Welcome Back, Pigeons!!

The HILLS are alive, with the sound of PeaceBang!!

Well, WHAT FUN.
I abandoned this blog about two years ago so that I could focus on finishing my Doctor of Ministry degree. That mission is accomplished and I graduated on May 21 in a funny hat and with many beloved friends and parishioners present. Thank you for your expressions of support and congratulations throughout the process. I am now the proud owner of a big whomping dissertation called “Covenanting: Ancient Promise and New Life For the Contemporary Church” which I think deserves to be published but you know, I just don’t feel like doing the work to get it to publishers. Maybe later, after I’ve had a few beers and thrown some books down a flight of stairs to release the tension.

The Facebook and Twitter phenomena took off right after I stopped blogging here, so I have been carrying on a lively discussion over at Facebook (as PeaceBang), which I will continue to do. I love the discipline of having to condense my blatherings to a few pithy phrases, which means that I will be blogging here on a less frequent basis than I used to. As I remarked to a crowd of Unitarian Universalists earlier this week at our General Assembly workshop on ministry and social media, I am verbally manic, so this is a health practice for me. No, it really is. If not for all of you I might be in a rubber room somewhere pontificating to the walls.

So this blog will be for the lengthier blatherings. It will be for podcasts and for a nice long coffee or cocktail break, as opposed to the shots of espresso we’re all tossing back as we stand at the Facebook bar. The PeaceBang blog may occasionally even be as long as a dinner party or a retreat as we converse at luxurious lengths about issues facing the Church, the soul, the world, and “RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 4,” or whatever tickles our fancy. I have such a ticklish fancy, as you know!

My dear friend and partner in crime, the Rev. Scott Wells, has continued to advise me and to construct this blog. I really couldn’t do this without him.

“Bent” At the UU Fellowship of Amarillo

If you were following my story from a few days ago about the closing down of Avenue 10’s production of “Bent,” I’d just like to update you:

a) The anonymous complaint leading to the closing of the theatre did not, in fact, come from Repent Amarillo, although RA did include the Avenue 10 Theatre as one of its “sinful” organizations. It came from a man named Charlie Eli Chick, Executive Director of Soulcatchers Prayer Group and Outreach Center. Here’s the article that outs him, and that features my host James Doore’s visit to the City Council to ask about the motivations for the particular timing of the closing of the theatre venue.

b) The production will be presented at the UU Fellowship of Amarillo on Friday and Saturday night. Here’s a nice article in the Amarillo Globe-News about it.

She Feels Called To Reconciliation

Cindy wrote in response to my earlier post, “The Whole Rick Warren Thing,”

Lesbian UU here.

And utterly unruffled by the Rick Warren pick. I’m not feeling any consternation. No anger at all.

I feel a growing spark of hope.

These days, I feel called — very powerfully called — to reach out in reconciliation. This is a time for GLBT folks to really show up in our communities and help the sick, the poor, the elderly and the children. My stripe of marriage has no bearing on my ability to do good works.

I somehow feel that, if I could make good on the goodwill that runneth over from the election, I should do it. If I can be visibly gay, visibly religious and visibly ready to bridge the distance between myself and the conservative end of the religious spectrum, I might be doing a fraction of that thing called “God’s work.”

I’m very moved by Cindy’s words. Not because she’s saying something that I agree with more than I agree with those who are angry and hurt by Obama’s choice of Rick Warren, but because she speaks so unapologetically about her sense of calling.

Unitarian Universalists are very good at sharing opinions — what we think – but if we are to mature as a people and live authentically into our covenantal promise to support one another in the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” we will have to become more accustomed to bearing witness to each other’s deep calling.

We have a long history of sharing our convictions through intellectual argument and rational persuasion (that has often been quite irrational, but I digress). I am excited by the possibility of a new era where we may speak of calling, of discernment and of how God may be working through our lives.

As my friend and colleague Adam says, “Rock ON.”