Happy 2023!

Photo of bluffs across Arkansas River at Little Rock a day or two before 1 January 2023

Wishing you all a very happy 2023, and apologizing that I have been absent from this blog. My spouse Steve had surgery on 19 December, then Christmas came along as he recuperated and I did nursing duties, and I have been stretched — though still posting routinely at my new Mastodon account, where you can find my "real time" commentary on various items I've been reading and want to share. 

For anyone looking for music to listen to as you celebrate the new year, here's my YouTube playlist for New Year's day, developed over a number of years.

As U.S. Elections Near, Charles Pierce Notes: "Every twist and turn in every campaign is wrought by the money power"

Sun parakeet in cage, photo uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by High Contrast

As Perry Bacon Jr. notes, the reason U.S. elections are so close is that the nation is so polarized, with ideological camps that are more or less equally balanced, at least when it comes to those who actually vote.

Ruth Krall, A Meditation: The Third Sunday in Advent

The photo is by Hans Vivek, who has generously made it available for online sharing at Unsplash.

Ruth Krall has written a beautiful sermon for the third Sunday of Advent, to follow on the one she wrote as Advent began, which I shared here a number of days ago. Ruth writes, 

An Advent Sermon from Ruth Krall on First Sunday of Advent

The photo is by Hans Vivek, who has generously made it available for online sharing at Unsplash.

It's my privilege today to share with you a sermon my friend Ruth Krall has written for the first Sunday of Advent (yesterday, 22 November). Other previous postings on Bilgrimage by Ruth Krall can be found at the label with her name beneath this posting. Here's Ruth's sermon:

Rev. Wendell Griffen on Our Choice for This Season of Pandemic

And for a different (and in my view, authentically pro-life) voice from an Arkansas church, after I just shared dismal news about a church in Arkansas in a previous posting, I want to share this recent sermon from my friend Pastor Wendell Griffen of New Millennium Baptist church in Little Rock. New Millennium stopped holding services some weeks back, and Wendell is now delivering his sermons online.

"The Immigrant Children…Cannot Be Erased by Shopping Excursions": An Advent Sermon by Wendell Griffen

I'm happy to be able to share with readers a sermon I heard my friend Reverend Wendell Griffen deliver this past Sunday at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Wendell has uploaded the sermon to his blog site, and has given me permission to share it here, too. Wendell's sermon, which is entitled “An Advent Prayer for Desperate People,” contextualizes Advent and Christmas in a way that Lisa Koop's Advent sermon, which I shared two days ago, also does. Both note the struggle many of us have in finding spiritual foundations and hope in a world in which much seems deeply awry, in which the powerful abuse the weak, with self-professed Christians standing squarely on the side of the powerful and cheering them on. Wendell's sermon follows.

Christmas Eve in Dark Times: Still, One Can Dream. And Hope.

I am, I have to admit, a pushover for flashmob videos, though I have a feeling the flashmob phenomenon has peaked. The world has taken a dark turn from the heady period in which this concept performative concept broke on the scene, when it seemed that European union and the election of an African-American president in the U.S. might herald a new age of international cooperation in which the human community might strive to overcome some of its old, deep hatreds and work to build a better world for all.

Making Light of Darkness Together: A New Year's Gift from a Bilgrimage Reader

Larry Motuz shared a wonderful poem here several days ago. I'm sharing it with all of you now as Larry's new year's gift and inspiration to us (click on the image above to see the light move):

Advent: "Darkness and Death Take Different Forms in Every Generation, But the Challenge of Gathering the Forces of Light and Love to Oppose Them Remains the Same"

An Advent offering for you, continuing the themes of the meditation I posted yesterday: illuminations from many different books and poems I've read over many years, and have recorded in my quotation log: 

An Advent Meditation: The Struggle for Hope As Dark Rises and Light Shifts, and Churches Become Trivial Cultural Adjuncts of Affluent Values

It's that time of year in which the waning of the light really does put us into a new — a different — space emotionally and spiritually. We wake these days to bleak darkness, and long before bedtime, the sun has vanished below the horizon. During the day, it comes into the house at new, and sometimes challenging, angles as it moves itself to the southern side of the sky.

As Pope Francis Arrives in U.S., Centrist Catholic Media Continue to Harp on "Balance" and Holding the Center

As Pope Francis arrives in the U.S. to a church very bitterly divided on ideological and political grounds, the centrist Catholic publications are still talking "balance," as they've done for decades now. As if someone has appointed them divine overseers to stand in the middle and keep the quarreling children on either side in line. As if they themselves are omniscient and objective, and have no dogs in any frays. As if the pope himself is a model of "balance." As if "balance" and the "center" were what Jesus himself was about. As if anything really important in the world gets accomplished by "balance."

My Personal Response to the Supreme Court Ruling on Marriage Equality: There Are Rivers of Overflowing Hearts in the U.S. Right Now

My very personal and immediate unvarnished reaction after reading the news of the Supreme Court decision: 

MARRIAGE EQUALITY NATIONWIDE IN U.S.

I'm sure many of you have seen the news, and I don't mean to turn this blog into a news ticker, but what a jolt — in the best way possible — to click on the Huffington Post site right now and see, in big capital letters,

MARRIAGE EQUALITY NATIONWIDE.

Juan Felipe Herrera, First Latino U.S. Poet Laureate: "My Main Goal Was to Shake Hands with as Many People as Possible, of All Ages, and to Reshake Them into Poetry"

Natasha Hakimi comments on the appointment of Juan Felipe Herrera to the position of U.S. poet laureate: as she notes, Herrera is the son of Mexican migrant workers who came to California in 1948. He spent his childhood in tents and trailers as his parents moved around among farm communities in southern California seeking work. 

Rachel Maddow, "This Is an Aspirational Dog"

Well, Advent is about living in hope, isn't it? The graphic is a screen shot from a short clip of Rachel Maddow talking about an aspirational dog, which is a teaser for a longer one in which she reports on the brouhaha caused by misreporting about a papal statement re: dogs and heaven recently.

Pope Francis and What He Represents: Ten Reasons Why I Keep Listening Widely and Maintaining Hope

As I just stated in my previous posting, as I read commentary about Pope Francis and what's happening in my church today, I commit msyelf to listen widely, and I intend to keep doing that, for a variety of reasons. I do also, believe or not, commit myself to continue trying in every way possible to keep hope for a better church alive, even as I take seriously the testimony of many Catholics living on the margins of the institution, or those who have been so savaged by the institution that they want nothing more to do with it — especially survivors of childhood clerical sexual abuse — as a reality-check against hope that is grounded in nothing more than fantasy and media spin.

Here's where I come from as I continue listening to testimony about these issues:

A Belated Happy Birthday to Scott Lentine!

I've mentioned to you before (and here) the poetry of Scott Lentine, a young man in Massachusetts who contacted me by email several years ago, and has shared his poetry and other work with me in the past few years. As Scott's blog says, he's someone living with high-functioning autism who has a degree in religious studies from Merrimack College.

Pope Francis, Anti-Gay Clobber Texts, and Hope: An Advent Meditation

Advent's my season, in some ways. As a gay Catholic who hopes and believes that my church might eventually decide to treat me and others like me with basic human decency, I have long lived in hope, believing in the substance of things unseen. 

In Catholic News: Pope Francis Responds to Letter from Gay Group in Italy

An item much in Catholic news in the past several days, particularly among gay Catholics: the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported several days ago that a group of gay and lesbian Catholics in Italy, Kairos, had written a letter to Pope Francis about the struggles gay folks face in the Catholic church, and that the pope responded to the letter, sending a "benedictory greeting" to the group. At his Dish site, Andrew Sullivan offers a translation of the La Repubblica article. Kairos has not released the text of either its letter to Francis or Francis's response.

As U.S. Is Poised for Another Cowboy War, Need for Expedited Action Remains Entirely Unexplained

Steve Benen at Maddow Blog on what Huffington Post's lead headline* this morning is calling the next in line of America's "cowboy wars":