PeaceBang

Mary Oliver’s Thirst

Thirst
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Can you believe that I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister who loves the poetry of Mary Oliver?
Why, that’s about as shocking as being a gay man who loves the music of Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand!!

I know, I know — it’s a cliche, but I discovered Mary Oliver before I even went to seminary courtesy of my dear friend, the poet Sophie Wadsworth. My first Oliver was American Primitive, and it’s still one of my favorite favorites.

I was a bit sick at heart, then, when I found myself unmoved by Oliver’s last two or three offerings. They seemed to me so derivative that it was as though they were penned not by Mary Oliver but by some cheap imitation of her.

Imagine my great delight and appreciation when I picked up Thirst and found myself brought to that still, deep, breathless place she first brought me in American Primitive.

This is a wonderful collection of 43 poems, many of which deal with the subject of death (Oliver recently lost her partner of over 40 years, Molly Malone Cook) and faith.

Eat it up. Yum, yum. Published by our own Beacon Press, so get your copy directly from them here http://www.beacon.org/index.cfm

By the way, did you know that JOHN WATERS (yes, *that* John Waters) was a close friend of Oliver and Malone Cook?

Festival of Homiletics

OH MAN, I am jubilant!
I registered to attend the Festival of Homiletics in Nashville from May 21-25th and even though I’m teaching later that month, I just HAD to go.

Listen to the names of some of the people I’ll be hearing preach and lecture:

Barbara Brown Taylor
Fred Craddock
Jim Wallis
James Forbes
Walter Brueggemann
William Willimon
Anna Carter Florence

Can you STAND it?

The theme is Prophetic Preaching with an emphasis on MUSIC — traditional, blended, gospel and jazz worship.

I got this in the mail and I did a little wiggly dance of wanting to register so badly and the Chair of my Worship Committee was in the office at the time and saw me getting all wild and she just laughed and said, “Go!” So I’m going.

I must have become a terrible nerd to be so excited to sit around all day and listen to lectures and sermons on homiletics, but the thing is, I love preaching a lot and I want to be good at it, and I only took one little preaching class in seminary and I’m sorry but that’s JUST NOT SUFFICIENT.

Honestly, I just looked at the brochure again and now I’ll be up all night, wired with anticipation. I need to calm down.

Do You Knit?

I was asked to bless about 150 baby caps knit by four women in my congregation as part of the Caps to the Capital project of Save the Chidren.

http://www.savethechildren.org/campaigns/caps-to-the-capital/malawi-and-bangladesh.html

How am I going to keep from crying? Did you see that photo of that tiny baby?

Saddam Is Dead

Saddam
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Prez Bush said that the execution of Saddam was “bringing him to justice.”

How does that work, exactly, in Bush’s Christian scheme of things?

Would it not be more accurate to say, “Saddam needed to be wacked because he was a super-dangerous sociopath with lots and lots of power. It’s not the Christian thing to do, but I’m the leader of the most powerful nation on earth with major economic and military interests in Iraq, and it works for me. How it winds up affecting the Iraq situation, I can’t say and frankly, I don’t much care.”

I suppose that’s way too much to hope for. Just like it was too much to hope that the recent confab on Iraq that took place at Bush’s Crawford, TX ranch wouldn’t be described as “NON-DECISIONAL.”

Did Saddam deserve to die? Legally, yes. He got a fair trial, he was sentenced, the sentence was carried out. Is capital punishment ever justified? I’m still struggling with it. Some entire years I say, “NO.” Other years, like this one, I don’t know why I was ever so passionately against it. When the BTK story broke a few years ago, I swore I could have strangled him myself, and gladly. Actually, in my fantasy scenario he was set upon by enraged people with shovels and then left tied on a leash to a stake in an empty, extremely remote field to bleed to death or to die of hunger or thirst. Not that I got too specific about it or anything. I just feel that the human community has every right to fight against evil incarnate when it is unleashed among them. Jesus and I argue about this a lot.

I’m preaching a series on the Ten Commandments this year. I suppose this story will come up when I hit “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

[This just in on Dec. 31st from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/world/31world.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Kind of late to be respecting Iraq as a sovereign nation, eh, Margaret Beckett? — P.B.]

Blogging For Two Years

two years old
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

PeaceBang turns two years old today or tomorrow.

It all began when I had dinner with my pals, two of whom were expecting their first child any minute. She (my preganant pal) told me that they had a blog for the baby and that I would be able to see photos on the blog.

I wanted to know what a blog was. I was vaguely aware that my friends Chris (Philocrites) and Scott (Boy In the Bands) had blogs, but those both seemed very high-tech and fancy, and I was intrigued by the fact that Rebecca had apparently started one so easily. She said it was easy as pie to get on Blogspot.com and start my own. She said I should do it.
So if you love PeaceBang, you can thank Rebecca. If you hate PeaceBang, you can BLAME Rebecca!!

Steve — another friend along that night — and I stood in line to get ice cream later that evening. He had stiffed me on a dinner date earlier in the summer, and I was holding a grudge. So as the clerk took our orders, I gestured to him and said, “He’s paying.”

It was kind of loud in the ice cream store.

He looked at me with a happy smile and said, “PeaceBang!”

I stared back at him, and then at the clerk. “HE’S paying,” I said again. She turned to scoop the ice cream. Again Steve looked at me and said with a grin, “PEACEBANG!”

I thought he had lost his marbles, poor boy. “What in the HAY-ELL are you talking about?” I said. “Do you not understand me? HE’S. PAYING. HE. IS. PAYING. What in the world is PeaceBang, anyway?”

“That’s what I thought you were saying!” he said. “I thought it was something you say like before you clink glasses! ‘PeaceBang!’ Like ‘cheers!’”

“Oh my God,” I said, and we collapsed in giggles. He paid for my ice cream cone and I spent the rest of the night cracking up over his crazy PeaceBang notion.

When I went home and sat in front of the blank Blogspot template and had to choose a name, many options flitted in and out of my mind, but only one produced a total “AH HA” reaction: PeaceBang. It was perfect. It was, as they say, b’rsheit, meant to be.

I always knew that PeaceBang would be both the same and a distinct persona from my “real life” self (whoever that is!), but I had no idea what a joy it would be to put her out over the airwaves, as it were, and to enter into such a rich and intense conversation with all of you as PB. Because PeaceBang has so much to say, she encourages me to attend to the world with more mindfulness, and to articulate things I had heretofore left floating vaguely around my cerebrum.

Why do I blog? What draws me to zip onto Blogspot so often and to share my thoughts with you?

I blog because I am a compulsive writer and talker, and blogging ministers to my verbally manic mind and soul (and spares those I love the excesses of my thought process).

I blog to participate in the community of bloggers who inspire, irritate and challenge each other.

I blog as an excercise in Unitarian Universalist and Christian evangelism, and as a way to share my passion for ministry and for religious life lived in community.

I blog because I live alone and I get lonesome for someone to talk to, and when I do, you’re always there.

I blog as a way to connect people who are spinning around on the big blue marble thinking similar or complementary thoughts, so that we may feel a bit less alone or eccentric in our musings.

I blog as a way to create conversation between myself and others, and between me, myself and I. I have come to see the value in cyber community in a very busy world.

I blog because it brings a new dimension to friendships that I cherish, and helps create new ones.

Thanks to Rebecca for being the midwife to this blog, and to all of you for being part of this pioneering experiment in communication and community.

Children and Adults Making Music

There are many things about the holiday services at my church that touch my heart, but one thing in particular really got to me this year: intergenerational musical moments.

During our Children’s Holiday Service (where each Sunday School class shares — in a thematic holiday-oriented way — what they’ve been studying), we had an anthem with a small children’s choir. Pretty standard stuff, but what wasn’t standard was the four adult choir members standing behind the children, singing a soft counterpoint to their melody. They learned the piece together, they rehearsed it together. Therefore, we were spared that whole “LOOK AT THE KIDDIES AREN’T THEY CUTE” situation that so often occurs when children perform music in a worship setting. I thought it was breathtakingly tender and beautiful. Just kids and grownups sharing their music with an appreciative congregation.

At Christmas Eve, we had two very young men (one in college and one right out) provide our prelude and postlude music on piano and saxaphone. These are both children of our church who have done this for both of our services for two years now, and they’ve also given a concert together at our Center for the Arts. They’re terrific. We love them, and they love being there. It didn’t occur to me until two nights ago, watching them, that their jazzy take on the Christmas classics adds a bit of contemporary pizzazz to our extremely historic New England traditional Christmas Eve service. I was like, hey, we’re kinda cool, man!
And boy, I wish you could have all heard “Ave Maria” played on the alto sax in our quiet, candlelit church as people walked out into the night. You’d think it was kind of sacreligious, but it was like a lullaby right from God for all Her babies.

At the end of our 5 pm service, we had four kindergarten and toddler boys playing the handbells to accompany “Silent Night.” I hadn’t known that this was planned, and watching their expressions of rapt attention as they played will be forever branded in my memory. The tykes were able to hit every bell perfectly on cue because standing behind each of them was their mother or grandmother, gently tapping them on the shoulder when their time came. Again, adults and children making music. No exploitation of cuteness for the benefit of cooing elders, as makes me so uncomfortable when I’ve seen it done in churches. Just people who love music making music together. They were conducted by our Music Director’s 17 year old son.

I’m not saying that the cuteness factor wasn’t extremely high, but the thing is, EVERYONE was cute. The mothers and grandmothers and the teenaged conductor were cute, not just the children. It made you realize that all God’s children are just really cute when they’re making music together. And that on Christmas Eve, we’re all children.

Merry Christmas, Friends

christmas morning
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Down Came An Angel

Down Came An Angel
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

This CD features pianist Jacqueline Schwab playing a beautiful variety of Christmas and holiday tunes, including the enigmatic “Cheery Tree Carol,” wherein Mary asks Joseph to pick her some cherries, and he replies, “Let the father of your BABY get you some cherries” and she goes, “Whoa, that was so rude — I totally TOLD you that I am bearing God’s own child” and the cherry trees bend down their branches and give her lots of fruit and she goes, “Ha ha, Joseph. In your face.”

It’s not exactly like that, but pretty close. Of course, this being the piano version you won’t hear those lyrics, but I just learned them from Sweet the Sound because we sing it at our Christmas gigs.

Anyway, the double bonus about buying this lovely recording is that Jacqueline is married to Unitarian Universalist minister, so there’s a family connection there for UUs.

It’s available on Amazon.com at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Came-Angel-Henry-Hopkins/dp/B00000JLL0

New Book On Radical Welcome

I just had the pleasure of flipping through the new book by Stephanie Spellers called Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other and the Spirit of Transformation:

http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Stephanie_Spellers.html

Stephanie is an Episcopal priest who has written about flinging open the doors of our hearts and our churches the way God would have us do, and why we don’t always manage that in our various denominations (you may now nominate me for Understatement of the Year), and how we can get down and grapple with that. It’s very well-written, well-organized and visually pleasing, making for what I anticipate will be an important resource for lay and ordained church leadership.

I haven’t read it carefully yet, but from first glance I think I can safely say that this is a book that lays out a loving challenge. This is a book you have to be ready for, or it will gnaw at your conscience. This is a book that could be your next dog-eared favorite, and help you set forth a vision for the next decade of your congregation’s leadership.

I remember when Steph was working on this book a few summers ago and I would get a call from her and she’d be in Seattle doing research and I’d get another call from her and I’d think she was home, but she’d be in Minneapolis doing research, and then Washington, DC, and then God-knows-where. This is by way of telling you that this isn’t the work of some armchair philosopher waxing rhapsodic about What Could Be, but the vision of a devoted religious leader and serious researcher who moved her body all over this country in order to learn firsthand how radically welcoming churches got that way.

Stephanie, mazel tov on this new baby. I’m right proud of you, rock star. My suggestion for your next big project: Have more fun in 2007!

Oh, Those Politcally Correct Snowflake Stamps!

I went to get stamps at the post office yesterday and was happy to see that they had little snowflake-designed ones that match my Christmas letter paper.

After I purchased two books and paused to put stamps on my cards, a man turned to the woman next to him and said, “Politically correct Christmas stamps.” He said it nicely, if ruefully.

She said, “I kind of like them, because you can use them after Christmas.”
“Yea, that’s true,” he responded.

And I wanted to say, “I don’t think it’s politcally correct for the United States Postal Service to account for the fact that we live in the most religiously pluralistic nation on earth.”

I really, really hate this. I hate how some people say “MERRY CHRISTMAS” in a hostile, forced tone like, “YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME SAY ‘HAPPY HOLIDAYS’ NO MATTER WHAT,” and I hate that things have gotten so bad that some guy actually thinks that snowflakes are politically correct.