I am running a Facebook "Advent Calendar". You can find it by searching for "Burbania Posts". many of them don't translate well to this format, but when they do I will post them here... ADVENT DAY 11, 2017 I haven't managed to bake anything this holiday season. On the good side, I haven't burned anything! On the bad side, I really should. Baked goods are a tradition. I usually give them to fellow church-staff and volunteers. I will get right on it...maybe... My barriers to baking joy are the classic ones. First, there is time. This year, Christmas Eve is on the fourth Sunday of Advent. This creates a compressed holiday for church leaders. Second, there is expense. I could probably by a house--granted, somewhere cheaper--for the amount of money I have spent on fruitcake ingredients. I don't mind being a renter but...wow...that is a steep price to pay for flour, nuts and apricots. Actually, even though I haven't baked anything, I did roast some chestnuts last night. We put up our Moravian star (since fallen down) and the tree is decorated. When this happens I do the hot chocolate and chestnuts thing in the evening and sit in front of the Christmas tree to edit (again and again) the various orders of service for the next couple Sundays. Chestnuts are affordable. They are the "fiddleheads of the winter" in that they are tasty but of limited interest. Chestnut roasting is easy. Heat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut an "X" in each chestnut (usually the round side) and place them in a single layer on a tray of some sort. Wait 25 minutes. Are they exploded? They are done. However, they are also 425 degrees! Be careful out there... This year I will hopefully make gingerbread. It is simpler. Then the wife and I can take the savings and retire to a nice trailer in the woods. Of course I still have that fruitcake recipe. Here it is... Fruit-Nut Bread of Advent Awesomeness It should be noted that I am not a great baker. This recipe is modified from a couple of cookbooks that I usually use. One is the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that my parents bought me when I got an apartment in college. The other is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. If you know someone who does not have a copy. Get them one for Christmas. There is also a vegetarian one. This is for two loaves because no one makes just one. That is silliness. 1 stick of butter 2 cups white flour 2 cups wheat flour 2 cups sugar (a small amount (1/4-1/3 cup) of this can be brown sugar if you are a New Englander) 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 teaspoons salt 1.5 cups mulled (heated with cinnamon and cloves) apple cider (other juices in a pinch but I actually will use a strong herbal tea first and it really should be cider) 2 eggs 2 cups dried fruit 1 cup walnuts chopped About the fruit: Sure, you can use what you want, but if you asked for my recipe, the cider and the fruit are key. I use a small amount (1/4 cup) of crystallized ginger. Then I hit stuff that feels Biblical to me. I use apricots, dates, figs, cherries, blueberries, and cranberries usually. All in their dried form and then steeped in the hot cider (I also add the butter) for about 45 minutes. The steeping gives them enough time to mingle and then cool before adding the eggs, which you do not want to cook too early. The rest is easy, put the dries in the liquids. Stir gently until it is a sticky mess. You might need a teensy bit more cider. Put it in the loaf pan and. Cook it at 350 Fahrenheit for 1 hour! Don't make the same mistake I did...
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I need to do tasks today. Some are Advent tasks others are "so we don't starve" tasks. I try to front load this month as time becomes its own precious commodity the closer we get to the "big day". This is true for everyone. However church is one of the places we see this pressure the most. Whether we are members of some sort of congregation or not, we want some religious and spiritual element to the holidays. For those of us who celebrate Christmas, we want to feel it, not just buy it. There aren't a lot of places left where you can do that anymore. Therefore, people bring these desires with them to worship. Some people--just as with Christmas shopping--wait until the very last moment. The first and only time we see them is at Christmas Eve. That is OK. Still, it poses a challenge for the church. Frequently, the ones for whom this is true carry unrealistic expectations about what can be done in 50 minutes on one December night. On the 22nd of December we usually start getting calls from people "shopping" for a Christmas Eve service. They always ask the same question. It isn't theological. It isn't even expressly religious. What they say when we pick up the phone is "Do you light real candles and sing Silent Night?" The answer of course is "yes." It would be like Springsteen--after three hours of every song he knows--forgetting to play Born to Run. We love the candles. We love how they make us feel. It is a favorite moment of many members in the church. Yet members aren't the ones calling the office. They already know the answer. The ones who call are searching for something in their season that they haven't found yet. Many of them aren't entirely sure what it is. To them church--any church--might be the sort of place that will have it in stock. I don't mean this in a bad way. We love to have visitors in church any old time. In fact we would love to have them cease to be visitors and become friends. Besides, why wouldn't you ask about the candles? It's an important part of our holiday experience. I mean it as an observation of the simple fact that there is something...lacking in the lives of many people. There is a quest for meaning that is with us all year. However--for some folks--it is only in the crazy mixed-up holiday season that they can recognize it. We recognize it by it's absence. On the one hand there is a story of a poor baby born to an unwed mother under trying circumstances. This child and his parents are part of an oppressed minority. Strangers in a strange town, they are repeatedly rejected by people who could help them until, finally, they settle for the corner of a barn. On the other hand we are told to mark this moment by buying sparkly things, toys, and food. We commemorate their suffering by engaging in our conspicuous consumption. Whether you believe the literal truth of the story or not, the contrast is jarring. I am just going to say it. The Christmas Eve service--as lovely as it is--is a strange part of church life. It is where religion slams right up against consumer demand, creating a tangled mass of emotions and desires for people. There are competing constituencies. Partly we are a religious community gathered for a service of religion. Partly we are putting on a show for the secular holiday that dominates the culture. The people who call are sincerely interested in the religious and spiritual dimensions of the season. They merely using the language of the season, which isn't religious. It's transactional. "Do you have the thing I want?" Make no mistake about it. Christmas is mostly secular. One of the two major stories is religious but in that "Jesus vs. Santa Claus" battle, Santa dominates the series. There are plenty of folks who will tell you that it is the "holiest day in the Christian year". If they tell you this, it is a sure sign that they aren't paying attention. As a church holiday, Christmas is in the first rank of the second raters. Easter is number 1. What comes next in the holy-day importance varies by sect and personal preference. However, in the clergy parlor game of holiday ranking, Christmas rarely gets higher than 6. That's OK, though, right? Of course it is! Solstice celebrations pre-date Christianity for a reason. We need a party. It's all good. Yet, it is also important to know what we are looking at. Christmas is a Hallmark event. It's like Valentine's Day. Someone figured out you could boost the economy while singing carols, lighting candles, and putting a tree in your house. Essentially there are two holidays on December 25. They use many (but not all) of the same symbols. One is spiritual. One is commercial. Each of us has to do the math as to how much of each we will participate in. I engage in the commercial holiday, of course, and I often enjoy it. That said, I am also firmly "team Jesus". After all, Ol' Nick is considered a saint because he punched out a proto-unitarian (look it up). This is why the holiday I like best right now is Advent and not Christmas at all.. Advent is harder to monetize, so of that is your holiday, you are pretty much left alone. It has an added benefit, too. Since Advent is explicitly religious and minimally co-opted, I can prepare my self for actual Christmas (which begins--but doesn't end--on the 25th). That is, I can stay spiritual on Christmas Eve. I love it. However, I try not to make too many demands on it. Part of the reason that my own tradition didn't really start celebrating holidays--including Advent and Christmas--until the 19th Century was because they believed (and still believe) that every day is equally holy. So, as with other holidays, Advent is a practice for me. It doesn't usher in a more sacred time but helps me to see the sacredness that is always there. Christmas Eve is also a practice, one made more effective because I do not require my spiritual life to come at me in one big dose. Those callers, though. Sometimes they get me down. We do, in fact, have the thing they want. The problem is, we don't get it from a one-off worship service. It comes from years of walking a path of discernment in a community of fellow travelers trying to live their ideals. Are houses of worship the only places these communities can be found? No. However, at least at Eliot Church, that is what you find. It is what we do every single week. The spiritual or religious experience doesn't come from a holiday. It rises from a practice. Sometimes, however, these calls excite me. As I have already said elsewhere this Advent, we are on a journey that starts with a single step. Christmas Eve is an awesome first step to have. We gather together--friends and strangers filled with a vast wealth of experience and stories--to push back the dark and bring our own warmth in the midst of the cold. So yes, of course there will be candles and Silent Night. Please come join us for that sacred and holy hour. Then--if this is the only time you ever visit--maybe after the New Year, when life returns to somewhat more mundane pursuits, you might want to drop back in. We will still be here to help you find what you seek. I am running a Facebook "Advent Calendar". You can find it by searching for "Burbania Posts". many of them don't translate well to this format, but when they do I will post them here... ADVENT DAY 5, 2017 The tree at the parsonage is finally up. It isn't decorated or anything, but baby steps have been achieved, which is a relief. Today I will search for lights and decorations in the attic after I get back from the office. Yesterday, while I was kicking around the kitchen post-tree, I put on some Frank Sinatra. Most of the time when I listen to Christmas music it is from Sufjan Stevens or the somewhat less "high concept" Trekky Yuletide Orchestra (that is Trekky Records, not Star Trek). In both cases the work is set against a backdrop of our conflicted and anxious era...our own. Of course, Old Blue Eyes calmly crooning in his smooth, effortless style surrounded by the chaos of the Second World War fits this same theme nicely. At Christmas time we talk about peace like it is here, even though evidence points to the contrary. Sometimes it feels like we are being aspirational. At other times it feels delusional. In the comments section I will put a video here from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It is an arrangement of "Carol of the Bells" they call "Christmas in Sarajevo". There are smoke bombs and lasers. It is discordant in places. What did you expect? TSO began their career as the prog metal band Savatage. As a long-time fan I can say that this discord is intentional. They are placing a big, fat question mark on one of the major themes of the season. How much can we celebrate peace if we do not work for it? How much do we truly want to live in harmony with the earth and our fellow humans? Right now it isn't all that clear. I am putting another song here before the comments. It is from that 9:30pm Christmas Eve Folk Service of a couple years back. Walker and I are playing a Frank Turner song. Turner is a well known atheist and has written some beautiful songs that can really only be considered hymns. This is one that we like to pull out sometimes. It addresses (perhaps more quietly and with--at least on my part--reduced technical talent) the same question. What does this holiday mean for us in our own doubt and our failure to meet it's lofty goals? I am running a Facebook "Advent Calendar". You can find it by searching for "Burbania Posts". many of them don't translate well to this format, but when they do I will post them here... ADVENT DAY 2, 2017 Advent finally began yesterday. Before that--on Saturday night--a bunch of youth groupers gathered to decorate the sanctuary and the parlor for the upcoming season. We also cast the pageant and rehearsed for the annual Advent 1 "Sanctuary Lighting". Then we projected a Phineas and Ferb XMas special on the wall of the sanctuary and ate pizza and snacks. Good. Times. I am grateful this season for the chance to work (and celebrate!) with the youths. :-) The picture is of our "Charlie Brown Tree". The tags are for presents we purchase for people we do not know but who will appreciate the presents when they receive them. The kids did a pretty good job, right? The link is for yesterday's (very short) reflection. It is about honoring Advent this year rather than rushing straight to Christmas Day... OK, so I haven't posted much lately. This is my usual drill as we get church back up and running. This year has been a busy one for the staff. For a variety of reasons we are taking more things on and we are still getting by. It's just that some other things have fallen by the wayside...like regular Burbania postings. Now we are kicking it up a notch. Winter is coming. So, too, are the holidays. One of my tasks is to find ways to remind people to pace themselves. People in the office will have to hear my pedantic lecturing on this topic. Everyone else has to settle for columns and sermons. In the newsletter column below I imply that my Advent begins on the traditional "First Sunday". For the most part this is true. However I do indulge myself a bit with the Christmas Tubas. Here is a picture. I have some sound, too, but that will have to wait for my Facebook Advent Calendar that begins on Sunday! That is Faneuil Hall reflected in the tuba bells by the way... Here is the column...
Dear Eliot Members and Friends, Yesterday I took some time out to look for the parsonage Christmas lights. It appears we are late decorating again. I am not surprised, of course. We are always late. This year, though, I thought more people would be waiting for Advent to actually begin. My problem is that I can never figure out the rush. After all, it isn't actually “Christmastime”. It isn't even Advent until Sunday and Advent isn't Christmas! At least in the eyes of the church it doesn't become Christmas until December 25. It's time--the “twelve days” celebrated in song—begins then. Yes, on the 26th the stores will be busy changing out the colors to sell champagne for New Year's Eve, but that doesn't change this basic fact. By the time the actual Christmas season arrives many people are too tired to celebrate anymore and are just looking forward to the moment they can go back to work or school. How depressing is that? Many of us, I suspect, find ourselves moving too fast already. When this happens, lights, decorations, and Christmas planning in general can become a burden rather than a joy. We don't really need to worry. The important thing is not to scramble the spirit out of the season before it ever really has a chance to grow. Doing less may make this time mean more. Maybe, instead of letting our holiday season be dictated by the commercial interests, we should pay attention to the older division of this time. There is a wisdom to the ancient cycle that pre-dates Christianity. It is done at a human speed and addresses those larger concerns we wish we had time to consider. This Sunday we will light the candles in the windows of our sanctuary during worship. We do this every year to welcome Advent. It is the beginning. It is the first step. This holiday let us walk it together rather than sprint through it alone. I hope you make it a point to come to church this month. It is a special time in our congregation. It would be great to spend it together. We would love to see you there. Faith and Hope, Adam If you happened to walk or drive by the Eliot Church in the last few days, you probably noticed that something is missing. On Saturday night (as best we can tell) someone tore our Rainbow "Peace" flag out of its usual spot and walked off with it. In the morning, I noticed its absence as I headed in to work, Of course we went through a brief "denial" phase. We don't like to think of our neighborhood as a place where things like this happen. However, it appears that it has. The grommets were still in their place so it wasn't one of us moving it for some reason. Members even walked around the neighborhood to see if the wind blew it away. This theory already seemed unlikely, as we had recently switched out an older, more fragile flag for this one. It was in pretty good shape. Needless to say, we didn't find it. Eventually we contacted the police and they did the same things. The officer we spoke to, came to the same conclusion we did. Yes, it was most likely stolen. We don't know who did this, of course, and hesitate to ascribe a detailed motive. That said, we assume that they didn't take it to put in their room or to otherwise display for themselves. If that was the case they could have just asked for one. We have plenty for that purpose. So, what did we do when we met for worship at our appointed time? It was World Communion Sunday, a service dedicated to what holds people together in the midst of disagreement. It is a day when Christians around the globe take communion together. The issues represented by that flag, of course, are ones that divide many people both Christian and non-Christian. It seemed fitting to mark this occasion the way we had planned. .We took communion, too. We chose to stand for unity and for building relationships across ideological lines. Of course we also prayed. We prayed for whoever took the flag. We prayed for those in our congregation who were impacted by the theft. Finally we prayed the entire LGBTQIA+ community, who have to endure much more than a simple act of vandalism. In fact, they do so on a daily basis. What are we doing now? We are putting up a new flag. Like I said, we have plenty. We will even give you one if you want. We like to see them put to use. That flag is part of our identity, like communion, the cross in the sanctuary, or the many good works we perform in the community.. It stands for peace, obviously. It also stands for diversity. It is one of the ways our congregation offers support and welcome to all people. It is not healthy to hide who you are. We are an Open and Affirming congregation. We will not hide. This is us. Back during my first sabbatical I made study of Samuel Longfellow. You should check him out... “A Spiritual and Working Church” Before I say goodbye to the collection of Samuel Longfellow's sermons that has given me much food for thought over the past two weeks, I wanted to pick out one more sermon in which he described the church that he hoped to build in Brooklyn. The date is October 30, 1853, the day he officially "assumed the pastorate" in the words of his editor. The topic for the day was his vision of the church, how it should function, and what its role should be in the rapidly growing city they were a part of. Like many sermons of its era, it is one with a clear structure. It was meant to convey fairly complicated and important concepts to his listeners and to do it efficiently by the standards of the time. It is short on stories and humor, but it still reads well and it isn't all that hard to imagine it being spoken. He begins by reminding us that the word "church" "implies some common idea or purpose. It represents something more than a mere aggregate of persons such as individual and separate errands may bring together at any hour in the crowded streets of a city...we limit, however, the word church to that unity whose central idea is a religious one--the idea of God." he goes on to list a variety of "churches". There are Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Christians at least, and he leaves room for others as well. Not too bad for the 19th Century pastor (though he really does use the term "church" for each of them, which was rather jarring to my modern ears). Then, after waxing poetic for a while about the virtues of faith communities, he gets down to his first set of "three points" (preachers know what I mean) by defining church as "a society of men and women and children, associated by a religious spirit, and for religious work". The first word he picks out of his definition is the word "religious". "A church must justify its existence by this, that it holds as its special thought--not its exclusive possession, but its special thought--the idea of God." Today we might argue about what his (or our) definition of that "special thought" might be. After all, there are plenty of devoted church-goers in my congregation and not all of them are sure what they think or believe about God. However, the idea if God is an obvious--if sometimes ambiguous--one. He then also chooses to emphasize the word "spirit". There are many folks who like to say that they are "spiritual but not religious". For Longfellow, however, the term is rooted deeply in the life of faith communities. In fact, in the liberal church the religious spirit is essential as these bonds may tie us more closely than the those of belief. "I do not deny that similarity of opinion is a bond of union. We are drawn to those who think like ourselves. But it is not the strongest or deepest bond. It is easily overridden by spiritual sympathy, or annulled by the want of that." There are few ministers who have served for any period of time that could disagree with this. Many, many congregations come together over shared ideas, but if the the connections between individuals aren't also felt then there is no real community. Some congregations find this spirit quickly. For some it takes longer. It also ebbs and flows. When the spirit is lost (or at least not present) the congregation is dead--whether they continue to meet or not--and something else must rise to replace it. Finally, he addresses the word "work". The church is not a private debating society or health club, or therapy session. It is meant to be out in the world. " It seems to me as if, whenever a new church is formed, earth's suffering, sinning, wronged, and perishing ones should lift up their heads and a new hope light up their eyes, as they cried, "You will help us, you will save us". Churches should work together to support each other and work beyond their doors to alleviate suffering and follow the teachings of Jesus. It is a tall order. However, work is needed to balance out the otherwise navel-gazy nature of religious communities. Finding this balance is the challenge that faces our churches today. Sometimes we lean one way. At other times we tilt in another direction. It is our way as people. Sabbatical, perhaps not surprisingly, is designed to help the pastor to find that balance. The religious work of the church is the job of the minister. It is the job of others as well, but usually part-time. Pastors are paid to think about the church and its members full-time. Often to the detriment of the her or his own religious spirit. Hence the extended sabbath. Longfellow has three more "points" to his sermon. They are the kinds of work that the church does. First he lists the Culture of the Religious Spirit by which he means those things that spring most quickly to mind when we think of church. Worship, rites of passage, and communion are examples of this first type of work. The second is Religious Education, the deepening and growing of the faith for both young and old. Finally (and he cheats here by including two things as one) there is the category of Religious Benefice and Philanthropic Action. Here he is thinking of what we more often call "social service" and "social justice." It is clear that he does mean both. Again there is the question of balance. We have limited time and resources. Where do we put them? It seems to me that finding balance between both sets of "points" comes down to our capacity for thoughtful discernment. How do we, as people and as congregations, find ways to consider issues of importance with as little anxiety as possible? How do we remember the spirit that flows through us and between us, while also nurturing that spirit? How do we become religious? How do we make our communities of faith this way as well? The answers to these questions vary. We are a diverse species and our faith reflects that. However, I think these are questions that we all must consider both for ourselves and for the congregations we love. Dear Members and Friends, Worship and Religious Education are well underway this year. I have been enjoying getting to touch base with you all as we have gone about our usual opening rituals. I enjoyed getting to see folks at the Kickoff Sunday brunch. I was moved by the sharing at our the Gathering of the Waters during our ingathering. This congregation is a community that supports and hears each other. It is wonderful to be getting back together after our summer journeys. It was also great to see so many of you make an effort to get to church! This brings me to another topic that I would like to touch on briefly. I want to talk to you about attendance. Keep reading! You can do it! It may even be helpful to know that our current attendance is slightly higher this year... We have always been a church with a much larger membership than we see regularly on Sundays. This is fine. In fact, even though this is the case, most people do manage to drop in from time to time. People work hard to make it to non-worship events when they come up on the calendar. Which is to say that we attend Pub Theology, Dungeons & Dragons, philosophy discussions (like our Emerson group), Chili Cookoffs, house parties, vigils, rallies, and workdays, among other things. We are there for each other outside of church and for casual gathers, too. Eliot Church is blessed by a dedicated membership. It’s just that we can get really, really busy. The world isn’t constructed around “sacred time”. Many of our members work on Sundays. Others have rigorous travel schedules. There are illnesses, child commitments, weather challenges, and social obligations that get in the way of making it every week. I get it. There are weeks I don’t make it to church either. However, I would like to encourage all of us to make a point of attending worship when we can this year. In fact, I would like you to consider committing to making it to church more than you did last year! I will, too. I can think of an infinite number of reasons why we should make an effort. I bet you can think of a few as well. However, I would like to mention three key reasons for this church this year. Our Faith Community Needs Our Presence To Thrive: You may have noticed over the years that Eliot Church has gone through some changes. We are very much a community in transition. Our RE program is divided between teens and toddlers with no one in between. Our outreach and justice work (and, therefore our profile in the community) has increased substantially. We have also grown closer together as individuals. Heck, we even go skiing in New Hampshire together! The fact is, this church is doing a lot of work and having a lot of fun. We need your presence to make the party better. We need your participation to make the load lighter. We need your ideas to maintain this congregation and guarantee its future. Right now the church is strong. We want to keep it that way. This won’t just happen on it’s own. I am serious. There are no guarantees. If you value the Eliot Church, it isn’t enough to love it from afar. We need you to be here with us to keep it a living, loving, vibrant place. Worship is the biggest part of that. It is central to everything else we do. Our Faith Community Needs Our Presence for Others: Guess what? Loving Eliot Church from afar doesn’t help when we have visitors, either. Worship is usually where they encounter the congregation for the first time. The past couple of weeks we have had a few newbies drop by. If you are not here, they don’t know that you are part of what is happening. They only see those who showed up that day. Yeah, we do our best when people cannot make it. That said, when new folks come to church they are looking for others on the same spot in their life-path. It’s not that they don’t want to hang with everyone else. They just want to know that people like them are welcome and supported! That means they want to see parents of young children, new empty nesters, retirees, young couples and old couples and be greeted by those people. Life can be lonely. Visitors want to see folks who are interested in the same things they are interested in. In a small church--and being a small church is also our strength--the challenge is that when one or two individuals or families cannot make it on a Sunday, it is like that entire group just doesn’t exist. Once again, part of belonging is showing up. If visitors do not make some sort of connection with people they identify with after a couple of weeks? They find somewhere else to go to church. The congregation misses out on potential members. We members miss out on potential friends. Those visitors miss out on a community that they may have loved and would have loved them. We Need Our Faith Community: Look, getting through the week is hard. It is isolating. There are times when all we do is move from task to task. Even things we enjoy take time and effort. They leave us feeling tired and wiped out. Maybe there are moments when we just want to “sleep in” on Sunday. This certainly happens to me. However, when we step back and really consider it, that doesn’t make much sense. Let’s set aside the fact that services are at 10am. When we are home most of us can realistically both sleep in and get to church on time. I get up between 5 and 6 most mornings. I bet a lot of the rest of the congregation does too. We get the kids off to school and then get to work by 8 or 9. The only “school” the kids have on Sunday is at church. Also, the commute to Eliot is usually pretty easy. It is near where we live. Traffic is light. What we are really suffering from is inertia. We forget that church has something to offer. We forget that it is only an hour long on the slowest day of the week. We are forgetting that we need to feed our spirits. We need the church but we worry too much about the demands of our everyday lives and neglect the sacred elements that give those lives meaning. This is what keeps us home. The fact is, what sustains us is exactly what the church is offering. Stressed out and tired? Come sit with us and take a while to put those worries in perspective. Find some solace and new life in the rituals and ancient wisdom that worship provides. Do you feel isolated? Guess what! Your friends are at church. We can talk to you about your problems. We can listen to you talk. We can just have some coffee. We are not the first people to feel the way we do. That is why we are meant to join in community to explore the Divine. Coming together in worship helps us to live lives of greater meaning and strength. Final Note: As I mentioned at the beginning of this long screed, people are, in fact, coming to church. Also, those of you who were around a couple of weeks ago know that I made a big thing in the sermon about how worship attendance and participation is non-coercive in our tradition. That is true. Neither I nor the leadership is interested in making anyone do anything they don't want to do. That said, part of my job is to observe and encourage. Both your own spiritual well being and the future well-being of this community are in your hands. In this new church year, it is my hope that we continue to grow together as a healthy community of faith This Sunday we will gather in worship. We will have coffee hour. We will practice what we preach about being a caring spiritual community. I hope you can make it. If you cannot, then I hope to see you when you are able! See You in Church, Adam This is an old post from when I wrote on Blogger. It seemed worth reviving, given the massive amount of football water that has flowed under the bridge since then. Did I quit watching football entirely? Well, not really. I quit watching everything but the Super Bowl as I have a longstanding tradition of inviting friends over. Otherwise yes, I have. I do not watch regular season or pre-season games. No following Brady, Belichik, no "Mr. Kraft". Of course, the reactionary and un-reflective politics of those guys have made it easy to step away. Now I am thinking I may just drop the Super Bowl as well and just have a party, instead.
The video above is about a boycott in honor of Colin Kaepernick that is gathering steam. I may join them. The statement below is only slightly dated, as it turns out. Regular readers of Burbania Posts will know that there was a time when I watched a whole lot of football. I even religiously tuned in to the 24-hour infomercial that is the NFL Network. I wrote about it online. I made predictions. The first Sunday of our church year is called "Kickoff Sunday" partly because we are kicking off the new year...and partly because the new season begins that afternoon. The point is, I was almost a super fan. The only thing keeping me back was that I couldn't bring myself to engage in the frightening debates at the bottom of the "comments" section on NFL.com. I got into it in a roundabout way. I live in a place where baseball remained king for longer than anywhere else (Go Red Sox!). It was as a youngish adult that I turned to the fandom of professional football. It began by hanging out with the Phys. Ed. majors in my dorm. I embraced it with the zeal of a convert. That is coming to an end now. In fact, the end began a few years ago with the slow erosion of my trust in the institution of the NFL. I don't think I have to go into details, do I? There were a number of ill-conceived labor disputes culminating in the absolutely ridiculous lock-out of the referees. I took a break then, because I don't cross picket lines, even TV ones. Then there were the revelations around concussions. Perhaps most importantly, I (and others) had the creeping suspicion that the league and it's owners didn't particularly care about the health of players and former players as much as they cared about message control. About a third of the way through last year's season, I turned off the TV and didn't return until the Super Bowl. "Protect the Shield" is the unofficial slogan of Commissioner Roger Goodell and it has made him very popular among his employers. The league does its best to project an image that is as pure and wholesome as eating apple pie at a church social, but reality keeps sneaking in. Do I need to mention that racial slur used as a "mascot" in our nation's capitol? The league keeps saying that it is respectful--even an honorific--to Native Americans even though pretty much everyone they aren't paying says it isn't. This week we get to hear that there are new rules around players committing acts of domestic violence. Why? Because the league just discovered that most fans view it as more heinous a crime than smoking pot. The two-game suspension of Ray Rice seems a bit too much like the punishment parents give out to kids when they secretly think their child can do no wrong. What world do they live in? Protect the shield. Always make sure the money keeps rolling in. That is their world. Here is what I saw before I turned off the TV. In earlier times I had seen a pleasant diversion, an interesting metaphor for the struggle of life, even a certain regional pride as I watched my home team. In the last time I watched I saw something different. I saw a wealthy old billionaire high-fiving his billionaire friends while his employees permanently damaged their heads, spines, legs and backs in pursuit of...something. On the sideline was a coach. Theoretically he is worthy of respect. In reality he was the caricature of the sort of horrible, screaming, obscene middle-aged suburban dad most of us try not to become at youth sporting events. I asked myself if I wanted to be the sort of person who condones this. The answer, it turned out, was "no". Look, I am not anti-football per se. You will see me at the annual high school Thanksgiving game and maybe at a couple more. What I am is anti-NFL, at least in its current incarnation. The game has problems. It has really, really big problems that trickle down to that high school field and need to be addressed in an open, honest, forthright manner. They need to be dealt with by the folks at the top. They need to be dealt with by the people who build (and profit from) the dream. No pretending. No fakes. Deal with the issues and I will come back. Don't and I won't. I can go outdoors and spend time with my family on Sunday afternoons. I am quitting the NFL. My Facebook feed is full of statements opposing the rise of white supremacy. Ministers tend to like words. We also expect to speak out on issues that we find important. There is no way in the world that one could look at what happened in Charlottesville and see anything other than a potential turning point in race relations. Which way will we turn? I do believe that among the many, many markers of the rise of the radical right this weekend will stand out. Therefore, I have been reading and talking and listening along with everyone else. In fact, there has been a part of me that wonders if there is anything left for me to say that hasn't been said better by others. For a moment I even thought of letting this pass and to wait for another news cycle to bring a new set of offenses. However, speaking out is something we all have to do. Besides, otherwise I am just walking around angry anyway. So I thought I would point out a few markers in the internet sea that make the anti-racist/anti-fascist case better than I can. Each of them gets to specific concerns (among many) that I have and that many of you have as well. Paul Krugman, in his column "When the President is Un-American" opens with a reminder of Sarah Palin's "real America" phase. You will remember the concept. It isn't difficult as many people right, left, and center, fall into it's trap. "Real" America--according to many--is populated by a strangely simplified form of "rural" or "working class" whites. We raise them up as examples of what we perceive as American virtues. The problem is that when we do this (whether we mean to or not) we have instantly labeled everyone else as less "real" and therefore less worthy. Liberals do this, too, by the way. Right now there is a lot of talk in the Democratic party about "reclaiming the base". Along with this effort, there is little thought given to the risk of romanticizing the crueler part of whiteness that--as we have seen this week--simmers beneath the surface. Perhaps they (we) do it unconsciously and without reflection. However, when we ascribe greater authenticity to one group, we give them greater power. Their narrative then controls the conversation. My faith tells me that all humans--and that would include all Americans--are equally "real". This is a bedrock of the theology I preach. However, it is a challenge to assert that position when so much of the noise around us tries to tell a different story. That is why speaking out is important, even if it feels like our position has already been said, and said with more art than we can muster. But I digress: Krugman's article is an indictment of the President, who has inhabited the "real America" narrative of his base. Donald Trump has increased the noise in what at best can only be called a failure of leadership. In many ways, the stoking of this narrative has led directly to society's apparent new comfort with white supremacist language. The results of that should be obvious. On the same day and in the same paper Michael Eric Dyson wrote "Charlottesville and the Bigotocracy" I don't feel the need to add much commentary. He refines the point that Krugman makes until it cuts with surgical precision. He quotes LBJ saying "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you are picking his pocket". To me that is an accurate--if somewhat dated in its language-- description of how myth of "realness" functions. Dyson concludes with a call to people like me. "Now is the time for every decent white American to prove he or she loves this country by actively speaking out against the scourge this bigotocracy represents. If such heinous behavior is met by white silence, it will only cement the perception that as most white folks are not immediately at risk, then all is relatively well." This article has reminded me once again that I need to finally get through his book "Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America". Finally, I have one more item. This is an old film first shown in 1943 and then edited and rebroadcast (as far as I can tell) in 1947. "Don't Be a Sucker" is many things. I see it as a classic noir PSA. The narrative of America it provides us, though, is still a powerful antidote to the rhetoric we are hearing from the alt-right, the fascists, and many in the conservative establishment, Many folks have been linking the tw0-minute clip. If you can stand it, however, I suggest you watch the whole thing below. It is jumpy and the beginning feels like a non-sequitur at first. That said, I am glad I stuck with it. It made me uncomfortable in parts. However, it made me ask why... Oh yeah... and the American Nazi? He talks about "real Americans" too. |
Adam Tierney-EliotThis is my old weblog of many years. I will probably post here from time to time is there is a subject that does not fit WWG. However WWG is the more active page at this point. Archives
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