defining

I was watching the Daily Show with my mom a couple days ago. And there was this ad for a 9/11 movie. The tagline was "Every generation has a defining moment. This was ours."

Now, clearly, since I was watching the daily show, the narrator meant our generation. (I might have assumed something different if I was watching the Price is Right, or Pro Golf.) This leads to my point:

I don't want September 11 to be the defining moment of our generation.

Can we get a better one?

rage and outrage

This is a response to Emily's post. It is a quotation from Sue Monk Kidd's "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter", her spiritual memoir. The book is the story of her feminist spiritual awakening. The quotation below had a heading: "Transfiguring Anger", and regards her anger at patriarchal structures that wound women.

page 186-187
"By transfiguring anger, I don't mean that we wave a placating wand and poof! anger disappears. Nor do I mean that anger is turned into sweet resignation. By healing or transfiguring it, I mean to imply, in Clarissa Pinkola Estés's words, that anger becomes "a fire that cooks things rather than a fire of conflagration." A conflagration may embolden and impassion you for a while, but if you get stuck in it, it can burn you up. A fire that cooks things, however, can feed you and a whole lot of other people...
...The transfiguration of anger is a movement from rage to outrage. Rage implies an internalized emotion, a tempest within. Rage, or what might be called untransfigured anger, can become a calcified bitterness. What rage wants and needs is to move outward toward positive social purpose, to become a creative force or energy that changes the conditions that created it. It needs to become out-rage.
Outrage is love's wild and unacknowledged sister...She is the one grappling with her life, reconfiguring it, struggling to find liberating ways of relating..."

Love,
Rachael

fellow student

I recieved an email forwarded from a fellow CTS student. Here is the information that follows her signature:

Fifth Degree Black Belt Four Time World Karate Champion
Ordained Minister Ornament Artist Certified Public Accountant
2005 U.S. Martial Arts Association Illinois Tae Kwon Do Instructor of the Year.

Grad school is going to be awesome!

cinematic genius (Rene el Rana, in spanish)

When I'm in the mood for cinematic genius, I turn to one place, and one place only. Namely, the muppets.

My mom and I watched the Muppets Take Manhattan. Kermit's and his friends have to seperate after graduating from college, (who knew?) but they get back together when their musical is produced on Broadway. Also, fanning out throughout the country (Scooter in Cleveland, naturally) gives them the extra dogs, bears, and whatevers to add the one thing that the script was missing to the show, namely, lots of dogs, bears, and whatevers.

To touch on what seems to be a continuing theme of random media mirroring my life, I think we have something to learn from Kermit. I mean, clearly, we have a lot to learn from Kermit, but this is a particular plan. Let's just all go and do our stuff, you know, the work we're called to or whatever, and that'll be really cool. And it will be so cool that it will probably intersect with the other things that our friends are doing, and those who have long been seperated from us by field or geography, will naturally have to come and live in the same community as us. Or at least work in the same "community." Kermit stood on top of the Empire State Building, and swore to the city of New York that he would get the show produced, so that he could get the gang back together.

This seems like a good plan. I've got a good feeling that at the very least the four co-writers of this blog will all live in the same place. And we'll bring with us all the other frogs and bears and dogs and whatevers that we have met in-between.

2010, anybody?

David

ps- In other news, i hung up a bunch of old keith haring prints on my wall. My room in Warren is now approximately 34,000 times better than it was before.

India's censorship of blogs and implications for Emily

So, in a bizarre twist of world politics, Emily might not be able to read this blog anymore. I'm not sure whether or not she'll be able to post to it. I will email her and offer to post anything from her here.

Here's the story from boingboing.net:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/18/update_on_india_cens.html

David

hi from Lancaster

Emily! It's good to hear from you.

I'm sprawled out on the big spinny chair in the office at my house in Lancaster, doing internet things at a much slower pace than usual:) However, I just installed Firefox which makes a gigantic improvement. Out the window is our neighbor's bright red garage (picture a small barn) with what looks like a wagon wheel with a Puerto Rican flag on the front above the doors. The rest of what I can see out the window from my present position are tall trees.

It's good to be here. I'm still feeling kind of overwhelmed, but in a really good emotional/spiritual place after the church service and potluck lunch yesterday.

I found a Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice NEWSPAPER laying around the house. I don't think this group has been around for more than a couple of years (I might be wrong...) but it was really incredible to see that there's a peace group around that's established enough to publish things! Let's keep praying for the people and nations that have been struck with such violence during the past several weeks.

what we bring/ showing up

A melody and some words came to me on my way to church a couple of months ago. I wrote some more during the sermon and sang it a couple weeks ago, at my commissioning service at PCC.

Someone in the congregation asked for the lyrics, and since I had to type them up to email them, I figured I would post them here. They don't rhyme or anything fancy like that, and it's just the same melody over and over again. But I think it has some good lines. It's not the greatest song, but it's good enough for church.



chords: D D/ A D/ D D/ G A

some of us are tired
some of us are lonely
all of us are broken
from the weather of the world

chorus:
this is what we bring
what we bring to Jesus
this is what we carry
when we show up at the church.

we show up with our eyes open
could this be the season?
could this random bunch of people
be a shelter or a home?

we show up with our bleeding
for twelve long bloody years
interrogate our heart strings
dance us back to here

so pray for my bleeding
and i'll pray for your mourning
and together we will pray
for the people of the world

chorus

could these questionable people
be the means of my deliverance?
could this dusty bunch of pilgrims
be the body of the Christ?

we can't stop the process
of transubstantiation
when we show up Sunday morning
we become the risen Lord.

the ceiling's losing plaster
by the big round stained-glass window
the staircases are ugly
but that won't stop my Lord.

chorus

what if I don't like the way
that the man up there is preaching?
how can this be the body,
when I'm not welcome here?

Look at the institutions
that claim the name of Jesus
when they leave out the outcast
they crucify the Christ

so you citizens of heaven
open up your churches
stand back from the barred door
something's breaking through

chorus

we show up for the work
we show up for the resting
we show up to meet our Jesus
in the breaking of the bread

what kind of mission is this
that pits us against empire?
throwing in our prayers
to stop the works of war.

can this be such a place,
for the Easter incarnation?
amidst our stupid broken-ness,
you say "yes, yes, yes!"

chorus

so show up with your doubts
with your pains and your frustration
if you show up with your hunger
you can stay for lunch (stay for lunch.)