with and knew how to use, presumably that's the one you'd stick with.

(I should add that at the time before I was confirmed, I didn't seriously feel the need to consider other religions, nor do I in hindsight regret my decision at all. At that point I had had comparative religion classes, was well aware of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, and of course atheism.)

Of course, there is a more to it than that. For one thing, once upon a time I was confirmed in the Church and made a solemn promise in the process, and I take that promise seriously, so I therefore stuck to it. But I also didn't see the need to seriously consider other religions, because while I would readily concede that they may genuinely lead to God, I also as a Christian must fulfill my duty to my own promise. But at least that gives you a general summary of how I got back to where I started, so to speak.

So I ended up being more or less a high church liberal Anglican, just as I was as a child, but deeper and in more detail. Am I right to do so? I have no idea, and will only know once I die. Even so, there you have a general -- if rather long -- overview of just what I believe, and why.

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide



create your own personalized map of Canada
or check out ourVancouver travel guide



create your personalized map of europe
or check out our Barcelona travel guide



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Just now I was preparing stuff for this evening's vesper service, which I have to run since the priest is out of town for a conference. I was dashing off a collect -- a type of prayer -- in German (partly translating one from English, partly composing it) and then had BoE double-check the grammar to be sure.

So I had a slight boo-boo in there and had das Finsternis for "the darkness". I should have known better, actually, but I put in "das" without thinking. BoE marked it and said it's "die", and said, "Remember that in German, darkness is female," and got an evil grin.

I retorted, "Knowing you, somehow I'm not surprised."

Ah yes, nine years of holy acrimony and still counting. :-)