Wandering Elder

The United Methodist Church (of which I am a part) has elected an openly gay individual to the Episcopacy.  Karen Oliveto, a pastor in the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC was elected unanimously to the office of Bishop. My issue is not with her sexuality. It is with rules. By the rules of the United Methodist Church, which are collectively known as the Book of Discipline , "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" are officially prohibited from being ordained as pastors - let alone Bishop.  Oliveto came out to her congregation and denomination this past year, meaning she had already been ordained.  However at some point the question of her sexuality was either never brought up or ignored by her or by those in the process of ordination. Let me again say that her sexuality is not my concern.  What is  is that she seems to ( seems to ) have knowingly broken the rules of the Discipline and, as such, put the larger denomination in the odd position of having ordained someone who

So, my thoughts this week have been returning to that which is less painful and more of the philosophic and musical. In particular, my thoughts have been surrounded by the music of Pink Floyd. I am a big fan of Pink Floyd and have been since I was in junior high.  I got into listening to Pink Floyd late in their career - my first tape  of Pink Floyd's catalog was A Momentary Lapse of Reason.  This was followed shortly by The Dark Side of the Moon.   And while they both came from the band Pink Floyd, they weren't the same  band in the sense of members or of attitude. Yet I love them both. I will admit that I am a fan more of the music that comes from 1971 and forward than I am of the music that came before.  Not that I dislike the even older stuff, but the music from Dark Side and forward (with a touch of "Echoes" from the previous album, Meddle ) captured my attention and my imagination in a way few other bands ever would. Some of that came from the open e

Given the news as of late, I found I had little to express but grief and sadness.  Not what you want to hear from a pastor, I know.  Even pastors have their dark moments.  Believe me. This morning I pulled a book off my shelf called Strength to Love .  It is a collection of sermons by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The opening words of his preface hit home:  "In these turbulent days of uncertainty the evils of war and of economic and racial injustice threaten the very survival of the human race.  Indeed, we live in a day of grave crisis." Still too true. So I wish to offer a challenge to each of us that comes from the words of such a great man. The following is an excerpt from Dr. King's sermon, "A Knock at Midnight" which was written in 1963. "Even in the inevitable moments when all seems hopeless, men know that without hope they cannot really live, and in agonizing desperation they cry for the bread of hope. And there is the deep longing for the br