PeaceBang

Sabbatical Thoughts

I can’t imagine anything more amazing than being granted a paid sabbatical from one’s work, but I must say that the planning for it is far more time-consuming than I had anticipated. I have this sense that this is THE BIG OPPORTUNITY and want to cram in every bit of travel and learning possible, only to remember colleagues’ advice not to over-plan.

Some ministers take classes during their sabbaticals, or return to seminary for a semester. I’m in a very different place in my continuing education: having just completed coursework for a Doctor of Ministry degree, I should probably avoid the classroom for my sabbatical.

I still want to travel the USA and podcast and blog “Some Good News About Religion” by driving to visit you all and see you in your church/houses of worship setting. I want to hear the ridiculous, the divine, the heart-breaking and the triumphant stories about religious community. But I do not relish the idea of spending 8 weeks on the road.

So far, I envision this:

Early January: teach an intensive course on worship at my seminary. I love teaching and I haven’t offered the class yet this year.
Later January: go somewhere Spanish-speaking and warm, take an intensive Spanish language course, and rest for 2-3 weeks. Any ideas for locations, escuelas?
Mid- February through March: Travel the USA and collect stories for “Some Good News About Religion.” Start by driving South down Eastern seaboard, cut across the South/Southwest, drive up California, return home by Northerly route. (Eek, this sounds exhausting.)
April: Travel to Partner Church in Transylvania for a week or so and then travel to Turkey for Bible-themed tour (the latter is a deep desire I’ve had for a long time). Again, any ideas, recommendations?
Two weeks in May: Home, rest, re-entry.

This might be way too crazy and over-ambitious.

“Sire, The Peasants Demand The Right To Bear Arms!”

So says the frantic-looking lackey to the sardonic, pint-sized king in a frame from the much-missed comic strip, “The Wizard of Id.”
The king, always deliciously arrogant, replies, “Then rip off their sleeves.”
I laughed and laughed when it ran over twenty years ago and have never forgotten it.

Here’s the full NY Times story of Antonin Scalia’s and the other conservative Supe’s latest great contribution to American jurisprudence, with a truly mind-boggling photograph of pro-gun protesters included (the photo could be titled, “White Guys Just Wanna Have Guns” sung to the tune of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”). Can someone explain the logic of “If guns kill people, do pens misspell words?” Maybe it’s because I’m a bit down in the dumps today and the old mind isn’t particularly keen, but this just plain baffles me. I know someone out there can lay it out like an algebraic equation, a=guns a=pens, there’s an obvious analogy there, let me ’splain it to you. Please do.

Meanwhile, I’m disgusted and sickened by the decision — for some reason, Cher singing “If I Could Turn Back Time” runs through my head — probably because this ruling does seem to turn back time when we should be moving forward with gun control, not insisting that the second amendment really has nothing to do with the 18th century context within which it was ratified.

Aw, hell.
Let’s just tell a few jokes, then.

“They say guns don’t kill people; people kill people. But I think guns help. Just standing there saying bang doesn’t really hurt anybody. - Eddie Izzard

“I’m all for gun control. Sometimes I shake a little; I’ve got to use two hands.” - Tom Kearney

“Why do I need a gun license? It’s only for use around the house.” - Charles Addams

from “The Wizard of Id,” Brant Parker (artist) and Jonny Hart (writer)

These Lyrics Have Been Going Through My Mind All Day

A wonderful song from the show “Pippin” expresses how I feel today as I allow myself to wallow a bit over the end of my great romantic adventure with SweetieBang. The song is sung in the show by Catherine, a woman who meets and loves Prince Pippin and who loses him (but there’s ultimately a happy ending, of course!). SweetieBang does not have a “blunt, abrasive style” but the song perfectly expresses that sense of bittersweet regret any experienced woman feels at the end of a relationship with a truly good guy. He was the best to come along in a long, long while, and blessings be upon him.

I guess I’ll miss the man
Explain it if you can
His face was far from fine
But still I’ll miss his face
And wonder if he’s missing mine
Some days he wouldn’t say
A pleasant word all day
Some days he’d scowl and curse
But there were other days
When he was really…
even worse.

Some men are heroes
Some men outshine the sun
Some men are simple, good men
This man wasn’t one
And I won’t miss his moods
His gloomy solitudes
His blunt abrasive style
But please don’t get me wrong
He was the best to come along
In a long, long while….

George Carlin Dies

What terrible news.

I just adored him.

A lot of you will find this offensive, but he speaks for millions of people (albeit in a far funnier and more obscene manner than they would express the same ideas). It’s his brilliant routine on why religion is a crock, why there is no God, and why he prays to Joe Pesci.

Joe bless you, George!!
Thanks especially for that night in some city hotel when I couldn’t sleep and found one of your HBO specials on TV and stayed up far too late laughing so hard I thought I’d surely lose an eyeball.

[photo by leslie hawes]

Men Disappearing From Jewish Life and Leadership

Here’s an interesting article by Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe about the increasing numbers of women in reform Jewish leadership, and the concomitant decline of male participation in the synagogue.

One part of me hates the word “feminization” and the icky connotations that go with it: ie, when women are in charge religion gets soft and fuzzy, loses its intellectual edge, and becomes concerned so much with daily domestic concerns that it fails to address the need for social change (except within the context of “our children’s future”). On the other hand, some of those generalizations exist for good reason. I’m always disappointed when women preachers preach on cringe-worthy lightweight subjects like dieting, constantly use their own children as sermon illustrations, or degenerate into Oprah-esque New Age babble. I don’t see it a lot, but I do see it, and it’s no answer to the stereotypically male brainy, emotionally disconnected, droning or macho triumphalist exegesis of Scripture that represents the worst of male preaching.

Beyond the clergy leadership, however, my experience is that it’s just plain wonderful to have a good mix of male and female, gay and straight, partnered and single leading the congregation. Some of our women are the toughest, most organized, whip-snap generals you’ll ever see lead a committee. Some of our men are gentle, emotional and thoughtful, bringing classically “feminine” values to a team of straight-talking, irreverent broads. Marrieds with children represent an important demographic of our world, but child-free singles can be just as “the children are our future”-oriented. At church fairs, it is often the men who have the aprons on in the kitchen and the women who are collecting the money at the front door or helping people load their cars with heavy purchases. One of our most talented flower arrangers is a man. Some of our best financial whizzes are women.

The point is, any human organization devoted to cultivation of community and the inner life is impoverished by the absence of male or female. Part of the solution, I hope, is for all religious leaders to cultivate leadership equally among a variety of people and to recruit for leadership with diversity in mind.

First Time Out

Today was a glorious day so I popped Max into the car and drove into the big city to see what it would be like having him with me at an arts festival on Boston Common. His first Boston outing!

He rode in like an angel and we drove around the Common a couple of times looking for metered parking. Just as I was on my third go-round and hoping Max wasn’t getting car-sick going in circles (he seemed perky and fine; I, however, was getting green around the gills), I SPOTTED A SPACE! I drove toward it, just about to turn on my indicator signal when a BMW crossed two lanes of Charles Avenue and screeched in front of me to cut me off and steal the space. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it just isn’t done. You usually don’t see this sort of thing until Christmas time, honestly.

I thought maybe they didn’t see me. I said to myself, “Surely they didn’t mean to do that. Surely they’ll turn out to have some manners.” I rolled down my window and yelled, “HEY! You cut me off! That was my space!” I realized right away this was going to fall on deaf ears when I saw a Patagonia -clad guy with an incredibly self-conscious haircut and super fashionable spectacles get out of the car and look my way with a glance of utter disgust. Mr. Privilege incarnate. “You don’t cut someone off and steal their space!!” How lame. Why did I bother? Like he cared! Mr. Haircut responded with an original remark that begins with an “f” and ends with a “u.” I responded with some of my own original remarks (unkind but not quite that charming) and drove off to look for a space. It just wasn’t my day. I’m also of the belief that even if someone passes a departing car, if they put their blinker on first it’s only fair for me to back up and let them have the space. They were before me in line, is how I see it. Call me a sucker, but I usually have good parking karma so I stick with my little rules.

I’ve heard people complain about the obnoxiousness of BMW drivers all my life and one doesn’t like to harbor prejudices, but today was a banner day for validating that prejudice. To be fair, I never saw the driver. The passenger was bad enough. I imagined him saying, “Gun it, man. Cut that broad off.” I was going the speed limit, silly me, because I had a BEAGLE in my back seat!

I finally gave up on finding meter parking and parked in a garage for $11. Max refused to ride the elevator on the way out of the garage (but he did on the way back in!) but was otherwise a champ, sniffing his way through the concrete underground like Sherlock Holmes’ basset hound. We had an excellent experience at the festival, he met lots of doggies, and there was only one mishap when someone scared him from behind and he got himself wrapped around a pole and almost pulled down one exhibitor’s pavilion. (I am right now making a face that expresses my total agreement with anyone who is thinking, or was thinking at that moment, “Beagle people are the BMW people equivalent of the dog world.”) I promise that we were profusely helpful and apologetic and didn’t leave until we were sure everything was sturdily in place again.

It was a beautiful day! We walked over to the Boston Garden and sat on a bench by the duck boat pond. I chatted with a friendly couple and hummed along with two fiddlers who were playing a few feet away. “You are my sunshine, la da di da da…” I got up to put a dollar in the musicians’ violin case when I realized who they were. Mr. BMW and his Friendly Passenger, Mr. Haircut!! Oh, how rich!! I told the couple about our little encounter earlier in the day and we all roared with laughter. “I was going to give them a buck,” said the man, “but maybe I’ll go take one out!”

By God, the two of them: playing peaceful folk tunes in their Keene sandals, collecting dollars on a sunny day, having mere hours before endangered my and my dog’s lives with aggressive driving. The name of the duo is “First Time Out,” and I enjoyed the look of profound discomfort on Mr. Haircut’s face as I stepped up to read their sign and jot down their name. Big smile for both of them. The driver, of course, had no idea who I was. He probably thought I was taking down their name so they could play at my kid’s bar mitzvah or something.

I’ve been late to gigs before myself. I’ve been frantic for parking while trying to make stage manager’s call or a guest preaching engagement. I know the feeling. It stinks to spend $10 or even $20 on parking, and it stinks to get a parking ticket because you don’t have enough time on the meter, but it happens. What kills me is that these guys were just feet away from the ramp to the municipal parking ramp when they skidded across the road to cut me off. They were on their way to a gig and could have written off the $11 as a professional expense! Was it worth whiplash to save $11?

So my point, and I do have one, is to ask if any of you could design a little BEAGLE ON BOARD oval sticker in the style of “Baby on Board” or in the style of those location stickers (ACK for Nantucket, etc.). If I have the artwork I can order one from CafePress.com, and I’d like to put one on the car.

In my experience aggressive drivers don’t care if they imperil the lives of humans, but most people, deep down, have a soft spot for the dawgies. Maybe a BEAGLE ON BOARD sticker would have also reminded the teenaged girl driver who was tailgating me and everyone else as she zig-zagged madly down Route 3 southbound this afternoon to cool it.

Both of the animals are curled up sound asleep right now, grateful that Big Mommy Kitty Cat didn’t order them Cats/Dogs for Obama t-shirts from Cafe Press (yet).

Friday Cat and Dog Blogging

My little beagle is curled up in the tiniest possible roll on my bed right now as I write this on Thursday evening. He has had his biggest day with me so far — it was a day of testing him as True Pastor’s Dog. His schedule went like this:

11-12:30 Attend meeting with Mom at church. After greeting everyone, slept on floor throughout.
12:30-1:30 Take longest drive yet (on the highway, even!) to nursing home visit. Behave like angel all the way there in little doggie seatbelt.
1:40-2:20 Cheer up 94-year old friend in nursing home and get lots of pets from nurses and other residents. Behave like an angel except for brief naughty moment of jumping on wrong residents’ bed. Pee on lawn before getting back in car for drive back. Drink water out of tupperware in car.
2:20-3:30 Another big car ride, get stuck in traffic, wind up having to go with Mom to next visit. Sleep on floor for 45 minutes.
3:30-3:45 Take a little walk and behave like perfect gentlemen except for unsuccessful mad dash toward horse manure with the objective of eating or rolling in it.
3:50-4:00 Wait quietly in car while Mom picks up soft shell crabs from market.
4:15 Return home. Poop in yard. Eat. Sleep.

I think that’s a 4-star beagle we got there.

As Max snoozes, Ermengarde announces her presence on the bed with a loud “eoww!” She’s missed us all day and wants to know what’s going on. She has developed a slightly bossy big-sister attitude toward Max but there’s definitely love there. Last night at about 3:30 AM (technically this morning), Max started whimpering in his sleep. His whimperings turned into a full-fledged puppy nightmare and he cried and cried as I talked softly to him and comforted him (he had a tough vet appointment two days ago, would a dog have a nightmare about something like that?). As I was sleepily petting Max back to sleep, I heard the familiar *thump* of Ermengarde’s landing on the bed and watched through the dark as she sniffed him cautiously from the back and then tip-toed toward his head. He got two little sandpaper kisses on his smooth little noggin before she hopped back down and scrammed out of there.

I never thought I’d see the day. She’s pretty 4-star herself, little miss tigerpants.

How Do You Structure Your Writing Time?

This might earn me a bonking on the head from those who don’t have the luxury of study leave, but I’m interested in how other ministers or academics structure their days when they have big writing projects they’d like to tackle (say, a doctoral project) and a thousand distractions to lure them away from their desk (don’t we all!?).

Do you have a writing buddy — someone with whom you check in every day to compare notes, cheerlead for, or meet for coffee and procrastination?

Do you leave your home and write at Starbucks? I know my friend Stephanie wrote much of an excellent book on radical welcome that way.

Do you wake up real early, work out, eat a good breakfast, walk the dog, then sit your posterior down for an appointed number of hours, vowing not to budge for any reason, EVEN FOR LAUNDRY (or some other virtuous task that you can easily persuade yourself needs to get done)?

Do you light a cigarette, pour a cup of coffee, and smoke and drink and write until 3 AM, stopping only to wolf down a corned beef sandwich?

Do you write in short bursts, taking a little walk or reading celebrity gossip blogs to clear your head between each few pages?

I’d love to hear how you do it. I’m good at writing papers on deadline and I obviously love to blog and e-mail, but longer, more sustained efforts without looming deadlines are new to me and I’d like to make some progress on climbing this particular authorial mountain.

Cutting The Forty-Dollar Fabric

This is a totally awesome post by Kate, and it’s exactly how I feel right now about SweetieBang’s impending departure. I won’t say that there haven’t been some red eyes and sniffles around here but dang it, how cool was it to meet a guy at a bar in Florida one day and have him drive thousands of miles to show up at my door nary a week later to move in and be my love? It was VERY cool. I will cherish the memory and the experience for as long as I live, and I hope he will too. We were total strangers! We were going on sheer instinct and a lot of our instinct was right. But even a deep sense of soul kinship and genuine joy in each other’s company can’t provide everything needed for a strong partnership over the long run.

Thank you for your condolences, those who have offered them, and for your cyber hugs. I will definitely miss the guy. But there is something deeply satisfying about being old and mature enough to know that (1) people don’t change that much and (2) if you stay with the (probably) wrong person it will just get ugly eventually. Haven’t we all seen enough of that? And why do that to two terrific people?

And for those who are worried about the pup, he stays with Mommy. I am officially calling him Max Moses Weinstein from now on to honor his doggie daddy (Moses is SweetieBang’s mother’s maiden name). After all, Greg was the one who found Max in the shelter and got me to take the plunge of adopting the dog I’ve wanted for oh-so-many years. That was his most special gift to me, even though I mock curse him when I drop another $40 at Petco or $100 at the vet!

So here we are on a walk today, SweetieBang took this photo, and everyone’s going to be alright.

“The Happening:” A PeaceBang Review

SweetieBang* and I ventured out to see “The Happening” last night despite having read at least a dozen lukewarm to downright bad reviews of it. We agreed that the premise (people randomly committing suicide en masse) was sufficiently creepy and that M. Night Shyamalan’s unique storytelling abilities would probably be enough to entertain us for an hour and a half.

And that’s an hour and a half I’ll never get back.

This movie is worse than merely bad, it’s a genuine Golden Turkey. The script is preposterous and full of black holes of emotional and plot-related inconsistencies (like, what father would leave his 8-year old daughter with friends to head to a city that had very likely been hit by a terrorist attack in order to find his wife?). The dialogue is bad enough to groan over, and groan we did. The acting is so bad I was glad I had a shawl with me because I needed to twist it over my head and peek through it when Mark Wahlberg went up the Overacting-O-Meter from “Embarrassing” to “May Never Work In This Town Again.” The direction and editing were bad. The score was bad (”We can’t make this scene work through acting, writing or directing, so let’s just make it REALLY LOUD right here”). The make-up and costuming were bad. The extras were really bad (and when are extras noticeably bad??) The silly deep South hillbilly accents given to rural Pennsylvanian characters were bad. Everything about this movie was bad at best.

SweetieBang is a devoted cineast and has a pretty good poker face during all movies, but I felt him wince more than once (and can my next boyfriend be someone who will at least exchange a grimace with me when movies are this terrible? C’mon, that’s half the fun!!). I admit to being one of the many sickos in the audience who let out a huge whoop of laughter during a scene showing an act of suicide-by-tiger committed at the zoo (”What kind of terrorists are these?” moans the woman in the scene as she watches the horror unfold by video). I’m guffawing into my popcorn as the guy staggers around with one arm missing, having fed it to the tiger. Know why? Because it was just so bad. That’s not a spoiler, either. I promise you that I haven’t given away anything about the precious few genuinely eerie or effective moments in the film.

Watch for Betty Buckley in what is sure to become a cult classic cameo as the deranged religious fanatic Mrs. Jones (you know she’s a fanatic because she has tastefully framed artwork of JESUS all over her bedroom wall and is seen wandering in the garden murmuring the 23rd psalm during a windstorm). Betty Buckley, best remembered as the groovy mom Abigail in “Eight is Enough,” is also a whizbang Broadway diva and I have to think that she read the script, hooted with derisive scorn, called her agent and said, “GET ME ON THIS!” knowing that she’d earn a fat paycheck and camp it up with one of the most unintentionally funny death scenes in all movie history. Again, not a spoiler. The only thing spoiled will be your evening if you waste your money on this gargantuan disaster.

“Alma, you’d better stay safely in the car while I try to find the guy responsible for my really humiliating performance.”

*SweetieBang and I are hanging out as friends until he moves back to Florida in July. We had great fun and I certainly don’t regret the wonderfully romantic risk we took — but alas, we are a perfect example of the old saying, “Opposites Attract… And Then Drive Each Other Crazy.” In the end, I get custody of my baby beagle and a good friend, and all is well.