Anyway, both the nature and the mentality of the complaint got me thinking... what would any sensible parent say should their child act and argue the same way. And so I bring you, modeled on precisely the same arguments and logic:
TO: Dr. K. J. Schori, Gene Robinson, Bonnie Anderson, a religiously-clueless but knee-jerked-ly anti-establishment anti-Church anti-Christian mainstream media who will therefore publish this letter, and anyone else who likes to listen to this sort of inane narcicistic prattle.
FROM: Ima Whiner, youth member, parish of St. Ipsos.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I am writing all of you as a response to my parents' recent refusal to let me have icecream.
The reason they have refused me dessert has nothing to do with my character, nor my skills and gifts of digestion. Their so-called reason was that I failed to clean up my room as I had earlier agreed and I did not eat any of my dinner.
In refusing to let me have ice-cream, my parents are REFUSING TO RECOGNIZE MY BAPTISM, because we are all supposed to be equally children of God and are marked as "Christ's own forever"... and so therefor they obviously have no right to keep me from getting my ice cream which is promised to me in that baptism and in Scripture.
Refusal to recognize baptism is a serious matter. This is why I am writing this open letter, so that we might begin a dialogical conversation over this matter... in the hopes that my incessant whining will create such unpleasantness and fuss over this bogus silliness that my parents give up in irritated disgust, or at least so that I can keep eating my icecream while everyone is distracted by it.
I had been warned by some of my classmates that certain parents can be very oppressive over matters of nutrition and diet. By not letting me eat my ice cream, my parents have refused to recognize my individual personhood, my human dignity, my full autonomy, and my civil rights. As Martin Luther King would have said, my parents have, by refusing to let me eat my ice cream, cast me into an "I-It" relationship with them rather than an "I-Thou" relationship... and they have definitely refused my right to have the proper "ME ME ME ME ME ME!!!!" relationship that Gene Robinson has shown us all in the Episcopal church is what God really wants for us to have.
Inspired by these lessons we learned in Episcopal Sunday School, several of us formed the "Pottinghead" group, an "youth underground", freedom-fighting child-liberating movement where we have been able to partake of icecream, drugs, alcohol, indiscriminate sex, and all the other behaviors our parents -- who are thereby REFUSING TO RECOGNIZE OUR BAPTISM!!! -- have denied us.
But I have grown more and more uncomfortable with the fact that I have to sneak out of the house to go to these meetings, rather then being allowed to indulge them in the middle of the living room in front of dinner guests or out on the playground in public parks.
"Obedience", as I was taught to understand it in the context of authority in the Episcopal Church, means "obedience" to whatever I decide is my "true, inner self," as expressed by my moment-to-moment urges -- it has nothing to do with accountability objective truth, historical or scientific fact, common sense, good nutrition, or Christian teaching. Only in such sanctified self-indulgence can we find the true "ME ME ME ME ME ME ME" relationships which the Episcopal Church has taught us to prize above all things.
Only such self-love is true love... and without such love, our relationship with God is turned into "Master/Slave" or "King/Subject" or "Parent/Child" -- or even (incredible, almost incomprehensible, as it might seem) -- "Creator/Creature" relationships. And this rejects the Gospel and DENIES MY BAPTISM!!!
I have now discerned that this true "love" and "obedience" to this love -- as well as my responsibility to minister to and celebrate the similar gastronomic urges of my peers -- requires me to obey my desires for ice cream as a holy, God-given right, regardless of what my parents, Scripture, or anyone else says. So I wish to announce that, tomorrow night, I will be leading an icecream and dessert party with the Pottinghead Underground.
In order to respect my parents -- despite the fact that they are EVIL MEANIES who have DENIED MY BAPTISM!!! by refusing to give me ice cream -- I will be taking the following actions so that I will not be functioning as their child in any official capacity:
- I will leave any i.d. with my name on it out in the car, and people will not use my last name.
- The party will not be held on my parents' property.
- The ice cream will be bought and brought by other youth from the parish, and so it will be "youth" ice cream and not "adult" ice cream, and so won't count as dessert.
- The ice cream will be served on plates rather than in bowls, and so it won't really be ice cream.
- We will be holding hands with each other while eating the ice cream, so it won't really be me eating the ice cream anyway.
May the peace of the Lord (and Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Almond Nougat) be always with you.
Hugs and kissies (at least for those of you who aren't evil meanies like my parents and thus DENYING MY BAPTISM!!!),
Ima Whiner
