PeaceBang

MLB All-Star Game

Can I just break genre for a moment to gripe about the All-Star Game last night on Fox?

My beefs:

It was scheduled to begin at 8 pm but we didn’t get started on the game until almost 9:00, due to a bunch of pre-game garbage.

The telecast was a mess: too many flash-backs and extraneous videos to be able to focus on the game. Fire that producer! We don’t need extensive footage of the guys in kayaks outside the park and their swimming dog, okay? We just want to watch the GAME.

Did Barry Bonds need to VELCRO himself to Willie Mays’ side in every shot of Mays? Yea, BB, we KNOW he’s your godfather. We still think you’re a juiced up disgrace to the game. Go away.

Was it not obvious to everyone that pretty much all the players had partied ’til 3AM the night before and were playing like a bunch of Keystone Cops? Why aren’t the sports writers covering this? How many errors should we reasonably expect to see at an MLB All-Star game, fer cryin’ out loud?? It’s one thing if the ball has a wicked spin on it and you’ve contorted yourself like Gumby in an effort to get your mitt around it and fail. It’s another thing entirely when the ball goes rolling by at about O miles per hour and you, hung-over at third base, watch it roll past your feet with an expression on your face like Homer Simpson thinking about donuts. GET THAT BALL, Son! That’s why you earn eleventy billion dollars a year!

Petty, but…what’s with those stupid sleeveless jerseys on the Pirates players? And Cardinals management, take a cue from the Orioles in how to design uniforms for bird-named teams that don’t look totally dorky. We know who you are. We don’t need the six inch red bird all over your shirt to make it more obvious. What’s next? Eye patches and big gold hoops for the Pirates?

AL Manager Jim Leyland, how could you KEEP FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ ON THE MOUND FOR THAT LONG IN THE 9TH AFTER PULLING J.J. PUTZ AS FAST AS YOU DID? Do you care NOTHING for my coronary health?

Pride Theme: “Ask. Tell. Proud To Serve…”

I should add that the Pride Theme in Boston this year was controversial, because some saw it as a pro-military statement. As you can see from the website, it was not intended to be specifically about being out in the military but about g/l/b/t folk being out and integral in all walks of life. One woman was carrying a big sign that said, “Are you SURE your librarian is straight?” I thought that was great.

Still, I know of at least three people who stayed away out of protest, one grumbling that promoting “queer cannon fodder” was not his idea of Pride.

Please tell me I’m wrong about this, but I scanned the Boston Globe yesterday and didn’t see ONE WORD about Pride. I mean, heck, it was only attended by maybe tens of thousands of people, closing down downtown Boston for hours!! THAT’s not news!

And I must respectfully disagree with my dear friend Scott Wells about the “tacky” floats. I hope that Pride never becomes too staid and respectable. I hope it always maintains an element of heinie-shaking, outrageous, drag-queen striding, beads-throwing, raucous FABULOUSNESS. To me, the g/l/b/t community is our uptight, pornography-addicted, repressed, homophobic, misogynist society’s reminder that we are messy, flesh and blood BODIES. We are wild sexual beings who do not belong in categories and boxes, but in relationships and joyous, unapologetic incarnation of Who We Are!

Listen up: when I was a little girl and my parents were in the throes of an emotionally violent and miserable marriage, and my mother very much under the influence of some drug or another (mostly booze), my dad was an edgy workaholic maniac and my sister and brother and I were scared little ghosts in our house, do you know who it was that raised me? Inspired, inspiring, grounded, talented, loving, committed theatre and music homos who were there, day after day, providing a thrilling vision that I wanted to be part of, and who had the discipline, adult maturity and sense of responsibility that my OWN PARENTS LACKED. When my own parents were too unhealthy to show up for me, my music teachers were there EVERY day, sober, exacting and ready to work. My theatre director(s) was there EVERY night in the summer, guiding the cast and crew through weeks and weeks of rehearsals and into a triumphant opening night, giving us and the community the gift of fantastic theatre.

Yes, the gay boys in the theatre were flamboyant and yes, they were promiscuous — now that I think about it, why wouldn’t they be? Wouldn’t we ALL be, if society told us we were freaks and perverts and should never be LEGALLY or religiously allowed to marry and make a lifetime commitment? Think that little fact of broad societal disapproval might have anything to do with that? Dammit to hell!?

I hope the g/l/b/t community never, ever buttons up too much. When I see them out and out there — spiky-haired, bare-breasted women with fierce faces, gangly teens girls holding hands, boys in Speedos and Carmen Miranda headdresses doing the merengue on top a gaudy float, tranny babes teetering by on 6″ platforms, everything inside me hollers, “YES! YES! YES! TELL it! Bring it ON! Remind us all WHO WE ARE!”

My own two gay fathers, both serious classical musicians and life-long schoolteachers, would tsk at all the nonsense, but … the thing is, they’re just not as queer as I am.

Maybe The Devil Made Him Do It, But What’s Your Excuse, Lady?

Perhaps by now you’ve heard the story of the father who burned his 2-month old daughter in the hotel microwave? He claims that it was stress, but his supportive, loving wife says that it was Satan’s doing– that Satan was threatened by his efforts to become a minister or some such thing. She says that daddy LOVES his baby and would never hurt her. Well madam, don’t you get the Mother Of The Year Award?

“He’s the worst scum of the earth,” says the guy on this video, and there’s a refreshing clarity in that assessment, I’d say.

But of course, that would upset some UUs, who have this notion that “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” means that no matter what we do with our God-given freedom, we can never forfeit our essential and innate dignity.

Um, I’d say that microwaving your kid manages to do that pretty well, though. Of course this guy might be delusional and mentally ill, but what excuse can you make for the wife?

That was a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m really hoping no one writes in to talk about Dingbat Permissive Wife Syndrome or Pathologically Supportive Spouse Disease or anything like that. Because I’m sticking to my opinion that these two shouldn’t be trusted to take care of a schnauzer, let alone a child.

Poor, poor baby.

[I’m on my way to Nashville right now. This post was authored on 5/20/07 - PB]

Other Acronyms

What do you call those things like
LOL
and
ROFLMAO
and other on-line shorthand thingy-dingys?

Because I’m getting bored with the usual ones.

There’s WTF and JFC and OMG — and I’m not about to elaborate on those if you don’t know what they stand for.

But I’m thinking of adding:

LYLGFS (Love You Lots, Going For Sushi)
and
RLGJITS (Running Late, Gotta Jump In The Shower)
and possibly also
MMHLIT (Mama Mia, How Lame Is That?)
to my repetoire.

Other contenders include
GGMM (Good Golly Miss Molly)
and
IASLURN (I Am So Loving U Right Now)
or
SUSCW (See U Soon, Can’t Wait).

Then there’s
LHM (Lord Have Mercy)
and
TBTG (Thanks Be To God)
and
PTL (need I say?)
for the religious set.

Finally, we could add
GGNC (Gotta Go, Need Chocolate)
or
FAWIT (Falling Asleep While I Type)
and
PWS (Procrastinating Writing Sermon).

Would you like to nominate a few?

My Annual Wedding Industrial Complex Rant With a Marriage Equality Twist

And then, maybe after they’ve considered the dress, the caterer, the florist, the party favors, the DJ, the honeymoon destination and all this other insanity, the engaged couple might put a few moments of thought into the actual wedding ceremony.

I’ve ranted about this before, of course, but I’m feeling especially cranky about hetero privilege right now because marriage equality is under threat in Massachusetts.

“On January 2, 2007, legislators voted by a margin of 62-134 to advance a discriminatory ballot initiative to add an amendment banning same-sex marriage to the Massachusetts state Constitution. If the amendment gets 50 or more votes in a second vote later this year, it will go before voters on the 2008 ballot.” (from www.massequality.org)

141 Massachusetts legislators support marriage equality, but we need 8 more votes to keep it from becoming, “a toxic public campaign of discrimination against gay families.” My own state rep, Robert Nyman, is one of the legislators who needs to be persuaded. I’m writing and calling, and urge Massachusetts readers to join me in your own efforts.

Visit www.MassEquality.org to see how you can help.

After all, why should happy hets be the only ones to be bombarded with the consumeristic fallout of falling in love and desiring to share their lives together?

Bring on the Gay Bridal Expo!

The Hostile New Age Takeover of Yoga

Here’s a great article in Slate (thanks, Chris) that articulates some of my squicky feelings about the narcissistic yoga culture that’s been oozing out of control among American spiritual seekers over the past few years…

http://www.slate.com/id/2162283/pagenum/all/

I’d love to be able to do yoga. I’ve tried many times, and my too-short limbs and meatball-shaped body have resulted in failed efforts and giggling through class, which I don’t think is conducive to other people achieving the deep peace they’re looking for. I have lots of people in my life that are serious aficionados and whose yoga practice obviously contribute to their physical health, emotional groundedness and spiritual loveliness. They’re not the strivers I see zooming around Whole Foods in flared pants and exasperated expressions chugging on Fruit Water by Glaceau and making dagger-eyes at me for lingering too long over the artisanal cheeses and getting in their way. True confessions, time, yoga people: I don’t so much shop at Whole Foods as use it as free therapy. I shop at Trader Joe’s and Stop & Shop. I stroll through Whole Foods to fill my nose and eyes with aesthetic ideals of beauty and health. Because seriously, their pears cost like $3 each.

A lot of today’s yoga culture seems to me to be about the re-inscribing of upper middle class values: competetiveness, acquisitiveness, materialism and humorless self-importance, and my very favorite — Just Making Up My Own Religion As I Go Along.

Of course if the liberal church was doing its job and showing people a deep, meaningful spiritual path and giving them unapologetically directive teachings on how to transform their inner lives through prayer, study and service, yoga people might be able to keep their Thursday morning class in better perspective. That is, those yoga people who attend liberal churches might. Hey, if the liberal church was doing its job better, I have to think that more people — including yoga people — would be attending.

Or maybe not. Maybe the idea of disciplined religion is so ruined in the eyes of spiritually liberal seekers that they’ll never embrace it, and those of us in the liberal churches are presiding over a funeral. There’s never going to be anything but a tiny market for floppy, “Gee-I-dunno-what-do-YOU-think” religion, no matter how much it dresses itself up in prophet’s clothes and claims to be the Truth-Telling Group.

One Truth the liberal church has been telling for years is that conservative folks Just Want To Be Told What To Believe. That’s so easy, so dismissive, so snotty and so mostly wrong. All people want a religious life that actually shakes them, demands something of them and transforms them. Liberals, unfortunately, join the effort with the attitude that while this process is occurring, they should be comfortable and even indulged. They join the project with the attitude that there are no rockbound truths, so everything is relative. Who can really be transformed with a permanent orientation of skepticism and self-preservation?

My understanding is that real yoga requires a guru. Some nice guy teaching “Hot Yoga” at your health club is not a guru. A guru makes demands on us and teaches us a path to enlightenment that requires sacrifice and the painful dissolving of ego.

My guru is named Jesus, and his form of yoga was about achieving personal and social change through healing. I kind of wish he taught some form of physical practice beyond walking around, preaching, healing people and eating with people, but he didn’t. He also would be very against spending $3 on one pear.

That Purpose-Driven Scandal And a Ghost Story

I tried to go to sleep early last night, but I thought it very possible that my segment would air on “Nightline” so I gave up around 11:00 and turned the light back on.

I saw immediately that I wouldn’t be on, as they were featuring some scandal about Rick Warren called “The Purpose-Driven STRIFE” (cue ominous music).

This story gave me such a bad fit of the giggles I almost threw out my back. Here’s what it was about: churches that are growing by leaps and bounds by using Warren’s “purpose-driven” model are actually experiencing some conflict.

I’ll give you a moment to get up off the floor. I know, I was amazed and astounded, too. Conflict in churches? Especially ones that go from an average of thirty worshipers to three hundred? The mind fairly boggles!

This was so great. The reporter was very earnest as he interviewed a man who left a “purpose-driven” congregation in North Carolina because — please hold onto your coffee cups now — they were hardly playing any traditional hymns anymore.

Just as I was reeling with this news – what? Good church-going Americans are disagreeing about music??? — they showed footage from purpose-driven church services where people responded enthusiastically to praise music and the minister preached with heartfelt intensity about applying gospel lessons to our actual lives. The critical man considered this “mixing psychology” into religion. My God, what’s next!!?? Suggesting outright to church-goers that the ancient spiritual teachings of Christ might have direct relevance to their contemporary lives? This has to stop. Rick Warren, are you listening to me? How dare you grow the church by millions of people according to this nefarious method?

I finally quit my giggling and went back to sleep. An hour or so later, I was awakened by a deep thudding noise from downstairs. I figured it was the jacked-up bass from a sound system of a passing car on Main Street, and then I heard it again. A few more times.

Must be the cat. Just as I was about to call for her, I heard the sound of someone climbing the stairs. Heavy footsteps, but calm and sure, like a father coming to check on his sleeping child. As my neckhairs began to prickle (”Boy, Ermengarde sure sounds like a human climbing those stairs”), I saw that the cat was not coming up the stairs — she was awake and listening at the foot of my bed. Instead of being terrified, I was flooded with the most amazing sense of blessing and protection I have had in years. Maybe ever. The cat didn’t seem too disturbed, but she very quietly and stealthily padded across the mattress to curl up closer to me. When I woke up this morning, she was still there–sleeping in a little striped ball just inches from my nose.

This house has been occupied by the ministers of my church since 1875. I have always felt a lot of love from “my boys,” — I’m the first female pastor in the congregation’s 365 year history — and I wonder if one of them stopped by to minister to me.

Maybe it was my Dad “breaking on through from the other side,” as Jim Morrison once sang. I’ve missed him a LOT lately.

Maybe it was a little episode of psychosis brought on by too much prayer and openness.

Whatever it was, I still felt like I was in the presence of angels when I woke up this morning, that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Hey ghost, thanks for stopping by.

Poverty and Sustainability

I’m just wondering this honestly, and with no sense of judgment (quelle surprise!), but honestly, as middle and upper-class Americans are running around trying to eat organic everything and grass-fed beef (if they eat beef) and full-moon harvested herbs and drinking biodynamic wine, isn’t it true that most of the people in our country are still eating mostly crap?

Shouldn’t we be working on justice issues that make basically, minimally healthful food available to more people before scurrying about trying to fill our own larders exclusively with organic and perfectly nutritious foodstuffs?

I get to go to Whole Foods in my car and read labels and purchase the best, best, best nutrients for my precious bod. Meanwhile, people in Boston nearby have trouble getting a regular old supermarket into their neighborhood, and have to subsist on convenience store fare.

Shouldn’t we stop the presses, so to speak, when this is the case around us? I’m not saying I know how to, but I wonder sometimes if all this emphasis on sustainable, fabulously healthful, perfectly produced food is more about the fact that “I, Privileged and Educated White Woman, Deserve To Live Longer and Better Than The Average Joe” than “I Care Deeply About How the Earth Is Being Plundered To Feed Humans.” If there was a special Food Gandhi among us, what would he say?
Would he say, “This is like the airplane scenario: use your oxygen mask on yourself first so you can assist someone else?” or would he say, “Hey, before you get to fill your own plates with impeccable offerings, make sure your sisters and brothers nearby at least get to have something better than Doritoes and McDonald’s on theirs.”

I really don’t know. I understand that food is not just political, it is also cultural, and some people want to eat decidedly unsustainable items and want Miss GoodyTwoShoesPants over here to butt out.

I just thought about it yesterday when I was cruising through Whole Foods thinking wow, I have access to all of this. I could walk out of here with nothing but the finest and most healthful food available to any American. Meanwhile, 15 miles from here, I know they don’t even have access to a grocery store. Is my shopping at Whole Foods so much about stewardship of the Earth as it is about my own ego-based survival instinct? And if it’s the latter, isn’t there a more egalitarian way to approach the greening of the food supply question?

Dear God,
In the dark of this Lenten season, I confront my own fear of death. I pray to be brought into deeper spiritual fellowship with all my brother and sister creatures, with a sense of our interconnectedness and mutuality.
Let my unquenchable desire for life not blind me to responsibility to those around me. Make my consciousness of the toxicity of our environment bind me more deeply to others, not flee to the false haven of imagined safety of purchased health. If my neighbor cannot be healthy, then neither can I be. Make us courageous, God, to make necessary sacrifices where we have heedlessly laid waste to Your creation. Amen.

The Over-Medication of American Children

Just skimming the headlines I could barely finish reading this on the death of 4 year old Rebecca Riley, who lived very near to me:
http://tinyurl.com/2z2xms

How do you diagnose a TWO AND A HALF YEAR OLD as having attention deficit disorder?? Or bi-polar disorder? Isn’t being squirrelly and difficult the job description for a two year old? Isn’t that we call them the Terrible Twos? This kid never had a chance.

God rest her soul, poor thing, born to terminally stupid parents and into a very dangerous medical culture. What good would imprisonment do for these two? Keep them from procreating? Their hearts are broken. They were criminally ignorant, not murderous. Leave them be.

Well, if it generates serious discussion about the ethics of prescribing prescription psychiatric drugs to tots, her death will not have been in vain.

"Call Me Issa": Part II

As you will recall from this post,
http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2005/07/i-used-to-love-jane-siberry.html
and this one,
http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2007/02/call-me-issa.html
I purchased a sweet little silver ring in France several years ago that just happened to have the same spiral symbol on it that showed up as the motif in Jane Siberry’s Philadelphia concert I attended days after my return from France. I thought it was really very cool synchronicity, as I remember thinking when I bought the ring, “This isn’t really me: it’s too Celtic, but it’s cute.” When I saw that Jane had chosen that very symbol as the motif for her show, it was clear to me that I should just give her the ring. Obviously the symbol must have special resonance for her.

But it didn’t. Or not enough. She rejected my ring with disdainful air and humiliated me. Then she showed up in the news a few days ago as having divested of all her worldly goods and changed her name to “Issa,” Arabic for Jesus.

A friend of mine forwarded my last blog entry to Issa herself, who had this to say:

“someone forwarded your blog about me.oh dear. i am horrified to think that you felt so disrespectfully treated. I didn’t feel the way you described. if anything, i feel awkward and slightly embarassed saying that to people when they are offering a gift from the heart that is more than a trinket.it would feel worse, though, if i accepted it and then left it for the maid. my deepest apologies. to offer something important to you to someone you appreciate is something i really honour and try to communicate so. i’m sorry that my response has gotten in the way of enjoying the music. i’m just the messenger.issa”

PeaceBang here.

On one hand, it was nice of Jane/Issa to respond at all. She has the good grace to say that she feels “horrified” by my offense. To that I say, Issa, if my commenters are to be trusted, you’ve got a rep for being snotty and disdainful of your fans. As you divest of worldly goods in search of a purer life, you might want to work on that.

Second, of whom, or of what, are you “the messenger?” Are we not all messengers? I would not have cared if you left that ring for the maid. Perhaps that was just why I was meant to purchase it. If the magic of synchronicity didn’t work for you, perhaps you might have simply passed along that ring to the next person for whom it may have had some meaning. Your ego should not be the final decision-making factor in how someone’s energy gets out into the world if they feel so inclined to begin with you. Why stop a gift in the giving? Especially one so obviously unencumbersome (I wasn’t inviting you to use my beach house in St. Kitts — not that I have one — or offering anything else that might have obligations or strings attached) and directly connected to something as soulful as an ancient symbol for the Triple Goddess. If you don’t want such a thing, for heavens sake, pass it on.

Those of us who choose lives that require us to be conduits of energy and love need to get out of our own way a lot of the time. Issa, I hope you are able to get out of your own way more successfully in the future. If you think your fans small gifts troublesome to your great spiritual quest, that may be the biggest baggage you have yet to divest yourself of.