My So-Called Life

Saturday, January 27, 2007

www.postsecret.com

Word.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

My cat died today

It makes me sad. We had that cat since I was in, like 5th grade, and although it lived with my parents when we both moved, it still makes me a little teary. And I just ran out of the good Kleenex with the lotion in it.

Documentary Alert!

If you get HBO, you should tape this for me. (My boss said she'd try, but it will all depend on whether or not she can figure out her VCR/DVR/Tivo.)

Man, I've got to quit sounding like such a tree-hugger Californian on my blog, or people will start thinking I eat tofu and brown rice for lunch. Oh wait. . .I do eat tofu and brown rice for lunch.


A Culture of Faith, Devoted Yet Complex
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

There is a God, and he punishes those who overreach on television.

Until he was removed from his ministry last November for “sexually immoral conduct” (he was accused of having sex with a male prostitute and buying illegal drugs), the Rev. Ted Haggard was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the most prominent spokesmen for the Christian right.

“You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group,” Mr. Haggard waggishly told a documentary filmmaker a few months before his secret came out. On “Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi,” which will be shown tonight on HBO, Mr. Haggard coaxes a member of his congregation to say how often he has sex with his wife (“Every day. Twice a day.”) and how often she climaxes (“Every time”).

You could almost see the wrathful lightning bolt striking down from the heavens.

The Bible Belt is the Loire Valley of American extremism — visitors glide across vast highways in the South and West to marvel at the revivalist megachurches and “Honk for Jesus” road signs with the giddy awe of tourists exploring an alien civilization. And like Chenonceau or the vineyards of Sancerre, Christian evangelical churches rarely disappoint.

In his hit comedy, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen already proved how open and trusting born-again believers can be in front of a television camera. Posing as a naïve journalist from Kazakhstan, Mr. Cohen was welcomed at a Pentecostal meeting where worshipers spoke in tongues and helped him accept Jesus as his savior.

The French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy took a more self-serious tour of evangelical Christianity when he retraveled the road taken by Alexis de Tocqueville in his study of the modern American psyche, “American Vertigo.” (Mr. Lévy found New World religiosity a little less admirable than his predecessor did.)

“Friends of God” is not intended as a satire or even an exposé; Mr. Haggard’s fall from grace occurred after the filming was complete and is summed up in a postscript.

The documentary is a good-natured travelogue: it glances on the more intolerant and grotesque manifestations of Christian fundamentalism and also the faith’s vast following and political clout. Ms. Pelosi’s film doesn’t go deep; it doesn’t even explore why so many televangelists seem to follow the trajectory of Elmer Gantry. But it doesn’t snicker. “Friends of God” serves as a breezy, colorful reminder of how George W. Bush became president, why Fox News has the highest ratings of any 24-hour cable news network and why Democrats didn’t win an even greater landslide in the 2006 elections.

Ms. Pelosi is the daughter of the newly elected House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and this is her third HBO film, and the one furthest afield from her natural habitats of Washington, New York and San Francisco. The first documentary, “Journeys With George,” was a mischievous, camcorder-look inside the world of the presidential campaign. (Ms. Pelosi was an NBC News producer on Mr. Bush’s press plane.) Her second, “Diary of a Political Tourist,” a smart-alecky, first-person tour of the Democratic primary process, was less winning.

Ms. Pelosi stays off camera and out of the way in “Friends of God,” and we only occasionally hear her voice. “So explain to me the concept of this Biblical mini golf,” the filmmaker says to a man who putts on a paper-and-glue parted Red Sea. (The ninth hole is a papier-mâché miniature of the Holy Sepulchre.)

Mostly, Ms. Pelosi lets pastors, creationism teachers, Christian stand-up comics and rockers and the founder of the Christian Wrestling Federation speak for themselves.

“So we do have a public relations problem; we always have — they killed Jesus if you’ll recall,” Mr. Haggard tells her. “And the church has always had this problem because we are the ones with the role to say, ‘There is a moral plumb line, and we need to rise up to it.’ ” At this point, the disgraced minister seems almost to foreshadow his own fate.

“And that’s also why secular people are so concerned when the church doesn’t fulfill its own moral standard,” he said. “Like if a pastor falls into corruption or becomes dishonest or greedy: it’s heartbreaking because even secular people want godly people to be authentically godly.”

FRIENDS OF GOD

A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi

HBO, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.

Written, directed and produced by Alexandra Pelosi; Lisa Heller, supervising producer; Sheila Nevins, executive producer

Thursday, January 18, 2007

If you live in Texas,

and know someone affected by domestic violence. . .or even if you don't, please take a moment to call on the Texas State Legislature to support full funding for domestic violence programs. The Texas Council on Family Violence is working to send 15,000 Purple Postcards to the Legislature this year. They will hand-deliver the postcards that are submitted online to the Legislature prior to the 2007 session, so go please visit them online here.

Thanks to Kim for sending this link.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Critical AIDS and Poverty Assistance Funding in Jeopardy

Read about it here and use the "Take Action" link at the bottom to contact your local representatives and the president. (You don't even need to know who they are--World Vision will locate them for you based on your zip code.)

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Is there a point?


I’ve been thinking lately about church, and why I should go. Right now, I’m still attending church because I made a 15-month commitment to one, and I’m about one-third of the way through it. If I hadn’t made that commitment, I’m not sure if I’d be attending church at all.

When I moved here a little over a year ago, I church-shopped religiously (excuse the pun), and attended the church I chose on a fairly regular basis. I spend quite a few weekends away from home, but when I was in town, I was there.

I think this is because I had decided that if I was going to find a community (including, especially, people my age) who had similar values and goals and who would put as much time and effort into supporting me as I did them, I would have to find it in a church.

Unfortunately, however, it turns out that my values and goals are largely different than what I picked up on at most Christian gatherings I attended, and the groups of people my own age there felt too much like cleverly disguised meat markets. (If I was desperate, I’d go on The Bachelor, not to church.)

When I started attending my current church, the singles group was small, but friendly, and I imagined that this could be my community. It wasn’t perfect, but it felt inclusive-- there were even some members of the group who lacked average social skills and mental capacities. While those people might have been harder to support/love, I liked that they were part of the group. I figure that’s what Christianity, at its core, is all about: loving the unlovable.

Little did I know, however, that many of the members of this group were carrying around some incredibly scary group-related baggage, and while they really wanted the group to work, they didn’t know how to fix it. This later led to a few well-intentioned but extreme (and also somewhat scary) last-ditch efforts.

Long story short, a few months ago, the remaining members of the group (quite a few had left) who had average or higher social skills and mental capacities asked for a meeting with the elder over the singles group and the preacher. At that meeting, we asked them to let the group die. We were requesting a mercy killing, actually, because the group had gotten so small that there weren’t enough “average or above” members to support the others. If the “stronger brothers” are outnumbered, then the situation can’t last.

I was told by the preacher that the rest of the group would find other ways to be supported by the church, and I believed him. So he and the elder told us they would take until January 1 to come up with a story that considered the “weaker brothers” and was as loving as possible (yet incredibly final) about why the group needed to dissolve.

I should also mention that those of us from the singles group who were present at that meeting were hosting events at our houses on a regular basis and attending singles class on Sunday mornings, as well as other events. We were asking for the class to cease, but mostly for the group as a whole to take a break for a little while, because we were overextended. (And I fully admit that I was having lots of trouble loving one of the “weaker brothers”.)

Another problem that I had recently realized about the group was that it wouldn’t attract new members in its current state, because it obvious that the group dynamic was unstable and taxing. I mean, who wants to join a group that’s obviously more work than it’s worth and swiftly going under? It’s sad, but building up the “stronger” part of the group was not really an option.

So long story short, the elders and ministers did not end the singles class or the group itself. However, I think they handled it well, as far as the “weaker” members of the group are concerned. The elder over the singles group was willing to carry the burden it presented, which was his prerogative. All in all, I think they did the right thing, the better thing, but I still felt like it wasn't exactly what was promised.

And my "church" issues, added to the fact that I haven’t really gotten anything out of a worship service in a very long time, make me question the point of church, anyway. I guess these feelings started in Mission Year—it’s like most church services go around me instead of through me. And now that our group has died and I have no community to speak of—and, honestly, not even someone to go to the movies with—what’s the point? (I guess if I get really desperate, I could always ask staring-at-my-chest-guy to go to the movies with me. My friends keep telling me that mental capacity and social skills really aren’t that important, anyway.)

Over Christmas, my grandmother expressed her views on how important corporate worship services are, but I’m not so sure. I think community is important. I think loving each other is important. I think talking about the things that are important to God is important. I think spending time observing rituals that have real meaning is important. (I admit: the way most churches do communion seems useless to me. I can commune with God at home, on my couch. I can’t, however, commune with his people there, so it seems like communion should be time spent with God’s people, doing things that matter, like breaking bread together. I think sharing a meal is one of the most important and sacred acts that people can share.)

I’ve heard people say that “you get out what you put in” regarding corporate worship services. I think that’s crap, because I don’t even know what to put in. I agree that it’s stupid to go to church expecting everything to be catered to you as an individual, and it makes sense that having a bad attitude about corporate worship probably doesn’t help, but that still sounds like another Christian platitude to me.

And yet, I’m going to church tomorrow morning. I’m going because I’ve committed to it. I’m going because I’ve been in my apartment most of the weekend. But most of all, I’m going because there are good people there. And while I might never find true community with people my own age there (or even, God forbid, someone to go to the movies with), I truly believe that the people there are good people. And there’s something to be said for spending time with good people.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year!

I think it is important that, at the start of this new year, we take some time to reflect on 2006, to identify the high points, celebrate our successes and think back on what we could have done better.

Or we could just let Dave Barry make fun of all of it for us.