PeaceBang

The Unitarian Universalists Are Talkin ‘Bout Theology!

Matthew Gatheringwater and some others are in the midst of a great conversation over at Philocrites: http://www.philocrites.com/archives/002057.html

Matthew said this, which made me make a Scooby-Doo “ruh roh?” noise and perk my doggie ear in the air:

“Getting swept up in uncritical emotional acceptance of religious language scares me a bit.”

Experience is indeed everything. Most people I know who use traditional religious language have hefted the heavy ax of critical thought over each word and cracked it open over many years, researched it, followed its etymologies like so many Encyclopedia Browns, considered its political and social implications, prayed over it, tried it out in different settings, and claimed or re-claimed it only after a tenacious battle with it. God. Kingdom of Heaven. Grace. Sin. Redemption. Divine. Holy. Christ. Sacrament. Spiritual. Religion. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, we would not let these words go until they had blessed us.

When *I* think of emotional treatment of language, I tend to think of the rejectors of traditional religious language who recoil violently and immediately against such words, responding viscerally from a place of old wounds and abuses and insisting they not be used, said, employed or invoked.

This is not to insult the emotional response; I for one have never been in favor of the old “reason trumps emotion” dualism. It is just to exegete for a moment my authentic Scooby Doo moment while mulling through the comments section in Philocrites.

At my recent summer intensive course, a wonderful new UU friend (and seminarian) was approached by a professor after her afternoon lecture. Entirely unprompted, the professor inquired, “Did I use too much God-language for you?”

What does this tell you? It tells me that lacking a theological center or a shared and clear “good news,” Unitarian Universalists become known for our terminal uniqueness, our pre-offendedness, and our wholly Other identity (with tinges of victimhood) within even the progressive Christian community.
Please read this year’s Commission on Appraisal report. It is fine, it is eloquent, it is dignified and lovely and inspiring. And I believe (although I’ve just skimmed it) that we can all find our own theological perspectives affirmed in there. Hats way off to the Commission. Shoes off. Clothes off. Everyone in the pool!!

Oh, and speaking of dogs, I feel like a golden retriever every time I put the damned drops in my ear. I have “infecto-ear,” as my sister used to say of her dogs. The doc admonished me with this highly medical explanation: “It was healing up until you putzed with it with the Q-tip!” I love a doctor who can say “putzed.” There’s nothing like a little bit of mamaloschen to comfort a girl.

Here’s why I am closing off the comments lately: it’s an editorial decision to help me manage my exhaustion and anxiety. I take every comment to heart, I read them all and think out a response to each and every one even if I don’t post anything.
So as I work my way back from “hiatus” please understand that my energy level isn’t where I want it to be, and rather than avoid blogging entirely I’m just managing it differently.

Peace and Grace.
Grease and Pace.

"The Importance of Art:" DISCUSS

T-Man Sam, my maniac Ottawa artist and fellow Bohunk Easter egg, needs some brainy type person to write a gorgeous, brings-tears-to-the-eyes essay suitable for a brochure at an art gallery: something on the value of ART.

The idea is that people will read this brochure and understand that art is not a luxury, and that it doesn’t need to match the couch in your living room. And you should buy it, acquire it, and love it.

Have at it, darlings. E-mail submissions to me at lunadiva@msn.com. Maybe about 400 words?

If It’s Too Hot For Fireworks, You Can Read This

Happy Fourth of July. I am giving this sermon on Sunday, July 2nd. It was originally composed in 2003, and I did my very best to update or clarify some of the statistics, but since I don’t have a research assistant (Jess and Dooner offered, but I’m leaving Thursday morning and had to finish this up tonight), this will have to do. If you find any glaringly horrific math errors let me know off–line, and Matthew Gatheringwater, I hope you will e-mail me your phone number!!
– P.B., hiatusly

[The sermon is preceded by a prayer from Paul’s 2nd Letter to the bone-headed Corinthians]

I wanted us to hear from the Apostle Paul this morning because Paul is probably the most famous prisoner in Western religious history, and perhaps in Western literature as well. The Apostle Paul is particularly useful to us this morning because he is a criminal twice over: in Paul’s lifetime in the first decades of the Common Era, he was both a perpetrator of violent oppression, and later a victim of violent oppression.

The interesting thing is, Paul was never arrested or jailed for his early career in torturing and murdering those mostly Jewish citizens of the Roman empire who were considered dangerously misguided for worshiping Jesus of Nazareth as their lord and savior. That behavior was just fine with the Roman authorities! What eventually landed Paul in prison – many times – was his own dramatic conversion to that same religion he had spent so many years brutally suppressing. The definition of “crime,” as we see, is a relative one; history informs us that what constitutes crime is determined by each people in each era. What I am doing right now – a woman daring to preach!– for instance, could have landed me in the stocks in past centuries in this country. It could land me in jail in some countries today.

As we are sitting here, well over two million men and women – mostly men of color– are living behind bars (that’s the population of the greater Boston area, and an estimated 486 prison inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents) — up from 411 at yearend 1995. One out of every 140 citizens of the United States woke up this morning in a tiny locked cell, on a cot bolted to the wall, with a toilet in the corner. If they’re very lucky, a stream of light may have come through a high, small window. But most likely not. Another four million Americans are on probation, and about 725,500 are on parole. If this sounds like a shockingly high number of our citizens involved in the criminal justice system as offenders, it is. To have this high of a percentage of the population behind bars is unprecedented in our history and unprecedented on the planet. As of 2003, the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Mostly due to mandatory sentencing for drug crimes, the number of inmates has quadrupled in American prisons since 1980. In the 1990’s, when the economy was booming, one out of three African-American men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine was either behind bars or on probation or parole.

I don’t know how many men and women were imprisoned in the first sixty years of the Common Era in the Roman Empire. But at the ending of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he writes this haunting phrase to his community of believers: “Remember my chains.”

And I do. I remember Paul’s chains, and I think of the shackles that have been placed, and are placed today, on great numbers of human beings whose ideas, beliefs or proclivities were or are in violation of the taboos or social norms of their place and time. In this, the Apostle Paul is in the company of those great authors of prison letters like the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote from his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama where he was locked up for civil rights activism, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote letters of moral challenge and consolation from his cell in Germany, where he was kept for protesting Nazism, or Alice Paul, the intrepid suffragist of the early 20th century who served three prison terms for her activism. Both King and Bonhoeffer died martyrs, as did Paul.

Please understand. This is not to paint all of our prison population in America with the great brush of liberal pity and delusions of innocent victimhood. Most of our prisoners are not victims. They are not Kings and Bonhoeffers and Saint Pauls or Alice Pauls. They are perpetrators, and they are mostly in prison because they are guilty of something our society has decided is a crime.

You have heard the statistics telling that prisoners are often products of poverty, mental illness[1] (about 16% of prisoners) and addiction. Our religious convictions call us to note those grim facts, and to care about them. It is also true that most prisoners are possessed of sound enough mind and body to be responsible for their decisions. Our religious convictions call us to note that fact, too. We must hold both of these realities in creative tension. Prisoners are our fellow human beings, and we must remember them, and stretch our own souls enough to be able to acknowledge their basic humanity even when decrying many of their decisions.

When Jesus listed the righteous acts that will create the realm of heaven here on earth, he enumerated these for his community:

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matthew 25:35-37)

So, they may be in chains, but they are still ours to minister to and to keep within the circle of our concern. It is a gospel imperative. We cannot usher in anyone’s idea of the kingdom of heaven if we relinquish 2.1 million fellow citizens to an “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy or dismiss their predicament as being their own literally damned fault. This is a spiritual challenge for us, living in a country that has spent the past twenty years peddling the notion that “soft on crime” is a disastrous recipe for societal chaos and a terrorized population. It is a spiritual challenge for those of us living in a nation whose leaders — in my memory, at least — have never dared to express one iota of concern for the imprisoned (if prisoners have come up at election time, they have been used as bogeyman illustrations for candidates’ tough on crime agenda – you will remember Willie Horton). It is certainly a spiritual challenge for those of us who have been victims of crime.

If you prefer not to take that spiritual challenge, consider then the merely practical implications of ignoring Americans in prison: since 1998, about 600,000 people have been released from prison each year – about 1,600 a day. 100,000 of these are released with no community supervision. Practices vary from state to state. In Massachusetts, prisons work with local agencies to find housing and employment for inmates upon their release. In Texas, a prisoner who has served his term gets one hundred bucks and a bus ticket. In Maine, he or she gets up to fifty dollars, some clothes, and a ride home. If there’s no home, he gets a ride to work. If there’s no work, he gets dropped off somewhere – maybe at the state border. In Georgia, it’s twenty-five bucks and a bus ticket.
Where are these people supposed to go? More importantly, who are they supposed to be? If they went into jail or prison a non-violent offender, they’ve been keeping intimate company with violent offenders for some time. They’ve learned violent ways. If they’ve been emotionally neglected, had their basic assumptions about how to function in the world left unchallenged, and left to rot intellectually, they’re not likely to make any better neighbors or co-workers or church members or family members than they did before they went into prison.

Where are they supposed to live? And how? Ex-cons are not eligible to live in public and subsidized housing, even if that’s where their family lives. They’re not eligible to work in a number of professions… including home health aide, firefighter, turnpike employee, bartender, cosmetician or barber.

A total of four million Americans have lost the right to vote because of their incarceration, including one in every seven African American men. (American Radio Works, “Hard Time: Life After Prison,” 2003) In twelve states, this disenfranchisement is permanent; a life sentence no matter what the length of the prison sentence. Not much incentive to participate in social change then, is there? Not much of a sense of personhood.

We cannot underestimate how prisons contrive to strip prisoners of their inherent sense of worth and dignity. A dignified prisoner is a threatening prisoner. By his very presence he shames his jailers, a shame and degradation that already permeates our correctional system at every level. Of course the jailers suffer as well as the jailed: prison guards have the highest rates of heart disease, alcoholism, drug addiction and divorce — and the shortest life span — of any state civil servants. (Conover, p.21)

More and more it seems clear that our so-called “correctional” system has no real plan (or desire) to rehabilitate criminals to lead more productive lives outside of prison. “Corrections” began as a system of corporal punishment in early American history (“Before independence, Americans generally flogged, branded or mutilated those felons they did not hang.” – James S. Kunen), and evolved by the late 18thcentury into a punishment more of the mind than the body. The Quakers, beginning with William Penn’s colonial government in Pennsylvania, aimed through the incarceration of criminals to prevent further harm to citizens and to encourage prisoners to penitent reflection, hence the term “penitentiary.” The hope was that the prisoner would truly reform before returning to society. Of course, this was an ideal that was seldom met, or even sincerely sought. The history of incarceration in America is an appalling litany of human rights violations. [2]

I have sat through presentations by prison administrators during prison chaplaincy training (right near here at the Delaware County Correctional Institute in Media), and seen self-congratulatory videos describing “programs” that are intended to ease my sentimental religious conscience about the brutality of life behind bars. These glossy productions are intentionally misleading; disturbingly so. My work inside prisons and as a pen pal to inmates causes me to doubt that there is any greater purpose to most modern American prisons than for both jailers and the jailed to simply endure the passage of time, (“A life sentence in eight-hour shifts,” said one guard about his own professional life) and to make money for the corrections industry.

Yes, corrections in America is an industry. The construction of prisons is expensive, and private contractors make huge profits building them for the government. Prisoners are consumers, too. They need food (over six millions meals a day) and medical care, they need shaving supplies and uniforms. They need a telephone company to provide them phone service so they can call home or their lawyers. And prisons needs all kinds of products: equipment for the rec. room, surveillance equipment, razor wire, and terrific gizmos like the “B.O.S.S. chair” – the Body Orifice Security Scanner that sells for $5,000 “On its web site, the American Correctional Association points to the $50 billion spent each year to run the nation’s prisons and jails. And it warns companies, ‘Don’t miss out on this prime revenue-generating opportunity!’” (from American Radio Works,“Corrections, Inc.”, 2003)

Let me tell you how ethically troubling the corrections system is in our country, in case you never considered, as I did not, that keeping more people in prisons for longer sentences is good business for corporate America:
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an organization founded in the 1970’s whose stated mission is to “promote free markets, small government, state’s rights and privatization.’ More than a third of the nation’s lawmakers belong to ALEC, whose members meet at corporate-sponsored conferences where they write model legislation and then take those “model” bills home and try to make them state law. Among the corporate sponsors of ALEC conferences are Turner, a construction giant and the nation’s number one builder of prisons, and Wackenhut Corrections, a private prison corporation. (The keynote in 2002 was Jeb Bush, and they gave Zell Miller the “Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award.” That should provide some helpful context. )

The result, of course, is corporate-sponsored legislation, including legislation on sentencing of criminals. I am sure it will not surprise you to also learn that Corrections Corporation of America, which dominates the private prison business (building and running prisons in twenty-one states and Puerto Rico), pays $2,000 a year for a seat on ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force. The panel writes the group’s “model” bills on crime and punishment. And I doubt if it will surprise you to learn that the Corrections Corporation of America has pushed a tough-on-crime agenda an influenced legislation on mandatory minimum sentences, and Three-Strikes laws. This is all very good business for those who build and run prisons. [3] The absolutely appalling conflict of interest here has not yet come to the attention of most Americans, who have been well trained to think of convicts of those who deserve to live behind bars for as long as a judge sees fit to put them there.

(Now you know. And I hope that you will feel empowered to do something about it, particularly around sentencing laws in the state of Pennsylvania. Ask yourselves who stands to profit from incarcerating non-violent criminals. Find out where those released from Delaware go, and those released from Graterford.)

Some time ago, I visited England and went on a tour of a magnificent castle. The first stop on the tour was the dungeon. Not a dungeon, but the dungeon – no home of the wealthy and powerful was complete with a dungeon! The dungeons were set far enough away from the great halls and ballrooms so the ladies and gentlemen of the manor wouldn’t be troubled by the tormented screaming and begging of the damned. I almost cannot catch my breath describing it: the dank, sweaty walls, the unforgiving earthen floor, the darkness, and the smell of fear that remained in that space across hundreds of years. Now a tourist attraction, you understand.

There were shackles on the wall; rusty and well used, where prisoners were hung for days before they died of thirst or injuries. Worst of all, and one of the worse things I have ever seen, was a small hole in the floor covered by an iron grate. The hole was so small that a man would have to curl up to fit into it, and that’s just what it was used for. A prisoner would be shackled in the fetal position and put in the hole, and left to die of madness or physical agony. Usually the first preceded the other.

What was this special torture device called? The oubliette, taken from the French verb oublier, to forget.
I have no doubt that some of the men left to perish in the oubliette were truly dangerous and unrepentant criminals. But I ask you to consider when, if ever, such punishment is the appropriate action of a civilized society or people. I ask you to remember this morning those often forgotten men and women who, although freer in body than the tormented occupant of the oubliette, are often no less confined in intellect and possibility than those tortured souls who ended their lives in the dungeons and oubliettes of past, horrifically unenlightened societies.

Finally, I ask you to hear these words written by the criminal, the prisoner, the apostle, the martyr and the saint Paul, who in his letter to the Romans wrote, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God. . . ”

I consider this one of the most beautiful Universalist statements ever uttered. This is our good news. It is not easy news, but it is our news. [P.Bangers, I know you know that this reading concludes, “the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord,” but let’s just let it go this once, shall we? This congregation has a hard enough time when you just mention the Jeez, okay?]

For the love of God and the love of humanity, remember them. Include them in your thoughts and prayers for a reconciled world, and in your work for justice, and know that our claim to affirm the dignity of all peoples is tied to their fate. In the words of the beautiful hymn, “In prison cell and dungeon vile, our thoughts to them are winging…”
So may it be, and may we have the courage to make it so. Amen, and amen.

NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing, Ted Conover, Random House, 2000.

[1] My statistics this morning were gathered in 2001 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Urban Institute, The Sentencing Project, and The Center for Law and Social Policy.
[2] For a fuller discussion of this history, I encourage you to read Ted Conover’s book NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing, pp 172-209.
[3] I got this information and many direct quotes about ALEC and CCA from “Corrections, Inc

No Reason You Can’t Click On This

…and feed a dog or cat.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites.woa

Still On Hiatus…

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/06/21/ethiopia.lions.ap/index.html

but sari linked to this and I had to, too.

Now go kiss your cat.

Little Sabbatical

Grief
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

One of the beauties of blogging is that it’s entirely voluntary.

In recognition of the fact that it is all too easy for her to keep painful emotions at bay by compulsively writing about them, PeaceBang is going to take a tiny sabbatical.

There is a time to be born and a time to die. A time to weep and a time to dance. A time to pray for folks and a time to blog.

Peace.
Bang.

Revenge of Anthony Lane’s Sith

For lovers of scathing cinema critique in the style of the late great Dorothy Parker, ladies and gentlemen, I give you …

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050523crci_cinema
[Warning: do not read while drinking beverages. Especially the part about Yoda.]

Excerpt:

“The general opinion of ‘Revenge of the Sith’ seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, ‘The Phantom Menace’ and ‘Attack of the Clones.’ True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.”

No Punch Line

So you and your wife are atheists and are camped out in the hospital because your son is gravely ill, and your minister walks in.
This isn’t a joke. There’s no punch line.

So what happens next?
Unitarian Universalists, you know what happens next. This is for the other kids. This is for the people who can’t imagine how such pastoral moments work without a Bible being cracked or psalms recited, or prayers shared out loud
(this is not to say that Unitarian Universalists never include the Bible or shared prayer in pastoral visits, it’s just not very typical any more).

This is a fairly typical PeaceBang scenario:

The minister will listen to you talk. Tissues may be produced, and used. She will be apprised of medical realities, and treatment protocols. She will hear again the story of how it got to this point.
She will ask if there’s anything the congregation can do by way of practical support. She will bring greetings from many friends and neighbors.
She may discuss the Red Sox, if that’s a fun diversion for the worried ones.

The minister, who is a “praying tomato” (see Damon Runyon, “Guys and Dolls”), will eventually mention that she’s been praying for you. She won’t ask to pray with you, because she knows that you don’t do that, and such a thing makes you very self-conscious and uncomfortable. Knowing this, the minister will hold your hands and say that she’s been praying that you feel a sense of inviolable love among you and within you, that she is grateful that you have the strength of such a close family, that you will feel the loving support of the congregation as you endure this stressful time, and that you’ll be as free of anxiety and sleepless nights as is possible under the circumstances.

There will be hugs and kisses and promises to talk soon. There will be blessings.

And then the minister will drive home listening to U-2’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” and wait for her breathing to come from a calmer place, and the worried parents will continue to wait.

And though understanding the source of connectedness in different ways, they will all know themselves connected by the bonds of love, and everyone will, in Bono’s words, “walk on.”

It’s really not so exotic after all.

What the Hell Are RUMBA PANTIES?

Remember when I said today that “nothing human is alien to me?”

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2005-06-09/news/feature_print.html

I think I might be takin’ that back.

Courtesy of PlanetDan, with my eternal, diapered thanks.

"Nothing Human Is Alien," Continued

Well, and you might as well see this, too:

http://pressedfur.coolfreepages.com/press/vanityfair/

Because there have already been questions to some UU chat lines about how to “best welcome” so-called furries.

(How about with a puppy biscuit?)