Connor Coyne

Borrowed from Pastor Dan.

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

I’m going to write about this at length, but not today.
This is truly an issue where I believe both major party lines are seriously flawed, although Democrats have made more headway recently then Republicans.

The Democrats often decry the practice of abortion while refusing to legislate on the subject. Since these declarations are often offered without a solution proposed, they amount to platitudes, though there are signs of improvement. Some Democrats (the Presidential ticket among them) are encouraging reductions in the number of abortions through social levers. Some may say that this is an ineffective compromise; from the standpoint that life is sacred prebirth, it is certainly a compromise. However it is not ineffective; the nations with the lowest abortion rates have, in fact, legalized abortion in the context of a health care system that provides medical and financial assistance to new mothers.

The Republican Party takes a stand on the legality of the subject, but it is a sanctimonious, self-righteous stand that offers nothing, not even crumbs, to those they would bar from abortion. This is borne out, as the role of poverty is often the decisive factor in whether or not to have an abortion, while Republicans tend to slash welfare programs that respond to these problems, regardless of the program’s effectiveness, and even while other spending proliferates under their watch. This is worse than a platitude; it is a sort of open-book hypocrisy. If conservatives really value the lives of the unborn, they’ll be willing to make real sacrifices in other policy positions to advance this issue: universal health care, provisions for the poor and disenfranchised, and comprehensive sex education to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

From the point of view of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, abortion is a non-negotiable issue. That is fine, and is in agreement with the Catechism:

Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.
This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.
Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law… (2771)

What can and must remain negotiable is the way in which this issue is addressed. Solutions which pass the buck, which demand compliance on the part of others without asking us to scrutinize our own lives and obligations are the easy way out, and have more to do with keeping our own conscience clean according to some minimum standard than leading a true life of faith. But solutions which spread out the sacrifice, where we “do unto others” and take on a portion of the burden as a sign of our commitment are not only more effective; they speak for themselves as a more genuine living out of God’s vision. For “if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing,” (1 Corinthians 13:3).

from my journal:

Last Thurs. 10/18… before Mark and I went to see Unkle I hopped from one Barnes and Noble to the next and it was like the past. That moment of darkness when fall has finally fallen thick and dense and dead. Tonight it is familiar too.
Then I was at work then various B&N, sky shadowed and heavy and I knew that the B&N on Union Square was the place to be (even if it didn’t have the books I wanted) because the light as so bright. Elsewhere, light seemed to have a film in front of it making it dusty muffling and sepia toned.

[a sketch of this]
The right Barnes & Noble. The Place to Be.

And now tonight I’m at a coffee shop on A (before I go to Guerrilla Lit – I hope to be terrified). It is very dark dim. Just the tiniest chandelier candle lights above and candles on the tables. I sit alone – far back – black coffee – candle – RWC3: The Church in the Roman Empire – Village Voice – pencil. Spoon. The place is dark wood and orange Christmas light for Halloween. And it’s gray and gimy and rain and moldering outside. Christ. I feel besieged like always, but now I feel it most strongly.

[two sketches, one of the room, one of my table and its accoutrements]

There is a tradition in all this. More than I will remember but at the front of it: the Hamlet reading at UT in the 3^floor Theater directed by SMH where Judd was the Prince of rotten Denmark. Sometimes (rarely) at St. Thomas the Apostle. Then also at listening to Poison (a bit) by Laurie Anderson. The UT moment was potent. Another potent: Jr. High Drama Club. And the Nintendo Power rendering of FFII (so the beginning of 7^th grade. So Drama Club. I do believe that it has to do with October/November… and also lots of umbral dark pitch black dark and beaten wood.

In 7^th grade, Auditions at the Gym.

[sketch of this]
black ceiling
blue mesh net ->
volleyball ->
practicing ->
watching ->
auditioning ->
watching ->
black floor

Overheard here: “…and my body is deteriorating…” “no focus” “no focus” “only think, like, that I can initially connect to.”

Two related things – strong for NYC. (I think) – have to figure out. It’s dense. Hard.

1. from Cricket/ghoststories (clock, etc.)

[sketch of the below]
sewar grate
far overhead

This was the prison in NYC where a demihuman antediluvian was kept and he was so old that his emotions had all eroded and dissolved away. He was also deeply ambivalent about his captivity seemed a cathedral w. the grate cover above working like stained glass.
(Also: Watership Down)

2. from Flint: “The Flushing/Eastside. Bizarre.

3. from NYC? Or Europe? Out of time. More later.

Quick Schematic.

[sketch of this]
Neoclassical official
bldg.s and maybe a brick tenement or two
Italian-style
Romanesque.
Medici. Ominous.
Cold/Forbitting town square where the ghosts whistle by
Statue of
Death as a
Beautiful
Woman

Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
To Guerrilla Lit.

Meandering thoughts this Thursday morning.

One of the major reasons I ultimately left the Unitarian Church was because its defined search for truth was so unfocused that it didn’t offer me much by way of spiritual nourishment.

That said, looking back at the changes in religion and religious organization over the last millennium, and then considering the present and future, I wonder what changes are ahead. Straightforward syncretism is rarely fruitful. There has to be tension involved (ie. a questing) involved in building any religion with cultural staying power. Religious progress always seems to happen in the context of a struggle to articulate something intangible and difficult, and to reconcile it with different classes, regions, and world views. Formulaic syncretism neither benefits from nor adequately confronts these complexities; it simply aligns correspondant tropes and concepts and equates them with each other. Since this does not force a spiritual reckoning, neither does it engender a fertile field of religious contemplation or inquiry.

I think, however, that religious syncretism has a role to play in the future. I’ve been struck recently by certain similarities and differences between Buddhism and Christianity as expansive “missionary” religions. By way of similarities, both sprang from ancient, ethnically defined religions, achieved dramatic success far from home, and proved as durable and elastic as their predecessors. Among interesting differences, and those which to me suggest the most fruitful syncretic possibilities, are not overlaps, but in fact points of difference in their resort to elaboration and austerity. For example, in theravada Buddhism, the Buddha abjures any claim to godhood or messianism, defining his precepts as a moral code and an approach to enlightenment. As against this, Christianity, which is epistemologically explicit, could possibly benefit from the very nuanced, and in some ways very different, Buddhist understanding of humility and obligation.

But this is all I can say about this without learning much much more.