PeaceBang

Merry Christmas, PeaceBangers

When my siblings and I were just little squirts, Santa would occasionally leave us letters in our stockings, written in an ornate, curlicued hand in red ink, and tied into a scroll with a ribbon. I wish so much I had kept each and every one of them, for they were full of Santa’s magic and his loving joviality. He always seemed to know about some special struggle we had suffered and overcome during the year. We marvelled at how well he understood us, and took his affectionate blessings to heart.

In 1996, I was in my seminary internship and had Christmas Eve duties at church that prevented me from going home to Mom’s for Christmas. By now, Christmas alone has become a regular thing, not nearly as painful and often quite enjoyable. But in that first year, I knew I would be in an awful way if I did not try to do something radically different; something that let my heart and my head know that the old traditions were over, I had a new role to play in the world, and I was giving my Christmases to the Lord, not to Lord & Taylor.
So I went on a silent retreat at a Cistercian Abbey in western Massachusetts.

Before I left, I got a package from home. In it, Mom included a letter from Santa that she said he had sent along early. It was rolled into a scroll and tied with a red ribbon. When I saw the curlicue writing, my eyes filled with tears. It said:

My Dear [PeaceBang],

It is becoming far too difficult to fill your Christmas Stocking, for you already are Blessed with your own rare natural gifts: intelligence, charm, wit, fortitude, determination, talent, loyalty, to name a very few.

Your spirit shines as bright as the Christmas Star, reaching out to those near and dear to you, and soon its rays will warm and nourish and heal many, many more of those who will need your strength and wisdom. I can only fill Stockings, so I need you to fill Hearts.

That is why I implore you to stay healthy, listen to your body and respect its demands.

You continue to be a fine young woman I continue to praise to the Mrs. and my Staff. We have watched you graduate from little [P.B.] to the proud [PeaceBang] that you wear so well.

May God, the Goddesses, the Earth’s winds, the Loving Spirits of the Waters, Earth, Sky and Beyond, ever protect and cradle you from all Harm.

I am sending you my love,
Santa Claus

This Christmas I wish you all the gift of love: love that pays attention, love that encourages, love that goads, love that understands, love that cradles, love that blesses you with all the strength you need to meet all the challenges of this life.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth.
Peace.
Bang.

Jud

Hey, old friend,
whattya say, old friend,
are you okay, old friend,
are we or aren’t we unique?
…
New friends pour
through the revolving door
maybe there’s one that’s more
maybe there’s one that will do
but us old friend
what’s to discuss, old friend
Here’s to us,
Who’s like us?
Damn few!
– Stephen Sondheim, “Old Friend” from Merrily We Roll Along

Jud and I met in the first grade and fell in love. He was my best friend and romantic interest from first through sixth grade, and gave me my first maple-syrup tasting kiss in fifth grade, standing in the street on under the dogwoods. When he tried to put his tongue in my mouth I thought that was the most perverted thing anyone had ever thought of and figured it was just Jud’s own unique invention.

He went off to private school in 7th grade and we kept in sporadic, torturous touch over the next six or seven years.

I tracked him down about 7 or 8 years ago when I lived in Maryland and we had long, crazy phone conversations, and then we stopped talking again for a few years.

He just called from Florida and we talked for about an hour. He’s still nuts, he still remembers far too many details of things I’ve said and done, and he still feels like someone I can trust with my soul. And he’s just as emphatically single as I am. We figure we should have married back when we were six and we’d be a comfortable old couple by now, and not so sot in our ways that we’re probably unfit for cohabitation with anyone ever again.

I’m so glad he called. Now I don’t have to have bad dreams anymore where I can’t find Jud and wander around crying. I don’t like not knowing where he is. I always have to know where Jud is in the world.

"Once Upon A Mattress"

One of the fun things about doing a Google Image search of a show is that you find tons of amateur production photos. So along with, say, Carol Burnett in a role, you get to see some 7th grader from Hackensack in her Queen Agravaine costume for “Once Upon A Mattress.”

Speaking of which, the 2005 version of “Mattress” that aired last night on ABC, was a big Disney disappointment. The cast did their best (Zooey Deschanel was just miscast) but the director, although accomplished on Broadway, had no idea how to make the piece funny or charming.

Carol Burnett, so wonderfully Grand Guignol as the dastardly Miss Hannigan in the film version of “Annie,” looked hilarious in big Bob Mackie costumes but was directed to be so subdued that it killed all the humor of her role, or most of it. Tommy Smothers, as the silent king Sextimus, was also misdirected — especially in the final moment of the show during the reversal of the curse. In the show he’s a devoted skirt-chaser and clown; in this version, just a pleasant, mild-mannered mute. Not funny, and what a waste of the great Smothers!

Other important secondary roles were cut to bits, and Tracy Ullman, doing her frenetic best to make Winnifred the Woebegon into a loveable madcap heroine, was just okay.

The evening was not at all a waste, though, as I got to sit up with one of my oldest and best pals in the world and wrap Christmas and Hanukah gifts. That was very much fun, and hard to believe, since it seems only yesterday that we were buying each other Lip Smackers and starter stud earrings for Christmas.

The Curse

We’re at that point in the church office where we’re checking carol lyrics and deciding how many verses of what is going into the Christmas Eve service.

I went into gales of laughter remembering some of the faces the year we forgot to snip out the third verse of “Joy To The World:”

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found!

Random Advent Musings

I am finally in the Christmas spirit. We had the annual Holiday Religious Education Insanity service today, which was very cute and made me all mushy and Christmasy. So I have to break one of my own rules and talk about my church.

During coffee hour I sat with some kids and was gravely informed that “Santa Claus has bad knees so you can’t sit on his lap,” which made me snarf into my sleeve. Santa is one of our big wonderful church men who sings in the choir and is involved in everything. He dresses up in the full Santa regalia every year and he looks REALLY LIKE SANTA.

Then one of my tots came up to show me the beautiful decorative boxes Santa was passing out (I got one too — swanky cloisinee dealies) and we talked for awhile about what we might put in the box. Maybe a very tiny teddy bear? Maybe our piggy toe, if we were brave enough to bite it off? Maybe one piece of secret candy? I suggested a worm. Erdine, the 91 year old sitting next to me, nodded in agreement and said, “A worm is always good.” We winked at each other. She’s a beautiful shining gem of an elder.

Then the three-year old sang “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” to me, and I thought back to when he was just a growing pod in his mama’s belly, and how he squirmed the day I dedicated him. He remembered every word of the song and sang it to me very earnestly, maintaining eye contact the whole time, and on key. I said to him, “That was so great. That’s just my favorite.” I resisted the temptation to steal him and take him home.

One of my parishioners gave me a bright red lipstick. What a great gift. I always admire hers and ask her where she gets it and she went out and GOT ME SOME. It’s an obscure make called “Niko” and the shade is “Vibe Red” and I don’t think that could be any more cool.

Tonight I’m going to Mel’s house to watch “Once Upon a Mattress” starring Carol Burnett. She and I were the stars of the 6th grade play — she played Winifred the Woebegone (Tracy Ullman) and I played Carol Burnett’s role, Queen Agravaine. The fun part will be watching it with her 4 year old daughter.

Yay!

"Luther"

I finally saw the 2003 film “Luther” starring Joseph Fiennes.

There’s a bloody long debate about its accuracies and so on over at IMDB.com:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309820/board/nest/26231294

I thought the film was okay, with a few bits of embarrassing nonsense like the Hollywoodized, boy-meets-girlization of what was really the fairly unsexy, monk-meets-nun relationship of Martin Luther and his wife, Katie.

Ialso couldn’t help but smirk at the film’s suggestion that them German peasants were just dying to get their hands on a Bible written in their own language!
They were? Even when the vast majority of them were illiterate?

But you must see Sir Peter Ustinov chew the scenery as Frederic the Wise. His lips are the most memorable part of the whole production.

I thought it was a little bit sad that poor Martin Luther had to start the whole Reformation without ever having anything to eat or drink. From the looks of it, all he did was pray, talk, and write the Bible in German. Sometimes rode a horse. Never once allowed liquid or solid refreshment to pass his lips.
Not one wienerschnitzel. Poor guy.

Liturgy As Politics

I just wrote a fan letter to William Cavanaugh, a Catholic theologian whose most well-known work is Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics And the Body of Christ and whose article in the most recent Christian Century is the most exciting thing I’ve read in a long time.

http://www.stthomas.edu/theology/cavanaugh.html
He’s cute, no?

Some quotes:

“We try to ‘read’ the liturgy for symbols and meanings that we take out and apply in the ‘real world’ — the offering means we should give of our wealth, the kiss of peace means we should seek peace in international relations, and so on. This is fine, but it doesn’t address the liturgy as an action that forms the body of Christ.”

“The church is more than just a Moose Lodge for Christians. The church is a social space in its own right, an enactment of the politics of Jesus. This does not mean that the church should become a political party or interject party politics into the liturgy. It means the church should help create — in collaboration with non-Christians, too — spaces of peace, charity, and just economic exchange.”

“The modern nation-state is founded on violence. If the church is going to resist violence, it has to emerge from its privatization and have a political voice, one that seeks not to regain state power but to speak truthfully about it.”

You have to get this article for what he says about the myths of religious violence… let me quote at length here:

“I worry, however, about the way that the great myth of religious violence serves to justify certain kinds of violence: ‘Those people over there are crazy religious fanatics; their violence is irrational, absolutist and divisive. We live in a democratic, secular state; our violence is rational, modest and unitive. They have not learned the lesson we learned: religion should be kept out of the public sphere. So we need to help them by bombing them into the higher rationality.’ This way of thinking is, I think, one of the subtexts of the Iraq war…
This myth helps us to think of ourselves as the most peace-loving nation on earth at the same time that our military budget exceeds those of all other nations combined. Our violence doesn’t count as violence, because we are just trying to spread democracy, rationality, and peace.”

Look for it online at ChristianCentury.org in a week or so. I can’t promise it will be up there, but he has a book Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy As A Political Act In An Age of Global Consumerism (T.& T.Clarke).

Feel free to get it for me for Christmas.

A Great Line For My Fellow Crankies

My date (very nice guy, thanks for asking) and I were talking last night about things in the current culture that greatly irritate us. I said something about how I am not an “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” kind of gal — too Calvinistic for that — and he suggested,
“You’re Not Okay, and I’m Not Okay With You” as an amendment. And we cracked up.

I Accidentally Stood Up Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

It’s the saddest thing ever! I thought I was going to an America’s Test Kitchen event at Brookline Booksmith, because they always send me Event Notice e-mails, but it turns out that the event was at the ACTUAL AMERICA’s TEST KITCHEN in Brookline. I went to the wrong place. Worse yet, I met my date at the wrong place.

I am a big frowny face about missing Christopher Kimball. But I did go on a date, so that was one new year’s resolution accomplished, and just in the nick of time! Only 15 or so days to spare!

Meanwhile, I caught this pic of Kelly Osbourne on gofugyourself.com and wondered if anyone would mind if I used it as a professional headshot:

I just thought that would be kind of funny. I used to wear piles of make-up like that, when I was about 15 and the theatre-vampire look was all the rage. If I slapped on bunch of pancake make-up and blood red lipstick, she could definitely pass for my demon spawn.