PeaceBang

Friday Whale Blogging

There’s no reason you shouldn’t make your day by looking at these photos of the new baby beluga at the Chicago Aquarium!

Is that not the cutest little mobus head in the whole world?

Hi, baby! Hi, baby! Hi, baby! (petting screen)

“The Proposition:” A PeaceBang Film Review

Whooee, this was an amazing film.

It’s essentially an old-school Western set in the Australian outback in 1880’s. Ray Winstone is British captain Morris Stanley who aims to “civilize this land” and Guy Pearce is Charlie Burns, a member of an outlaw gang of brothers who have just massacred a settler family.

In the hair-raising opening scene, Cpt. Stanley and his men catch and imprison Charlie and his simple-minded younger brother Mikey, and Stanley makes a proposition: if Charlie will murder his brother Arthur — the homicidal leader of the Burns gang — his little brother won’t hang on Christmas Day. He has nine days to make good on the deal.

Sounds like your typical morality tale with lots of shoot-em-up, right? Not quite. Factor in that the screenplay and the music were written by none other than Bad Seed Nick Cave, and you’ll understand why I couldn’t get to sleep until almost 3 a.m. last night.

I agree with the reviewer who said that this film deserves to be seen on as big a screen as you can find: I’m really sorry I missed it in the theatre. Yes, it was profoundly upsetting but it was also gloriously beautiful and emotionally affecting, a triumph I attribute to director John Hillcoat and to Nick Cave’s haunting music.

If you can’t stand dirty reality, this is not the film for you. Those flies you see crawling all over the extras in the scene where they flog Mikey in the town square are real, as is the rampant sweat and greasy hair. Temperatures were over 100 degrees during production (necessitating a lot of night filming — we learn in the DVD extras that the cameras often became literally too hot to handle) and that’s a real corset and velvet dress you see on the always-riveting Emily Watson as Cpt. Stanley’s beloved wife, Martha. I’d see the movie again just to marvel at the tragicomedy of her offering hot tea to a visitor and serving a proper English breakfast on a patio surrounded by a valiant desert approximation of a Dorset garden.

Danny Huston has the role of a lifetime as the “family man” Arthur Burns, a kind of sociopathic guru with a slice of fey running through his massive menacing presence. It’s a bit of a scenery-chewing performance but just right as a foil to Guy Pearce’s silent, sinewy turn as Charlie.

For those interested in the sad history of the treatment of aboriginal Australians by white colonizers, this film provides an unflinching look at one of the most brutal periods in this tragic history. Indigenous actors Tom E. Lewis (Two Bob), Leah Purcell (Queenie), David Gulpilil (Jacko) in leading roles, and many aboriginal actors in smaller roles, apparently helped develop this aspect of the storyline and great care was taken to represent their history fairly. I was very happy to learn that the film got big props from the aboriginal community. It’s also great to see indigenous people in fully-fleshed out roles beyond the “noble savage” stereotype. I especially loved Rodney Boschman as the Stanley’s housekeeper. There’s a marvelous moment where he takes off his boots and socks before he leaves for the day with just the right combination of disgust for the white man’s ways and infinite patience.

It’s so rare for me to see a film that stays with me, let alone one that I’m still thinking about the next day, I give “The Proposition” an “A.”

Debt

My friend Scott Wells writes about seminary debt today over at Boy In the Bands.

It’s funny that he chose this topic for this week, because I’ve been thinking a lot about my own seminary debt lately: namely, that I’m getting tired of chasing it down. It will shock you, but it shouldn’t, to learn that I borrowed $60K to attend seminary. Dumb, yes, and the UUA leadership advised against it, but I wanted to be a minister. I wanted to go to Harvard. I regret none of it. I let my heart overrule my head. I took a gamble that I would be healthy and able to work for long enough to retire that debt. Here I am ten years into it and feeling age creep up on me, and thinking wow, I have another seven to ten years left on that sucker! I am just one of thousands of clergypeople in a similar situation.

It’s not exaggerating to say that I lived in financial fear for the entire first five years of my ministry. I lived in affluent areas where housing costs ate most of my paycheck, and tax bills were always a shock for which I was never prepared (it takes awhile to figure out how taxes work for clergy!). I grew up wealthy and knew nothing about how to manage money, but I’ve learned a thing or two since then! Like: credit cards are from SATAN. Use them ONLY when absolutely necessary and pay them off right away.

During my first ministry I lived in a hovel compared to the homes of my parishioners, and vowed to avoid that in the future: it’s a great way to build resentment. As far as finding a roommate to share a nicer place, there are a lot of risks in that. Ministers work at home a lot and have some weird needs: who wants to tip-toe around on a Saturday night because your roommate has to be in bed early? In my second ministerial settlement, I was expected to house the church office in my home, so the roommate option was ruled out there, too. Who wants to come home to find a religious education program or board meeting being conducted in your living room?

Now that I’m finally earning a good compensation package (a fact that was only achieved into my third pastorate), I feel that I’m making up for lost time. As a single woman there is always the sense of flying without a net — if I get sick or am incapacitated in any way, I’m sunk. I’ll still have my debt but no way of servicing it. I feel very confident about my ministerial skills, but I am wise enough to know that those skills are not lucrative in the wider society. I love my work and accepted long ago that my resume was never going to put me into consideration for big bucks jobs.

I know this will sound Pollyannish but I’m just being honest: I would love to retire my debt not only to start serious saving for a home of my own but to do more charitable giving. I currently tithe 10% of my salary to various organizations (including my own church) and love the feeling of connection and meaning that brings to my life. When I dream of winning the lottery I don’t think about owning a home in Switzerland, I fantasize about going to the Harvard Divinity School or Andover-Newton Theological School Bookstore at the beginning of the semester and saying, “This semester’s on me!” I would write a check for every book in the place and all the students who showed up to purchase texts for their classes would be told that an anonymous donor has taken care of their bill.

Wouldn’t that be ALsome?

What Are You Gonna Do To the Monster?

I tried not to post this but I just watched it again and it still made me so happy so I have to share it.

Not only is the kid a totally adorable, goofy little being (love that bowl cut, those enormous eyes and the gap-toothed grin!), she has those flat a’s that make the punch line even funnier. Honey, you oughta be in picktchas!

New Brain

My new Dell Inspiron should arrive in about three weeks. This old thing is so slow and crotchety I just went ahead and got the newer version. My computer is truly my second brain and I go to absolute pieces when it doesn’t work 100%. Everything is on here. All church notes, sermons, writings, personal correspondence, photos, music. Blog postings, doctoral work, e-mails, my entire written connection to the outside world.

It seems that I’ve got the new Windows Vista software in the new ‘puter. I’ve been using XP for three years now: what do I have to look forward to? And to dread? Any comments? Warnings?

Ministering to Single Folk: Some Questions You Can Ask Yourselves

One thing I have noticed this summer is how drawn I am to churches that don’t emphasize marriage and family life with children as the primary means by which we experience love and relationship.

After all, I don’t have a husband or children. I live alone. I have been single for most of my adult life. My observation is that the Protestant church in America (not to mention the Jewish community!) has a total Noah’s Ark attitude toward life: everyone’s on the ark two by two. Weddings and baptism are central to the life of the church. What other kinds of rituals do we have that allow an adult to feel sacramentally included in the sacred story of God’s love in the world? The Bible lifts up the importance of caring for the widows. What about the elders who have never been married? Do they also deserve our solicitious care, or is it to be assumed that the old broads (and I intend to be one someday) and gents can just take care of themselves since they’ve been doing just that for decades?

How many single churchfolk out there have heard this one? “Well, you don’t have a family, so you have more time for all of this.” I’m a single person with a sister, brother, sister-in-law, mother, stepdad, cousins, aunts, uncles and nephews — many with whom I am extraordinarily close and whose physical distance from me is a source of genuine pain in my life. We must stop thinking of singles as people with no family and start thinking of them as people who have to make a special effort to achieve connection with other humans — even something so simple as sharing a meal with friends takes scheduling effort, planning and driving. Singles are so often the ones who make the effort to reach out. How many people reach out to singles?

Single people don’t get any more hours in their day than do married people with families. Churches must stop discriminating against them and expecting more from them. When I visit churches I see long lists of pastoral outreach that take into account a wonderful variety of human need: meals for the sick and bereaved, meals and visits to new parents. Callers for the elderly and shut-in, support groups for the divorced, addiction recovery ministries. I’d love to see something like Single Support. It would be totally cool if singles could count on their church to be a place where they might find an open invitation to dinner — or Friday night movie night (we’re always happy to cook and contribute since most of us have experienced the feeling that we’re being invited out of pity). I love the “open door” philosophy that some folks have — “just stop by!” I love that. I strive to emulate it. The church Singles Support group could be a place to coordinate rides to and from the airport, to and from the car mechanic (only singles understand what a pain in the butt it is to get your car worked on because you have no spouse to drive you to and from the garage, necessitating doing business with a sub-par operation close-by).

I am lucky enough to have fantastic neighbors who I know are absolutely there for me. They do things like call on a snowy night to say “hey, we’re at the grocery store… do you need anything?” I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Single people often feel that it’s inappropriate to ask for help. We don’t want to be a burden on anyone. We don’t want to be pitied, and we don’t want to be seen as (eek) too needy. The church universal needs to do a better job of affirming the mutual interdependence between all people. The church in America needs to do a better job remembering that our culture is obsessively couples-oriented and to lift up the message that we must reach beyond the comforts our our own families and include others in our intimate circle of concern. Must I remind the Church that Jesus was not a family man?

At one church I attend fairly frequently, the offering is brought up to the altar with great fanfare and the singing of “Amen” by a parade of tiny children and their proud parents. The children bang tambourines and wave ribbon banners. Part of me knows that these cute babies symbolize the future of the church, that they are developing positive associations with church in this moment, and that the children of the church are all our children. Another part of me gets a strong message that stewardship in this congregation is connected with procreativity. I love seeing the little boos, but I also feel that I am most explicitly not included in this moment. If I was a woman who ever had a dream of motherhood, I think it would hurt. Sometimes it hurts anyway. And — and this is small but I’m going to be honest — this hurt affects my giving. When so much about any church broadcasts, “THIS CHURCH IS FOR FAMILIES, AND BY ‘FAMILY’ WE MEAN KINSHIP TIES BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO LIVE TOGETHER IN A HAPPY HOME, PROBABLY ALSO WITH A DOG,” I just don’t feel that my gifts are as welcome or needed as other places. And I give more generously in those other places.

I know many single people who won’t step foot in a church because the last time they tried, they were treated as a problem rather than as a beloved guest. Single men venturing into the church are often descended upon by Yente types who assume they want to be set up. Single women can be seen as a threat by married women. Churches are mostly geared to welcome families with children. Do an audit of your own church: when someone walks through the door alone, what are your assumptions? Do you know how often I have been asked if my husband would be joining me? (I like to say, “I certainly hope so, but first I need to meet him.”)
The American Church tends to consider singles ministry as a transitions ministry: we assume that ministries for singles should be about pastoring to them in the aftermath of divorce or in setting them up for dating relationships with each other. I don’t think I have ever seen a singles ministry model that assumed that single folks were neither wounded by divorce nor heading toward the Promised Land of marriage. How about it, pastors? Can we work on this?

How many of Unitarian Universalist congregations start their church service with familes lighting the chalice? Is the “family” in question always a family with two parents (of any gender) and children? In my congregation, we try to present a mix of families, solo folks, and duos or trios of friends or leadership teams.

How many sermons use married and family life as the sole illustrations for relationship issues? How many preachers preach Sunday after Sunday about the challenges of family life, never taking into account the people in the pews who would dearly love the opportunity to have these same challenges? When those little babies come singing down the aisle waving banners every Sunday at the church I just mentioned, has anyone considered the agony it might be causing to women or couples who have been trying to conceive, and failing year after year? Couples whose adoption proceedings have fallen through? Single women and men who dearly want to have children and who are unsuccessfully seeking a partner with whom to share the experience of parenting?
Women who had an abortion this week, or who are considering one? It’s important that the way we lift up God’s blessings of relationship at a particular point in our liturgies (whether it be the chalice lighting or offering or the sermon) not look the same every time we do it.

When your congregation has a fellowship dinner or a Circle Supper, is everyone seated couple by couple in deference to their comfort level, leaving singles to shoehorn themselves in, or is there an effort made to diversify the tables? Has your church ever committed the unpardonable rudeness of seating all the single people at a table by themselves at a social event, as happened to me once at a Pennsylvania congregation where all the singles were women?
“Here– you girls keep each other company.” How unbelievably insensitive!

How about pledging? When we discuss stewardship in our congregations and urge a pledge of, for instance, $1200 or more to meet a goal, are we taking into account the fact that most of the pledges are coming from couples? What are we saying to the singles? “We expect you to contribute twice as much to this congregation as the families (many of whom have children in religious education programs and ostensibly ‘cost’ the church more).” Why not suggest a per person guide to giving, and emphasize the individual spiritual benefits of practicing generosity? To look at it another way — couples aren’t one person; let’s stop treating them like one in this wise.

Those are just some thoughts for now. This issue has been on my mind for some time. There are millions more single adults in America than any other time in history. We are not just leftovers or people living half-lives until that magical moment when we find our special someone and join all you partnered grown-ups in the land of True Adulthood. That’s all a myth; all of it. Loneliness, need and emotional and social isolation are not just the challenges of single folk. They are human predicaments. The only difference is, partnered people mostly have someone at home to accompany them through these painful realities of the human condition. Singles don’t.

Church, remember them.

Friday Cat Blogging

“If I put out the White Paw of Surrender will you stop packing your bags and going away so much?”

Yes, honey. Big Mommy Kitty Cat isn’t going away for more than one night for the rest of the summer. You have been a very good girl, except for knocking over a pile of about 1,000 church folders in my study.

Gospel Night This Saturday!

Hey local PeaceBangers!

This Saturday evening, August 18, is Gospel Night at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 340 Dorchester Street, South Boston, MA 02127. 7:15 pm!

Sweet the Sound will be singing three or four numbers, and Yours Truly is featured on one of them.

Come join us in praise and celebration! Bring your fan and dress cool!

Anne And the Sand Dobbies Revisited

Awhile back I posted a review of a lovely children’s book called Anne And the Sand Dobbies, written by John Coburn.

His daughter-in-law just wrote to me courtesy of this blog and told me that the good reverend is at a relatively nearby nursing home in Massachusetts and will be turning 93 years old in September. She asked permission to share my review with him, and I think that’s just wonderful.

If I get a chance to visit him, I’d love to thank him for all his book meant to me, and perhaps to get it autographed.

The internet is a wonderful thing. I’m not sure that I even knew that Mr. Coburn was a minister. This is really neat.

MotherBang Goes Boom

Ouch, ya’ll! Me mama took a bad spill last night at the theatre, tripping over a stupid piece of scenery that should have been marked with glo-tape or blocked by an usher.
She fell hard and is terribly bruised up. She’s at the doctor right now to see if anything is broken, but your prayers are welcome.

Poor Mommy! I’m glad I’m here to help her get dressed and stuff.

She is such a good sport. When she was finally able to get up (she can’t put any weight on her right arm) she bowed to the crowd and said, “Would you like to see that again?” And then today when we worried whether or not her arm was broken, she said without missing a beat, “If it is, we can have a cast party!”

[Update 8/16: MotherBang’s left arm is brokedy-broke! It is covered with enormous black bruises, and there’s a little gouge in her ankle. All have been photographed for the lawyers. She is still being a very wonderful sport, though although most extremely ouchy. — PB]