PeaceBang

Vineyard Church

So, doesn’t this look like a terrific church?

http://www.cambridgevineyard.org/sunday/index.htm

From a perusal of their web site, I only see a Christ-centered, very hip group of people who seem to really want me to join with them. It looks like a great summer worship community for me, the Jesus freak UU chick who appreciates an opportunity to get down and praise-y for a few weeks when her own congregation is having bi-monthly lay-led services.

Of course I know that I really don’t want to go to the Vineyard, as (I think!?) their theology falls into the conservative, fundamentalist category that exclude gay people from grace, and which commits other serious sins against the true gospel as my tradition understands it.

Notice, however, that their web site doesn’t really go into theology all that much. It emphasizes community, optimism, inclusion, the arts, and where to park on Sunday morning.

Those who shop for churches the same way they shop for beach towels get what they deserve, I suppose. You should no more choose a religious community by shopping for it online than you should scroll down the thousands of photos on Match.com looking for a mate. The snares are far too many and potentially serious.
Still, like everything else, it serendipitously works for some. Both the church shopping and the dating, I mean.

(I’m out in the Berkshires and boy, is the font teensy tinsy on this teensy tinsy Mac computer!)

Random

I’m running off to the Berkshires tonight for a couple of nights. I’m going to a concert at Tanglewood (Sondheim! with Marin Mazzie, Greg Edelman and Faith Prince! Broadway fans, swoon away) and then to see “Equus” at the Berkshire Theatre Festival on Thursday night.

I have decided that, along with most of the world, I hate car salesmen. Why must they be such vultures? Why, when I assure them that I am simply test driving, pricing various models and getting *ready* to buy a car, must they insist on obtaining my phone number and e-mail address and then harassing me for weeks afterward? Who’s idea of good salesmanship is THAT? In what parallel universe does that technique actually work?
(And why don’t I just refuse to give that information the next time? I’ve learned that you don’t actually, legally have to fill out any paperwork before test driving cars).

When are these wolverines going to get hip to the fact that anyone who has access to the Internet knows exactly how much their old car is worth, how much the dealership paid for that new car on the lot, and everything about the engine (including the fact that a V-6 engine does require premium fuel, Mr. Lying Head Sales Schmuck)? I may be a girl but I ain’t that dumb.

In totally unrelated rantings, I just learned that one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, died in late March. Very sad. He was weird and bright and really funny.

http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=escalator_ontario_improv_2003

SPF! SPF!

I walked along the beach yesterday, picking my way over bajillions of sun-worshipers. I’ve never seen so much impending melanoma in my life. Women were slathering on BABY OIL as if they’d never heard of such a thing as the depleted ozone.
I saw horrifyingly burned, leathery skin everywhere I looked, me in my SPF 45 and spray-on tanned legs. I wanted to be the Skin Cancer Fairy and spray titanium dioxide on the worst cases, but I figured I might end up in Davy Jones’ Locker if I tried it.

(Jessica Simpson: Princess of the Bad Faux Tan)

My father and siblings always got these gorgeous tans. Me, I got my shiksa mother’s rosy pin- and-white skin. On family vacations my father would be baking on a chaise by the pool and when I asked if I looked burned, would shade his eyes with his hand, look over at me, and say, “You look fine. You can stay out another hour.” Meanwhile, it never quite penetrated his skull that sunburns take time to develop, and that I was inevitably headed that night for a vinegar bath, a miserable sleep on scratchy cotton sheets, and skin the shade of Contadina tomato paste.

Teens, if there are any of you out there in PeaceBang land, I’m talking especially to you: SPF! SPF! Reapply after swimming or sweating!

I myself have developed a love of protective eye creams, and am particularly fond right now of Kiehl’s eye gel with SPF 30. I swear my crow’s feet have improved in the past year.

Sunrise July 10th

Because Not All Of You Are Here For the Theology

Goff_Paltrow_080705_1
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

… some of you are here for the haute couture. And we aim to please.

(Thanks to www.Perez Hilton.com for the fashion hilarity.)

Blogging Ethics

I think it’s fine to reference another blog and link to it, and to use another blogger’s comments as a jumping off point for one’s own reflections.

I think it’s fair enough to say, “I disagree with Sir/Lady So-And-So’s blog comments, and here’s why…”

I do not think it fair, fine or ethical to use one’s own blog as a place to malign the character or motives of other writers, and especially not to play Junior Psychologist and make lofty suggestions as to the condition of various people’s unconscious selves. No, I’m not including a link. This isn’t dish, it’s a sincere concern. We are a reconciling people.

We must guard against ridiculous asswhappery. No one knows another person’s unconscious self except God. Or maybe their shrink. At any rate, there’s plenty to talk about without fantasizing that we have any understanding at all of the other crazed bloggers out there.

That’s one of the reasons I have consistently declined to be included on the official list of Unitarian Universalist bloggers, although I have wound up on many such lists anyway: we’re a little family and it’s too easy to get drawn into the habit of talking about and psuedo-analyzing each other, instead of being inspired by each other.

(If you haven’t read UU blogs, there’s a derned good list of them at www.philocrites.com. Better yet you should get up on Sunday morning and visit one of our congregations. Keep going back. Go back six times before you make up your mind.)

In blogging, as in all other literary pursuits, “write what you know, not what you don’t know.”

I’m not a former English teacher for nothin’.

(I recommended to my church that they stay up at least one night this summer to see the sun rise. Tonight’s gonna be my night. I have a full-out insomniac situation going on here.)

Theological Doo-Doo

It’s 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday night into Sunday morning and I’m just guessing that I will be sound asleep at church-goin’ hour tomorrow. I can’t help but emit a little Jeff Spicoli chuckle. “Duuuuude! Rad!” So naughty. So rare. So freeing. I had INTENTIONS of going to church at 4th Presbyterian in Boston. I really did. And we know what the road to HELL is paved with, don’t we, my little Satan Spawn?

I’m still musing about Open Theism. I still don’t get it. I still think that the Mind of God is just totally incomprehensible to me and all other of my humanoid brothers and sisters. I have always thought so.
I take theology very seriously and have respect for those who dare to do it, but sometimes I read these works that really, really suggest that God’s Mind is similar to ours and I tilt my head. All I hear is “meow, meow, meow.”

William Ellery Channing put me on my knees about this question, though, by writing and preaching so beauteously about our Likeness to God. It occurred to me some time ago that I do, in fact, believe that we are somehow created in God’s image, and that for me (thanks to Channing) the imago Dei is related most to the reality of conscience. Not consciousness. . . conscience.

I was comfortable with this for years and now I’m uncomfortable again. Unsatisfied. It needs work. This daughter of Eve is feeling once again like she doesn’t know doo-doo and that she’s been very lazy in the Personal Theology Department. (Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve been very busy falling madly in love with the Bible, so that counts for a lot. Also, Saul/Paul and I are getting very close and that requires a lot of christological mind-melding).

More thoughts: This relates to death, of course. I contemplate death every day (Russian melancholics do, you know) and comfort myself with the belief that the Creator really, really doesn’t intend for me to understand it, to know what to expect, or to overly-anticipate it. What does Open Theism say about that?
I think about death, the possibilities of an afterlife and/or total oblivion/stick-a-fork-in-me-I’m-doneness, the consolations of memory and a good name, the Bardo Dream and not wanting to get stuck in a bad one, the fact that my friends will give bitchin’ eulogies at my funeral, and so on. I consider how waxy I’ll look in my casket (which gives me an inevitable case of wicked chuckles), and then I imagine floating through space as pure nothingness, energy released, no more “I.”
And God says, “Oh, PeaceBang. Meow, meow, meow. You don’t know doo-doo and you’re not meant to. Go to sleep.”

You may think it morbid that I intend to be buried in white cotton pajamas and tucked into my pine box on comfy bedding, and buried with lots of lavender and rosemary sprigs, but I think it’s lovely. (And waxy.) On my tombstone, if I’m buried in our own churchyard, it should say, “AT LEAST I’M NOT STUCK IN CAPE-BOUND TRAFFIC.” And then the dates. Wouldn’t that be hi-larious?

Now that I think about it, God grant us all a death that we can afford to treat with some gentle irreverence. That’s really all one could ask. Too many of our brothers and sisters suffer deaths that reacquaint us with the urgency of theodicy.
And that’s a good place to shut my mouth for the moment.

Blog Response to Karl (spit) Rove

Sorry to overload you but I think you should see this. It’s a new blog set up to allow liberal military folks to respond to Karl Rove [spit]’s comment about the liberal response to 9/11, which was something like, “the liberals wanted to understand and provide therapy to the attackers.” Or some other such vomitously inflammatory asswhappery. I don’t like to try to quote Mr. Rove [spit] too accurately: I might grow horns and cloven hooves.

(Oh alright. He said this: “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.”)

Some serviceman and women are whapping back at Rove:
http://takeittokarl.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Respectful of Otters for the link.
(Yes, I made up the word “asswhappery.” You have my permission to use it.)

It’s FRIDAY

goldie-pups-in-basket
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

… so you get PUPPIES IN A BASKET!!

All together, now.

“AAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW”

:::::::::sound of happy hour cocktails clinking:::::::

Open Theism

I don’t mean to be snotty and/or patronizing but I wonder about these theological systems that need to make God’s consciousness similar to human consciouness.

What do you think of this?
http://www.carm.org/open/intro.htm

It’s “open theism;” the idea that the future is not determined by God.

I first heard about this this morning from my most recent issue of The Christian Century, in an article called “What God Knows: The Debate On Open Theism” by James K.A. Smith.

I’m reading this thing over toast with cream cheese, lox and capers and puzzling. Furrowed brow.

From the article:

“If God knows that suffering will occur, the open theist reasons, then there must be some sense in which God is responsible for evil — which would compromise God’s goodness. Since such a conclusion would be clearly contrary to scripture and Christian tradition, the open theist offers another account: God didn’t know.”

Um. Okay.
Well, I appreciate these open theists’ sincere desire to deal with theodicy. That’s cool. Thanks, fellas.
But on another level it seems kind of sweet and dear, like I want to pat them on the head and say “There, there, it’s okay if you don’t understand why your omniscient God permits evil. It’s okay if you don’t know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s okay if you aren’t capable of comprehending the ineffable mystery of a mostly benevolent Deity and a sacred creation that still contains BTK killers and genocides and bombs on the London tube, and cancer and tsunamis and the recent Britney Spears-Kevin Federline reality show. You don’t have to develop a whole new systematics of the mind of God to help you manage the anxiety of that unknowing. But I mean, knock yourself out.”

Also, since when does scripture not include a concept of God’s (for lack of a better word) Badness?

Well, it all makes my head ache. It seems sad, futile, unnecessarily irreverent and worst of all, we’re back in that anthropomorphized God concept again.

Have at it, PeaceBangers.
Or have another iced coffee. It is summer, after all.

(P.S. Sorry for technical difficulties experienced by T-Man and Dave. Wish I could help, dudes, but I am Unfrozen Caveman Blogger. Your modern technological ways confuse and confound me!)