PeaceBang

The Hammer of the UUs

I think when blogging makes you vomit, it may be time to set a few boundaries.

Let me bring any interested readers back to where it all began. A few days ago, WHILE ON VACATION, I posted about why I would like to see the word “God” returned to the Principles or Sources. The comments that specific posting generated are here:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=9873156&postID=115134895952638425

Within those comments, I said that I think of myself as a “soldier in the army of the Lord,” which is a quote from a LYLE LOVETT SONG. Not exactly a statement of serious personal theology, folks.

My use of the word “Lord” generated the expected UU critique that it’s medieval and oppressive, etc. I said that I was “hip” to those critiques, but that I liked the word anyway. I said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of immediately informing me why my choice of this word is medieval and ignorant, someone asked me WHY I like it?” And someone took the bait and asked. So I wrote a little more about why I like “LORD,” — again, while on vacation at a friend’s house — not expecting that within a day I would be cast in the role of Defender of the LORD on the UU blogosphere.

Any number of bloggers wrote righteous, condemnatory posts about why LORD is WRONG, and why we should have moved past it by now. At least five UUs have written me heartfelt off-line letters about how much they hate righteous, condemnatory posts and comments that insult their intelligence and assume they don’t know that the word LORD has patriarchal, oppressive connotations.

Good LORD. Lyle Lovett owes me a DRINK.

I have tried to reply to a reasonable number of the over 100 comments my last postings have generated. In trying to keep up with the multiple postings about me and my ideas, I have found that at best,my writings are encouraging people to think about their own beliefs. At worst, my writings are providing some UUs an opportunity to affirm their own beliefs over/against beliefs they think I have. It is becoming exhausting and not at all fun to have to respond to these erroneous assumptions. Cripes, even a light-hearted comment about what I ATE AT DINNER leaves one reader feeling entitled to leave a condemnatory little comment about why I should come to the path of Vegetarianism.

Darling people, I’m a blogger. I’m not the resident theologian of the Unitarian Universalist Association. If all this energy around my latest posts is evidence of anything, it’s evidence that we’re all really hungry to have serious theological discussion. I just don’t think it’s possible to do it well on the blogosphere. My postings are typed out fast, with no study or research or assumption that they will live beyond a few hours. I assume other bloggers operate the same way.

One writer asked me whether or not my reflections were creating a “stumbling block” for other UUs.
A stumbling block in what way? To them understanding my theology? Why do they need to understand my theology? A stumbling block to them developing their own theology? Did I become the Pope of UUism and no one told me? If so, I want a tiara!

This morning, I read a post that literally made me vomit: something that was intended to be a clever game and which was written well and with a great sense of fun by a blogger whose work I totally love and respect. In the comments of that post, which made a multiple choice quiz out of my personal theological struggles, yet another well-meaning commenter with a huge brain affectionately chastised me for failing to mention the GREEK etymology of the word LORD in my first discussion.

That’s when I went and threw up my banana smoothie. And in all my years of ministry, I have yet to vomit over anything.
I don’t think it’s a matter of not having a sense of humor. I think my sense of humor is quite evident and in good shape.
I appreciate that my friend removed the post. Like any of you, my religious path is slick with blood, sweat and tears. I don’t mind being challenged, but there’s no possible response to mockery (which I know was not intended, but my gut had a different reaction).

So, for my own sanity, let me make two requests:

>If you comment on PB, I may not be able to respond to you, and I’m sorry. I can’t always keep up.

> If you use one of my posts as a jumping off place for your own reflections on a given subject, I respectfully ask that you try to stick to your own ruminations and not summarize what you think I’m saying, or what kind of religious beliefs you think I have as a way to clarify your own thinking. If you’d like to quote me, I’m flattered. If you’re going to interpret those quotes, I can’t stop you, but having read any number of wildly off-base assumptions about myself since I started blogging, I have to say that you’re probably not interpreting correctly, and why are you even trying?

Please go talk among yourselves.
I am closing comments for the time being and going to make out with my cat, who doesn’t care if I sing old gospel songs that praise the LORD just so long as I give her kibble.

"What PeaceBang Thinks"

I’ve been following the strands of my posting on LORD all over the blogosphere and chuckling a little bit whenever I see people write about “PeaceBang’s brand of Christianity.”

Folks, honestly, a few paragraphs on the word “LORD” are not a thorough explication of my theology. I’ve never written a theology, nor do I intend to. Therefore, I’d like to respectfully inform the readers of this blog that none of you knows what “PeaceBang’s brand of Christianity” is. PEACEBANG doesn’t know yet what her brand of Christianity is. She is a blogger, not a theologian, so she feels like she’s got time to figure it out.

This isn’t to say that I’m not thrilled that so many of you have jumped off my original post and written your own credos — I am. And I’m thrilled that you read my post in the first place. I just want to GENTLY and LOVINGLY say that if you’re using my reflections as a mirror to see yourself in, I want to tell you that I’m looking into the same mirror. PeaceBang expresses but a mere fraction of what the writer behind PeaceBang struggles herself to understand and discern about her own beliefs.

I’ve read a few blogs tonight that paraphrased me so unrecognizably that I felt like I was in a game of Operator. I’m not offended; just bemused, and I want to be responsible in reporting the phenomenon.

I admire those of you who take the time and energy to post really thorough theological statements. As PeaceBang, I am content to generate bits and pieces of provocative prose, and to appreciate the conversation it generates.

In the meantime, read this wonderful post by Fausto. It’s a perfect example of what I mean in the “Wow, I Thought I Knew Where He Was Coming From But I Guess I Was Making Assumptions!” Department:

http://socinian.blogspot.com/2006/06/in-or-out.html

Comments, We Get Comments!!

My Darling Powder Pigeons!

Let me say how wonderful it’s been to see the dozens upon dozens of comments on everything from LORD to fashion bloopers to tapas to the letter I got off-line from a recent seminary graduate who used the f-word several times in her emphatic response to my posting on God language. Whoo, girl! I hear you! Now cool down or you’ll never get through July!
I appreciate my colleague from the South who wrote to inform me that I have been misspelling “YA’LL!” It’s Y’ALL!” I think!
(Did I get that right, finally?)

Someone asked me what my favorite tapas was. Chalice Chick was my dinner date — she let me be the boy and order for both of us (Oh, stop. I KNOW it’s a vile gender stereotype; it just happens to be one that I particularly like) and she’ll have to add her 2 cents’ worth here. I loved the gooey manchego cheese and beef thing. I also loved the oysters. I loved the mojitos and the CUBAN FRIES and … everything. It was a fabulous, fabulous meal.

One more word about the LORD, you big huge bunch of brainiacs.
I forgot to tell you that one of my favorite expressions is “Lord have mercy.” It used to be kind of a hipster ironic thing I said, but it grew on me. I say it a lot now and I really mean it.

I was very touched by what Jamie wrote here:
http://wherewemeet.blogspot.com/2006/06/on-god-talk-band-wagon.html
in response to my saying that I hurt “almost all the time” in UU settings.

I want to say that I don’t hurt in my own church. Hardly ever. I think it’s actually fascinating that no matter how often I say that, people jump to that conclusion. I am left to conclude that my readers would rather keep assuming that I’m frustrated within my parish than to hear what I’m really saying out of my experience with UUs in seven states and dozens of congregations, eight General Assemblies and countless district gatherings. Someone said he thought it sounded like my congregation was “mostly supportive.” Not mostly, honey, 100%. I know I brag on my church too much, but there’s good reason.

I hurt because of the way we hear each other’s stories in the wider movement. I hurt because we’ve been encouraged, nay, trained, to hear someone’s deep truth and respond with our critical analysis of that truth rather than just with “thank you.”
I hurt not so much for me as for all of us: for the missed opportunities for ministry, for the intimacies that don’t occur, for the companionable silences we often don’t make space for, for the gracious receiving of someone else’s spiritual experience. Perhaps Small Group Ministries are fostering a better sense of hospitality among us. I hope so. But all too often, when one of us says, “I have found that I deeply believe in God” or “I have reached a transcendent state of peace,” UUs hearing them are likely to jump in with something like, “Oh. Well, here’s why I don’t believe in God” or “Here’s why your choice of language feels abusive to me” or “What’s transcendence and how can you be sure you’ve achieved it?” or “I don’t think human nature really lends itself to peace, but hey, best of luck with that.”

Where did we pick up these lousy habits??

Let’s take a look at sermon “talk-backs,” long popular among us:

A preacher deeply and prayerfully considers a topic, researches it, crafts it carefully so that it will minister to his people, and he gives it from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. What took him two weeks to think about, days to live with in his mind and twelve to fifteen hours to research and compose is heard in 20 minutes. Instead of receiving the sermon as a gift of the ministry, folks are led to believe they’re hearing a lecture to which they have every right to respond. Therefore, they listen to the sermon not in the spirit of reception and appreciation, but in a critical manner, taking notes on their programs and pouncing on weak points so they can highlight their deficiencies in the “talk-back” (what a hostile term in the first place!). Their off-the-cuff, immediate reactions to what was said (or their reactions to what they thought was said) are considered worthy enought to include within the worship service. Voila: the lifting up of unconsidered, immediate opinion as liturgically appropriate, i.e., deserving of congregational consideration within the sacred space of worship.

In the Puritan era, “talk-backs” followed a sermon that was based exclusively on the Scriptures. Therefore, talk-backs provided the people an opportunity to disagree or to gently challenge the minister on his or her interpretation of the Word. The difference between the Puritan and the contemporary talk-back is that, in the 17th century, while the pastor was meditating on the meaning of a biblical text within the context of his time and place, so were his church members meditating on the same text at the same time and place. In other words, reactions and opinions were grounded in common spiritual practices, learning and reflection.

I use this illustration to highlight how what was once a practice of mutual discernment degenerated to a free-form carnival of opinions, in an era where everyone is free to ground themselves in whatever religious truths they feel drawn to, and where everyone feels equally free to critique one another’s truths from the comfort of their own perspective. I don’t think there’s much health or care in this approach.

Yes, I do have some ideas for how this might be improved
I am a big fan of Bible study, book groups that focus on religious works that feature a variety of perspectives, and thematic, inter-generational religious education themes that an entire congregation can undertake over a year’s time together.
I believe that whoever touted Bible study as a great way to “survive” in the Bible belt, i.e., to gather spiritual ammunition of a sort against our ideological foes, is only partly right. I advocate studying the Bible because it’s epic and crazy and gorgeous and the cornerstone of tons of Western art and literature, and because it belongs to us as UUs, dagnabit.

Let me ask you all this:

I grew up UU, as you know, and as a young adult I became very interested in spiritual disciplines and practices that would actually transform my inner life in some significant way. My first successful attempt at spiritual discipline occurred for me in college, when I set about changing my heart and mind in order to win liberation from the demon Jealousy. It took me two years of arduous spiritual work, but I conquered that demon through a combination of psychological study, Christian prayer and Wiccan ritual. Out of the desperation of my miserable soul, I created this hodgepodge of spiritual aid. Were there Unitarian Universalist spiritual practices I should have known about?

What I’m wondering is, since I now undertake most of my spiritual discipline within a Christian context (with much support from Tibetan Buddhism and other sources), I would like to know what you consider UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST spiritual practice.

In other words, what are your specifically UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST spiritual practices that aren’t learned or borrowed directly from “other” traditions? Assuming that UUism isn’t just a happy smorgasboard of Everything (and I don’t think that it is), what spiritual practices and disciplines would you say are distinctly ours? Which UU practices and disciplines do you use?

Lord, Lord, Lord

Some of ya’ll asked me why I go around cheerfully using LORD language.

I wish I had a wonderful hand-out given me some years ago by my dear friend Scott Wells, which I believe was called “What Should We Do With the LORD?” It was a cool etymological breakdown of the term and I always thought it would make for good sermon fodder. I believe it’s tucked away at home in my “Sermon Fodder” folder number 167B, which is filed carefully on the floor of my office with folders 1-166. Drat.

For now, from the 20th floor of a condo building in beautiful Chicago, let me just say that I use the LORD because it’s bombastic and majestic, powerful and evocative. I love how in certain Bibles the word is always capitalized, so I always use caps, too. The word is a rough translation of the unspeakable name of HaShem (The Name), which we write in the Hebrew letters YHVH and say as “Yaweh” or sometimes “Jehovah.” We should always remember that for Jews, the Name was never spoken except by the high priest on the High Holy Days.

For those of us who adore Micah’s question, “What doth the LORD require of thee” and try to live by its answer (”do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God”) or who hold to their heart Jesus’ teaching to love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, “LORD” becomes a word we like to hear roll around in our mouths, rumble like thunder in our mortal bellies, and sound like drums in our heads.

“LORD” is an invocation. I use it as a UU because it is for me the most powerful, Charles Heston-ish name for the holy that the Western world has produced, and I’ll be god-damned if I let the Pat Robertsons of the world use it as a whipping rod against those you and I are called to love and to speak up for, least of all ourselves.

My tradition — the Unitarian and the Universalist ones, that is - boldy claim that the LORD is a mighty advocate for the poor, a shepherd who wants to make of the warring human nations one people, and a lover who calls us to intimate and even erotic relationship with this world. The LORD makes demands and will not be mocked.

I don’t have a personal God in the way that all this LORD stuff would suggest, but I certainly do believe in some impersonal force of moral imperative, by whatever name. I have said many times and in many places that my own sense of what God might be wavers and changes and gets lost on many days. I turn, on those days and on every other day, to Jesus’ understanding of the nature of God, and when I can’t figure it out, I go by my teacher. Since he uses LORD language, it works for me too.

Of course there was a time when the mere term “God” or “Lord” gave me the hives, almost literally.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

We got all kinds of HOT in the recent post about including “God” (word and concept), with 29 comments posted.
I think you might like to read them, and travel over to some of the links folks recommended to hear more people expound on the subject.
Miss Kitty, for instance, has some nice reflections on her own blog about 40 years as a UU. I know that CK writes amazing stuff over at her blog (click the link on her name), and she also helpfully referred us over to an older posting at Free and Responsible Search.

I’ve closed the comments on that posting and invite bloggers who are fired up and discussing the God Conversation (not debate! not debate!) at their own sites to link here.

In conclusion, I would like to add that while I have heard probably thousands of testimonials from UUs who were invited to share why they left their former religion, and to speak with great passion about how they feel saved by UUism, I have always known that it would be a very bad idea to speak, in those same gatherings, about the saving power of Christ Jesus in my life as a UU.

I’m grateful for the UU Christian Fellowship today, thinking that if it wasn’t for them and their spiritual support and friendship, their humor and patience and kindness, I would probably be totally unchurched today, having given up on the UUs and having had no other home to go to.

Also, as a clarification, I want to add that while I am careful to invoke the holy in myriad ways in my own parish ministry (in preaching and pastoral care), it is not from anxiety or “not being allowed” to use Christian language. My own congregation is comprised of mature UUs who are genuinely theologically pluralistic. Very few of them are nervously rejecting of traditional language and ideas — they just aren’t ministered to by them, and so I employ a wide variety of images, metaphors and messages in an effort to nurture their spirits. This is mostly a joyful challenge and only occasionally a terrible burden. Readers of this blog should not assume that my comments about UUism are a commentary on my own congregation, which is my favorite church in the world, and a people who have made me a better Christian and a better human being.

I Just Felt I Had To Say This

For those of you following the comment thread between me and CK, I would just like to inform you that she is so much cuter and younger in person than in her photo that it’s really wrong to let you go on believing that she’s a very seriously intimidating middle-aged woman scratching her chin.

In real life she is a totally cute, fresh-faced, wide blue-eyed young pup, who isn’t intimidating at all until you realize how freakily brainy she is. She also has an extremely cute girlfriend and we here in the Boston area would like to put in a vote that they move here.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Including "God"

CK asked me in the last comment section why I hoped for a return of “God” to our Sources.

Good question.

When we assiduously avoid the word “God” in our Principles, our Sources, pulpits and in our religious education offerings (except to include God as A Concept That Some People Believe In But We Don’t, Not Really), we invite both seekers and adherents of Unitarian Universalism to make the following assumptions:

1. This is a fellowship of atheists. (It’s not)

2. If my spirituality involves praying to God and praising God in a traditional manner bequeathed me by my Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Unitarian Universalist background, I am not really going to be welcome here. I will not be supported in my spiritual growth unless that growth travels along a trajectory of “getting over” my faith in a personal God.

3. UUs proudly wear “Famous UUs” t-shirts and claim every Unitarian and Universalist forebear they can drag out of the cemeteries, but staunchly refuse to proclaim the name of the One those same ancestors invoked and relied on when doing all their admirable, redeeming work. Therefore, UUs must be hypocrites or just in really serious denial.

4. These people claim to respect “the best” of a Judeo-Christian heritage, yet steadfastly ignore the great gift of the Jews, which is monotheism. According to the Unitarian Universalists the great gift of Judaism is intellectualism and bagels.

5. Unitarian Universalists must all be so wounded by an abusive Theistic past (or by the grossly offensive theistic strains in American and global culture) that they all agree on the necessity of expunging “God” from their lives and replacing it with vague, poetic metaphors that will offend no one.

6. Unitarian Universalists are so theologically uneducated that they actually believe that all Theistic concepts are firmly grounded in a medieval mentality.

7. Unitarian Universalists, obviously having such a damaging view of God that they cannot invoke God in any of their worship or associational materials, must have completely abandoned their Universalist heritage, which claims the unconquerable, everlasting love of God.

Overheard at GA

Philocrites, regarding his nice big glass of fresh o.j. at brunch:

“Eight oranges gave their lives for this.”

After being asked if he wanted a second glass:

“I guess not. I feel a little guilty getting into the second harvest.”

The Seven UU Principles

Mr. Crankypants has re-worked the Seven Principles. I think they’re great, if too verbose:

http://www.danielharper.org/blog/?p=517

What about the Sources, Mr. Crankypants? Are we at the point yet where we can refer to “that transcending source of mystery and wonder affirmed in every culture, bla bla bla” as GOD??

Probably not.

Mirasol, St. Louis

Don’t think, by the way, that I won’t be posting photos from our wonderful blogger’s dinner of Friday night.

I will do so as soon as I get home.

For now, I will just say that Mirasol in St. Louis is a fantastic tapas restaurant.

Final bill: $732.45