PeaceBang

PeaceBang On Holy Week Blogging Hiatus

I’ll write if something burning arises; otherwise, I’ll be hanging out with my J. I wish you a blessed week as you journey to Emmaus.

Excerpts from a Palm Sunday Sermon: “What We Love We Yet Shall Be”

“The goal of world community with liberty, peace and justice for all.”

It’s the sixth principle of our Unitarian Universalist Association. Liberty, peace and justice for everyone, and a sense of kinship between all the peoples of the world. A great idea. I’m for it. I’m for it. But how? I hear those words, which are easy to remember because they so closely echo the words of the pledge of allegiance we all learned as kids. Words that slide easily out of the mouth, with starry eyes, hand over the heart. Peace, liberty and justice for all. A tall order indeed. If you hold yourself personally responsible to fill that order, its expectations could feel a bit crushing. How are any of us supposed to bring peace, liberty or justice to the whole world, let alone all three?
The short answer is, we’re not. We can’t. But the longer answer is more complicated, and it has to do with what we can bring to the world where we are.

…

What most particularly inspires me today is that Jesus was able to have that breadth of influence without ever being on television, without access to any kind of form of communication, without ever writing a word for posterity, without a computer, with no home, no credit card, no personal secretary, and he never even traveled that far beyond his own hometown. He did all that with nothing but a heart on fire and a pair of dusty sandals to walk around in.

If we have ever thought that saving the world required more than that, friends, we have been thinking too big, very likely over-reaching ourselves.
“Since what we choose is what we are,
and what we love we yet shall be,
the goal may ever shine afar,
the will to reach it makes us free.”
We sing those words as our Doxology on most Second Sundays, when we send our financial gifts – our offering — out into the world. These words remind us that bringing about peace, liberty and justice in any way, no matter how small or how significant, require first that we choose what we shall love, and then that we strive to reach it. That striving doesn’t need to take us geographically far, just somewhere new in the heart, new in our insides.

When he was saying goodbye to his community, Jesus said, “My peace I give to you. My peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives do I give you.”

Peace. The peace of knowing who we are and what we want to work toward, not just the peace of being comfortable and unbothered. We should not confuse the latter with the former. The peace of being comfortable and unchallenged is not peace but apathy. Our sixth principle tells us that we are communally committed to the goal of peace, liberty and justice for all. Not peace, liberty and justice as the world gives — through bureaucracies, and by government administrations that create a program in one era but demolish it the next — but peace, liberty, and justice as a way of being, as a way of ordering the way we look and think about things, as a way of disciplining ourselves and setting priorities that make demands on us.

What we love we yet shall be — and we are trying to love peace, liberty and justice for all people, a global goal that we mostly pursue here in our own local community. It can be done, friends. You know, Palm Sunday is notable for many reasons, but not least of all because it’s the one time we see Jesus riding on an animal rather than walking. He walked everywhere. As I said earlier, this man who changed the entire course of history never traveled very far from his own hometown. Think about that. A person can be an agent of peace, liberty and justice by walking around where they are; by letting their hearts be aflame with passion for the contribution they might make from right from where they are.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19th. I’ve had a lot of rage about it, especially when I think of your children in harm’s way, and all the carnage of the Iraqi people and culture. I am angry that my country has still required no sacrifice from me in order to make this war more real. I remember the monks who set themselves on fire in Vietnam to protest the war when the U.S. was fighting there, and I think, “We cannot set ourselves on fire, but we should allow our hearts and souls to catch fire. That fire is the divine presence in each of us, and it will not let us rest. And thank God for that. Nothing of worth happens without it.”

I have a colleague who is in Kenya right now, and others who have gone to Darfur, and some others who are going to train ministers in Zimbabwe this summer. And that’s all wonderful. But if we can’t go to Darfur or Zimbabwe, but that doesn’t mean we can’t create peace, liberty and justice where we are. Even the Ghandis and the Albert Schweitzers and the Mother Theresas and the Jesuses of the world all carried out their life work in very local communities. Of all of these admired people, Jesus was the least well-traveled.
…

Oh, it would be exciting to be a jet-setting savior of the world, wouldn’t it. To be a Jane Goodall flying from one country to the next inspiring people to eco-consciousness, signing books for hour upon hour for adoring fans like me. To be Paul Farmer lecturing on three continents in two days, so committed to saving poor communities from the scourge of tuberculosis and HIV that he hardly ever sees his own family, beloved of appreciative patients and mentor to dozens of brilliant doctors worldwide. So admired that he’s practically a saint to some.

But then there is this other man, who had no passport, won no awards, never got invited to an industry banquet, never published a book, didn’t have a change of clothes and never even had a wife and kids to neglect for his noble cause. A local man, a hometown boy who took long walks and talked to people, shared his deep and profound admiration for humanity and reverence for his God, and who did nothing but try to set each community’s hearts afire with the idea that we live not for ourselves
alone, but for others, and that we are not a random accident on the Earth but children of a Creator who loves us to every last hair on our heads.

What does it all mean? It means that some lives are lived on a grand scale of nobility and achievement, and that others whose hearts are just as full of passion are lived on a far smaller scale – a very local scale – and are just as noble. The point isn’t the scale, but the intensity of the fire that burns within, and how willing we are to have love lead us in the direction illumined by that fire.
What we love we yet shall be. And we can become it together, right here. That’s good news.

from “What We Love We Yet Shall Be”
The Reverend Victoria Weinstein
Palm Sunday 2008

War and Sacrifice

I got an e-mail yesterday from a colleague asking me to sign on to a statement of Lamentation and Repentance for War generated by Jim Wallis and the good folks at Sojourners. As I’m sure you are aware, March 19 marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a moral disaster of such long-lasting and profound dimensions I won’t even try to address them in a phrase or two.

When I think of this occupation, though, I think not of my own generation but of my nephews’ grandchildren, who will stay be paying for it, and theirs after them. I am convinced that two hundred years hence, if we still have a planet Earth and a history of it, this episode will be remembered as one of the greatest disgraces committed by an empire at the height of its power. It will be remembered as a tale of stupidity and hubris and cultural ignorance over which historians and lay people will shake their heads wondering, “How could that one superpower in that era do something so incredibly, obviously motivated by bloodlust and greed? How did their great government allow it? How could the people not take to the streets in droves, screaming and protesting, boycotting and barraging their elected representatives until they got out? What in the world was it really supposed to accomplish? How long did it take Iraq and surrounding nations to regain anything resembling equilibrium?”

I did sign on to the Call to Lament and Repent, but really, what other sacrifices have I been asked to make? Sending an e-mail petition is a pitifully empty action made through zero effort by a fat, comfortable civilian whose exterior life has been entirely uninterrupted or disturbed by this war while thousands of my countrymen and women are dead, are currently in harm’s way, and whose families daily bear the burden of their being in a hostile, dangerous environment fighting a war with no end in sight. My only sigh of regret comes at the gas pump, where I shell out (pun intended) over $3 a gallon for gas so I can go and drive wherever I please, while how many tens of thousands of Iraqi lives are shattered and their land drenched in blood? My biggest family concerns in the past five years amount to a mother with a broken shoulder and a brother with knee problems. My nephews are alive and well and growing up with all comforts and luxuries on a safe little suburban street, my sister and I work our jobs and have full and free social lives, travel, shop, entertain ourselves as we so choose — there is no interruption of services, no end to the diversions we might purchase for ourselves, no cessation of the round of social outings, learning opportunities, cultural life and beautiful countryside to which we might avail ourselves. Our sleep is undisturbed. Our grocery stores are full to bursting, we never go hungry unless we choose to, and all manner of services are widely available to us with no delay.

I saw a movie this past week that was ostensibly a sweet piece of madcap costume fun starring the extraordinary Frances McDormand, the delightful Amy Adams and my personal favorite, the wickedly talented Shirley Henderson. It was set in England at the start of WWII, and while the younger characters involved themselves in a whirl of sex, champagne and romantic intrigue, the middle-aged leads (McDormand and her lovely, sexy suitor Joe played by Ciaran Hinds) were dreadfully aware of the signs of coming war, and knew just what that would mean. They had lived through the first world war, you see, and while the youngsters danced and carried on obliviously, these two drew closer together in deep generational understanding and sympathy, having no idea what was to come but knowing in their hearts that it would be terrible, and require much of them, taking away their peace of mind and their comforts, which is what any war should do. Any war should take away the peace of mind and the comforts of the nations that fight it, else it is too distant, too hypothetical, too much a spectacle on the nightly news and not real enough for us to hate it enough to end it.

Helpless, helpless, helpless. We inflicted this horror upon another sovereign nation and our own military forces and kept ourselves largely untroubled at home, thinking that yellow “Support Our Troops” stickers on our cars was gesture enough, that circling around in peaceful protest was enough. We should have had our gas rationed, our sugar, silk stockings, and other luxuries taken away, our electricity and heat rationed — not only to pay for some of this disastrous experiment in “nation building” but to have it brought to our attention on a daily basis that we are a nation at war, hemorrhaging billions of dollars a day while many of our own citizens lack housing, food and health insurance, and that this is untenable, disastrous, and must be repented of and ENDED.

“Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day” — which of these women has lived through a world war??

Men Are From Kashmir…Women Are From Venus

I’m sorry but this is just too good not to share.

I was running to an appointment yesterday afternoon while SweetieBang was deciding that the load of dishes we washed with the eco-friendly cleaner had come out gross and smelly (too true, and it’s too bad), and so I grabbed a box of Cascade from the pantry and thumped it on the counter. “That stuff obviously doesn’t work, we might as well use this more toxic product since I already have it on hand.”

I ran into the study to shut down my computer and I hear maniacal laughter from the kitchen. I call out, “What? What’s so funny? What happened?” “Oh, nothing,” he says, muffling his guffaws. Then another burst of helpless laughter. “Tell me, tell me!” I say. I go into the kitchen.

I had thumped the Cascade down on the counter next to a carton of Chai Tea that had a similar spout-like opening. SweetieDingbatBang, in his intense domestic concentration, (*rolling eyes*), had opened the CHAI instead of the CASCADE and filled the dishwasher detergent tray with it.

As my friend Robin used to say at such times, “Om nama shivaya.” Or as both Greg’s and my Jewish ancestors would have said, “Oy, gevalt.”

And yet there is no sweeter sound than that of a human being laughing heartily at him or herself.

Oh Happy Day

Easter is coming, friends!

This song has gotten me through some of the dreariest moments in my life over the past years. The Edwin Hawkins Singers, ladies and gentlemen. Blessings and may your day rock.

Music Blogging

On mornings like this, when I can’t quite wake up (I want that hour back!) and want to get my creative side grooving (I have a paper due tomorrow), I like to MOG; that is, write about music on my music blog.
Yes, I have one of those, too. Like regular blogging or ministerial fashion blogging, it’s a good and brief mental work-out, it empties out the detritus that might otherwise clutter my brain all day, and it’s about sharing interesting and good things with a community of readers — or in this case, other music-lovers.

And it’s here.

Now FaceBook, I have no excuse for. That’s just about saying “hi” to pals and being in high school all over again.

“To Patrick Swayze, Thanks For Everything, Victoria Weinstein”

I wrote a little tribute to drag queens, and to Patrick Swayze over at my other blog. The news that Swayze is battling pancreatic cancer was a blow.

“To Wong Foo,Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995) was released very close to the break-out drag queen hit “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” and I know I’m in the minority in believing that “To Wong Foo” was by far the better picture. To me, “Priscilla” was a wonderful road story but an overly-mincing performance by Guy Pearce and unbelievable casting in Terrence Stamp (I love the man, but he can’t move, and drag queens — especially legendary ones — have serious moves) made it impossible for me to buy his character).

“To Wong Foo,” first of all, totally gets the aesthetics of big American drag right, and exquisitely so. The three actors playing the key characters (John Leguizamo as Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Wesley Snipes as Miss Noxeema Jackson, and Patrick Swayze as Miss Vida Boheme) were unbelievably good together, and threw themselves into the roles with total abandon. Given the three “girls” differences in economic class, culture and race, this is a great movie about America itself, land of the free and the brave, where we are free to recreate ourselves in whatever image we can afford emotionally and financially. The dialogue is wickedly funny and mean, such as when the Latina “baby drag queen” Chi-Chi starts to run away from the car in the middle of the night in a fit of pique and Wesley Snipes, the African-American Amazon goddess Noxeema Jackson, calmly watches her from the back seat and says, “Look at her, lookin’ like she runnin’ for the border.” The script is full of this kind of racial and class tension dealt with through affectionately biting sarcasm, which makes it true to the American experience and to the drag community.

Yes, the hetero men in the movie are mostly macho, dumb stereotypes (watch for the sweet Arliss Howard trying to persuade us that he’s a drunk wife-beater — bad casting, there!) and some have complained that they didn’t appreciate the whole “It takes a man dressed as a woman to teach a woman how to be a woman,” but I loved it. I loved it because it can be true. Just as it can take a woman to teach a man how to live more fully into his masculinity, so can the opposite be true.

I remember when I moved to Massachusetts from Maryland, having lived as a sexless frump for three dateless years and having totally subsumed my sense of femininity in the work of ministry. My friend Nathan, a drag queen, took me shopping in the summer of 2003. He coaxed me into more fitted jackets than I would have purchased, a sexy skirt that hugged my hips, and a pair of Nine West pumps that I first refused. “I don’t wear heels, Nathan, I’m too fat!” “HONEY,” he replied, from his full height of well over 6″ with one hand on a not-at-all slim hip, “If I can wear 4″ heels, you can wear these little 2″ things. GET THEM.” I did, I woke up to the fact that I was hiding myself behind layers of fat and big, shapeless clothing and I began to consider why I was doing this, and how it served neither myself nor my ministry. I started working out, I started dating, I started integrating my identity as a minister with my femininity, and I have never looked back. Thanks, Nathan.

And thank you, Patrick Swayze, for your marvelous creation of Vida Boheme. I wish you well in your cancer treatment, and want to say now that to me, you will always be immortalized in that great lady; a performance underappreciated by critics and by the general public.

Friday Cat Blogging

“Why is everyone coughing around here? This has got to stop : I only got 21 hours of sleep yesterday!”

A Sardonic & Serious Take on Lenten Discipline

A snarky Catholic pal sent me this card, which cracked me up and reminded me of a Boston Globe article I read about ten years wherein Boston Catholics described Lenten disciplines such as giving up popcorn and potato chips for forty days, and they weren’t kidding:

I love this. It’s such a perfect commentary on our contemporary idea of sacrifice as compared with the old practices of penitence and deprivation that would lead to spiritual insights we seek in the Lenten season. Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert… I think I’ll, um, refrain from buying lip gloss for forty days!

My Lenten discipline this year has been to be in a relationship that began, in an officially seriously committed way, just days before Ash Wednesday. For a long-time single, incredibly strong-willed and independent woman with extremely high expectations and a total inability to (a) hide her emotions or (b) speak her truth to any man in her life in a circumspect manner, this period has definitely been time in the wilderness wearing a hair shirt. Lent of 2008 will always be memorable as the year I gave up privacy, sole governance of my home, my sense of an inevitably solo future, my refrigerator, my schedule and social plans, and (on a happier note) the popular myth that I am far too prickly a pear for any human being to abide with in close quarters.

Not true, saith the LORD. Even when Jesus was being tempted by Satan (the Adversary), he had angels to attend to him. Lent may be about spending some time in the desert of self-denial and facing our demons, but it is also a time of feeling angel wings hovering ’round, and knowing their tender ministrations to be just as real as the awful stuff Satan is whispering into our ears.

For those who are offended by the whole idea of Lent, let me share with you that for me, penitence is not about punishment and Calvinistic ideas of existential unworthiness. The penitence we embrace during Lent is, for me, the confession of a dignified soul knowing that it can be more whole, a spirit incarnate in one human body vowing that it can receive healing and be an instrument of God’s peace, and the faith of a heart saying to itself that it deserves both to love, and to be loved, better.

La Vie En Rose: A PeaceBang Review

Now, there’s nothing I love better than a good entertainment bio pic; especially one featuring a super diva like Edith Piaf and the age-old “she came from the streets, lived in a brothel, drank hard, loved hard and had brass lungs to beat the band” variety. But “La Vie En Rose,” except for a marvelous performance by the recently Oscar’d Marion Cotillard, was just not very interesting. Yes, we marvelled at her great characterization of Piaf, we loved the Parisian scenery, we thought her lip-syncing was extraordinarily good, but we were, in the end, unmoved by this story. Why? Because it just seemed an endless, wearying epic of bad luck, more bad luck,sordid characters, a lot of drinking, drugs and hoarse shouting, cliched lines like “I’m gonna be a STAR - THEY can’t keep me DOWN!” and the de rigeur tragic love story.

Maybe it’s a French thing. I was absolutely riveted by “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” the wonderful bio-pic about our own American version of Piaf, Miss Judy Garland, played in the film by Judy Davis. Aside from one really bad fat suit, Davis got into the heart and soul of Garland and made her a force of nature you cared about, whereas with Piaf’s character I just felt she was a rather boring gal who happened to have a really distinctive and strong voice. Yes, we got the whole Svengali scene in “La Vie En Rose” where an abusive mentor breaks Piaf down and gets her to use her arms and her full heart and soul to express l’amour and such, but in the end I felt her a shallow woman, not much there, just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing but the will to survive. That isn’t to discredit Miss Cotillard’s exquisite work, but perhaps a critique of the screenplay or the direction.

I think I’ll watch “Me and My Shadows” again soon, just to revel in the amazing performances by Tammy Blanchard (who doesn’t impersonate so much as reincarnate the young Judy) and Judy Davis, and to get all the wringing-hankie dramatic pay-off at the end that I had hoped for from “La Vie En Rose” but didn’t get.