Is there a baby in that bathwater?

News of President-elect Obama's choice of the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the Inaugural Invocation provoked an immediate response for me: nausea. However, over the past couple of days, i'm more concerned that the visceral reactions of some lgbt people and abortion-rights supporters, while completely understandable, could be short-sighted.

Andrew Sullivan's recent thoughts on the situation eerily reflect my own. From a post on his blog, The Daily Dish:

Dish readers will know my own conflicted feelings about the selection of Rick Warren for the Inaugural Invocation. But feelings must at some point cede to reason. And I sense an understandable but, the more I think about it, misjudged response on the part of my fellow gays and lesbians. In our hurt, we may be pushing away from a real opportunity to engage and win hearts and minds.

One reality that i think some lgbt folks may be missing is that if Obama had gathered together a representative group of, let's say, 100 evangelical Christian clergy and then had randomly picked one to deliver the invocation, that randomly chosen pastor would most likely share Rev. Warren's views on gay rights & abortion rights. The evangelical right exists, and much of the prejudice & ignorance we face is rooted in the soil they're tending. If we want to make headway against their anti-gay stance, perhaps we should tolerate their existence, at least to some small degree, as we move inexorably, inevitably toward achieving our goals.

Why not take Obama's choice of Warren as an opportunity to shine more light on the utter lack of compassion and integrity in Warren's anti-gay views? To get our truth out there while the media's looking for angles to cover? Believe me, if all we do is protest and complain, it's like a Christmas gift to those who oppose our equality.

Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend shares another good point about this situation. Namely, that civil rights giant, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, has been chosen to bookend Warren by delivering the Inaugural Benediction. Lowery's participation could quite possibly make Warren look mighty small in comparison.

Still, i wish Lowery were delivering the invocation, and Warren (if the choice stands) the benediction. And i think that the inauguration team under-estimated the effect that the choice of Warren would have on lgbt Americans. Let's just hope that President-elect Obama actually does fiercely support equal rights for lgbt people, and that his stance on abortion really turns out to be what he said it was during the campaigns.

A story of Christmas

i'm a sucker for stories at Christmas time. And holiday movies, the most recently watched being "The Polar Express." i'm certain there was a goofy smile unconsciously plastered on my face most of the time.

Check out this article from Thinking Anglicans, entitled "The power of story."

There is an old saw which says that God invented humanity because God loves stories. In the tradition of the Hebrew people, there was a prohibition against rendering their God in the plastic arts and so they went to town on narrative and thoroughly delighted in it. The Hebrew sacred texts are story and counter-story describing worlds and the God who is active in those worlds. If you are familiar with the world painted by the Deuteronomist, that you get what you deserve, and God rewards the righteous, then the Book of Job comes alive as a counter-story, protesting that ill-fortune falls on the righteous too, and the reasons are hidden in the depths of God.

The Christmas stories are counter-stories. They are stories which are holding out for a God and a world which will work differently to the one in which the storytellers live. Matthew uses the Moses story, and Luke the call of Samuel, to tell their listeners that the God who was present in these classical tales is present in Jesus of Nazareth. We know that the Christmas stories are counter-stories because they use words for Jesus of Nazareth which the early audience will have associated with Augustus Caesar. Caesar was Son of God, Prince of Peace, and our Christmas birth story writers are saying that Jesus is these things, in other words, Jesus is, Caesar is not. Caesar’s Roman Peace is fine if you are Roman, and so long as Caesar has the biggest army. The peace of Jesus of Nazareth is about seeking out those who do not benefit from Roman peace, and including them at life’s table. Our Christmas stories are asking us whether our God is more likely to be found in a Roman palace, or a cow’s feeding trough.

Anticipation

While my clearest Christmas memories don't include Advent Calendars, i've become intrigued by the tradition this year. Online & mobile Advent Calendars seem to be more prevalent, though the really cool mobile versions are for the iPhone, and not my LG Voyager. C'mon programmers! There's a market waiting....

Advent Calendar apps for the iPhone:
24 Days
Advent08 (this is the REALLY cool one, imo.)
If you know of an Advent Calendar app for smartphones other than the iPhone, please let me know.

Online there are many advent calendars. A Google search for Online Advent Calendar Interactive will turn up nearly 2 million hits. Here are a few that looked rather cool:
Paperlesschristmas.org
Beliefnet's Advent Calendar (if you can stand the ads.)
Doxaweb's Advent Calendar
And one from Dinosaur Designs.

Singing Bobo - cutest dog ever

And now, a video of a dog.