PeaceBang

The Souls Of Inanimate Objects

So I go to pick up a chaise I just purchased from Home Goods and I’ve got it in the back of a friend’s truck. I run into a woman I know in the community (not my church, but a church-goer) and she stops to chat. “Did you just buy that?” she asks. I look over at the chaise and I say,very casual-like, “Oh no. That’s just my couch. I’m just taking it for a little ride to get some fresh air.” She looks at me incredulously but I’m totally dead-pan. “It’s such a nice day,” I add.
She gets an expression like she wants to laugh but maybe that would be rude, so she stays silent. We look at each other.

“I think that all inanimate objects have souls,” I say. “So I think it’s important that they not stay cooped up in the house for too long.” She composes herself, remembering that I am a Professional Spiritual Person and I must actually believe this stuff.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do next week when it’s the bed’s turn to go out. I’ll have to borrow a bigger truck.”

She finally allows her eyes to express her opinion of me: she was worried that I was insane, and now she knows I’m just sort of insane.

“You’re pulling my leg, right,” she asks. And I admit that yes, I am. And then she says, “But for a minute there, even though I thought you were crazy, it was sort of a sweet idea. I mean, that objects have souls of their own.”

I tell her that it’s actually not my idea at all, that the Celts and other indigenous religious peoples believe this and so do I (although not to the extend that I take my furniture out for Sunday drives) and that she might like to read Thomas Moore’s book The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life if the idea appeals to her. She says she will because she really liked Care of the Soul by the same author. And we say goodbye and she says to me, “I always heard that you were crazy, but in a good way. I can’t believe you’ve lasted this long in this little town, but we love having you here.” I respond that my couch and I are very touched by her sentiments, and we crack up and say goodbye.

The chaise looks great in the living room. It looks like it’s sitting there thinking, “FINALLY, I’m in just the right place and off that stupid retail floor.” It’s very elegant brown and I’ve got my favorite deep red chenille throw on it, plus two pillows I’ve had for years that just happen to look great with it. It’s very sturdy and I plan to spend many happy and calm hours reading and watching movies in it. I’ve been looking for years for just the right chaise. I’m stupidly happy about it.

Genie In New York

My friend Genie is just one of those touchstone people you’re lucky to have in your life. We’ve been friends since the first days of college when we went on endless rounds of auditions and jokingly referred to each other as “the call-back queens.” We constantly got called back for leading roles and not cast. Not bad for two kids who weren’t even theatre majors in the hyper-competitive Northwestern University theatre scene!
Of course I didn’t see it that way back then; I just saw failure and rejection. Silly kid.
Genie is a beautiful, open-faced corn-fed girl from Libertyville, Illinois. She came to NU with an enormous, authentic smile, the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, and a great set of singing pipes and dancing pins. She is one of those people of whom I have always thought, “But she’s so truly sweet and good; why would she want to be friends with me?”

My first big trip abroad alone was to see Genie in England right after graduation. I had finished my student teaching in December and couldn’t find a teaching job, so I worked as a nanny and saved my pennies for a pilgrimage trip to the U.K. to honor my degree in English Literature. Genie was living in London and working for the BBC at the time, and I wanted to backpack around (using London as a home base) and visit an elderly distant relative — the sole member of my extended European family who had escaped the Nazi persecution.

Back in those days, we didn’t have e-mail (I can’t believe I just said that!) so Genie and I exchanged letters and I planned to show up at about 11 AM after my trans-Atlantic flight, phone her, and get detailed instructions to town. But when I landed and phoned, jet-lagged and painfully congested in the head, no one answered. What to do? I determined to find my way into the city by public transport (a habit I have maintained to this day — I like the mental challenge of navigating my route when I arrive at a foreign destination, as it keeps me from falling asleep on my feet and saves loads of cab fare). Much to my pride, I was able to find my way to her neighborhood, to change some money at a local pub, and to phone her flat again. Still no answer. You can see where this is going.

As it turns out, I was rescued on the street outside the apartment by Genie’s landlord who took pity on me immediately, let me in for a nap and took my passport by way of collateral. Genie showed up a few days later, having forgotten all about my arrival and taken off for the weekEND (British pronunciation) to Scotland with some friends. I have never forgotten that episode and still like to tease her about it, even though she has been impressively responsible during my subsequent visits to see her in Paris.

But it’s more than that. It was during those European travels that I had my first experiences deeply attending to my own inner voice away from the demands and distractions of my ordinary life. I associate Genie with getting to know myself better, facing my own demons, and wandering in the world a pilgrim and sojourner at the mercy of luck, planning, my own savings account, and the hospitality of strangers. I still have journals from that first trip to England when I chronicled my discovery of my relentlessly cruel Inner Critic. During a subsequent trip (1989) from Denmark to Sweden to Germany to Holland to Belgium to France, I fully acknowledged residual grief and depression from my childhood. Those trips helped me enter more deeply into the truth of my life. I could tolerate and even somehow cherish those feelings on my solo travels because I knew I had Genie to meet up with at some point on the itinerary.

During the 1989 tour of European cities, I was supposed to meet up with Genie in Amsterdam, but she sent me a note via the American Express office and told me she couldn’t make it, I’d have to see her next week in Paris. During my stay in A’dam I was groped in the Sex Museum one day and traumatized the same night by a traveling Amnesty International exhibit of medieval torture instruments. Days later in Brussels, Belgium I was sexually harrassed by an amorous (and married) hotel manager (he let himself into my room with his own key in the morning, bearing breakfast on a tray and the expectation that I would let him join me for breakfast in bed — so naive was I! No wonder he had upgraded me to such a nice room!). I endured all these things with fairly good cheer because I knew that they’d make great stories to tell Genie. When I got to Paris we rode the TGV to spend a few days in Geneva, Switzerland where she was promptly groped on the street.

I haven’t seen my buddy in about four years… or is it five? My god, is it SIX? Lord, I think it is six. She has since gotten married and had the baby she always dreamed of having, and they’re going to be in NYC on a short stopover on Nov. 18-19. Look at her now, all grown up and with her own entry on Wikipedia, which describes her as an “animatrice de radio et de television.” It’s been fun watching her go from radio DJ to television personality (on France’s equivalent to “Entertainment Tonight” to culture reporter on “France 24.”

It’s going to be a real rush to jump on the Greyhound next Sunday afternoon after church and to get to NYC for a very brief visit. But unless something comes up at church, I am going to try. I want to see those Libertyville sky-blue eyes again, hear that wonderful laugh and to meet the man she married (lucky guy — she certainly kissed enough frogs before finding her prince!) and her little Jonah. It’s important to keep in touch with our touchstones.

Muslim Stamp

A friend forwarded one of those so-called “patriotic” e-mails you may have gotten expressing outrage about this fairly newly-issued stamp (from the postage price it may have been last year):

“THEY DON’T EVEN BELIEVE IN CHRIST AND THEY’RE GETTING THEIR OWN CHRISTMAS STAMP,” sez the genius who composed the nationalistic screed. Um,excuse me, Mr. or Ms. “Peace On Earth, Good Will Toward Men,” Eid isn’t Christmas. Look it up. It’s a Muslim holiday. “Eid” is not Arabic for “Merry Christmas.”

REMEMBER THE AMERICANS WHO HAVE DIED IN TERRORIST ATTACKS! BOYCOTT THIS STAMP!

Because, of course, the 5-8 million Muslims in America are all terrorists. That’s what it’s all about. Right on, and welcome to the holiday season!

(P.S. I actually love the design of the stamp and plan to use it to send all my holiday cards if it’s still available. Thanks, Miguelito!)

Update: It’s much older than I thought. You can read about its release, and about Eid, here. And you can read about the boycott of the stamp here.

Random Autumn Musings

I’m waiting for my Spanish rice/faux paella to cook and feeling very virtuous for having gotten a start on my newsletter column and sermon for this weekend. This is such an energetic season for me, and I’m hugely inspired by a class I’m taking at Andover-Newton on the practice of ministry. I feel like Helen Keller with her hand in the flowing water at the pump: although I’ve dutifully read and appreciated dozens upon dozens of books on ministry and culture, church growth, spiritual leadership, bla bla bla insert-your-Alban-Institute-title here, they didn’t set my hair on fire or anything. But something about where I am with my congregation and the great chemistry in my doctoral seminar at school has made all the literature come alive and animated, like in “The Wizard of Oz” where Dorothy’s world goes from black and white to Technicolor.

So it’s a good time. I EVEN GOT TO THE GYM THIS MORNING (fanfare). There was a gaggle of middle-aged soccer mom types with fabulous, fit figures in the locker room clucking about their fitness regimens and personal trainers and I said on my way out the door into the gym, “You all have totally hot bodies! Remember that!” Someone called after me, “Wait! Would you spend the day with me and tell me that?”
I said, “Tell yourself that! Jump on some lucky man and have some fun with that body!” Wicked cackling all around (they were all sporting wedding rings, so I thought I’d do my part for conjugal relations on the South Shore).

I came home to an e-mail from an old friend catching me up and explaining that she got married in 2005 and divorced in 2006. “I didn’t like being married,” she said, (which, by the way, is all that Elizabeth Gilbert really had to say in her bathetic memoir Eat, Love, Pray – ya don’t have to make a three-hankie Hollywood weeper out of it, for heaven’s sake, we’re not all meant for the married life). I thought about my friend’s sad, simple little confession and remembered how strangled and weird I felt when I co-habitated with the great love of my life, how unlike myself, how out of sorts and self-consciously I moved through our home even though I madly adored him (and still do, more’s the pity). I hated living in the family house growing up: it wasn’t just the insanity of my particular family, it was that and my intense need for total privacy and quiet so I can THINK!

I noticed while staying with my brother and sister in-law last week that people with little kids in the house don’t get much time to just THINK (I hear your sardonic laughter out there, moms and dads, and yes, I know it’s the Understatement Of The Year). One morning when I was down in the kitchen (which extends to the family room) with my tiny dudes, they wanted to turn on the TV. I said no. “Why not?” asked Nicholas. I said, “Because it’s morning and we all need some quiet time so we can think about our day.” This was kind of a show-stopper for the boys. They came around to the table with big eyes and slightly open, wondering mouths and sat quietly, actually thinking about what I said. I set bananas and muffins before them in an amiable silence. I mean, they’re two and three years old, so the silence didn’t last that long, but while it lasted it was literally heavenly.

“Happy Feet:” A PeaceBang Review

I must have been the only person in America to find this heart-warming tale about Emperor penguins really creepy and incredibly racist. All I ever heard about it was how charming it was, how toe-tappingly inspiring and how great the animation.

Yikes! The adult penguins were downright scary, with cold beady eyes and weird voices. And where was the outcry over Robin Williams’ voicing of the character Lovelace, doing a really cheap Jamaican routine that took me right back to the bad old days of the minstrel show? Cripes, was that offensive! D’ya think the animation world could maybe try to make a film that isn’t laden with the crassest kind of racist stereotypes? I mean, just to see if they could do it? Like a kind of special challenge? I think if they tried really hard, they might be able to include a Latino character who isn’t a sex-obsessed gangsta slacker, for instance.

So cranky Auntie PeaceBang hated this movie and doesn’t recommend it for the kiddies or the adults. My nephews were enthralled, however, so what do I know.

PeaceBang’s First Apple Pie

My friend Rali makes great pie and I always mess mine up (mostly the crusts), so I asked her to do a Pie Tutorial for me last night.

This is our beautiful pie.

Nothing but apple, cinnamon, sugar, flour and water and butter. Totally heavenly. I know the crust is a little crazy with the weaving but it was late and I kind of lost my motor skills.

“Science Informs”

As a comical addendum to our conversation about being offended by the idea of someone praying for us, I wanted to tell you that a teen-aged boy of my sister’s acquaintance says, “Science informs” when someone sneezes. It’s his way of countering the whole “God bless you” tradition.

It goes like this:

“Achoo!”
“Science informs!”

Over The Rainbow Bridge

My friend Michael’s cat, Sybil, died this morning. She was sick and he and his partner knew it was coming but it’s never easy. She has been his companion and familiar for over 15 years, bonded to him in her kittiehood by shared plates of spaghetti (!). Since she’s a black cat, Michael thinks that maybe she was holding on for one more Halloween. This photo was the last taken of her — yesterday when Michael took her out for a little fresh air. She died peacefully in her sleep.

Bless her heart. Thanks for all the love, Sybil.

“I’ll Pray For You”

I was in high school when my father died — a mystical non-Theistic Unitarian church-attending kid mourning an existentialist nominally Jewish papa. When my classmate Jessica McDonald approached me a week after he died to tell me that her church had said a mass for him, I immediately flushed red hot as anger coursed through my body. What the hell is the Catholic church doing messing with my Dad’s soul? was my first thought. You didn’t like or accept him in life, and he wouldn’t have wanted all that superstitious nonsense anyway; he hated it! was my second. And then, because Jessica was standing in front of me with an expression of such vulnerability, so obviously trying to help, a new emotion made its way through the redhot rage: appreciation. Just a tetch. Just enough to create a cramp in my chest as fondness forced its way through the anger.

“Jess, thanks,” I said, and went off to cry in the girl’s bathroom. I cried silently because I was the brave one, the star of the school play and Carl D. Weinstein’s daughter, and I would allow no one to see anything but strength and courage. My heart physically hurt as I struggled to maintain my defenses that were being quietly demolished by the news that Catholics would bother to pray to their God for the repose of my father’s spirit. We are all so crazy, I remember thinking. We are all so crazy. I wouldn’t have an opportunity to unpack or to consider what I meant by that for twenty years. I am still unpacking it now.

A few weeks ago in the Miss Conduct advice column of the Boston Globe, this letter appeared:

I’ve made it very clear to a born-again co-worker that I’m not religious, but she persists in telling me “I’m praying for you” any time she hears I’m having a problem. I’ve told her several times that I don’t believe in it, and it’s her business if she wants to do it, but I don’t need to hear about it. She said it to me today again, and I just ignored her, but it still rankles. On the list of disrespectful behaviors, I suppose it isn’t the worst thing, but I do wish she’d stop! Any advice?
M.R. in Jamaica Plain

And here is Miss Conduct’s (Robin Abraham) terrific response:

Get over it. If you don’t believe in prayer, what’s it hurting you? Saying “I’ll pray for the salvation of your hell-bound heathen soul” is one (seriously inappropriate) thing. Saying “I’ll pray for your sprained ankle to get better soon” is another. Your co-worker is showing her concern in a way that is meaningful to her and harmless to you.

Most nonreligious people reject religion because they believe it to be superstitious and intolerant. But what is more superstitious than thinking that you are somehow affected by prayers to a deity you don’t even believe in? And what is more intolerant than wanting to curb an innocuous expression of concern merely because it doesn’t cohere with your personal worldview? Be a better, more gracious advertisement for secularism. (Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are doing the cause enough damage.) Tell your co-worker that while your philosophies may differ, you appreciate that she takes the time and emotional energy to remember you in her prayers.

We are all so crazy. Listen to this: in response to her response, Robin Abrahams got herself a little pile of hate mail, and even some direct threats. Some of the more thoughtful and printable ones appear here. This from readers who, I have no doubt, consider themselves rationalists. And this is where the either-or, black-white rhetoric of the New Atheism has gotten some of us: either you are a reasonable, intelligent person who doesn’t do insane things like pray to a nonsensical, human-created Deity Concept or your are one of those credulous dingbats who believes in a Deity Concept and therefore feel inexorably compelled to foist that stupidity onto everyone else. And dammit, if you’re praying for me, you must be inflicting your dingbatted ideas onto me, and I’ll have none of it!

I’m glad that this letter made its way to an etiquette advice column; it is, in the end, a matter of pure civility and graciousness necessary for living in a pluralistic society. But let me say more about prayer from my perspective as a minister in a theologically pluralistic religious tradition.

One of my great frustrations with my own often prayer-phobic Unitarian Universalists is that they’re too often sadly and even willfully ignorant about the vast spectrum of prayer practices and techniques in the world, insisting that prayer is always a petition that someone makes to get something out of God. No matter how many sermons they hear defining and exploring a wide variety of prayers from various traditions (and even within the Judeo-Christian tradition), they persist in believing that prayer is always of the “Gimme” variety. No matter how many times they are offered a non-theistic form of prayer in a worship service, they remain rejecting and uncomfortable with the mere idea of being invited to pray unless the prayer is titled in some more innocuous liturgical term, say, “meditation.” (That’s just a little side rant, you understand, coming from a woman who has learned over the years that a community cannot actually “meditate” in less than 60 seconds, but they can indeed pray!) For those who fuss over the word year after year I offer this: “You can sit and think loving thoughts about someone. You can sit quietly and follow your breathing in and out. You can look out the window and appreciate the beauty of the world outside. Those are all entirely legitimate forms of prayer.”

Miss Conduct is right: if someone insinuates that their prayer is toward our conversion, that’s offensive. It is, however, a tradition to pray in this way among some conservative Christians. By all means, tell those who are praying for you to “find Jesus” that you don’t appreciate those sentiments, and that you hope they will grow in faith enough to stop praying in public like the hypocrites Jesus derided in Matthew 6:5. But for those who say they are just praying for us for whatever reason (we’re sick, we’re suffering, we’re unhappy, etc.), the correct response is simply, “Thank you. I need all the good thoughts I can get right now.” It’s helpful to understand that for a certain kind of religious person, “I’m praying for you” is a reflexive response to the news of other’s troubles. It’s supposed to be comforting, friends. It’s supposed to communicate, “I care enough about you to bring your name before my God tonight, because I fervently believe there is a power in the universe beyond all this tangible mess that loves us enough to listen when we cry to Him.”

Even if the pray-er is a bit of a pious irritant, remember that in the quiet of their devotions they probably know that. And they know you don’t like them. So if you can, spare them a kind thought, too. Let’s weave the invisible filaments between us with mindfulness and love. Why not? Is the alternative working so well?

[Update: Robin’s blog has more here, including a shout-out to PeaceBang Blog.]