The furor of some that Rick Warren has been invited to pray at the Presidential Inauguration suggests to me that our next President is doing his job and is courageous enough to understand the cost of what we have told him we want.

     I have said in the past that if the last fifty years in the Episcopal Church was identifying who was not equally at the table (divorced persons, African-Americans, women, persons who are of gay and lesbian orientation and others), the next fifty years would be learning how to live together now that we are all gathered around.

     How can he appoint this person as Interior Secretary?  Who is praying?  Does it occur to us that there are folks equally ruffled by Joseph Lowery as Rick Warren and is that of consideration?  I am not at all crazy about many of Mr. Warren's convictions, including his work on Proposition 8 in California.  I find that work incredibly offensive.

     It has also been said that if a decision (like who gets to pray when we gather) leaves everyone in the group a bit ruffled, it may in fact be the right decision.  For no real community comes without cost- real cost for everyone.  Perhaps what Scott Peck meant when he described pseudo community and real community.  Real community means laying down our lives to be in relationship.  It means finding we can do so from a place of dignity enhancement, not dignity diminishment.  "No one takes my life; I lay it down."  Jesus

     Perhaps this season of Incarnation is just the time for reflection on community and its cost.  For God to come among us means a laying down- as Paul said, 'the one who understood equality with God not something to be grasped, but let go so that deeper life could be found.'  God coming to us in human flesh, so desirous of relationship, so intent on communion, community, with us, Diety assumes the limitations of human flesh to be present, to know us, to live with us, to be ecstatic with us, to be enraged with us, to speak and listen with us, to live in such a way as to move Paul to say, 'there is nothing in the heavens or on earth that can separate us from the love of God...' including political convictions, moral decisions, or propositions we either favor or oppose.  That's not me, that's Jesus. 

     When it comes to friends, Jesus has an amazing lack of taste- at least from my perspective. And thank God he does.  For at the end of the day, I want to be known simply as human being.  I don't want to be valued on my various convictions or lack thereof.

     Community is hard. It costs immeasurably.  If it wasn't hard we would have found world peace by now.  We certainly have had enough millennia to try.

     So thank you Mr. President Elect for not settling for a litmus test approach   to community. Thank you for trying to raise us above community meaning 'me and all the folks whose convictions I like'.

     Perhaps new life is truly emerging in our midst.

Blessed Advent,

Todd Donatelli