When Both Roads Lead Home

Steve Bruce, the facilitator of our St. John's Episcopal Church men's retreat this weekend, began by explaining the difference between decision and discernment. Do we want Chevy or Ford, blue or red, steak or fish? Decision. Move your parents into your house or assisted living? Move your family to another state to be closer to loved ones? Accept a promotion when you really love the job you have? These are choices ripe for discernment -- a process of finding the outcome that moves us closer to God and our neighbor, the choice that matches our estimation of what God wants for us.

The right answer can end up being different from what we thought we wanted, at least at first. As Steve described it to us 15 seekers gathered in a circle at a golf resort in suburban San Diego, discernment is different from making a moral choice because we're usually choosing not between right or wrong but between two goods. It's also different from the classic lone-wolf model of American male decision-making, because by definition we can't do discernment by ourselves. God's part of the conversation, of course, but so's the community. Discernment entails putting as much stock in how others see us and our dilemmas as we do ourselves.

AAs (who often are the most spiritually sophisticated among us, since a mature relationship with God has become a requisite of survival) understand this as a willingness to submit themselves to a higher power as well as to regular accountability in a group setting where questions and observations can be severe (if also, usually, loving). Asking for and accepting others' judgment and insights can be scary. It can also be freeing, once we release ourselves to the belief that God and the Holy Spirit have us and all things (even our anxieties, fears, illnesses, broken relationships, joblessness, bankruptcies) well in hand.

We had teaching and discussion sessions Friday night and Saturday morning and evening, and we'll share Holy Eucharist together Sunday morning before heading home. From this summary you may have discerned that Saturday afternoon was set aside for what used to appear on the schedule of overachieving secret napper Richard Nixon as "staff time." I asked a buddy in his 40s when he'd last had a weekend afternoon off. "You mean, just for me?" he said. "I think it was when I was in graduate school."

Meeting up again before dinner, we enjoyed comparing notes on our sabbath time. Four played golf. Others hiked, worked out, played guitar, read, watched football. Several mentioned naps. I bought a bottle of water and followed the magic blue dot on my phone up Penasquitos, through wafts of afternoon BBQing and past houses already ready for Halloween, to a dead-end street called Avenida Maria (guide me, Holy Mother!), where I found a gate leading into the Black Mountain Open Space Park. The hike up a steep, rocky trail through chaparral and fragrant sage liked to kill me. I hoped for an ocean view, but not quite. But I could smell the sea, as you almost always can in San Diego. On the ridge line, I captured this image of discernment -- a fork in the trail, lying before a man with time to kill. Two good choices, surely.

I took the path that led back down to Albertson's, where I bought a loaf of sourdough bread which, standing for the last time in our sacred circle tomorrow morning, we'll consecrate as Jesus Christ's body. Thinking of ourselves as having that authority, freedom, and unity, and resisting the prevailing worldly illusions of scarcity and constraint, may be the most daring discernment of all.

The Angry Player

The New York Times describes how angry self-proclaimed outsider Carl Paladino, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in New York who pretends to be a regular guy, has gotten rich by feeding at the public trough and buying influence with politicians. By his own definition, he's why authentic regular guys should be angry about politics as usual. He also displayed the practiced politician's ability to bury the hatchet when it serves his interests by showing up at party chairman Ed Cox's birthday party. Paladino was Cox's third Republican choice for governor this year.

O.K. To Hate?

In the wake of suicides by gay young people, some ask whether the church is tacitly sanctioning bullying. The New York Times:

The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, a Baptist minister in Fort Worth, framed antigay bullying as a theological issue. “With dualistic conceptions of good and evil and hierarchical notions of values and worth,” Mr. Sanders wrote in an essay for the Web site Religion Dispatches, “it becomes easy to know who it is O.K. to hate or bully, or, seemingly more benignly, to ignore. And no institutions have done more to create and perpetuate the public disapproval of gay and lesbian people than churches.”

Where's God In That?

After a couple of Grandparents Day chapels this morning at St. John's School, I'm heading to San Diego with 15 buddies from St. John's Church for our men's retreat -- fellowship, food, golf (for some), guitars (for others), worship (but not too much, guys; don't worry), and, while we're at it, learning better how to discern God's will.

Our facilitator will be entrepreneur, spiritual director, and episcopal spouse Stephen Bruce, who genially busted my chops as a member of my discernment committee during an internship at the Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana lo! these many years ago. Man kept asking me, "So where's God in that?"

Great question, it turns it. Here's our prayer for the weekend:

Holy Father, we understand that our lives entail one decision after another, decisions that affect our family and work lives, decisions while driving and while at rest, decisions that can come out right or wrong. Our faith teaches that you are listening, cautioning, and counseling whenever we turn to you. Sometimes, we forget to listen. Other times, your voice seems hard to hear. During this weekend of fellowship, inquiry, worship, and rest, help us learn to quiet our busy minds so that we can hear your voice loud and clear. We pray in the name of our LORD Jesus Christ, Amen.

Ecclesiastes 1:6-7

And so the chill, just winds of politics blow. Last week, Jerry Brown supporter Gloria Allred manufactured a crisis for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to try to weaken her standing with Latino voters. Today, misogynist-sounding talk by Brown and his aides could weaken his standing with women.

Republicans should note well, however, that the gist of the inadvertently taped conversation among Brown and his boys is that he may be tougher on public employee unions that Whitman.

Bruuuuuuuuuuce

I remember going to Tower Records in San Diego in the spring of 1978 and buying "Darkness On The Edge Of Town." I remember speeding home to Clairemont Mesa in my Chevy Vega, taking the album out of the yellow bag, unwrapping it, putting it on my roommate Daniel Shawler's turntable, and listening to it all the way through twice. I remember not liking the lean, angry, even threatening music as much as 1975's towering "Born To Run" and deciding that it didn't matter, because it was Bruce Springsteen's new album, and I'd make it my business to love it, which I did.

Tonight HBO aired a wonderful documentary about the year Springsteen and his colleagues spent in the studio grasping after a sound characterized by what he calls "apocalyptic grandeur." iTunes has just released one of a score or more of previously unreleased songs from the session, "Save My Love," with lots more to come on Nov. 16 (including a song called "The Promise," which sounds amazing, based on the snippets we heard tonight). Springsteen's a canny businessman who's extruded old material in time for Christmas before, and I'm glad, because when there's new music from the greatest rock and roller ever, even when it's old, life is good.

Peace And Work

Why are Arab Christians fleeing the Holy Land? Because political instability and violence are enemies of opportunity, according to this Reuters report:

Decades of conflict, shifting borders and occupation are the root causes of the poor economic situation that is forcing Christians to seek better lives abroad, [PNA official Hanna] Eissa said.

Rising Muslim fundamentalism, a trend across the Middle East, concerns some. But most cite Israeli occupation as the prime cause of emigration and the decline of their community.

"If there was no political problem, the economic situation would be good, so the problems are linked," Eissa said.

Stop The Olive Presses

Matthew Yglesias is amazed to discover that large numbers of Christian pilgrims visit Jerusalem.

When Christmas Was A "Popish Superstition"

Maybe we Protestants are the problem! Foreshadowing the controversy over Cordoba House (charges of nefarious foreign influence, demands that it move uptown), angry Protestants were outraged when St. Peter's Catholic Church was built in lower Manhattan beginning in 1785. On Christmas Eve in 1806, they started a riot (they were doctrinally against Christmas) in which a policeman died. Read about it here.

Not Walking And Not Blinking At The Same Time

Creative paralysis in Middle East peace efforts.