Why The Coracle?

It skipped my notice earlier this year, but my official "blogging" actually began ten years ago. While I had participated as a contributor to weblogs before that, I realized how fluid a medium for communication this could be in a parish, especially an active one with a broad congregation, so, on Easter Wednesday of 2005, while serving at St. Paul's Church in the Huntington section of Shelton, Conn., what would become The Coracle enjoyed its first post.

The people of St. Paul's were particularly good about reading the weblog and submitting information to it about parish activities.  It was so successful that the ancient parish complaint of "We need better communication" [which was usually voiced by those who never bothered to read a parish newsletter] was obliterated.  Recognizing the possibilities, I told a bishop of the weblog's existence.  His response was, "Be careful.  E-mail is tricky"  Historically, innovation isn't always well received in organizations.  That remained true with the people at my next parish, as they didn't really have any interest in such a thing as a weblog and, as the warden said to me, "We don't like to do e-mail."

[Seriously, what was it about the mid-00's that Episcopal Church leadership thought that every form of social media was "e-mail"?]

So, as the original mission could no longer be fulfilled as long as only a dozen parishioners bothered to read it, and as parish weblogs were now becoming more and more common, I thought I'd try something radical.  Well, radical for the Church.

Just about every parish weblog at the time presented parish information and links to official statements made by the local diocese and the national church offices.  They tended to the prosaic.  So, I thought it would be lively to present counter-arguments or perspectives not usually reflected in parochial weblogs, especially as most Episcopal Church thinking in those days [and these] was/is simply a re-statement of whatever was/is read in the New York Times or heard on National Public Radio.

It turns out that a lot of people who were blogging and engaged in Internet commentary had the same idea and online discussions, debates, and arguments became the contemporary equivalent of the Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park or the Oxford Student Union; a place of free thinking and freely exchanged opinion.  It was refreshing, especially since both churches and universities were becoming more and more monolithic in their ideology and more and more intolerant of any deviation from a preferred narrative.  Suddenly, my readership, which was around 6-20 people a week, reached over 300+ a day, and increasingly from international sources.

My current parish, while certainly much more attentive than the last, still doesn't use The Coracle for its original intention, although to be fair much of that information is nowadays presented through the parish's Facebook page.  As The Coracle has been in its current form since 2008, it has developed as an eccentric forum for religious and Christian news not often found in the mainstream, for archaeological developments, circumstances of a gently humorous nature, of inspirational people in danger of being lost to history, of uncommon sources of music, and of occasional commentary, especially when such commentary may be contrary.

Oh, and surfing.

Except for a few days or a week from time to time when I'm either traveling or on vacation, I have published 14,000 individual postings in 3800 days that have enjoyed over 180,000 views.  It has become the habit of my mornings, for indolent moments, or when afflicted with a bout of insomnia.  However, as I have to complete a project that will require every spare moment not serving in one of my paid positions, I'll need to clear some time.

To fulfill that need, The Coracle will be on hiatus from today until Tuesday, December 1st.

All I would ask is that those who read The Coracle by habit [I see you, Jeanne and Jayne] remember to come back on that day.  Believe me, there will be lots to read.  If you wish, a reader may sign up for notification whenever something new is posted by following the link at the bottom of the page that is marked "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)"

Also, near-weekly videos and other information will appear on the parish's Facebook page.

For those who wonder why this is entitled The Coracle, here's an explanation from February, 2010:

The reason it's employed as the title of this weblog is because of an ancient Celtic story about three men who set out on the Irish Sea in a coracle to see where it would take them, confident that God would guide their apparently random and rudderless journey. This story is one that is often offered to illuminate the experience of peregrinatio, the Celtic Christian version of a spiritual walkabout. Since I don't know really know what any day's topic will be, and as this weblog seems to wander some, it seemed like a good title.

"Why Doesn't the Jewish Tradition Hold Noah in Higher Esteem?"

Abraham and Moses are considered wholly righteous men, but Noah isn’t quite. That’s because, unlike them, he does what he’s told without question.

A Serious and Necessary Re-Appraisal of Henry David Thoreau

Really, the article's title sums it all up:

Pond Scum

This comprehensive arrogance is captured in one of Thoreau’s most famous lines: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” It is a mystery to me how a claim so simultaneously insufferable and absurd ever entered the canon of popular quotations. Had Thoreau broadened it to include himself, it would be less obnoxious; had he broadened it to include everyone (à la Sartre), it would be more defensible. As it stands, however, Thoreau’s declaration is at once off-putting and empirically dubious. By what method, one wonders, could a man so disinclined to get to know other people substantiate an allegation about the majority of humanity?

I've always been struck by the fact that, while living "deliberately" in the woods, he also permitted a woman to do his laundry for him.  Thoreau's popularity is probably based on the fact that he is generally introduced to teenagers in high school English classes and there is something insufferably adolescent about his world view.

Just Another Day in Paradise

Hawaii governor declares state of emergency for homelessness

No Assaults? No Flaming Cars? No Scolding Law Enforcement Officers? What Kind of Victory Celebration is This?

You might only see this in Canada: Blue Jays fans danced around the intersection of Yonge Street and Dundas Street in Toronto right up until the light turned green. Then they calmly walked aside to let the cars through.

Personally, I Find It Bland and Soul-less, Like Most Secular Ideas About the "Spiritual"

The Spiritual and Spectacular Meet at an Ultramodern Community Center in Connecticut

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - All Blues

Extra Seat [1995]

The best conversation I ever had about the surf was also the shortest. And the quietest.

There are sounds common to every hospital, from Manila to New York City. Besides the murmur of voices and the occasional rasp from the intercom, there is the beeping associated with the various telemetry and servo-mechanisms, sometimes with the bellows rhythm of a respirator or the gurgle of a pleur-evac. I don’t know what it’s like for the patient; I don’t know if they stop hearing all of it or whether, since it’s the only distraction permitted when one can’t read, speak, or see, these sounds become comforting in their constancy.

Sitting in an ICU bay for more than a day, I know I stopped hearing them, permitting me a quiet vigil. Except for the forty-five minute ambulance ride and the six hours during which she was in neuro-surgery, I had been at my wife’s side for over thirty hours, still wearing the clergy collar and tweed suit from Sunday morning. As the ER physician had told me she wasn’t going to make it, I had given her “last rites” at noon the day before [since most people know what that term means I’ll use it; I’ll leave it to pedantic bishops to point out that “last rites” is not technically correct]. At 6pm, now at a second hospital, I had anointed her with the oil of unction, as I had been told that she might make it, but there would be lingering disability. With therapy and care she might be able to speak or even walk again. “After a fashion”, said the neuro-surgeon.

It was now 6pm the next day; two days before Ash Wednesday. I sat in the chair next to her bed, holding her hand in the noisy silence, waiting to see what the free-ranging pocket of blood still left in her brain sac would do if it came into contact with healthy tissue. If it did, it would further disable her or kill her. Then again, according to the surgeon, it could just dissipate with no further damage. If she were able to speak sometime in the next day, it would be a sign that the blood was dissipating.

I spoke to her for hours, without response, about family, pets, the daunting labor of filling out college aid applications. When those topics were exhausted, I spoke of our vacations to the various beaches we had enjoyed during our six years of marriage; about sailing the Lesser Antilles the year before, about the vacation we would take once she had recovered, maybe to Aruba or Barbados; about waves and surf and swimming and diving. I had just finished describing in lush detail a trip we could take one day to Kona when her hand, limp for a day and a half, suddenly squeezed mine. Then, through dried lips and a throat parched by the previous day’s intubation, she said, “We’ll have to buy an extra ticket for the surfboard.”

I knew that there had probably been more poignant words spoken in human history, but I really couldn't think of any. She could speak, and would in the months to come converse normally, regain her balance, walk, and return to work without any lingering effects from the sub-arachnoid aneurysm; and we would, after she was cleared by her physicians, begin to visit the beaches and coral reefs about which I’d spoken during those terrible hours of one-sided conversation.

And once, on a flight to the Palancar Reef, when we noticed that our row contained a vacant seat, we exchanged a silent smile.

[Excerpt from Reading Water, all rights reserved ©2011]

A Collision of Religion, Economic Class, and Race in a Neighborhood in Oakland

Oakland Gospel Choir Draws Nuisance Complaint, Faces $500 A Day Fine

“Kind of hard to believe because we’ve been here about 65 years in the community and all of a sudden we get some concerns about the noise,” said Thomas A Harris III, the pastor at Pleasant Grove. Church pastors who met Wednesday said the real issue is gentrification. The church sits in a neighborhood full of old Victorians being snapped up by affluent tech workers.

No, it's not hard to believe at all, especially as I've observed the same prejudice from people who move next door to churches in quaint New England towns and then object to the fact that the churches have bells and ring them.

This is Why War is Not Spoken Of Outside the Circle of Warriors

“In fact, seeing the reaction to my father’s story in recent days has highlighted for me the almost stunning level of ignorance that the general public has about war. CNN introduced him as a ‘war hero,’ and yet people were surprised and even uncomfortable when they were given a glimpse of what that might have entailed. . . . This country has been at war for almost 15 years, and as I think about the ridicule leveled at my father in the past 24 hours, I can’t help but imagine what these same people must think about the service of my own generation. In their eyes, did we simply spend some kind of twisted ‘semester abroad’ in a place with plenty of sand, but no ocean? Or conversely, do they ignorantly dismiss our experiences, as they have my father, as those of cold callous killers?”

Well, given of whom you speak, the answers to those questions are "yes" and "yes".  Warriors are always held in contempt by the elites in any society.  There are Roman poems from the days of empire that lament that tendency, not to mention it is a leitmotif in the works of Rudyard Kipling.  This is why those who have been in combat tend not to speak of such things with family and friends who have not shared in what philosophy would describe as a form of "limit situation".

I attended an Episcopal seminary with three veterans, one of whom was highly decorated in Vietnam.  Because the Episcopal Church is disquieted by the notion and practice of military service, all three kept their backgrounds a near secret so they would not be marked as "other" by their classmates and the seminary faculty.

Giving Members Greater Say in How the National Church Uses Donations Would Certainly Help

Episcopalians and the Tithe

"Earliest Known Draft of King James Bible Is Found, Scholar Says"

The King James Bible is the most widely read work in English literature, a masterpiece of translation whose stately cadences and transcendent phrases have long been seen, even by secular readers, as having emerged from a kind of collective divine inspiration.

Please, New York Times, it should be "collaborative" rather than "collective".  Also, one will find, even with a cursory examination of history, that divine inspiration is almost always collaborative, at least in Christianity.  After all, what Jesus offered us was a radical redefinition of community.

The Word "Unexpectedly" Seems to Show Up in a Lot of Media Reports These Days

Unexpectedly, The Middle East Meltdown Continues

One problem is that while President Obama saw the nuclear deal as an opportunity to bridge divides with Iran, both Russia and Iran saw the negotiation as an opportunity to advance an anti-American agenda. While President Obama and his negotiating team were hunting for compromises and mutually face-saving agreements. Russia was looking for ways to turn the deal into a formula for destabilizing the region at Washington’s expense. Thus Russia insisted at the 11th hour in the negotiations on the lifting of a conventional weapons export ban. And even as President Obama scrambled to dodge Congressional scrutiny of the deal, Iran unhelpfully insisted that U.S. domestic debate consisted a material breach of the deal and rattled its sabers at home.

Caught in the midst of all of this are the Middle-Eastern Christians, who are being brutalized and slaughtered on a daily basis.

It Took Awhile, but It Was Worth It

Today: @WNCathedral dedicates the Isaiah window, begun in the 1970s and officially completed last year: pic.twitter.com/VMvJQBCySu

— National Cathedral (@WNCathedral) October 15, 2015

I Confess

More people watched 'NCIS' than the Democratic debate

One of the Reasons New England Has Difficulty Attracting Clergy

It's a mighty challenge.  Don't you love such a noble battle?

But What Does This Have to Do with Climate Change?

12 Christians Brutally Executed By ISIS Refused to Renounce Name of Christ, Died Praying, Reciting Lord's Prayer

The Episcopal Church statement may be found here.

Oh, Look. An Internet Argument.

There was a big argument on the Internet, I think it originated on Twitter, about this photo.  The original poster maintained that the man holding the puppy was Eric Blair, better known by his nom de plume of George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984, along with many other works.  It was taken during the Spanish Civil War, when Blair/Orwell fought against the fascists.

Thing is, that's not him.

The photo was once used to illustrate the paperback version of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, which is probably what created the confusion.  That, and the puppy-holder does bear a superficial resemblance to the author.

As happens, and not just with Internet controversies, there was considerable back and forth about the photo, with clear divisions between the pro- and anti-Blair contingents.  As Blair/Orwell had been a Communist for awhile, things became rather ideological and degraded into exchanges of Hitler accusations and Stalin references.  Name calling came next, of course.  Typical of our modern age, really.

Arguments such as this narrow one's perspective and renders focus opaque.  So much so that none of those involved in the back and forth noticed the tall, hat-less, bespectacled fellow in the center of the photo.  Yep, that's Ernest Hemingway.

If the Past is Any Indicator, Badly, Poorly, and Harmfully

How Will the Government Structure American Diets Next?

And another:  The More We Learn on Nutrition, the More We Ignore

I Know the Feeling

Aging Mother Knows Any Wrong Move Could Be Taken For Telltale Sign Of Dementia