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Walking the Episcopal Tightrope
Last week I read of the fracture of the Episcopal Church over the issue of gay relationships and gay clergy and bishops, and the secession of 4 of its 110 dioceses to form a new Anglican province. It was hard to put together the word "new" with a church in which the priests would again be all male, women would return to a second-class position, and gay people must again hide.
On Saturday I mentioned these feelings to Jim Morton, former dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, whom I'd known since childhood. Why didn't I meet him that afternoon, he said. Philippe Petit, the tightrope walker, was to do "a short walk," as part of the reopening festivities at the cathedral, just restored after a fire several years ago.
As I grew up, there was a generation of Episcopal priests who witnessed and formed an evolving liturgy and theology with a sense of openness that was new then to the church. Jim Morton and my father Bishop Paul Moore were among those clergy, and I spent my childhood in the church they made. In the 1950s, the new meant a church that was racially integrated, committing itself to the spiritually alive struggle for civil rights. In the 1970s, the new meant that women in the church would be central to it, that we would no longer be only nuns or wives of, that we could ourselves be priests, or even, as time went on, bishops. In the 1980s, the church began to welcome people who were openly gay - that struggle culminated when Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
Entering the cathedral last Saturday, I found myself in the buoyant chaos of church community that I remembered from childhood. Children, mothers with strollers, people of all ages and races. Dancers and tumblers and musicians. I located Jim and very soon we found ourselves in the midst of a multitude gathered around a circular space in the cathedral crossing. Presently we heard a whistle, and Philippe Petit, dressed in black and wearing a black derby hat, rode in on a unicycle carrying a black doctor's bag, a neatly coiled swath of rope slung over his shoulder.
As he drew a circle in chalk to mark his performance space, everyone fell silent, anticipation turning to delight as he juggled, balanced a cane on his nose, and allowed his black hat to tumble down his back where he caught it with one hand. He grabbed Jim's cane and balanced that on his nose, plucked a twig of hydrangea from a grand flower arrangement and balanced that on his nose. When would he walk? How would he walk?
Soon he was riding his unicycle and juggling at the same time, once in a while pausing to direct a family to stay on its side of the chalk line as children giggled and adults guffawed. Then he unraveled the rope and fastened one end to a hook on a massive stone column. Where would he hook the other end of the rope? He chose eight strong men from among the spectators, whom he fashioned into a human structure. He lifted himself and walked the rope, which swayed like a jump rope as the men held fast.
Would he fall? He'd walked a wire between the World Trade Towers, but that was more than thirty years ago! So much had changed! The towers were gone, the world had become so dangerous and unforgiving. I looked around at all of us, everyone, no matter what our age, caught in the marvel of it.
There was a time when the spirit of this kind of moment was at the heart of my experience of the Episcopal Church. The spirit that would have me believe a man could walk a length of rope and reach the other end, believe that my belief - and the belief of all of us - will actually help him reach the end of the rope, jump to the floor, and bow.
Which he did. We all clapped. I was all choked up and not sure what to say as I looked at Jim and saw light catch a tear on his cheek. Philippe mounted his unicyle and cycled through the crowd and away, blowing his whistle and taking with him -- or at least making light of -- anyone who did not understand what can happen here.
Honor Moore's memoir, "The Bishop's Daughter," was just named a favorite book of 2008 by the Los Angeles Times.
By Honor Moore |
December 18, 2008; 10:41 AM ET
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Posted by: Rob-Roy | December 31, 2008 9:07 AM
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For CCNL:
Jesus was gay. At that time, it was all the rage with prophets influenced by Greek thinking. Nobody much minded. Live and let live said the other illiterate Jewish peasant hallucinaters.
We still do.
Posted by: Farnaz2 | December 20, 2008 11:56 AM
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Philippe Petit can unicycle, Phillippe Petit can juggle, and Philippe Petit can do dangerous tightrope walks. But you can bet that Philippe Petit would never walk a tightrope from one tower to another WHILE juggling a bunch of useless objects. Similarly, the Episcopal Church might be able to navigate the tightrope between faithfulness to the Bible and modern society's acceptance of homosexuals, but not unless it puts away its excess baggage first. The best thing the Episcopal Church can do to survive the tightrope walk is to let its hateful whackos split off and form their own little church, which society will appropriately marginalize the way we have marginalized the Westboro Baptists and the Ku Klux Klan.
Posted by: orthodoxheathen | December 20, 2008 11:21 AM
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The things Episcopalians should really worry about:
For those eyes that have not seen!!!
Jesus was an illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter/ simple preacher man who suffered from hallucinations and who has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer from Nazareth (Professor Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus). Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.
The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics.
http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php/Works_Cited
For added "pizzazz", Catholic/Christian theologians divided god the singularity into three persons and invented atonement as an added guilt trip for the "pew people" to go along with this trinity of overseers. By doing so, they made god the padre into god the "filicider".
Current crises:
Pedophiliac priests, atonement theology and original sin!!!!
Luther, Calvin, Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley et al, founders of Christian-based religions, also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of "pretty wingie thingie" visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).
Current crises:
Adulterous preachers, "propheteering/ profiteering" evangelicals and atonement theology.
Posted by: CCNL | December 20, 2008 1:06 AM
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This is important because ...
those who focus on arguing sometimes miss the extraordinary essence of spiritual experience.
Posted by: ford9504 | December 19, 2008 6:33 PM
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This is important because ...
those who don't "get it" are those who are trying to take away our church! Perhaps those who just want to argue and split hairs should join a debate club! Spiritual experiences seem to escape their notice.
Posted by: ford9504 | December 19, 2008 6:29 PM
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Does this have anything to do with the Christian faith? Was this even a religious event? It sounds like this could have happened at any town festival or neighborhood community center.
Posted by: PerpetuaofCarthage | December 19, 2008 2:44 PM
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"And this is important because?"
Not. It is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As usual with CCNL. Yawn.
Posted by: Arminius | December 18, 2008 6:00 PM
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And this is important because?
Posted by: Farnaz2 | December 18, 2008 5:08 PM
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With only 1.8% of the adult population in the USA being Episcopalian, why the fuss??
Bishop Minns and the religious leaders of all faiths should be more concerned about the flaws and errors in their religions. Once these are corrected, these leaders will have no jobs.
Posted by: CCNL | December 18, 2008 2:33 PM
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Honor,
This Episcopalian is very moved by your essay. You have captured in words a great part of what is our wonderful Church today. Thank you!
Posted by: Arminius | December 18, 2008 12:49 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
Paul Moore was a sexual predator - taking advantage of young men who came to him for counseling.
Ms Moore's sad life was a product of the new and clouded thinking of the Episcopal denomination - hetero- and homo-sexual relations outside of Christian marriage. She will never know the happiness of sexual fidelity and lifelong marriage. She is pitiable, indeed.