Someone else's thoughts on Africa

I'm throwing in a quick link here before I poop out entirely. This is an article from Obit, my lovely death-related online magazine, called The Last of Africa's Big Men. It talks about how the death of the long-time leader of Gabon may be a turning point in Africa's mixed relationship with its former colonial connections. I thought it was interesting, so I pass it along.

Sunday Funnies

I'm adding this to my next cabaret production.



Bit of an inside joke, though. Let me know if translation is needed.

Escaping the Vicious Circle

This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots which are generally thought to mark the beginning of the Gay Rights movement.

I'm 40 years old myself, and I realize I've gotten to see and hear a lot of this movement up close(ish) in ways I didn't even notice at the time. Growing up in the Bay Area, I heard about the assassination of Harvey Milk when it happened. The AIDS crisis hit San Francisco hard while I was in high school. I remember signing petitions when I was in college against the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Gene Robinson was a candidate for bishop in Rochester while I was in seminary several years before he was elected in New Hampshire.

And now the movement to legalize gay marriage. Who would've thunk it?

Two things this week have been milling around in my mind. Or maybe one thing in two parts.

First of all, I realized that I'm very tired of the same old arguments about gay marriage. I feel like it's on autopilot and anybody could play the parts. I almost feel it would be entertaining when getting into this kind of spat to stop in the middle and say, "Let's trade roles!" and see how well we do in articulating the other side's argument.

I found this graphic this week that captures it well. (I don't even know where I found it now.)




I hope you can see it here. (I see that you can't, but you can click on it for the full view. You can also look at it on the web at http://www.geocities.com/patrick_farley/gayMarriageChart-large.png.) It captures for me the futility of how we keep saying the same things again and again and again.

However, this week I also stumbled across a project called Bridging the Gap which offered what they called a Synchroblog. Over 50 bloggers from all over the religious/political spectrum offered their thoughts on issues relating to homosexuality and Christianity in a way that is loving and respectful. It was so refreshing. What's more, I was able to listen and I learned a lot. It gave me hope that the argument doesn't have to be like a dog chasing its tail. It doesn't even have to be an argument.

One of my favorite entries on the Synchroblog came from this blogger who described the familiar experience of online debate where "The arguments were endless and repetitive, and I can't remember how many times we rehashed that same conversation over those early months."

One evening, when he sent me a message to initiate the same old routine, I decided that I wasn't in the mood for it. As I sat there for a moment, I decided that our conversation was going to be different that night. I decided we were going to talk about something else. So I started steering the conversation in various directions, such as what I had done earlier that day. I also asked him about his day and various other questions. As a result, we had a twenty minute conversation that night that was completely debate-free and even a little pleasant, if somewhat forced. The conversation ended when Thyle said he needed to go and we exchanged pleasant goodbyes.

I learned that it takes two people to debate, but often only takes one person to redirect the conversation away from that debate.

He's realistic about the need for debate sometimes, but when the debate is simply a rehash of well-rehearsed positions, it doesn't seem to make sense to keep going. Instead, "When we force the debates and disagreements to take a more appropriate place amidst all the positive interactions a group of people can have, there is room for a beautiful picture to emerge and develop over time."

There was a lot more in these blogs and if this topic interests you--or tires you, actually--I recommend you take a look at what people wrote. Lots of good thoughts written with generous spirits. It gave me a lot to think about.

Also on the obit page

So we have all heard about Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, but today's obits from the NY Times provided their less famous counterparts.

The off-Broadway actor, T. Scott Cunningham, died at age 47, which is way too young, if you ask me. His seems to me to be the story of a working actor and gay man in New York. His obit announces that he is survived by "his partner, Harry Bouvy, of Manhattan." It's so matter-of-fact, I'm very touched by that. Broadway World goes further, naming him as "his partner of 14 years." Also no doubt by his bedside when he died, but without the drama and paparazzi of L.A. And a blessing for that.

Then there's Betty Allen, a mezzo-soprano who sang with the Met and everyone else under the sun and whose childhood was as agonizing as you hear Michael Jackson's was.

In the obit, they mention how she is not as famous as her Wilberforce College classmate Leontyne Price. She doesn't seem too worried about it.

“I’m not a household name,” she told The Times in the 1973 interview. “I don’t stay awake nights plotting and planning. Maybe I don’t have that extra drive and ambition and energy that makes for a blazing career. I need a home, and I need to be looked after. I may look to be a very self-sufficient female. I act very brazen and hard and matter-of-fact and seem as though I could cope with anything. Well, I can’t. I’m as soft as putty underneath.”

I don't think fame does people a lot of favors. Certainly not in death. I feel for Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson who I think suffered quite a bit because they were famous. It looks so good from a safe distance, fame does, but it seems to me that both Scott Cunningham and Betty Allen worked hard and did well with a much healthier dose of public recognition. Maybe they wanted more, I don't know. But I can't help but think that fame is a rotten thing, or at any rate a thing that rots quickly. I want to think some more about that.

Church Geek Alert

I'm prepping for this Sunday's sermon and looking over all the parts of 1 and 2 Samuel that the Revised Common Lectionary skips (which are, of course, all the wonderful grisly bits of the story) and I wanted to find out where David was when he was running around the countryside trying to hide from Saul.

Enter BibleMap.org which is friggin' awesome! You enter a book of the Bible--go ahead, pick one! Good one. And a chapter. Pick it from the pull-down menu.

Voila! A little box shows the passage and highlights each of the place names in it. And then when you click on the highlighted place names, it shows you where they are and what their significance is in Biblical times.

All of this is overlaid with Google satellite images and also lines that show the borders of the nations of Biblical times!

It is just too cool! Or I am just too lame. Oh, just go check it out. I'm telling you, it's cool.

General Convention

In case you're wondering why my posts have been spottier, shorter, and more derivative, it's because of General Convention, the triennial meeting of the Episcopal Church which starts two weeks from today. The image to the right, there, is the theme and logo of this year's GC, Ubuntu, which (in my opinion) is almost unbearably PC, but that's just me.

I'll be there in a 10 by 10 foot booth, promoting Confirm not Conform and pretending to be an extravert. Yikes!

I'm excited about going, very curious what it will be like. I mean, what is it like being around 10,000 Episcopalians at a time? Over 200 bishops will be wandering around; will any of them need a confirmation program?

The Archbishop of Canterbury will make an appearance, though I doubt he'll appear in the exhibit hall. The convention is in Anaheim; will the ABC go to Disneyland? Will I? And I have no idea who all will be there that I know or that I have met through the blogosphere or who I will get to know.

In the meantime, there's a ton to do, so blogging may be light for a bit. But it's exciting stuff, and I'll keep you posted as I can.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

I'm a sucker for those little 15 percent off stickers that Barnes and Noble cleverly sends out, and so last week I went to B&N and told myself I could buy Any Book I Wanted. Not a book that I thought I ought to want, but something that I thought I would actually like.

Naturally, I headed over to the Young Adult section where I found a book that had no business being in the YA section, but I'm glad it was: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron. And the reason I picked it up is because Peter Cameron was my Creative Writing 101 professor at Oberlin.

I was a bit dubious when the back jacket described the protagonist as "Articulate, sensitive, and cynical," and "a sophisticated, vulnerable young man." I'm not a huge fan of the articulate, sensitive, cynical, sophisticated, vulnerable, young man Manhattanite school of writing; I never really cared for Catcher in the Rye.

But I loved this book, starting with the first sentence: "The day my sister, Gillian, decided to pronounce her name with a hard G was, coincidentally, the same day my mother returned, early and alone, from her honeymoon." It caught me right there.

Our sophisticated, vulnerable, sensitive, articulate hero is, in my opinion, a sweet kid and I liked him which made all the difference. And the book is funny and touching. My favorite line occurs when our hero is watching his grandmother sleeping and pondering various things that have gone awry for him. He reports that he "Just let everything go, turned the net of myself inside out and let all the worried desperate fish swim away." Isn't that lovely?

I can see why it's in the YA section; our hero is 18 and doesn't want to go to college. But it's not written to be a YA novel. It's just a flat-out novel, and it's wonderful. I highly recommend it.