Baiting The Barista

A Columbia University English professor with a venti ego gives in to epic tall-mindedness.

Still Standing

Looks like Prop. 8's going to SCOTUS after all.

The Reformation Will Not Be Televised

You know what's harder to believe that not giving a mosque a building permit because you don't want Muslims worshiping near Ground Zero? Firing Roman Catholics and Episcopalians at an evangelical school because they're not the right kind of Christians.

Holy Family First

Writing last month at the "Huffington Post," Robert Ross, president and CEO of the California Endowment, praised LA's Episcopal bishop (and our St. John's rector), Jon Bruno, for having the moxie to form a partnership with Holy Family Services, a venerable local adoption agency, after it refused to buckle to the demands of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles that it not place children with same-gender couples.

St. John's is proud to be a Holy Family "parish partner." In June, we celebrated Holy Family Sunday, welcoming Mary Bruno (left), who has devoted countless volunteer hours to the agency as a board member and advisor, and its executive director, Debra Richardson. With Mary is my wife, Kathy O'Connor, recently named to the agency's board. Thanks to the leadership of a dedicated, media-savvy layperson, Dot Leach, we're studying all the ways we can support and supplement the agency's mission of encouraging adoption and protecting children and mothers at risk.

Sing Freedom, Cook Pork

Writing at the conservative NRO blog, Reihan Salam nails it:

What I find bizarre about some of the conservative response to Cordoba House is not just the objection to the construction of the mosque, but the conviction that it should be stopped by any means necessary—even if that means violating conservative principles about property rights, rule of law, and federalism.

Part of supporting limited government is understanding that sometimes, things you don’t like will happen, and the government (especially the federal government) won’t do anything about it. Getting to do what you want comes at the price of other people getting to do what they want—including build mosques where you’d prefer they didn’t.

Given the number of people who are personally grieved (as opposed to politically motivated) by the idea of a mosque and cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, it would obviously be better if it were built elsewhere. After all, why would faithful people, worshiping a merciful and loving God, want to give offense or injure feelings? When I was discussing the matter last week with a wise, constitutionally-minded friend, he said that using government power to stop the project would constrain the possibility of grace on the part of the project planners and others.

In this case, grace would be a gracious retreat to different space. But calling for the use of raw state power, wrapped in the velvet glove of historical preservation or concern for public safety, in order to interfere with the practice of a certain kind of religious observance is just about the least conservative thing I can think of. I'll hasten to add that most of us think that way most of the time. We desire a benefit or a policy outcome -- preservation of the death penalty, abortion rights, gay rights, national security, whatever -- and so we use lobbyists and lawyers to get it for us. The framers knew that people were constitutionally utilitarian, which is why they wrote a constitution that put process and certain immutable principles first.

Some people like to say that the terrorists hate what we take to be immutable western and American values. These are summed up nowhere better than in the First Amendment. Ground Zero was consecrated nine years ago as another of its living temples. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard people say or imply that putting process principles ahead of outcomes is for sissies. But not where the hallowed ground itself cries freedom.

We can dislike the idea of the Cordoba House and yet defend to the death its right to exist. Here's what my wise friend said (his tongue deep in cheek, wishing to illustrate colorfully that freedom comes in many forms): "My solution: Let 'em build it, and next door build a gay bar aimed at Muslim men, and upwind build a very smokey pork ribs joint. Now where's the grace in that?"

I'd Say That's The End Of That

Hamas has thrown its support behind the mosque and cultural center in lower Manhattan.

Counting Living Stones

Fuad Dagher was born in Nazareth, making him "the man from Galilee," he said gamely to the people of St. John's Episcopal Church this morning. He's now rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Shefa-'Amr, about 20 minutes by car from from his birthplace and Jesus's home town.

So he's lived his whole life in the middle of what we usually call the Holy Land but which Fr. Fuad takes care to call "the land of the Holy One." The Holy Land, he said, has become a bloody land of war, as Jews and Arabs battle over mere territory. Better to remember, he says, the true source of holiness, a reality that can't be constrained by politics or borders.

He had another piece of advice for 30 St. John's pilgrims he met with today between services, some who visited Israel and Palestine last summer and others who will make the trip in January 2011. Walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, he said. Run your hands along the damp rock in the Bethlehem cave where the church teaches that the holy child was born, and touch the hill of Golgotha at the heart of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. "But also remember the living stones," he said -- the Christians who have faithfully kept watch over the land of the Holy One for 2,000 years. "Sometimes when people meet me, and they see that I'm an Arab, they say, 'God is good! When did you convert?'", he said with a smile. But he was never a Muslim. His family have always been Christians.

Shefa-'Amr's population of 40,000 is composed of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, a showplace of interfaith comity of which the nation of Israel is considerably proud. If peace can make it in Shefa-'Amr, it should be able to make it anywhere. But Fuad has relatively little faith in the putative peacemakers in the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority -- not that he makes any bones about what he calls the original sin of Middle East strife, namely Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as a result of its victory in the Six-Day War in 1967. That proposition is open to debate, as is almost every proposition made in almost every argument about the Middle East (although the key elements of the two-state solution, which theoretically is now embraced by both sides and the U.S., amount to a return to the status quo before 1967).

Not open to debate is the alarming decline in the number of living stones, namely Arab Christians, who remain in the Holy Land. They now comprise less than 2% of the population. Christians are a vital buffer between Muslims and Jews. As they leave, prospects for peace decline further.

But meanwhile, for us St. John's Epiphany 2011 pilgrims, it's on to Jerusalem and Shef-'Amr.

Lone Gone Lonesome Blues

When a novelist (sober for nearly 20 years) and her husband went looking for the West Virginia gas station where Hank Williams was found dead in the backseat of his car in 1953, they collected some souvenirs but left with an empty feeling:

To me, there is no romance in such a death; and not much in the life that leads to it. I get to say this because I, too, once flirted seriously with self-destruction and know that when you’re an addict, the rest of your life is a shadow no matter how many songs you write or places­ you go or people you please. Or how many good times you have, for that matter. There’s no bargaining with alcohol and drugs once you have to have them. You either stop drinking and using or you die.

Definitely Gathering Moss

Sitting in an airport a couple of months ago, great American folksinger and songwriter Tom Russell, stuck with an old copy of "Rolling Stone," experienced discouragement:

Over 90% of their 500 best songs ever written [as identified by RS] were written before 1970. The summation is there ain’t been much to be excited about in the last forty years - with all our bleating, digital gadgetry, conferences, alliances, SXSW, “how to write songs” cartoon books, posturing circus rap, and lack of human artistic character. The chaos has led us, with our little IPOD head phones on, into the death throes of popular song.

Or maybe, Tom, it's just the people who drew up the list. For instance, you wrote this one, "Isaac Lewis," just a few years ago. Sure beats "Stairway to Heaven."

And Obama Now Agrees

Of three GOP candidates seeking the Sept. 14 nomination to vie for Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop's Long Island seat, Nixon grandson Christopher Cox is the least militant on the mosque and cultural center in lower Manhattan:

Mr. Cox said voters are rightly concerned and questioning why the mosque can't just be built somewhere else.