PeaceBang

Unconditional Welcome

Boy In the Bands writes a thoughtful entry about the “Forever Congregation,”
to which I have contributed a lengthy comment (& now that I see it online, far too lengthy! Sorry, Scott!):

http://www.universalistchurch.net/boyinthebands/archives/forever-congregation/

The church’s job is to incarnate God’s unconditional love, certainly. But in churches we too often mistake pastoral welcome with institutional permeability (a phrase I seem to have coined tonight). To clarify what I said on Scott’s post:
Fate will provide enough challenging and potentially uneducable people to any congregation. The congregation should therefore not expend its energies trying to accomodate the exhausting demands of those who can fully well understand and grasp the implications of their dysfunctional behaviors , but who refuse to.

(This goes for clergy, too!)

Pastoral welcome should be extended to all comers; it is an authentic way the church expresses fellowship and hospitality. Institutional permeability, however, is not hospitality; it is an indiscriminate offer of authority, power and (oftentimes) leadership to anyone who happens to walk through the door, without inviting them into a process of discernment, integration or instruction in how to responsibly participate in the community.

In the contemporary liberal church’s often sloppy, sentimental way of welcoming the seeker, it too often mistakes institutional permeability with authentic hospitality, claiming that the first is more loving and inclusive than the second. In fact, welcoming seekers indiscriminately is not nearly as loving as authentic pastoral welcome, which requires deep attention to the guest, a conscious effort to help them find a ministry within the church, and an invitation for them to become a living steward and incarnation of the church’s highest ideals.

Preacher’s Corner

Since I always get so much great help from PeaceBangers, I hope this is a little bit of “giving back:”

I just came up with the idea to include a little column called “Preacher’s Corner” in my church newsletter, which says:

“The following works of art, literature, contemporary non-fiction, film and Scripture are likely to be referenced at length in upcoming sermons.”
And then I list them. They include Amadeus, Equus, “Brokeback Mountain,” Antigone, the Gospel of Matthew, the book of Genesis (4:1-16), King Lear, The Cambridge Platform, of 1648 Picasso’s “Guernica” and Michaelangelo’s “Pieta.” I think, gee, this is kind of cool. I might like to hear these sermons myself.

Now, I can do this because I actually have planned a bunch of sermons for the spring. I don’t know how far in advance I’ll be able to do this in the future. But I think my church will dig it for a few reasons: first, it might get a few more people reading the newsletter, second, it gives them a chance to think about things before I use them in sermons, and third, it shows in black & white that there’s a whole world out there for your serious religious reflection, so go ye and theologize!

Gay Propaganda??

A very dear, very old friend disagrees with my December 26th review of “Brokeback Mountain,” which she refers to as (ha ha) “Bareback Mounthim.”
She says she found it slow, the Ennis Del Mar character maddeningly passive, and Michelle Williams as his wife pouty and irritating.

Okay, that’s cool. Everyone sees films differently.

But then she says that 2-3 days after having seen the flick, she agrees with those who call it gay propaganda.

I have e-mailed her to ask her to explain, because I’m rather floored by this assessment, which I would not expect to be coming from a liberal, open-minded, unhomophobic pal.

I asked my friend this, and let me ask you, too:

Do you think that gay people will ever be able to have cinematic love stories that aren’t about AIDS, that aren’t de-sexed (i.e., fade to black before we see anything explicit), and that don’t conform to a bunch of hetero stereotypes (which, in the case of “BBM,” would have had required either Jack Twist or Ennis Del Mar to be fairly limp-wristed) without being accused of being gay propaganda?

People, the way our culture allows or disallows stories of people’s real lives to be told is a justice issue.

When the majority population dictates the terms of the depictions of real life, we not only suffer for it artistically, we suffer for it morally. This is, perhaps, why Hollywood has seemed so spiritually bankrupt to me for so many years: the story they keep telling again and again reinscribes the Accepted Truth that macho men run the world, that love is a matter between beautiful men and beautiful (younger) women, and that the most interesting people on the planet are sociopathic torturer/murderers.

In fact, to answer my friend most distinctly, I would say, “No, I don’t think that ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is gay propaganda. I think that the majority of films produced in Hollywood are white heterosexual male propaganda.”

Best Herbal Tea

If you’re an herbal tea person (and even if you’re not) you should know about these:

http://www.newenglandtea.com/sys/product/category1.html

I bought a bunch of them when I was in Montreal this summer and they’re just wonderful in a 32 oz. container of plain old water, not even boiled. I get so dehydrated in the winter but I get bored of drinking water, so I pop a starfruit or blueberry tea bag in there, add three drops of stevia, and voila! a much better, much cheaper alternative to Vitamin Water (which has calories, too, and this doesn’t).

Something is very wrong with me this evening in the tummy department and I am just praying, praying, praying that it’s not the flu. I have such huge plans for the next week, a flu would be disastrous right now.

Hard to imagine that Ariel Sharon is lying in extremis in Israel right now. I can’t remember a time when Sharon was not. O, Israel. You confuse me so very much.

My cousin’s son makes his bar mitzvah on the day that I turn 40. I am sending him the lovely book The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. If I think of it, I also want to send him a collection of Heschel’s works called
I Asked For Wonder, which I also love.
I loved Heschel’s first anthology, too — a reflection on secular life called
I Asked For the Check.

I’m kidding! I’m kidding already! Don’t look it up on Amazon, what are you, meshugenah?

Coal Miner’s Great Granddaughter

My great-grandfather, Stephen Billo, was a coal miner in Pennsylvania.

This just could not be sadder:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10692461/

It seems that this coal mine had more than its share of violation. That’s bad enough. But to allow a “miscommunication” that had the families of the 13 men believing that they had all survived is just inexcusably horrific.

May they rest in peace.

Was MLK Funny?

I’m thinking about the title “Humor and Outrage” for my January 15th sermon. My idea is that the most effective works for justice are often tinged with a sense of outrage that also carries with it an irrepresible love for the absurdity of human nature.

Think how Jesus occasionally used mockery to get his point across.
Think how Martin poked fun at committees and institutionalized do-gooding in his sermon “The Three Dimensions of Life” (in the section about the Good Samaritan).

I would like to share stories of the way the civil rights leaders and activists used humor and outrage and mockery in their tactics, but I don’t have enough evidence that they did. PeaceBangers, can you help me (and I’m heading to the bookstore later today)…?

I begin to realize that one of the things that most deeply disgusts me about the Bush Administration is how bloody seriously they take themselves. I want to lift up the saving grace of humor within the realistic response of outrage when we deal with oppression(s).

Sorry, Little Compton

Sorry, Little Compton
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I was so proud when I made fabulous, restaurant-worthy lamb shanks last night.

They were utterly delicious. One of the best things I’ve ever made.

Then I remembered Little Compton.

Oh, I’m so sorry. The hooves! The hooves!

Commercials We Hate, 2006 Edition

Have you seen the ad for this product?

http://get.ampd.com/
On the commercial that played about ten times already tonight on VH1 (I’m indulging in “I Love the 90’s”),
a blonde guy of indeterminate European origin rides a city bus. He’s got a little gadget in his hand. He says to two men in the back of the bus, “You two: fight.” And a young black guy and an old white man start to mix it up.

He turns next to a cool-looking dark-skinned dude and says, “Turn up the music,” and the guy docilely obeys by cranking up his boom box.

Next, the man turns to a young African-American woman. “Shake your junk,” he commands, and she obligingly turns, grabs the bus pole, and shakes a juicy posterior.

The man looks satisfied and the tag line reads, “Entertain yourself.”

I wrote to the company telling them what I thought of their concept of “entertainment.” My God. How patently offensive, racist, sexist and despicable.

I’m also not impressed by the Temperpedic bed ads, but just for silly reasons: why do they think I care that their bed is endorsed by NASA, or whatever? They don’t even have GRAVITY in space, so I don’t think astronauts have the best sense of what kind of mattress I might like best here on planet Earth. Cheez.