A Serious and Thoughtful Entry? Say It Ain't So!

It never bothered me when my mother and father got divorced, yet when I think about my beloved Anglican Communion splitting up, I find myself on the verge of tears.

Maybe I'm so heartbroken because I'm part of the reason the Communion is tearing itself apart. After all, I'm a woman called to the Presbyterate and the idea of a female priest in the eyes of the Southern Hemisphere Bishops --and many in the north as well-- is repulsive. "These women are not priests, but a new order of transvestites" one man of God so nicely put it.

Um you know what buddy? You're wrong. You can say women can't become priests because we --since we have breasts and ovaries and whatnot-- don't look like Jesus and thus can't become in persona Christi in the act of consecrating the oblations and forgiving sins, but …and I'm just going to step out on a limb here… I'm pretty sure that when Jesus was doing that, he didn't do any of it with his penis. That's crass I know, but the point is valid.

I truly believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully Man, both a ripped Jewish dude named Eoshua, and Christ the Lord, Savior of All Mankind. But y'know…he's been the only one who's been able to pull that off. So it seems to me that the rest of us either have to pick one or the other to imitate and take into our souls and I can't help but think that it's his heavenly, not human, nature we want to replicate and I'm pretty sure that God, the infinite and unknowable, doesn't care if his disciples pee standing up.

Okay, so that's all doctrinal stuff, but what about the practical side?

When a woman loses her child in childbirth, who's going to stand there with her as she rails against God for allowing that to happen? Someone who's never been kicked by the child inside them or even had their body swell with just the possibility of new life? Or when a teenage boy is struggling with his faith because he can't understand why God would allow him to be born gay if that just meant he was going to be cast into Hell?

I don't have the answers, but I have an idea and that idea is there are a lot of experiences in this world thank goodness and no man or woman can have had them all. Maybe instead of focusing on whose hand basket will make it first down to Hell, we should concentrate on finding as many ways to spread the gospel of love to as many people --especially those who are traditionally marginalized-- as possible.

It's just an idea, but I think it's a good one.