Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood

 
THE WISDOM OF THE TICK! Via Ratty.
posted by Eve at 5:21 PM

 
IRAQ: "New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge": "Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets. [This sentence, believe it or not, significantly prettifies the allegations.--Eve] ...

"'Do you believe in anything?' he said the soldier asked. 'I said to him, "I believe in Allah." So he said, 'But I believe in torture and I will torture you.'"

more--via Hit & Run

"Brutal interrogation in Iraq: Five detainees' deaths probed": Brutal interrogation techniques by U.S. military personnel are being investigated in connection with the deaths of at least five Iraqi prisoners in war-zone detention camps, Pentagon documents obtained by The Denver Post show.

The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure.

Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another detainee died "while undergoing stress technique interrogation," involving smothering and "chest compressions," according to the documents.

Details of the death investigations, involving at least four different detention facilities including the Abu Ghraib prison, provide the clearest view yet into war-zone interrogation rooms, where intelligence soldiers and other personnel have sometimes used lethal tactics to try to coax secrets from prisoners, including choking off detainees' airways. Other abusive strategies involve sitting on prisoners or bending them into uncomfortable positions, records show.

"Torture is the only thing you can call this," said a Pentagon source with knowledge of internal investigations into prisoner abuses. "There is a lot about our country's interrogation techniques that is very troubling. These are violations of military law."

Internal records obtained by The Post point to wider problems beyond the Abu Ghraib prison and demonstrate that some coercive tactics used at Abu Ghraib have shown up in interrogations elsewhere in the war effort. The documents also show more than twice as many allegations of detainee abuse--75--are being investigated by the military than previously known. Twenty-seven of the abuse cases involve deaths; at least eight are believed to be homicides.

No criminal punishments have been announced in the interrogation deaths, even though three deaths occurred last year.

more--via Hit & Run or maybe Unqualified Offerings

And to end on a non-hideous note: Mickey Kaus has been blogging a lot, substantively and persuasively, on why Iraq can and should have rolling elections as soon as possible. Click and scroll.
posted by Eve at 2:14 AM

 
"THERE'S ROOM AT THE CROSS FOR YOU": Christianity Today has this article about Waco's Church Under the Bridge. Excerpts:

Lugging backpacks and Hefty bags on Sunday at sunrise, they trickle in to the expanse of dirt and gravel under Interstate 35. Littering this city block between 4th and 5th streets in Waco, Texas are taillight shards, pigeon feathers, and at least one dead bat. The men sit mostly in solitude at the base of support columns, waiting for something to happen.

More than a dozen are there when, just after 9, a van with men from two drug rehab centers eases over the curb and parks. Two pickup trucks follow with trailers of folding chairs and sound equipment. One flatbed truck doubles as a stage. Recovering addicts line up chairs beneath the northbound lanes.

A hoodless, bumperless Chevy pickup arrives. Made from '73 to '85 parts, its burnt-orange bed is filled with balding tires, plastic drums, aluminum cans, wire-tangled innards of mechanical devices, and a push broom. Former drug addict and ex-con Kenneth Kucker gets out, slams its blue door, and hands a visitor a peppermint, his smile peeking through a lopped-off ZZ Top beard. He smells of the axle grease that permeates his jeans, but he's dressed for worship in his best T-shirt that reads CHURCH UNDER THE BRIDGE.

"It's a humble bridge," Kucker says. "Today it's going to be sanctified."

For Waco's homeless and hard-living people, there may be no safer place than this bridge on Sunday morning--as safe from street crime as from the glares of worshipers in other churches.

The interdenominational Church Under the Bridge (CUB) began in 1992 when Baylor professor Jimmy Dorrell, 54, began a Bible study for homeless men who slept under this overpass. The group grew to include more homeless, poor, drug addicts, prostitutes, and bikers. They were later joined by others who had no church experience or felt they didn't fit into area congregations.

Now the people who worship under the bridge are a demographic snapshot of this city of 100,000 people and 257 churches. Black, white, Asian, and Latino students from Baylor University, and others from the upper middle class, form the body of Christ with the down-and-out of all colors.

CUB's calling is to be a church to the unchurched of all socioeconomic levels and races, and to serve the poor and marginalized. Ex-prisoners and food-stamp recipients worship with the well-heeled and educated. Along with breaking down class barriers, racial reconciliation is one of the church's main pillars. At one service, Dorrell had the assembled break into small groups to talk about any prejudice they harbored, and to pray for forgiveness. ...

Kucker, 54, drove a Cadillac in the 1970s when he earned $50,000 a year as body shop mechanic. He's a Vietnam vet with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a self-described former "junkie, car thief, and alcoholic" who became a Christian while in prison. Once out, he drifted, homeless, among the big cities of Texas. He moved to Waco to be near the Veterans Administration hospital psychiatric ward.

Churches he tried to attend--two in Waco and one in Houston, where a security guard confronted him two steps onto the church grounds--all threw him out because of his appearance. In Waco he was living in a Geo Metro with an Apple computer in back when he heard about free meals under the bridge. He was hungry enough to check it out.

Today, 10 years later, he's a church leader living in an apartment owned by CUB's relief and development arm, Mission Waco.

Dorrell parks his pickup a few cars over from Kucker's and a couple of rows from a Mercedes-Benz SUV. The plump, gray-bearded pastor in shorts and a Baylor T-shirt greets folks with handshakes, back pats and hugs so hearty that at times they lift people off the ground. He mingles among indigents and Mercedes drivers alike with gestures of acceptance and welcome.

Dorrell's journey to the bridge began in the 1970s, when he was a missionary to lepers in Calcutta and New Delhi slums. There he had something of an epiphany. He believed the church is the primary agent of change in the world, but surrounded by India's abysmal poverty, he asked himself, What is the church doing to incarnate Christ? ...

It's not that the CUB disregards the need for repentance and obedience, Dorrell says, but God's incredible love--not more condemnation--is what brings people to repentance. "We do preach the reality that there has to be a change" in behavior after conversion, he says. During church services, he often encourages people to "make things right" with each other and straighten out various areas of their lives.

Congregant Charmaine Beers adds that repentance happens, but the challenge is believing in God's forgiveness for so much sin--or that there's a God who even cares. "You don't know what it is to have a pure, righteous, upright, holy life when all you've known is sad and ugly," she says. "I've led people to Christ by example and love--but it took two years before they felt it might be real, not another lie of the world or another letdown."

Love brought Beers back to the bridge 10 years ago, after Jimmy Dorrell preached the funeral of her sister-in-law, Dixie. A crack- and heroin-addicted prostitute, Dixie was found in a weedy field one freezing morning. She had overdosed. Someone had dumped her body in the field and stolen her shoes. She was buried in a pauper's grave.

Months before her death, Dixie had told Beers she had felt welcome at CUB and had been treated kindly. Dixie's death hit Dorrell hard.

"Just another prostitute gone, but Jimmy loved her--you could tell he cared," says Beers, herself a former methamphetamine addict.

An eighth-grade dropout who began smoking pot at 12 and dropping LSD at 13, Beers drifted in and out of homelessness much of her life. After Dixie's funeral, Beers's husband, Randy, nagged her to return with him to the bridge. Like most newcomers to CUB, Beers hung to the back, quietly watching well behind the rows of chairs. If this is real, show me, she prayed.

God answered. "I found out there's a loving, forgiving God out there who wants to love me despite me," Beers says. "Jesus loves me, no matter what."

Her first job was running Mission Waco's thrift store. Now she's office manager of the Mission Waco social services center, which provides emergency aid to the needy. ...

CUB is not a celebration of sin but an acceptance of people where they are. People aren't expected to clean up their acts before they come to church. The leadership knows sanctification takes time. Charmaine Beers, for example, kept taking drugs for at least six months after she committed her life to Christ. She didn't marry her live-in boyfriend for more than two years after that.

Many people at the bridge feel they're so unworthy that God couldn't want them. "The church typically reminds them of their sinfulness," Dorrell says. "Our responsibility is to love them. The Holy Spirit's work is to convict them. All come, feel love, and draw closer to God. They have spiritual gifts, personal value, and worth."

more, including more links about CUTB

Via Sed Contra.
posted by Eve at 2:05 AM

 
She took me to her parents' for a Sunday meal;
Her blogwatch took one look at me and he began to squeal...

I'm on the road. Be afraid--I may be near YOU!

Another (Je est un autre) is a blog exploring depression and literature. When I am not completely exhausted and brain-fried, I will read it more deeply, because it looks really interesting (despite kind of cutesy italics in title). Via Mixolydian Mode, of which more in a moment.

Sometime after sleep, I will add Mixolydian Mode to the blogroll. Ballads and literary-ness and randomness, and more ballads.
posted by Eve at 1:51 AM

 
"Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even yesterday. But once! Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope! And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception!"
--"The Tick." Man, I love The Tick.

Via Mark Shea.
posted by Eve at 1:49 AM

 
NOT EXACTLY NATURAL; STUNNING, NONETHELESS: Someone sent an email to me, in my capacity as editor of Marriage Debate, that read, in its entirety (as best I can remember), "What is homosexuality?"

And to be honest, I don't think I know.

Homosexuality has gone from an adjective applied to acts to an adjective applied to people--from a tendency to an identity. But that identity shivers out of your hands when you try to grasp it.

Some define it as a lack: an incapacity for sexual and/or romantic fulfillment with the opposite sex. (I am guessing, though I'm not sure, that this is how Jonathan Rauch is defining it in Gay Marriage.) This negative definition is wildly unpopular with contemporary gay activists, for obvious reasons. "I'm only gay because I can't possibly really love a woman/man" is not a rallying point for "pride." (And notice how "real love" in this formulation is always sexual....)

I don't have that lack. I ordinarily do not write much about my personal life on this blog; I don't like giving out information, let alone Too Much Information. But here is where the personal really does intersect with the political, and so I think it might be worth talking about. So: I can have romantic relationships with men, and have. ("But not very often!" as the Smiths say.)

What I remember--what makes me "identify as queer" as the young folk say, even after my conversion to Catholicism and my very, very late decision that I opposed same-sex marriage (I am not sure I opposed civil SSM as late as a year ago today--I was super ambivalent about it)--is this: I remember feeling like an alien, freakish, reprehensible outsider for my sexual orientation. I remember finding gay culture in books and movies and music and taking to it "like a duck to ducks" as Quentin Crisp says. I remember hiding everything I felt from myself and everyone around me. I remember that intense, sensual, paranoid awareness of how everyone around me was reacting, so I could be sure to react the same way, to react appropriately instead of reacting in a way that would expose me. (Possibly this experience has made me sympathetic to wildly desiring hetero guys, who ordinarily would really piss me off!)

I remember, too, pretty girls in their summer dresses, and the sweetness when my eyes swerved and I noticed some summer beauty. I remember, too, seeing my semi-secret girlfriend in the hallways of our high school, and remembering the smell of her cigarettes and her shampoo, and hearing again her voice as she explained why I had to be so careful so her parents would never know we were dating. I remember, too, what it felt like to find other people who lived as I did. I remember developing secret languages with my best friend so we could talk about the people we had crushes on and the ways we envisioned structuring our romantic lives. I remember spending obsessive hours reading gay subtext into every single book I read and every single song I liked, so I could find someone who was like me--so I could feel that astonishing thing, like when you solve a difficult rhyming problem in an English poem, like when you pick a lock and hear all the tumblers finally shifting into place, click-click-click. So I could feel the door open.

I remember all that, I should note, even though I was raised in an extraordinarily gay-positive family and general atmosphere. But still there was this sense that it was not only the usual childhood alienation, not only the usual estrangement of the over-intellectual, but some specifically sexual, specifically queer exile that caused my sense of difference.

Doubtless this was strongly reinforced by cultural messages that homosexuality was an identity, and that, therefore, if you desired the practice you must share the identity and make it a huge, defining part of your sense of self. I think we are far too naive about how much our culture shapes which identities we think are "real" and "deep" and "my essential true self." That's why I've said a couple times on this blog that we should focus on what we should do, and Whom we should love, rather than on what we think we are.

But I don't want to go there just yet. What I want to do is ask: Is this a description of a queer childhood? Is this the narrative that launched a thousand lawsuits? What do we talk about, when we talk about homosexuality?

I have never been sure.
posted by Eve at 8:40 PM

 
THE INTERNET MUSEUM OF FLEXI/CARDBOARD/ODDITY RECORDS. I only have one of these, I think--"Billy and the Boingers Bootleg" from Bloom County, featuring... let me think... "U Make Me Sick (But I Love U)" and something I can't remember on the B-side. But yeah... this is a treasure trove of the bizarre.

You make me sick! way-oh, way-oh, way-oh,
You really stink, girl...
posted by Eve at 6:28 PM

 
BRIEF IRAQI BLOGWATCH: New blog! (New to me, anyway.) Suha in Iraq, blogging at Suhax.

Raed has an alternatingly harsh and sweet post in which his emotional, rational, and political selves battle for dominance. Reminds me of the famous Lee Miller photo from the Blitz, "One Night of Love."

And Ali from Iraq the Model harasses a complaining cab driver and finds a kindred spirit from Sadr City. I didn't know that Ali used to work at a hospital in Sadr City. This post is fascinating and, like the one above, a must-read.
posted by Eve at 6:10 PM

 
WELCOME TO MY BLOG! NOW GO AWAY! As you might guess, the Marriage Debate blog (my day job--exploring all aspects of the debate over same-sex marriage, from a variety of philosophical and political stances) is roaring along this week due to events in the state that brought you Harvard. Why not take a look?
posted by Eve at 1:32 PM

 
ABU GHRAIB AND BEYOND: Hit and Run notes, "[O]ne reason why the torture scandal keeps attracting coverage is that it, unlike the Berg video, keeps yielding new developments." That post links to pieces on a possible coverup of "dozens" of other soldiers' involvement in the scandal, and on allegations of disgusting actions of U.S. forces elsewhere in Iraq.

And some black humor in The Onion: "U.S. to Fight Terror with Terror." Via Mark Shea.
posted by Eve at 12:49 PM

 
"I know very few young people, but it seems to me that they are all possessed with an almost fatal hunger for permanence. I think all these divorces show that."
--Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

Via Kelly Jane Torrance, who has a review of the upcoming Stephen Fry movie adaptation of Vile Bodies here, and a good but depressing piece on the decline of the short story market here. I'm especially intrigued by her suggestion that short stories are an especially American form: "The short story is pretty much an American invention. Its first master, Edgar Allan Poe credited the American magazine with creating the new literary form. Notes Jack Clemens, an associate editor at Writer's Digest: 'Before America, a short tale was not known as a short story. Collections of stories were not really published [elsewhere], at least not with the popularity that came in the United States.'"

I don't, at the moment, think that there's anything in the short story form that makes it uniquely suited to American writers (or vice versa), but I'm open to persuasion. It is a form that requires a strong foundational idea, like science fiction.
posted by Eve at 12:38 PM

 
FROM THE ICE AGE TO THE DOLE AGE, THERE IS BUT ONE CONCERN: Well, the National Catholic Register, that excellent but somewhat Luddite newspaper, has not yet posted my most recent column, so I think it's okay for me to print it here. It ran a while ago but I'm not sure when (nor do I know what title they used, or how it was edited from my draft) because somewhere in the Register/Post Office/my apartment building sequence all of my copies of the paper seem to vanish. Anyway! Onward and upward. Here is my piece about gender, poetry, and the Creator God.
-------------------------------------------------------------

In 1972, the Pioneer 10 space probe ventured out, bearing images from Earth to distant galaxies. To convey a sense of who humans are, we sent up a map showing our location in the galaxy, and drawings of a man and a woman.

Apparently, we thought it important that the aliens know that human beings come in two kinds. And not just any two kinds: We didn't send drawings of a fat man and a thin man, or a tall woman and a short woman. Nor did we attempt to send one androgynous silhouette, like those eerie sexless mannequins at some of the artier clothing stores.

If any aliens have received those images by now, they know more about humans than many of us know about ourselves! Today,one common view--perhaps even the default view at the ritzier colleges and newspapers--holds that the assumption behind the Pioneer 10 pictures is just wrong: The difference between men and women is trivial. It's interesting when you happen to be watching a Tracy/Hepburn movie, but easy to ignore whenever it might prove inconvenient. La differance doesn't make much difference when you don't want it to. Men and women are basically interchangeable, and that's great, because it means we operate under far fewer constraints.

This viewpoint spills out from the political realm through the theological and into the intensely personal. If men and women are interchangeable, children do not need a mother and a father; two mothers or two fathers will do just as well. If men and women are interchangeable, women should be ordained. If men and women are interchangeable, cultures need not develop and maintain courtship practices that recognize the sexes' differing risks and vulnerabilities.

Americans may be especially prone to this anti-gender worldview. We romanticize the unconstrained individual: the Lone Ranger. We hate the thought that accidents of birth--whether you're born a boy or a girl--should restrict your life's possibilities. We especially fear being constrained by our bodies, because every fleshly constraint is a premonition of death, the final limit our physicality places on our ambitions. Moreover, we live in a young nation born of revolution. It's only natural that we're skeptical of received wisdom and open to radical innovation.

But if Americans are unusually vulnerable to anti-gender thinking, there are two groups of people who should be unusually attuned to the meaning and value of la differance: writers and believers in a creator God.

Poets, playwrights, and novelists can look back through the history of their craft and see a parade of vivid, compelling characters: Hektor, Medea, the Wife of Bath, Falstaff, all the way up through Molly Bloom and Mickey Sabbath. And all these characters would be unimaginable in a world where gender meant little. Many of the great characters break societal conventions; they don't conform to what their culture considered the proper roles of men and women. (After all, the clash between role and desire, or between individual and society, generates the drama that the great stories need.) But their manhood or womanhood matters. Medea's break from convention is shocking, horrifying--and the horror is especially great because a mother has slain her own children, a woman has taken up a knife. The men are intensely men, the women intensely women; and sexual difference, unlike (for example) class and ethnic divisions, persists at high intensity in radically different ages and countries. From ancient Roman comedies to Gone With the Wind, He does not behave like She.

On a deeper level, literature relies on the symbolic use of real objects and features of our world. Writers rely on a belief that things in the world have particular meanings that can be understood, in at least some cases, across cultures. The world is itself a kind of symbolic dictionary--that's the feeling writers get when they know they've hit upon the exact right image, the exact right word. When a lamppost or a sparrow turns up in a poem and you know it couldn't have been anything else, the writer has tapped into that inherent meaning in physical things. This intuitive sense understands that a sparrow doesn't convey the same symbolic meaning as a peacock; and it also knows that there is a far deeper difference in meaning between a man and a woman. Trying to write a man where the poem needs a woman would lead to results even more ridiculous than if Shakespeare had written, "There's a special providence in the fall of a peacock."

And this belief in creatures as words in a symbolic language is also the natural perspective of anyone who believes in a creator God. For us, God is the one who speaks the words that make up the world, and by speaking them brings them into being. If Man and Woman are especially important, unique words, we would expect creation narratives to reflect that fact. And so they do: "Male and female he created them."

We can, if we hate constraint that much, pretend that sexual difference makes little difference. It will cloud our eyes as we read great literature. It will blind us to the fingerprints of God impressed into the world around us. It will warp our politics and our private lives. It's anti-poetic and deeply unromantic.

Which would you rather be--an autonomous mannequin, or a word spoken by God?
posted by Eve at 8:27 PM

 
LAST CALL--AND THIS TIME I MEAN IT! But I had to note: You want a nice title? Here's a nice title: Kyle Baker's WHY I HATE SATURN. I haven't read it yet, but every single time I see that title I think, "You know, that sounds like a lot of fun."

Oh, and as soon as I posted this, I remembered another title of something I haven't read: H. Rider Haggard's SHE. Woman as Other, woman as exotic, woman as challenge and land of opportunity and conquest, all in three letters. Nice. I have no desire to read the book, but really--what a title!
posted by Eve at 8:07 PM

 
COMICS AT THE LIBRARY: I had occasion the other day to wander past the comics section at Martin Luther King, Jr. Public Library--the main DC library--and I noticed something. I'd been to that section before, and it had been sparse, with a fairly random selection: Maus, yes, and something by Joe Sacco (really!), and one lone volume of Love and Rockets. Really no rhyme nor reason.

This time, the section was full to bursting with interesting stuff. I had to restrain myself from checking several books out. Age of Bronze; yes, there was Safe Area Gorazde, which is probably the Sacco from last visit; Y: The Last Man; and, on a table where some kid (or out-of-bounds pseudo-adult like me--the comics are in the YA section) had been reading it, Brian Bendis's excellent Torso. And lots more that I can't recall right now. I just remember thinking it looked like a really good selection, with all kinds of different genres and styles. I don't know if that's new since I last visited, or if my previous visit just happened to come when many of the books were checked out (I hope!), or what--but I thought I'd pass this on to you all. Sign of the times and whatnot.
posted by Eve at 7:59 PM

 
MOTHER, COME HOME: I finally read this wrenching comic. It is really, really good. Paul Hornschemeier has the Mishima technique of zeroing in on a particular object, a particular small image, and using that tight focus to convey a deep sense of dissociation and loss. By the end, yes, as a few reviewers have noted (be sure to read the asterisked bits at the end of that second link), the comic becomes too top-heavy with tragedy. But I'll definitely remember images from this work (the lion mask; the sandwich) long after most things I've read have faded. And the writing, while very occasionally veering over the top, is much, much better than most comics writing--too often people get hyperpoetic in "serious" comics writing, whereas Hornschemeier, because he's trying so hard to convey alienation and dislocation, ends up with this doomy but generally not overdone cadence. He's willing to let some things go unspoken. (Should've used that more often, though.) This comic is very much worth its cover price. If you want to know whether you should read it, stand in your local comics shop and read the introduction. I was captivated from the first page.
posted by Eve at 7:51 PM

 
CHINESE PRIESTS ARRESTED FOR TEACHING THEOLOGY AND NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING: Via the Cardinal Kung Foundation via FoxNews via Mark Shea. You absolutely should check out the CKF as they are doing amazing work. See also the Laogai Research Foundation (exposing the Chinese gulag system--run by Harry Wu, a true hero) and Freedom House.
posted by Eve at 7:38 PM

 
"IO: Do not care for me more than I would have you."
--"Prometheus Bound" tr. Grene

Also, more titles here; my favorite of these is You Give Drugs a Bad Name.
posted by Eve at 9:10 PM

 
LET US HAVE NO MORE MARRIAGES: The current question at MarriageDebate is this: "Some advocates across the political spectrum are making the radical case for separating the civil and religious dimensions of marriage entirely. Let religions keep the word 'marriage,' they say; the state should merely provide civil unions for all. Lawmakers in New York and Massachusetts have already proposed this move.

"This radical proposal has won a surprising amount of support from religious believers who think the definition of marriage should be left to the churches; gay-rights supporters who want all couples to be treated equally; and some who believe it's the best way to prevent alternative family forms from being enshrined in law.

"What's your view?"

You can find a really excellent quote from Jonathan Rauch on this subject here. You can find a much less excellent post from me here.

Now, I ordinarily do not push my Day Job on you people. But I think a couple of the constituencies who read my blog (libertarians? hardcore crazy theocons? I'm so looking at you...) have a lot to say about this issue. Look: For a lot of reasons that I think are really, really bad, the more extreme libertarian and theocon positions are getting a mainstream hearing w/r/t civil marriage. Surely you want to take advantage of this opportunity. So tell me what you think.

Jim Henley: Hello, yes, staring fixedly in your direction. I am sure you have cogent commentary on all this.
posted by Eve at 7:01 PM

 
SAME-SEX ATTRACTED ANGLICANS SPEAK OUT: Brave stuff, via David Morrison.

We, the undersigned, are Canadian Anglicans who were once active homosexuals. Some of us are now celibate homosexuals; some of us are now heterosexuals. We represent a much larger group than appears on this paper. We are united in our commitment to the authority of Holy Scripture, and we reject the resolutions regarding the blessing of same-sex unions sent by the Council of General Synod to General Synod, 2004. We believe that facilitating the blessing of same-sex unions, without listening to the stories of God’s transforming power in our lives, is to act irresponsibly, and without weighing all the facts. To pass these motions would be to betray and marginalize those of us who have come under the authority of Scripture and entered into a process of exodus from the homosexual lifestyle. As such members of the Church, we are witnesses to God’s Holy Spirit, his transforming power. We look to the Church for pastoral care and moral direction, subject to the authority of Scripture, which would empower us in the ordering of our relationships. It is not loving for the Church to encourage us to live in slavery to this mortal flesh. Instead, we look to the Church to empower us to draw closer to God by offering our bodies as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing unto God.

Our voices have been silenced in the Anglican Church of Canada; you have not paid heed to us. Today, we ask that you would not betray us by passing these motions allowing for the blessing of same-sex unions within the Anglican Church of Canada without first weighing our voices and hearing our stories. We ask that you would table these motions and commit yourselves instead to listening to our voices before making any move as a Church. Let us all acknowledge the love and lordship of Christ who makes all things new.

"Behold, I make all things new." Revelation 21:5

Signed,

Rob Goetze, Diocese of Edmonton
Michel Schnob, Diocese of Ottawa
David Colpitts, M. Div, Diocese of Toronto
The Rev. Don Alcock, Diocese of Huron
The Rev. Stephen Emery, Diocese of Huron
The Rev. Dawn McDonald, Diocese of New Westminster
The Rev. Mario Bergner, Diocese of Quincy, (born in Thetford Mines, Quebec)

Here's that link again.

Morrison comments here.
posted by Eve at 6:52 PM

 
THE LAST OF THE REALLY GREAT WHANGDOODLES: I think this will be my last post on titling--thanks very much to all who wrote in!

Sean Collins adds a large list, with which I often though not always agree, here (and notes that I am super lazy and have bad blog etiquette! How's this, SC--previous title posts can be found here here here here here).

Joshua Elder says something with which I thoroughly agree: [T]here remains a glaring omission I simply must address: "Airplane!" The Zucker Bros. masterpiece boasts one of the most sublimely descriptive titles in all of cinema history. It tells you that it's a parody of overblown airborne disaster movies and it accomplishes all this with the addition of a single innocuous mark of punctuation. Brilliant.

David Fried writes: [T]wo very different favorites of mine, both from Larry Woiwode: "What I'm Going
to Do, I Think" (catch the ambiguity!) and "Beyond the Bedroom Wall" (a great multi-generational family saga.)

And ...the Delmore Schwartz short story '"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"[.]
posted by Eve at 6:33 PM

 
SCREAM FOR JEEVES! Hilarity from WJ Duquette.

You can buy the original Scream for Jeeves: PG Wodehouse meets HP Lovecraft here, and believe me, it is worth every cent.
posted by Eve at 6:29 PM

 
CHORUS: Did you perhaps go further than you told us?

PROMETHEUS: Yes, I stopped mortals from foreseeing doom.

CHORUS: What cure did you discover for that sickness?

PROMETHEUS: I sowed in them blind hopes.

CHORUS: That was a great help that you gave to men.
--Aeschylus, "Prometheus Bound," tr. Grene
posted by Eve at 6:21 PM

 
"I TASTE A LIQUOR NEVER BREWED": Terry Teachout writes to say, in re Ye Olde Title Discussion, "Dickie Umfraville, one of the characters in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, serves a cocktail dubbed Death Comes for the Archbishop. I've always wondered what was in it!"

This seems like a good lead-in for a contest. Way back in college, Ratty and I hosted a drink-mixing party in which we started with the names of drinks and attempted to come up with recipes that would fit the names. We... didn't quite succeed, although we did have fun, and learned quite a lot about the interaction of various tropical fruit juices and hard liquors. So: drink names. People who send in recipes that sound like they might actually taste GOOD will win everlasting fame and fortune, if by "everlasting fame and fortune" you mean "an email published on my weblog." Also, feel free to suggest more drink names, and if I like 'em I'll add 'em to the contest.

The names: APOLLO AND DIONYSOS
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME
DEAD FOR A DUCAT
A FAILED SOUTHERN LADY
I KNOW MY REDEEMER LIVETH (from "Cheers")
INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
TOTALLY UNRELATED
VIEW TO A KILL

and, of course, DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP.
posted by Eve at 3:39 PM

 
THE MOVIES SEARCH FOR SPIRIT: Excerpts from a phenomenal speech by Barbara Nicolosi. Stuff in bold is my emphasis.

...There is an artistic movement crowding in on Hollywood which is pushing this idea more and more. It is changing cinema, or in many ways, restoring cinema to its roots in the lyrical, poetic imagery of the Silent Screen.

I call this movement, The "Don't Show How Things Look, Tell Us What They Mean" Movement. It is being driven very much by a young crop of directors who made their way into the business through the music video world. Music video is all about what things mean, as opposed to how they look. The best music video directors freely distort real colors, shapes, dimensions and points of view, in an effort to complement and interpret a song. Rejecting the demand for gritty "realism" (as though that were possible in a movie...) of the Baby Boomer filmmakers, these young filmmakers are pushing for a cinematic lyricism that could mirror and echo the emotional power of music. Films that reflect this movement include Donnie Darko, Levity, and TV shows like HBO's Carnivale.

This new trend toward meanings as opposed to appearances is showing up particularly as regards the portrayal of human sexuality. In forty shameless years of the Sexual Revolution, cinema has shown us every possible permutation of two naked bodies writhing around. Suddenly now, many filmmakers consider it pedestrian to simply show what sex looks like. This is not because of any ethical-moral sense, but from we could call an artistic-moral sense which rejects the idea of being unoriginal or uncreative. "We've seen sex before. Don't go there in the movie unless you are going to show us what sex means for the two characters." ...

My students are very concerned with creating movies that "tell the truth about sin." Again, part of this is driven by the fact that their generation has been the victim of the lies of the Sexual Revolution, but for my students from Christian homes, this is actually a rejection of the artistic sensibilities of their religious parents.

Religious people have responded to the excesses of sex and violence in mainstream cinema, by clamoring for an art that is "non-offensive." They want happy stories, with no challenging ideas and images that will be "safe." Hence, Christian parents are embracing really bad movies--in terms of their lack of artistry--like Cheaper By The Dozen, Walk to Remember--which are, in fact, over-sentimentalized G-rated lies. ...

The new generation of young Christians coming into Hollywood are all about telling hard truths honestly. The problem is, in their urgency to show sin as being very ugly, they run the risk of violating the audience. Again, as Emily Dickinson said, "Tell the Truth, but Tell it Slant, or All the World Be Blind." ...

For half a century, religious people have been complaining that there is too much violence in movies. Now, a movie comes along that is--in the words of one Los Angeles critic, "a two hour execution," and people of faith everywhere are embracing it, and being moved to compunction, repentance and spiritual renewal.

What we are learning from all this is that the problem is not with violence on the screen. It is meaningless violence that is wrong in entertainment. The Passion reconnects violence to its source in rebellion against God. It never objectifies the subject of the violence, nor does it dehumanize the perpetrators of violence. It shows the effects of violence in all its horror.

read the whole thing!
posted by Eve at 2:38 PM

 
"HEPHAESTUS: For the mind of Zeus is hard to soften with prayer and every ruler is harsh whose rule is new."
--Aeschylus, "Prometheus Bound," tr. David Grene
posted by Eve at 2:36 PM

 
AUTHOR TURNS LOVE OF RATS INTO BOOK: Sullivan's book tracks the history of rats, describes such oddities as the promoters of rat fights in the 19th century and details a convention of exterminators.

While he once captured a rat, Sullivan says he has never brought one home nor is he likely to adopt one as a pet.

"No I never kept a rat. I'm married," he explained.

more

Via (who else?) The Rat.
posted by Eve at 6:40 PM

 
WHICH CICADA ARE YOU? Stupidly funny. I am Teenage Mutant Ninja Cicadas!
posted by Eve at 5:51 PM

 
"KISSABLE PICTURES": OOH OOH, THEY'RE OBSESSED WITH YOU. In which John is disturbed and disturbing, and our music journalist attends a concert.

More workaday prose here, sorry, and a few placeholders that I will change in the final version. But there are a couple things in this segment that I like. There are two or maybe three sections left after this one.

The usual warning: This story has sex in it. (Not, as such, in this section.) It has creepiness in it (this section and passim). This story is not healthy for children or other living things.

Click here to read from the beginning, or here to get the most recent section.
posted by Eve at 2:51 PM

 
FREE THE IRAQI PRESS!: Excellent piece from the Weekly Standard. Excerpts:

...Then came bad news. On March 20, the Coalition issued Decree Number 66, signed by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, turning the Iraqi Media Network into the Iraqi Public Service Broadcaster, a government media enterprise equivalent to the British Broadcasting Corporation. Zayer and the al-Sabah staff professed shock that, under the decree, their newspaper would become a state-owned newspaper, with no prospect of the promised privatization....

Before announcing their attempt at independence, al-Sabah had published a detailed critique of the media laws set to be imposed in Iraq. Coalition Decree Number 65, also issued March 20, for example, had established an Iraqi Communications and Media Commission. This body would regulate all "telecommunications and telecommunications-related information services," including print media, broadcasting, coverage of elections, mobile telephone services, Internet providers, and Internet cafés. The commission, which would issue licenses for all such enterprises, was to be supported by an array of chairmanships, boards, and panels.

In an editorial, al-Sabah described the commission as "bigger and more powerful than Iraq's former Ministry of Information--a state within the state." The newspaper continued, "This
Commission will be lawmaker, prosecutor, and judge, technical engineer and moral guardian of the interests of, for example, children (against too much violence on television) and consumers (against fraudulent advertising)....[I]n order to be prosecutor and judge, this Commission will need considerable staff to monitor television and radio programs and read the newspapers and weeklies."

With so many print organs already in existence, al-Sabah's editorialists were justified in asking how the commission would find time to keep track of the press. Al-Sabah blamed this unwieldy plan on Simon Haselock, the British official named media commissioner by the Coalition in August 2003. The decree making al-Sabah part of the Iraqi Public Service Broadcaster also comprised the creation of another whole set of governorships, boards, committees, and related bodies.

In all this, three things should be obvious. The first is that imposing a massive bureaucratic apparatus on top of Iraqi media is a disincentive to independent reporting, entrepreneurial investment, and other essentials for media success in the free market.

The second is that these offices, boards, and other bodies will instantly become centers of political patronage and corruption, regardless of safeguards written into their constitutional documents.

The third and overarching fact is that this is no way to cure the Iraqis, or any other Arab society, of the statist legacy of the Baathist dictatorship. ...

It is often said that the Coalition in Iraq needs a voice of its own. That is true: It should express its views at frequent press conferences open to all reporters. A vigorous, free press is the best possible place to begin the real democratization of Iraq.

more
posted by Eve at 2:41 PM

 
IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT: The scathing Army Times editorial on Abu Ghraib. Via Hit & Run, I think.
posted by Eve at 2:27 PM

 
IN THE GRAND TRADITION OF SCREAM FOR JEEVES!: H.P. LOVECRAFT MEETS P.G. WODEHOUSE: Terry Teachout at About Last Night writes: "Apropos of last week’s posting about whether Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodehouse attended Dulwich College simultaneously, a reader writes:

"'Moments in greatness: suppose if Wodehouse had had to fag for Chandler? The parody almost writes itself.'

"You know who you are. You know what to do."

Eve adds: Aaaaiiiieeeee!!!! PLEASE, somebody, do this!!!
posted by Eve at 1:51 PM

 
A WINTER'S TITLE: Scattered notes on The Great Title Discussion:

1) Embarrassingly, I misremembered the Ray Bradbury title I listed as one of my top five! It's THE OCTOBER COUNTRY, not THE OCTOBER PEOPLE (although Bradbury uses the latter phrase, with much the same meaning as the former, in his excellent Something Wicked This Way Comes). Anyway, as a title, THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is better.

2) I now have a title theory! Sort of. And it's astonishingly boring. Still, here it is, for what it's worth: Many of the titles I love and remember have either a) some element of sharp contrast, whether within the title itself (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is the most obvious example) or between the title and the first impression of the work (A WINTER'S TALE); or, more frequently,

b) a sense of time--an implied arc up from the past or into the future. A few examples: EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA, AND BOTH WERE YOUNG, WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED, GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

I really have no knack for titles, and I don't expect that this minimal, boring theory will help me develop such a knack; but if you're more rationalist in your titling methods than I am, perhaps it will help you. I note that the one person who mentioned which of my titles she liked best picked NOW AND AT THE HOUR, which has both an implied time-arc and a contrast with the content of the story (since the point of the piece is that the implied time-arc has been disrupted; the narrator is stuck in "now," unable to reach the second half of the title). Story, by the way, starts here and continues here.

3) More of your suggestions:

Our Girl in Chicago (of About Last Night blog) here.

Parabasis here.

Amy Carney writes: Has nobody mentioned Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather? It's definitely in my top 5 . . . it has curb appeal, it makes you want to see the inside.

Douglas Hofstadter has some excellent titles, although they're actually so well-crafted that they're a bit too self-conscious. But my favorites are Le Ton beau de Marot; Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; and The Mind's I.

Tom K offers: The Revenge of the Lawn

Irina Manta: Has anyone yet mentioned "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (Milan Kundera) as one of the greatest titles? I haven't read the book yet, but the title sure rocks. Some of Rand's titles were not so bad, actually, especially "We the Living" (which was oddly enough not the original title of the book, I think). "Notes from Underground," "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "Dangerous Liaisons," "As I Lay Dying," "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984" and also deserve honorable mention. I guess a lot titles that contain numbers intrigue us, see also "Catch-22." As for non-fiction, it's hard to beat "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat."

[she later added:]
The World According to Garp (John Irving)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey)
It (Stephen King)

And finally, Kathy Shaidle: Death on the Installment Plan
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
Trout Fishing In America
High Wind in Jamaica

And the Band Played On, with its understated allusion to an earlier gay milestone from slightly happier times, The Boys in the Band.

Being Canadian, I feel obliged to add: The Edible Woman
And while it wasn't that great, we had a first novel here a few years back called Fly-Boy Action Figure Comes With Gas Mask

The play Bill Murray is writing in Tootsie: Return to Love Canal
posted by Eve at 1:25 PM

 
I'M SITTIN' ON TOP OF THE WORLD, BLOGROLLIN' ALONG... As many people on my blogroll have announced plans to blog less frequently or to stop altogether, I've changed it around a bit. Just wanted to explain why the place looks a bit different.
posted by Eve at 1:22 PM

 
"There are multiple distractions that somehow leak themselves in, even into these open spaces. Things about cleaning and creditors. All sorts of ephemera...

"Little ghosts to be brushed aside.

"There is one that keeps occurring to me though.

"Something that I think may be of some import. Something we created together.

"A doll? A talking something? Something that made us happy.

"I will look for it--we will look for it--after I find you, but only after. It is important to prioritize."
--Paul Hornschemeier, Mother, Come Home
posted by Eve at 10:47 AM