Ruth Krall, "Persephone’s Journey into the Underworld: Lessons for Our Time"

Ancient portrayal of Demeter and Persephone, Apulian red-figure loutrophoro, ca. 4th century BCE, from the J. Paul Getty Museum, at the Theoi Project website

When I announced at the start of this year that I've decided no longer to maintain Bilgrimage, I also noted that if readers have something they'd like me to consider for posting here down the road, I'll gladly do that. Ruth Krall has kindly offered the following essay for publication here, and I'm delighted to share it. 

A Piece of Personal Testimony on All Saints' Day: The Sanctity of Many Queer People and Their Loving Relationships

This All Saints' day, I think of a little iconostasis I kept for some years next to my desk. The saints whose pictures or icons I had on the iconostasis were my own personal saints — an idiosyncratic collection, almost all of whom would never be canonized by the church.

My Response to "American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel" — Still None, Still Done, as US Christianity Exhibits Total Lack of Imagination in Face of Pandemic

I did watch "American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel." It’s an excellent film and great statement, and I highly recommend it.

Mass Suffering and Televised Masses: Watch Me Eat for You! Watch ME!

Coronavirus: A Spanish bishop has hit out at the “bombardment” of the faithful with coronavirus TV broadcast and livestreamed Masses, asking:

“Aren’t we treating believers as if they don’t know how to pray, and should depend on the clergy to do so?"https://t.co/oWX8Vcu6Y2

— Novena News (@novenanews) March 26, 2020

Recommended: Ian Gilmour, Slavery to Civil Rights

I'd like to recommend to you a little monograph entitled Slavery to Civil Rights, written by my friend Ian Gilmour, a Presbyterian pastor in Edinburgh who is currently serving the Scottish kirk in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Ian's small book reflects years of research into the role that spirituals and music in general have played among African-Americans and in African-American churches, to sustain hope and courage as people battle prejudice and discrimination. I find Slavery to Civil Rights — which is engagingly and clearly written — fascinating from a number of standpoints.

Ruth Krall, Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking (Part 2)

This posting is a continuation of an essay by Ruth Krall, the first part of which I posted several days ago. As that previous posting notes, Ruth's essay, entitled "Prolegomena: An Act of Re-Thinking," invites readers to re-think how we've come to view the phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable people in religious contexts. Ruth urges us to consider applying terms and concepts from the realm of public health to this phenomenon. Is this abuse an epidemic in religious contexts today? Is it endemic in religious structures? Is it pandemic?

Because the essay belows continues (and links to) the first part published previously, the endnotes begin at xvi rather than 1. Here's the second part of Ruth's valuable essay:

A Christmas Story

Since Christmas is a time for telling ourselves stories….

The Christmas story is one we have to make way for against all odds.

Death of 7-Year-Old Girl in U.S. Custody, a Family Funeral, and the Inexplicable Cruelty of Right-Wing U.S. Catholicism: An Advent Conundrum

Sometimes I follow threads in Catholic discussions on Twitter down rabbit holes. I know I shouldn't do this, because the holes inevitably turn out to be dark, claustrophobic, and stifling. 

Putting Christ Back Into Christmas: The Death of Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin

A Story of Two Jesuits, with Commentary on the Current State of the Catholic Church (Especially re: LGBTQ People)

This is a story of two Jesuits. I'm telling it now primarily because news I read about one of the two this week gave me a shock, and, after having read that story, I've been mulling over my years as a student at Loyola University in New Orleans from 1968-1972. Because what I say about these two men involves personal judgments and neither is around to defend or explain himself, I'm not going to name them — though I'm perfectly aware that anyone with access to the internet, who knows how to dig for information, can fairly easily identify both men.

POTUS Headed to Church on Easter Day: "NEED WALL!" — Deep Shame of White American Christianity As Hatred of Immigrants Normalized

‘NEED WALL!’: Trump Heads to Easter Service After Threatening Mexico, Attacking Democrats https://t.co/t1BkpKInqB pic.twitter.com/zO9OeoY5RN

— Gay Civil Rights (@gaycivilrights) April 1, 2018

In my mind as I watched the hate directed towards immigrants pour out on Easter day, from the man in the White House as he walked to church, down to his followers, many of them using bible verses to prop up their hate:

Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection, and His Table Open to All: Why Politics Are Unavoidable on Good Friday and Easter

Because of the very powerful slaveholder religion (and here) crafted by Southern Christian apologists for slavery, which pretends that salvation and Jesus are all about the "spiritual" realm and not this world and the muddy, sordid political realities that shape this world, many American Christians find it distasteful to talk about Jesus, or Easter, and the political at the same time.

This Is Easter for Me: Joan Baez Singing "The President Sang Amazing Grace"

This is Easter for me — Joan Baez singing "The President Sang Amazing Grace," with Jeff Scheer's beautiful animated video accompanying the song.

As Men Lift Up the Cross in Holy Week Liturgies Around the World, Some Theological Questions

In a just-published article entitled "In an age of Trump and Stormy Daniels, evangelical leaders face sex scandals of their own," Sarah Pulliam Bailey quotes Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who states,

What Does it Mean to Learn on Good Friday That Sacramento Police Shot Stephon Clark 7 Times in Back?

Don Thompson and Sophia Bollag at TPM

What does it mean to read this report on Good Friday?

"You can't talk about #GoodFriday with any kind of moral relevance—any understanding of how Christ's crucifixion occurs all around us—without discussing police shootings"

"Between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men & women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these 'Christians' did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions.”- James H. Cone, The Cross & The Lynching Tree

— Union Seminary (@UnionSeminary) March 30, 2018

Behold the Wood of the Cross: Good Friday Meditation on Crosses . . . And Crossings

Alan Bennett, Keeping On Keeping On (London: Faber & Faber, 2016):

Oh to live in the world one sees from the train — empty, unpeopled, only a horse in the field, one car at the crossing, and a woman at the end of a garden taking down washing (Diary, 3 March 2006, p. 51).

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.

Happy Solstice: Veni et Illumina Sedentes in Tenebris

Happy winter solstice to all of you readers. The photo above is one Steve took in 2013 a day or so after the winter solstice, at the Pantheon in Rome. We were visiting the Pantheon around noontime on that day.

The photo below is one we took of the basilica of St. Francis in Assisi a few days before the solstice. I see a parable here, in the juxtaposition of these two photos.

O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae et sol justitiae,

veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis.

Dark and Light: Winter Solstice, Hannukah, Christmas (2)

Light:

It never takes longer than a few minutes, whenever they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That’s what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts. 

~ Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (NY: Harper, 2007), p. 309.