Happy birthday to me?

[wildeabandon]

Yesterday was lovely. I had quite a productive morning and afternoon, then obandsoller took me out for dinner at one of my favourite restaurants, Dinings, who do Japanese/Modern European fusion (which seems to be mostly just Japanese food except with truffle added to approximately half the dishes, and whilst that might not be everyone's idea of a good time, as far as I'm concerned it's about as close to perfection as you're likely to find this side of heaven).

Today had some high points. I got some lovely messages and cards and gifts. One of those gifts was a kindle book from which Amazon had decided to hide the name of the sender, so I had to guess who was most likely to send me a copy of "Fallen Angels and the History of Christianity and Judaism: The Reception of Enochian Literature." (I got it down to a shortlist of two, and it turned out to be robert_jones rather than hjdoom).

But one of the first things that happened today was reading in the Church Times that one of the ten items under discussion at this year's Lambeth Conference will be whether to reaffirm resolution 1.10 from 1998 which "upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage;" and "rejects homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". So that was a bit of a kick in the teeth to start the day.

There's a whole bunch of politics around why this is coming up now, and it's tangled up with the church's history of colonialism in complicated and uncomfortable and thorny ways, which is probably going to make it harder to unpick my own reaction and what it means for my ongoing relationship with and place in the church. Although at this early stage my reaction is mostly just being fucking sad, which is at least uncomplicated.

Comments

[ludy]

Happy Birthday.

I’m so sorry about the difficult church stuff

[sfred]

<3

[verazea]

Happy birthday!

And oof :(

[ewt]

The Lambeth Calls are such a kick in the teeth. I've been somewhat heartened by some of the responses I've seen in the wider church, which amount to "wait, wtf?" and "8 days before the conference is a shitty time to send something like this out and it's even worse if you sneak something like that in" and "well obviously this *isn't* the 'mind of the church as a whole' so that needs amending". It looks like it could turn into a genuinely helpful discussion about polity, which would be nice, but it would of course be even better if we could have the discussion about polity without the homophobia to kick things off.

I am glad your birthday was enjoyable otherwise; I wish you many happy returns, preferably without church politics bullshit.

[rmc28]

Many happy returns for your birthday, and enormous sympathy on the church politics.

[emperor]

Yeah, it's a bit WTF on a number of levels :(

[bella_luugosi]

<3

[atreic]

*hugs* I'm sure the holy spirit is at work in the church, but there's some very mysterious ways going on quite a lot of the time :-(

[kht]

Happy unbirthday!

[leonato]

Belated Happy Birthday!

And Urgh/boo etc. at Lambeth :)

[kht]

I like the new version of the Lambeth Calls better!
(would it be heretical to think of it as God giving you a belated birthday present?)

[smhwpf]

Happy belated Birthday!

Ghastly with the Lambeth Calls, I'm so sorry. It sounds like they're revising them and giving Bishops the option to reject them? Let's hope that awful original text gets buried.