2008 September Clamour News

Clamour & News from Underbridge Labyrinth Walk September 21, 2008 explore the Labyrinth at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. Weather permitting. Please check the PPF website for bulletins. We will begin at 5:30 p.m. There will be no service at Mellwood Arts and Entertainment Center that day. According to Wikipedia: Labyrinths can be thought of as symbolic forms of pilgrimage; peoLabyrinth ple can walk the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary path, ascending toward salvation or enlightenment. Many Join us on Sunday 21 people could not afford to September 2008 as we

travel to holy sites and lands, so labyrinths and prayer substituted for such travel. Later, the religious significance of labyrinths faded, and they served primarily for entertainment, though recently their spiritual aspect has seen a resurgence. Path, travel, pilgrimage and the search for the center are all key images in Progressive Pathways Fellowship’s mission to study the various routes into the presence of the Divine. In our work to bring accord to our personal spiritualities, the life of our church and the larger denominations and faith traditions around us, we hope to continue learning new ways to be church and community.

Anonymous Satanism Clamour Underbridge for September from The Letter God does not hear my prayers. That’s the word from a particular Southern Baptist believer who informed me that it was important that I sit down and listen to his witness.

When I checked The Baptist Faith and Message after the fact I discovered a few discrepancies from my witness’ testimony but who am I to dispute an expert.

I also plan to keep on praying. As a matter of fact, I’m a professional pray-er. The divine ones hear my prayers just like always. They haven’t checked The Baptist Faith and Message either. But according to my witnesser my prayers are being spoofed.

September 5, 2008 Please note that: While Father Jim is copastor of Progressive Pathways Fellowship in Louisville his opinions and any opinions and information found in Clamour Underbridge or Clamour & News from Underbridge are those of Father Jim or other writers as they appear. They do not usually represent the official policy of the church.

Inside this issue: Labyrinth

1

Anonymous Satanism

1& 2

What’s Up with Book Chat

3& 4

Page 2

Clamour & News from Underbridge

Anonymous Satanism continued Spoofing is something that happens to email. It’s part of the junk mail and spam phenomena. An email arrives in your mailbox that seems to be from a friend or perhaps your church. Surprise! The email is actually from someone who knows all the secrets of increasing your breast size, penis length, disposable income or stock portfolio. Face to face this is referred to as bait and switch. In the world of computers, emails and prayers, it’s called spoofing. It was explained to me like this. Since I am not a Christian there is no chance that god listens to me unless I am repenting. A few observations from my perspective--the god being discussed is, of course, the jealous god and the Christianity of my witnesser is practiced by the scrupulous and self-elected set. To me it seems this particular clique of Christians worships the Bible and has very little use for Jesus except as a human sacrifice and the agent of their get-out-of-hell-free insurance policy. I also wondered how the “this is a prayer of repentance” determination gets made. Maybe somebeing is reading prayer subject lines as well as rerouting their destination addresses. Then it gets even better. I was told

that not only am I not a Christian but I’m actually a Satanist, an anonymous Satanist. Believe it or not, this is one of those times when being gay has nothing to do with it. My prayers are being diverted to the in-basket of the devil. As a matter of fact, all the goddesses and gods are just the devil in disguise. Color me incredulous. Even though the jealous god is supposedly all powerful, all knowing and present everywhere at all times he has given his cast-out chief of staff, Satan, the power to hear and answer all the prayers of those of us who don’t grovel properly, read the Bible the proscribed way and follow the “Jesus is a human sacrifice” line. That devil really has the inside line on the world and billions of people. The flip side of anonymous Satanism is anonymous Christianity. Father Karl Rahner, SJ proposed the theory of anonymous Christianity way back in 1966. Father Karl said “I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion noth-

ing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.” I would prefer to be neither an anonymous Christian nor an anonymous Satanist but it seems my feelings on the issue just don’t matter. The jealous god is not the only divine one. He is one of many goddesses and gods that love and care for the world and its peoples. I pray to exactly whom I intend to pray and whether or not my prayer is heard depends on me and those numbered among the divine. The jealous god gets one vote and I tend not to talk to him much anyway. Incidentally, it takes a lot more faith than I have to believe in Satan’s power and might in the same way as my witnesser. Nevertheless, Lucifer is not in the prayer spoofing business nor does he creep hither, thither and yon impersonating other deities and gleefully leading the faithful of other religions down the road of perdition. He’s quite busy enough pestering the jealous god about Job and other faithful believers.

Volume 1, Issue 2

Page 3

What’s on the shelf for Book Chat? We finished The Llangollen Ladies by Mary Gordon. Gordon’s book is a 1930’s take on the extraordinary lives of Lady Eleanor Butler (1739-1829) The Honourable Sarah Ponsonby (1755– 1831) Susan S. Lanser, Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Maryland at College Park has this to say about the ladies. See her original essay at http://www.glbtq.com/ literature/butler_ponsonby.html. An enduring emblem of female romantic friendship, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby eloped to Wales where they lived together for over fifty years and entertained several important writers. Best known as the Ladies of Llangollen, after the Welsh village where they lived in "delicious Retirement," Butler and Ponsonby were daughters of the AngloIrish Ascendency who eloped together in 1778. Ponsonby, sixteen years Butler's junior, lost both parents in early childhood and her stepmother when she was thirteen. Given into the care of her

father's cousin Lady Betty Fownes, she was sent to Miss Parke's boarding school in Kilkenny. There, in 1768, she met Butler, youngest daughter in a Catholic branch of an ancient and noble family of Kilkenny. Educated in an English Benedictine convent in France, Butler became Ponsonby's intellectual mentor and intimate friend. After Ponsonby left Miss Parke's in 1773, the two women entered upon a secret correspondence and determined to live together. Butler and Ponsonby's first elopement failed; they were discovered, returned, and separated by their two families. Eleanor was urged to a convent, whereas Sarah, it was hoped, would be married. When both women resisted these pressures and Sarah threatened to make public the attentions of her guardian's husband, the families relented and the women fled to Wales. They took a cottage, which they named Plas Newydd, and there settled for the rest of their long lives. The Ladies' pastoral retreat drew many prominent visitors, including Edmund Burke, William Wordsworth, Anna Seward, and Stéphanie de Genlis. Their mutual attachment, and their life of shared reading, writing, walking, and gardening, were celebrated and mythologized in such contemporary writings as Seward's "Llangollen Vale" and Wordsworth's "Sonnet Composed at Plas Newydd."

Queen Eleanor by Polly Brooks September 2, 16, 23 and 30

The women shared bed, board, books, income, and daily walks; dressed similarly in men's waistcoats and women's skirts; signed their correspondence jointly; named one of their dogs Sappho; and refused to spend even one night away from home. Butler's journals refer to Ponsonby as "my Beloved" and "my sweet love," describe physical attentions bestowed for headaches and illnesses, and express the couple's longings, when visitors were too plentiful, to be alone again. There has been considerable debate

The Mists of Avaolon by Marion Zimmer Bradley Beginning October 7 through November 25 about whether Butler and Ponsonby's union should be labeled "lesbian." During their lifetime, implications of homosexuality circulated occasionally in the press and among visitors, although their upperclass status and connections undoubtedly protected them. Their homophobic neighbor Hester Thrale Piozzi suspected them of Sapphism; Genlis considered them imprudent victims of an excessive sensibility. Anne Lister, the Yorkshire woman who recorded her own homosexual activities in coded diaries, wrote after visiting Llangollen in 1822, "I cannot help thinking that surely it was not Platonic. Heaven forgive me, but I look within myself & doubt." Whether the Ladies of Llangollen have been regarded as celibate or sexual, their relationship has emblematized "romantic friendship" for over two centuries. Deeply immersed in the literary culture of their day as readers, conversa-

Book Chat Continued tionalists, and occasional writers, they have also remained literary subjects. Colette speculates about them in The Pure and the Impure (1928), Constance Stallard dramatizes their relationship in "The Ladies of Llangollen" (1955), and novels by Doris Grumbach (The Ladies, 1984) and Morgan Graham (These Lovers Fled Away, 1988) imagine their life. Elizabeth Mavor's 1971 biography remains the major resource for scholars; Mavor's selections from Butler's and Ponsonby's private writings is also a valuable textual source.

You are invited to any and all services of Progressive Pathways Fellowship. Our studio and education center is at 208 1/2 Mellwood Arts and Entertainment Center 1860 Mellwood Avenue Louisville, Kentucky 40206 Visit our website for more information, maps and directions. We meet on Sundays at 5:30 p.m for informal worship and

Clamour Underbridge a bastion in defiance of the jealous god, an outpost of refuge for the Queandom. This is a gay, lesbian, queer and questioning space. Be welcome and beware. Abusers and miscreants will be fed to the troll.

Mary Poppins December 2008.

http://clamourunderbridge.typepad.com/