Born Today

Three areas for future examination

2011-09-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

I presented these three things to the Adult Asian Adoptees of Washington at their most recent conference in Seattle. They stem from ethical musings about concealing history in adoption and donor conception practices.

Reconsider the absolute authority of the parent generation to determine the fate of their children.

Develop an anthropology that embraces both old and new in a single humanity.

Return to investigating revealed knowledge in addition to developing scientific knowledge.

There is a long tradition of the parent generation to control the life and even existence of their children. This tradition has limits, but what are they and how might society limit the extent of control of parents as it relates to sharing their identity information with children and descendants?

Regarding point two, one concern that I have is that donor conception practice has very often assumed that the child has no essential relationship to the source of their life, i.e., the 'donor'. Human identity is traced to present existence. For this practice, historical references are archaic and more like myths. Knowing the biological roots is unnecessary to this way of thinking and feeling. This is like taking Pauline anthropology - the new creation - without taking the 'flesh'. Modern anthropology has been allowed to develop but without critique. Practices of anonymous donor conception have arisen in a context of a changing anthropology. It is way past time to cultivate anthropology.

Point three, revealed knowledge isn't only about the gods. My mother revealed stories about my great-grandmother which were otherwise unknowable because the knowledge they reflected was familial. No one could know it unless it were disclosed. Revealed knowledge of this sort requires admission to it. These aren't stories that are necessarily shared in general, nor are they stories that are important to most people. Revealed knowledge, however, is dis-valued and misunderstood these days. I'd like to see more attention payed to it.

Washington State Passes Law Concerning Rights of Donor Conceived Persons

2011-06-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

It's good and bad.

Here's the link: Naomi Cahn and Wendy Kramer

The text of the bill is here.

The second dimension of identity formation and the rise of donor conception

2011-05-26T05:35:00.000-07:00

Chas. Taylor in The Sources of the Self (p. 36), writes, 'First, it is clear that the most important spiritual traditions of our civilization have encouraged, even demanded, a detachment from the second dimension of identity as this is normally lived, that is, from particular, historic communities, from the given webs of birth and history. If we transpose this discussion out of the modern language of identity, which would be anachronistic in talking about the ancients, and talk instead of how they found their spiritual bearings, then it is plain that the ideal of detachment comes to us from both sides of our heritage. In the writings of the prophets and the Psalms, we are addressed by people who stood out against the almost unanimous obloquy of their communities in order to deliver God's message. In a parallel development, Plato describes a Socrates who was firmly rooted enough in philosophical reason to be able to stand in imperious independence of Athenian opinion.'

Donor conception, like adoption practice, carries out the disconnect of generations from their 'given webs of birth and history' - which is to say, conception and genetic history. What is now 'given' is contracted. What is 'given' no longer has the sense of divine involvement. A birth is arranged and planned. A conception is first conceived in the minds of the prospective parents. Information is undisclosed or controlled. The children's relationship to their natal circumstances is removed by at least a step.

Are these two western streams, the Hebraic and Greek, responsible for this or prophetic?

How important is an identity anyway?

2011-05-25T07:01:00.000-07:00

Identity is a question for all persons. Charles Taylor writes (Sources of the Self, Harvard 1989, p. 27), "People may see their identity as defined partly by some moral or spiritual commitment, say as a Catholic, or an anarchist. Or they may define it in part by the nation or tradition they belong to, as an Armenian, say, or a Quebecois. What they are saying by this is not just that they are strongly attached to this spiritual view or background; rather it is that this provides the frame with which they can determine where they stand on questions of what is good, or worthwhile, or admirable, or of value. Put counterfactually, they are saying that were they to lose this commitment or identification, they would be at sea, as it were; they wouldn't know anymore, for an important range of questions, what the significance of things was for them."

The importance of identity as defined here lies in the orientation it provides toward things of value and meaning. Identity exists in relation to a system of explanations. Taylor calls these systems 'frames' or 'frameworks'. One law professor positions identity on a scale of values justifying public policy that necessitates donor anonymity for the greater social good (see Gaia Bernstein, 'Regulating Reproductive Technologies: Timing, Uncertainty, and Donor Anonymity', Boston University Law Review). In other words, the possible effect of anonymous gamete donations for the identity of the donor conceived persons is justified and encouraged.

Donor conceived persons, like adopted persons, may experience identity problems especially when they learn of their adoption or donor conception late in life.

Taylor begins to articulate what identity is important for and what the loss of identity might entail. Identity, also, for Taylor, cannot be assumed present but is achieved or found. For Taylor, the loss of an explanatory framework 'spells for us a person in the grip of an appalling identity crisis. Such a person wouldn't know where he stood on issues of fundamental importance, would have no orientation in these issues whatever, wouldn't be able to answer for himself on them. If one wants to add to the portrait by saying that the person doesn't suffer this absence of frameworks has a lack, isn't in other words in a crisis at all, then one rather has a picture of frightening dissociation. In practice, we should see such a person as deeply disturbed."

Both adopted and donor conceived persons provide a window into a world in which identity in particular comes to light. But if this is the case, we should not be interested only in identity but also the framework of explanations (the worldviews) that an identity is related to. Identity is a window into a world of goods, of values. Thus, a change of identity changes the world of the affected person but also threatens changing the world of everyone attached or related.

Atheism is harder to arrive at the one might suppose

2011-05-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

Atheism = no god, there is no god, I have no commitments to any being or thing that can be construed as god.
If the position is purely intellectual, one can easily say, 'no god'.

If one says 'I have no commitments to any being or thing that can be construed as god', that is another matter. A thing or being may be construed as god if it self-subsists or is without origin.
The physical world is god for many.

Showings - Julian of Norwich

2011-05-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

This begins from a series of revelations or showings experienced by Julian when she was in her early thirties. It expands upon the visions and thoughts in order to disclose their meanings. Question: does this book represent something both old and new for her period (late 14th to early 15th century)? Julian's visions are old but their relationship to her conscious questioning is new. They did not compel.

She offers a complex anthropology. Her terminology is difficult. 'Body' sometimes means 'a vision of the body'. Persons are 'birthed' by Christ our Mother. The process of birthing occurs through our lifetime.

Perceptions briefly noted

2011-04-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

Windy
deceitfully blue outside
but cold
Grass boldly green
buds peaking
or pressing out

Questions remain
unanswered.
Still, laughter.

Militant atheism, Science, Truth and Truthfulness

2011-04-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing about 'militant atheism'. At least some atheists are juxtaposing science and religion. One position of this sort of atheism is that religion is bad for humanity right now. I'm not sure that this is very different than what ancient atheists felt about religion, poppycock mythologies.

One concern I have of a view that puts science on one side and religion on the other is that people still have a need for truthfulness, whether scientist or religious. A scientist can lie just as well as any religious person. A scientist can be wrong about a hypothesis, just as a religious person can be wrong about the interpretation of a belief statement. It is also possible that both science and religion are wrong about very big things without knowing it. Science affirms that - though an abstract affirmation of the principle is not the same thing as believing it about a particular theory. No one wants to throw-out long-standing views, scientist or religious. Truthfulness, however, requires a certain actual conviction that as a person we may have some or most of it wrong.

With respect to religion being harmful to humanity, it isn't hard to see harms done by religious people, deceitfulness, error, abuse of power or authority. Religion does not have sole rights to harm. Neither does science have sole claim on truthfulness. There are truths that do not concern scientific methodologies, but which human beings have need to visit.

What truths are these? There are non-scientific methods that we trust. In some cases, simple question and answer: Did my mother tell me the truth about the circumstances of my birth? I can ask her. Or if she is dead, I would have to find another method; ask my father, an older brother or sister, a grandparent. Truthfulness is important and useful conceptually for anyone, not just the scientist.

Some truthfulness feels like fanaticism. When there is no way to get behind a statement or examine it, then its truthfulness may be at question. This idea applied to the extreme is also fanaticism. Some things ARE evident, or should be. Dealing with questions of truth and truthfulness we get involved with extremism and fanaticism.

Partial truths make the appearance of truth-fullness. A partial truth can be as misleading as a lie. 'This is your mother and this is your father.' A person born from donated gametes may be told that the social parents are mother and father, but for medical purposes would be useless. Truthfulness is better than truth-pieces.

Atheists, scientists, religious all have a need for truthfulness. Neither science nor revelation are spigots that pour all truth into a glass for everyone to drink. It isn't true to think that some particular thing we need or want to know can be known without going to the effort of framing the question and finding the proper methodology. Truths can only be known in a particular way.

Persons, not atheists, scientists nor religious, hold the keys to truthfulness.

In a Godward direction: Civilized Conversation

2011-04-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

In a Godward direction: Civilized Conversation

I want to thank Fr. Haller for the following response to a comment I made:

"Personally I see the old model of what I'll call for shorthand "genetic secrecy" -- which includes, in the older society, adoption, and more recently donors or surrogates -- as morally akin to the old tendency not to inform people with terminal illnesses of their condition. The idea that ignorance = protection (from what?) is an assault on human dignity. Thus at both ends of life, beginning and end, access to full information is an inherent right of the human person, or so I say."

The following resolution which came before the 2009 General Convention and which has been referred to the Commission on Public Policy and Social Justice for review and revision. The specific purpose of this was to address donor conceived persons, but was framed in the context of adoptees who in all but six states are denied access to their personal historical roots.

2009 General Convention C-084
Title: Right to Human Identity

Resolved, the House of concurring, That the 76^th General Convention adopt the following statement: Personal history is a fundamental human right and knowledge of one's entire parentage should be assumed as part of a person's natural property.

Resolved, the House of _ concurring, That the 76th General Convention adopt the following statement: That state legislatures be urged to establish procedures that would enable adoptees [upon reaching legal age] to secure current information regarding their historical heritage, medical history, and genetic derivation without the necessity of court action.

Explanation:

1) Adoptees in the United States are not necessarily granted knowledge of their parentage because state law in forty-eight states seals their original birth certificates. (Six states now provide access, Alabama, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee. Alaska and Kansas do not seal the records.)

2) There are no laws that protect the identity / history of the children born using artificial reproductive technology. Sperm donation, egg donation, embryo donation may not be disclosed to the children so conceived.

3) Similar concerns exist for children born of surrogacy parenting.

4) Theological grounds for knowledge of one's origins may be seen in scripture.

a) Old Testament scriptural testimony is structured around genealogical narratives.

b) The theological concept of adoption witnessed to by Paul incorporates knowledge of one's origins.

c) Jesus' birth narratives incorporate genealogies.

d) The concept of "fatherhood" is retained in the New Testament.

5) Church history has testified to the importance of "blood line" in canon law.

6) The theological concept that a person may become a "child of God" by the "will of God" does not negate other origin narratives, but fulfills them.

7) Narrative theology emphasizes the importance of the human narrative on personal and social levels.

a) On the personal level, the narrative is related to healing.

b) On the social level, the narrative is related to justice and liberation.

9) The Episcopal Church has already declared in Resolution 1982-D082,

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That state legislatures be urged to establish procedures that would enable adoptees [upon reaching legal age] to secure current information regarding their historical heritage, medical history, and genetic derivation: (1) without the necessity of court action, and (2) with sufficient safeguards provided for the protection of all parties in the adoptive triangle--the adoptee, the adoptive parents, and the biological parents; and be it further

Resolved, That every Diocese and Parish be encouraged to support such action in every state.

10) Resolution 1982-D082 should be superseded in regard to item 2, which is vague.

Anthroposophy, 'secret knowledge' and human origin

2011-04-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

'Secret knowledge', or gnosticism, has gotten tangled-up with Anthroposophy since its early days, but the main thrust of Anthroposophy is away from secrets and towards open and testable knowledge. Consequently, Rudolf Steiner's books are available for check-out at libraries. Not many take advantage of that fact. Anthroposophy is hard to swallow in part because of neologisms like 'etheric' and 'astral', its overt use of 'occult' as in the title "Occult Science" and the sheer volume of work. Anthroposophy appears like many other systems of knowledge that promise a lot and require much from readers, but in the end repeats things already well known.

Anthroposophy presents a method for spiritual science which is a more general form of knowledge than traditional science. Instead of settling for the long standing religious distinction between revealed and human knowledge, Anthroposophy argues that genuine science must inquire of spiritual realities in order to fulfill its own charter to empower and liberate human beings from the vestiges of superstition and captivity to authority. The kind of knowledge obtained does not dominate the inquirer but provides lines of questioning, a sort of research program. The use of words is necessary in order to communicate the ideas which in turn are the true point. The word 'astral', for instance, is important but not as important as what it points to. Words refer to ideas. It usually takes time for the idea to become clear.

Human origin is an important theme in Anthroposophy. Within Anthroposophy, the human being is comprised of four principle parts, the physical, etheric, astral and ego. Each one of these parts has evolved over eons of time but each of them is present in every human being today. Happily, each human is related to the physical world through the physical body, the etheric world (the world of plants) through the etheric body and the astral world (the animal world) through the astral body. The ego is the unique factor for humanity in world evolution.

The genetic part is only one part of the totality that comprises a human existence. The physical part comes through procreation. The etheric, astral and ego come, as it were, from other directions. They complicate the simple picture of human origin because in order to coherently understand human origin one needs to understand more than the physical origins, but etheric, astral and ego-ic.

At this point, many readers might say to themselves, 'there goes that secret knowledge' again. In order to understand Anthroposophy, one must feel a certain consonance. Not blind faith, but a sense that the words point to something one might fruitfully know more about. A journey must be worth making. I don't imagine that what is written here is sufficient for a critical reader to take that step. The words probably sound as abstract and hollow as any other.

What made a difference to me, an adopted person, was that Anthroposophy was concerned with more than physical origins. Humanity is made up of genes and the physical body, but also something more. The traditional and familiar modern day sciences, which are clearly very productive, are exclusively concerned with the physical body and physical things. The parents who conceived me are certainly a part of me, but I am not defined by them. I am not merely genetics. What else defines? That is where to question Anthroposophy. Or, that is where I question it.

Call no man on earth 'father'.

2011-04-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

In the movie HANNAH, a young woman discovers that her father is not what she understood a father to be. He is and isn't her father. The film makes no effort to resolve her conundrum. Society has an interest in erasing the trail of the biological past, though with ambiguity. Members of society still want to maintain bio-connectivity, as if the narratives coinciding with biology hold power.

This is probably NOT the way to frame things. Narratives do not coincide with biology. Biology is part of the narrative itself. Biology is an element of narration. When the narration of a human life cannot have the biological nerve and flow, it takes on a new character. Without biology, biography changes. The power of narrative remains and rises.

If there is a new character to biography, it is being felt after. The persons whose histories are denied them are still in some measure reaching for the old biographies. They want what others have. It is the blank space that the blank father...the 'no-father'...the without identity father, that connects with the unreflected upon 'father' of one who blanked all earthly fathers.

It may be necessary to dig deeper into the saying "call no man on earth father" in order to see what application the passage has for today's world which also tries to erase or minimize biology.

Just wanted to say this about the Coleridge quote

2011-03-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

When Coleridge says 'Jew mythoi' I'm shocked. The use of the word 'Jew' as an adjective has been so appalling that I say instead, 'Hebrew'.

The word 'reason' used to mean so much more

2011-03-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

'Reason' has come down so far that it means today something like opinion. AND, reason is contrasted with inspiration or powerful passionate life, so that the person who values it seems a gray man or woman. Coleridge wrote this,

"My principle has ever been, that Reason is subjective revelation, Revelation objective reason - and that our business is not to derive Authority from the mythoi of the Jews and the first Jew-Christians (i.e. the Old and New Testament) but to give it to them." (quoted in Opus Maximum, lxxv.)

Statements like this are almost indecipherable today, but the reason that lived in the revelations long ago was one which came to meet humanity, like an object. The word of God encountered the long ago Hebrew people like a hard object, something necessary. In these later days, the seat of Authority has come to be interior, like reason. Reason and authority go down together, discredited.

Call no man on earth 'father'.

2011-03-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Donor conception brings up all sorts of questions, one of them is the 'cultural mythology' that puts identity in the hands of the genetic past...commonly called 'mother' and 'father', but of course it doesn't stop with just them. That mythology stretches back into the distant past, sailing past grandparents, and 'greats', through generations unnamed, peoples and places, nations, to tribes and beyond. Some return so far as to locate particular gods. Mythology indeed!

There is in the Christian west an inclination that also relativizes the 'fathers', for example, Jesus' saying in Matthew, 'call no one on earth your father' (23:9). Jesus is not wed to his natural kin, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” ⁴⁹And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!" (Mt 12:48, 49). In Matthew 8:21, Jesus says, 'let the dead bury their dead' when a man wants to go bury his father. Filial piety was not absolute. Christianity at its beginnings deliberately moved beyond the tribe and located commonality in the condition of humanity. All human beings are related. There is more to existence and being than our genetic past.

Is donor conception practice related to this same feeling? If what really matters about us is that we are primordially related, then our identity is not fundamentally related to our biological parents, their history, or that of their ancestors. Humanity is related, each to another. Mere biology is nothing. Nothing essential in biology. There is no message, nothing to learn.

But donor conception practice is not concerned with primordial relationships. Family is something scripted by social practice. Our personal identity is conceived by us consciously, in relation to society. Call 'father' only that person so scripted. There is a different feeling. What are the feelings that work us to make children using these means?

One difference is that now society wants to declare who is the father (or mother). These figures are being legally defined...and absolutized by being made singular. 'These are the father and mother'. There are no others.

Obsession with Genetics?

2011-03-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

Response to the headline at Family Scholars “I never understood the collective obsession with genetic heritage, or thought I was missing anything.”

Amy Corderoy, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, might might be speaking for many with this autobiographical statement, but the collective does speak from more than one side of its mouth. Society is not and may never be of one mind with respect to the importance of genetic heritage. Colonized cultures, native Americans for example, want to preserve the genetic identity of their people. And society sympathizes with them. In their genetic identity is also their cultural identity.

David Velleman in “Family History” notes how his family resemblances helped him raise his two sons, both different from him and each other, yet similar to different members of his family. He does not say that genetics determines everything, but that the past and the stories of the past, can inform the present.

The past works into the present. The past, whether through genetics or legislative act or scientific imagination, expresses itself. Obsession with genetics is like an obsession with the past. I don’t understand an obsession with the past either…but not knowing anything about it and shaming an interest in it, relates the desire to know with shame. Just because one is interested and questioning of the importance of genetics, doesn’t mean it is an obsession (and therefore aberrant.)

It is like history. Not everyone cares about history. But everyone agrees that it would be wrong for society to develop systematic methods for the concealment of certain facts because sectors of society thought it important. Donor conceived persons can be historians too, and should be able to be historians of their own stories.

Nothing Lazy, Mercy Works to See Its Subject

2011-03-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

This pastiche is in relation to a sermon by Fr. Christopher Brown, posted here.

The sermon was given at the Christ the King Spiritual Life Center, Friday, March 11, 2011 at the noon Eucharist in honor of the visit by the Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. The context of the sermon is on the stresses in the Episcopal Church and makes the point that mercy seems to be difficult for all to carry out, but it is something all are called into. But what is mercy?

I want to point to a real situation where mercy, as I think of it, comes up. This morning I read a story told by Lorraine Dusky (Birth Mother First Mother Forum, “Do birthmother’s have a right to know who their children become?”). She tells about giving testimony before the Senate Congressional Hearing in 1980 concerning The Model Adoption Act. Dusky advocates opening records to adopted persons. Lorraine is a mother who gave her child up for adoption, a 'birth mother' (aka 'first mother). Mercy has to do with perception.

This is what she wrote, "I can remember that day in DC as if it were yesterday. Before I testified, the National Council for Adoption, the anti-adoptee rights organization, a lobby front for a slew of adoption agencies, including all the Bethany Christian agencies and --oh, here we go again--the LDS agencies, came up with an "anonymous" birth mother who had surrendered a few years earlier. She was against opening the records; somehow if this happened, it would wreck her life. I could hardly believe my ears and was quite riled up by the time I got up to speak. I made my remarks about never forgetting the daughter I had given birth to and felt I had to give up, as a single woman, about always wondering who she was and if that girl I passed on the street who was about the right age might be her. By the time I went back to my seat, Ms. Anon was in tears and her two NCFA handlers were comforting her. Florence and I were seated a couple rows behind her and I could see how openly she was now weeping.”

In the end, the decision of the Congressional committee was to recommend the sealing of adoption records, including the birth certificate. Dusky uses the example of the weeping woman to suggest that the 'mercy' that the congressional committee was one which saw the weeping anonymous birth mother and the supporting testimony, some 3000 letters, 82 percent of which opposed opening records. For Dusky, Congress perceived these concerns because they were easy to see and majority rules. There wasn’t much mercy going on.

Mercy has to do with perception but not all perception is merciful. Some perception is lazy. For Dusky, what was harder to see, even though invited and represented, were the concerns of other birth mothers and those of many adopted persons -- which is the reason of her post on this subject in 2011. Thirty-one years later, some of the same things need to be said. Seeing something unfamiliar, recognizing the unfamiliar, takes time and effort. Mercy is an act by the intelligence towards the less well known, less habitually recognizable. Mercy is an effort of perception; not something habitual. Mercy represents a sort of virtue, but it does not assure easy policy and practice. Good policy and practice, however, requires merciful people.

Human Fertilization Debate in England: A small part

2008-05-14T04:31:00.000-07:00

I going to share three posts that were written in response to the debate in England on the bill regarding human fertilization and embryology. The original site was Thinking Anglicans. The first comment is mine where I tried to point out a part of the bill which isn't getting much attention, the disclosure of information to children born as a result of these artificial reproductive technologies. The second and third comments were a response to mine.

The second one seems to say that she doesn't get what I'm saying. I think I answered the question she asks fairly clearly in the post. Read the penultimate line again and you will have the nib of it. The third post seems to get it. Too bad the discussion doesn't take it beyond this.

"I'm going to step out a little on this comment, nervously, and make a self-disclosure here that is somewhat relevant regarding my following concern. I am adopted... and was adopted in the United States in a place which has "closed records"... meaning that I have no right to know who my natural parents are. My concern with this bill doesn't concern what the BBC identifies as "key points". It doesn't concern what the Archbishop of Canterbury is talking about. It concerns the children who will be born using these reproductive technologies who will be precluded from knowing their genetic/biological roots. The applicable section of the bill seems to be the following: "Request for information as to genetic parentage etc. ... deleting five sections... (6) The Authority need not comply with a request made under subsection (2)(b) by any applicant if it considers that special circumstances exist which increase the likelihood that compliance with the request would enable the applicant— (a) to identify the donor, in a case where the Authority is not required by regulations under subsection (2)(a) to give the applicant information which identifies the donor, or 5 (b) to identify any person about whom information is given under subsection (2)(b). " I edited the bill because of excessive length... but please read it all. The concern I raise is for the child and his descendants. It regards the possession of personal, human, identifying history and how it is being controlled by the state and those interested in producing children so that the children (and their descendants) should come to think that they have no right to their histories. This is a human matter, that will affect potentially thousands of children. It is already affecting thousands right now. These policies must be examined. Most of society assumes a personal history, a heritage and connection to the past through relationships. When society closes that door, the door shuts hard. Information disclosure is not a scintillating part of the bill, but it has immediate and far reaching effect. It should be natural human right that everyone may know, without exception, their biological histories. This sort of thing affects not just one generation, but all subsequent. -- Posted by: mark diebel on Monday, 12 May 2008 at 10:33pm BST

Mark:

I understand (and sympathize with) your concerns, but what exactly are you concerned with--the actual identity (name, family, etc.) of the biological parents, or their medical information which may be of value to the adoptee for obvious reasons?

I ask, because I am familiar with several adopted children among my own children's friends, and I find that, for them, their "family history" is that of their adoptive family, not of their biological one. To them, their "personal history...a heritage and connection to the past through relationships" is through the family which has raised them and nurtured them and given them a place in the world. Their ancestors, for them, are the ancestors of their adoptive parents, not of their biological ones, at least as far as "personal history" is concerned.

Yes, those among them who have reached young adulthood are interested in the medical history of their biological forebears, but--to a man and woman--they appear to have no interest in them beyond that. Posted by: Pat O'Neill on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 4:02am BST

'.... This is a human matter, that will affect potentially thousands of children. It is already affecting thousands right now. These policies must be examined. Most of society assumes a personal history, a heritage and connection to the past through relationships.
' When society closes that door, the door shuts hard.Information disclosure is not a scintillating part of the bill, but it has immediate and far reaching effect. It should be natural human right that everyone may know, without exception, their biological histories. This sort of thing affects not just one generation, but all subsequent.'

Posted by: mark diebel on Monday, 12 May 2008 at 10:33pm BST

I think mark diebel's post is very important indeed. I quote what seems to me to be the nub of his post. We really must find a way to take on board and to honour such concerns, at a practical level also.

Many many people will want to know more of the identitiies, backgrouns and histories of their bilogical parents. And the need to know will kick in at varying points in the lives of individuals.

Adoption is far from straightforward emotionally and existentially. This is conveniently neglected by our societies.We must not compound this, by disregarding adopted people's feelings, sensibilities, and such deep needs.

Posted by: L Roberts on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 1:57pm BST

Daniel J. Smitherman wrote a book

2007-10-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

That book is called Philosophy and the Evolution of Consciousness: Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances (iUniversity Press: San Jose 2001) I had come back from one more professional development seminar with a renewed sense of what brought me into the priesthood. Important, perhaps essential, was Owen Barfield's little book.
Daniel Smitherman came to my attention via the internet. I was searching out work on Barfield. I bought his book sometime in 2002. My recollection of that reading was positive. He correlates Barfield's writing with more mainstream philosophical thought including Richard Rorty, Sartre, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend. Not a philosopher myself I found his discussion helpful and interesting, and, in the end, I thought to myself, good effort. Then I put the book on the shelf and left it sit until now.
This response had in part to do with my being a parish priest. As such I didn't have any particular way to address the main focus of Smitherman's book which is to place Barfield in and among philosophers in order to indicate (plead) that he can and should be taken seriously among them. Barfield is a worthy philosopher, a serious thinker who argues something not that many are and at the same time he comes off as a human being. But Barfield continues to get short shrift.
I put Smitherman's book on the shelf but about that time I was having fantasies of taking a sabbatical. I saw that Smitherman lived in Montana, a place I've had on my mind since I hitchhiked through it at eighteen and since I read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. On that sabbatical I would travel to Montana, visit that big sky and the Anaconda stack, meet Smitherman for many cups of coffee and long discussion. I needed and longed for intellectual refreshment. There is something about meeting someone who seems to get it.
As things unfolded the sabbatical plan was cut short. The parish wasn't ready for me to take off for three months. My attentions went to other writings and work. Nevertheless, Barfield was always a prominent part of that.
What Barfield did was point me to a way of thinking. He helped me learn to think. And in that urgency I found something which wasn't wearisome or a repetition of things I've already thought or things someone else has. There was a well-spring that drew me repeatedly back.
I pursued studies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Douglas Sloan, Stanley Grenz, John Franke, the Emergent Church Movement (or Emergent Church Conversation as they preferred), Brian Mclaren, James McClendon, Nancey Murphy, George Lindbeck with a few clergy and lay friends. At the same time I was preaching to and pastoring the congregation. Throughout these years has been the fall-out from 9/11 and the relationship of Christians and Islam. In the personal sphere I've been pursuing the roots of my life as an adopted person. I've also been a helping a friend work on a website dealing with Goethean Science.
So one day I get this email from Smitherman asking me to review his book. I took it off the shelf and decided to read it again.

Fr. Jake Stops his Audience

2007-09-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

Father Jake Stops the World is a premier blog when it comes to TEC (the Episcopal Church). At Jake's, excellent news, opinion and commentary, as well as an active group of commenters. The other day Jake posted the story on the link above and I was surprised at the relative paucity of comments. The article by Richard Tarnas, Is the Modern Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage?, inspired a few people but left most with a ho-hum response and one or two with a strong negative. Tarnas, born in 1950, has been doing integrative studies for many years and teaches in Santa Barbara, California.
One of the responders who was thrilled also was a Unitarian Universalist pastor. She writes,

"This guy is saying absolutely nothing different than what any neo-Pagan or Wiccan is saying. The only difference is, he's putting it in the jargon of academia, and the neo-Pagans use mythological language (Gods and Goddesses and various mythical truths) to get the exact same point across.

So perhaps I should say what I've been absolutely dying to say: there's no need for Christians and Pagans to live in mutual animosity. None whatever. There never has been, and some of the Pagans actually have some wisdom to impart.

I could just bust out crying, this is just that thrilling to me. I wish I could give everyone a crash course on the elder or common Germanic futhark, for that alphabet is a series of mysteries or "runes" that speak of these processes that the human race goes through. The "mysteries" aren't all that mysterious, they're what we live through and with all the time.

But I can't do that, sadly, and this is why I struggle so hard. Both the indigenous Germanic tradition and the Christian tradition are very meaningful to me, and this person has basically written into these lines things I've been saying (only in a different way) for almost 20 years now."

Another comment reads, "What did I think of the article? Trivial ideas expressed in bombastic, pretentious language."

Later someone writes, "Psychology (Jungian?) masquerading as theology. Maybe the basic worldview of our culture is changing -- but that does not mean it is getting any closer to the truth. It could simply be changing. From my perspective, what we can hang onto is what God has revealed in the teachings and life of Jesus, as recorded and explained by the Apostles."

Jake writes, "But, to be honest, I'm now quite caught up in Tarnas, as he offers a way to set aside some of the rather petty Christian debates, which I'm personally beginning to find quite pointless. Human thought will continue to evolve. If Christianity, or Islam for that matter, will be part of that process, or a hinderance (sic) to it, is an interesting question, but really a rather abstract side issue. The future will arrive, if we like it or not. I suspect that the role of institutionalized religion in that future will be minimal. It seems to me the institutions are becoming more and more consumed with self preservation, and less and less engaged in the new thing that God might be doing in our midst."

Jake was pretty brave to post that article, I think. Was Tarnas's essay trivial? Hardly, since it tries to come to terms with the western worldview and where we might be headed. Does Tarnas come to terms with reality in any way? I think so. He says, "... it is not just a matter of intellectual understanding of this coincidence of opposites in our historical evolution. Rather, it is a matter of experiencing, suffering through the struggle of opposites within our consciousness. We must in a sense undergo a kind of crucifixion..." He is certainly much more interesting than some Christian writers in TEC. I'm not giving examples here right now. Those of you in TEC probably know something about it. If not, then file it by title.

Sometimes one does have to step back and attempt to take in the larger picture. That's what Jake (with Tarnas's help) is doing, I believe, even if his audience won't.

Autobiographical Notes

2007-09-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

Fourteen months of my life is almost unknown to me. In the first six weeks of life I was kept at the hospital I think where I was "not thriving" and was having trouble with "lactose intolerance." Somewhere along the way I was removed to foster care where I was known as Charles Slade. Apparently I loved it there because I ate and grew cheerful. My foster mom wrote a letter to my adopting parents the day I was picked up. I read it and then lost it. Am still unhappy about that. They called me "Chuckie".
My adoptive brother, John, was a little like me: Japanese and Hispanic. According to non-identifying information I received two years ago, the agency workers were very happy about my placement. I fell asleep on my mother's lap the day they came to take me to my "forever home." Everyone has taken this as a sign of how natural a fit we were. These days I see it as a symptom of reactive attachment disorder.
Going home my parents said that I had "a cold" for a few days afterwards. There's a picture of me and I look sad and bewildered.
When I was with my grandson in July he was fourteen months old. When his parents left my wife and me with him for the evening he cried like mad and bowed to the door in tears until his mom and dad returned. Instead of crying for my natural mom I spent forty-eight years of my life looking for my her, quietly, secretly and ineffectively. My wife knew about it but she was the only one. How did I look? Whenever I entered a hospital I'd look for a Japanese nurse. That was one of the little tidbits handed on by the social workers. In all those years, of course, I knew it wouldn't pan out because she was probably far away. And I don't remember ever seeing one Japanese nurse.
It turned out when I did meet her that she wasn't doing nursing anymore and hadn't for many years.

Anthroposophy is a pastoral question

2007-09-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

Anthroposophy should not be thought of as a theological problem but a pastoral one. Some of us have found that it helped us make more sense of the Christian faith. It is interesting and I think sad that some Episcopalians have felt a need to conceal the fact of their interest in Anthroposophy. Considering that almost no one in the Episcopal Church knows anything about it first hand, why would this be the case? Isn't the Episcopal Church a place where open minded inquiry is encouraged?
I remember a conversation with my god-father's wife late in her life. Having known her since childhood, she told me when I was about forty years old that she had been reading Anthroposophy for years but never talked about it for fear of her husband's career (he was an Episcopal priest.)

Towards a New Science

2007-09-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

I'm working with a friend of mine on a project of his called New Science. I am doing reading for it. One relevant article he found is by Rustom Roy, called, The Twilight of Science -- Last of the "Gods" (Futures, Vol. 29. No. 6. pp. 471-482, 1997). He says, "...science is ending. Why? because it has succeeded beyond its own wildest dreams. Science has explained virtually everything about the physical world that technologists, engineers, and other scientists, certainly most citizens, needed to know. Our curiosity... is fully satisfied..." Roy goes on argue that a new science will take human inquiry to a new level and offers the suggestion of Rupert Sheldrake in Seven Experiments that Could Shake the World, "do animals have a special means by which they know when their mistress or master is coming?" He says, "this has been observed by hundreds but needs quantifying."
C.S. Lewis in his Abolition of Man (1955) argues that science has achieved so much in that last decades through a power to explain. But this ability to analyze and conceptualize is also the ability to explain things away. In the end, explaining everything away, seeing through everything, we are at risk of seeing nothing at all. When everything is transparent, everything is invisible. He argues for a regenerate science, something he only dimly guesses at. He points to Goethe and Rudolf Steiner.
What do you think about science? Has it reached an end? Or is there more for the human spirit to know?

Some Statements and Questions with the Episcopal Church in Mind

2007-09-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

1) How we understand, or even just imagine, where we human beings come from is part of the normal human warehouse. Does the Episcopal Church interact with this or further any discussions.
2) How does the Episcopal Church (TEC) interact with the advance of knowledge or its termination?
3) Does the oft cited conviction that the scriptures "contain all things necessary to salvation" fall under examination and elaboration? In what way are these things contained? Can these things be abstracted from scripture and known apart from it?
4) The salvation which TEC proclaims is what exactly? What does salvation consist in and what is the soul?
5) TEC has no teaching on the origin of the individual. It assumes whatever society thinks. The Bible and tradition are silent about the origin of the individual. Is that true?

An Adoptee Reaching out to the Episcopal Church

2007-07-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

I wrote this email to The Rev. Jayne Oasin last week, "I'm writing to learn whether the Episcopal Church has any ministry in place or in development regarding the rights of adoptees to open records. I'm an adoptee working in New York for open records. Legislation in both houses is pending, S235 and A2277. These bills would allow an adoptee (18 or older) the right to obtain a copy of his original birth certificate.

This matter is a nationwide question. There is a particularly powerful lobby in Washington, the National Council for Adoption, that is supporting the right of privacy for original parents. This organization has strong ties to the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The ACLU also seems to support this position. I don't know how Integrity feels about it. Other adoption groups contest this so-called right both as a right that supersedes the right to know and as a matter of fact, birthmoms didn't expect such a thing or ask for it. My own mom expected that I would search for her and find her. She didn't understand how I would come to understand a "closed adoption."

There are also related justice questions. For instance international adoptions have been cited with human rights violations involving human trafficking. Reproductive tourism is on the rise as well.

Please let me know if there is interest in knowing more about this. I think it is an urgent concern that will have further implications as we see children of surrogate parents coming of age in the present and future. Embryo-implant procedures will also produce children whose experience must be considered. But prior to their coming of age, the experience of adoptees and surrogacy adults must be heard, in my opinion. Organizations like Snowflake will have important effect and I'm sure some Episcopalians will soon be involved with it, it not already.

Thank you,
Mark Diebel+"

I'll let you know what happens.

Bishops Leave & The Zeitgeist

2007-06-21T06:31:00.000-07:00

Bishop Dave Bena retired and left the Episcopal Church for CANA, the Convocation for Anglicans in North America. It is part of the so-called rescue mission for the sinking raft of the godless Episcopalians. Bishop Dan Herzog retired and renounced his orders to become a layman in the Roman Church.
These two men were closely and actively involved with the Evangelical, Catholic and Reform renewal movement in the Diocese of Albany and elsewhere. Dan had us reading Rick Warren's, The Purpose Driven Church and Claude Payne's, Reclaiming the Great Commission. He sent us Lyle Schaller's essays. Things went wrong. All the good intentions and prayers, all the solutions they imagined, abandoned them and probably surprised them. I mean, if they weren't surprised at where they have come, then they must have been planning it all along. I don't think so.

They were swept into the troubles of the day, the troubles in the church. This tiny Episcopal Church... and the global Anglican Communion... are participant in the troubles of our time.

I do wish those who get upset about the Zeitgeist would explain how they managed to free themselves from its influence and keep free. That would be more helpful than the familiar scold that liberals or whoever are captive to the spirit of the age. We're here, we're now... we are in this together.

An Autobiography of an Adoptee: I

2007-06-21T06:10:00.000-07:00

I'm looking at a picture of my grandson at one year old right now and want to see my past with him in mind. It really wasn't such a dim past. I felt joy. Laughed. I practically never cried... well, that did bother me. When for instance my brother died I didn't cry, or when my mom or my dad died. No tears at all. But I loved them and I loved the blue sky, the slanting, ancient foothills of the front range, the red rocks, the prickly pear. I loved Chinese food with my dad. Granite and mica on the walks in Estes Park. Cocoa with my mom. The thunderstorm outside the window of the cabin, with black and strong shoulders: sound pounding and the river running.

I know love and joy. With Carlos Eire, I can quote, Charles Simic, "I spit on fools who fail to include breasts in their metaphysics / Star-gazers who have not enumerated them among the moons of the earth." Beauty was and is that which nursed by soul. My soul was nursed and fed deliciously. At times.

So, youth spent days wondering and other days watching the tube. Eating graham crackers with milk. Seldom doing homework. I loved running and walking outdoors. Fields, old orchards. Anthills. Dry summer grass. Swimming. As a boy I loved Doug and Jonathan in first grade and longed to be with all the time. Doug broke his leg and I wanted to break mine to be like him. There was Melanie, a dark haired girl in first grade. I walked her home once.

There were ghosts. The ghost man wasn't named, or liked. I ignored him, but he was there. The ghost woman, also nameless, the mom, she wore a red dress and was beautiful. She danced. These people lived in my home with my parents and me. Unseen by everyone except me.

These ghosts were my other parents, my first ones. I had always known that I was adopted. There was no mistaking it. I am Japanese and Cuban and I lived in a place where there were no others like me. It's been a long time to learn just how lonely it was.

These, dear grandson, are memories and thoughts of an adopted grandfather.