Salt Lake City

We went to the Episcopal Cathedral this morning. Then to the One World Cafe for lunch.

St. Mark's Cathedral had a very interesting welcome/explanation statement on the back of their bulletin. It is long, but worth sharing here...

"If you are passing by and feel intimidated or angry because of religion, please know that there is immunity granted when you enter St. Mark's Cathedral. Immunity from the ravages of religion and misuse of Divine revelation.

We live in a time of religious zealots, abortion clinic bombings, and TV evangelists attempting to take power in our land. How do you find persuasiveness rather than coercion and will-to-dominate in religion? An answer is St. Mark's Cathedral. Here operates an unconditional surrender to the freedom of God to speak to whomever in whatever language is understandable to you. Immunity from religious control is granted you upon entry. St. Mark's offers sanctuary to everyone and promises this glorious freedom of God as the climate to explore the healthiest living that religion affords.

If you are passing by and feel hesitant to join in the ranks of a particular denomination or buy into the creeds of millions, please know that most people who enter St. Mark's every week are practicing no regular religious discipline. The rule of St. Mark's is the stranger making himself or herself at home. All names are sacred here but none must place one's name on a membership list to be taken seriously.

Perhaps you quietly dropped by wanting to reconnect in your relationship with God, or to surrender a burden. Or to pray for a loved one. Or to meditate on a hard personal dilemma. Or find a moment of peace. A cathedral has a high ceiling and long aisles to allow the contained soul an opportunity to venture forth in multiple directions without the encumbrances of forced community. St. Mark's offers ages of spiritual space to which anonymous individuals may be on pilgrimage.

If you are passing by and feel that life is fragmenting into a vast number of irreconcilable, shattered pieces, then please know that St. Mark's holds an outrageous hope that, in God alone, all aspects of life are in unity. We believe that God is the Alpha, the beginning and that God is the Omega, the ending of all things.

So we are called to extravagant hospitality in the confidence that a gracious welcome is central to a cathedral's purpose. And yes, we are part of a specific religious tradition. We are so, not because one religious tradition exclusively contains all truth, but because when one goes on a long journey toward ultimate unity, one has to depart form one specific place. St. Mark's Cathedral, Episcopal Diocese of Utah, is our point of departure. And our companion and ultimate confidence in the journey is Jesus Christ. We believe Him to be the clear manifestation of God's love for the whole world and the expression that all of our lives are in ultimate unity even beyond the finality of death.

In the midst of what appears to be an ever-increasing fragmentation of life, St. Mark's offers a House of Prayer for all people, an abiding hope that there is a Oneness at the center of human life.

Enter, pray and may your time here be blessed."

Detour

We are in Evanston, Wyoming tonight.

Our contact in Jackson Hole didn't work out, and besides, it was supposed to snow there this weekend.

So we headed toward Salt Lake City, Utah, this morning. But then mid afternoon it started raining. Then the windshield wipers stopped working. Then it started snowing. And so here we are.


Rocky is wearing her sweater and we have the space heater going.

And besides, it's time for Sabbath rest taking anyway.

We ran on veggie oil for part of the way today once we got it warm.

We filled up the 20 gallon tank at the New Mandarin Chinese Restaurant in Laramie. We highly recommend it for scrumptious morsels and WVO (waste vegetable oil) should you find yourself there.

Rainbow Community

We went to the Rainbow Resource Center at the University of Wyoming today.

It was created by the University in response to Matthew Shepard's death. The Center displays all the latest periodicals, plus a wall of books about GLBT history, coming out, memoirs, and such. It felt lively and welcoming.

A couple of years ago the university moved the growing resource center to the first floor of the student union. Students often gather at noon to eat lunch together, they told us. We had a fun time talking to some of them today.

The memorial to Matthew Shepard on the university is this bench.

Laramie

I wonder if I would find Laramie, Wyoming such a chilling place if I didn't know about Matthew Shepard.

--if I hadn't been a college student myself almost 9 years ago, when the rallies began around what had happened to him. I tied that green and yellow ribbon to my purple backpack, and it stayed there long after I had left college.

When Matthew Shepard died, I thought everything was going to change. I wasn't even really out to myself then, but I cared a lot about queer rights. I remember marching through downtown Chicago, listening to the names of all the LGBT people who had been murdered that year in Chicago alone. I thought, "This is it. This is what will bring enough attention to these horrible acts to end them. Things are going to be different. No one else will die because of who they love, or because of how they understand gender and sexuality."

But last night, creeping out of the camper in the dead of the night to go to the bathroom, I was scared. I felt a chill in this place deeper than the cold air. The moon was high and almost full and I wondered how Matthew felt that night tied to the fence as the life drained out of him. I wondered what he thought of as he saw the sunrise over the fields.

They passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Act, I'm told. I also hear that President Bush will veto it. No special treatment for queer folk. If someone wants to kill them just because of who they are, that's no different than it would be if they killed them for their wallet.

I wonder if Matthew Shepard's parents would agree. I wonder if the people of Laramie would agree. I'm sure there are queer folk here and homophobic folk and every kind of person in between, but I doubt most of them would beat a man to death for supposedly hitting on them.

Yet still, almost nine years later, its a cold place.

The Week in Pictures

We sent our latest email update this afternoon. If you didn't receive it and would like to be sure and sign up on our website.

Here are some pics from the last week.





In Boulder one day we did our morning 20 minutes of silence in this field. It was near one of three Boulder Community Centers.








With the main waste veggie oil tank still broke like a joke, we filled up on 100 percent biodiesel in Boulder.








We went to Denver to visit the S.A.M.E. cafe. Which you can read more about on the website (www.jointheliving) under Encounters.






We drove to the "Denver East KOA" to stay after our visit to Denver. It was about 25 miles outside of Denver, however. On our way to the site we saw a sign for "Oklahoma State University memorial site." Because that's where Carol graduated we had to go. It was what she sadly expected down the miles of dirt road it took to get there: the site of a plane crash in 2001 that killed 8 of the basketball staff and two student athletes.



We were pleased to get to meet up and coming assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Patricia Malesh. She introduced us to the Boulder Tea House and taught us a great deal about social change. One interesting highlight: If you are trying to convert people to the vegan life, you don't show people pictures of dead rabbits. Instead you throw a fabulous dinner party and invite people to taste the goodness for themselves. Read, inwardly digest, and apply to your particular cause.






We had a fabulous time hanging out with the Refuge. We went to their theology pub night, their longterm visioning meeting called Infusion, a Sunday night service under a tent, and had coffee with their co-pastors Kathy and Karl who are a total hoot and tremendously gifted and creative ministers.





Rocky is now our only travel companion.

Here, Rocky is on the lookout for mating Elk northeast of Estes Park, Colorado.

Travels with Rocky

Rocky, our smallest dog, is now the only pet traveling with us. Perry and Houston being safe in other homes until we can be re-united after our trip.

She is mostly content to sit quietly beside us. She loves fetch and the sun. But she is also very nervous about strange places and big dogs, and she has been barking and growling more than usual since we have begun our travels.

So I have been trying to train her to be quiet. It goes something like this:

Rocky: Bark! Bark!
Me: Quiet, Rocky, quiet!
Rocky: Grrrrrr
Me: No. Quiet.
-Pause-
Good Quiet.
Rocky: Grrrrrr
Me: No. Quiet.
-Pause-
Good Quiet.

She might be getting it. But in sitting and repeating this pattern for several minutes several times a day, I have realized that I often have this same conversation with myself. All of my anxiety in this living off the grid thing, all of my fear about things unnamed, is like a little scared dog that I keep trying to quiet. And it works for a moment, but then I'm scared again.

Can we train ourselves? Should we?

Bread & Oranges

You can now download a pdf of the pilot issue of Bread & Oranges, the forthcoming magazine of Join the Living.

On THIS page of the website look under Bread & Oranges for a link to the pdf download.

Why the name Bread & Oranges? It came to me in a dream. What does it make you think about?