PeaceBang

Pollen Brain

I was thinking of writing a new “Welcome To Our Church” letter that goes to new families in the area, but my mind is so pollen-fogged that all I can do is stare at the computer and drool and try to keep my eyes open.

I did come up with one usable concept, but I can’t write today for monkey doo-doo. Care to wordsmith this for me, blog geniuses? It’s just two big run-on sentences right now. Help. Even recommending chucking the whole thing would be fine. Or you chuck it and rewrite it. Or just bring me a slice of chocolate cake. Something.

“Unitarian Universalism is a movement whose members come together around the idea that sharing religious life with people of diverse beliefs is of great benefit to personal spiritual development. We try to live out our lives in the spirit of South African civil rights leader Stephen Biko, who said, ‘We regard our living together not as an unfortunate mishap warranting endless competition among us, but as a deliberate act of God to make us a community of brothers and sisters jointly involved in the quest for a composite answer to the varied problems of life.’”

Taylor or Katherine?

Neither.

Bleh.

As I said to BoyInTheBands over the phone tonight as “Idol” played in the background, if you want to hear genuinely moving, gorgeous singing get an Eva Cassidy album.

Verbal Violence

I know I’ve already posted enough today for the entire week, but Kim told a story in the comments of “What Are Violent Movies For?” that’s got me thinking.

Read her story and think about how numb you’ve become to seeing violent scenes on the screen. I certainly have, even though I don’t consume a lot of on-screen violence intentionally.

But Kim reminds me that not only is visual violence spewed at us through the entertainment and news media 24-hours a day, so is verbal violence. It seems to me that vile, truly hateful insults are an accepted part of our everyday environment now, and particularly in the blogosphere.

For me, it comes mostly as an onslaught through the celebrity blogs I love to read as a form of relaxation and entertainment. Yes, I love scrolling through paragraphs about Brangelina or TomKat or Britney Spears’ latest baby disaster. What I don’t understand is why so many bloggers feel it’s okay to describe celebrities in the most disgusting, often obscene terms. Should it be any surprise that drunken, bloated oil heir Brandon Whatshisname was recently videotaped spewing absolutely pornographic insults about movie star Lindsay Lohan? And that a giggling Paris Hilton was by his side the entire time, cell phone firmly pressed to her ear?

This goes on on political blogs, too, when the likes of the incisive, very bright and entertaining Rude Pundit makes his fame spinning every tale of corruption in the Bush Administration into a pornographic scenario. I loved it initially and now it turns my stomach (and I have a lot of stomach to turn, kids).

When MotherBang and I were looking through the Time Out magazine for theatre listings this past Thursday night, I noticed that at least three articles had outright cusswords in them. And I’m not talking about the more mild cusswords, either. Why the egregious potty-mouthing?

I’m a rather saucy-tongued gal myself, and certainly have no problem with the occasional expletive or spicy insult. But I notice that I’m playing rather fast and loose lately with certain words I could never even bring myself to say ten years ago, let alone gleefully sling around in conversation with my sister (we’re very naughty because it makes us laugh so hard). What happened?
I became inured to the ugliness of these words by hearing them all the time.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing; to reduce a previously ugly word to a naughty giggle with my sis.
But it certainly is a bad thing when it’s fair game to express our casual dislike of this or that public figure — whose only real crime is to not live up to insane standards of physical perfection, wealth and power among the entertainment elite — by using the most hateful, richly abusive language we can contrive.

The Crucified Madge

crucified madge
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

My friends, as we can see from this photo taken last night at the first concert of her “Confessions Tour,” Madonna has officially jumped the shark.

My Answer to Matt Stone

A cool guy named Matt Stone commented on PeaceBang on May 20, asking me where I thought my journey was going.
I looked him up and it turns out he has this cool blog, which he is apparently moving, but these posts are quite terrific:

http://circleofdionysius.blogspot.com/
Plus, he has a really cute new baby. Congratulations to you and your wife, Matt.

So, where do I think my journey is going?

I think it’s going on as I am led by the Holy Spirit. I don’t know what else to say.
I’m passionately committed to the potential of Unitarian Universalism — not to its current reality, in case I haven’t made that abundantly clear — and I am going to do what I can for its survival as long as I have the energy and sense of calling to do so.

While I am tepid and skeptical of the larger movement that is “UUism,” I am red hot about my own congregation. They keep me inspired and excited. They remind me every day that this is about an association of congregations doing good ministry in local settings.

As far as my theological journey goes, who knows? I was a mystical child, an atheistic teenager who thought she might like to be a parapsychologist when she grew up, an angry, anti-Christian young adult, a Wiccan practitioner, and then, nine years ago, a baptized Christian with special interest in Jungian archetypal psychology and Tibetan Buddhist concepts of the afterlife. Anything could happen from this point on. God will do what God will do with me.

Matt, your blog has all the energy and intelligence and spirited curiosity I am missing so much within my own movement, which so often has an incredibly navel-gazing, energy-draining perspective. Glad you found PeaceBang, hope you come back, and thanks for asking.

What Are Violent Films For?

I don’t get it. Please explain this.

Film critic Ken Tucker explains in the recent issue of “Entertainment Weekly” that we should watch the brutally violent films of Michael Haneke because “Haneke doesn’t splatter the screen or make stupid dead co-ed jokes.”

Hey, that’s a reason to watch a film about a young man slaughtering a girl like a pig if I ever heard one.
Tucker praises another Haneke offering about two young sociopaths torturing a family because “it makes you feel the agony of violence, thus raising his work to a higher purpose: to recall the distinction between civilized and craven behavior.”

You know what, Ken? I don’t need to see horrific images of people being tortured and murdered in order to know the difference between heinous and civilized behavior. If you get into the sick thrill of watching such stuff, go for it. That’s why Haneke makes it; for people like you. But let’s not get all high-falutin’ about “the higher purpose” of it all.

Elsewhere in the same issue, Lisa Schwarzbaum reviews the DreamWorks film “Over the Hedge” and expresses concern that the cute little animated animals are a little bit too vengeful toward the humans.
Hey, EW, how about some editorial balance here?

Preaching Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one subject that a preacher can address at least once a year and no one will complain.
I tend to preach on the subject around Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, when I’m not preaching on my favorite subject, SIN!

One of the favorite sermons I ever gave was called “Who Are We To Forgive,” with a double meaning on who are we to forgive, and who are we to forgive (as in, how can we ethically express forgiveness when crimes against God and man are committed by others?). That was a sermon that left me wrung out, indeed.

For those of you looking ahead, I thought that the inspiring life of Freddie Boyce, chronicled in Michael D’Antonio’s book The State Boys Rebellion (which I’ve written about here before), would make a great starting point for a reflection on forgiveness. Freddie, who was treated with relentless cruelty and neglect throughout his childhood, managed to have true compassion for his abusers as well as for their victims.

I am going to try to see this movie, which contains the same themes, and addresses even more vile and evil acts of cruelty and torment:

http://www.frif.com/new2006/meng.html

Has anyone seen it? Comments?

Preachers, start your engines.

PeaceBang Reviews "Doubt"

MotherBang and I saw John Patrick Shanley’s magnificent play “Doubt” at the Walter Kerr Theatre in NYC last Thursday evening.

Here’s a review of the cast we saw: http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Doubt2.html

I had read the play a few months ago and was struck by its spare dialogue, its comfort with ambiguity, and the main character, Sister Aloysius (please, Mr. Producer, can I play this part somewhere someday?).

MotherBang and I loved it. Having already read it, I was prepared for some of the emotional revelations and particularly, for one incredibly disturbing scene between Sister Aloysius and the mother of a boy who may or may not have been molested by Father Flynn.

Dame Eileen Atkins is smashing in the role of Sr. Aloysius — it was one of those commanding performances you’ll never forget– a master class in acting and in claiming the stage on behalf of a great character.
(A few others, in no particular order: Ian McKellen as Richard III; Charlie Janasz as Richard II at the Guthrie; Stephanie Mills in “The Wiz”; Dixie Carter as Maria Callas in “Master Class” … care to add to the list?)

Jena Malone, known to most of you as a cute movie actress, was appallingly bad as the naive Sister James. According to the reviewer, she copied every detail of her performance from her predecessor, which is never a good idea (a lesson I learned in a very painful way by watching Lorna Luft mimic the every last bit of comic timing and vocal inflection of the marvelous Faith Prince as Miss Adelaide in the national tour of “Guys and Dolls”). Such aping of a previous, acclaimed performance is the sign of a very bad performer and worse yet, a very irresponsible director. I’m surprised that whoever was responsible for rehearsing Miss Malone allowed it. She is so bad that even the bridge-and-tunnel crowd up in the mezzanine with us was smirking behind their hands and punching each other.

Miss Jena Malone, this is for you:
(1) Get a vocal coach to help you learn how to use your voice on the stage. You’re adorable in the movies, but your Broadway debut is a crime against the theatre.

(2) If you’ve stopped meeting regularly with your dialect coach for brush-ups, assuming that you’ve got Sister James’ Bronx-tawk down, let me assure you that you have not. Between the strained quality of your weird, simpering yet strangely monotonal falsetto and the overdone dialect, you sound scarily like Marlon Brando in the final moments of “On the Waterfront,” and not in a good way.
You could not have been a contendah.
(3) Creasing your brow and wringing your hands does not a convincing performance make. Although you do warm up a bit in your later scenes, your atrocious showing in that first all-important show-down between Sister James and Sister Aloysius almost kills the play within the first ten minutes. You should send Dame Atkins a very large bouquet of roses for being brilliant enough to save the scene from your total inability to deal with it, and thus save the entire show. Better yet than roses, ask for her help. She’s a genius. Let her mentor you!
(4) Do you sing? Singing lessons might help you find some other colors in your voice, which remained on exactly the same note all night long. Would you like to attend the opera and hear arias sung on one note all night long? That’s what it was like every time you opened your mouth. Maddening, my dear, simply maddening.

(5) Don’t despair. You’re very young and we believe in you. We loved you in “Saved” but if you’re going to continue on the stage, you’ll need to work harder at it. Best of luck.

To the rest of the cast, the lighting designer and Mr. Shanley, thanks for a provocative, upsetting, and wonderful night at the theatre. Not to mention some whizbang sermon material.

Theological Rock Stars

As you know, I attended the commencement exercises at Union Theological Seminary on Friday afternoon.
My pal, L’il Flava, Ph.D., invited me to share a champagne toast up at her professor’s apartment on the fifth floor (we had to walk down several cement basement corridors to get to the elevator, and my friend Eddie and I played “Titanic” and “Poseidon Adventure” all the way there, slamming our bodies against the walls and pretending the waters were rising).

The toast was given by Emilie Townes, which is cool, but it was in Professor Gary Dorrien’s home, which was even more cool, and he was there and gave a toast.

I was very star struck. It’s so nice when brilliant people you admire from afar turn out to be very nice and cute in person.
http://www.uts.columbia.edu/index.php?id=592