Recycling holy images

The driver, Dennis, wasn't that sure about throwing Mary and Jesus into the truck but hey, they were out there with the recycling and I persuaded him to let me snap a photo.

My neighbor Harold put them atop the bins, by the way. They were previously on the ground, behind the bins.

Is there an accepted method for disposing of plastic renditions of the holy family?

Diamonds on the soles of their shoes

I was reading this story in today's Daily News, about the Christian Science church closing its doors on High St. and two things came to mind:

1. A church in a town is a business, a local franchise if you will, and

2. SENIOR CENTER

Who has about $900,000 to buy this building for a senior center, before someone else snatches it up?

But back to #1: I find it interesting that people don't think of a church as a business, with legitimate business expenses - and the odd tax break here and there.

Churches have always been about making money - when they weren't being political, that is.

Back in the good old days - that would be Medieval times to me - churches went around collecting tithes from the common folk who could ill afford it, by telling them they would be doomed to eternal hellfire if they didn't fork over their last farthing (or whatever coin they used back then).

That was so the bishops and such could have fur robes to keep them warm and toasty in those drafty buildings. Just look at all that jewel-encrusted finery available to the Pope, for instance. Of course, the lowly vicars and priests were living on moldy bread ...

I've oversimplified to make a point but still, churches (in the forest sense) are big business and they are powerful.

That particular local church isn't making enough money? Get rid of it! ... And on and on it goes.

The flip side

Going back to being in the community garden behind the First Parish Church, Newbury - I was there on Sunday morning when the bell started tolling to tell people it was time to get to church.

And although I'm not a religious person, it made me kind of sad to think that, not even 100 years ago, a whole community answered to that bell.

You know that famous quote, "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you ...?" Well, it means something slightly different than what I'm saying, but somehow it fits in this case as well.

This 'bares' scrutiny

(Warning: I did no research on this; it's purely my personal observations.)

The controversy between Facebook and women who want to put photos of themselves breast feeding topless rages on. (You can watch this video about one particular mom on CNN.com.)

Is this prudishness?

Stepping into the Wayback Machine, I once again see the French exchange student who lived with my family for a year and photos she showed us of her life in France - including ones of her on a beach that allowed semi-nudity (bottoms but no tops).

As my warning above indicates, I have no figures on how hung up Europeans are on females baring their breasts ...

But if Facebook should change its policy, an unlikely event I would say, what's to stop everyone from wanting to post pictures of bared female breasts? Nada.

But (again) - if you are banning female nips, you should ban male ones as well. If mandatory dress codes have taught us nothing, they have taught us that you can't apply standards to women without also applying them to men.

So I say de-criminalize the female breast. How can a woman feel comfortable with her body if she knows exposing parts of it is considered "obscene?"

But no! The bits below are still 'bad.' Bad bits.

So I retract my previous bare statement and amend it to: let's go back to the 19th century, where women had to cover themselves from head to toe.

We haven't come a long way, baby.

Isn't it funny how something so purely functional (the human body) became a matter of shame and censorship? When did that happen? Not recently! Bad, naughty, evil Eve.

And for those of us not into the religious explanation - Bad, naughty, evil Mother Nature.

Well, folks, there are a million stories in The Naked City - and I have to go write up a few of them now!

Evangelical drug dealers

I was just reading that Sarah Palin, McCain's pick for vice president in case you've been living under a rock for the past week, is Pentecostal.

OK, well, no reflection whatsoever on Ms. Palin (I mean it), or the movement itself, it just reminded me of when I was in college and there were about 10 Pentecostal women on the same floor of the dorm that I lived on as a freshman.

They sold LSD to make extra cash.

And I mean they did it as a group, not just one or two of them. A couple of them kept the stash in their room, in one of those dorm-sized fridges that was just full of LSD in every form ...

It was an open secret at Alice Lloyd Hall - plus, one of them who lived across the hall from me showed me the fridge for reasons I can't remember, but had nothing to do with me being a customer. She might have thought I was a potential customer, but I was pretty goody-two-shoes at that point.

It always made me snicker.

It's just a reasonable facsimile

I was reading with interest Mary Baker Easton's most recent posts about churches and weathervanes (they are actually one right after the other on her blog).

She didn't mention it, but I do believe the weathervane from the historic Old South Church was once stolen and has been since replaced with a copy (see photo, from when the bell tower was being replaced in Sept. 2006, or photo on the website, with it in place).

Well, the theft of historic icons is nothing new, but I still think it takes a lower form of life to steal from a church (although that's hardly new, either). And I'm not even religious.

Yes, I guess the First Parish Church of Newbury should sell its weathervane and try to make the best with the proceeds. It pained me to go in there a couple of months ago for Sunday service and see how few people were in attendance.

Triple-D, who is why I went in the first place (she was trying to find a church that "fit"), sniffed contemptuously at the paltry number of parisioners present. Her church of choice, Unity on the River, is apparently always full.

"My church has (modern) music!" she exclaimed. Apparently the whole experience was much to "Catholic" for her (the church is United Church of Christ, or UCC). Help save Triple-D from traditional hymns and get her that zydeco beat going.

Is religion also been co-opted by the cappucino-sipping, khaki-wearing, need-for-constant-amusement (or validation) crowd that everyone's been carrying on about? It's just a thought, being thrown out there for consideration ...

Bishops blogging

I was scanning the CNN website and came across this story of people in Italy who continued to sunbathe even though the bodies of 2 young girls who had just drowned lay nearby on the beach.

The story was kind of revolting, but what caught my attention was this sentence:

The incident also attracted condemnation from the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe. "Indifference is not an emotion for human beings," Seppe wrote in his parish blog.

Wait ... the Archbishop of Naples has a blog? I stopped reading the story as soon as I read that. It is, apparently, part of the parish website.

A quick Google search later, and I see all kinds of clerical types have blogs. Not so much here in the States, it would seem, but lots of other places.

This, by the way, is one person's characterization of blogging: Most blogs are written by regular folks with strong opinions and a considerable amount of free time.

I don't know why it surprised me that the Archbishop of Naples has a blog, but I can definitely see why the Archbishop of Naples has a blog.

Thanks for the comment

I published a comment earlier today, from someone in South Africa. Since it's on a post from a ways back, I thought I'd publish it in a separate post:

I do find your blog thought provoking. You are an open minded person filled with God's love for people and able to appreciate the creation. I am a video documentary producer and events photographer in South Africa.

Hannes

I'm not doing this for the compliment (thank you, Hannes) but for the comment on my appreciation of "the creation."

I am not a Creationist, but I can certainly see why people are. As I've said before, both the notion of creation and evolution require leaps of faith. Given that no one knows for sure what's really out there in the Universe, or how many there may be, who am I to dispute someone else's faith?

Not that I don't do it, mind you, if someone provokes me ... in the end, though, I accept that it is what it is and thinking too much about how it got here gives me a headache. Which kind of explains, in my tortured mind, why someone (or some people), came up with the Creation.

It's really a rather simplistic explanation for what had to be a very complicated process, don't you think? Or it could be a rather complicated explanation for a very simple process ...

Also, Hannes might like to know that numbered among the residents of our city are a fair number of South Africans.

Is this sexism?

Over at Ari Herzog's blog, he has posted about sexism, and I've commented - but I thought I'd jump into the fray with a post of my own. A lot of people seem to have a lot to say about this.


Sexism, like racism, is an extreme word.


Was it 'sexist' for Katie Couric to ask Hillary Clinton about male classmates in high school calling Clinton "Miss Frigidaire?" I thought maybe it more cast aspersions on Clinton's sexuality, another issue hinted at by some in the media - so maybe it was more homophobic than sexist? Or both?


I don't know, for sure ... it's just as likely it was to hold the viewers' attention.


(By the way, Laura Bush only had one pregnancy - and nobody questions her sexuality. But she's sweet and demure, like a woman should be, right?)


What about the so-called "vagina vote?" People who used that term implied that women were only behind Clinton because of a shared anatomical feature. Does that include transsexuals, I wonder?


Would you vote for someone based on such loose criteria? People do.


I still think George Bush was elected (or not) the first time, not based on much other than the "good ole boy" image he projected to middle America. It was a brilliant marketing strategy. What kind of "-ism" was that?


Nothing wrong with that, except that the rest of us were stuck with Bush.


If Joe Lieberman had been in the race, it would have been the ... what? The "yarmulke vote?"


If Rudy Giuliani had stayed in and won the Republican nomination, what would that have been? The "Soprano vote?"


Mitt Romney, even though I didn't care for him as our (sometime) governor, probably could not have won because he's a Mormon.


Which brings me around to religion. I got into a debate a while back with someone who was contending that women are 'lesser' (as in, only good for making babies and raising the kids) because it says so in the Bible.


What do you call that? Before organized religion, most cultures were egalitarian. Well, except for the throwing virginal girls into the volcano bit ... but do we absolutely know that to be true?


There are a lot of prejudices out there. My sense is, Clinton did not make it because a lot of people do not care for her personality and some of that is because she is a 'strong' woman. Some of it is because of the Clinton political machine, which obviously tries to mow everything in its path down.


I think it's too easy to say she didn't get the nomination because of sexism, although I do believe that was probably part of it.

Reminds me of that Prince song, "Controversy."

"Am I black or white
Am I straight, or gay?
Controversy."


I don't have any answers; I'm just throwing this out into the local Blogosphere!

ET visits Newbury?

Maybe the extraterrestrials read my blog and wanted to check out the crazy doings in Newbury ...

Two local men swear they saw a UFO over I-95 near Byfield (part of Newbury) yesterday morning. Read the full story here.

The piece talks about a UFO sighting in Exeter, NH: The Exeter incident was one of the best documented in the folklore of UFO sightings. It happened on Sept. 3, 1965, when several New Hampshire residents believed they saw a UFO traveling overhead.

The first to report it was Norman Muscarello, 18, who was walking along Route 150 in Kensington, N.H., at 2 a.m. after visiting his girlfriend in Amesbury, when he saw a strange glow in the sky.

Moments later, Muscarello said he saw an orb of red and blue lights.

"I didn't know what it was, but it was as big as a house," Muscarello recounted in the book, "Sightings: UFO" written by Susan Michaels and published in 1997. "It had a red hue and flashing lights, sometimes in sequence, sometimes erratic."

My cousin and I saw something that sounds exactly like this one night in Michigan, when we were approaching a football field to watch a JV game. It was hovering over the field, but high enough up that people in the stadium would not necessarily have noticed, if they weren't looking straight up.

I honestly don't know if anyone else noticed because we looked at it, commented on it, and went on our merry way to watch the game and said nothing to anyone else.

I liked this: When asked if there were any unique planes in the area, a skeptic Jim Peters, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said, "Our agency doesn't have the time or the resources to look into such things."

I notice that in the Exeter sighting, because police also saw whatever it was, Air Force officers were sent on up there to investigate.

My thought on UFOs is this: it's extremely arrogant to believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe, or any universe. Even if one believes in God, it's still unlikely a God would start and/or stop at us. Unless he was assigned this planet - but who is doing the assigning, in that case?

It boggles the mind, doesn't it?

A balanced perspective on a hot topic

Today I went to Sunday worship at the First Parish Church of Newbury.

The Rev. Nancy Haverington, about whom I wrote here, told her congregation that she had abandoned her planned sermon about Ascension and decided instead to address an issue about which she is being frequently questioned: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

He is the pastor of a UCC (United Church of Christ) church, as is she. The church, she noted, is standing behind Rev. Wright.

I can't go into it all here, but I did ask Nancy if I could get a copy of her sermon so if anyone wants to read it, I can send along a copy. She is a very intelligent and articulate woman and I admire her greatly.

The gist of the sermon was to impart where the Rev. Wright was right (theologically and politically) and where she thinks he was wrong (being divisive with his message rather than inclusive, for one; I think it's more ego vs. humility myself). Nancy pointed out that there is a fine line between theology, especially Black Liberation Theology, and politics (since most oppression is born of politics).

She also spoke extensively about the history of Black Liberation Theology (for more information/history on this, click here to go to an article called "A Closer Look at Black Liberation Theology" on the NPR website).

Most of all, she said what was great about this country is that, sure, there were mistakes made; but once the 'evil' things the government was doing (Tuskegee Syphilis Study, experiments on soldiers and Native Americans, etc., cited by Rev. Wright) were made public, the result was change and in some cases, legislation.

In China, for instance, she noted, not only would the 'whistle blowers' have been silenced but the 'evil doing' would have continued.

I was moved in sum by the basic delivery of her message - fair and balanced. Rev. Wright, also an intelligent and articulate pastor, could stand to take a page from Nancy's book.

No use in asking the 24-hour cable news networks to do the same.

A spiritual morning in Newbury

I had an epiphany of sorts this morning. I was at the First Parish Church in Newbury talking with the church pastor, Nancy Haverington and church deacon Erin Stack. The church is again very involved with the city's celebrations leading up to Earth Day.

I put my notebook away and as often happens, we started talking about stuff. In this case, it was that story I posted a ways back about people leaving the church of their upbringing and seeking another message, or faith, or whatever.

As we went along talking, my eyes teared up and walking back to my car I found that I was close to weeping. It could have been a hormonal flux but there was definitely something else there.

As I said back in the previous post, I'm not particularly religious. But I think that there is something in that building for me.

Perhaps it's those 2 endearing women. Both are intelligent and forthright and warm - hugging me upon both my arrival and departure (I knew both previous to this morning). Bingo! - A caring community!

And I think that this is why people belong to a church, aside from the obvious reason. Maybe Obama had it right but just said it wrong. A hug, a good intelligent conversation and a lot of warmth from a church community (or any community) can go a long way to help alleviate day-to-day stress. And why not cling to that?

Not sure about the clinging to guns part, however - but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I don't think I wanted to cry because I had suddenly found God. What I had found were truly spiritual people who believe in something I don't necessarily believe in - but who still embraced me, welcomed me and offered me their friendship down the road.

We've got a lot of good people here, doing good things here. We should cherish that.

Interesting reading

I found this interesting column listed in, of all places, LinkedIn. Apparently it is what my former colleagues at Community Newspaper Company are reading. How the folks at LinkedIn know or even care what my former colleagues are reading is another subject altogether ...

I'm not particularly religious, so therefore religion is a topic I'm not prepared to tackle (unless it's my neighbor's former boyfriend, who for some reason I could not resist bickering with - in a good spirited way on both sides - at every opportunity).

I do, however, know some people who are switching from church to church, striving to find the "right" fit. In at least one case the search is a source of great anxiety.