Monday, February 28, 2005

Mild Oscar Anti-Snark

I would be trying harder to defend the Oscars, but as I fell asleep on my friend's floor while watching them, I don't think that defense would be very good.

I will say that I LIKE zombie-skin gray and well as black skinny dresses (Julia Roberts) and vampire red fishtail dresses (Renee Zellwegger, who admittedly didn't look like she could walk.) I guess I'm just creepy.

I thought Chris Rock was OK and thought his observation that Nicole Kidman should have gotten an Emmy for her convincing acting that she wasn't disappointed at losing when someone else's name was called out was pretty funny.

And I was REALLY glad Cate Blanchett one. Smile. It's like they gave Katharine Hepburn one more Oscar. Blanchett's acceptance speech even seemed to recognize this.

Ah well.

Off to work.


CC

Sunday, February 27, 2005

CC be trippin'

Inspired by Peacebang telling a sort of similar story, but not really.

So, right before the wedding, the CSO and I were taking some dancing lessons. I'm not great with schedules and the times for the lessons jumped around and one time he and I showed up at 6 for an eight o'clock lesson.

So we decided to get some dinner. We didn't know the area well, and after a lot of driving around, found a scary little southern buffet restaurant. Now the CSO hails from Charlotte, so scary little southern restaurants are nothing to him. In fact, down south, the scarier the clientele, the better the barbecue.

By that theory, this place would have been the Inn at Little Washington because the people inside were terrifying.

But hey, it's the CSO's heritage, so we ate there anyway. He proudly announced that he was drinking only his second glass of presweetened tea since coming to Washington. Our turned out to be competent if not inspired, and we were eating when Santa Claus came out of the men's room.

Item: It was mid-October.

We watched, amused/appalled as Santa walked around the room, greeting children and giving them candy.

It was weird, kids. Really weird.

But what cemented the incident forever in our minds was a booming female voice from the other side of the room.

"Get BACK heh! That ain't no DAMN Santa Claus! He be TRIPPIN!"

Looking at this story on paper, it's not that funny.

I've tried retelling it, it's not that funny.

But I kid you not, I walked into the living room giggling five minutes ago and the CSO asked what was up.

"He be trippin!" I responded and we both laughed anew. Hard. Tears coming to my eyes.

Guess you had to be there.

CC

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Flattery will get you everywhere

Last night at the bar, Utah Whitney told me I look like Juliette Lewis.


Ummm.

Wow.



I assume she was referring to Juliette Lewis during her chubby, awkward adolescence.

But I was still sort of impressed.

I mean, the last movie star anyone compared me too was Sarah Jessica Parker in "LA Story." And the guy who said that didn't mean my looks.

It took a long time for me to get over that one. Juliette Lewis, though, goodness, I could get used to that,

CC

Fell asleep at the computer

Ok, it's a laptop computer, so I technically fell asleep on the couch, but I still have a creepy suspicion that this is a new low.

Tongiht, I spent too much time at a bar with Boston Whitney and Utah Whitney and the-belle-of-Charlotte.

Tomorrow, I have nothing planned. Sunday, I have church, a ballet with Ridiculously Accomplished Abby, an alumni thing and my college and watching the academy awards with Jennifer Beautiful.

But I have an incredibly busy week at work coming up, so maybe I will not go to the ballet. Or leave early from the Academy Awards. Or something.

Did you know that a person can get arrested for running a stop sign and turning thr wrong way down a one-way street? My brother can. But come to think of it, he hates police officers and does not speak respectfully to them, so that probably
explains it right there. Whether this comes down to cops are too impressed with their own authority or my brother sucks is up to you, I'll accept either explanation.

CC

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Pant, pant, pant

I've had entirely too many meals that left me feeling like Caligula recently. (Love that sushi buffet.)

So I'm thinking I should get back into a slightly less huggable but perhaps more overall appealling shape. I'm not too excited to stop eating cheese and as the girl in Heathers points out, "bulimia is SO '87."

This leaves me exercising. As luck would have it, we now have a dog in the house, a big dumb husky my brother abandoned here.

I'd heard someplace that walking 10,000 steps per day was a good thing, so I set out to walk 10,000 steps.

And I learned that 10,000 steps is a hell of a long way.

But I did it.

I only walked about 3,000 steps in the course of the day, so the dog and I walked 7,000 steps tonight.

We will swee about tomorrow.

CC

Hey kids...

Want to see a bitchin' little UUism discussion?

Sure you do


CC

Word.

Heard this on radio this morning and thought it was bitchin'

N dey say
By Nelly

Hold up stop now let me get a look at ya,
Damn girl I ain't seen you since prom,
Come to think about it I can't believe its been that long,
I heard your man locked down now how long he gone.... Oh dat long
How the hell he get time like that?
Three strikes with possession, aww he ain't comin back,
He left you with 2 kids and bills all around,
Plus you found out he had another chick cross-town,
It's always the darkness right before the sun rises
And you gotta stay strong for the kids in their eyes and
Please don't despise and go against all brothers and
have a hatred in your heart and take it out on another,
I hate to sound Tupacish now momma but keep your head up,
But you gon' make it I promise you keep your head up
And that, that don't kill you only makes you stronger
And the will to succeed will only feed the hunger, Fo' Reel (Fo' Reel, Fo' Reel)


Chorus
Ha ha ha ha ha ohhhhhhhh
N dey say ohhhhhh ohh ohhhhhhhh
Ha ha ha ha ha ohhhhhhh
N dey say ohhhhh oh ohh

I was at the gas station and a man walked past
With his sign will work for food, clothes or cash
and he asked if he could pump my gas, so I let him
Clean the windshield and throw out the trash, so I let him (Hey)
I even asked a brother his name, where he was from, got kids man and what's their ages
He kinda stuttered for a second, he kinda looked surprised that anyone would even take an interest in his life
He said young brother dem the only words I done heard in the last year that wasn't no or get the fuck away from herrre
How could somthin so simple as general conversation
Mean much more than general conversation? (Hey)
You could tell life had beaten him down
Like he was in the title fight and this might be his last round
Sometimes the easiest things we take for granted
Until they gone, then realise we even had it, Fo' Reel (Fo' Reel, Fo' Reel)

Chorus
Ha ha ha ha ha ohhhhhhhh
N dey say ohhhhhh ohh ohhhhhhhh
Ha ha ha ha ha ohhhhhhh
N dey say ohhhhh oh ohhhhh

I used to think that life had a plan for me
Until I realised life had to be planned by me, see that's the key
I only deal with what I can see cause over history, mystery brought us nothin but misery
Man more people done died in the name of the lord
Than in any natural disaster, disease or gangwars
Before guns there was swords and they was killin each other
and what's changed to this day still killin each other
Killin a brother while another mother cries for help
Man! we need to help a brother find themself
Feed em light 1, 2, 3
Hey! that's something every brother should see and that's Fo' Reel,
and that's Fo' Reel, and that's Fo' Reel

Chorus

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Hmm...

Sigh.

Tonight, I had dinner at my favorite sushi buffet. Eating there always leaves me feeling a little like Caligula, as if there are no pleasures left in the world.

I’ve been rethinking a long-held position of mine that politics really don’t have place in church, especially mine.

Sinkford’s grandstanding seriously makes me ill. Seriously.

But at the same time, I have been thinking about Universalists and how they were the first church to really come out against slavery. That undeniably kicks ass.

When I got home, the CSO sat on the edge of the bathtub as I washed my hair. We talked about the issue for awhile, deciding that political issues in historical retrospect become moral issues.

I remain uncomfortable with the idea of politics from the pulpit, yet I’m rethinking exactly how deeply into politics morality can go.

CC

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Chaliceblog Snark Policy

Left Coast Unitarian: Lenten snark vigil has me thinking about my own snarkiness and who and what I will be snarky about.

So I've written a policy. (One that I've been following all along really, but here it is in writing.)

In short.

1. I never insult the CSO on my blog. He and I have a rule of presenting ourselves as a united front to both families and all but the closest of our friends. (Item: All marriages should have this rule. Seriously.) Making some big fuss about a minor beef I have with him would be a violation of this.

2. If you have a blog, you’re fair game. Sorry. You are. If you don’t want your opinions criticized, don’t put them on the internet. If someone typically comes up with better things or if they have a thoughtful wrong opinion, I will be more gentle, but frankly Home Improvement was a hit television show, so clearly people have trouble recognizing when something sucks and need the suckiness pointed out.

3. It’s not my church’s fault that they have CC for a congregant. So I try not to punish them for it. There are a lot of UU churches around DC and I try not to make which one I attend too terribly obvious. At the same time, if they are doing something I'm not used to (such as kicking around having a pledging ritual ) I might mention it so see if other people’s churches are doing the same thing,. If I do decide to take some Sundays and write “church reviews,” I won’t write one about my home church.

4. I’m stricter on myself when it comes to my ministers. Being criticized all over the internet is not in their job descriptions. I might talk about the same topic they talked about, but I won’t directly respond to them.

5. Former members of my previous churches may well show up in thinly-disguised form in the Round Robin. Partially, this is because there’s a certain commedia dell’arte to UU churches. There is a woman at each of my previous churches, and my current one, who could see herself in Peggy, a feisty old lady who runs the church’s social action committee. Other people appear because I miss them and writing them into the round robin lets me be back in church with them in a very loose and self-indulgent sense.

6. When I’m writing something positive about one of my friends, I will use their real name and my favorite of their good qualities or something cool about them. When I write something negative or personal, I won’t reveal who I am talking about Again, most of my friends befriended me in my “real life,” not as a blogger. I try to make them identifiable only in a loose sense. The exception here is, of course, Katy-the-Wise whose identity is pretty clear to anyone who wants to take a little time to look. Katy-the-Wise knows I write about her sometimes and that I very much admire her as a thinker and as a human being. So far, she tolerates being written about, though I don’t know that she reads my blog. If she ever asked me to stop writing about her, I would.

I think these rules constitute a pretty reasonable approach to blogging and to letting my blog reflect my life and opinions.

CC
who doesn't give up stuff for lent

Friday, February 18, 2005

A new slogan

So, I've been reading a bit of UU history as I wasn't raised UU. And somehow I had totally missed that Joseph Preistly discovered oxygen in his spare time.

He discovered oxygen. Seriously, how cool is that? I mean, Muslims discovered zero. The Christians discovered the Cartesian coordinate system, but WE discovered oxygen.

Screw this "uncommon denomination" crap. We need bumperstickers that read: "Unitarian Universalists: We discovered Oxygen. As a hobby."

That's what I'm talkin' about.

CC

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Sniffle.

I couldn't sleep well last night, which has been par for the course for the last few nights. I'm really exhausted and bummed out and I have a bunch of niggling little stuff to do today.

Grrr.

Just wanted to bitch about it,

CC

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Probably a bad idea

By leading me here my good blogging buddy Peacebang had given me an idea.

Does UUism need something similar, or do we bitch at one another enough?









Being a "mystery worshipper" and writing "church reviews," encouraging other people to do the same, would be:
Really cool, you badass hipster
More damaging than helpful to the churches in question.


  

Free polls from Pollhost.com




Monday, February 14, 2005

Do you do UU like I do UU?












I've been thinking recently about my own rigidity toward my actively unrigid faith.

This Sunday, I went to a small UU church in the Midwest and was sort of depressed by what I found. The Seven principles were proudly posted in a most creedlike manner and were referred to that way. Worship committiee members were talking about a future Sunday where someone from the local nature preserve would bring in animals to show off, causing my friend to drily remark that he would probably spend that Sunday at the local art museum. (Don't you wish I were making that up? I do.)

A sign on the sanctuary door said something like "You may hear things you don't agree with. Take what you like and leave the rest" and CC wanted to scream "No! What you like the least is probably what you NEED!"

I was talking to my smart friend Pam about this recently. She is rather conservative religiously and watched my conversion to UUism five years ago with rolled eyes. She assumes that my enthusiasm for UUism can't last and she indicated that the root of her concern was that I seem to have such a very specific idea of what UUism is and how I want to see it practiced.

Maybe I am at times too tough on other churches, and judgmental of congregations that do not achieve the balance of being religion-focussed without forcing theism.

Hmmm

CC

Sunday, February 13, 2005

A lengthy essay about Liberal Christians and UUs

Wrote this about six months ago as a response to a sermon about Christianity that squicked me and it is on my mind. An apparently dedicated reader of this blog (lucky me) will notice that a lot of his comments have been taken to heart. My errors basically stemmed from having had an oversimplified version of Arminianist-flavored Calvinism explained to me as a kid, and having left the Presbyterians before I grew up intellectually enough to read Calvin on my own.

When I was a child, church was a trial to be endured. Though I had an enviable view of the proceedings from the choir loft where I sat with my parents, I failed to appreciate it. Hyperactive creature that I am, I was forever making small noises, getting up to move around and otherwise embarrassing my parents and distracting the choir. After some complaints from the other choir members, I was sent back down to sit with the rest of the church.

So I sat with a book, reading through the entire service.

Not good enough. My parents ordered me to stand when everyone else stood, sing what they sang and participate in the responsive readings.

As a kid, I noticed that I didn’t necessarily agree with what was in the readings, but I read them anyway. That I thought to disagree was the Unitarian Universalist in me. That I kept reading anyway was the good Calvinist in me, a streak that is still there.

The UU in me was visible other ways, though, I was kicked out of Sunday School for asking too many questions as a kid. (As I recall, the question that got me escorted from the room was my challenging a teacher’s assertion that the bible is the best-selling book in the world by pointing out that there are lots of translations of the bible but the only Koran that counts to Muslims is the one in Arabic, a nugget I’d picked up in my fifth grade World Cultures class. Thus, ten-year-old CC reasoned, it was likely that people would buy several bibles as they had different words, but a person only ever needed one Koran.)

In a lot of ways, Christianity is good for a kid. Calvinism especially. Anyone in Junior High School will find a theologian who understands the innate depravity of man and the ultimate worthlessness of human effort to have extraordinary insight.

I was a liberal Christian though, so my parents were always light on this message and heavy on the concept of God’s love and the redeeming value of doing one’s duty to one’s church, one’s family and one’s God. The people at this church were on the whole very, very good to me and I wanted to be like them. I was pretty well-schooled in Bible stories, knowledge that has served me well culturally. Indeed, by late high school I was having huge doubts about Christianity in general, yet was the only person in my senior English class who could correctly identify Joseph of Aramathea.

At the same time, the Presbyterian Church had gotten a new minister. She was brilliant, well read and I knew she was a lesbian from the moment I saw her. I identified totally with her intelligence and literary nature. Even though I'm straight, when she was fired I felt that the Presbyterian Church had no use for person like me, despite the loving treatment I’d received my whole life.

The Hindu Dharma says “We do things to no purpose, and at the same time we do not have the courage to give up such rites altogether. So we go through them ‘somehow’ for a false sense of satisfaction. Far better it would be, instead, to have the courage to be an atheist. The atheist at least has some convictions, so it seems to me.”

Going through ritual “somehow” well describes my attitude toward Christianity for most of late high school, and by the time I went to college I had determined that I wasn’t going back to Presbyterianism, though I missed terribly the promise of a good afterlife to those who were among the elect. (Item: Every 17-year-old believes themselves to be among the elect, if not a visible saint. Trademark of the age.) I wanted to believe in those things and be accepted, but I just couldn’t accept the personified deity that the bible described who had made humans in his image and thus had quite rightly made them jealous, vain and wrathful creatures.


In college, I declared myself an agnostic and developed a habit I retain to this day of taking the atheist side in any disagreement between theists and atheists.

As I progressed through college, things called me back toward my past and toward a life of faith. The old familiar hymns were the most notorious. The “Ode to Joy” will forever send me to my mother’s side as her dutiful soprano, less on key than she imagined, belted out “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.”

I was alone in my faith, though I took several college theology classes, all Christian, and had many talks with my aunt on the subject. She sent me lots of books. One day, at graduate school in New Orleans, I was very lonely and decided to hunt up a church. I found a sermon of Katy-the-Wise's on the internet, decided to visit, and that was that.

My conversion story is a crucial part of this essay if for no better reason than to offer a counterpoint to the conversion stories of ex-conservative Christians who describe childhoods traumatized by thoughts of hell. But now we get to Unitarianism, and we’ve gone as far as this can go with just my story. After all, this is supposed to be about the general case of converting liberal Christians. (And, to be fair, it doesn't even address the case of liberal Christians who become UU Christians. While I consider my UUism heavily Christian influenced, I am by no means a trinitarian.)

I viewed Christianity pretty rationally by this point myself, and I suspect this is the case of a lot of liberal Christians. What surprised me was how irrationally UUs typically viewed it. Christianity was my high school sweetheart. I was still fond of it, though I could see its flaws. To have so many people so openly declaring that they were, in effect, “recovering Christians,” as if Christianity were like alcoholism, was very troubling to me. No one likes to hear their high school sweetheart insulted.

Make no mistake, Jerry Falwell is a figure of fun to Liberal Christians too, but surely UUs who were so good with tolerance would understand and tolerate the differences in Christianity, too?

Some did. But to many, Southern Baptists were the extent of Christianity and concepts even as basic and Unitarian-friendly as viewing bible stories as metaphor were viewed as impossible for these simple folk with their crosses.

Hearing my roots made fun of, which to be fair Katy did limit, was not the only issue I faced.

I suspect that once the aspect of fear is gone, to turn away from the God who threatens and punishes you, is quite simple for the Conservative Christian.

The liberal Christian God is a different sort of God. A kind, loving God, who has done so much for you. All you need to do is your duty to God. You do want to do your duty, don’t you?

The Conservative Christian God is an angry redneck father who takes you out behind the woodshed when you don’t behave. The liberal Christian God is more like a Jewish mother who doesn’t eat for three days so her mouth won’t be full of food when you call.

You can’t hate a Jewish mother, but developing the proper psychological distance from one takes no small amount of time and fortitude. And hearing her insulted can send you back into her arms.

The very assumptions that Christians are all alike and they are all adept at mental compartmentalization or otherwise lying to themselves that are so comfortable for the ex-Conservative Christian make life much rougher on the ex-liberal one, and the ex-liberal is much less likely to make a fuss about it as they are not rebelling against anything and are likely to be quite unsure of themselves. The enthusiasm of the recently converted, annoying to others but valuable in retaining conversions, is much more the domain of the ex-Conservative Christian.

To the ex-Conservative Christian, Christianity is often a difficult and possibly abusive ex-spouse. To the ex-Liberal Christian, Christianity is more like a parent. We rebel against our parents when we’re young, but we still love them and we recognize that they are right about a lot of things. Still, sometimes their way of living and view of the world cannot be ours. To have ways of living and views of the world that differ from our parents’ can be a really scary thing but is necessary for one to reach full adulthood.

It bears mentioning that the Conservative Christian’s intolerant family and social connections wasn’t my problem either. My Christian relations’ reaction was somewhat snippy at first, I’m still young and they took it as a stage, but they quickly adjusted and my family allowed they would rather I went to a more liberal and more intellectual faith than the other direction toward getting saved and bombing abortion clinics. My friends were accepting and even interested. I actually was able to subtly evangelize and get UUism a few more members from those who had doubts like my own.

Every UU church wants to expand, but most seem to want to convert the Conservative Christians and bring in atheists who haven’t previously needed a church. In reality, every UU church’s best source of converts are the UCC, liberal Episcopalian, liberal Methodist and liberal Presbyterian churches that have people sitting in the back unable to embrace God in human terms as a being who rewards and punishes. A person who can look past the scriptural God, who is very much that personified deity, and see something else, something above that, is halfway in our door.

And that person is going to be a much better UU, at least initially. They will not ask why they can’t believe whatever they want or insist that their specific preferences as to service content will be matched exactly as ex-Conservative Christians do. By the same token, they will have an understanding of the way churches function and what needs to be done and how an hour long talk on gardening or the church’s maintenance needs is not a sermon that an atheist may lack. Both of those impairments can be overcome by new members, but liberal Christians already have that much more resolved.

Thus we return to the membership question. What does it take to get them the rest of the way here? We need to do everything we can to divorce ourselves from the image that we’re a bunch of liberal freaks, first of all. If the only time the outside community hears of the UU church is when they are protesting something, then that church is doing its membership a great disservice and not fulfilling its obligations to work for a better world. (ooh… Fulfilling its obligations… I'm getting downright Pelagian...) For every contingent that goes to the March for Women’s lives, we need a group working with interfaith organizations to feed the hungry and a group meeting Wednesday nights to study theology.

Sometimes, we work very hard to remove anything from our “Fellowships” that might make us resemble a church. We rewrite the hymns to make them less theistic. Ex-Conservatives love that. But wouldn’t we be better served to sing the original version, examining its meaning for theological relevance today, especially in light of different conceptions of God and the Holy? There’s a beautiful baby in this bathwater. (Some of you are saying "duh." Good for you.)

RE is vital here. UU children need to know the bible stories that will be so important culturally and need to be exposed to other faiths, but the teachers also need to teach a rigorous curriculum of UU history that will give the students a firm foundation and an idea that their faith has roots and that a lot of good people have found their truth in UUism. If nothing else, their parents who have come from liberal Christianity to UUism will find that in many ways, their journey reflects the journey we as a denomination have taken from historical Unitarianism to modern UUism.

Everyone needs to know how the UU faith differs from other faiths in a way they can easily explain—UUs don’t share belief, they share a method of arriving at belief. This method, refining belief through reason, is the core of who we are. Don’t let people describe our faith as “the church where you can believe whatever you want to.” The church spends way too much time emphasizing our tolerance when members and potential members alike desperately need reminders of our integrity. (After all, in a church of "tolerance," small groups are encouraged to yap at one another in endless competition for the attention that "tolerance" implies is their due. A church of "freedom" emphasizes that you can have a barn, but you have to build it first.)

The most important lesson we can teach our liberal Christian converts is that we are seeking what they are seeking, to live an unambiguous life in an ambiguous world and to seek always the highest and best in humanity, and that if we blur the lines between theism and atheism, it is because in light of the ultimate significance of this goal those lines seem less crucial.

There are a few hundred thousand UUs in our churches. But though society at large don’t have the courage, intellectual wherewithal or attention span to be UUs there are a least hundred thousand more out there.

But right now a lot of them aren’t having nightmares of brimstone and fire or arguing about the existence of God with their co-workers. They are fidgeting in a church full of people that love them, wondering why they so naturally recite words that they don’t believe. For such a person, church is a trial to be endured. But the life of faith can be so much more.

A ritual of giving.

At our church, we had a fundraising meeting a few days ago, and some thoughts I had about it have bubbled to the surface. CC has some ideas about fundraising that are pretty weird to church fundraising, because, well, she’s used to political fundraising. In political fundraising (from PACs), we sort of assume that people will likely give the money somewhere, we just want them to give it to us. In church fundraising, apparently one has to beg for it a lot more, with power point presentations about the value of church and some such.

If CC ran a church fundraising campaign, the theme of the campaign would be "Ours is a free church, time to pay for it." (A phrase stolen from Katy-the-Wise. ) Choir members would get letters about upcoming upgrades to the music ministry, parents to RE, etc. The Fellowship Dinner would cost $50 and anyone who agreed to convince three people to come could call themselves a member of the "Steering Committee" and wear a nicer name tag and come to a "thank you" luncheon of their own where they would be hit up for even more money, but could make broad suggestions about sermon topics. The fellowship dinner at CC's church is split over two nights. One night is catered, one night is pot luck. Anybody who came to the catered dinner would be hit up for twice as much money. Oh, and the pledge invoices would look as much as possible like phone bills. Because seriously, y'all, that's what paying one's pledge should feel like.)

(This brings to mind several chapters in
The Almost Church
CC loves a good masochistic beating as much as the next freaky chick, but even she found the book, from that sucky title on, a little much. That goes double for the author's smarmy "Y'all can't admit this to yourselves, but I know better" tone. He sounds a lot more humble and cool in the Coffee Hour discussion despite the fact that I almost think that saying that one didn't intend for a book to be negative is almost a bit disingenuous when one has named it the "Almost Church." Almost. Why am I humming that damn "Bowling for Soup" song all of a sudden? )

That having been said, I can seriously get behind the idea of UUs tithing. I've learned a lot about faithful church membership from the Mormons I work with, and the enthusiasm with which they approach giving to their church is really sort of inspiring. It's clear it makes them feel good and like they are a part of something, rather than the approach I see in my UU church of making the whole thing seem like a good financial transaction on the part of the giver. (Which admittedly is an approach so committedly rational that it makes my cranky humanist heart skip a beat. But I don't think it is the most effective approach.)

One of the suggestions the head of our fundraising group had was to make putting in our pledge envelopes a sort of ceremony, with people marching up to the front of the church to ceremonial music. Now CC, who had to stand in front of her Presbyterian church as a kid during a commissioning ceremony for her aunt while her brothers made some completely humiliating chaos involving the baptismal font and a rubber snake (y'all think I'm making this up, don't you?) is not a big fan of standing in front of the church for any reason, unless they let her into the pulpit in which case good luck getting her down. When she goes back to the Presbyterian church, she doesn't take communion by intinction if she can get out of it. (As in, if her mom is not watching.)

But even she didn't react as strongly as the rest of the committee.

Kids, I have seen empirical evidence that it IS possible for a suburban UU church to get whiter, because the entire committee went pale. Two people out of about two dozen (yeah, two dozen, Micheal Durrall might have a point on that one, too.) favored the idea and everyone else totally shouted it down.

Which leaves me with a few questions:

1. Do any of y'all's churches do any such ceremony?

2. What fundraising methods work best for y'all? Anything I should know?

3. Why didn't the title of The Almost Church piss more people off? To me it implicitly makes a theological criticism that had nothing to do with the book's content.

CC

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Wahoo!!

CC got a Shorter OED.

Peacebang got a nephew.

Camilla got a ring.

It's been a good few days all around, publishing errors aside.

CC
who digs Camilla's new title "Princess Consort," but herself would like to take a hint from Oliver Cromwell and be "Lady Protector" of someplace, someday.

Friday, February 11, 2005

What fausto reads in Hooters CC reads on airplanes.

FWIW, I am reading "The Dante Club." But I don't have as much of the background for it as I probably need.

CC

Dark night of the soul

So how can one tell when being neurotic and anxious has gone from an adorable facet of one's character and become and actual problem?

Like, when you're supposed to be having a fun long weekend with a friend whom you flew hundreds of miles to see, but you found out two hours before you got on the plane that didn't catch a mistake at work that you could have caught that will cost the bosses a couple hundred bucks to reprint something, and nobody's really blaming you, but you feel really bad about it and you wake up at 2 a.m. and at 4:30 a.m. you're still up and feeling bummed out and unfun?

In a related note, since when does a PDF cut off part of a document. Ever?

Like a PDF is supposed to be a perfect copy. Isn't it?

I mean, the whole office had checked over it in MS Publisher format. I printed it to a PDF and sent it. Ignore me. I'm obsessing again.

CC

What a coincidence! I find deviant behavior fascinating, too! Shall we discuss it over dinner?

Apparently, I'm not alone in my Grissom lust. Slate has a whole article about Gil Grissom as a sex object.

CC
wondering if the CSO is up for one of them murder mystery weekends sometime soon.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

CC the bad blogger

I have been SO busy and SO tired this week.

It's not even funny.

will post soon, I swear.


CC

Sunday, February 06, 2005

I can't define "pornography," but I've never watched Ghandi at 2 a.m. on a lonely Saturday night

Crossposted at Coffe Hour

This is a shout out, especially to ministers, but I'm happy for anyone to respond.

A close friend of CC's is giving a lay sermon in his UU church next Sunday and has sent CC what he plans to say.

It's a very fine speech for the rotary club, but it's not a sermon. It doesn't really connect personally with the reader/listener it doens't really even mention spirituality.

This person has had his lay-lead sermons criticized by CC before for not being sermons, and what he has written this time does represent improvement. But it's still not there.

It might help if I explained better what differentiates a sermon from a rotary club speech, but I'm having troujble articulating it.

Thoughts?

Articulations?

CC

Saturday, February 05, 2005

CC's Fuckedupometer goes off.

I kid y'all not, there is a kiosk in a my not-so-local outlet mall where people in white shirts and black ties are offering "free stress tests" to mall patrons.

What are they selling, presumably to those found to be stressed out?

Copies of "Dianetics."

CC
Who is suddenly in the mood for steamed clams.

Large breasts, but not

Strange night. I hung out with Chris-who-makes-it-happen, Hazel, Ed-who-cooks and the CSO at Hooters, my first Hooters experience. Ed claimed Hooters was a bit of Americana and this experience everyone needed at least once. I didn't see what the big deal was. After all, I've had greasy chicken wings before and I'm pretty sure our waitress was an A-cup with a really good pushup bra.

Ed talked about how he had a public-access cooking show in college and how much he wanted to start it up again. He made it sound really fun and the other four of us were all enthused when he talked about possibly doing it again and offered to invest. Nothing came of it really, but it sounds like a cool thing to be involved with.

CC

Friday, February 04, 2005

Buzzed from the Stress

Ever have a day that is just full of crises, but none of them are your
fault and you can fix all of them and by the end of the day, you're a
wacky sort of high?

That's me today.

CC

UU blog reviews: Vigorous Discussions

This was a week of lots of vigorous discussions.

After lots of vigorous discussion the votes are in and we have winners in the UU blog awards.

There’s a vigorous discussion about rejection of organized religion going on at peacebang Oh, yeah, and Philocrites gets its ads read.

Meanwhile, at Phil's Little Blog on the Prarie Phil is solving some of the problems that the folks at Peacebang are talking about.

At Boy in the Bands , Scott Wells seems to be trying to inspire vigorous discussion on churches that haven't registered in the last few years.

Checking out the statistics, I found that Katy-the-Wise has a nice big church. As well she should.

Ibeth is being profound again.

At MyIrony, Chutney is trying to start a well-deserved vigorous discussion on the fate of the King center. The place of a legacy is always a strange question. Is Martin Luther King's legacy his family's? Ours?

Take it up with Chutney.

Let's keep Sean from Ministrare and his congregation in our thoughts and prayers.

Now, go and discuss! Vigorously!

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Braided lives

So I’ve realized why The CSO and I can never divorce,.

Chapstick.

You see, The CSO hates one thing more than just about anything else: ATM fees. He will walk seemingly miles out of the way to avoid paying that extra three bucks.

In a marginally-related note, I have sort of sensitive skin and I’m always getting chapped lips.

And I’m kind of disorganized. I loose my lip stuff all the time.

So we have this informal arrangment.

Instead of paying ATM fees when he can’t find an ATM owned by his bank, The CSO goes to a drugstore, buys a tube of chapstick and gets cash back. The chapstick is cheaper than the ATM fee, so he saves money. And he gives the cahpstick to me. I put it on my chapped lips and put a tube back in my purse, hoping I won't lose it before I have another.

Thus ATM fees, chapped lips and disorganization are all defeated.

Surely two people whose lives align this neatly can never divorce.

CC

Sigh.

You know what really sucks?

Dreaming that you fell asleep on the couch in your office at work and woke up in the middle of the night, and dreaming about picking your stuff up and getting ready to leave.

Then waking up for real and discovering that it's time to go to work.

CC

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Well, yeah, they want to rob me blind, but look at those GRE words!

From a peice of Nigerian Scam spam that hit my inbox this morning...

However, we were having some minor problems with our payment system, which have demoralized us. And have cause a lot of predicament to us that are Inexplicable. Which have held us stranded and Indolent, not having the perseverance and Aspiration to devote our 100% Assiduity in accrediting foreign contract payments. We apologies once again for all inconveniences.