We had book and a movie night at church yesterday and the book / movie was Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird. To say this work is beloved is like saying grass is green or the sky is blue. Who doesn’t want a father like Atticus Finch? Who doesn’t want a simpler world where country lawyers accept hickory nuts as payment for their services and where mentally ill people become the saviors of young children? Or where a stoical man bears another man spitting in his face with the serenity of Christ in the presence of his torturers?
Well, me for one. Am I the only one who has noticed that grass can be brown as well as green or the sky can be gray or black or all sorts of shades of orange and red and green sometimes? Reality is complicated.
I love To Kill a Mockingbird. It is sentimental in all the right ways, it is nostalgic in all the right ways, it pushes all the right buttons … I mean, who isn’t moved when the balcony full of black people rise and the minister tells Scout to get up because her father’s passing? It made my eyes fill with tears last night.
But is it real?
Is Atticus Finch real? Is Boo Radley real? (I’m convinced that Boo Radley was reincarnated by Billy Bob Thornton in the movie Slingblade, but that’s another discussion for another day.) More than that, are the racial issues presented in the story real? I raised the race issue last night in our conversation after the movie but I didn’t do a very good job of making myself clear. Let me try again. What I said was white people experience racial issues relationally, while minority people experience racial issues systemically. Progressive thinking white people (like me) feel good about ourselves because we identify with Atticus and aspire to act as beautifully as he does. We have black and Latino friends and, because of that, we are sure we aren’t racist. Meanwhile, we are blind to the racist systems we participate in that work to our advantage. On the other hand, minorities know there are nice white people in the world, they know there are good people like Atticus Finch out there, but they also know that the odds are stacked against them in countless ways. Haven’t you noticed that Tom Robinson dies in this story! Justice never had a chance. And I wonder how much better things are today. Fifty years after the release of the book and eighty years after the setting of the story, I watched the movie in a beautiful church with an all-white group of people and then drove home through beautiful white neighborhoods, only a few blocks away from inner-city neighborhoods where the grip of poverty is more real than anything I’d just watched on the movie screen.
The really hard question to ask about To Kill a Mockingbird is what is the message of the story supposed to be for black people? Isn’t it “be patient with us”? But don’t us white folks need to stick our heads in the sand to keep saying that? Has anyone who believes things are getting better for African-American people in our country paid attention to what’s been happening in Detroit?
So, I’m left wondering … does it really serve us to have stories that perpetuate myths about America that aren’t really true. (And hey, I haven’t even mentioned the issues raised by treatment of the “white trash” people in the story.)
Sorry, sorry, sorry if I just stomped all over your favorite book. I love it, too. I really do. But I can’t help and wonder ….
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Hey, Preacher, Leave Those Tostitos Alone
Think about it – is there a dirtier word than “preach”? I’m hard pressed to think of a positive use for the word. Or the word “preacher,” for that matter. Just last night we watched an inane comedy from the late 1970s that featured one of Hollywood’s stock characters – the horribly out-of-touch minister, always good for a few laughs. Think of the great movie preachers – Rowan Atkinson in Four Weddings and a Funeral talking about the Holy Spigot; that guy in The Princess Bride going on about mahwidge; the uptight, disapproving minister in the last scenes of The Graduate; and the Southern minister Borat had a field day with.
Who wants to have someone preach at you? The word implies one-way communication of the worst kind. Even St. Francis, of all people, is credited with saying “Preach the gospel always and, if necessary, use words.” Another person with a religious name, Madonna, famously sang “Papa Don’t Preach.” One of the communication principles of the founder of Young Life was “Don’t preach, teach.” Woe unto him who doesn’t practice what he preaches. And if you do preach, you certainly don’t want to just be preaching to the choir.
But I do it. I preach. I get nervous before hand and feel somewhat deflated afterwards (even though people say nice things to me, I feel like all that work just goes up into the air and is then lost forever). One reason I’ve never been the full-time minister of a church is because I can’t imagine doing it every week. Not only do I fear I would quickly run out of things to say, I can’t imagine having any creativity left over for anything else if you write a sermon every week. I suppose, in the end, you just wind up preaching yourself, and I wonder if I’m filled with too much uncertainty at this point in my life to subject others to that every week.
For better or worse, I do it. And here’s a link to some recent sermons of mine – you can hear what I said Sunday, the Sunday before that, another Sunday in May, and, if you search far enough, you can hear a sermon I did in February. That’s over an hour's worth – I recommend it if you’re having trouble sleeping. And remember what Gandhi said, “An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
To prove Gandhi’s point, here’s a true story. One day Gretchen and I went to the grocery store together. She wandered off to find something and I didn’t see her go, which made me frustrated. Finally, I found her and then she successfully wandered off again. More frustration. Dare I say even anger. I went through the whole store before I finally found her. She was happy as a lark and said we needed tortillas. I grabbed a bag of Tostitos, and she said, “Those are tortilla chips, not tortillas, you imbecile.” NO! I lie. She didn’t actually say that. She's way too nice to say that. I’m sure she just said “Those are tortilla chips, not tortillas, sweetie,” but I heard something different. I was so frustrated I started to crush the bag of chips in my hand. And I heard a voice behind me say, “Excuse me.” I wheeled around to see who dared to interrupt me when I was damaging corn chips at Meijers. I felt like saying “You want some of this” to the guy when he said, “I don’t mean to bug you, but you preached at my church a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you that was one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, as I slowly eased the tension off the chip bag, feeling genuinely like an imbecile.
And now I will reveal the real reason why I preach: It’s so I have a chance to say something to myself.
Here's the link: Sermons
Who wants to have someone preach at you? The word implies one-way communication of the worst kind. Even St. Francis, of all people, is credited with saying “Preach the gospel always and, if necessary, use words.” Another person with a religious name, Madonna, famously sang “Papa Don’t Preach.” One of the communication principles of the founder of Young Life was “Don’t preach, teach.” Woe unto him who doesn’t practice what he preaches. And if you do preach, you certainly don’t want to just be preaching to the choir.
But I do it. I preach. I get nervous before hand and feel somewhat deflated afterwards (even though people say nice things to me, I feel like all that work just goes up into the air and is then lost forever). One reason I’ve never been the full-time minister of a church is because I can’t imagine doing it every week. Not only do I fear I would quickly run out of things to say, I can’t imagine having any creativity left over for anything else if you write a sermon every week. I suppose, in the end, you just wind up preaching yourself, and I wonder if I’m filled with too much uncertainty at this point in my life to subject others to that every week.
For better or worse, I do it. And here’s a link to some recent sermons of mine – you can hear what I said Sunday, the Sunday before that, another Sunday in May, and, if you search far enough, you can hear a sermon I did in February. That’s over an hour's worth – I recommend it if you’re having trouble sleeping. And remember what Gandhi said, “An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
To prove Gandhi’s point, here’s a true story. One day Gretchen and I went to the grocery store together. She wandered off to find something and I didn’t see her go, which made me frustrated. Finally, I found her and then she successfully wandered off again. More frustration. Dare I say even anger. I went through the whole store before I finally found her. She was happy as a lark and said we needed tortillas. I grabbed a bag of Tostitos, and she said, “Those are tortilla chips, not tortillas, you imbecile.” NO! I lie. She didn’t actually say that. She's way too nice to say that. I’m sure she just said “Those are tortilla chips, not tortillas, sweetie,” but I heard something different. I was so frustrated I started to crush the bag of chips in my hand. And I heard a voice behind me say, “Excuse me.” I wheeled around to see who dared to interrupt me when I was damaging corn chips at Meijers. I felt like saying “You want some of this” to the guy when he said, “I don’t mean to bug you, but you preached at my church a few weeks ago and I just wanted to tell you that was one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, as I slowly eased the tension off the chip bag, feeling genuinely like an imbecile.
And now I will reveal the real reason why I preach: It’s so I have a chance to say something to myself.
Here's the link: Sermons
Friday, June 17, 2011
Midnight in Paris
Are there any movies you especially want to see this summer?
I’m the first to admit my tastes run a bit off-center. I couldn’t care less about any of the comic book hero movies coming out. Last night we saw Midnight in Paris, number one on my summer movie list, and I loved it.
If you’re not familiar with the story, Owen Wilson stars as a writer who wishes he could go back in time to the Paris of the 1920’s. He must have had some of the same college professors I did – I read a whole bunch of Hemingway and Fitzgerald in college, and learned about the expatriate community of artists and writers living in the City of Lights in those days. Or maybe Woody Allen had the same professors I did, since he’s the one who wrote and directed the movie. Let me tip my hand here and unabashedly say I love the Woodman.
His new film is enchanting, delightful, funny, wistful and wise. It’s also a treat for the eyes as he showcases Paris with the same sort of affection he often employs to show off New York City. In his later years he’s taken to using European cities as backdrops – Venice and Barcelona quickly come to mind, and now he’s put together a wonderful love letter to Paris.
The story centers on Wilson’s character Gil, who magically spends his days in modern Paris and his nights there in the 1920’s, meeting Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Picasso, Dali, TS Eliot, Hemingway, and both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It all works. I suppose if you’ve spent your life reading DC Comics and have never heard of the people in the sentence I just wrote, you’re better off avoiding this movie. If not, give it a whirl. I’d give the movie three and a half stars on a four point scale. I mean it’s not one of the all-time great movies ever made, but it is so, so, so much better than 98% of what usually fills our screens.
I won’t spoil the story, but I will add this: one of the sub-plots involves a woman who lives in the 1920’s and longs for “La Belle Epoque,” the 1890’s. Somehow she gets there, and meets Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas – all of whom wish they lived during the days of the Renaissance. I left the theater not longing for some by-gone golden age, but happy I live in this one, when Woody Allen is writing and directing films.
One last item of business – I have had a few people lately tell me they read my blog and want to follow or comment but can’t figure out how to do it. The trick is you have to have a Google account. If you don’t have Gmail already, then use the “follow” button on the blog and then follow the steps for opening a Google account. It’s safe and painless to do. Thanks!
I’m the first to admit my tastes run a bit off-center. I couldn’t care less about any of the comic book hero movies coming out. Last night we saw Midnight in Paris, number one on my summer movie list, and I loved it.
If you’re not familiar with the story, Owen Wilson stars as a writer who wishes he could go back in time to the Paris of the 1920’s. He must have had some of the same college professors I did – I read a whole bunch of Hemingway and Fitzgerald in college, and learned about the expatriate community of artists and writers living in the City of Lights in those days. Or maybe Woody Allen had the same professors I did, since he’s the one who wrote and directed the movie. Let me tip my hand here and unabashedly say I love the Woodman.
His new film is enchanting, delightful, funny, wistful and wise. It’s also a treat for the eyes as he showcases Paris with the same sort of affection he often employs to show off New York City. In his later years he’s taken to using European cities as backdrops – Venice and Barcelona quickly come to mind, and now he’s put together a wonderful love letter to Paris.
The story centers on Wilson’s character Gil, who magically spends his days in modern Paris and his nights there in the 1920’s, meeting Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Picasso, Dali, TS Eliot, Hemingway, and both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It all works. I suppose if you’ve spent your life reading DC Comics and have never heard of the people in the sentence I just wrote, you’re better off avoiding this movie. If not, give it a whirl. I’d give the movie three and a half stars on a four point scale. I mean it’s not one of the all-time great movies ever made, but it is so, so, so much better than 98% of what usually fills our screens.
I won’t spoil the story, but I will add this: one of the sub-plots involves a woman who lives in the 1920’s and longs for “La Belle Epoque,” the 1890’s. Somehow she gets there, and meets Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas – all of whom wish they lived during the days of the Renaissance. I left the theater not longing for some by-gone golden age, but happy I live in this one, when Woody Allen is writing and directing films.
One last item of business – I have had a few people lately tell me they read my blog and want to follow or comment but can’t figure out how to do it. The trick is you have to have a Google account. If you don’t have Gmail already, then use the “follow” button on the blog and then follow the steps for opening a Google account. It’s safe and painless to do. Thanks!
Monday, June 13, 2011
Oops!
We made too many of the wrong mistakes – Yogi Berra
I made a “wrong mistake” yesterday. One of the perils of public speaking is twisting words around, and I sure dropped a bomb in the middle of my sermon at Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. I was being clever at the time – talking about hell and about how passé the idea of hell has become in our world. I said, “Hell’s popularity ratings were at an all-time low this Spring when Time magazine ran a cover story asking ‘What if there’s no hell?’ Enlightened and sophisticated people were done with hell, until the last day of April when hell made a startling comeback. Do you remember what happened? Osama Bin Laden was killed. The next day the New York Daily News ran a cover photograph of Bin Laden with the words ‘Rot in hell’ in banner text over it. According to polls a great majority of Americans believed Bin Laden was there. Late night television hosts made one Osama’s in hell joke after another and the audience would laugh and applaud.”
So far so good. But then, I blew it. I looked at the next line in my text, which said “We happily consign Bin Laden and Hitler and Stalin to hell ….” For some reason I thought maybe I should say “Osama” instead of “Bin Laden” since I’d just called him Osama the line before. I bet you can guess what’s coming. I said “Osama” and “Bin Laden” at the same time … and it came out “We happily consign Obama to hell.” Ouch. This is why it’s always a bad idea to think when you speak. Seriously, my experience is I’m better off preparing my remarks ahead of time and then sticking to the script instead of trying to think and speak at the same time. Some people can’t chew gum and walk. I can’t think and speak.
Fortunately, the congregation laughed. A lot. Some of them even thought I did it on purpose to get a laugh. I guess one good thing you could say was at least I had everyone’s attention. I’m preaching at the same place this coming Sunday. Probably half the people will be there waiting for my next blooper. It’s an amazing thing, but sometimes I feel like the world pays me to go around and say stupid things. We’ll see what happens next.
I made a “wrong mistake” yesterday. One of the perils of public speaking is twisting words around, and I sure dropped a bomb in the middle of my sermon at Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. I was being clever at the time – talking about hell and about how passé the idea of hell has become in our world. I said, “Hell’s popularity ratings were at an all-time low this Spring when Time magazine ran a cover story asking ‘What if there’s no hell?’ Enlightened and sophisticated people were done with hell, until the last day of April when hell made a startling comeback. Do you remember what happened? Osama Bin Laden was killed. The next day the New York Daily News ran a cover photograph of Bin Laden with the words ‘Rot in hell’ in banner text over it. According to polls a great majority of Americans believed Bin Laden was there. Late night television hosts made one Osama’s in hell joke after another and the audience would laugh and applaud.”
So far so good. But then, I blew it. I looked at the next line in my text, which said “We happily consign Bin Laden and Hitler and Stalin to hell ….” For some reason I thought maybe I should say “Osama” instead of “Bin Laden” since I’d just called him Osama the line before. I bet you can guess what’s coming. I said “Osama” and “Bin Laden” at the same time … and it came out “We happily consign Obama to hell.” Ouch. This is why it’s always a bad idea to think when you speak. Seriously, my experience is I’m better off preparing my remarks ahead of time and then sticking to the script instead of trying to think and speak at the same time. Some people can’t chew gum and walk. I can’t think and speak.
Fortunately, the congregation laughed. A lot. Some of them even thought I did it on purpose to get a laugh. I guess one good thing you could say was at least I had everyone’s attention. I’m preaching at the same place this coming Sunday. Probably half the people will be there waiting for my next blooper. It’s an amazing thing, but sometimes I feel like the world pays me to go around and say stupid things. We’ll see what happens next.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Well Said, Fred
Who is your favorite writer?
Mine is Frederick Buechner. He writes beautifully, has something to say and writes in at least three distinct genres.
As a novelist, he burst on the scene in 1949 with a best-seller called A Long Day’s Dying, which he wrote while a student at Princeton University. His novel Lion Country was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1972 and Godric, perhaps his crowing achievement, was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.
But he also has more or less invented the genre of the spiritual memoir, and the recent memoir craze in publishing owes a debt to Buechner. He has written three memoirs and at least two other “memoirish” books. A book called Telling Secrets, published in 1991, begins with as arresting a first line as I’ve ever come across: “One November morning in 1936 when I was ten years old, my father got up early, put on a pair of gray slacks and a maroon sweater, opened the door to look in briefly on my brother and me, who were playing a game in our room, and then went down into the garage where he turned on the engine of the family Chevy and sat on the running board to wait for the exhaust to kill him.” Writers are trying to hook you into wanting to read more with their first lines. I’d say in this instance Buechner succeeds.
He also has published books of what I call “popular theology,” in collections of sermons (among other things, he’s an ordained Presbyterian minister, although he never served a congregation) and in three books that are best called lexicons. I was looking through my Buechner shelf a couple of weeks ago and realized I was missing one of those books – a slim volume called Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary. So I spent a few dollars at Amazon and got a copy and as I’ve been reading it I can’t tell if I’ve read it before. I know there are certain sections I’ve read, but it is entirely possible I’ve read them in other anthologies of his work. The book was published in 1988 and I can imagine that we were so overwhelmed with diapers at that point in our lives that I might have missed it.
Buechner takes words – both religious and non-religious words – and gives fresh insight and meaning to them in this book. Here are a couple of new discoveries for me:
Tourist Preaching
English-speaking tourists abroad are inclined to believe that if only they speak English loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, the natives will know what’s being said even though they don’t understand a single word of the language.
Preachers often make the same mistake. They believe that if only they speak the ancient verities loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, their congregations will understand them.
Unfortunately, the only language people really understand is their own language, and unless preachers are prepared to translate the ancient verities into it, they might as well save their breath.
X – Rated
The terms Adult Books, Adult Movies, Adult Entertainment imply that whereas the young must be somehow protected from all those bare breasts and heaving buttocks, adults will simply take them in their stride. Possibly the reverse is closer to the truth.
The young seem to have the knack for coming through all sorts of heady experiences relatively unscathed, and paperback prurience and video venery are less apt to turn them on than to turn them elsewhere. The middle-aged, on the other hand, having fewer elsewheres, settle for what they can get.
After the first half or so, the X-rated titillations tend to turn tawdry and tedious, but even days later, they keep on flickering away somewhere in the back of the mind to a captive audience of one.
The chances are that the loneliness and sadness of it then may leave deeper scars on the forty-five year old than the gymnastics of it on a thirteen-year-old child.
Well said, Fred. What a joy to discover something new to me from my favorite writer.
Want to get into Buechner? You can’t go wrong with either Godric, Telling Secrets or Whistling in the Dark as introductions.
Who is your favorite writer?
Mine is Frederick Buechner. He writes beautifully, has something to say and writes in at least three distinct genres.
As a novelist, he burst on the scene in 1949 with a best-seller called A Long Day’s Dying, which he wrote while a student at Princeton University. His novel Lion Country was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1972 and Godric, perhaps his crowing achievement, was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.
But he also has more or less invented the genre of the spiritual memoir, and the recent memoir craze in publishing owes a debt to Buechner. He has written three memoirs and at least two other “memoirish” books. A book called Telling Secrets, published in 1991, begins with as arresting a first line as I’ve ever come across: “One November morning in 1936 when I was ten years old, my father got up early, put on a pair of gray slacks and a maroon sweater, opened the door to look in briefly on my brother and me, who were playing a game in our room, and then went down into the garage where he turned on the engine of the family Chevy and sat on the running board to wait for the exhaust to kill him.” Writers are trying to hook you into wanting to read more with their first lines. I’d say in this instance Buechner succeeds.
He also has published books of what I call “popular theology,” in collections of sermons (among other things, he’s an ordained Presbyterian minister, although he never served a congregation) and in three books that are best called lexicons. I was looking through my Buechner shelf a couple of weeks ago and realized I was missing one of those books – a slim volume called Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary. So I spent a few dollars at Amazon and got a copy and as I’ve been reading it I can’t tell if I’ve read it before. I know there are certain sections I’ve read, but it is entirely possible I’ve read them in other anthologies of his work. The book was published in 1988 and I can imagine that we were so overwhelmed with diapers at that point in our lives that I might have missed it.
Buechner takes words – both religious and non-religious words – and gives fresh insight and meaning to them in this book. Here are a couple of new discoveries for me:
Tourist Preaching
English-speaking tourists abroad are inclined to believe that if only they speak English loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, the natives will know what’s being said even though they don’t understand a single word of the language.
Preachers often make the same mistake. They believe that if only they speak the ancient verities loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, their congregations will understand them.
Unfortunately, the only language people really understand is their own language, and unless preachers are prepared to translate the ancient verities into it, they might as well save their breath.
X – Rated
The terms Adult Books, Adult Movies, Adult Entertainment imply that whereas the young must be somehow protected from all those bare breasts and heaving buttocks, adults will simply take them in their stride. Possibly the reverse is closer to the truth.
The young seem to have the knack for coming through all sorts of heady experiences relatively unscathed, and paperback prurience and video venery are less apt to turn them on than to turn them elsewhere. The middle-aged, on the other hand, having fewer elsewheres, settle for what they can get.
After the first half or so, the X-rated titillations tend to turn tawdry and tedious, but even days later, they keep on flickering away somewhere in the back of the mind to a captive audience of one.
The chances are that the loneliness and sadness of it then may leave deeper scars on the forty-five year old than the gymnastics of it on a thirteen-year-old child.
Well said, Fred. What a joy to discover something new to me from my favorite writer.
Want to get into Buechner? You can’t go wrong with either Godric, Telling Secrets or Whistling in the Dark as introductions.
Who is your favorite writer?
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