PeaceBang

A Lenten Morality Tale, Played On Piano

This strikes me as a particularly Lenten scandal:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/02/27/cherished_music_wasnt_hers/

It’s not about money, it’s not about sex.

It’s about the deep human desire for beauty and transcendence through art.
It’s about the mystery of creative talent and the sin of trying to steal someone else’s when you feel you haven’t got enough of your own.
It’s about how love mixed with ego can lead us to violate our own integrity.
It’s about denial.

I can already see the movie version starring Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench.

Brief Oscar Dreams

Remember when Adrien Brody won the Oscar for Best Actor a few years ago for “The Piano?” And when he got to the stage he grabbed presenter Halle Berry and swept her into this amazingly inappropriate back-breaking, long kiss?

When Jennifer Hudson won last night for Best Supporting Actress, I thought it would have been great if she had done the same thing to presenter George Clooney. That would have been the best moment ever in Oscar History.

I think it was the most boring Oscars ever.

Don’t Doubt The Dance

Well, bless their hearts.

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/02/24/theyre_dancing_in_the_street/

Lenten Hiatus

Hola, amigos,

Given all the attention that Beauty Tips For Ministers is getting these days, I will be taking a little break from this blog.

If anything totally inspiring comes to mind, I’ll be sure to share it.

I’m off to church for a midday service to get smeared on the forehead and reminded that I’m mortal but that I get to spend my eternity with God.
It’s one of my favorite holy days.

Peace.Bang.

Coming Out As PeaceBang

I suppose once you’ve made the cover of the Sunday paper as a blogger, your anonymity is pretty much totally over:

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/fashion/articles/2007/02/18/preaching_fashion/

Now, I know that the vast majority of you who read this blog know who I am.
That’s fine and that has always been fine.
Since I began this blog well over two years ago, I have always been happy to tell any curious person who I am.

So why do I continue to write anonymously?

Three reasons:

1. PeaceBang is a kind of alter ego for me; a creative outlet as a writer. Certainly at Beauty Tips for Ministers, I write in a “voice” that is a far exaggerated, much more irreverent and silly one than my own. The purpose there is to keep the writing entertaining and over-the-top as a way in to what could be a deadly dull and earnest conversation.

2. Keeping my identifying information off of this blog makes very clear to my readers that I am blogging as myself, not as a part of my parish ministry. PeaceBang offers far more partisan and trenchant commentary on pop culture, politics and society than I tend to bring to my parish ministry work, and certainly to my preaching ministry in the parish. Blogging anonymously assures that no one mistakes PeaceBang’s opinions with her specific church.

3. When I started blogging, I looked around to see how other clergy did it. Most of them blogged under nom-de-plumes, and most without offering identifying information, so I followed that model.

Have a beautiful day, PeaceBangers.

This Is the Day The Lord Hath Made

You must realize that I have a personal affection for Psalm 118 that comes from the fact that my church choir sang its lyrics at my candidating Sunday and again at my Installation.

This is the day the LORD hath made
Let us rejoice and be glad!!

So I was perhaps more deflated than usual to read of one Unitarian Universalist minister’s translation of the psalm as,

This is the day we are given,
let us rejoice…

My problem is linguistic and theological. There is such vibrancy in the Biblical psalm! To switch from the majesty of “This is the day the LORD hath made” to the passive voice of “this is the day we are given” just kills the poetry for me. As a friend and I were discussing yesterday, the pale language of “we are given” puts me in mind of a weary drive-through attendant at McDonald’s: “Hey lady, here’s your quarter pounder with cheese, and your fries. And here’s a day.”

There’s a good conversation about this small detail of the Rev. Galen Guengerich’s article in the latest UU World –proposing gratitude as the theological center of Unitarian Universalism –here at Philocrites:
http://www.philocrites.com/archives/003420.html#allcomments

I’m looking forward to reading the entire article. Despite my small quibble with the issue of the psalm, it’s always good to have a theological conversation. Does gratitude feel like the theological center of Unitarian Universalism to you? Would you like to see us work on that? Is gratitude at the center of your personal spiritual life or practice? Would you like it to be?

The conversation at Philocrites left me thinking about other things that I think just don’t work in a non-theistic translation. One is a healing service, which I’d like to do at my church for Lent. The only healing services I’ve ever been part of were centered around the idea that God loves us and that Jesus offers healing to all who ask for it. I am wondering how Unitarian Universalists do healing services in a non-theistic way. Do you have any stories of such services, and would you be willing to share liturgies?

The Rev. Parisa Parsa On UUism and Ministry

As someone who freezes in terror whenever a microphone or camera is pointed at her, I am beside myself with admiration over this interview on a local cable channel featuring Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Parisa Parsa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmT9eRyZUzM

She speaks comfortably and with great poise and intelligence about ministry and about Unitarian Universalism.

Seminarians, watch and learn. Heck, experienced ministers, we can all get something from this!

Friday Dog Blogging

dords snow
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

And in the interest of inter-species harmony and fairness, I must add a Friday Dog Blog to the mix.

This is my nephew, Gordon, who lives with SisterBang in Connecticut.

This photo makes me cry. It’s the tenderest thing I ever saw. Our beloved old gentleman with his white face against the white snow.

Dogs are the most special beings.

Friday Cat Blogging

Annie
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

This isn’t my cat, but it’s a very adorable cat. PeaceBangers, meet Annie. She was apparently on her way outside but never made it, choosing to crash by the warm stove instead.

She’s no dummy! Have you SEEN it out there? All kinds of ice! She has to have The Warm Paws!

UU Carnival: More Entries And More Thoughts

Folks, there have been some more bloggers weighing in on the James Luther Adam quote that was the focus of this month’s Carnival.

Here, Earthbound Spirit muses about the accusation of atheism being thrown at all kinds of reformers and infidels through the ages:
http://earthbound-spirit.blogspot.com/2007/02/uu-carnival-is-atheism-non-belief.html

The original conversation is here:

http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2007/02/uu-carnival-prophetic-atheists.html

If anyone else has been writing on this topic and would like to be included, let me know.

For myself, I’m having a hard time finding Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion — it’s not at the Andover-Newton library and my local library has a hold list a mile long — and I find that I really don’t want to spend $28 of my professional expenses on it. I’ve promised to address it in my Feb. 25 sermon, though, so I need to get my hands on a copy.

Someone in my congregation sent me a great article by John Shelby Spong called “Human Definitions of God Need Revision.” One of my favorite quotes from Spong’s article says, “I believe that atheism as a challenge to organized religion has a worthy vocation to fulfill. The real atheists are saying that the God they have encountered inside the life of the church is too small and too compromised to be God for their lives. If the church is dedicated to such an unbelievable, magical and miracle-working deity that it cannot admit to any genuine probing of the divine, then the atheist speaks a powerful truth.”

This quote makes me think that in the Unitarian Universalist context, where we clearly have the “genuine probing of the divine” part down, we need to get a lot better at finding a theos we can affirm. When people walk through the doors of our churches, they are so often relieved at being freed from the Big Daddy Wonderworker in the Sky concept of divinity that they rest in that relief forever after, and build a faith based on the rejection of the faith claims made by other religious traditions.

We UUs have become so enamored of the motto that we are “non-creedal, non-dogmatic and non-doctrinal” that we have failed to realize that we need doctrine if we are to effectively communicate a soul-fulfilling, prophetic and affirming faith to seekers. There is nothing wrong with doctrine: the Universalists crafted powerful doctrine and converted many Christians to their theological understanding. They were not great institutionalists, but they made a tremendous impact on the faith lives of Americans and the theology preached in the mainline Protestant church.

I believe that we have milked all that we can out of pure atheism and have been enthralled by its presumed exoticism as a theological position for too long. Is atheism radical any more? Not if you’re a Unitarian Universalist. We’ve had publicly atheistic ministers for longer than we’ve had female ministers!

Yes, it seems radical that so many of UUs are atheists. But only if you keep comparing us to conservative churches, which I don’t. I would like to stop treating atheists as some exotic species among us — some “problem” that needs special care and kid gloves. Atheists come to church for the same reason any believing person come to any house of worship: to be nurtured in love, compassion and prophetic challenge, to be part of a community, to express reverence, and to grow as a human being. If any atheist in a UU community doesn’t want to grow, doesn’t want to authentically worship, and doesn’t want to cultivate reverence, he or she is no different than the similarly dysfunctional theist or self-proclaimed mystic or Buddhist who also refuses to do those things.

I’ve had the dubious honor of watching Christians choke the life out of the worship life of their church by arguing about language and harrassing the poor choir master over choices of anthems. I’ve known theistic Jews who picked apart their rabbi’s sermon with an acid pen and spared no insult in their parsing of his or her unacceptable theology. I’ve seen Goddess-worshiping pagans start hate campaigns against church leaders and ministers whose worship style did not fulfill their spiritual vision or meet their personal needs. Anyone in the religion biz has heard these stories, yet it seems to me that when the perpetrators of this kind of dysfunction are atheists, there is a special kind of scandal associated with them, as in “Those nasty atheists — who shouldn’t even be here, ’cause you can never make an ATHEIST happy in the church! — started this terrible problem!!”

Let’s consider this: no one who behaves in a consistently vile and unchecked manner in a religious community should “even be here.” Also: it may be interesting to consider that Unitarian Universalist history conclusively proves that many atheists apparently have been made happy in their churches, as they have stayed there for many good years and been grieved in them at their death.

There are atheists in all kinds of religious communities all over the world, where they have decided to abide both with the integrity of their convictions and with the God affirmed there. In the end, are the finer points of our various theological beliefs or spiritual practices what anyone remembers or cherishes about us in our religious communities? No. It is our service to others and to the institution, our generosity of spirit and kindness, our gifts and our talents, our sharing of self and our wisdom, that are remembered.
Faith is a beautiful thing. We have all known someone whose faith in God animated them and made them a shining presence among us. But we have probably also known someone whose absolute certainty in the non-existence of God animated and inspired them. We haven’t expected spiritually vibrant atheists among us, so we haven’t looked for them.

The atheist in the church is not the Other. The atheist in the church or synagogue or mosque is part of a community of questioning, questing human beings. The only truly Other in any religious community is the Thou whose ineffable presence draws us together as faithful seekers in the first place.

[Hot diggity, kids, I think I just wrote my sermon!!!]