Category: Arts & culture

Red Sox clergy

What’s the well-dressed clergyperson from Red Sox Nation wearing today? Well, obviously it depends on which faith tradition you’re part of. Since I’m from a faith tradition that requires Biblical knowledge in its clergy, an obvious choice for me is some kind of Red Sox garb in a Biblical language. No, not Koine Greek — that message of loving your enemies is not a good fit with the World Series. The teleology of Revelation is not exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for either. Definitely not Koine Greek.

Hebrew, on the other hand — the language of Moses and the story of the journey to the Promised Land — and, in case the Sox lose, the language of Jeremiah — Hebrew strikes me as a good Biblical language for Red Sox clergy. So today I’m wearing the hat that my friend the rabbi gave to me:

BlogOct2813

Yeah. Go, Sox!

Shareable economy

“Shareable economy” and “the new mutualism” are new and trendy terms for new-fashioned things like bikesharing programs, coworking, hacker spaces, etc. — and also names for old-fashioned things like public libraries, public parks, credit unions, co-ops, etc.

Two blogs on the shareable economy that seem worth reading:

Shareable

OuiShare

Both blogs encourage social entrepreneurship. Both blogs look beyond North America to Europe, South America, Australia, and beyond. Not sure I’d read either blog on a regular basis, but both are worth looking at for ideas at least once.

“The Race That Long in Darkness Pined”

It’s way too early for Christmas, but….

My favorite reading for the Christmas season is the King James translation of Isaiah 9.1-8. I love the rhythm of the language, and the beauty of the imagery. From a theological perspective, I’m not willing to say that Isaiah 9.1-8 predicts the coming of Jesus as the one and only Messiah (capital “M”) — I’m in the camp that says there have been and will continue to be messiahs (lower case “m”), of whom Jesus of Nazareth was one. Whatever my theological position, it’s a beautiful piece of prose.

Recently, I stumbled across a metrical paraphrase of Isaiah 9.1-8, done by John Morison for the 1650 Scottish Psalter. It’s not as good a rendition as the King James translation — but because it’s a metrical paraphrase, you could sing it, and how cool is that? So I wrote a hymn tune for it. A polyphonic tune. In Dorian mode. Between the music and the words, this would never be used as a hymn in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. But I had fun writing it, and there are one or two hymn geeks out there who might actually enjoy seeing it, so here it is:

TheRaceThatFingernail

(Click the image for a PDF. Complete words below.) Continue reading ““The Race That Long in Darkness Pined””

Theology deadlock

One of the things I see as I watch the slow-motion train wreck that is the budget deadlock in Congress is a battle between two competing theologies.

These two competing theologies have, above all, differing notions of sin and salvation (soteriology):

On the one side, the possibility of salvation is understood to reside primarily in individual humans. To put it another way, fighting sin is primarily the responsibility of an individual. The way to fight sin, and move towards salvation, is to assign the highest level of responsibility to individuals. This theological position tends to deplore government intervention in social problems, such as providing health insurance; thus in the context of this theological position, individuals, not impersonal social structures, are ultimately responsible for saving themselves and, e.g., taking care of their own health.

On the other side, the possibility of salvation is understood to reside both in the individual and in social institutions; however, in practice the emphasis tends to be on social salvation and social sin, since social sin is perceived to be so much more powerful a force than individual sin. To put it another way, fighting sin is primarily a battle that must be fought in social institutions. The way to move towards salvation is to assign the highest priority to fighting sin in society. This theological position tends to urge governmental solutions to social problems; thus in the context of this theological position, individuals are not powerful enough in themselves to fight social sin, and must use social structures such as government to fight sin and reach salvation by establishing a moral society.

These two different theological positions also have differing understandings of the nature of human beings (theological anthropology): Continue reading “Theology deadlock”

The real America

In his 1994 introduction to his 1981 novel Hello, America, J. G. Ballard writes: “The United States has given birth to most of our century’s dreams, and to a good many of its nightmares. No other country has created such a potent vision of itself, and exported that vision so successfully to the rest of the world…. Whenever I visit the United States I often feel that the real ‘America’ lies not in the streets of Manhattan or Chicago, or the farm towns of the mid-west, but in the imaginary America created by Hollywood and the media landscape.”

The real America is the imaginary America which is presented in pop culture; this makes sense to me. And this raises a question for me: should religion accommodate to this imaginary America, as for example Rick Warren and his version of the prosperity gospel do? — or should religion take pains to point out that the “real America” is really an imaginary America? — or should religion ignore altogether the problems caused by the imaginary America being the real America? Or put more starkly: should religion resist pop culture, or embrace it?

I think they did it again…

“Oops, I Did It Again,” a song written by Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, has gotten a bad reputation. In an introduction to his own version of the song, Richard Thompson says that unfortunately, the best-known performance of the song was done by “a rather crass pop artist”; yet, Thompson says, the song itself is lovely, with a chord structure “reminiscent of other centuries,” and “if we just take it out of the original hands, and give it a slightly different interpretation, … we can reveal its splendor.” 1”

Since this is such a splendid song, it seems a prime candidate for adaptation: instead of a song addressed to a confused lover, why not make it into a song addressed to some of the people who are behind the growing economic inequality in the U.S.?

Oops, They Did It Again

I think they did it again,
They made us believe
That they were our friends.
Oh, baby,
They might think act like they care
But it doesn’t mean
That they’re serious;
‘Cause to make empty promises
That is just what CEOs do.
Oh, baby, baby —

Oops, they did it again,
They played with our hearts,
To them it’s a game.
Oh, baby, baby,
Oops, they cut back our pay,
Took benefits away;
They’re not so innocent! Continue reading “I think they did it again…”

Homework

If you haven’t yet seen it, I recommend an article in the October, 2013, issue of Atlantic magazine.

The article is titled “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me.” For one week, the author does homework alongside his 13 year old daughter — and it’s more work than he bargained for. The author finds he has doubts about whether the homework is worth spending so much time on, and he also cites studies that claim there is little correlation between the amount of homework and academic performance. Also of interest — the author says that the amount of homework increases and decreases in a 30 year cycle, and we are currently at the peak of heavy homework. You can read this article online here.

I was interested in this article because I often hear from kids in middle school and high school how overwhelmed they are by the amount of homework they have. Of course, from my point of view as a religious educator, I care less about academic performance than about whether kids are growing up to be ethical, sensitive, and caring human beings — and as far as I know, homework has not helped kids become more ethical, sensitive, and caring. But I have definitely noticed that kids are getting more homework now than, say, a decade ago.

I wonder what you think about homework — especially those of you who are parents of middle school and high school students. Are kids getting too much homework these days? Do you think kids need lots of homework in order to remain competitive in today’s academic environment? How is homework affecting their lives — and your life as a parent? I’d love to hear from you!

Originally posted here.

Down by the docks

This afternoon, I went down to the marina, and stood on one of the docks. Plodding along the dock came a tall, strong, heavy man with a tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, muttering under his breath and occasionally breaking out into song:

  Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
      Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum…

He sang in a high, old tottering voice that sounded like it had been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. As he came closer, I could see a scar across one cheek, an old sabre cut that now showed a dirty, livid white on his nut-brown face. Continue reading “Down by the docks”

Labor Day, LGBTQ rights, and the 1963 March on Washington

We’re all hearing a great deal about how the 1963 March on Washington featured Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. But I’ve been thinking about jobs and LGBTQ rights.

With Labor Day just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about how it was billed as a “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” Shannon sent me a link to the Organizing Manual (you can view it online here) — and the Organizing Manual contained this passage about jobs and labor:

“Why We March

“We march to redress old grievances and to help resolve an American crisis.

“That crisis is born of the twin evils of racism and economic deprivation. They rob all people, Negro and white, of dignity, self-respect, and freedom. They impose a special burden on the Negro, who is denied the right to vote, economically exploited, refused access to public accommodations, subjected to inferior education, and relegated to substandard ghetto housing.

“Discrimination in education and apprenticeship training renders Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other minorities helpless in our mechanized, industrial society. Lacking specialized training, they are the first victims of racism. Thus the rate of Negro unemployment is nearly three times that or whites.

“Their livelihoods destroyed, the Negro unemployed are thrown into the streets, driven to despair, to hatred, to crime, to violence. All America is robbed of their potential contribution. …

“The Southern Democrats came to power by disfranchising the Negro. They know that as long as black workers are voteless, exploited, and underpaid, the fight of the white workers for decent wages and working conditions will fail. They know that semi-slavery for one means semi-slavery for all.”

 

That’s something to think about on this Labor Day weekend. Maybe we haven’t come as far as we think we have in the last fifty years — with the salaries of the CEOs rising, and the middle class disappearing, these days many white workers are also entering semi-slavery….

And then one of the two names listed on the front page of the Organizing Manual is that of Bayard Rustin. He was crucial to making the March on Washington become a reality. But because he was openly gay, the others who were in charge felt they had to keep Rustin in the background. At least we’ve made some progress in the area of LGBTQ rights; today, they might even have let Rustin speak, or at least show his face on the speaker’s platform [but see Erp’s correction to this statement in the comments below].