PeaceBang

PB in P’Town

PeaceBang is on vacation in Provincetown this week.

She is reading three wonderful books:

A Long Obedience In the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson
and
Julie and Julia (about a woman who cooks her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking)
and
an anthology on writers and depression.

She is praying the Anglican rosary.
She is plotting sermons.
And sleeping late.
And laughing with friends.

She wishes you love and God’s strength and wisdom as you prepare for the rigors of autumn.

Peace.
Bang/

BrotherBang’s Birthday Reflections

Just about thirty-seven years ago, I was playing paper dolls over at the Infertia’s house when the car pulled in the driveway. I ran through the hedges (I remember getting stuck on a pricker) and up into the house.

Mommy was home from the hospital! She was home!

My Baba had a bundle in her arms, and I slowed down from skidding into the room and quietly approached. I totally remember this. I was 3 1/2 years old.
Baba knelt down and showed me what was in the bundle.

It was a tiny person with a red face. I looked and looked at it, and went deaf to everything around me. Something happened and I was aware of love for the first time. I didn’t so much see that little baby’s face as I just felt the essence of that little baby. I very simply knew I loved him and that my job was to protect him.

Soon after that he became the cutest baby the world has ever known, and this was an important factor in his not getting killed for making doo-doo art all over the walls of his nursery. There was something about those damp curls, pink chubby cheeks and those enormous, mischievous chocolate chip eyes that made you decide you probably shouldn’t kill him just yet. Maybe tomorrow.

One morning I wanted to play with him but he was trapped in his crib, so I very carefully pulled the crib down by the slats until it touched the floor. I scooped my baby onto the floor and played with him there until one of my parents found us like that and started making noises like a fire alarm, all about how I could have killed us both, etc. etc. etc. They both ran around like headless chickens, wailing away. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I knew I would never drop that crib. The baby was unperturbed. I don’t remember him crying much at all, actually.

That cute baby grew up to be my bratty little brother and then into a kid and into a young man and then a man and although I was never able to protect him from anything, I never stopped loving him. Eventually he participated in the creation of two more adorable boy children who have their own damp curls and naughty eyes (and doody dipes), and they made an Auntie out of me, which was just what I have always wanted.

It’s his birthday on August 20th and I’ll be on the Cape. In true family fashion, his card and present will be late, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my Chimp.

Meet My Little Cow!

Calf-in-Straw
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I would like to announce the birth of my cow at 11:22 p.m. on Friday, August 18th. It does not have a name. It weighs in at 17 pages.

I love my cow.

The Cow

Remember the cow?

The cow is officially birthed!!

I am in the finishing stages of editing and I only have to put together the bibliography.

It was a painful paper to write, which is why it took so long.

It moved me to a final assessment of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s contribution to Unitarianism as a fatal blow to the 19th century religion that I know and love through Channing, Ware and Clarke.
I had known this for a long time, but it wasn’t until I studied it deeply this summer that I could see that RWE’s total failure to develop a doctrine of the church along with his doctrine of the self would eventually kill classical Unitarianism. It’s not his fault; he resonated with a lot of people and they beatified him and became Emersonians who called themselves Unitarians. They became the majority among us.
Unitarians were devoted to disciplined self-culture. Emerson, by the time of his 1838 “Human Culture” lectures, had given up the idea of discipline as the means to moral progress.

It’s too complex to go into here, but I’ve learned two things:

1. My blogging is very much like RWE’s journaling. I do it every day to talk to myself, but I’m lucky in that I have you out there to talk back, and he didn’t have that.
2. I believe in my claim that, in the most recent iteration of the UU Principles, with their failure to refer in any way to a transcendent Source of love, their failur to mention love at all, and their entirely humanistic, horizontal orientation, classical Unitarianism literally, officially and irretrievably flat-lined in the 1980s.

There’s a LOT more to say, and I will be happy to share my paper with those who want to see it. I think I will be, anyway.

Latest Culinary Obsession

Macarico Piri Piri hot sauce.

I can’t believe this stuff is available on Amazon.com!!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006GRHEK/qid=1155947020/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-8728660-3660134?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=3580501&s=gourmet-food&v=glance

It’s from the gods.

Feeling Dead

I feel a little bit weird when people tell me that they heard my work used as a reading in church. Quoting me in a sermon is one thing, but using my words as a reading kind of creeps me out. What, you can’t find some Scripture or something? You can’t find something with more gravitas and eternal resonance? Some classic, perhaps?
Some broad who’s alive and well and living in Massachusetts just hasn’t stood the test of time, in my opinion. Bring back the classics. The people need to hear them.

This goes back to our earlier discussion(s) about how Unitarian Universalists put just about anything in a worship service where Scripture used to be.

I just googled myself (which you should do occasionally to see what mischief might pop up), and I see that a pagan congregation in Texas used one of my sermons in its entirety as the basis of one of their recent worship services.

I’m a little miffed by that.
Shouldn’t someone at least have tried to get in touch with me as a courtesy to let me know that they were going to be reading my sermon?
Am I supposed to feel flattered? I mean, I am, but somehow I’m flattered and miffed.

A sermon lives in a particular context; that is, ministry to a particular congregation. If you’re going to take my sermon out of context and deliver it wholesale to your own congregation, I’d like to know why, and what setting you’re going to put it in. Also, this sermon is intensely personal. What makes you feel you have the right to deliver it in your own voice? I don’t think I like that.

I suppose a sermon is public — this one won an award a few years ago so it’s more public than usual — but I just don’t feel good about this. It makes me feel like a dead person, for one, and it also seems like bad manners. If the author is alive, why wouldn’t you at least contact her to tell her what you’re doing, and to at least THANK HER for the use of her work? If we are in a covenanted relationship as members of member congregations of the UUA, aren’t we supposed to have a better relationship than you just using my stuff and me finding out about it on Google?

From the looks of the congregation’s website, this was an entirely lay-led thing. At least it wasn’t someone getting paid to guest preach and then using my sermon. That would be really bad news.

Is this just about courtesy, or is it about something else? Intellectual property, perhaps? Emotional property?

PeaceBang in P’Town

When we were little kids, we took a family vacation to the Cape. It must have been around 1977.
This trip was famous in my little world for two reasons.
First, my sister sang “No Other Love Like Mine” in her sleep in a Chatham hotel room (including the piano “da da da daaa” between “you’ll never find” and “another love like mine”) and gave me one of the best laughs of my life. She was 12 or 13.

Second, my parents took us to Provincetown for lunch. Here’s how I remember it. After we parked the car on some sandy outlying street, my father turned around to give the three of us a little talking-to that went something like this:

“Now listen to me. We are going to a get out of the car and go have lunch here, and you are to behave yourselves. This is a very different kind of place, and the people here are different than you’re used to. You are not to stare, to giggle, or to make any comments, do you understand?”

We sat like three little owls.

“People come to this town to be themselves. This is their special place and we are the visitors. If I hear so much as one snicker from you, we are coming right back to this car, period, end of report. Is that understood?”

We looked at my mom. She made a little nod of agreement with Dad.
Whoa. We had NO idea what was going on.

After promising to be on our very best behavior, we cautiously slid out of the Oldsmobile. We walked along very softly and carefully, like we were hunting wabbits.

Within probably a block or two, we saw two tanned, slim, oiled up Speedo gents walking along with their arms wrapped around each other. Then we saw some more. We saw women in overalls, kissing. We were very well-behaved little owls and I don’t remember the lunch but I’m sure it was tasty.

The thing is, my Dad was perfectly comfortable making a limp wrist on occasion and calling someone else “Bruce” in a lisping voice as a joke. He didn’t do this a lot, but he did it. He also, though, tenderly sat me down when I was 14 years old and had a terribly painful crush on Chris Kondub (who was playing the Emcee in our production of “Cabaret” and was a wickedly talented 19 year old) and explained to me that Chris wasn’t ever going to like me “that way.” He explained to me that a lot of the guys I was going to have crushes on in the theatre just didn’t like girls, and there was nothing I could do about it. And he grieved for me. His Daddy-sweetness about that particular issue got me through a lot of subsequent terrible crushes on gay men. His general term for boys who didn’t return my affection was “loser” or “schmuck,” but for the gay boys, never. It was just, “Oh honey, don’t break your heart on him. It’s not going to happen.”

My mother, of course, has always been 100% down with the homosexuals.

So I’m going off to spend a week in Gay Mecca, and as I drive into town, I will certainly remember Carl D. and the infamous talking-to of 1977. Many of the Speedo gents of that era are long gone, bless their souls, as is DaddyBang. I wish he had lived to know that his daughter performs gay weddings and advocates for civil rights for gays. I could trace it all back to that moment in the car. And he’d probably say, “Honey, that’s great. But you’re not still getting crushes on them, are you?”

No, Dad. I’m not. Although you should know that they’ve been the most loyal, affectionate, supportive and loving men in my life, all my life since you’ve been gone.

Disturbing Double Faced Cat!

How could this BE?
How can a cat have TWO FACES!??

I am going to have nightmares about this tonight.

http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060721/NEWS/607210688/1116

Get a closer look here at http://www.planetdan.net/blog/2006/07/oh-dear.htm

[Blame your heebie jeebies on Planet Dan and on the fact that it’s 2:21 a.m. and I’ve been rearranging my study bookshelves for too long]

Favorite Podcasts?

So what are your favorite podcasts?

I download Ebert and Roper movie reviews, the NY Times front page, ABC News Daily Dish, American Experience, a wonderful little show called “Hidden Kitchens” (always totally spellbinding), a second favorite cook show called “The Splendid Table,” American RadioWorks (great audio documentaries), APM Speaking of Faith, Bon Appetit Audio Podcast, Coverville, New York Times Restaurant Revies with Frank Bruni, NPR Books, NPR Food, NPR Movies, NPR The Diane Rehm Show, Open Source, Piano Jazz Shorts, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, and Steve’s Ten Dollar Wine Challenge.

What can you tell about me from this list?

That I’m a music and movie-loving, religious foodie with an interest in politics and American history and culture?

Sounds about right.

more on "Vague Buddhism"

Joel Monka on the “Vague Buddhism” discussion:

http://cuumbaya.blogspot.com/2006/08/vague-buddhism.html

Which makes me wonder, is UUism just a “generic religion” for unchurched folks who want something spiritual but not specific for their kids?