Do they have any idea....?

Shrimp here: Have you heard? If you want to be a Christian today, ya gotta "embrace ambiguity"? Now, if you are like me (which you are not, you a human I'm a crustacean), that might sound like grabbibg jello, and at first you may not be able to explain to the youth in your parish why that jello you are trying to your chest is making a mess, but, hey, get in step...

Now, if we are to get serious, we should try and understand who our mentors are in this. Sure, we got Hanson, but who is his mentor? Well, that was more than a nod and a wink the other night in Manhattan. Frank Griswold is ambiguity himself.

So, let's go to that expert on ecclessial lunacy, Chris Johnson, and get some pointers. Chris said start here (italics are Grizwoldian, or as his fans say, Grizspeak:

"Frank Griswold takes on the temptation of Christ. Trust me; you really ought to bail out right now:

Jesus emerged dripping wet from the waters of the Jordan river with the voice from heaven still ringing in his ears: "This is my son, the Beloved with whom I am well pleased." Without a moment’s pause to catch his breath or take into himself the profound implications of what had just occurred,"

Want more? Go here.

There's more:

"Views of the cosmos once sent people to prison at the hands of the clergy," he added. "Things in the Scripture described as demonic we now know were epilepsy. We are always learning more . . . We are all under construction, and my prayer is that we be faithful to that process."

"Religion has a tremendous amount to contribute to the transformation and healing of the world," Griswold told the gathering. "Love by nature has to give itself away. The more we root and ground ourselves and our inner energies of our tradition, we become people of compassion and the world is healed to that extent."

And then this:

The "fine line" between official blessing and unofficial blessing is a distinction Bishop Griswold acknowledged "would be difficult to comprehend" in many parts of the world, particularly among bishops who believe any recognition of same-sex unions runs counter to biblical teaching.

"It is our way of honoring the request that we not put forward in authorized fashion rites of public blessing. Many things happen in the life of a congregation that are informal with knowledge and encouragement of the local bishop, but they are not seen as formal actions committing the Episcopal Church," Bishop Griswold said.

And Frank recently said this:

Some of the law needs to be kept, but not all of the law needs to be kept.

This:

When you talk about the authority of scripture, not as a rule book that has all the answers, but if we see in scripture the way in which God works — the way in our own day to attach to the motions of the spirit in our midst.

This:

For instance, in the portion of Romans that talks about homosexuality, clearly the Biblical writers assume that everyone was naturally heterosexual, and therefore any kind of homosexual behavior was unnatural. Well, I think there’s a big question mark there.

And this:

Along with many others, both within and beyond the Roman Catholic Church, I offer my prayers for Pope Benedict XVI as he takes up the august responsibility of his office. I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide him in his words and his actions and that he may become a focus of unity and a minister of reconciliation in a church and a world in which faithfulness and truth wear many faces.

(read more here.)

Lastly (do read the whole thing:

because God’s truth, which was given human form in Jesus, who declares himself to be the truth, and continues to dwell among us in his risen reality through the agency and driving motion of the Spirit of truth – God’s truth is larger, stranger, wilder and infinitely more paradoxical then anything we can understand or imagine or contain within our tidy notions of righteousness.

You can get Chris in hard cover.

Thank you.

ELCA, be scared, be very scared, because we seem to be headed in this direction, lockstep.