In Paradiso, Tutto e a Posto

The Lady in the Radiator reminds us that in Heaven, every thing is fine; and in this clip, you can learn to sing it in Italian.



... from that midnight movie in art school classic, Eraserhead, by David Lynch.

Fats Waller playing the organ will never be the same again.

I love this movie, a masterpiece of creepy atmospherics and sly humor.

"Henry's very clever with printing."
"Yes... he looks clever."

Transfiguration Day

Giovanni Bellini, The Transfiguration

Transfiguration, where all that is ordinary and familiar is made radiant, new, and glorious for us. Transfiguration is our assurance that this drab world of toil, suffering, evil, and death that we see is not the whole story.

The Russian Avant-Garde Part 2; Constructivism

Poster by Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1924

After the catastrophe of the First World War, it seemed everyone everywhere wanted a new start. The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that the trauma of the First World War broke the thread of historical continuity. The generations that survived the war believed that the experience not only contaminated the history that immediately preceded it, but the whole of Western history. The war generations wanted a radical new start to history, the more radical the better.
All eyes were on the Soviet Union, a brand new state with a brand new unprecedented political system emerging out of the ruins of that failed past. We have to remember that no one knew how it would all come out at the time. Stalin was still an unknown party apparatchik with a criminal past. The violence of the Revolution was seen at the time as birth pangs, and not as a portent of things to come.

The artists of the Russian avant-garde wanted to give form to this new start. They wanted to begin by ending the privileged status of fine art, to end the divide between fine and applied art; and by implication, to end the class divide between fine art connossieurs (haute bourgeois) and applied art users (petit bourgeois and proletariat). This group of artists wanted to collaborate directly with technology, industry, and mass media to create a new visual (and a new moral and political) order, and to bring it to the broad population. This group of artists called themselves "Constructivisists."

This ambition to end the privileged status of fine art put the Constructivists into conflict with the Suprematists who insisted on the priveleged status of painting as a generator of form. Many of these artists began as painters in the Suprematist movement. Some, like Rodchenko, would give up painting entirely. Others, like El Lissitzky, would continue to paint. These artists created what to my mind are some of the finest and most beautiful abstract paintings of the 20th century.

Aleksandr Rodchenko, Composition 64, 1918

Rodchenko, Black Circles, 1918

El Lissitzky produced a series of magnificent abstract compositions he called PROUN paintings, from the Russian acronym for "Projects for Creating the New."

Lissitzky, PROUN composition, about 1920



Lissitzky, PROUN composition, 1923

Vladimir Tatlin emerged as the leader of the Constructivists and as an international proletarian hero of modern art whose praises were sung around the world. He was a very colorful character, one of the few in this movement who was not from a middle-class background. His father worked on the railroad. He ran away from home at 18 and worked as a sailor and as a traveling folk musician. He even worked as a professional wrestler (and not a good one, losing fights and the hearing in one of his ears). I've already discussed Tatlin before in a previous post.

Tatlin, through a bit of great good luck (a gold coin from Kaiser Wilhelm II himself after a folk-music performance in Berlin, according to legend), had enough money to buy a railroad ticket to Paris. He went to Paris and begged Picasso to hire him as a studio assistant. Picasso refused to hire him, but let him hang out in the studio. Tatlin would play Russian folk music for Picasso on a balalaika in his studio while Picasso worked. While there, he saw Picasso working on the sculpture of a guitar made entirely out of sheet metal. The sculpture's use of industrial material, conflation of object and setting, and inversion of mass and volume profoundly influenced Tatlin. Picasso eventually tired of this crazy Russian (he had enough of them with his friends at the Ballet Russe and his future wife, Olga) and threw him out of the studio.

Tatlin went back to Russia and began making a series of wall relief sculptures assembled out of industrial materials like sheet metal, wire, glass, timber, and plaster.

Tatlin, Painting Relief, 1914

Tatlin, like Malevich, made works of art for the icon corner, in this case, sculptures made out of industrial materials. Like Malevich's Black Square, this was intended to propagate a new form language for a new age of science and technology, this time with the materials of that new age.

Tatlin, Corner Relief, 1918

As far as I know, only one of these relief sculptures survives in the original. The rest survive only through a set photographs taken in 1921.

Tatlin's most spectacular project was never realized, an immense tower of steel and glass with moving parts.

Tatlin, model for the proposed Monument to the Third International, 1919 - 1920

This was to be a 1300 foot high tower straddling the Moscow River. It was to have sections that turned like clockwork every month, every week, every day, and every hour. It was to have loudspeakers and massive projectors to beam slogans on the winter cloud cover. It's a stirring design. It's organized around that most unstable of all forms, the diagonal with a great spiral rising around it, a spidery slanting Tower of Babel pointing Onward and Upward. It splendidly distills all those dynamic creative forces of nature and history harnessed to production; the orbits of stars and planets, the turning of seasons, the constant processes of formation and re-formation of the earth itself, the constant struggles and transformations of human history, all forces in motion toward their natural and historical fulfillment in the proletarian state.
However, the fact that this model must be supported by ropes hanging from the ceiling should give us pause. The tower was unbuildable. There was not enough steel in all of Russia to build it. The technology necessary for it had not been invented. It's a romantically impractical monument to practicality. And there is the problem.
So much of this art is driven by utopian dreaming and expectation. That's what makes it so moving and so tragic.

Society of Young Artists Exhibition, Moscow, May, 1920.

Rodchenko, Hanging Sculpture, 1920

Tatlin had a huge influence on other Russian artists. After his example, they began making sculptures intended to serve as prototypes for architecture and design. Like Tatlin's work, they were assembled out of industrial material. No longer is this sculpture shaped from a mass of stone or clay, but constructed around and through its ambient space. Some of these sculptures, like Rodchenko's above, came down off the pedestals and seemed to float in the air and move with the air currents. These sculptures would be a form language for a new world of change and constant motion; the struts of the airplane met the struts of the steel frame house. Also like Tatlin's work, they were too new and different to be successfully accepted by a broad Russian public. However, these works will have a profound influence on art and design beyond Russia.

Where the Constructivists will have their most lasting influence is in graphic design. Below is a typical American advertisment from the 1920s.



Here is a political poster by the Latvian born artist Gustav Klutsis from about the same time as the ad above.


The Russians pioneered the use of simple memorable photomontage images coupled together with short punchy slogans instead of columns of text.

Aleksandr Rodchenko quit painting to devote his full attention to graphic design. He sometimes collaborated with poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in creating short memorable slogans on bright memorable posters.

Rodchenko, Poster for a Film Festival, 1925



Rodchenko, cover for Novy LEF magazine, 1925

Rodchenko pioneered a new graphic design incorporating photography with bright colorful forms and large simple text. He also rethought the photography he used in these designs. He began by incorporating other photos, but began making his own photographs. Rodchenko's photos emphasized the abstract qualities of imagery; shots taken from odd angles such as from high above or far below that flatten the image into pattern.



This cover design very remarkably anticipates the graphic layout debuted in Life magazine in the USA about 9 years after this issue.

Among the many ironies of the 20th century is that these creations of Communist utopians would have the biggest influence on later American publishing and advertising.


So, what happened to the Russian avant-garde? By 1932, it had almost entirely disappeared.

Defamatory Exhibition of Modern Art in Moscow, 1937

In the same year Hitler staged the Decadent Art Exhibit, Stalin staged a similar, but less ambitious, exhibition to drive the last nail into the coffin of Russian modernism. In the photo above in clockwise order are paintings by Kandinsky, Rodchenko, and Malevich with Malevich's Black Square on the bottom right.


Here is what the Soviet regime really wanted from its artists even before Stalin took power, easily comprehensible story-telling form that concentrates on spectacles of agreement and solidarity. The stories are always kept simple and uncomplicated from any drama. Nothing is asked from the viewer except agreement. Artists had to adapt to this new regime or perish, professionally or literally.

-Malevich died of cancer in 1935.

-El Lissitzky found himself increasingly marginalized and under threat. He died of tuberculosis shortly after the German invasion in 1941.

-The once internationally celebrated Tatlin was reduced to painting camouflage during World War II. He died in poverty and obscurity in Moscow in 1953, forgotten in Russia and in the West.

-Rodchenko survived as a photo-journalist and curator for the government, dying in 1956.

-Gustav Klutsis was arrested in 1933, and shot 3 weeks later.

Moral Witness and Moral Scolds

We love a moral scold in this country, someone who can make us all feel like such naughty children. We find it reassuring when someone tells us that all that is good and right is ultimately a simple matter of eating our vegetables, coloring within the lines, and following all the rules. If everyone did so, all would be right in the world and the Great Santa Claus in the Sky would smile on us and shower us all with toys.
I think people fixate on sexual morality because it is such naughty fun, and it is so easy and convenient. Gays are easy for a lot of people. There are relatively few of them, and whatever does or does not happen with their status will not affect the lives of the hetero majority. Nothing will be asked of this majority, and nothing will change for them. Someone else will bear the weight of the decisions, however they are decided. Gays are horrifyingly fascinating. Their sex lives have the horrifying and titillating fascination of a freak show that eclipses every other aspect about them. Gays, and the people who hate them obsessively make great teevee; a gladiator fight of the freaks every night on the news. The best part about it is that it affects only "those people," and not us. Everyone can enjoy being a spectator without consequences.

Above is one of the most powerful moral witnesses in New York, that haunted building on 23-24 Washington Place in Greenwich Village once known as the Asch Building, and now known as the Brown Building, part of the New York University campus. It is the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire that happened around 5PM March 25, 1911. It claimed the lives of a total of 148 sweatshop workers out of a total of about 600 employees. There were no safety measures in the factory other than buckets of water for the occaisional small fire. The place was filled with piles of cloth scraps and paper patterns. Men who worked in the cutting rooms smoked. The place was lit by open gas flames. On the 9th floor, there were only 2 exit doors, one of which was locked when the fire broke out. It was common practice for sweatshops to lock their employees in. A series of fatal sweatshop fires that year prompted the New York Fire Department to call for the imposition of emergency safety regulations. Those proposed regulations were successfully defeated by the garment industry.
The women who worked at the Triangle company were from Italy, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Some were as young as 12. They worked 14 hour shifts in a 60 to 72 hour work week. They were paid $3 a day.
The fire broke out suddenly and spread very quickly trapping many on the 8th and 9th floors. Some burned to death. Many lept to their deaths on the pavement below.



The owners of the company successfully evaded liability for the fire. They had subcontracted out all the work, and claimed ignorance of working conditions. Defense lawyers successfully bullied and intimidated survivors, all young women, on the witness stand.

It has been said that the New Deal began with that fire. Among the witnesses was the young Frances Perkins who would be the first Labor Secretary under President Franklin Roosevelt. Workplace safety regulations and workman's compensation came as a consequence of the fire. But truly, nothing much has really changed since that fire. New York, and cities around the world, are still full of sweatshops with badly paid and brutalized workers. Garment prices still depend on this labor remaining so cheap and expendable. So much of our convenience depends on someone else's misery. Kitchens and construction sites around the city are filled with illegal immigrant labor who form a brutalized indentured laboring class that sustains New York's prosperity. We all depend on this labor and benefit from it. No one is a spectator in this moral conflict.

Unlike the gay issue, this one directly affects us all, and profoundly affects the lives of millions around the world with far more serious consequences. This brutal system is driven by greed and selfishness on our part. Could it be that so much of what we identify as "values" are nothing more than survival skills? Could it be that the only real "value" that we universally recognize is what's written on a price tag? That same greed drives an entire culture of predation and nihilism whose consequences are economic collapse impoverishing millions, and war over resources and profits, killing thousands.

Where are the moral scolds for this?

One thing I've never heard in church in the States is a sermon on the morality of greed.

Another excellent meditation on this same issue from a sharply different standpoint on certain issues from mine can be found here.

The Russian Avant-Garde Part 1; Suprematism

Kazimir Malevich, Black and Red Squares, 1913

In December 1913, a "Futurist" opera opened at the Luna Park Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia with costumes and back cloths designed by the Ukrainian born artist Kazimir Malevich. It was a work of science fiction titled Victory Over The Sun, about the victory by a "Man of the Future" over the decadent culture of "The Sun." Like Futurist entertainments pioneered in Italy shortly before, the performance was full of noise and dissonant music. The plot was minimal. The audience rioted and the opera closed on opening night.

Probably the most memorable part of the opera was Malevich's contribution. He brought visual modernism to the very unconventional and anti-naturalistic costumes. Most especially, he put a pioneering work of abstract art before the audience in the form of one of the back-cloths, a very minimalist design that survives only in his working drawing for the design.

Malevich's drawing for the back-cloth of Victory Over The Sun, 1913.

Surely someone somewhere has done exhaustive scholarly and critical work on the close association between early modernism and science fiction. We've already seen it in the visionary architecture of Antonio Sant'Elia that continues to inspire Sci Fi illustrators and movie directors. Science fiction and modern art of the time were about The Future, and great expectations born of rapidly evolving technology.

The Russian avant-garde was a short lived movement of great expectations at the height of its powers in the years of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. It took over from Futurism the title of most adventurous and trail-blazing modern art movement in the world. Without it, the German Bauhaus and almost all subsequent modern architecture and design would have been unthinkable. The Russian avant-garde's influence on emerging international modernism was profound.
Their influence on Russia was limited. This most forward-looking of all modern art movements began in the most backward country in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, Russia was only beginning to industrialize. The medieval feudal order had been formally dissolved barely 30 years earlier. The vast majority of the population were illiterate former serfs, slaves toiling on their lords' estates for generations. The very idea that the world's first Communist state would appear out of this medieval Byzantine survival would have horrified Karl Marx who died convinced that the first such state would be Britain or his native Germany.
And yet, it would be this backward country just emerged from feudalism that would be the first to embark on manned space exploration within 50 years of its revolution. The Victory Over the Sun would prove to be prophetic despite the hostile critics and audience.

The Russian avant-garde was largely isolated in its own country, having to make do in conditions of shortages, turmoil, and civil war. Lenin famously regarded them with contemptuous indifference. "Let the artists live off their enthusiasm," he said. Stalin would bring the movement (and some of its artists) to a premature end. It has only been recently that scholarship has resurrected the memory of this movement, and collections of surviving artworks have emerged from official oblivion.

Malevich, Black Square, 1913

First Suprematist Exhibition, St. Petersburg, 1915

The Russian avant-garde was actually a number of different groups. The first important group formed around Malevich and called themselves "Suprematists." They claimed to be the "inventors"of abstract painting. Another Russian, Wassily Kandinsky would dispute that claim, saying he made the first truly non-representational painting 3 years earlier.
I've always been of the opinion that all the truly revolutionary gestures in art were made before the Second World War. Here is absolute essentialist anti-figural abstraction 50 years before Ad Reinhardt and other artists would invent "Minimalist" abstraction. The "supreme" in Suprematism referred to that absolute reduction to the most fundamental forms of painting. It is no accident that Malevich's Black Square is hanging up in the corner of the exhibition.

Icon corner of a Russian dacha.

Russian icon of the Transfiguration from the 15th century.

The corner in the main room was the place of honor for religious icons in traditional Russian homes. For centuries, the Russian Orthodox Church communicated its mysteries and teachings to its illiterate flock of indentured tenant farmers through images. The image played a very large role in bearing meaning in Russia, contrary to the English-speaking world that privileges the word over the image as a consequence of its Protestant history. The icon was a window into the Next World, and a window out of this Vale of Tears for the believer.
Malevich decided to use that profound reverence for the image, its power to bear meaning for a largely illiterate population, to propagate a new religion of modernity, of science and technology. This new religion came not to save their souls in the next life, but to free them from their toil and obedience in this life.
Of course, things didn't quite work out that way, but in 1913, no one knew that yet.

Malevich, White on White, 1913

There is nothing spiritual or transcendent intended in these most reductivist of abstract paintings by Malevich. They are what they are and nothing more. Malevich considered this a revolutionary new form language for an emerging new world shaped by technology. In a new world without precedent, the artist had to start over from scratch, to go back to the very basics of form to prepare for this new world. Malevich and his followers always believed in the privileged position of painting as a medium for thinking and making.

Malevich, Yellow and Black, 1916

His compositions were not always quite so reduced and austere. His most bare-bones abstractions belong to 1913 in the year of Victory Over the Sun. Later, his work becomes a little more elaborate, and he made drawings intended to apply this form language to architecture.


Here is one of a series of drawings for proposed house designs. In this case, a house that uses the form of a bi-plane is suitable for that most celebrated of early modern heroes, the aviator. 1924.

Liubova Popova, Painterly Architectonics, 1918

Malevich's most gifted followers in the Suprematist movement were women.

Olga Rozanova, Green Stripe, 1917

Olga Rozanova makes a painting as absolute in its reduction of form as anything by Malevich. This painting uncannily anticipates the whole career of the much later American abstract painter Barnett Newman.

Malevich teaching class, 1925

Malevich pioneered new methods of art instruction that owed less to classical figurative training, and more to methods of engineering design. His teaching methods would have far reaching influence on the Bauhaus later on, and in the United States after World War II.

In 1917, the entire Russian Army mutinied and walked off the Eastern front. They marched in reverse on St. Petersburg, killing officers who tried to stop them. The thousand year old Russian monarchy came to a violent end in the anger and disillusionment of World War I. In its place rose history's first Communist state, the Soviet Union. The artists were thrilled to be part of it, even if only a small part. It was that enthusiasm, that exceited sense of expectation, that carried them through years of shortages and hardship. They believed that their role would be to give visual form to the new world brought forth out of the revolution.

In the meantime, the Revolution needed pagentry and propaganda. Like the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution believed in the politics of pagentry and spectacle, and the artists obliged.

Pageant set designs by Olga Lialina and Igor Fomin in Leningrad for the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927.

An agitprop boat with theaters and musical entertainment on board.

"Then and Now," an agitprop poster from 1920



El Lissitzky, "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge!" poster, 1920

Here is the most famous application of Suprematist form to a practical application. The results are a mixed success. It's a stirring and magnificent abstract composition. But, does it work as a propaganda poster? Keep in mind, this is revolutionary Russia in the middle of civil war. I suspect that the form language was just too new to reach that broad mass of the population that the regime wanted to reach. Its message is probably much clearer to us living on the far side of modern art than it was to the illiterate people for whom it was intended in 1920.

El Lissitzky helped to form a group of artists in the early years of the Soviet Union for whom the radical reductivism of Suprematism wasn't radical enough. They were the Constructivists.

No Anglican Covenant!

Peter Paul Rubens, Triumph of the Church Over Fury and Discord

I've never wanted to run an Episcopal Church blog, or a religious blog. My interests lie largely elsewhere. I'm not well-read enough to argue theology, and candidly, I'm a very agnostic believer. I give God the benefit of the doubt more often than I'm unshakably convinced of the truth of this or that. I say the Creeds sincerely with uncrossed fingers, but I agree with Luther's famous comment about the Bible being a manger full of straw.

Better minds than mine have parsed in detail the specifics of the proposed Anglican Covenant being pushed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I direct you to Mark Harris' blog at Preludium, and the comprehensive coverage of the issue at Thinking Anglicans.

The Anglican Covenant is a bad idea whose time has come.

For those of you who read this blog who are not Episcopalian or in the Anglican Communion, you may have heard that we are in a tizzy over the ordination of openly gay clergy. The issue became "urgent" for some when the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson, an openly gay man living with a partner, to be their bishop. Bishops in our church are elected by their dioceses, and their elections are confirmed by both houses (a House of Bishops and another house of laity and other clergy) of the General Convention of our church which meets every 3 years. It happened to be meeting in 2003, and the necessary canonical (legal) consents were given. The Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop. I've tried to keep the church-speak to a minimum in this explanation.

All hell broke loose in the Anglican Communion, especially from central Africa. The bishops of the central African churches called for sanctions against the Episcopal Church and even for its expulsion from the Communion. The African bishops effectively excommunicated our bishops by refusing to join them in the all important rite of Eucharist. Robinson's consecration emboldened a right-wing faction of the church to go forward with plans to begin another Anglican church with the intention of overthrowing and replacing the Episcopal Church as the Anglican presence in the USA. This schism, aided and abetted by right-wing American money and by foreign bishops, has since spread to Canada, and is now spreading to England.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is backing a proposed Covenant to mend the ruptures between churches in the Anglican Communion. In a nutshell, this proposed covenant would transform the Communion, a voluntary association of independent churches with common historic ties to the Church of England dating back to the late 19th century. That voluntary organization would be changed into something like a confessional church along the lines of the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox. It would be a binding statement of religious doctrine enforced from a central authority. That central authority would be the Archbishop of Canterbury together with the head bishops of the various national churches, known in our Communion by the wonderfully evocative term, "primates."

The individual polities and constitutions of the member churches would effectively be mooted. Their synods and legislatures would be transformed into debating societies. No real change in any direction in any church could take place without the consent of all the other churches. All movement foreward (and backward) would come to a halt.

I see this as a bishops' coup at the expense of the laity and the lower clergy. It is ultimately a power grab. It is being strongly pushed by most (but not all) conservative bishops in order to "punish" the Episcopal Church (read Americans) for stepping out of line. A lot of the fury in this fight is driven by a host of different emotional factors; fear of modernity, fear of change, anti-American resentment, and dare I say, a large measure of homophobia.

I illustrate this post with that frothy allegory by Rubens at the top as an image of everything I DON'T want in the church. I don't think it's the business of the Church to be driving triumphal chariots over anyone, not even Fury and Discord. I'm not interested in a Church Militant (Catholic or Evangelical) out to conquer an empire of souls. I don't want to go out there and transform the infinite diversity of humankind into cookie-cutter clones of me and my fellow believers. I don't want to steal anyone's soul, or to turn people into good Christians, American citizens, or subjects of the Spanish Crown.

Andrea da Firenze, The Church Militant and Triumphant from the Spanish Chapel
in Sta Maria Novella, Florence

This is another image of what I DON'T want the Church to become. This was an allegory painted in the mid 14th century to encourage the Dominicans, those enforcers of church doctrine. It is an elaborate painting about salvation through correctness of belief. The black and white hounds at the bottom of the painting attacking the wolves of heresy are a Latin pun; the Domini canes, the Hounds of the Lord driving out heresy. As one Episcopal blogger put it recently, salvation through correctness of belief is the spiritual equivalent of Russian roulette. ALL the thousands of Christian churches and denominations claim to be the One and Only True Church. Why bet your soul on any of those horses?

The world already has a surplus of confessional churches with authoritarian structures to enforce uniformity of belief. The Roman Catholic Church "works" after a fashion. Institutional identity, unity, and conformity are preserved, but at a high price. Evangelical churches led by the iron hand of charismatic and authoritarian preachers "work" as well, but also at a high price. That high price is individual responsibility and institutional accountability. These rigid confessional churches have a tendency to infantilize responsible adults into dependents. Both Catholic and Evangelical churches practice unaccountable clericalism which as we've seen becomes license for scandal, exploitation, and crime.

I remember hearing Bishop Neil Alexander (before he became a bishop) describe the Episcopal Church, and Anglicanism in general, as a place where all these different people who thought they were traveling alone and independently found themselves gathered together, and decided to travel together. Yes, I suppose this is very American, that idea that we can make up our lives as we go along and choose our traveling companions. But, I think there is more to it than that.

Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe Altarpiece.

Here is a painting by Bellini that is about harmony and concord. If you look carefully, the assembled saints are all opposites, or complements, of each other. Elderly Job had his complement in youthful Sebastian. Dominic absorbed in his book is complemented by Francis who turns to invite us into their company. Ascetic unworldly John the Baptist has his complement in splendidly mitered and coped Louis of Toulouse. They are all different from each other, yet they come together around the Virgin Child voluntarily. There is a wide variety of opposite colors in this painting from warm yellows to cool blues, all harmonized into an over-all silvery tonality. The angel musicians, all wearing different colors, beautifully summarize the theme of harmony. Agreement in this picture does not come through conformity or coercion. It comes through mutual consent.

This painting was made to assist the prayers of the sick in Venice. Job and Sebastian were saints invoked in time of plague in Venice, which goes to another picture that I think beautifully describes the task of the Church and of Christians.

Rembrandt, the "Hundred Guilder Print," etching.

Rembrandt illustrates the entire 19th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. The Scribes and Pharisees are there plotting how to trick Jesus. The disappointed rich young man is there as are the children prevented from approaching Jesus. There is a huge crowd of the suffering and sick washing up upon Christ like a wave on a rock. Rembrandt puts Christ, not behind an altar rail or in a shrine or a book, but in the flesh in the midst of suffering and sinful humanity. Christ is not there to give them a doctrinal pop quiz, or to separate out sinners and the unclean from the elect. He's not there to win any converts. He is there in solidarity with flawed and suffering humankind, correcting them when they need to be corrected, challenging them when they need to be challenged, but always there to heal their sickness and to bear their sufferings with them no matter what.

That is the task of Christians and the Church.

We will not get there with a Covenant that seeks to hold together by legislation what is supposed to be held together by consent and trust. When that consent and trust are gone, then no amount of legislation and coercion in the world can bring it back, nor should it.

*Some links to more thoughtful reflections by the professionals:

Malcolm in Canada argues that the Archbishop will kill the Communion in his efforts to save it.

Here is Lionel Demiel's very thorough critique of the Archbishop's letter.

A very learned critique of the Archbishop's conception of catholicity can be found at Christopher's blog Betwixt and Between.

Here are the views of Rev. Jonathan Hagger, the "Madpriest" of Newcastle on the Covenant proposal, and their consequences for the Church of England.

Serious Anti-Gay Violence in Tel Aviv, 2 Dead

According to the BBC, there has been some kind of a shooting incident involving either a gay lesbian social center or a nightclub. Reports say at least 2 died and 8 are injured. Apparently this has just happened and the reports are conflicting and very sketchy.

Here's the latest from the NY Times wire service. It's not much more complete.

According to the latest from the BBC, the gunman is still at large. He walked into a meeting of gay teenagers and began shooting indiscriminately. Two are dead, and ten are injured. The Tel Aviv police have closed all the gay nightspots in the city until the gunman is caught.

UPDATE:

JayV sent a link to an Israeli blog reflecting on this attack and on what it means for the sharp conflicts within Israel between the religious and the secular. Apparently, homophobia plays a big role in the settlement movement. I'm not surprised.