PeaceBang

Lenten Invitation

How much does this rock?

I was just asked by the local Methodist church to lead their Ash Wednesday service.

The reason I think that’s so cool is that first of all, it’s a tiny town here and I’m friends with their pastor and I love that they went across denominational borders to make this invitation. I have spent the past three Ash Wednesdays worshiping with them, which makes it even more of a kind of fellowship experience. I’m shocked that they think a Unitarian Universalist is worthy to do this for them. And I’m grateful. We tried to plan a pulpit swap with the UCC church and one of their pastors (the other one is a delightful, non-sectarian person) had a problem with it, because my folks are just too heathenish. I was fit to be tied, and I don’t mean in fun way.

Secondly, I’ve never presided over an Ash Wednesday service and I look forward to the stress of it. I like that kind of stress; it forces me to study a lot, and to learn.

But most of all, it’s just so neighborly and possibly a little bit scandalous, and as I said, that just rocks.

The News of the Year In Religion

I always preach the first sermon of the year on the news of the year in religion. Most years it’s been the GOOD news of the year in religion, but sometimes I forget to save happy little snippets of interfaith cooperation and the like, and this year it’s just publicized as the news of the year in religion, neutral.

I am going to focus on the hurricanes and on Tookie Williams.

I turned on the television this morning to see if he had been executed and when I saw his face, I immediately felt sick. I have many mixed feelings about the death penalty — I WANT to be totally against it on principle — but in this case, I just felt in a very visceral sense that I didn’t want to participate in pumping this man full of poison. That’s all.

I’ll work it out for the sermon. Meanwhile, what do you think merits the Story of the Year in Religion?

My GOD I wish I could go to this: http://www.city…

My GOD I wish I could go to this:

http://www.citypaper.com/calendar/event.asp?whatID=66894

To Read The Impossible Book

Several hundred pages into Don Quixote, I begin to get its genius.

I had only heard that this was the greatest novel ever written and based my expectations on that. I was so excited to start it this past summer.

It was slow going at first. My expectations were crushed immediately. Having been raised on the Broadway show version, I expected a sweetly insane protaganist, a loveable knight errant. But Cervantes didn’t write that. He wrote a violent, deluded buffoon. It was hard to stay with it, but I stayed out of affection for Sancho Panza. I figured if Sancho could stay by Don Quixote’s side, so could I.

Because I am studying the history and character of Spain now, the light is beginning to dawn. The Spanish are a hot, rebellious people. All their heroes are flouters of authority — from Teresa of Avila to El Cid, they smack propriety in the face. And I love it. I am starting… slooooowly… to love the Knight of the Woeful Countenance himself. I am starting to get that he is more Charlie Chaplin than King Arthur.

Ya’ll, can you IMAGINE reading Don Quixote on line!!??? Here, if you feel like ruining your eyes and spending the rest of your life scrolling. Be my guest.

http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/

I think it’s time to take Don Quixote out of the car (it was my beach book) and into the house, into the reading room. Maybe I’ll even take it to bed; the place of highest honor for books in the House of PeaceBang.

Persecution

I am an avid student of the history of persecution, because such episodes are so illuminating of human nature, even if in a conistently upsetting and depressing way.

I’m reading Mary Lee Settle’s book Spanish Recognitions right now in preparation for my trip to Spain, and following some of that great country’s history of religious persecution (they were the pros, boy) and the cruelties of their 20th century Civil War.

This steady encounter with the history of persecution(s) leaves me very impatient with the way contemporary Unitarian Universalists cry “persecution!” at the slightest provocation.

Persecution is having your toenails ripped out and your skin flayed for failing to convert to Christianity. Persecution is to be hunted down, raped and murdered for the crime of having brown skin and having lived on the land someone else wants, first. Persecution is being rounded up in the public square and shot for being a member of the wrong political party, or being placed on house arrest for five years for speaking out against fascism at a rally.

You are not being persecuted when the hymns include lyrics that do not resonate with us. We are not being persecuted if our 4th grader’s religious education curriculum is Jesus And His Kingdom of Equals, and we don’t want anyone in our family to have to think or hear about Jesus. We are not being persecuted if your congregation fails to vote the way we want them to on the budget.

Unitarian Universalists will be so much stronger when we identify more with our freedom than with our terminal uniqueness as individuals, and when we stop making a mockery of the real human crime of persecution by accusing each other of committing it every time someone does something or has an idea that doesn’t include us.

A Heaven Joke

So, Senator Eugene McCarthy and comedian Richard Pryor approach the pearly gates and get in line to talk to St. Peter…

you finish it.

So I Flunked Science And I Need Your Help

I am starting my sermon on Intelligent Design and Evolution with the phrase, “In the beginning…”

In the beginning was the heaven and earth.
In the beginning was the great Turtle.
In the beginning was the first world, and it was red.

These are some phrases from creation myths. If you were writing a creation myth based on Darwin’s insights, how would it begin?

In the beginning was the first …..

I’m so afraid of doing this wrong and having every science-brain in the congregation immediately tune me out as being a huge, uneducated moron.

I swear I understand the principles of evolutionary biology. I’ve been reading. I don’t need help with that. I need help telling the beginnings of the story in language a child could understand.

Comment away!!

Holy and Unholy Scripture

Some days ago The Boy In the Bands posted an interesting, provocative piece on Unitarian Universalist use of non-Biblical sources as readings in worship, thus elevating those sources to a kind of “Scripture:”

http://www.universalistchurch.net/boyinthebands/archives/accidential-clericalism/#comments

Having been raised in Unitarian Universalism, and never having belonged to a Scripturally-based tradition, I found myself thinking a lot about this. I know why the Bible (both Old and New Testament readings, and psalms) are included in Christian worship services. I certainly know why the Bible readings are the focus of Jewish worship. I am greatly disappointed by UUism’s throwing out of the Bible in worship somewhere along the post-Transcendentalist era, and I do wish I could bring more Bible to my own congregation’s worship today.

However, it has never occurred to me that by choosing, say, a poem by Wendell Berry or part of an article by Jim Wallis as readings that I am putting them in the place of Scripture, or elevating them to the status of the Bible. To me, the readings illuminate the theme of the service, and more particularly, help the congregation enter into the longer reflection and teaching moment of the sermon with a bit of context.

I am aware that in choosing those readings I am influencing the way the congregation thinks about the sermon topic, and that’s perfectly acceptable to me. I have often felt grateful that I didn’t have to contort my sermon around the lectionary readings for that week, although I respect the discipline the lectionary creates.

But Scott makes a great point, which is that preachers are not there to create, ex nihilo, the teachings of the religious tradition (which the choice of non-Scriptural sources might imply to some), but are there to have the religious tradition (represented in this conversation by Holy Scripture) create us.

I think of the readings in the worship service as an opportunity to illustrate for the worshipers that we can read anything in a religously meaningful way. I choose readings not only that provide a color to the sermon I may not be able to provide, but as a way of showing the congregation that we can approach all texts from a spiritual place. It is a way of modeling a religious reading of the world.

Friday Fashion Break

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Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

My god. If this is the new neckline, I’m in big trouble.

Meanwhile, Gwen Stefani, you are not Frida Kahlo and you never will be no matter how many enormous flowers you wear in your hair. P.S. Get the right size shoes. I’m tired of looking at your toes hanging out the end of your sandals.

(thanks to the gofugyourself girls for the photos)

Going Gently Into That Good Night

I’m thinking a lot about this article from the NY Times written by Susan Sontag’s son. It’s long but worth skimming, if not reading thoroughly (I did not read it thoroughly myself):

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/04sontag.html