PeaceBang

Christianities

Mom To the Left has written a very meaty post about how viewing the movie “Jesus Camp” put a damper on her newfound enthusiasm for Christianity.

You can read about it here.

As a UU Christian, I feel Mom To the Left’s discomfort and hurt. Within our own movement, we know that many regard us with suspicion and even hostility because we won’t “grow out of” that awful, oppressive religion, Christianity. How can we intentionally affiliate ourselves with those people?

The answer for me is that we have to. We are Christians by baptism and by God’s grace, not by party affiliation or shared ideas about how to raise children or even doctrinal conformity. It’s not fun having so many ideological opponents in one’s own faith family, but for Christians, it’s an unavoidable challenge and tension.

That’s part of why I’ve always been frustrated by the extravagant claims of “diversity” among UUs. We’re just not that diverse, deep down. We all believe in freedom of conscience. We all believe that the point of religion is to “take it outside” and be some kind of helping presence. We all want our children to develop discerning, curious minds and attitudes. We all understand the value of encountering a variety of theological ideas. We all think education and self-culture are keys to a meaningful life. We really get behind the idea that humans are, despite their cruddy behavior, improvable beings.

As sisters and brothers in faith go, we get along pretty well. We’re a small family, and we know we have to. There’s a lot of snarky ribbing and some outright brawls, but for all our strong differences of opinion, there’s nothing like what I’ve seen between conservative and liberal Christians.

So, Mom on the Left, thanks for your post. I hope you won’t let the Jesus Camp types hold you at a distance from the Christian community for too long.

A Sermon Series: Soft, Small Animals

I preached a sermon series on the Ten Commandments this year and whew!– we got into some pretty heavy stuff. I mean, unless you’re going to treat it in a namby-pamby way, the Decalogue is going to take you into some serious moralizing, something quite foreign to most Unitarian Universalists.

I joked from the pulpit today that I was going to try not to make eye contact with anyone in the congregation because I had heard that when I did so, that person got all nervous and thought I was maybe focusing on them because they broke the Sabbath, or were an adulterer or someone who took the name of the LORD in vain. I said, “I just like to look at you! Don’t take it personally!”

But anyway, my sermon was on the ninth and tenth commandment and connected the ways that oppressors who covet the land and resources of others will almost always demonize them first — or “bear false witness against them” — in order to convince themselves, and others, that what they’re doing is justified. I referenced African slavery, the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Iraq, Darfur, the Holocaust, the witch hunts of the medieval era, and a local conflict in a nearby town. Near the end of the sermon I said,

As citizens of the most powerful nation on the planet, I think we should reflect with particular gravity and intention on the ninth and tenth commandments. All empires – not just the American empire – are built on egregious violations of these commandments. As the human story presses forward on an increasingly stressed and depleted planet, it falls to the most powerful to decide whether this pattern of greed leading to lies and manipulation and domination is sustainable, and to find new alternatives if they conclude it is not. I conclude for myself that it is not. — “Lying and Stuff” 5/20/07

As has happened with this sermon series in the past, what I wrote at home in a fairly calm vein became more serious and impassioned in the delivery of it. I was talking to SisterBang about it and she said, “What did you do to them?” because she’s very protective of my congregation. She loves them a lot and wants to make sure that I’m not, in her words, “mean.” Whenever I tell her that a Sunday service was intense she says, “It’s time to do a kitten and bunnies sermon.” And she’s right. You’ve got to mix up the joy and praise and the confrontation of hard truths.

So SisterBang has a recommendation for a sermon series next year: “Soft, Small Animals.” We figure we can do one on fieldmice, one on baby bunnies, one on newborn chicks and a special one on prairie dogs (my favorites!). I think this is a great idea. I am also considering Adult Religious Education offerings on the theme of “Candy & Toys.”

PeaceBang In NashVegas

Dear readers,

From May 21 - May 25 I will be in Nashville at the Festival of Homiletics finally getting to see many of my favorite and most esteemed preaching exemplars in person.

The posts you will read between now and Friday have been pre-authored and delivered to you via the magic of WordPress (via the tutelage of Scott Wells!). So if I my flight goes down somewhere over Detroit or I partake of some fatally bad BBQ and seem to be blogging from the Great Beyond, don’t let that freak ya.

Sayanora, sweeties.

Saying Thank You As a Spiritual Practice

Like most pastors (I hope!), I spend a goodly portion of my time reaching out to people, making check-in calls, and sending “thinking of you” and thank you notes. As a result of this activity, I also spend a goodly portion of my time making and losing lists of who needs to be thanked, forgetting a few people now and then, and feeling truly lousy about it. It goes with the territory.

:::breast-beating interlude for failing to thank someone who totally deserves it in church this week:::

My parents raised me to write thank you notes for everything, and to basically understand that without people’s help there is no life and you’ve got to thank folks. You bring little gifts. You tell them verbally. You never leave a party without thanking the hostess. When my Dad took us out to dinner, we were expected to thank him, not to take it for granted. All of that emphasis on thanking people really influenced the person that I am today: a person who is attentive to blessings and really, truly grateful. I may be a cranky, nasty wench, but boy, I’m sure not an ingrate. My CAT is an ingrate, but that’s another story, and a species issues.

So it always shocks me how often in my life I have made a pretty monumental effort on someone’s behalf and have been utterly ignored for it. I could never, for instance, spend a weekend at someone’s house and then not write a hand-written thank you note afterwards, or at least send an e-mail. I couldn’t imagine asking the minister of a church I’ve barely attended to come speak for an hour at two college classes I teach and then never thank her. (Hell, I’d PAY her!) I can’t imagine stiffing the minister who officiates at my own wedding — let alone not thanking them — although I absolutely can imagine how one would fail to thank a clergyperson for doing a funeral — trauma has a way of obliterating manners, and I understand that. But mostly, I just don’t get it when people accept generosity and don’t express thanks. It just seems to me that their lives must be kind of impoverished for that, because I know that when I express thanks, it has the pleasant effect of prolonging the goodness of whatever I am thanking someone for.

Again, I’m not perfect in this but I do make a concerted effort.

A young Southern woman has written to me a few times to ask for my help with her spiritual malaise as she struggles to maintain a fairly liberal theology while living in the Bible Belt. She listens to my sermons on the internet and calls herself my “uncommon parishioner.” I think it’s a wonderful connection. But I noticed something strange the other day: she initiated the conversation last fall, and while I have written her at least three heartfelt and caring respones, she has never in any way thanked me for them. When she first asked for my spiritual support, I was instant in my reply of many pages. I never heard from her to even acknowledge that she received my e-mail.

Then she popped up again the other day to share her grief about a friend’s passing. I’ve written her two long letters and she has replied. She includes no salutation, just launches into her statement of need, and says nothing that would acknowledge appreciation for my being there.

I begin to wonder if her sense of spiritual torpor and arid, dwindling faith is connected to her inability to express gratitude where it is appropriate. I say this truly without malice, but with genuine curiosity. If one can reach out to a busy clergywoman one has never met and receive a very compassionate response that obviously took a long time to compose, and absolutely fail to express even a shred of appreciation for it, perhaps one is taking a similar stance toward God? By which I mean, sending out the call for help and support, receiving it in abundance, and then soldiering right on with one’s further sharing of pain without stopping to say, “Hey, I may not perfectly love the response I’m getting here, but I love that I’m getting a response, and thank you.”

As you all know, I have an anxious, irritable and melancholy temperament and spend a lot of time grousing in my head about the state of the world. It hadn’t occurred to me until now — and for that I am grateful to my Southern Correspondent — but I spend at least as much time thanking God for my blessings as I do bitching about the brokenness of the human species. If I did not, I couldn’t bear to stay here. My inner voice of criticism, skepticism, anger and disappointment with myself and other humans would drown out the music of what’s really going on, and although I’d probably survive in body, my soul and spirit would be numb and dead.

Just the other day I was crabbing in my mind about my stupid paper, my stupid aching lower back, the stupid person tailgating me down Route 123, stupid Jerry Falwell and stupid Paul Wolfowitz, and the stupid rain, even getting in some good glowering about the fact that I’ve had two movies out from Netflix since early April that I haven’t watched, and doing an excellent Crank Pile-On. Then I stopped at a stop sign and was practically attacked by a huge, dripping wet lilac bush that is my favoritest flower.

And right away, it was like I was at the swankiest divine cocktail party ever with the most elegant, gracious guests who were welcoming me with gorgeously fragrant hugs and kisses and saying, “It is SO good to see you. We are SO glad you’re here, honey!” I had to stop grousing right away and say, “Well, thank you, because I’m SO GLAD to be here! And I LOVE what you’re wearing!”

I really do feel that God is like a love-sick suitor constantly trying to win our hearts and our loyalty. As a privileged woman living in the wealthiest nation on earth, I feel like God is showing up every morning with a magnum of champagne and a huge bouquet of roses going, “Darling! Shall we dance?” I mean, even in my times of deepest depression when I couldn’t feel connected to that extravagance of love and generosity, I knew that it was there. I knew that there were lilacs, and music, and friends. I knew that it wasn’t God’s job to do some miracle on my behalf, but to just keep being God, which was miracle enough.

As I get older I am less and less interested in fussing over doctrine and more and more interested in finding ways that make being human a less painful experience. I don’t know what beliefs or prayers work, but I do know that gratitude does, and I’m pretty sure it’s pleasing to God, too.

Buena Suerte, Caminante

I just discovered this blog and I love it:

http://caminantesi.blogspot.com/

How could I not love someone who has all those CATS and whose childhood cat was named CHIPPER and who writes so beautifully and simply about so many cherished things?

I will look forward to reading about Caminante’s walking of the path to Santiago de Compostela here.

Love to Caminante from PB and Ermengarde.

“Ewe-Ewes” and the Word “Church”

Philocrites is a totally cool customer in situations where I start foaming at the mouth, pontificating and opining. That’s why I like to hang out with him at conferences: I get very depressed about our glaring hypocrisies and scary ideological intensity and want to scream, and he’s just blogging away in his Oxford shirt, cool as a cuke. Every now and then he’ll glance up and say something incredibly smart and also scathingly funny that calms me right down. Sometimes it’s about denominational issues but sometimes it’s just about breakfast, like the time last year in St. Louis he somberly regarded the enormous glass of juice in front of him and said, “Seven oranges gave their lives for this.”

So you should probably listen to him talk about this issue, and not me.

Read the comments, too. They’re really thoughtful, informative and good. You’ll be impressed.

Festival of Homiletics

One of the most fun things about going to the Festival of Homiletics is the reaction I get from people when I tell them where I’ll be next week.

“Festival of …what?”

Check out that list of super-duper preachin’ rock stars! I am so excited!

I’m already meeting some PeaceBangers for dinners and lunches… anyone else going and want to connect for iced coffee?

Friday Cat Blogging

A couple of years back, Fausto alerted me to the dumbest website ever, “LitterBox Cam.” It is a live camera of some person’s mud room with two litter boxes in it. If you’re lucky (?), you will catch one of the cats (or, on a really banner day, both!) using the boxes.

Obviously this is funny only to people with ridiculous cat obsessions, but every now and then I check in. In all these years I have never seen either of the cats. Fausto has teased me about this.

But last night I was starting in on my sermon and got to a writer’s block moment during which I decided to check the Litterbox Cam. And lo and behold, people, I saw a cat!!

There it is, like the Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. A legendary, mysterious figure first seen by these human eyes. The Litterbox Cam Cat.

And speaking of Fausto, his post on the death of Jerry Falwell is mature and lovely and very Christian, if you like that sort of thing.

No More Cows For the Year!!!

I finished all the IRRITATING detail-checking on my last paper of the year, thankya Jesus. I am SO ON EDGE RIGHT NOW from reading and re-reading TINY FOOTNOTE FONTS.

But the paper is done and it is IN.

This one wasn’t so much like birthing a cow out of my butt as it was like trying to eat an anvil with a fork and knife. Pass the ketchup!! And the Pepcid!

I started revving up a good ole anxiety attack at about 5:00 AM. The cat interrupted me, woke me up with her alarmed cries (she can tell when it’s coming because I think my temperature shoots up, or I emit some kind of nerve gas or something), and spent the next 25 minutes literally petting my back with her paw until I was fully awake and breathing deeply and calmly. She then glued herself to my side (Velcro Cat!) and stayed there until I awoke for real.
I was so upset and disappointed because the anxiety has gotten tremendously better of late. But okay, you just take it one day at a time. I’m grateful for the many days of relief I’ve had of late.

That animal. I swar’. Just an angel in a striped fur suit.

New Readers

It seems to me that we have a lot of new PeaceBangers since we moved to WordPress, or maybe some of you were lurkers who are now commenting.

Whatever the case, it’s great to have you here!

I’m looking through my special Romper Room Looking Glass and I see Gus, and James, and Jean and Diceman and Tom and UUSnyder… and all of you special boys and girls out there.

Miss PeaceBang sends you all a big kiss of peace.