PeaceBang

Techno Difficulties

Hey PeaceBangers,

I haven’t been able to post due to technical difficulties, and it’s killing me! Because as you can imagine, I have a few things to say about Imus.

But until I can figure out why Blogger won’t let me post from home, ta for now.

"How Jesus Claimed Me"

This essay of mine appears in the anthology, Christian Voices in Unitarian Universalism. I’m glad to be able to share it with you today as the front page article in this week’s UU World online magazine:

http://www.uuworld.org/spirit/articles/22324.shtml

He Is Risen!

Buddy Jesus
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Happy Easter!

The Harrowing Of Hell

I’m not quite sure what Jesus was doing today the year he was crucified. I believe one of the things orthodox tradition has him doing is harrowing hell and freeing all the souls, very Rambo the Redeemer. Maybe Mel Gibson will make a movie.

But look, I found this great passage in “The Gospel of Nicodemus Acts of Pilate and Christ’s descent into Hell” in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, Volume One: Gospels and Related Writings, revised edition. In this hilarious exchange between Satan and Hades, Hades bemoans Christ’s ability to restore the dead from the Underworld. He says,

“I have pain in the stomach. Lazarus who was snatched from me before seems to me no good sign.”

Do you LOVE the idea of Satan hanging out talking with Hades? Holy syncretism, Batman!
I have this image of Jesus walking in on them, kind of swaggering in his robe, and saying, “Yeaaaa, Hades, get used to it. I’m gonna be snatching a lot of li’l doggies from your ranch before this is all over.” Then he walks away twirling his pistol.

And Satan and Hades just sit there all dejected on the porch, pouring iced tea from a pitcher and staring off into space.

And….scene.

Overheard on the Red Line, Good Friday

I’m standing crammed in with dozens of other greater Boston-area citizens on the train from Downtown Crossing to Braintree.

As we pull into the JFK-UMass station, this exceedingly nerdy-looking kid, probably 20 or so years old, blonde, cute, nice sideburns, opens his phone and dials.

“Hello, grampy? It’s me. I’m at JFK-UMass… yeah. I’m at JFK-UMass! …. I’m at the JFK-UMass station. . . . I’m on the T. … JFK-UMass.”
(patiently listens)
…
“I just got to JKF-UMass.”

… (more patient listening)

“I just got here. I’m at JFK-UMass. At the station.”

“Right! JFK-UMass! It’s a nice day so I’ll walk. No, I will. I want to. I’ll see you really soon.”
. . . (listening)
“I can’t wait.”

The kid was wearing a huge LL Bean backpack adorned with a bright orange rabbit’s foot.

It just made my day. I bet his visit made grampy’s day, too.

I hope you get to spend some time soon with someone who can’t wait to see you, and who doesn’t hesitate to tell you so.

Good Friday Preaching

Friends,
I will be preaching part of the Good Friday service today at the Paulist Center on Beacon Hill, right up Park Street from the T stop.

The service starts at noon and goes for about 2 hours. I am preaching the last homily.

Blessings to all,
PB

Soar: A Journal About Ministers As Perpetual Children?

I saw an ad just now in the new Christian Century (p. 61) that chafed at me. It seems to me lately that ministry-oriented ads are either totally bizarr-o (like the recent Meadville Lombard fiasco that looked like a reject from the “Close Encounters Of the Third Kind” ad campaign) or saccharinely precious, and forgive me for saying it, overtly feminized, if not exactly feminine.

The ad is for SOAR, a journal put out by Baylor University’s Center for Family and Community Ministries in the School of Social Work. Sounds like a great journal. The graphic, however, gives me the willies. It shows the sillhouette of a chubby woman with scrambly short hair wearing what looks to be a hooded anorak and swinging way up in the air on a swing set.

Here’s what I thought the moment I saw this ad, and it wasn’t a good thought:

Weeeee! I’m so in touch with my Inner Child!

Given that the journal is about ministering, I presume that the silhouetted figure is a minister. Let me just say right here that if this was an ad for a church, I would be afraid. I would be very afraid. I’d be all ready for the seed in the Dixie cup homily on Sunday morning, if you know what I mean.

Believe me, I have nothing against middle-aged people swinging on swing sets. I like to spend most of my summer toodling around lakes and pools riding a big yellow styrofoam noodle, myself, and living on a diet of berry pie, chips-and-salsa and sangria. I like to dance in my living room to “Cherchez La Femme.” Ministers need to have fun, to be silly, to exercise their wild sides, let down their hair, etc. etc. etc. However, I am highly suspicious of the suggestion that this aspect of self-care is the main orientation and energy out of which we do pastoral ministry.

My ministry to families over the past ten years has encompassed these issues, to name a few:
addiction (pills, booze, sex, gambling, spending)
adultery
crises arising from transitions (college, nursing homes, divorce, etc.)
mental illness
financial worries
serious illness
rape and domestic violence
incest
accidents
religious conflicts
lawsuits, imprisonment and legal issues
birth (including unintended pregnancies, abortion and fertility stresses)
death

When I think of ministry within the context of the family, I don’t think of me swinging alone on a swing set — not even in autumnal dusk (suggesting, in the ad, maturity and the light and dark of human life, yea, I get it, I get it). In fact, I never see me alone. That’s ridiculous. Family ministry doesn’t happen at the playground. It happens with families. That’s another thing that’s wrong with this image.

If I was designing the ad for this new journal, I would show…this is radical, but stay with me… a family. And I would show a figure set somewhat apart, sitting in a rocking chair, listening. All you would see is the backs of everyone’s heads. There would maybe be a dog on the floor. Inner city, suburbs, rural, everyone can see themselves in that.

Or maybe I would show someone riding in a car with a very serious, meditative expression on their face. Kind of nervous, obviously prayerful, obviously eager to get there. Every minister would know that this is how we look when we’re on our way somewhere to be with people.

I mean, there’s a lot of ways to visually express the intensity and urgency of family and community ministry. I just don’t think that me going la la la on a swing is one of them.

Snakes! Adventures in ExUrbia

Living in an old parsonage in the kind-of-rural suburbs has many charms. One of these charms is the Annual March of the Ants which usually begins about now, and which involves hundreds of ants marching determinedly through my kitchen giving me a huge case of the skeeves and my cat a huge source of crunchy protein.

You’ve heard, I gather, of my encounter with the three drowned mice in the olive oil. And the little one curled up dead in the empty can of organic bread crumbs. Et itself to death, poor little carb fiend. That was back in 2005, and I’m pretty much over it now. I can almost reach for the olive oil without flinching.

And then there was the infestation of black flies, during which I hummed the “Amityville Horror” theme as I swatted them down, one by nasty one. Those sumbitches make quite a splat mark on the wall.

Last summer, my NYC pal brought an infestation of bed bugs with her from campus housing. Shhh, she thinks it was fleas. From my cat who has never been outside in her life, and who apparently managed, in her cleverness, to concentrate the infestation right in the guest bedroom with all my friend’s clothing and belongings instead of in places around the house where she actually spends time.

So you can imagine how much I enjoyed this,
http://billbraine.blogspot.com/2007/03/serpents-of-paradise.html
and I think you will, too. It’s some of the most charming blogger writing I’ve seen lately.

Mr. Braine, I’m a new fan.

Just In Case

will-blinking
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Just in case you were having the kind of day where a photo of a dog doing cute things might make you unaccountably happy, let me be of assistance:

http://www.spiritofchange.org/articles.php?id=226

"The Namesake" — a PeaceBang Review

I really wanted to love Mira Nair’s new film”The Namesake,” because Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favorite authors and I wanted to get lost in this beautiful story.

It was a mostly lovelyand moving film. The first half, focusing on the arranged marriage between Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu), was lyrical and memorable.

The second half of the film felt jarringly wrong on several levels, beginning with its first scene featuring some Really Really Bad Acting by adults pretending to be high schoolers teasing Kal Penn’s character, Gogol, about his name. Oof, that was some bad acting!

Other problems, in random order:

> The clarity of the narrative goes to hell during a few key dramatic moments and I was left going, “Wait, what just happened? WHAT did he say?”
Nair just tries to cram too much novel into half a film, and in doing so loses the artistic and dramatic grip she so gorgeously establishes during the first half.

> If you have a main character who ages about 30 years over the course of the film and we hear her singing like a young enchantress when she’s 18 or so, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hear the same, exact voice come out of her mid-40 year-old mouth at the end of the film. Because that can cause a filmgoer like me to say, “Oh my God, that voice is so dubbed,” and that’s just distracting.

> On Jacinda Barrett as the excessively blonde American twit: was her teeth-grinding level of twittiness intentional, or is she just a thoroughly unlikeable actress? I shouldn’t be watching the film and wondering this. I shouldn’t be watching this girl slobber all over Gogol and thinking to myself, “Gogol, for the love of Ganesh, break up with this twit. Break up with her.”

I went away wishing that the film had never turned that corner into focusing on the life of Gogol. It was an achingly lovely film about two married people who were mad about each other. That’s the story I wanted to see. That’s the story I cared about. That’s the story that Nair told with equal parts magic and understanding. The rest of it was a hurried, cliched meditation on cultural assimilation.