Bishing about Bishes

So my mother called this morning to inform me that the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Pa, (which shall be known as SCDioPa), has called for the resignation of their bishop, calling the lack of trust in his leadership 'paralyzing to the function of the diocese.' Damn, people!
I feel like Typhoid Mary--is this casting out of bishops contagious? DioSoVa, my own lovely jewel of political contention, just went through 7 years of this particular brand of fun and excitement. I went back to SoVa from DioPa thinking that it would be more stable. (And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast on breakfast cereals, and sloths and fruit bats, etc.)
I don't know the specifics of the situation in DioPa. I don't know what their bishop has done or left undone. But this is the kind of thing that makes those on the outside of the church marvel at our seeming hypocrisy. And it's the kind of thing that makes most of us on the inside wonder what in the world makes us stick around for so long. I'm getting ready to go back to my diocesan council for a weekend of debating more resolutions about sex, and whether or not we still believe in the foundational nature of Scripture. (This last one baffles me. Did some priest wake up this past year and say, "Wait. The Bible--really just a load of garbage, or a series of good life lessons? Let's vote, because I can't decide!")
After everything that has happened in this country in the past year, the tsunami, Katrina, Rita, the spying, the perversion of Christianity with Justice Sundays, the IRS going after All Saints in Pasadena, I would think that we would have more to talk about than another round of resolutions about sex. We have become a weird sort of ecclesiastical Linus, and homosexuality is our security blanket. If we cling close enough to it, we don't have to deal with the larger issues that might scare us more: authority, justice, power, and everything else that's behind this one issue. Instead, we just yell back and forth about sex, and the Bible, and we throw things. I don't know if we'll ever put down the blanket. In time, we will probably just switch to a new one, once this one becomes too ratty to hold onto any longer. Maybe we can argue vigorously over paint colors!

In which Dajji gets up on her soapbox, and not for the last time...

So, if you've been watching the news, or reading the news, or listening, or corresponding through ESP, or whatever your particular preference, you probably know that Hamas won the elections in Palestine yesterday. And that the international community took this opportunity to have a major flip-out.
"Yipes!" said Our Glorious Leader, On Whom No Aspersions Can Ever EVER Be Cast, "Democracy... who'd have thunk it?" He got this bemused expression on his lovable little face (NSA, this one's for you!) and said encouragingly that while we always support those who choose their own leadership, we might object to said leadership when it disagrees with us . And we might be tempted to say, cut off foreign aid. And stop negotiations. And not recognize the government at all. But we love democracy! Yay!
But see, here's the thing: the people of Palestine did not wake up on Election Day and go unilaterally ballistic, decide all of a sudden that the calm, nationalistic, secular approach of Fatah had failed, and to do away with the state of Israel. Fatah has been screwing up for a while now. For years and years, the situation on the ground in Palestine, for the average Palestinian has not improved; in fact, it has gotten worse. Oslo was supposed to be the magic bullet, after the first intifada, but after all that, nothing. Unemployment is sky-high, the refugee camps are a nightmare, with no end in sight. As far as the average person can tell, the negotiations haven't worked, except to enrich the few at the top of Fatah while the people on the bottom starve.
Meanwhile, Hamas provides social services, especially in Gaza, one of the most crowded places on earth. These people didn't vote for suicide bombers; they voted for food, and doctors, and jobs, and an end to corruption. Hamas didn't campaign that they were going to blow Israel off the map; they campaigned that they were going to clean up the government and stop people from dying in the streets so much. When your kids are getting shot at every night, you could honestly give a damn about grand and glorious ideologies of right-to-exist.
The worst mistake the world could make is to isolate Palestine right now. Cut off foreign aid (not that we give them that much in the first place) and you give them one more reason to become desperate. This was the government they elected; if you negotiate with them, you force them to become pragmatic, which a majority of the population wants anyway. Make real progress towards a just peace, and chances are, the next election will go better for everyone.
PS: one more thing: we won't negotiate with a party that has 'an armed wing'?? Mr. President, have you met the NRA? Allow me to introduce you sometime. Also the IDF, I hear, is a great group of guys. Little on the militant side, but what the hell....

Random: but this is in Venice, from this past summer. It's one of the famous churches there, but Venice blurs together for me--lots of canals and prettiness. One of the only times in my life I've managed to pull off taking a pretty good artistic photograph!

This is an icon from the Eastern Orthodox shrine in Nazareth, showing the Holy Family in flight to Egypt. I like it, because the little Jesus is playing piggy-back with Joseph, while Mary walks along behind. No donkey riding for her! The God-bearer can walk on her own steam, thank you very much! And Joseph's other child leads the donkey--so clearly, this is a mixed family. Definitely not an iconic depiction you see every day, and definitely not on this side of Christianity!

The Name

So about this dajji thing.... when I was in Nazareth, I visited one of the shrines of the Annunciation. (There are 2. or more. Lots of those things over there. Popping up like daisies.) The Eastern Orthodox have a really pretty little shrine, over a spring, which was the one that I liked, and the Roman Catholics have a HUGGGGGEEEEEE one built in the 1960s, with murals of Vatican II all over it. Because this is what you want, on a church dedicated to Gabriel's visitation to Mary. Also it lacks a well.
So that's where I was, down in the bowels of the church, at the spot where Gabriel evidently showed up. The floor of the church is made of stone, and steps down to the lower altar and the lower shrine of the Annunciation. I was standing down there, clutching my cherished Nalgene bottle (hydration! gotta have hydration!) when I decided to gaze up at the domed ceiling, thus loosening my grip on the Nalgene.
*****CRASH*********
Immediately, I grabbed the errant, but still well-beloved Nalgene, and fled the scene of the crime, as my reverberations echoed throughout the church. But as I scrambled, three little monks darted past me, chattering nervously in Italian. One concernedly pushed me out of the way, and roped off the grotto where I had dropped my Nalgene, while anxiously consulting with his equally concerned collegues.
The rest of the monks began to clear the church, and my tour group gathered at the front of the building. My friend, who had seen the whole incident, wanted to know what on earth I had done to offend the protectors of the holy shrine. "Nothing!" I yelped, "I dropped a closed Nalgene!" She grinned, "Abuna, [Father in Arabic]," she asked the leader, " how do you say 'crash' in Arabic?"
Thus, I have earned my nickname. I have a freakish ability to shut down holy shrines with sheer force of will and a mere water bottle, envied by other mortals! Dajji is a terrifying force!