Martin Elfert

Episcopal Priest, Charming Uncle, Past Recipient of the Kindergarten Perfect Attendance Award.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

I had a dream last night in which I discovered that @AJemaineClement was a member of Pink Floyd (a band famous for its Flight of the Conchords-esque humour and understatement). The concert was pretty good. But, sadly, the dream ended before the psychedelic version of Mutha’uckas.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@masonmennenga A seminary classmate had a book on their shelf with a similar sexual ethic or sexual theology. I kept on waiting for the author to fess up that they were writing satire. And they kept on not doing it.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

Similar to Alice Munro, @1JessWalter conveys so, so much in the space between the words. "Show don't tell" may be a bit of a cliche - but when an artist shows this much and tells this little: Well, it's wondrous.

From Walter's beautiful short story collection, "Angel of Rome."

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@emollick @nytdavidbrooks My big knock on the feedback sandwich is that is teaches us to distrust praise - to tense up after a compliment and say, "Oh no! What's coming next?"

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@masonmennenga Totally. The fundamentalist and the anti-theist are in deep agreement that scripture is either objective history or hogwash. And, I'd add, they both insist that those of us who don't accept that binary choice aren't really Christians.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@josh_a_scott Indeed. I would even - to use an old-fashioned word - call it heresy. "If it were up to me I'd say 'yes' [to marriage equality, to women's ordination, you name it] but God says 'no,'" necessarily means that the speaker is more generous and more loving than God.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@josh_a_scott I have a colleague who - wonderfully - says, "If it turns out that I am mistaken about the nature God's love, my goal is to have overestimated, rather than underestimated, how loving God actually is." That feels like a good goal - a Christ-like one, really.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@AmysMargin I reckon that there are good intentions here - that folks reckon that brevity is the antidote to tedium. But rules such as this are too reductive. We have all heard 10 & even 5 minute speeches that were impossibly tedious - & 90-minute ones that kept you rapt the whole time.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@danielwinvw It is the worst technology.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@mattnightingale And the inadvertent comedy is how many of their horror stories -

What if a gay guy hit on me?

You may as well put a stripper pole in the church!

- look an awful lot like sexual fantasies.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@mattnightingale That would be offensive & absurd. It would be evidence a stunted moral imagination, one that cannot hold the many, many ways that two people express their love for one another.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@mattnightingale Folks will always misunderstand - & caricature - their neighbor if they hold onto the idea that sex is what primarily defines them. We know this with straight couples: *no one* goes to a straight 60th wedding anniversary & says, "Boy, you two have done a lot screwing."

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

Brock Boeser is now pace to score 324 goals this season.

[Vancouver Canucks @Canucks]

🚨 BROCK x 4 🚨

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@StJohnsPriest @dvdpeters I had a clergy colleague who went for Halloween as a projection screen. That is a costume choice that sits on the knife edge of hilarious and painful, that is just a little too true.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@dvdpeters It is haunting. Particularly because there is so often so little for us to learn from or to do differently: if your sin is not being the previous rector, there is no fixing that.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@TexasBishop (The comments on this thread illustrate the impossibility of being in leadership post-2020: there are folks disillusioned that we took too long to reopen & make masks optional; and there are folks disillusioned that we reopened & made masks optional too soon.)

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@TexasBishop So well said. This is a 3 steps forward, 2 steps back moment for everyone in the gathering business - Taylor Swift excepted. Our place's attendance is appreciably up over a year ago & still down from early 2020. I suspect that is common tale.

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@jdflynn Right. And remember the story of the curmudgeon on the church steps.

Fighting to be kind, he tells the pastor, "Well, your sermon was brief." To which the pastor replies, "Yes, I avoid being tedious." At which point the curmudgeon can no longer resist: "But you *were* tedious."

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@kaylajohnsonatl I think often of that famous scene "When Harry Met Sally." Imagine if we Christians lived with such joy, curiosity, generosity, & purpose folks looked at us and said, "I want what they're having."

[Martin Elfert @MartinElfert]

@_nomadic_soul 100%, yes. If you tried to reconstruct the Gospel based on what Christians talk about most often, you could not help but conclude that sex was Jesus' primary concern - and that, say, poverty was of little interest to him.