i woke up at 4:30 this morning with the absolute certain revelation that i will never again be kissed breathless, kissed into and with total abandon, by my husband.  despite talking about it.  despite trying.  it will never again be part of what we share.

would you rather i be a plaster saint, outwardly perfect in all that i do or say? or would you rather i be real, concrete, present in all the sinfulness of humanity, but still walking and working towards enlightenment?

that's what i want to shout at jb.  throw in his face.  scream at the world. 

tomorrow i will have stomach virus, which will force me to stay home from work, because i have my personal interviews with faculty plus financial aid at General Theological Seminary in new york city!!!!  it looks like they have accepted me, or else why this command performance, complete with transcript?

and this is why jb and i have had this discussion, about my "behavior".  about how he expects "some" people (read yours truly) to live up to a higher standard.  because if i do reach the end of this path culminating in ordination, it is a truly valid question. a lifestyle question, for anyone who is searching for enlightenment.

what's the answer?  it used to be that we all wanted plaster saints, icons to be revered.  then the Roman church had the sexual scandals of the 1990s and everything changed > we are still seeing repercussions of that.  was it better to not know what had (probably) been going on for centuries? or is it better now, to see the world as it is?  i know which is more comfortable; i own my own pair of rose colored glasses. i even own rose colored goggles for when i need my entire world (including the peripheral bits) to be nice.  however, when reality eventually crashes in, it can then be worse.

people seem to want those they view as enlightened to be perfect, perhaps so that they can then excuse themselves from striving for enlightenment since only the perfect can succeed, perhaps because they need to believe that there is some thing better in this world.  however gilded, this is still a cage > we remain trapped in childhood, living with magical thinking.

we should take strength and comfort from the fact that we are all on the pathway to enlightentment, and that those who are "ahead" of us still share our fundamental struggles against sin/evil/chaos/not-God/le néant.  we take this journey together, and where i might stumble, you might be strong, and where you are faint and weary, i might have more stamina.  others may have trouble with stealing or anger while i have trouble with lying and love.

it is hard to grow up, to voluntarily remove our blinders and see the world as it is.  if we refuse, however, we will never experience all of life in all of its rich goodness, for even with the faults of humanity and the rest of life's events, this world is still a beautiful place.  it is still God's good creation.

so... how would you answer the questions posed at the beginning?

Just in case you missed me, i thought i should post and update all y'all....

the mammogram/sonogram of my breast showed a tumor.  not the one i felt, but in another location.  now i have to get a biopsy on the 8th of August.  even though i know the chances are even that it could be a fibroedema and benign, why does the word "tumor" immediately conjure up the word "cancer"?

dj's best friend called us friday night to say that, after 18 years and 2 kids, his wife has asked for a divorce. quite unamicably.  and so mj spent most of saturday and most of sunday with us.  since both he and his wife are our friends, this is very sad.  and it has nothing to do with falling in love with someone else, just with external forces...

dj and i took the moms back to St. Peter's, Perth Amboy (where i did my internship) to see everybody.  it was so nice to be welcomed with open arms!  but one of my friends has had a set back - lung cancer that had been eradicated by radiation has metastasized to her hip, so she is now on chemo and tolerating it badly.  her name is carole, and her husband, billy, told me that he is so scared that he will lose her... so if any of you would be so inclined, i would really appreciate you sending prayers to God (or, for my atheist friends, healing thoughts to the universe) for healing and strength for both of them.  also, i discovered that Fr. Rod, the priest who mentored me so wisely and well there, has polyps on his vocal chords, and his xrays showed an abnormality, so he must have a biopsy done at the end of August.... so please, healing for him as well...

Ces and i and Dj and i have been going around and around talking about measuring success.  both Ces and Dj feel that, if you have not achieved a certain level of material success, you are a failure.  Dj ended up blowing up at me out of frustration with his job on thursday - he refuses to give up this job he hates because he has to have a certain level of income in order to meet his bills.  he has these bills still from his first marriage because he felt he had to have a certain level of material achievement to feel good about himself.  Ces is upset because he can "only" afford a $500K home, when all his friends and family live in $750K+ homes.... they seem to be in the majority, while my satisfaction with what i have, even if it is nothing by their standards, seems to be the counter-cultural trend of thinking.  it was such a terrible blow-up on thursday, that even the pets were afraid of Dj... i have to say i was not afraid, just very very sad...

so... to recap since my last post > tuesday i found out i have a tumor, thursday Dj and i had a killer fight, friday Mj told us about his impending divorce, and sunday i discovered that two of my very dear friends are quite ill....  i hope this week is better!

is there a consensus of belief among Christians? actually, despite how different it seems, there is, and it is found in the statements of belief called the creeds. 

the Nicene Creed (without the statement that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son) is the universal creed, and said with the statement about the Holy Spirit, is said by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant churches.  The fundamental beliefs are in a Triune Godhead, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the sins of the entire world, the divinity of Jesus (if you want a true theological discussion of this, email me or RYP me), the catholicity (little 'c' not big 'C') of the holy church and its transmission from the apostles, that one baptism is all that is needed for redemption from sin, that the dead will be resurrected as Christ was resurrected, and in eternal life (the life to come)....

as long as these beliefs are held, there is no doubt that the church in question is a Christian church, and therefore a denomination, and not a cult.  please notice that there is no mention of a need to believe in any hierarchy or theocracy to be considered Christian.  the roman catholic church states that only roman catholics will be saved by appealing to apostolic succession (direct decension from the apostles) but the anglican church and the orthodox churches are descended directly from the apostles.  the roman church also says that one must accept the authority of the pope (which office issued a papal decree about 200 years ago declaring that office infallible in matters of church doctrine) but that is not part of the nicene creed, and not necessary for Christian faith. 

why Jehovah's Witnesses are considered by mainstream christians to be a cult is that they don't believe in the divinity of Christ; of course, they could also be considered a new religion, but they, themselves, seem to want to try to maintain a christian identity without believing in the ontological divinity of Jesus... for them, he was just the best possible human.

 within the jewish religion, christianity was not considered to be separate but a sect because it held all the same tenets as judaism, except they believed in the fulfillment of the messianic promise.  it was not until the early christians began to admit gentiles into their congregations without requiring circumcision or obedience to dietary laws that they deviated outside the fundamental laws of judaism (both circumcision and obedience to dietary laws were considered foundational) and therefore became a religion unto themselves. 

the church of england existed as a separate entity back at the first council of nicea in 325 CE.  except no one was calling themselves the church of anything then, they were all Christian churches and they all considered themselves to be one body. this is why the council of nicea was formed - there were slight-to-large differences in doctrine creeping up (think a game of telephone dealing with complex theological issues spread from constantinople and extending to the celtic isles (modern day ireland/scotland/england)... we know from extant records that the celtic church, the church of england, had a presence at that council in 325CE.

fast forward 800 years, to when the orthodox churches split from the church centered around rome, and this is when the roman catholic church was formed , not by the "direct word of God" any more than the celtic churches or the orthodox churches or the churches in africa... the split was 50% at least political, since rome felt it could better represent the western churches, and wanted the secular power it had amassed to be reflected in its ecclesiastical power.  the excuse was a portion of the nicene creed that read that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son" which raised an entire theological battle about the composition of the Trinity.

fast forward another 400 years, to the 1500s and the reign of henry viii... he was a roman catholic, and wanted to divorce, but the church in rome said no.  so he approached the then archbishop of canterbury and said he would give the celtic church the primacy in his country, make it the Church of England, so if they would grant him a decree of divorce.  sadly, the archbishop caved to political ambition, and that is how the celtic church became the Church of England.  later politics would divide it into the Church of Ireland, the Church of Scotland, and the  Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and colonial aggression would bring the Anglican church into India and Africa and Canada.  now the anglican church has 38 provinces associated with it, of which the Episcopal church is one....

long answer, but an essential one, to the question about the origin of the church of england as it relates to henry viii > all he did was give primacy in his country to a church that already existed....

props where props are due> this post is mostly composed of the editorial of Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, June 12, 2006 issue

The hard reality is that it is no longer possible for more than a very small minority to start out poor, work hard, and become well off... The generation that emerged from World War II enjoyed income growth fairly evenly spread throughout our entire population.  The past 25 years tell an utterly different story.  Median family incomes have risen by less than 1 percent a year - for a total of 18 percent overall - but median incomes for the top 1 percent have gone up more than 10 times faster - by an astounding 200 percent!  From 1980 to 2004, our GDP (gross domestic product) rose by almost two thirds, but when you factor in inflation, the wages of the typical earner actually fell... Among the top 20 percent of American earners, real incomes increased by 59 percent. 

And there is no sign that the trend is moderating.  This year the top 10 percent of wage earners are projected to receive 45 percent of all household cash income, up from 40.6 percent in 2000.  And what about the average family in the 80 percent of the workforce who make up our rank and file?  Incomes are actually slightly lower, after adjusting for inflation, than they were four years ago… those Americans have effectively taken a pay cut since 2002 even though the economy has been growing by over 3% per year.  Except for a few years in the late 1990s, the hourly pay of most workers has done no better than inflation for the past 30 years. 

The gap between the ostentatious new rich and the rest of America is growing fast.  Twenty-five years ago, the top fifth of all American households’ post-tax incomes were 6.7 times those of the bottom fifth.  Today, that ratio has jumped to 9.8 times – nearly a 50% increase.  The result? 37 million Americans living below the poverty line in 2004, but an additional 54 million were the ‘near poor’…

If we look at net worth, as distinct from income, the growing inequality is equally manifest.  Some 85% of the nations’ wealth now resides in the hands of the richest 15% of American families.  The bottom 50% of families, on the other hand, claim only 2.5% of household net worth… The average net worth of the richest 10% of American families rose to $861,000 last year, a 6.5% increase over 2001.  What happened to the typical family in the bottom 25%? Net worth actually fell by 1.5%.

Our tax system has become much less progressive, enabling families in the top decile to benefit, and especially the top families within the top… Taxes for the well-to-do are lower today than they have been in 60 years.  It is role reversal for Robin Hood: We are robbing the poor to enrich the rich. 

"If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your need neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it might be....Give liberally, and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this accoutn the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.  Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, 'Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.'"   Deuteronomy 15:7-8, 10-11