PeaceBang

Flash Flood In Transylvania

In a land far from ours, a flash flood hit the Transylvanian region of Romania on August 23rd with devastating results.

You may wonder why I care enough about this to mention it. We have a partner church there and my heart is aching for our friends. They have a tough enough life as it is.

You can make a contribution to flood relief, if you like. They have very hard winters there, and with very diminished supplies, no livestock and badly damaged houses, demolished rail lines and roads, it’s going to be a frighteningly trying one.

http://www.uupcc.org/flood.html

There certainly is enough pain on this globe to go around.

"Antonia’s Line"

antonias line
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

This is such a wonderful film that I just caught on the new gay cable channel, LOGO. I’ve already written too many posts today so I won’t bore you with a real review, but trust me: this you want to see.

There are so many preachable moments in it; so many great philosophical lines.
It features a brooding existentialist character named Crooked Finger who, when informed of his young female friend’s unintentional pregnancy, takes on the most tragic expression you can imagine.

“How can you even imagine committing the cold-blooded crime of bringing another life into this world?” he asks her.
Take THAT, right-to-lifers!

This is one of those lovely films about small village life that intermingles the real beauty, the real horror and the real love that are part of it, but without taking on an overly dark or overly sweetsie-pie tone.

This ain’t no Mayberry, but it’s not Peyton Place, either.

“Is there a heaven?” asks little Sarah.
Her great-grandmother firmly responds, without breaking her stride, “This is the only dance we do.”

At another simply poignant moment, young Therese breaks down crying while studying philosophy with Crooked Finger. Holding her in his arms, he croons these comforting words:

“This life is hell. It’s populated with demons and tormented souls.”

She is somehow comforted, and so was I. The perfect antitode to too much cheery Channing theology.

I probably don’t have to mention that this is a Scandanavian film.

NRO Sez Cindy Sheehan Is an "Artist Of Anger"

Pandagon.net (http://www.pandagon.net) alerted me to this jaw-droppingly egregious example of total ass-whappery over at the National Review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/wood200508300818.asp

Things like this make me violent.

You Can Watch the Hurricane, Or…

I am trying to avoid camping out in front of the Weather Channel and feeding into their hurricane-for-ratings manipulation. You know how they do it: the sensationalistic teasers, the breathless commentators making it sound as though a projectile piece house is just seconds away from flying into their forehead (even though it’s currently just raining out), and the ominous horror movie music at every break.

I just won’t do it. I’m just as worried as everyone else is but I won’t do it.

For this tiny moment, I’m choosing to laugh at the fashion foibles of celebrities instead (http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/), because it makes me feel better for buying those gorgeous cowboy boots whose current status as “wildly fashionable” and “really cool” was probably conferred by no other cultural influence than “The Dukes Of Hazzard.” I swear to God that this JUST OCCURRED TO ME, and it’s too late to take them back. I already wore them twice.

Go ye and laugh. Now that I know that every day of this final week off is going to be rainy, I’m choosing to laugh. I could go park at the beach and cry, but I’m going to laugh. And put things on my cat.

She Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth

Anna at Call and Response (http://www.callandresponse2.blogspot.com/)
puts it absolutely perfectly when she berates outdoor mall developers for trying to convince us that their creations are in any way akin to a thriving downtown area:

Her posting:

Fake-street shopping/lifestyle plaza dealies

“Santana Row is one of those fake-street shopping/lifestyle plaza dealies. They’re all over the place here. See, it’s like a thriving downtown, without all the poor people and non-chain stores!” Going Jesus hit the nail right on the head there. When I went to eat with my family at the Atkins Park in Smyrna Market Village, out in the suburbs west of Atlanta, it was charming, but something just seemed sort of Disney, like it was just a facade of a downtown, a hollywood set. Every single building in the Smyrna “downtown” was brand new, and if you got to the end of it it was just field beyond. Very surreal. I don’t know what they did with the old downtown Smyrna. Bulldozed it all? I think the main difference (besides the lack of poor people) is the lack of historic buildings, memories, family owned businesses. Coming from small towns, when a charming (or even slightly run down) downtown has those things, you can actually feel the difference. That’s what makes a downtown different than a mall. Dressing a mall up as a downtown is just putting lipstick on a pig.

—-

Amen, sister. That pig can have a Crate & Barrel and a Whole Foods and a Barnes & Noble and a Claire’s Boutique all it wants, but it ain’t no downtown. There’s nothing organic or community or real about it. When you put in a public square, a library, a free theatre and other elements that one can participate in without spending a dime, then you can start calling yourselves a “lifestyle plaza.” But until “lifestyle” becomes synonymous with “shopping” (and God forbid!), let’s just call it a MALL, okay?

This Couldn’t Wait Until Friday?

Because it’s important to call your attention to stupid cat blogs:

http://stuffonmycat.com/

I think it’s especially funny to me because most of the cats are striped tabbies, like my girl. Also because it never occurred to me to put stuff on her, except for a blanket, and she might like that. I think I’ll try it right now (when I’m on the computer, she’s asleep on the modem as a rule).

Thanks to Call and Response for the introduction.

Speaking of Anxiety

My pal Steve learned the leading role of the conservative Baptist preacher daddy in “Footloose” in like two days and he’s going on tonight for one performance. He actually enjoys this kind of thing. It would put most performers I know on serious Valium. I mean, it’s the actual, real Actor’s Nightmare!!
He says he learned the entire role of Othello in 24 hours or something one time, but I may have gotten that wrong. It may have been 48 hours. Insane.
This I gotta see.

Happy Birthday, you crazy man!
And Papa… don’t preach.

The Anatomy of An Anxiety Attack

If you’ve ever had one, does it have a color? Mine are greyish red.

Okay, I just had an anxiety attack. I know what they are now, I know how they feel when they’re coming on, and I know they will resolve themselves. And that I will live.

I am beginning to find it rather fascinating that the mind has to override the body with such sternness, and that it can. The body thinks something is terribly, terribly wrong. The mind firmly informs it that nothing is wrong, and stop it right now.

I was working on two sermons for Sunday. I am preaching one in the morning at the usual worship service and the other in the evening, on the occasion of an ordination.
I worked on them a long time. I got help from friends.
I am sure they’re acceptable. I wrote them with love and sincere intent to minister to those who have gathered. Psalm 19, and so on.

The anxiety was just one of those unreasonable whompers that happens. It’s not rational. It just happens. After the effort of finishing the work, my mind, freed from the constraints of composition, went into a mad spin-out of self-doubt. It’s happened before and it goes something like this, “Both of these sermons stinketh mightily. Not only do they stink, they stink and rot for about two pages too long. When you leave that church people will joke for years about that woman who came that day and bored them out of their minds not just once, but twice, and for about ten minutes longer than was strictly necessary.”

And then you see reddish gray that takes up your entire field of vision, and then the body floods with heat, and the pins and needles prick up and down the torso, and the breathing occurs through a tiny straw.

So you immediately get up and leave the desk and walk out to get some fresh air and sit on the grass, mostly for the green antidote to red it provides.

I’m fine, it happens, it helps to write about it. I spend a lot of my life looking for evidence that other generally productive, hard-working, ostensibly sane people are as crazy as I am. If you’re looking for that evidence, too, well, here’s some with PeaceBang’s regards.

Having had this whomper today, I feel like I scored big: maybe I won’t have any anxiety on the plane tomorrow or Monday.

If you’d like to comment, I hope you will not feel its necessary to offer pastoral support, but it would be very interesting to hear about your experiences with anxiety if you’d care to share.

"Bee Season"

Did anyone read Myla Goldberg’s wonderful novel, Bee Season?

I just googled it and found that they’ve made a movie of it. My stomach actually lurched when I realized that they changed the character of Chali, a gawky 20-something Hare Krishna guy, to a woman and cast KATE BOSWORTH in the role.
Which means, I’m guessing, that the subplot of teenaged Aaron’s religious conversion was deemed too boring — so they had to add a sexy sub-sub-plot, where Kate Bosworth could look really fetching in an orange robe and bald head and Aaron could become a Hare Krishna not because the religious practices and community truly fed his soul, but because, like, there’s this hot chick at the temple. Gads, I hope not.

Also a shock to my system: French beauty JULIETTE BINOCHE as the kleptomaniacal, Brillo-haired, pear-shaped mother, Miriam. I like Juliette Binoche an awful lot, but you know when you have a mental image and the movie casting just shatters it? Like when Rosie O’Donnell was cast as Ole Golly in “Harriet The Spy?” And it so totally should have been Lily Tomlin, who was the only living actor who could do Ole Golly justice?

Like that.

There I was reading the novel and thinking wow, this is a really special story. This is deep stuff about Jewish mysticism and marriage and Krishna consciousness and the painful beauty of family life, but they could never translate it to film. But if they did… they would have to find such totally unknown, fragile, fascinating, unmistakably Jewish actors, and have the best director of all time, and it could be amazing and evocative and get people interested in mysticism.

Mother Jones Cartoon

oh my. If you remember the 1970’s and those really syrupy “Love Is…” cartoons, you’ll love this parody:

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/fiore/2005/08/victory.html