Night Light

Bishop Robinson Will Give the Inaugural Celebration's Opening Prayer

photo by Allen McInnis

Gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson will be at the inaugural celebration, as reported here and elsewhere:

"I am writing to tell you that President-Elect Obama and the Inaugural Committee have invited me to give the invocation at the opening event of the Inaugural Week activities, We are One, to be held at the Lincoln Memorial," Robinson wrote in an email to friends.

The announcement comes after weeks of outcry from the gay community over Obama's choice of evangelical, anti-gay pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.

Not that I'm taking credit or anything, but I did write this in the Huffington Post on December 18, in a piece on politics and conflict resolution:

Regarding Rick Warren, why not invite one more minister to speak at the Inauguration? I have someone in mind: Rev. Gene Robinson. Gene Robinson is the openly gay Episcopal bishop whose appointment has caused a rift with anti-gay Third World Anglican communities. I'm not gay and can't speak for the community, but that might help.

I'm sure many other people had the same thought. 

It's not clear from the story how much time will elapse between Bishop Robinson's prayer and the inauguration itself.  I hope he gets a lot of press attention. 

beer bottle temple

Philip Ryan at the Tricycle blog points us to this Thai Buddhist temple built entirely out of beer bottles.  The local beer (which Treehugger calls Chang, but isn't it Chiang?) provides the brown-shaded bottles, and Heineken provides the green.

I always thought it would be tasteful if everybody drank exclusively in earth tones.  (Hey!  My alcoholism is a "spring"!)  Now we see that it can make for an aesthetically pleasing and fully recycled building, too:

Note the monk in front, who provides a sense of scale.  This is an enormous building.  Its mass brought that old Don Henley song to mind:  "I Must Not Be Drinking Enough."

The building is a living lesson, one I've seen many people follow:  Past bad behaviors - e.g. excessive alcohol consumption - can be recycled into meritorious acts.   It makes its statement it so cleanly and simply that it brings to mind the principle that mathematicians call "elegance."

Now, how do we encourage more recycling (of all kinds)?  Philip Ryan rightly notes that interest in recycling fades as gas prices fall -- but the global economic crisis may play a part, too.