PeaceBang

No More ‘Mokin’, ‘Tay?

bumeat
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

O PeaceBangers with caring hearts!

I am not really a smoker. I learned how to smoke in 9th grade when Mrs. Russell-Tutty cast me as Marty in “Grease,” and I had to make one entrance smoking a cigarette. I had been initiated into the world of Virginia Slims by Lisa Cardone in the 8th grade, but they made me so sick that I wanted nothing to do with them.
But I was a stah, and I had to smoke.

Can you imagine a drama teacher requiring a kid to smoke today!!??? I cackle into my sleeve just thinking about it!

I smoked occassionally in high school, and then not really at all in college. I picked up cigarettes in Divinity School, rolling my own with a filter.

I smoked very occasionally over the subsequent ten years. My practice now is to get one pouch of rolling tabaccy in the summertime, and just roll and smoke ‘em until the pack is gone, which is usually around October.

The truth is, the vast majority of my sermons and articles come to me while sitting in the driveway having some tobacco. I only ever have one (ciggie, not idea) at a time.

Remember the SNL skit about “The Dark Side of Buckwheat?” It featured shaky hand-cam work and grainy film. In it, Eddie Murphy lurched around as “Bu’meat” a room full of producers and Hollywood starlets playing his best enfant terrible. At one point, he crams himself between two bosomy blondes and says, “Let’s make a Bu’meat sandwich!” A man comes into the frame smoking a cigarette. Buckwheat orders the man to come closer.

“Tum here. TUM here,” he says.
The man inches closer.
“Dimme yer tigarette. DIMME yer tigarette,” orders Buckwheat.

The man hands it over.
“Dimme yer hand.” The man hesitates. “DIMME yer hand,” insists the irate superstar.
And the man does.

Buckwheat then puts the cigarette out in the man’s palm to the accompaniment of a horrid sizzling sound.

“No more ‘mokin,’ ‘tay?” says Buckwheat.

And my brother and sister and I have never stopped laughing about it.

I know, we should all take Buckwheat’s stern admonition to heart.
I’m glad I never got truly addicted. Brother and Sister of PeaceBang both smoke, and it upsets me a lot.

P.S. Fausto, you CANNOT eat the cigarettes! No!

Stress and Women

I went to get CPR training last night at my health club. It was really interesting, and I’m relieved to have refreshed my memory since age 14 or 15, when I had that encounter with Resusci-Annie. You remember Resusci-Annie. She was that ghastly dummy whose grey, dead lips got swabbed with an alcohol wipe before you blew into them, and her nose was really hard to pinch. Apparently she was full of horrid germs that were impossible to thoroughly clean out, which just fills me with lots of hideous imaginings.

(In case you were wondering, it’s not true that she was modelled after the dead daughter of the guy who invented her: http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/cprannie.asp)

Our instructor, Jack, a cute middle-aged firefighter with a fetching paunch, told us all about heart disease and the symptoms of cardiac arrest and just generally convinced me that a really fast, thorough heart attack is the best way to die (aside from dying in your sleep — a blessing that was granted my 90-year old grandfather but pretty hard to plan on, whereas plenty of cheeseburgers and cigarettes is a good way to plan on a blow-out heart attack).

Guess what I learned? According to the American Heart Association, lack of exercise is the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day in terms of heart health. I looked very smug when he said that, because I have worked out TWICE this week. And probably twice over the entire summer, which makes me a very heart healthy little gal, if you don’t count the cigarettes and cheeseburgers. Or the fried clams (if you walk down the length of the entire beach to get them, you can justify them. This is what fat people do, and you have my permission).

Anyway, we also learned that heart disease is the #1 killer of both men and women, but women get about ten more years before they clutch their chest and keel. Estrogen may be one factor. But it is now being discovered that that ten year gap is closing, and that stress is the chief factor.

This factoid inspired a really fit, really old guy with a super dark tan (he looked like a Gucci bag, frankly) to comment with great sincerity, “It’s because women are working out of the home, and all the stress is killing them.”

To which I replied, with equal sincerity, “I know. We should just stay home and die of childbirth, instead, like we used to.”
I said it quietly enough that only the two women next to me would hear me. Snorts all ’round.

But really, it all just brings me back around to the point I made way at the beginning of this blog’s life (January 2004): Why must Americans treat death as this terrible scourge they’ve got to eradicate and fast, because human lives are at stake?

All that said, I’m happy to know how to resuscitate someone who has stopped breathing on their own, but I’d better make sure to check DNR orders in my congregation before I go puffing into the mouth of someone who’d have no cause to thank me for it afterward. Not that I think it will happen: I’m far more likely to have occasion to use the Heimlich manuever (we learned that last night, too).

This is the universal sign of choking:

If you see someone do this, ask them, “Are you choking?” If they nod, ask, “Can you speak?” If they can speak and cough, let them cough out whatever it is that’s choking them. If they can breathe, they’ll be alright. You can go to the ER and have whatever it is taken out with forceps, if need be.
If they can’t speak and their windpipe is totally blocked that’s when you do the Heimlich.

You should learn how to do it on yourself, too, so you don’t end up like Mama Cass. Then again, that may be an urban legend, too.

FEMA Prison Camp

I think this is a very noteworthy story:

http://www.myirony.net/

Mighty Mighty Water

I’m going to do a service on September 25th on Water. Tsunamis, flash floods, levees, hurricanes, tears, all of the scary, awesome aspects of water. I’m going to tie it in with the Rosh Hashanah practice of tashlich, where you cast pebbles or crumbs into running water to get rid of the bad things you’ve done in the past year.

I’d also like to address water rights issues but I’m a complete tyro on the subject (or I will be when I learn more about it).
Can you help?
HELP! (Jessica, are you there?)

One thing I wonder about: after New Orleans gets all pumped out, where does that water go? I mean, I know I can look up where it GOES, but what about all the debris, the human remains, et al? What happens to the water? What about after the tsunami? Does Great Mama Ocean just absorb it all? What does it all mean for the ecological balance?

I went to the beach today. Then I came home and roasted a chicken and sat outside and smoked a cigarette and said “Goodbye, summer.”

Do We Pray?

Philocrites posted a notice about an interfaith prayer service in Boston, and a commenter asked him if he prays:

http://www.philocrites.com/

He asked it nicely but still, it fries me.

I am so sick of people asking Unitarian Universalists if they participate in basic, generic religious practices, but of course it isn’t their fault for asking.

We’ve well earned our reputation as this exotic hot house flower, bizarr-o humanist cult you need to approach with the trepidation of a jackrabbit among a pack of wolves when inquiring about religious practices: “Excuse me, sirs and ma’ams, would it be okay if I prayed for the dead here in your building? Or are we only allowed to ‘think good thoughts?’”

I was at the Andover-Newton Theological School opening worship the other day and found it far less than cute when the president of the school cracked a joke (the first of thousands I’m sure to hear during my doctoral studies there) about having to get along with both UNITARIANS and BAPTISTS. When he said the word “Unitarian,” there was this deep, mellow chuckle from the student body, and one UU shouted out, “GODDESS Forbid!!”

I groaned. Is the theological issue of gendering God now a joke? How might things look today if UUs had historically taken as seriously our calling to do public theology as we do political activism?

How many times have I attended an interfaith clergy gathering and been instantly insulted and marginalized because all the other religious leaders were indoctrinated by some previous UU to believe that we don’t pray, we will not read that Bible passage, we are pre-offended by any ideas you might have, and we expect to be capitulated to in our every terminally unique need or whim or we will stamp our teeny, tiny wounded feet and slam out the door? I’ve taken to arriving early to all such gatherings so I can do damage control before the meeting starts.

There is a way to represent a theologically pluralistic people without communicating the idea that we’re inherently hostile to those things widely and universally associated with “religion.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we can do what we like in our own congregations, but if we keep expecting the rest of the world to define “religious” in a radically different way than they’ve been doing since the time of the prophets, we’re going to be wallflowers for a long, long time.

We could have been building bridges, teaching, inviting dialogue and respectfully challenging orthodoxy (and even mainstream) Christianity all these years. Instead, we blithely threw out traditions without replacing them with heartier ones, gave away our worship practices to the loudest whiner, allowed organizations that are hostile to the very premise of religion into our association of congregations, and sold our birthright for a …well, not a mess of pottage. I don’t know what.

With Six You Get Eggroll!!

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/international/news/20050908p2g00m0in018000c.html

(thanks to Perez Hilton for the link)

What’s Hotter Than Gay Cowboys??

Absolutely nothing!

I so can’t wait to see this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9285873/

Rude Pundit

How did I not know about this guy until just yesterday?

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

Rude Pundit is outrageous. He is pornographic. He is the Marquis de Sade with a laptop. He is shocking and tasteless, and that’s putting it mildly.

And he’s doing something very unique and, I think, important, with his style of writing.

I warn you — you may be very offended.

Dog Collars

clergyblouses
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

UU bloggers have talked an awful lot about when it’s appropriate to wear clericals, and when to do so would be inauthentic and manipulative. Boy In the Bands has a good rule: he says if you don’t wear them regularly to identify yourself as clergy, don’t just throw on a shirt when you attend a rally or on some other work of activism.

Nevertheless, I just bought a clergy shirt to wear to Baton Rouge, even though I rarely wear one at home. My old one was simply heinous (and I don’t like the big all-around dog collar, I prefer the tab — and I don’t much care about the historical or ecclesiastical differences between them right now, although by this spring I probably will, as my class may want to know for their own edification).

Why wear the dog collar in Louisiana?

A couple of reasons: first, it’s a uniform of sorts. I could just walk around with a sign that says, “Hey ya’ll, I’m a minister, which means that I’m prepared to offer you spiritual support right now,” or like a firefighter or National Guard reservist, I can show up in my uniform and people will know I’m clergy. Not only will I pray with you, listen to you, hold your hand, tell your child a story, or hold your purse while you go to the bathroom, I’m also good for a Kleenex and some good pointers on where to go to get a meal, clothes, and shelter for the night if need be. Although I expect that there will be a lot less of that come October.

Second, if someone wants to give God an earful of rage and accusation, they know they can lay it on me. No, it’s not rational, but it can help. And since I’m a Unitarian Universalist, they’re never going to hear a response like, “It was God’s will” or “It was his time to go” or “His ways are mighty to behold” or anything like that. They’re probably going to hear, “Bring it on, baby. You give that God a piece of your mind.”

I am grateful today for my Universalist heritage which tells me that our God is not a God who sends storms and floods to punish anyone, anywhere, ever.

(Fausto has a good conversation of this issue going on at http://www.socinian.blogspot.com/)

On a sartorial note: it’s not okay to wear a clergy blouse with a belt, is it? I am so not a tuck-the-shirt-in girl. I suppose I’ll have to make judicious use of blazers and overshirts. There’s no need to traumatize a population of people any more than they already have been.

Garments of Praise!

For the truly stylin’ clergywoman. Get a load of this:

http://www.garmentsofpraise.net/preaching_attire_for_women.htm

“Garments of Praise has attempted to change this concept by offering soft styles to keep women both feminine and anointed without revealing the body, yet not concealing the very essence of womanhood.”

(Not only is she feminine and anointed, she is rocking some totally awesome goth-style sleeves! )