PeaceBang

Napping Might Be Good For Women’s Hearts, Too, But We’re Not Sure

Here’s an article from the Boston Globe suggesting that napping in the afternoon may be beneficial to heart health:

http://tinyurl.com/2dkllr

But speaking of heart health (!), what really infuriates me is that once again, we don’t know if the results apply to women because so few women were included in the study.

Heart disease kills far, far more women every year than breast and skin cancer combined, and yet the medical research done on coronary health continues to focus almost exclusively on men. This isn’t to downplay the seriousness of breast cancer and the prevalence of other cancers as killers of women (or to downplay any other cause of mortality), but the fact is that the women reading this blog are far more likely to die of plain old heart disease than of anything else.

What’s it going to take to get included in these studies?????

It shocks me that this is still going on.

In Faith, Hope and Love — Totally

You know how you send out e-mails to people with several points about pastoral news and/or committee work? And then someone sends you back your e-mail with their own replies in bold or in another color font?

I just got one this morning and where I signed, “In faith, hope and love,” he had added in blue font, “Totally,” as his own sign-off.

It’s going to keep me grinning all day.

Good old “totally.” Remember how it was every third word we used back in the 80’s? I’m totally bringing back “totally.”

Just Another Ugly Fat Chick Joke

Wesley Morris writes this about Eddie Murphy’s latest fat-woman-bashing flick, “Norbit:”
http://tinyurl.com/2tg4xl

It’s funny, it’s effective. Right on, Wesley. Thanks from over here.

I did see Mo’nique’s fat-girl-finds-romance film “Phat Girlz” and found it to be embarrassingly bad but also guiltily refreshing. Mo’nique’s take on the tale is that African men just love heavy women and will passionately pursue them no matter how reticent or downright mean and rejecting the big girls are. Which is just replacing one stupid stereotype with another. *sigh*

Queen Latifah is large and in-charge in “Last Holiday,” which was fun fluff.

Other than that, I look in vain for stories starring fat women having real lives.

And now… back to preachin’ prep.

UU Carnival: Prophetic Atheists

Since I’m planning to preach soon on the integrity of atheism, I was tickled to see that the UU Carnival topic this month was prophetic atheism, based on some remarks made by our great theologian, James Luther Adams:
http://uucarnival.wordpress.com/2007/02/05/seventh-uu-carnival-topic-atheist-prophets/

We’d love it if you submitted your take on the subject.

Here, Ms. Kitty takes us through the permutations of her own rejection of the “old white guy in the sky-God” and her embrace of a more panentheistic, immanance-based faith:

http://mskittyssaloonandroadshow.blogspot.com/2007/02/prophetic-atheism.html

And Matt over at Spirituality and Sunflowers, a “fundamentalist atheist” in his teen years, is making his mom happy by thinking he might be an agnostic after all:
http://kinsi.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/blog-carnival-7-atheist-prophets/

[This just in…]
Jess kicks up a good fuss about not letting religious conservatives define our terms for us:
http://www.jesspages.net/jessjournal/?p=502

Let’s hear from some more of you. When Unitarian Universalists are derided and scorned for having atheists in our pews, how do you articulate your support for the theological diversity that joins us as one people in the search for truth and meaning?

My own personal experience with mature atheists is that they are often the most theologically thoughtful people within the community, having carefully considered many angles of traditional religious traditions and having refused “shopworn creeds” (if I’m remembering my Emerson correctly).

We who worship in UU communities know that to be atheistic is not necessarily to be un-reverent or unfaithful. But does it insult the integrity of the atheistic position to agree with James Luther Adams that atheism “is the working of God in history, and judgement upon the pious”? If we are to fairly consider the value of having “out” atheists in the religious community, should we not do so according to a different framework?

It seems to me that applauding the contribution of atheists as “the working of God in history” is more than a bit of a backhanded compliment, and possibly patronizing. How might you say it?

Thanks for CK for the invitation to host this month’s carnival.

PeaceBang Finally Sees "King Kong"

I’m supposed to be working on a sermon on communal grief and the cost of repressing it, but I can’t stop thinking about Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” starring Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody. It was on HBO last night and although I had intended to go to bed early, I wound up watching the whole thing until 11pm.

Some of you may recall that I originally inquired about the meaning of “KK” here:
http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2005/12/king-kong-question.html

After having actually seen it, I can only say that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a graduate student out there working on a thesis called something like, “King Kong: Images of Otherness in Contemporary Cinema,” or “King Kong: A Study of Symbiotic Relationships
In Racial and Gendered Experiences of Oppression” or “King Kong: The Futility of Maleness in the Creative Imagination of Peter Jackson.” The internet is absolutely loaded with articles on the racism inherent in the picture.

Was it racist? Oh my Gods, yes. I can imagine Peter Jackson, in all earnestness, saying, “We’ve got to make the natives of Skull Island really aboriginal and scary, but we can’t make them African. I know! Let’s make them South Sea Islanders. That won’t seem so racist. They’ll just seem to be… I don’t know… Horrible Mud-Covered People of Indeterminate Racial Heritage.”

Oh, Peter. These characters are unbelievably offensive throwbacks to what one commentator called “the ooga booga school of thespian arts.”

Here’s what I thought: the Skull Island natives are apparently in the habit of feeding female sacrifices to the great 24-foot gorilla, Kong. Did these aboriginal lasses go willingly to their deaths to appease the beast? Did they too struggle to survive, but unsuccessfully? Because the way the film plays, it takes a scrawny white American chick (Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow) in a silk camisole and pink skirt to have the spunk and strength to stab Kong in the paw with part of the sharp bone necklace she’s been forced to wear, and to escape from him. Oh, those enterprising white Americans! Can’t keep ‘em down!

The same scrawny white chick later enchants her simian captor by dancing and juggling for him and by teaching him sign language for “beautiful.” They have a lovely relationship. I mean that; it’s very touching. But clearly they don’t make skinny white chicks the way they used to, because I noticed that at the end of the film, when Ann is running around on top of the Empire State Building in the midst of winter in nothing but a white satin negligee-type gown, she manages to totally avoid hypothermia. Or even shivering. Way up high like that. It’s fantastic.

Why wasn’t this film protested by anti-racism organizations? You know why? Because it’s a really, really stupid movie and they had better things to do.

In fact, although this movie is offensively racist, it cheerfully and rather grandly mocks everyone’s intelligence. “King Kong” was unintentionally hilarious in that way that action/adventure films are always hilarious, which is that ordinary human beings can get shot at, flung sideways through the jungle at a velocity that would break every bone in the average body, hurled off cliffs, and attacked by hostile insects the size of Marlon Brando in his later years, and still walk away unscathed. This always delights me. In fact, “King Kong” was the best movie I’ve ever seen for this sort of silliness.

The best part was the Attack of the Dinosaurs sequence, which went on forever and ever in this manner:

“Oh my gosh! We have just stumbled on a grove of very enormous dinosaurs! They seem to be nervous and agitated! Let’s get closer to them!”
…
“Ack! I’m being chased by a very scary Brontosaurus! Or maybe it’s a T-Rex! But I am outrunning him, because I am an important character in this movie and it’s very important that I not die yet!”
…
“Whoaf! WATCH out! I thought that Brontosaurus was bad, but here comes a Brontomegalasaurus and it’s trying to chomp my butt! Run! Run!… WUH-OH, now there’s a Brontorexolaubadassasauraus on the scene!! My life sure is in danger now!!”

You get the idea.

All of the characters are really stereotypical and dumb, so you don’t care about any of them. Adrien Brody has the distinction of playing the most pointless romantic interest of all time, running around trying to save Ann as she’s mooning about with her gorilla boyfriend and clearly doesn’t give a fig for him. I mean, any woman who would clamber around on the top of the Empire State Building in the freezing cold while war planes are zooming all over the place and shooting in her general vicinity in order to scream “NO! NO!” is just not regular girlfriend material. You can eat all the bananas you want, feller, but you’ll never capture her heart like the big hairy guy. I’m sorry, but I don’t blame her, either. Any date who can hold me in the palm of his hand while we slide gigglingly all over the ice on a Central Park lake is going to be a tough act to follow.

Anyway, Andy Serkis (who “played” Gollum so marvelously in Jackson’s “Lord of the Ring” pictures) does a fantastic job playing Kong, and the special effects are gorgeous.

And really, for all its monumental silliness, there is something about this film that stays with you. At least it’s staying with me. There is something ineffably sad and haunting about it.

Anna Nicole Smith

ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS DEAD.
You hadn’t HEARD, right? Because you don’t follow celebrity gossip like PeaceBang does, and you were watching the SERIOUS news all day, where they didn’t mention it.
(sarcastic cough)

I have to admit that when I heard the news I definitely had an emotional reaction. Which is strange, but just a testament to how effective the whole Rupert Murdoch We Own Your Brain phenomenon is on my apparently impressionable little mind.
Anna Nicole wasn’t someone I thought that I was remotely interested in even as a curiosity. I watched a few minutes of her MTV show a few times and stayed glued to the TV in open-mouthed horror until I willed myself to reach for the remote kind of like you reach for a crucifix when Dracula comes around. I have to say, Anna Nicole’s special combination of relentless self-promotion and excruciating drug-addled haplessness was mesmerizing. And of course she had those ridiculous, parodic bazooms and the peroxide blonde Hollwood Aphrodite archetypal thing going. Poor kid.

Yesterday at the gym I tried hard to concentrate on my podcast of “Speaking Of Faith” while distracting images of naughty astronauts flashe on the row of televisions parked in front of the treadmills and I thought, “O Lord, please let me get through this week without having to find out what that’s all about.” I still don’t know. I’m not missing anything serious, am I?

And now, every channel will be the All Anna Nicole, All The Time. Which means we’re going on an NPR news diet this week at La Casa de PeaceBang.

No disrespect to the dead, of course.

Ten Years Ago…

On February 8, 1997, I went before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee with fear and trembling for the interview that would determine whether or not I would welcomed into the ministerial fellowship by my colleagues.

I had been through a terrible breakup with a thoroughly odious human being that winter and was walking around all wounded and weepy until about mid-January when my mother said to me, and I quote, “If you LET that disgusting man distract you from doing your best with the MFC, I will KILL YOU.” So I took my friend Cynthia Kane’s famous flash cards down to Florida for a little vay-kay with La Mama (how many of you out there studied for the MFC with Cynthia’s flash cards? Heavens, I think there were dozens of us, bless her organized little heart), and got my heart, mind and soul ready to see and be seen by the Committee. I had no fierce of my own, so I borrowed some from my mom and went off to my morning appointment that fateful day fortified by her belief in me, and the presence of my pal Mark Fleming.

Here’s how I felt about it: if the Committee didn’t see a minister, I was ready to hear that. I was open to the possibility that I was deluding myself about my vocation. Why not?
Didn’t Jones Very think he was the Messiah? Didn’t Bronson Alcott think he was a coherent writer? They were both good dudes, just not very self-aware (and, okay…Jones Very was certifiably nuts). I figured there was no shame in being way off base about my readiness to serve in our ministry.
I hoped to God that I wouldn’t get a 5 (on a scale of 1-5), but I was certainly prepared to get a 3 and to be sent back to do more work.

Aspirants to the Unitarian Universalist ministry, it is not a failure to get a 2 or a 3. When you get ordained, you’re very likely in it for life, so what’s the hurry? Believe me, once you’ve had your first few shocking revelations of your own clay feetsies, you won’t think it’s such a big deal to be ordered around a bit by the folks who just want you to be your best, most prepared self out there. But that’s me. I know all you radical Free Church folks out there are rolling your eyes at me, and I maturely abide with your criticism. Here’s a Bronx cheer: Plllllll.

One of the members of my MFC had known me as a teeny child in the church of my youth, and he was very stern with me during the interview. He can cut a very imposing figure, and if I hadn’t had plenty of life experience with intimidating Jewish papa types, my guts may have all turned to liquid just looking at him. He was fairly glowering. Just when I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown about it, though, it occurred to me that he was coming on strong because he didn’t want to seem to favor me in any way. And I was able to unclench a bit.

Boy, what an ordeal. I preached a homily on — you won’t believe this, but it’s true — what I would do as a minister in the air on a plane that was destined to crash, and all the passengers knew it. Do NOT ask me how I developed this genius idea. All I can tell you is that it actually was a good homily, it had a perfectly reasonable genesis, and this was 1997, so it wasn’t nearly as bizarre and macabre a subject as it seems now.

I survived the interrogation, I paced outside with Mark and the student chaplain, and I got called in to get my “1.” I was truly shocked. It was an incredibly scary and wonderful day.

If you didn’t like this post, I’m just warning you: I’ll probably write one a lot like it in July, when we hit the 10th anniversary of my ordination.

It just so happens, by the way, that February 8th is also the anniversary of my relationship with someone I’ve now known for 21 years. It was a romance, then it was a death struggle, then it was a … well, whatever it is when you make your peace with the fact that you’ll never make your peace. Hey DCM, remember how we said we were raising each other? I think we turned out okay.

The Over-Medication of American Children

Just skimming the headlines I could barely finish reading this on the death of 4 year old Rebecca Riley, who lived very near to me:
http://tinyurl.com/2z2xms

How do you diagnose a TWO AND A HALF YEAR OLD as having attention deficit disorder?? Or bi-polar disorder? Isn’t being squirrelly and difficult the job description for a two year old? Isn’t that we call them the Terrible Twos? This kid never had a chance.

God rest her soul, poor thing, born to terminally stupid parents and into a very dangerous medical culture. What good would imprisonment do for these two? Keep them from procreating? Their hearts are broken. They were criminally ignorant, not murderous. Leave them be.

Well, if it generates serious discussion about the ethics of prescribing prescription psychiatric drugs to tots, her death will not have been in vain.

"Call Me Issa": Part II

As you will recall from this post,
http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2005/07/i-used-to-love-jane-siberry.html
and this one,
http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2007/02/call-me-issa.html
I purchased a sweet little silver ring in France several years ago that just happened to have the same spiral symbol on it that showed up as the motif in Jane Siberry’s Philadelphia concert I attended days after my return from France. I thought it was really very cool synchronicity, as I remember thinking when I bought the ring, “This isn’t really me: it’s too Celtic, but it’s cute.” When I saw that Jane had chosen that very symbol as the motif for her show, it was clear to me that I should just give her the ring. Obviously the symbol must have special resonance for her.

But it didn’t. Or not enough. She rejected my ring with disdainful air and humiliated me. Then she showed up in the news a few days ago as having divested of all her worldly goods and changed her name to “Issa,” Arabic for Jesus.

A friend of mine forwarded my last blog entry to Issa herself, who had this to say:

“someone forwarded your blog about me.oh dear. i am horrified to think that you felt so disrespectfully treated. I didn’t feel the way you described. if anything, i feel awkward and slightly embarassed saying that to people when they are offering a gift from the heart that is more than a trinket.it would feel worse, though, if i accepted it and then left it for the maid. my deepest apologies. to offer something important to you to someone you appreciate is something i really honour and try to communicate so. i’m sorry that my response has gotten in the way of enjoying the music. i’m just the messenger.issa”

PeaceBang here.

On one hand, it was nice of Jane/Issa to respond at all. She has the good grace to say that she feels “horrified” by my offense. To that I say, Issa, if my commenters are to be trusted, you’ve got a rep for being snotty and disdainful of your fans. As you divest of worldly goods in search of a purer life, you might want to work on that.

Second, of whom, or of what, are you “the messenger?” Are we not all messengers? I would not have cared if you left that ring for the maid. Perhaps that was just why I was meant to purchase it. If the magic of synchronicity didn’t work for you, perhaps you might have simply passed along that ring to the next person for whom it may have had some meaning. Your ego should not be the final decision-making factor in how someone’s energy gets out into the world if they feel so inclined to begin with you. Why stop a gift in the giving? Especially one so obviously unencumbersome (I wasn’t inviting you to use my beach house in St. Kitts — not that I have one — or offering anything else that might have obligations or strings attached) and directly connected to something as soulful as an ancient symbol for the Triple Goddess. If you don’t want such a thing, for heavens sake, pass it on.

Those of us who choose lives that require us to be conduits of energy and love need to get out of our own way a lot of the time. Issa, I hope you are able to get out of your own way more successfully in the future. If you think your fans small gifts troublesome to your great spiritual quest, that may be the biggest baggage you have yet to divest yourself of.

Does Iran Have To Be Next?

Remember a year or so ago, when it seemed incomprehensible that we would consider war with Iran? And now, some neo-cons are making noise like it’s a fait accompli?

A friend sent me this:

http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html