Tag: Bible

Trudy’s funeral program

It’s about the widow giving all she had. The lectionary recommends reading that introductory part about “teachers of the law [liking] to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers.”


Since, once again, I’m writing about this before the fact, I thought I’d describe the thought process behind what (presumably) took place at the service yesterday.

The front of the bulletin, in addition to the usual information, contains this scripture: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” (James 1:19). I think Leslie picked this scripture and it was pretty accurate. I opted for the New International Version because most of the other versions mention only “brothers”, or “brethren”.

ORDER OF SERVICE

In lieu of a wake, there was scheduled to be a time for the family to receive friends at the church from 1 to 1:45 pm. During this time, my niece Alex was putting together a bunch of photos of Mom, both solo and in various family combinations. At the same time, there would be secular music playing: Johnny Mathis, Ray Charles, and especially her favorite, Nat ‘King’ Cole. She had a bunch of Cole 78s when I was growing up.

Prelude-“Sweet, Sweet Spirit”
Though this is a reference to the Holy Spirit, she did in fact have a sweet spirit.

Lighting the Candle – the granddaughters
My mother had three granddaughters: Leslie’s daughter, Rebecca Staubes, who is 32; Marcia’s daughter, Alexandria Green-House, who turned 20 at the end of December; and Lydia, my daughter, who will turn 7 next month. Assuming Becky can get a flight, this will be the first time that Rebecca and Lydia have met, though the older two and the younger two are very tight. And Lydia has seen Rebecca on Wipeout.

Invocation – Rev. Cannon

Hymn of Praise- – “Goin’ Up Yonder”
Initially, it was going to be “I’ll Fly Away”, a song I always associate with that great TV show of the early 1990s, starring Regina Taylor a pre-“Law & Order” Sam Waterston, as well as the soundtrack to the movie O Brother Where Art Thou. The final selection, though, I don’t particularly know.

Scriptural Reading: Proverbs 31:10-31
The Wife of Noble Character, or the Virtuous Woman, which Leslie picked out, and which her daughter Rebecca will read.

Prayer of Comfort
We’re hoping that her former pastor, Rev. George Goodman, can read this.

Scriptural Reading: Psalm 23
My sister Marcia will read the King James version.

Musical Selection: “It Is Well With My Soul”
A woman from the church, Myrtle Miller, volunteered to sing this. It’s in many hymnals. I associate it with the funeral of the funeral of our tenor soloist back at my old church, Sandy Cohen, who died Christmas Eve 1990.

Scriptural Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:4-13
My niece Alexandria will read the passage that has almost become a cliche at weddings.

Sharing Memories
We’ve lined up a number of folks from the church to speak, for no more than two minutes (we hope), then my mom’s cousin Fran (if she makes it), Leslie, and me.

Scripture Reading: Luke 20:45-21:4
I picked this one, which my wife Carol will read. It’s about the widow giving all she had. One of my sisters wanted to limit it to the Luke 21 part, but I wanted, and the lectionary (suggested reading) recommends, reading that introductory part about “teachers of the law [liking] to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers.”

Eulogy-Rev. Cannon

Musical Selection: “By and By”-the Green Family.
An old song I associate with Leadbelly.

Recessional: “God Be With You”

Then, it is our intention to play a recording of Sing, Sing, Sing, the classic Louis Prima song heavily associated with Benny Goodman. She loved the big band sound.

Mainstream Christianity QUESTION

Fundamentalism is just plain simpler.


Arthur, in his response to my post last week about Christian yoga, asked me to “look at how mainstream Christians can get attention (and differentiation) when overshadowed by the loud—and often flaky…fundamentalists.” I’d love to, but I can’t, and I’ll tell you why.

During one of the debates during the 2004 Presidential campaign, the candidates were each asked about their faith stance. George W. Bush gave his standard response about his personal relationship with Jesus Christ. John Kerry gave what I thought was a fine answer about how his Roman Catholic faith compelled him to respond to the social gospel, i.e., to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, et al. But after the debates, more than a few pundits suggested that Kerry had somehow evaded the question. And, according to that PBS series God in America, that I keep recommending, Kerry himself concluded that he had “blown it” on the religion issue.

So the junior senator from Illinois was out making speeches in 2005 and 2006, touting his religious conversation, from someone of not much faith, rather like his mother, to someone who had found Jesus. Then when he decided to run for President, you would think that this would have put him in good stead with that crowd. But the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy muddied the waters, and his absence from regular church attendance since he was elected President helped the “Muslim” thing stick.

Much of the media, particularly in the early part of this century, helped establish the narrative that the fundamentalists were the “values voters”, which truly infuriated me. I have values; I vote. How did the term get so co-opted?

Part of the problem with the liberal/progressive church is the problem with liberals in general. Some people have suggested that we condemn this one or that, but unless it’s a real outlier (Rev. Terry Jones, the would-be Koran burner), it is generally disinclined to criticize. “That’s not we believe, but you’re entitled to your views.”

And let’s face it: fundamentalism is just plain simpler. The Bible is the inerrant Word of God and every word is factually true vs. the Bible is not a history book, and that God gave us reason, intellect, tradition to discern what God is saying to us in these times. Now, what’s easier to explain, a black-and-white philosophy or nuance? And as this article suggests, the fundamentalists work harder because they have, historically, been outsiders.

But hey, maybe you folks out there have a better idea. How DOES the mainstream church better present its message of tolerance so that it isn’t drowned out by some yahoos who suggest, e.g., that the Haitian earthquake, or Katrina, or 9/11 is God’s punishment?

Genesis 38: Onan

So instead of mocking Christine O’Donnell, I want to thank her for bringing the conversation of self-gratification to the public forum.

WARNING: not for those easily offended. Ah, my first “mature audience” post, and it’s based on the Bible, no less.

I have to blame US Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell (R-Delaware) for my need to reread the 38th chapter of the first book of the Bible. Those of you unfamiliar with that person need only know that she has made public comments about witchcraft and onanism. Don’t know that latter word? You will, very soon.

In the Biblical tale, it seems that Judah – a son of Jacob, a/k/a Israel – who was behind the selling off of his brother Joseph (the Technicolor Dreamcoat dude) into slavery, moved out of town and married a Canaanite woman named Shua, which wasn’t kosher. He had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah fixed up Er with a woman named Tamar. But Er ticked off God, though we’re never specifically told in what fashion and God kills him.

OK, so Onan is supposed to marry his sister-in-law and impregnate her, but the male heir would be considered Er’s son, not Onan’s. Now Onan didn’t mind having sex with Tamar but didn’t want to put her “in a family way”, as it used to be called, so he engaged in a bit of coitus interruptus, and his seed spilled on the ground. This ticked off God and He killed Onan too.

For one purpose only

Now, what’s peculiar with the interpretation of this story thus far by many people is that what Onan did was masturbation. Thus the word onanism has come to mean masturbation. Others have suggested that it was a text saying that people should have sex ONLY for the purpose of procreation, not recreation since every seed was potentially life. (See, e.g., the video of Every Sperm is Sacred from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life.) The only thing that IS clear is that Onan disobeyed GOD and that he and his elder brother REALLY ticked Him off.

Back to the story: Shelah, Judah’s youngest, grows up and should be married off to Tamar, but Judah was afraid he’d suffer the same fate as his brothers. Meanwhile, Judah’s wife dies. Tamar covered her face, pretending to be harlot, has sex with her father-in-law, and gets pregnant. When Judah discovers that Tamar played a harlot – though not yet HIS harlot – he orders her to be burned until it was revealed that it was Judah himself who slept with her.

He then realizes that she did what she had to, while Judah had dealt dishonorably with Tamar by not providing her with a (third) husband, without which she had no economic means. He has twin sons, Perez (in some translations, Pharez) and Zerah, and though it’s not stated here, Perez’s descendants would include King David, and a carpenter named Joseph, the (human) father figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Which only goes to show that God moves in very mysterious ways.

Kudos

So instead of mocking Christine O’Donnell, I want to thank her for bringing the conversation of self-gratification to the public forum. Why even Jimmy Carter, the former President of the United States, recently mentioned it, albeit obliquely, on national television. On the September 20 episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, starting at about the 4:15 mark, Carter talks about O’Donnell’s toying with witchcraft in her younger days. He said he’s never engaged in witchcraft, but in his younger days might have partaken in that OTHER thing she had been talking about. A slightly embarrassed Stewart says that didn’t think Carter would be going there. (But he should have: in an interview with PLAYBOY in 1976, Presidential candidate Carter talked about “lust in his heart.”)

I’d hardly be the first person to note how peculiar Americans are about sex. Did you know the movie A Clockwork Orange, was originally rated X, not because of violence but because of an extremely speeded up sex scene performed to an extremely speeded up Lone Ranger theme (William Tell Overture)? People getting tortured? OK to see with the kids. People getting horizontal? Not so much. [And cut! Movie sex scenes not part of the act for parents, kids]

I think, despite all manner of sexuality in the marketplace, that puritanical streak is still stubbornly embedded, at least in the US. If sex is only for procreation, does that mean that people beyond the age of child-bearing oughtn’t to have sex? I think that, even now, that has been the message, which is why younger people tend to giggle at the thought of people in their seventies and beyond still “doing it”. There is a ban on birth control in the Catholic church, which the vast majority of US Catholics ignore regularly.

No insanity

To the matter at hand – probably a poor choice of words – the Wikipedia article on masturbation has all sorts of health benefits, not the least of which is the lessened likelihood of prostate cancer, as well as increased motility when one DOES want to engage in procreative activities. There’s no proof that it will make one go insane or grow hair on one’s palms.

One is to be “celibate in singleness, and faithful in marriage”, according to the traditions of many Christians and other believers. Even the apostle Paul, who preferred the faithful to be celibate recognized the power of sexuality. So even though I don’t think it’s really anyone else’s business, I’m not quite sure what is it about the act that is so wrong, especially since all reports, going back at least to the 1950s, suggests that a majority of women and a vast majority of males are doing it anyway. How does one talk to one’s partner about what he or she likes without self-discovery? Lack of self-awareness seems the more selfish act.

Incidentally, it was not my intention to dwell on the male side of the conversation, rather than the female. It’s just that it generates greater data. There was even a song in the 1990s called Firing the Surgeon General that contained many euphemisms for the male act, a recent recording of which I found here.

Finally

The Brothers of Onan and Middle East peace

Sodomy from the Broadway musical Hair

I named my pet canary Onan, because he spills his seed upon the ground. —Dorothy Parker

Wrong Premise, Right Outcome

“America has been a land of religious freedom. To many people, it seems impossible that this country could ever be anything but a defender of liberty in matters of faith.
That actually is a very dangerous view because it easily leads to complacency, assuming that what has been always will be…”


I’m not a big fan of Biblical apocalyptic writings. It’s less that I find them true or untrue and more that I see them as irrelevant. If Jesus is coming back, he said clearly that no one knows the day or time when he’ll reappear. Thus, all the speculation about this sign or that “proving” the Lord’s return, something that’s been going on for over 1900 years is, to my mind, pointless at best.

Still, there was this free magazine in one of those newspaper boxes called Signs of the Times®, which “encourages readers to lead joyful Christian lives as they await the soon return of Jesus.” The cover story of the September 2010 issue was Is the United States in Bible prophecy? by Marvin Moore.

The article concludes that the United States is the “land beast” mentioned in the books of Daniel and Revelation (read the article if you want to know what that means). The land beast is a global, end-time superpower and a Christian nation. I know others seem to think the land beast is the UN, BTW.

But here’s the stuff that piqued my interest:
if the land beast…is the United States, we can conclude that this nation’s historic separation between government and religion will end someday, because the land beast will enforce a particular form of worship…[it] will enforce its false worship with an iron fist. Anyone who refuses to receive the mark of the beast will be barred from carrying out any economic activity—he or she will not be allowed to buy or sell…
America has been a land of religious freedom. To many people, it seems impossible that this country could ever be anything but a defender of liberty in matters of faith.
That actually is a very dangerous view because it easily leads to complacency, assuming that what has been always will be… If we fail in our vigilance, the United States could very well turn on its historical principle of religious freedom.

Indeed, there is evidence that this is happening even now. I am frankly troubled by the profound hostility some Christians in America hold toward the principle of church-state separation, which is the foundation of religious freedom. Church-state separation simply means that government and religion operate in distinctive spheres, each recognizing the unique responsibilities of the other. They are separate in the sense that neither should ever control the other.

Should the United States ever abandon its commitment to the principle of church-state separation, persecution of dissenters will inevitably follow… we should defend, for as long as possible, the principle that government and religion operate in separate spheres, neither dictating the laws that govern the other.

So while I don’t necessarily subscribe to the apocalyptic premise of the piece, the conclusion that church-state separation is a good thing is a position with which I can firmly agree.
***
This is from The Onion, but I’d swear it’s true: God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

 

30-Day Challenge: Day 4 – Favorite Book

What about “real” books, books with actual sentences?

About a month before Carol and I got married, some of our friends threw us a party. We were supposed to answer a series of questions about each other. I was supposed to pick her favorite book; don’t know what I chose, but it was wrong. It was 100 Years of Solitude, which I had never heard her ever mention.

She guessed the World Almanac. Some folks declared skepticism about her pick, but it was dead-on right. It’s a book I’ve gotten every year except maybe a couple since I was 10.
Now that the computer is so ubiquitous, can’t I find the same info online? Probably most of it. But I know where to find it in this book, with a notation for the source of additional data; in some ways, THAT is more significant than the initial information. Besides, sometimes I don’t WANT to be on the computer.

Indeed I love my reference books on music, TV, movies; that’s why the former is on my list for The Giveaway (see right column until July 3, 2010).

But what about “real” books, books with actual sentences? Certainly, one of the most significant is Lying by Sissela Bok; except for a couple books on the Beatles, it’s one of the books I’ve read more than once all the way through as an adult.

Another would be the Bible, but that’s a special case. Sometimes it’s just too oblique for me. In our Bible study, one of the goals is to ascertain what the reading means for today. But there are plenty of readings, in Leviticus, e.g., that I can’t fathom., even after repeated study.

So I pick the book with the facts and figures as my favorite.

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