PADDY’S GREEN Kate Middleton, aka PrincessCatherine Elizabeth, Duchess of Cambridge, wife to Prince William, the Duke ofCambridge, and Colonel in the Irish Guards, was fashionably all green (down toeyeshadows) during the regimental ceremonies on St. Patrick’s Day (LáFheile Pádraig) where she handed sprigs of shamrock and a basket ofthe same to officers who in turn handed sprigs to their men. OK. For my fellow“pedestrians”, Patrick was an English lad in the 5rd century when Irish marauderskidnapped him in England and brought him to the Emerald Isle to serve as aslave to his captors. He escaped,returned to England, trained in the priesthood, and returned to his pagancaptors in Ireland, converting them to Christianity. That’s how he made it to the pantheon ofwestern saints. Now, what’s with the “pedestrians”? Paddy was in New York. He was patiently waiting and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, "Okay, pedestrians." Then he'd allow the traffic to pass. He'd done this several times, and Paddy still stood on the sidewalk. After the cop had shouted, "Pedestrians!" for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, "Is it not about time ye let the Catholics across?" (Withapologies to the Irish folks in this readership, but the foregoing tends to bethe tenor of Irish jokes. There probablywere not too many floating around Saipan anyway, save over promoting thebitters at the bar zones in Garapan.) Paddy’s Day has, of course, become more contemporaneous in the issuesit deals with beyond the Catholic and Protestant divide. Boston’s Mayor refused to march in the St.Patrick’s Day parade because the organizers refused the participation of gaysand lesbians. Ditto for the vaunted NewYork City parade usually seen around the world. The issue of LGBT’s legal right is advancing faster in StateLegislatures and the courts of law than in sanctified solemn assemblies. The United Methodist Church that brought meup, traditionally wore its social conscience in neon lights on its forehead; nowfinds itself behind the curve as its Good News Evangelicals have made Paul ofTarsus’ homophobia and subservient female prejudice in the service of Americanpolitical conservatism. With the UMC, this is actually an anomaly. A good 60 percent of mainstream Methodiststend to be more progressive than what is reflected in the wordings of its Bookof Discipline: “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexualunions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted inour churches.” The 38 percent foreign contingent voting in the last GeneralConference of the UMC for “participatory” types like me would be an occasionfor delight save that they were those who remained subservient to the New Yorkor Nashville offices and their budgetary support, towing essentially themissionary lines. Saving souls fromhellfire damnation in the by-and-by remained the mission, along with aningrained idolatry of Jesus, and polishing the altar cross for do-goodism, straightout of downtown Main Street, South of the Mason-Dixon line, U.S.A., 1930s andthereafter. Ergo, a majority of thedelegates from Asia and Africa are mirror images of the missionaries that“groomed” them. Homophobia and its related prejudices are learned, not homegrown. Iran into it in 1965 when I went to a conservative American Seminary in theformer slave State of Kentucky. My former Church suffers deeply and widely fromthe debilitating disease. On the other hand, the denomination is experiencing a caseof widespread ecclesiastical disobedience as members of the clergy ignoreprovisions that prohibit their presiding over L & B unions. Retired Methodist clergy 80-yr. old ThomasOgletree, former Yale Divinity School Dean, was going to face Church trial forofficiating on the same-sex marriage of his son. The Presiding Bishop of New York area MartinMcLee threw out the case declaring anunconditional dismissal of the charges, unprecedented in the Methodist Church. The language of Bishop McLee in the “justresolution” is even more momentous: I call for and commit to a cessation ofchurch trials for conducting ceremonies which celebrate homosexual unions orperforming same-gender wedding ceremonies … This is rearguard action to me but someone has to clean the horsemanure off those Kentucky horse farms! Green has become the color of my mission of late, though the missionitself is deeply embedded in the Christian faith. “For God so loved the world …” begins theoft-quoted scriptural verse, but we’ve had a tendency to skip the first phraseand move on to the next one, creating a redemption by substitution notion notunlike the knights of the roundtable and their virtue of self-sacrifice. It has now become clear that we consume a good half more than the restorativeand carrying capacity of the planet, so the question of how one does love theworld, deep in the Christian tradition, is existentially appropriate. I’ll go with Kate. I go green! j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!