The Mosher Pit

Ruth Gledhill, reporting on yesterday’s developments at Lambeth, links the Anglican Faith and Order Commission to–well–fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to, um, the Archbishop (at least, I think that’s what she’s saying), and nice purple uniforms.

Bishops are urging the setting up of an Anglican Faith and Order Commission to give “guidance” on controversial issues such as same-sex blessings and gay ordinations.

The commission was put forward as a proposal this week to the 650 bishops attending the Lambeth Conference as a way of preserving the future unity of the Anglican Communion. Insiders compared it with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body formerly headed by the present Pope as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and previously known as the Holy Office or Inquisition.

…

The proposals are a sign of how the Anglican Communion is centralising its authority in an attempt to prevent further schismatic events such as the consecration of a gay bishop.

Although he will resist describing himself as such, the effect of all these measures, if they are successfully implemented, will be to turn the Archbishop of Canterbury into a de facto Anglican Pope.

Seems like the press is all out of whack over this, but as my colleagues at the Episcopal Cafe point out, this is a HUGE leap, so say the least, so, uhhh — really. Don’t expect the English Inquisition.

Less snarky post on the Lead later.

Posted in Anglicanism, Faith by: Helen
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Last night, I was headed west on Interstate 66 at about 8 pm; looming ahead of me was something dark and menacing. While yammering into my cellphone to Utterz about it, I observed that being forced off the grid brings out my “voice,” that is, my writing voice. I started on this whole intarwebz thing 13 years ago wanting to meet and learn from other writers, after all.

Oh, but you do write, you say. You entertain us with this thing called blog and you have several hundred published articles blah blah blah. Yep. But I also have a slew of unpublished short stories and two unfinished novels.

And it may be that I’m an essay writer, after all. There’s something about being about to channel creative energy through one’s own experience; it’s something many writers do in terms of adapting their lives to fiction. But I seem to prefer reporting on the experience over distilling its essence and remixing it into fiction.

But then a storm like last night happens, and I find myself huddling in a corner of the library’s shelter area, a small section of the offices at the very center of the building, and had exactly 10 minutes left on my laptop battery. I wrote this on my private (but still online) journal to explain the difference between the energy I was feeling and the energy everyone else was putting off:

what’s really funny is listening to everyone say “I just saw major lightning!” Yeah. I saw a wall of charcoal-colored sky with the disco lights on full blast, an army of water marching with malice in its collective, soot-encrusted heart. I blinked.

I’d revise that now to say that I tried to stare down that wall to better illustrate what I mean by “I blinked,” but aside from that, yeah. A violent thunderstorm that eats the sky like that is like nature throwing an anarchistic disco party, and I wasn’t inclined to dance.

Posted in Life, Nature, Speculative Fiction, Writing by: Helen
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Now that I have a Flip camera, one of the ways I’m most empowered to share things I discover with you is through video. Now, I’ve always been a journalist of the writerly kind, so this kind of media is a bit new to me, but I think I’ve got a strong first entry for you: a bluegrass band called Bear Down Easy. According to their MySpace page:

Bear Down Easy was forged in October of 2006 by five ambitious musicians eager to explore the realms of acoustic music. Our original members included Cole Sigmon on bass, Lucas Nelson on lead guitar and banjo, Andy Burke on mandolin, Paul Stroebel on fiddle, and Ian Mulrenin on guitar. When our talented bassist skipped town to work on a fishing boat, his position was quickly filled by Jonah Freedman. As such, our original vision remains, combining original tunes with traditional bluegrass, folk, gospel, and blues. Bear Down Easy lives and performs in Asheville, NC and looks forward to taking its act on the road in the future.

So not only am I a come-lately fan of bluegrass (in the past 2-3 years), I’m well-connected in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, and our bishop has a real love of bluegrass, and while I missed his bluegrass festival this year, I’m going to be sure to tag this in such a way that hopefully he’ll check this out, and lots of other folks will as well. Because even though my specialty is 80s alternative music, I loves me some bluegrass when I’m in country girl mode. This song is called “I Never Got My Dear John” (with an “allrighty” from your truly). We’re standing in front of an office building on Haywood Ave. in Asheville, where the band had set up to play an evening set, and Chris and I wandered up and… welllll…….quite the crowd gathered round by the end.

So, without further ado, a new feature here at helenmosher.com: music from the streets, with Bear Down Easy:

Posted in Bluegrass, Diocese of Virginia, Music, Music from the Streets, North Carolina, Out and About by: Helen
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I haven’t been able to take a decent road trip in a long time. I spend so much of my “vacation” downtime in Philadelphia that even the backchannel routes I take to get there are becoming overly familiar. In those cases, it’s easy to take for granted the journey, especially when the destination has so much energy.

I’m presently in semirural North Carolina, just far enough outside of Charlotte, talking up all our creative pieces. from Etsy and knitting to comedy to public speaking and radio broadcasting with Xiane. I’m here while my son is hanging out in Chapel Hill with his friend.

It’s great hanging out with another retired DJ who’s contemplating going back behind the decks in a virtual environment. I just wish I had a better mixer than i-Tunes at the moment. While my focus remains primarily 80s alternative music (in fact, I registered http://dontyouforgetabout.me yesterday during the .me domain rush while everyone else was trying to get meme.me and aweso.me and all those other .me puns), I there’s a lot of other music I really love, everything from trip-hop and dub to bluegrass and old-timey. Plus I’ll always be just a touch of gothy punky gothpunk because, well, I am, even if I’m showing up in Good Housekeeping next month.

Oh, yeah, I’m showing up in Good Housekeeping next month, speaking of strange places.

And strange places brings us back to the point of this post: When I go to Philadelphia, the path is well-worn in my memory, soothing and comforting. In particular, some portions of the journey still trigger the memory of my journey out of Virginia in 1999, of learning to walk and fly on my own, and it’s a feeling of victory, of redemption. Those are good feelings, but nostalgic; and the drive to Philadelphia is mostly a chore to get to the only place that loves me as much as I love it.

But random road trips like the one I’m on now, where on a whim I decided to visit a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time (and last night, also on a whim, landing in BeckySays’s living room where we chatted until the sun had nearly gone down), and where every turn brings new discoveries–and I didn’t have the camera out today to catch such gems as the dollar store version of a car dealership where no car is more than $995–it’s trips like this where the journey is the destination, and as such, are the best kind.

Follow me on Utterz for media posts tomorrow as Xiane and I visit Asheville, NC.

Posted in Music, North Carolina, Out and About, Travel by: Helen
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Last night at the Episcopal Cafe, we posted links to all the blogs we’re aware of written by Anglican bishops. In a fit of “how am I going to keep up with this,” I created a pipeline of the posts and gave it a single feed, which you can subscribe to here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/lambethbishops

Hope it’s useful to some of you as well, especially with the Lambeth conference being next week.

Posted in Episcopal Church, Faith by: Helen
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20 years ago, I had recently graduated high school and was aimlessly working through a dreadful booze-and-boy filled summer of emotional discontent in preparation for wandering up to Mary Washington to attend college.

Now I’m.. erm, gearing up for my 20-year reunion by dusting off my not-very-dusty information gathering skills and tracking down missing members of my class, and inviting all of them to join our facebook group. Wacky what doing social media for a living–and seeing how my kid uses his facebook as an interactive yearbook–does to the brain in terms of reaching out to people who may or may not remember me. (Surprisingly, many of them do. Part of me wonders, though: When the 10-year happened in 1998, I was in that emotional nadir I alluded to in my last post, so I didn’t go, and later found out that I’d been talked about as the class of ’88’s resident Goth. Oddly enough, that was before I made my big debut as a music critic.)

Anyhow. I’ve invited the Colonial Heights High School Class of 1988 to stop by here as well so that they can get an invite to the facebook group. Drop me a comment! Coming soon to the group: Video! Photos! Stalk your former teachers! Where’s Bryan Moody when you need him?

And contrary to what Lisa Poarch said in the colophon of the ‘88 yearbook, I haven’t stopped talking about my hair. Or changing its color about once a quarter.

Posted in Hair, Memories by: Helen
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