PeaceBang

Cat Break

They love their cat Winston,

http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2005/06/playing_the_cut.html

And now I love them. And Winston.

Enjoy. By the time you scroll down to the shot of Winston lying dead asleep on his little pillow with his legs all sticking out, you’ll love him too.

Long Live Endora

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4632488

Why shouldn’t the residents of Salem, MA be upset and disgusted by their mayor’s boneheaded decision to accept a 9-foot bronze statue of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens from the company TV Land?

Don’t get me wrong. “Bewitched” was an obsession for me through many years of my childhood, and I still trot dutifully in to the hairdresser ever 60 days to have my hair dyed Endora red, and yes, it’s an homage to the late, great Agnes Moorhead.

I even like both Darrins: Dick York and Dick Sargeant.
“DERwooooood.”

But for God’s sake, is this how we treat history? So that in 200 years, visitors to this town will scratch their heads and wonder if that pretty lady riding the broom was one of the unfortunates persecuted and hanged for the imagined crime of witchcraft?

Don’t think it could happen? Visit Salem today and see how many well-meaning Wiccans conflate their Gerald Gardner-created “ancient” religion (from way back in the 1930’s, ya’ll!) with the folk practices allegedly or possibly or maybe engaged in by the thoroughly, unmistakably, unarguably Christian men and women of 17th century New England.

Tituba is the only one of the whole mess who was a practitioner of indigenous (”pagan”) religious practices. The others were God-fearing, Satan-fearing Christians who might have sewed the occasional poppet or used a charm to conceive a baby, but that doesn’t make them Wiccans, people.

Lots of Wiccans know this, of course. But plenty don’t, or they refuse to admit it because they’re making a good living peddling their muffled sense of history to tourists in Salem.

Today in Philocrites

http://www.philocrites.com/archives/002019.html

More unbelievably corrupt, despicable behavior by the Boston archdiocese. I thought they had sunk as low as they could go.

I was wrong.

Splitsville, Part II

I appreciate that many of you intuited that, in my first post on Splitsville, I was talking about that kind of divorce announcement that comes unexpectedly, that hits everyone upside the noggin (including at least one of the couple), and that isn’t so much about chronic misery as it is about unremitting discomfort or inconvenience, or irreconcilably different senses of how happy and comfortable one gets to be in this lifetime.

I puzzle, and I ache.

I have married over 200 couples and my overall sense is that they know that marriage is a lifetime deal; a permanent proposition through thick and thin, sickness and health, bad breath and fallen arches and wheelchairs and the final feeding tube… all the way to plots side by side in the graveyard. They recognize that they are walking into the great unknown together and they generally know that there will be rocky times. The graph of expectations, if charted, might go like this:

Great sense of compatability and sense of mutual enchantment and sexiness (highest point); stresses of living together, mutual disenchantment, establishing more realistic mutual understanding (leveling out); uh-oh — affair or extreme weight gain and/or profligate nose hairs & lack of hygiene, incredibly tense or non-existent sex life (when one of the partners wants one), evidence of major character flaws (low point); purchase of house, child-rearing (high peaks, low valleys); occasional perfect weekends, trip to Bermuda (up again); and so on until the tombstones.

In other words, the married couples I know seem to have a sense that married life has some definite phases, and they’re ready to endure them together.

I wonder, though, how much help we could give marrieds if we talked a lot more about these lesser-known and discussed phases in coupled life, such as :

The “I Really Don’t Think I Even LIKE You Any More, Let Alone Am In Love With You” phase.
The “I Have a Wicked Hot Crush On My Flirtatious and Available Co-Worker” phase.
The “I Secretly Think You’re a Really Lousy Parent” phase.
The “If You Repeat That Story At A Dinner Party One More Time I Will Set You On Fire” phase.
The “I Am So Bored I Could Set Myself On Fire Just To Have Something To Feel” phase.
The “I Regard You As a Professional /Domestic Failure And I’ve Totally Given Up Hope That You Will Ever Adequately Contribute To The Running Of A Functional Household” phase.
And the
“You’re A Really Sweet And Good Person But I Don’t Feel Like Being Married Anymore” phase.

I have thought for many years that marriage, like parenting, is a vocation. Romance, if romance is felt or experienced, is just so much icing on the cake.

One has to feel called to marriage and parenting not so much because one is in love and eternally delighted with the object of one’s devotion and care, but because one feels that it is one’s highest calling to be loyal to the relationship and role of spouse/parent, because one feels spiritually fulfilled through the daily acts of love, understanding and forebearance that such commitments require, and because one’s life would be obviously and eminently poorer without such commitments.

When my unmarried Master admonished his disciples to hate our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers (I’m paraphrasing, of course. You’ll find the teaching in Luke 14:26), I think he was pointing to the radical nature of love, which is after all, not about them but about us. It is about the spiritual integrity of the one who loves, not about the object of our love, whose charms will surely ebb and flow in our eyes over the course of time, and whose very lovability is entirely subject to our own projections and dysfunctions.

In other words, and more prosaically, when I see the oldest marries in my community together I think they got that way by honoring the sacred bond of marriage over the pursuit of individual happiness. In my fondest hopes, I imagine they have learned, over the passage of many years, that individual happiness comes not from the enduring adorableness of the other, but in the daily spiritual practice of being a trustworthy, committed spouse.

Before marrying: Know Thyself.
Before divorcing: Consider whose tombstone may be next to yours, and what name shall be inscribed there.

Splitsville

How do you respond when a friend tells you that her/his marriage is ending?

What, in your opinion, are the appropriate things to say, the parameters around reactions, the limits to expression of grief or disappointment?

What are our cultural responses to divorce?

Do we accept it too easily, chalking it up to “personal business” when really it has tremendous consequence for our shared lives?

I believe divorce is shattering and feel literally sick when someone announces an impending split.
Probably because I’m a clergy chick, I generally feel confident that my first response is, if not brilliant, then at least socially acceptable.

Part of me wishes that we would collectively refuse to accept this all-too-common announcement with our customary tactful, supportive murmurings. Part of me wants to pick something up and smash it and say, “NO! You must not divorce!”

When it comes to the death of the marriage of people we care about, should we go so gently into that good night?

What have you done to support marriage — your own or someone else’s– today?

The Good Book(s)

PeaceBangers, I hope you will help me out.

I am recommending to my congregation that they go forth and study during our summer hiatus. I am encouraging them to find some books about the theological orientation that resonates most with them, and to acquaint themselves in an intentional way with the Great Thinkers of their various philosophies.

So, recommend away! What would you pull off your book shelves that would nurture the souls of: the Christian Humanist, the Mystic, the Secular Humanist, the Religious/Spiritual Humanist, the Buddhistly-interested, the Jewish-curious, the Biblically-inclined? The Classical Unitarian? The Universalist Beginner? The Atheist, the Committed Skeptic? The Deist and the Pagan? The Wiccan, the vaguely feminine-divinely-oriented, the Otherwise Not Mentioned Here?

How about the Generally Seeking? The disenchanted and disenfranchised?

I await your recommendation with bated breath and a grateful heart.

(Word of the night: “panoply”)

Harvard Commencement

wigboys
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Happy, happy graduation, little Harvard boys and girls!!

May all your campuses be perfectly manicured, and all your jobs deeply meaningful and well-paying. Remember… you’re ENTITLED.

It’s a Crimson, Crimson, Crimson, Crimson World!!

Sins of The Open Road

Sins of The Open Road
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I can’t believe I saw it.

I still can’t believe it.

I was driving up Route 3 tonight on the way to town for the alumni dinner and I SAW A WOMAN READING WHILE DRIVING.

She wasn’t just looking in a book, she was reading a book. She read and drove for several miles, swerving occasionally. She barely glanced up when I honked at her.

I called the State Police and reported her plate number. She was driving a white Toyota and had a bumper sticker that said, “CRONE.”

She should have had a bumper sticker that said, “TREACHEROUS IDIOT.”

I only hope and pray that they pulled her over before she hurt someone.

(Word of the day: allegiance)

Fun With Ticks

You may as well benefit from my pain:

http://patients.uptodate.com/topic.asp?file=inf_immu/7714

Dear readers, I do it all for you. Even being bitten by a tick.

Church Meetings: Great, Free Theatre!!

We had our congregational Annual Meeting last night. As usual I found it lovely and endearing and irritating and silly and noble and momentous. This excerpt is from my final newsletter column before our summer hiatus, penned this morning:

“I remember a colleague who unexpectedly left the parish after over twenty years in the ministry. When I asked about his decision, he replied, ‘I couldn’t go to one more bloody meeting and pretend I cared about any of it.’

Ouch. My crispy colleague showed good discernment. When a minister comes to dread and resent meetings then yes, that’s the perfect time to bid the church adieu!

Ah, meetings. Dear meetings. I have actually come to (mostly) love them. Such a reviled and misunderstood aspect of church life, and such an important one. Sure, church meetings can seem uninspired, plodding, and unintentionally comic. Agenda items appear again and again, discerning groups struggle to come to agreement on the simplest of issues through hours of debate, while huge, important decisions are made in shockingly casual “so moved” and “seconded” fashion, and the cast of characters never changes: The Cranky Nay-sayers, The Starry-Eyed Idealists, The Careful Keepers of the By-Laws and Robert’s Rules, and the Blissfully Uninformed. I’m sure you can think of a few more. We have all played every part.

Why would you want to miss this!!?

Church meetings are, in my opinion, free theatre, and some of the best there is. Euripides never wrote such tragedy as the church meetings gone terribly wrong. Pinter never crafted such pregnant silences as can be found at church meetings when someone says something uncomfortable or drops in an unexpectedly creative and brilliant idea. Arthur Miller at his finest never penned such wonderfully intense and detailed dialogue, and Shakespeare’s characters just can’t compare with our own, living heroes and heroines, jesters and irascibles. They are magnificent, every one, and their like shall never come again… until, one hopes, the next generation.”

P.S. I’m driving to CT on Friday to meet the dog.