The Colbert Report and same-sex marriage

Freakin' BRILLIANT. Seriously. Laughed my butt off.

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Friday five: it slices! It dices! It even makes julienne fries!

Sally of the RevGals writes:

As I write this I am waiting for my new dishwasher to be delivered, it along with my washing machine and vacuum cleaner are household appliances that I consider indispensable! Others not so much, we decided not to replace our tumble drier when the old one finally gave out last year, and I can honestly say I haven't really missed it. My hubby Tim and I often disagree about which household appliances are really necessary and which ones aren't, we also enjoy a few luxury items, one of my favorites is a juicer, and Tim's is our all-singing-all-dancing filter coffee maker--it has a thermos jug so the coffee stays nice and hot without the aid of a heat element.

So being in a domestic frame of mind I thought I'd ask:

1. What is the one appliance you simply couldn't be without?

I live in Minnesota. This is, in part, because I prefer being cold to being too hot. But August...well, as they say around here, "It's not the heat; it's the humidity." YECH. And so...our bedroom air conditioner gets my vote here.

Because a Choralgirl that sleeps through the night is much more rational and pleasant than a Choralgirl that sweats and swears her way through the 2-4 a.m. period.

Oh, and we've got a George Foreman grill that's not going ANYWHERE. Panini...mmmmmm.

2. What, if anything, would you happily give up?

The 1000 mysterious gizmos that clutter the kitchen cabinets.

3. What is the strangest household appliance you own?

A vaporizer shaped like a penguin.

4. What is the most luxurious household appliance you own?

When we had a housemate, our (rather small) refrigerator was always stuffed beyond usefulness. So we got a mini-fridge for beverages and tucked it under the counter. Best. Idea. Ever. Buy soda in bulk (cheaply), stock the little fridge, and there's always one cold. And it's possible to always have beer and a couple of bottles of wine in there, too...as they would have said in the sixties (on TV), "It makes entertaining a breeze!"

5. Tell us about your dream kitchen--the sky is the limit here...

It has beautiful wood cabinetry, is sunny, and is staffed by Padma Lakshmi, full-time. ;-) Nah--just kidding. Actually, ours is very nice--it's big and colorful, it's sunny, and it is occasionally staffed by my Beloved, who is lovely and gifted in the kitchen.

But I'm only partly kidding about the personal chef. We're always on the run; it'd be terrific to have someone whose raison d'etre (at least professionally) was to provide us with fresh, healthy meals! FAB. I'm just too adept at eating fast food in the car.

This just in from the Lake Wobegon Genome Project

Yesterday morning, I was sitting in the church office, proofreading the Easter bulletin, when a bunch of Sunday schoolers trooped by on their way to the sanctuary. They were going to practice processing, waving palms and singing "All Glory, Laud and Honor." All of a sudden, I was given a glimpse of Lutheran DNA in action when one of the little sprouts expressed an earnest concern to his/her teacher:

I don't know if I can do this.
They want me to sing and smile at the same time.

Had a difficult time not anointing the bulletin proof with a mouthful of coffee.

Blessed Holy Week, everyone!

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste

That came from Majora Carter, as told to Krista Tippett in Speaking of Faith's ongoing conversation entitled Repossessing Virtue--Wise Voices from Religion, Science, Industry and the Arts. In this excellent, thought-provoking series, Krista and her staff are gathering perspectives on our current economic crisis, it's moral overtones, and what to do about it. I find it a fascinating kind of reframing. One of my favorite ideas came from Rachel Naomi Remen; I've synopsized it here:

• Money is stored energy.
• Energy follows belief.
• We need to be careful what we believe.
• This crisis is an opportunity to create a new story about who we want to be, as individuals and as a society.

LOVE that. I'll be walking around with it for the next little while, I think.

Friday five: Holy Week-a-thon

Sally of the RevGals writes:

Holy Week is almost upon us, I suspect that ordained or not, other revgal/pals calendars look a bit like mine, FULL, FULL, FULL.....

Jesus was great at teaching us to take time out, even in that last week, right up to Maundy Thursday he withdrew, John's gospel tells us he hid! He hid not because he was afraid, but because he knew that he needed physical, mental and spiritual strength to get through...

So, faced with a busy week:

1. What restores you physically?

Sleep. Quiet time. Good food. A brisk walk around one of the many lakes in town.

2. What strengthens you emotionally/mentally?

Time with Beloved. Poetry. Music (of which there will, thankfully, be a lot). Rubbing a puppy belly.

3. What encourages you spiritually?

Prayer. Music (see what my friend Mags has to say about this; it's wonderful!). Poetry. Walking in the woods or by the shore (though I usually can't manage that during Holy Week!).

4. Share a favorite poem or piece of music from the coming week.

This is a favorite hymn of mine because the plaintive melody is so well matched with the text. I'm an especial fan of the Carolyn Jennings's arrangement for SSA voices and cello, but her colleague (and my teacher...actually, both of them were in grad school) John Ferguson's arrangement is great, too. Here he is, accompanying it at the organ:



5.There may be many services for you to attend/ lead over the next week, which one are you most looking forward to and why? If there aren't do you have a favorite day in Holy week if so which one is it?

I'm a Maundy Thursday fan. It's intimate and honest, and it calls us into relationship with God and with one another in a refreshing way. Our service this year will be candlelit, in the round, with the bread and wine passed hand to hand instead of lining up for it. Simple Taize refrains by the congregation, and I'm going to sing this hymn that Bonhoeffer wrote in prison:

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
and confidently waiting come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented
still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
with bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us
the joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be Yours alone.

Daily grin

What the...

I could be wrong about this, of course, but aren't institutions of higher learning supposed to support and elevate discourse...to value the exchange of ideas and to learn to live within their inherent tensions? To make us better thinkers and citizens, able to debate without lobbing grenades at one another?

What's all the fuss, Notre Dame?

Transgendered in Zimbabwe

I don't know how to even begin to imagine what life must be like for Tawanda. It's a terrifying story.

Robert Mugabe is dangerous to Zimbabwe's GLBT community, as evidenced by the combination of his power and his views on homosexuality:

...degrades human dignity. It's unnatural and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings? We have our own culture, and we must re-dedicate ourselves to our traditional values that make us human beings...what we are being persuaded to accept is sub-animal behavior and we will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as lesbians and gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!

Bigotry breeds violence--if not in the bigot himself, certainly in some part of his sphere of influence. And a significant component of Mugabe's legacy in Zimbabwe is violent repression.

This is tragic.

Better than coffee and bars...

...is this book, which I began reading today. If you Lutherans out there have ever found yourselves intimidated by theological jargon, consider this definition:

Angel
Divine beings, heavenly servants of God, know as purveyors of godly messages, such as recipes for light and delicious food--cake and impossibly fine pasta, or the somewhat rougher traditions of motorcycle fellowship.

There's a longer exegesis (a word which, sadly, they neglected to define) of the topic, a portion of which won my undying esteem:

In art angels are most often depicted with wings upon the back--sometimes two, sometimes six--but it should be noted that in the Bible, most often do not have wings and seem to appear much like people...if you're wondering whether the six-winged angel flies faster than the other varieties, the answer is no, as two wings are used for flying and the other four to cover eyes and ensure decency (Isaiah 6:2). (Now, whether a laden or unladen angel makes better time remains a separate matter.)

This caused a bit of a spew, as I was reading while eating chicken soup. Consider also:

Justice
A condition that most people desire for themselves, claim never to get, and have no interest in granting to their neighbors.

and

Free Will
The belief--which you have no choice but to believe--that human beings are free to make their own choices.

Gentle Reader. Buy this book. You KNOW you could use a laugh. Or thirty. I leave you with these thoughts:

"Corrective" rape

Yep. That's what they're calling it. How do we help fix this?

Because the idea that a woman would be "cured" from lesbianism by getting raped...well, I don't know where to BEGIN to discuss how many things are wrong with that.

I'm angry.

Turn that frown upside down

I dare you not to smile. I double-dog dare you!

Surround sound

Love this ad, found through CurrentConductor's blog.




And, oh my, what an interesting discussion here about the Whitacre phenomenon! Not just the post, which is thought-provoking, but the comments as well. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who was at his Minneapolis appearance last week...what do you think? I particularly like what commenter Philip had to say about not condescending to young people. About Whitacre, I think he's written a couple of lovely pieces (had a particularly powerful experience hearing his Lux Aurumque once), but he is a bit overhyped. I'm inherently suspicious of any cultural phenomenon at the center of such a splendid marketing machine. I will be interested to see what his next chapter is as a composer.

To err is human

If you've ever directed or sung in a choir, you're familiar with the difficulties associated with certain consonants. For example, a little bit of "S" goes a very long way. An "L" can smudge into the vowels that precede or follow it, distorting both vowel and pitch. And, what has become my personal favorite, the dreaded "R." It has a way of overstaying its welcome, adding a saber-like edge to certain words.

It is a tradition in my choir to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19. In rehearsal, we sing whatever anthem we're preparing for the following Sunday as if we were pirates. The first time we did this, it was "If Ye Love Me," a Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis. You'll have to use your imagination a bit here, but mentally stick a bunch of "arrrrs" in this:



High (seas) hilarity ensued. It has become something of a running joke with us. Last night, I was presented with a gift by my tenors and basses:



Thanks, me hearties. I'll nae be sendin' ye to Davy Jones' locker. Salmagundi and grog's on me!

Yer cap'n,
Anne Bonny

Bonus and malus

I love words. I respect people who use them carefully and elegantly. Our excellent local soprano Maria Jette does just that--with insight and humor--in this commentary on the AIG debacle. Check it out!

The task of our generation

I was listening to a fascinating podcast of the most recent Bill Moyers Journal. His guest is Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun turned Islamic scholar and author of several bestsellers on religious themes (more info available here).

When she was researching her recent book The Bible: a Biography, a question formed in her mind: what if the Golden Rule were the lens used in interpreting scripture?

Well, this is one of the things that really intrigued me: how frequently the early rabbis, for example, in the Talmudic period, shortly after the death of Jesus, insisted that to any interpretation of scripture that read hatred or contempt for any single human being was illegitimate.

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

St. Augustine said that scripture teaches nothing but charity. And if you come to a passage like the one you just read, that seems to preach hatred, you've got to give it an allegorical or metaphorical interpretation. And make it speak of charity.

Shades of Deuteronomy and the synoptic Gospels!

He answered,
‘You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength,
and with all your mind;
and your neighbor as yourself.’
--Luke 10:27

Last year she received the TED prize, which grants $100,000 and a wish. Karen's wish was for "help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion--crafted by a group of inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and based on the fundamental principle of the Golden Rule."

She's getting her wish. Check it out.

The task of our generation,
whether we are religious people
or secular people,
is to build a global community
where people of all persuasions
can live together
in peace and harmony.

--Karen Armstrong