Fade to Black

My heart was sad and I let out a heavy sigh this evening as I exited the Miracle 5 movie theater.   This was the last day of operation for this place that specialized in independent and international films.   As of the 7pm movies, the theater which has been in operation since 1968 was fading to black.  Regal Entertainment, the owner, says that it was an underperforming venue and in these economic times, you better perform or you're outta here.
The Miracle was my movie house of choice.   This is where I went to see Michael Moore documentaries, foreign-language films like  "Once Were Warriors", "The Lives of Others" and "Of Gods and Men" as well as just odd films such as "Ed Wood" and "Bubba Ho-Tep".   I saw "March of the Penguins" several times and was fascinated with "Control Room".   

It was also the place most likely to show movies with LGBT themes.  So it was only fitting that my final film at the Miracle 5 would be "Beginners", an interesting sweet and sad story about a man named Oliver (Ewan MacGregor) in mourning over the death of his father (Christopher Plummer).  Turns out the father lived the last few years of his life as an openly-gay man, something he had kept a secret throughout his 44-year marriage.  When the wife died, Plummer's character was finally free to love in the way he had wanted, only to die of lung cancer.  Still, Plummer was able to live and love fully.  Something his son was struggling to do as he mourned his father's death and the relationship he'd witnessed between his parents.

"Beginners" is not a "Harry Potter" or a "Captain America" or "The Help."  It is a film about relationships as opposed to shoot 'em ups.   It may not be the stuff of blockbusters, but it is the stuff of themes that I'm willing to pay to see on a big screen.  I'm not alone in this.  As a protest to the corporate decision, there was a large gathering of people that showed up Saturday night for a tailgate and movie party in the Miracle's parking lot.   The idea was to show the corporate number crunchers that there is an audience for such art house movies in Tallahassee.

And there really is.  The theater for the 4:10 showing today of "Beginners" was probably 40-percent full.

Still, 40-percent is not a packed house.  And probably qualifies as "underperforming."

I'm hoping that the other Regal Entertainment theatre in Tallahassee will dedicate at  least two or three of its 12 screens to showing some of the usual Miracle 5 fare.  This city, which has a film school at Florida State, really needs a place to show those movies that are characterized as "small films."

At the end of "Beginners", Oliver and his love interest in the film, Anne, are sitting next to each other as they try to begin their relationship after a lot of ups and downs.

"What happens now?" asks Oliver.

"I don't know, " says Anne.

"How does that work?"

I have the same questions about the future of such films in Tallahassee.

Good night and good bye, Miracle 5.   You've been a good show!



     

Rock on, Canaanite Woman

It was this time three years ago that I was at the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Durham.  A movie short that I had written and helped to produce was having its premiere in the Tarheel State and I was anxious to see how it was received.  I love going to this festival because you get to see lots and lots of LGBT-themed films of all kinds, the hosts are really nice and attentive to the filmmakers and its just an overall good time.

But on that visit, I saw something I didn't like.

There was an African-American man, accompanied by some white teenagers, standing outside on the sidewalk to the Carolina Theatre.  Megaphone in hand and donning his "Jesus Saves" T-Shirt, he was pelting the movie goers with a message of "Repent!!  Repent your abomination of man lying with man and woman lying with woman!!" 

People strode passed him.  Some threw comments back at him.  But what I noticed was that the faces of the people headed into the theatre were hardened.  No doubt this was a reflection of what must have been in their hearts.

How many times has a gay person had to listen to someone in a "Jesus Saves" shirt screaming at them to "Repent!!"?   What an irony to say that Jesus "saves" while telling someone they will burn in Hell?   Jesus can save, but it would help if his supposed fan club would stop nailing him to the cross!
Sunday's gospel lesson was, of course, the same one I heard that weekend in Durham at St. Philip's Church.  And it was as poignant then as it is now. 

We begin with Jesus defending the disciples for eating with 'unclean hands' by noting that it isn't what goes in the mouth that defiles the person but what comes out.  From there, Jesus goes off to Tyre and Sidon where he encounters (in Matthew's version of the story) a Canaanite woman.  The Canaanites were the antithesis of all things good and righteous for the Israelites.  After all, God had promised Abraham that he would basically conquer Canaan and establish the nations of Israel.  So, here is this woman (already a bit of 'eww' factor) and then she is a Canaanite (way beyond just 'eww') and she has the audacity to call out to Jesus... even noting that he is a Son of David... and asks for healing for her daughter.  At first, Jesus dismisses her noting that he came to feed the children of Israel and not the dogs.  But she persists and tells him, "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."  Her boldness in stating her right to his attention is rewarded, and he praises her for her faith and the daughter is healed.

In the queer ear: wow!  There's a LOT here. 

"What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart and this is what defiles."  If a man wears a T-shirt to identify himself as a Christian, but then speaks an anti-Christ message of hell and damnation upon you "others", he is reflecting what is truly in his heart.  And his heart does not belong to Christ if he believes that Christ doesn't love LGBT people unless they "repent" of their LGBTness.   A queer person can no more repent their sexual orientation or gender identity than a Mexican can repent of her ethnicity.

There is also the next scene with the Canaanite Woman.  Jesus, who has said it isn't what goes in that defiles but what goes out, encounters the challenge of being met by an "other" of his time.  And he calls her a dog.  How many times has a gay person sat in the pews of a church and heard words from the pulpit about loving the neighbor, welcoming the stranger, do unto others... only to find that for the priest or pastor, there is an exclusionary clause in that "welcome".   All are welcome... except for LGBT people.  In some quarters, LGBT people are treated, as Bishop Barbara Harris describes,  "the half-assed baptized."

This is why the Canaanite Woman stands for me, and many of us other 'others', as the beautiful representation of standing up for one's self in the face of resistance and discrimination.   Rather than accept the slur, she lays it back at Jesus' feet by noting that even she is worthy of the crumbs that fall from the master's table.  She has established that she has the utmost respect for him, but she refuses the dismissal.  Many of us of the queer persuasion have had to make a similar courageous stand.  We bring our whole selves into the sanctuary and will not hide who we are or attempt to "pass" as straight because we know that when Jesus died and rose from the dead, it was for "all", and not just the chosen few.   This is why I think queer Christians are some of the most faith-filled members of Christendom.   Despite human sinful attempts to block us from the grace of God, we have persisted and prevailed.

My hope is that anyone who has ever felt wronged by the people of God will take another look at what is actually in Scripture and not the warped and perverted versions screamed into a megaphone on a street corner.  Take a chance on reading what Christ was teaching.  It is a message of Love beyond measure that even the Canaanite woman could claim as her own. 
  

In the Water

Sunday's gospel lesson about Peter walking on water until he starts to sink and Jesus saves him has been on my mind for several days.  As one who is not a great swimmer and prefers walking along the beach rather than venturing out into the ocean, the whole idea of stepping out of the boat and onto the surface of the sea seems like a drowning just asking to happen.

Seriously, if I were in a boat being battered by waves, and Jesus invited me to step out onto the ocean and walk,  I think I'd be tempted to say, "What the hell for?"

If we are honest with ourselves, I think we'd agree that most of us really feel that way.  The invitation is there for us to focus our eyes, our hearts and our minds on God.   But instead, we balk at that invite and begin scouring the invitation for the fine print, the black out dates, the exclusionary clause that says, "This unconditional love and grace void and prohibited for the likes of me!" 

Why do we always want to make God so limited and so small and petty?  Perhaps because we, as humans, can see ourselves placing limits and boundaries on the love we're willing to share. If we can conceive of limits, then surely God must have limits, too.

How quickly we forget the words in Isaiah 55:

"For your thoughts are not my thoughts nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord."

Just because we are willing to place limits and boundaries does not mean that God does the same thing.  As it shows in the gospel story, even when Peter gets distracted and takes his eyes off Jesus and starts to sink, Jesus didn't laugh in his face and say, "Suckah!!"  Instead, he grabs hold of Peter and, in what I imagine was said in the love shared between two friends, chides him with the line, "O you of little faith!"  A reminder to Peter that he was doing fine until he let the winds and choppy sea steal his focus.  Much in the same way we, in our day to day living, will allow all kinds of things to interfere with the unboundless Love that surrounds us all the time.  Nothing like a crappy job, or lack of employment, to steal the focus on the fact that we are products of Love and we are worthy of Love.  And we can live and share our lives out of a place that knows the freedom of that Love.

Centering prayer is a great practice toward training our minds and hearts to focus on Love and keep that as our home base.  I've found it useful that way as an additional supplement to the other more liturgical worship I do.  It's a way of allowing the space for God to place the invite to come out onto the waters and walk with me, if only for a little while, so that I can see that I can do it, remember it, and let that be the core of how I function.  Those days in which I have taken the time to sit in quiet and focus on a sacred word have been the days in which I don't feel myself fighting as hard to keep above the waters that would otherwise drown me.

Perhaps it can be said then that the Kingdom of God is like a vast body of water with no shores to border it where one can feel the coolness of the waves against you and yet never drown. 
 

The Transfiguration of Peter, John and James

I saw a very interesting quote this morning on Facebook courtesy of Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton:

We call it Jesus’ Transfiguration...it actually might be more accurate to call this the story of the transfiguration of the three apostles...suddenly they, too, were filled with this light: lighting their lives, lighting the darkness of their pasts, lighting their hopes and dreams and confusion and fears about the future. Suddenly the dim mirror through which they had been seeing life became clear. They saw. They understood. It fit. Everything fit. Everything was okay.-Br. Curtis Almquist

I think this is almost accurate.  Almost because, of course, if they had really been fully transfigured in their thinking then I would have to believe there would have been a very different outcome at Jesus' time of trial.  A transfigured Peter would have been braver than he was in the moment in Pilate's garden.

Still, we know from the Gospel of Luke that upon hearing the booming voice in the cloud announce "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!", the three men did not speak a word of what they'd experienced to anyone.  They didn't run down the mountain and say, "Hey--guess what just went down with Jesus!!"  Probably a good idea to keep that underwraps until the time was right to tell.

What I get from Br. Almquist's analysis is that each one of us when we encounter Christ as revealed in that amazing light are changed.  Much like when Moses came down from the mountain with the bright, shiny face, we, too, may manifest a physical, or at least a visible spiritual, change when we have felt the contact of God in our lives that up close.  I have had friends say to me more than once, "You've changed!"  And I have.  They haven't always liked those changes initially.  I have certainly felt gangly and awkward as I have gone through some spiritual growth spurts.  But the growing I'm doing feels as though I am becoming fuller, deeper, and with roots that allow me to drink from many things to get a greater idea about this creation I am a part of with God.

Transfigured?  A little.  But the alchemist is still melting and pounding away at the edges.  I think that's the space Peter, John and James found themselves in when they descended from the mountain after witnessing something too awe-inspiring to adequately describe.  Here's hoping that everyone has a moment or three like that in God.

Our Id-Driven World

I can't help thinking that as I look around at this world, Freud's theory of "Id", that basic instinct of seeking what pleases us without any sense of right or wrong, seems to be driving the bus. We want our needs met and we don't care about the consequences to anyone else. The Id is the very primitive part of our being and is the motivator of infants and very young children.

And the Id seems to be the engine driving of our Congress. Consider this quote in the Washington Post by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell following the down-to-the-wire vote on the debt ceiling debacle:

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” he said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.” (Washington Post)

The “must be done”, I’m presuming, is to deal with our latest era of deficit-spending which began this time under President George W. Bush, a Republican. Most people understand that if you are spending money, you need to bring money in. For government, that means collecting taxes even from wealthy people. The hostage taking has cost us. The country’s credit rating was reduced by Standard’s and Poor… and the Chinese. Way to go, patriots of partisanship. I wonder what our next blunder will be?

Hallelujah for the Artists!

We give thanks to you, O Lord, for the vision and skill of Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder whose artistic depictions helped the peoples of their age understand the full suffering and glory of your incarnate Son; and we pray that their work may strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ and the mystery of the Holy Trinity; for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


At the noon day Eucharist, we celebrated the lives of three Germans of the Renaissance period. Dürer, Grünewald, and Cranach the Elder, painted and created woodcuts that captured images of Christ and some of the icons of church history such as Martin Luther during a time of enormous change happening with the Protestant Reformation in Europe.  Their works, especially the woodcuts and copperplates, allowed for mass reproductions for a populace hungry for art.

But these are not the only artists who ever tried to share their faith through their works.  As mentioned in the homily, there are many people who have used art to express the gifts God has given them.   I think again of the stunning beauty of hearing Haydn's piece "The Creation" and its electrifying introduction of a blast of sound at the line "Let there be light!" ("God is in the Art")    That musical moment stands out for me as such an amazing attempt by an artist to capture what he was experiencing in his head and his heart as he tried to give a glimpse of God's work through his own work.

Artists, both those who perform and those who create with their hands the images in their heads, reflect back a perception of the world as they see it that informs, provokes, inspires, and entertains our own imaginations.  Their contributions, especially when illustrating God,  is a form of prayer that works on a level transcending the headiness of corporate church.    Thanks be to God we have people of such creative energy to be among the mitochondria in the Body of Christ!

Aching Hip Insights

My right hip was killing me yesterday. Not in a way that made me lame, but just in that way that I kept “noticing” it. These days, it’s not uncommon for me to have occasional aches in my joints, a result of not getting enough exercise outdoors because it’s too hot and no interest in going indoors to a gym to bike in place for thirty minutes. Taking time between clients to stretch some more usually does the trick. But, for whatever reason, that wasn’t working yesterday.


As I tried to warm up the muscles around the hip joint, my mind went to the lesson from last Sunday’s Genesis reading in which Jacob wrestles with “the man” and “the man” puts his hip out of joint. I laughed at the thought that perhaps the reason my hip was hurting was because I seem to be locked in a struggle with “the man” myself. Tussling over my obligations, my choices, and where am I going to steer my energies.

No, I don’t think God caused my hip to ache, or that I am actually physically wrestling with God and demanding a blessing etc. But I have felt myself in a bit of a push-pull relationship with God as I keep along this journey.

I realize that I’m involved in many ministries, both inside and outside the church, each of which demands more and more of my time and attention. And I am aware of my humanity, and hence my limitations, to accomplish everything that might be expected of me in each of these ministries. For example, yesterday, I had to tell the Circle of Hope, a ministry to support the unemployed and underemployed in their job searches, that much as we might have been hearing from members of the parish about needs such as school supplies, such needs fall outside the purview of our particular ministry. Fortunately, the group agreed.

My partner and I ate at Jonah’s Fish and Grits restaurant in Thomasville, GA. I had been wanting to go there for months after seeing the billboard every time I traveled 319 into downtown Thomasville. I reminded her that Jonah is my “power prophet.”

“Jonah was whiny and judgmental,” she said.

Yeah. And these are both traits I am capable of having at any given moment.

But where I see me in the story of Jonah, the prophet who prayed in the belly of a fish, comes in the desire to run in the other direction from God’s stated mission. Jonah was to go to Nineveh and tell the people to turn from their ways and go back to God. And Jonah took that to mean, “Get in a boat going the opposite direction, so I don’t have to do this mission.” And we know what happened after that.

It’s not so much that I feel God has a stated mission or message for me to deliver that I am not willing to deliver. I find my tendency is to think of a hundred things I need to do instead. This is where the struggle with “the man” begins… and I feel my right hip joint.

It’s been better today. I guess I must not be putting up as much of a fight.