Upon entering week three

Back in the days when I was a sign language interpreter, one summer I worked with a summer school class of five kids: three boys and two girls. One day, the teacher divvied them up into two teams for a Jeopardy-style lesson: boys on one team, girls on the other. And even though there were more boys than girls, and even though every time the girls answered a question, the teacher said to the boys "Get ready to steal!", and even though the girls team was in the lead the entire time, at the end of the game, when the girls' team had won, the boys yelled, "It's not fair!" And the teacher, for reasons I shall never fathom, said, "OK, let's call it a draw."

What I see with the government shutdown reminds me daily of this incident.

Picture from the rally at the WWII Memorial on Sunday

Various & Sundry: Mostly things you're not sick of hearing about

It has been a long time, my friends, and goodness knows there are lots of things I could share with you today. But I will try to contain myself and keep it to the bare essentials, the most important and up-to-date...ummm...updates.

For example, we're all still talking about Miley Cyrus, right? I know there's been all sorts of stuff flitting about but I think all except this one article have missed the real issue, here: the terrible music.

Why do your children listen to knock-offs of Marvin Gaye? Why don’t they just listen to Marvin Gaye? Don’t you have Marvin Gaye records lying around, for crying out loud? Marvin Gaye sang about sex, but in a sexy way. Not in a rapey way. For example: while Marvin Gaye sings lines such as “You can love me when you want to, babe // This is such a groovy party, baby” in “Got to Give It Up”, a song that Thicke acknowledged being inspired by and preemptively sued the Gaye family re: copyright infringement allegations , Thicke sings “You the hottest bitch in the place". Since this is a blog post about shitty taste in music and not about feminism, I will ignore the fact that this is an incredibly offensive lyric and zero in on the fact that “you the hottest bitch in the place” is just plain ol’ incorrect English. Instead of worrying about your children watching scantily clad women being dry humped by men who could be their father, you should be more concerned about your children dropping verbs from their sentences.

Exactly so. May I have my curmudgeon card now?

It's strange that we're still talking about this almost one week later, given this eerily accurate description of the attention span of Twitter:

Also exactly so.

On to even more important things: your acting lesson from the week by Sir Patrick Stewart, who reviews previous lessons on the single-, double-, and triple-take, and moves into the extremely difficult quadruple-take. It is so difficult, he actually flubs it.



I deeply appreciated Jessica Creech's post Goodbye Church, Hello God. I feel like I'm in a similar place, in which going to church on Sundays is often not worth the cost of making that effort. Which is no sign of burn-out or loss of faith. It's...something else.

I wonder what has finally happened to the Bay Bridge Troll. Yes, troll, not toll. I will feel better knowing it has a good home when the new bridge opens next week.

Oh, update: "The troll will stay where it is for now, because there will be workers tearing down the old bridge and they will need protection. (This kind of quotidian witchcraft is quite head-spinning.) Later, it will be removed and put in a safe place somewhere near the bridge." I am relieved.

But you know what's even better than having a guardian troll under your bridge? Having a brand new puppy under your chair. Sam has arrived. Want to say hello?

Various & Sundry: The arc of the moral universe and its fashion requirements

Yesterday, I watched Kris Perry and Sandra Stier get married at San Francisco City Hall, courtesy of a live feed online. Who'd'a'thunk it would have happened that fast after the Supreme Court decision on...Tuesday? Wednesday? I forget. So much has happened.

It's been a crazy week in many ways, made even more remarkable by the events that could be seen from a distance.

Not only did I get to watch two women get married 30 miles away, I also got to watch the most amazing political moment in Austin, Texas on Tuesday night. Did you hear about this? A Texas state legislator named Wendy Davis attempted a 13-hour-long filibuster to stop the passage of SB5, a bill that "would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and force many clinics that perform the procedure to upgrade their facilities and be classified as ambulatory surgical centers."

Also, doctors would be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles — a tall order in rural communities. If signed into law, the measures would have closed almost every abortion clinic in Texas, a state 773 miles wide and 790 miles long with 26 million people. A woman living along the Mexico border or in West Texas would have to drive hundreds of miles to obtain an abortion if the law passed. The law's provision that abortions be performed at surgical centers means only five of Texas' 42 abortion clinics are currently designated to remain in operation.

Tuesday evening as I watched events unfold on Twitter through the hashtag #standwithWendy, I found myself on the edge of my seat. Would she be able to continue the filibuster, without water, food, or a break for the restroom, until the session ended at midnight? Would legislators stop her filibuster on technicalities? And then, when they did, would other legislators be able to stall the action long enough to get to midnight. And then, when that wasn't enough, would the crowd in the rotunda be loud enough to drown out the call for a vote. And then, when the vote was taken, did it happen after midnight? And did they change the time stamp on the vote? It was amazing to watch. A-ma-zing.

And then the follow-up: the type of shoes she wore to stand for all that time has become a sensation. Check out the reviews on Amazon. Here's one:

If you are looking for a shoe that will never yield to the floor, pressure or good ol' fashioned boy's club bullying this is the shoe for you. It has been tested for hours, opportunities to yield to oppression were presented yet this shoe stayed firmly in place holding up half the sky for 13 hours. Highly recommended.

 In other fashion news, let us admire Ewan McGregor in his fabulous kilt as he receives the OBE.

That's quite lovely.

But back to the news. The satirical law website Lowering the Bar offers these Top Ten Notable Facts about the Gay Marriage Decisions. Did you know this was the "First use of phrase "legalistic argle-bargle" since 1824's Gibbons v. Ogden"? That's a primo completely made-up fact, right there.

You might also want to celebrate the end of the Supreme Court session with this fabulous T-shirt:

As I said, a crazy week. I didn't know the arc of the moral universe was going to be quite such a roller coaster. But carry on, people, a step at a time. Get comfy shoes if that's what it takes. And I am very thankful for the people who spend their life fighting the good fight. 

Various & Sundry: Now with more random animal drama!

It's been a busy week work-wise as a deadline looooms for the ecumenical version (actually versions) of Confirm not Conform, which of course means I have more than the usual number of goofy links to share. I'm just going to go for the random, here. You sort out the themes.

My favorite grammar heresy, the Singular They, gets a thumbs up from the Grumpy Grammarian, asking, "are we really to heed [William Strunk's] aesthetic sensibilities over Shakespeare’s or Thackeray’s?" Let's just consider that a rhetorical question.

Here's a lead you don't read every day: "An English coroner is being asked to decide why a man was in the chimney of a law firm where he was found dead." Well, yes, that does raise some questions.

You also don't hear about pot-sniffing moose every time you turn around.

In other wild animal encounters, Nancy Kho describes How to Maximize the Drama Inherent in a Wild Turkey Encounter. That's a wild turkey as in an actual wild turkey, not Wild Turkey like glug-glug. Although Wild Turkey might indeed maximize the drama inherent in a wild turkey encounter. No mention of it, though.

OK, I do seem to be sensing a theme as we turn to glow in the dark sheep.

Scientists in Uruguay have announced the world's first genetically-modified phosphorescent sheep. 

Nine sheep were born in October of 2012 at Uruguay's Institute of Animal Reproduction, an experiment conducted in conjunction with the Institut Pasteur. 

The scientists used a gene from a jellyfish, allowing them to produce a green fluorescent protein.

The scientists say the sheep developed normally. They claim there are no differences to their non-modified peers.

Well. Good for them, then. But they are kind of creepy, aren't they?

On the more serious side, two pieces that made me go yay:

First, four teenagers in Wilcox County, Georgia, finally were able to offer the high school's first integrated prom. Yes, you read right. 2013. They had an integrated prom. So kudos to the four girls who finally broke through. It's still hard to wrap your brain around, though, isn't it?

Also kudos to the principal who fired security guards at his elementary school so that he could hire art teachers. He took a real risk, but it looks like it's paying huge dividends.

And for your own decision-making needs, take a look at the Disapproval Matrix, which is "one way to separate haterade from productive feedback." Very useful. Who are you listening to?

Being with people in the valley

This is a bloggified version of the sermon I gave on Good Shepherd Sunday.

There's a reason Psalm 23 is so popular, but I hadn't really realized it until I read it in the midst of the  rotten week we had last week.

Here's the verse that leapt out at me:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

As I thought about it, one of the things that's hard about helping people who are in the valley is that it feels like you aren't doing anything. We want so much to do something that will make it better. But  in the Psalm, it doesn't say, "I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and you take care of everything and make it go away." Accompanying someone through the valley isn't about zapping everything into perfection, but being with a person for the long haul to the other side. The Psalm captures that perfectly.

I thought it might be helpful to share what we can do to be with people when they are walking through the valley of the shadow of death -- and what we can hope for when we're going through it ourselves. And so here are three suggestions of what not to do, and three suggestions of what we can do to help those when they are walking through that valley.

What not to do:

1) Do not compare or rank suffering. When someone is having a hard time, it is not helpful to be told that other people have it much worse than they do. I saw that a lot with the bombings in Boston, with people saying, "Oh yeah? Well, think about Syria." There is no denying that other people are suffering, but if your object is to provide comfort, that will not help. It will, in fact, simply put up walls between you and the other person.

Another way we do this that seems encouraging but is simply another form of the same tactic is when we say to people "Cheer up! It could always be so much worse!" Again, this is not helpful. Comparing one person's suffering to another, or to an imaginary worse situation, denies or minimizes a person's situation. It sends the message that they should not feel the way they do. The fact is, they do feel the way they do. How anyone else feels or what anyone else is going through at that moment is irrelevant.

2) Do not give advice. The desire to give advice may come from the best of motives and the honest impulse to want to fix things. But the effect of giving advice often merely exacerbates the pain a person is going through.

I recently read a reflection from someone who talked about how giving advice to someone with chronic illness is, in fact, an isolating experience. For someone who has already tried everything and still feels stuck in the valley, advice is not only meaningless, it becomes a source of pain. It says to the person, "I'm healthy and you're not and if only you had X, Y, and Z, it wouldn't have happened to you. And if you only do 1, 2, and 3, you would get yourself out of it." Advice implies "I don't want to be here with you; I want you to come here with me." For someone in the valley, this is not helpful. The valley is not traversed by advice.

3) Do not make assumptions. Do not assume you know what's really going on. Do not assume you know what a person is feeling. Do not assume you know how things are going to turn out. Because the truth is, you do not know what people are experiencing. You cannot tell by looking. And even with what they tell you, dollars to donuts you are not getting the whole story.

Again, thinking of the bombing in Boston: You do not know who you know who might have been affected by this personally, so please be kind in your comments. I've never even been to Boston and yet I received an email this week from a friend who had worked with one of the people who was killed. What are the chances of that? Much higher than you might think.

What you can do:

1) Do reach out. You may worry that people won't want to be reminded if they're having a bad time. Believe me, they haven't forgotten. In fact, one thing that's hard for people who are in the middle of the valley is feeling like they are always the ones who have to reach out. Even if you don't have anything to say, just calling someone up and saying, "Hey, I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you" can mean a whole lot. The valley can be a long hard slog and the very people who seem to be handling it best because they "don't want to bug you" are the very ones for whom a simple word will mean the most.

2) Do ask what would help. Simply saying, "What can I do for you?" even if the answer is "nothing" is helpful. You can also ask some more specific questions, like "I'm going to the store/library/downtown; is there anything you need?"

3) Do listen. You don't need to have answers. Simply ask, "What's the latest? How are you? What's going on right now? How has your day been?" and let people tell you. Even when it's not what you want to hear. Even when it's discouraging. Even when you want to jump in with something to cheer them up. Just let them tell you. Just be there.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply be in the valley with people. As I said earlier, it feels like we're not doing anything. But that's not true. We're being with people, where they are, when things are hardest, even when we can't do anything about it. That's not easy. In fact, that's really hard work.

I hope you've been able to find people to be with you in the valley, and I wish you strength and good courage to accompany others.

***
Here's another article that offered helpful suggestions on how to be with people who are suffering: For a Sick Friend: First Do No Harm

And this one (which I've referenced before) sums it up in the terrifically helpful mantra Comfort IN, Dump OUT. Always good to remember.

Various & Sundry: Because I couldn't avoid the news

It's been a hell of a week, hasn't it? And to think, just a week ago I pointed out that reading the news is bad for you and I was going to try to stop reading it so much. Yeah. I think the Onion said it best:

According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, when reached for comment on this week, 93 percent of Americans responded “Okay, enough’s enough here, you have seriously got to be kidding me with this week,” with 84 percent saying “Is it Sunday yet? What? How in the hell are we only at Thursday? What the hell is going on?” and 100 percent of Americans responding “No, no, go ahead, just pile some more horrific shit on this hellish shitshow of a week. Have at it.”

Actually, I'd be just as happy not piling anything more on. But I've got to say, Tony Gwynn Jr.'s excellent response to a heckler is something that I can see being applicable to the nasty voices in the world -- and in one's head as well.


And this notecard captures the week perfectly, and in the most ladylike way:

I also drew some strength from this lovely reflection on breaking isolation.

And from this report from someone who was at the scene of the Boston bombing and saw many beautiful gestures of love and kindness.

And 20 Gentle Quotations from Mister Rogers.

And Patton Oswalt's perfect summation:

I hope you are well, wherever you are, and finding strength and courage within and love and support from the people around you. As Ellen DeGeneres says every day, be kind to one another.

Review: The Hunger Games trilogy

Book 1: The Hunger Games

I've been meaning to read The Hunger Games books by Suzanne Collins for forever, but only just got to them last month. They were a very satisfying and interesting read.

Satisfying because they were well-written and plot driven and I love a good, dense, and well-constructed plot.

Interesting because the books allowed things to be complicated. "Good" and "bad" were not as clear-cut as they first appear. Finding the right person for you and falling in love is not a straightforward proposition. And heroic deeds are not all done by heroes, or even by nice people.

Book 2: Catching Fire

Nor is the result of heroic behavior restful sleep and pleasant dreams. Those called upon to kill one another, whether for justice or for entertainment, are severely damaged by the experience. And you don't often see that in hero's quest books of this nature.

For that reason, I liked the third book, Mockingjay, best of the three (though I though all were terrific). I appreciated how Collins both resolved the action in a truly satisfying way while writing the experience in a way that seemed emotionally believable.

Book 3: Mockingjay

One of the thought-provoking things about it was how it explored the notion that, one way or another, violence would be done and people would be hurt. So given that you have no perfect option, what is the best option you have? What if you know that no matter what you choose, other people will get hurt? What will you do? It reminded me, of all things, of the movie Lincoln, in which the awful choice is to allow the bloody Civil War to continue so that the violent system of slavery can be abolished. Either way, people suffer and die. So what do you choose? Whose lives do you spare? No matter which way you go, your hands are going to have blood on them. So how do you play the game?

Be warned: these books are very violent. Brutal, even. There's no way you'll get me to see the movie versions. But I doubt I'd want to anyway. The books are told in first person, and part of the pleasure and complexity of these books is thinking along with our protagonist Katniss Everdeen about what is happening and how to deal with it. I'm not sure I'd simply want to see what happens without also knowing the mental struggle that's going on inside.

Various & Sundry, Education, Happiness, and two F words

A few quick items for your enjoyment and edification:

For example, students do a good job of evaluating their teachers. A company has developed a survey that seems to give pretty robust data on which teachers do a good job and which ones are struggling.

The survey did not ask Do you like your teacher? Is your teacher nice? This wasn’t a popularity contest. The survey mostly asked questions about what students saw, day in and day out. 

The results also fascinate me:

Of the 36 items included in the Gates Foundation study, the five that most correlated with student learning were very straightforward:

 1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.
 2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.
 3. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time.
 4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.
 5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes. 

 When Ferguson and Kane shared these five statements at conferences, teachers were surprised. They had typically thought it most important to care about kids, but what mattered more, according to the study, was whether teachers had control over the classroom and made it a challenging place to be. As most of us remember from our own school days, those two conditions did not always coexist: some teachers had high levels of control, but low levels of rigor.

Isn't that interesting?

Another insight I appreciated: there's nothing wrong with happiness. David Lose writes about how often Christians seem to denigrate happiness as vastly inferior to joy. But as he points out (not in these words), it's not that one is superior to the other; they are simply different things. There is no need to turn up one's nose at happiness.

Jennifer Weiner wrote an incredibly moving meditation on the F word - fat. Highly recommended.

And on another F word - fashion -, I have to admit I love this picture of Salma Hayak owning the sidewalk. You know what? It makes me happy. Enjoy.

Every wind of doctrine

Consider this your "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" Bible study post. But, hey, this passage will come up again:

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:14-16

Here's the thing that struck me reading it this time. So. It seems to me that people toss around that phrase "every wind of doctrine" to mean "every newfangled thought that comes along." Is that how you've heard it used? But it occurred to me that at the time the letter was written, Christianity was the newfangled thought. And Paul was an innovator even within this newfangled sect of Christianity, welcoming the uncircumcised, calling a slave his brother (and his owner's brother), expecting a radical equality among genders and races and incomes. He was doing crazily new stuff, way out of the mainstream.

So it makes me wonder if doctrine here doesn't mean new doctrine, but what we usually think of when we think of doctrine: those beliefs that are settled and static and cast in stone.

What if this isn't saying, "Don't be blown about by the latest fad," but instead is saying, "Don't be blown about by 'the way we've always done it'"? Don't be blown about by those forces that wish to deny new truths that have been brought to light through Jesus Christ. 

Remember that grim hymn "Once to ev'ry man and nation"? It has this great couplet:

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

And of course let us not forget the great Thomas Cranmer's delightful introduction to the first Book of Common Prayer (1549, of course): "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted."

Darn right.

So the next time someone throws that old "every wind of doctrine" line at you, I'd recommend you say, "That's exactly why we need to speak the truth in love, so that we are not continually battered by doctrines that no longer fit our understanding of God and of the world." The winds of doctrine isn't about new ways of thinking; the winds of doctrine are the ones that try to blow us backwards as we attempt to make progress, promoting the body's growth.

Review: Moonrise Kingdom

Last Saturday, I went to see Wes Anderson's new movie Moonrise Kingdom, and I'm still mulling it over.

If you like Wes Anderson movies, then you will like Moonrise Kingdom. If you do not like Wes Anderson movies, well, this is a Wes Anderson movie. If you don't know what a Wes Anderson movie is and wonder if you will like it or not, then here are some things to know.

In my opinion, Wes Anderson does sweet melancholy better than anyone in movies. His characters often seem disconnected from one another as they try to work out some secret sorrow. One of the things I liked about this movie is that our young heroes, Sam and Suzy, decide to support one another, decide that sharing the sorrow makes it more bearable. And in doing so, they break open the secrets of the characters around them. By the end of the movie, those secret sorrows that kept people apart have been to a great extent ameliorated as they make new and unexpected connections.

The point of view is fascinating. Clearly, the film shows us things the adults are doing and saying that the young protagonists cannot see, but I still get the sense throughout that the film is told from the point of view of the protagonists, an adolescent's perspective on adult behavior and motivation. The police chief is known only as "Captain Sharp." The scoutmaster is "Scoutmaster Ward." The social worker is "Social Services." They are known by function not name, the way as a kid you never know the name of your first-grade teacher.

As with many of Anderson's films, the young people in it are trying to piece together from the people around them how to be an adult, and the adults aren't really helping all that much. Actually, the adults are trying to figure it out, too.

As I think about it, this illuminates one of the things I loved about the movie: the constant return of the musical theme and composition The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten. Here's a piece designed to make sense of the "adult" world of classical music by breaking it into smaller pieces and explaining it section by section, then putting it all back together again in a new way. Which is pretty much what the movie does.

A couple more things to note: the movie is very stylized, no doubt. It makes the acting seem quite stiff when you're used to a more naturalized style. The standout in the movie--well, the standouts are the young leads, who are phenomenal--but among the big names in the movie, the standout is Bruce Willis who seems completely at home on the Island of New Penzance, like he's lived there all his life.

Review: Operation Mincemeat

I meant to read Operation Mincemeat when it first came out, but was only reminded to do so when I saw the obit for Jean Gerard Leigh.  Who was Jean Gerard Leigh, you ask?  She was a dead man's fiance.  Well, faux fiance.  All part of a plan of MI5 to trick the Germans into believing the Allies would invade Greece instead of Sicily.  How, you ask?  By placing a corpse with suggestive papers in the water off the coast of Spain and doing their darndest to convince them the were the genuine article.

This book is hilarious.  Of all the cockamamie schemes ever cooked up in wartime, this one certainly has to be in the top 5.  Not that I can name any of the other four, because they're probably all still classified.  But what with this crazy plan and this colorful cast of characters, I read this laughing at practically every page.

I mean, listen: You've got your hero, Ewan Montagu, who masterminded the plan and his Russian spy/table tennis enthusiast brother, Ivor.  You've got the coroner, Bentley Purchase, who procures a suitable corpse.  You've got a dashing submarine captain, Bill Jewell.  You've got Miss Leigh, aka "Pam."  You've got the near-sighted racecar driver who has to deliver the body to Scotland.  You've got your Spanish embassy absolutely riddled with double-crossers.  You've got your 1/8 Jewish head of the Abwehr in Spain who had better deliver the goods or be shipped off to a concentration camp.

And even though you know from the first that this completely absurd plan actually does work, it's still mind-boggling--MIND BOGGLING--that they were actually able to pull this thing off.

Ben MacIntyre sounds like he had a great time researching and writing this up.  Perhaps he tells you more about some of these people than you really need to know, but they're so interesting I can't blame him.  And the tale!  Well, it deserved to be told.  Read it and enjoy.

Review: Evolving in Monkey Town

I kept seeing blog posts from Rachel Held Evans being forwarded here, there, and everywhere.  I even posted about one myself.  It finally occurred to me that I might enjoy reading her book, Evolving in Monkey Town.

Subtitled "How a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions," Evolving in Monkey Town is  Evans' memoir of a crisis of faith.  Evans traces her Christian beliefs from her earliest days as the daughter of a professor at an Evangelical school, through her youth and college experience, and as the cracks begin to show in her carefully constructed "worldview" and what happens next. She frames this experience through the notion of her evolution in faith, fighting words for a girl who grew up in Dayton, Tennessee, the home of the Scopes trial.

I read this expecting to find some familiar experiences, having grown up in an Evangelical milieu. But my experience was nothing like Evans'.  Instead, I found myself shocked and amazed at what passes for Christianity for a great many people.  Mostly I was astonished at how unChristian the Christianity she grew up with was: how uncharitable, unforgiving, and unloving.

She describes how she was trained to answer any question thrown at her about her faith, based on 1 Peter 3:15: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you," but they are never told the next verse, "yet do it with gentleness and reverence."  As she discovers, when she finally leaves the Evangelical bubble and meets people to whom she can witness, "Not once after graduating from Bryan was I asked to make a case for the scientific feasibility of miracles, but often I was asked why Christians aren't more like Jesus.  I may have met one or two people who rejected Christianity because they had difficulties with the deity of Christ, but most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, and unkind."

I have to say, though Evans convinced me that she wasn't that way, she didn't exactly show that the rest of the so-called "Christianity" she was part of is anything other than intolerant and unkind.  It was worth reading just for that, just to get a sense of what that culture is like from the inside, how it is so many of them are trained to see the world. (The Unlikely Disciple is also an excellent exploration of this.)  But it was also worth reading because it is very well-written, entertaining, and honest. She writes beautifully and gives a gracious and fascinating glimpse into the life experience of many people in our culture whom we may not otherwise understand. Here's hoping that her experience inspires others to ask the questions and rid themselves, as we all need to do in one way or another, of the 'false fundamentals.'

Review: Being Elmo

Easter Sunday afternoon, I watched a movie I'd been dying to watch for ages: Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. It was even better than I had hoped.

A documentary about Kevin Clash, the man behind Elmo, Being Elmo is also a story about how mentors  make a difference even to those with the strongest of natural talents.

There's no doubt Clash was a natural.  He started making puppets as a kid in Baltimore where you can bet that wasn't the cool thing to do.  He watched Sesame Street and the Muppet Show obsessively, as much to find out how they made the muppets without visible seams as to see the shows.  Whatever it was that drove him, clearly puppets were his medium from his earliest days.

What was wonderful (and made me cry) was how many generous mentors Clash received over the years, and how he clearly understood what he had been given and will pass it along himself.  This is no self-made man and he knows it.  Special credit goes to Kermit Love, an esteemed muppet and puppet builder, who made a point of taking Clash under his wing--and made his first meeting with Jim Henson a successful one.

Being Elmo is a beautiful movie that embodies generosity of spirit.  It made me happy because I got to see someone's dream come true.  Watch and enjoy.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I haven't seen The Artist yet.  I also haven't seen The Descendents, or Hugo, or The Tree of Life, or War Horse, or The Help, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  So basically, I'm a loser when it comes to watching the nominees for best picture, though if you're paying attention you'll note that I saw Midnight in Paris and Moneyball (go A's!).

I did, however, see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and was blown away. I thought Gary Oldman's performance was incredible.  I kept thinking, "How is it he's able to convey what's going on inside when the camera is on the back of his head?"

It may have helped that not terribly long ago I heard the audiobook of TTSS (all umpteen hours of it) so I had an inkling going in what was happening--though I did not remember who the mole was.  It may have also helped that I'd never seen the TV version with Alec Guiness.

I thought they did a fabulous job adapting the book.  They shuffled things around in such a way that helped compress the plot without losing too much (though a couple characters, notably Ciaran Hinds' Roy Bland, got short shrift), and that still allowed the movie to seem leisurely, without too much information compressed in too short a time.  It also added one element to the personal life of one of the characters that I thought was revelatory both about that character and about that period in history. 

And can I just say: art direction!  Oh my goodness!  That whole 1970's Cold War Bureaucratic Bleak was amazing.  I don't know why that didn't get more love; I thought it was incredible.

A warning: there are some strong scenes of torture and violence.  It was not a bloodless and cerebral film by any means.

And now I'd better go and catch up on all the movies I've missed.

On the contra-contraception conniptions

I have been trying for...it seems like forever, but it's probably only been days to wrap my brain around the Catholic bishop's argument against allowing people in their employ to get the contraception that would be provided by the insurer as part of the insurance policy.  I really am trying to understand, to try to find an equivalent situation where my beliefs would be so strong that I would say, "No, I cannot bear to have any possible part in other people making their own moral and ethical decisions that are against no law but are against my own morals." I just can't come up with an equivalent that allows me to comprehend their argument.

I find myself going to extremes, thinking, "Well, you probably shouldn't pay them either, since they may do something you find immoral with the money--like buying birth control."  I find myself asking, "Does the Christian Science Monitor offer health insurance benefits to its employees?" (Yes, they do.)

I have been floored by the comments I've been hearing: that women should "keep their legs together," that birth control is "a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," and similar notions. In a way, I'm glad to get them out in the open where we can look at them, go "wha?! You mean people in this day and age actually think that?", and then do our best to counter-argue.

One of the things that ticks me off most about this argument is that I haven't heard much mention of the fact that birth control pills can be used for other medical reasons not related to birth control.  A very good friend of mine used them for endometriosis; another friend who had both ovaries removed  also used them.  Neither was able to conceive and in fact both of them had to go to great lengths to have children.  And yet, as I visited my friend in the hospital after emergency surgery to remove her ovary, I heard that she was unable to get the pill because the only pharmacy available to her that day was that of the Catholic hospital.

It is irrational that hospitals cannot provide treatments because a particular religious group doesn't like something else that the treatment does. It is unconscionable that one group should block any means for others to live according to the law and in keeping with their ethics.  Keeping your legs together will not control the pain of endometriosis.  And requiring women to buy birth control from the salaries you give them just means reducing their pay, not keeping you pure.

On Trinity Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street and the reactions thereunto

Headline: The Church that Aided Wall Street Protesters is Now Their Target

The displaced occupiers had asked the church, one of the city’s largest landholders, to hand over a gravel lot, near Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas, for use as an alternate campsite and organizing hub. The church declined, calling the proposed encampment “wrong, unsafe, unhealthy and potentially injurious.”

When I was in seminary, a group of us looked into the possibility of allowing those who were homeless to sleep on the grounds and offer them coffee in the morning. After much consultation, we discovered a number of things:

1) When homeless people slept on campus, the groundspeople were required to clean up human feces and other detritus after them (and we did not bear any responsibility or burden for that work);
2)  We were asked what would happen during school breaks and during the summer;
3)  We realized that though we wanted to do something, this didn't actually help homeless people out of their difficulties; it just made us feel better.

What we ended up doing was almost the opposite of what we had first thought: we sent the homeless away.  We posted signs around the campus with information about where the nearest homeless shelters were. And we volunteered to be part of the cooking rotation for another organization that offered dinners to those who lived on the streets. It was humbling because it required the painful realization that doing what was best in this situation made us look heartless. It also made me, at least, realize how much of my motivation was wanting to appear noble--even though other people would bear the burden for my noble cause.

Should Trinity have allowed the protesters to camp? I don't have all the information so I can't say. But to me that's not the issue. What gets to me about this brouhaha was neither OWS's desire to camp nor Trinity's decision not to let them. It was how quickly I saw many people--clergy particularly--jump from, "I think they should allow OWS to camp there," to "Trinity Wall Street isn't interested in justice." That's a mighty big leap, and one that I think is dangerous and divisive to make without full and Godlike knowledge of all the facts and the thoughts of everyone's hearts.