Violent Video Games … for Christians?

Filed Under pop culture, rants, religion | 4 Comments

I am utterly gobsmacked. What disgusts me even more than the idea of killing “for Christ” (or playing at being the antiChrist) is the horrendous tint of green washing over the whole thing. Church as an Industry. I have no problem with SAHMs selling stationery out of their homes, Christian bookstores, and the like. What horrifies me is the commodification of Christianity, and the conversion by consumerism approach some people are taking to it. It’s more than disappointing; it’s grotesque. I wonder how successful this game will be.

Left Behind Games

The comments to the article are worth reading, as well, including the one by Truth999, who offers a rebuttal.

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May

31

What is Your Good News?

Filed Under anecdotes, race, uuism | 2 Comments

I was re-reading Stephen’s two recent posts on the abysmal state of British Unitarian church membership just now, and thinking once again on “what is the answer?” led me to remember this:

Sitting in a car with a young man I’d met at a bus stop. We became friends. He spoke to me because he wanted to share with me. He was from Florida and his parents were Haitian. He denied that he was observing a “religion”- - he called it history and knowledge. Essentially, he was a black Hebrew, and he wanted me to know that I was one of God’s chosen people. He read the Bible vigorously, and pointed out many passages to me. I told him about Unitarian Universalism and explained that I could not accept his religion as I don’t believe any one particular people are “chosen.”

He told me how he attends Hebrew/Israelite school on weekends, and ministers whenever he can. He abstained from alcohol, drugs, sexual relations, gambling and other vices. As a person, he was honest and open hearted. He and his brothers in faith visited prisons and reservations, forming relationships with black, hispanic and indigenous (mostly) men, who were lacking hope and self-worth - who felt they had no future in this world.

In the midst of spirited debate one day, I had just gone on for five minutes about humanism and UUism. He listened to me intently, but after a pause, he shook his head and said to me, “But I don’t understand. What is your Good News?”

I couldn’t answer him at the time. He was offering me a communication of salvation and God’s love. What was I offering to him as a Unitarian Universalist? Since then I’ve thought about this often, and I have a better idea of what I’d say today if he were to ask me again. Can UUism be a healing balm to those whose lives are desperate, lonely or underprivileged? How?

By the way, I had to tell my friend that contrary to my physical appearance, I was not among the saved. His beliefs stated that Israelite status was based on one’s paternal line (opposite of the Jewish practice). My paternal line goes back to China, not Africa - and Asians are not among the Israelites. Interestingly, he refused to believe me.

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May

31

Is There a UU Theology?

Filed Under quotes, religion, spiritual practice, uuism | 1 Comment

“Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other [non Christian] religion, really. There’s no orthodoxy as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like.”

Karen Armstrong quotes Hyam Maccoby in her book, The Spiral Staircase. Help me out here, folks. Is this what UUism is trying to get at? And if so, why is not having a creed such a big deal for us? What are UUs talking about when they refer to a specifically UU theology? The conversation between Karen and Hyam continues.

“No official theology?” I repeated stupidly. “None at all? How can you be religious without a set of ideas - about God, salvation, and so on - as a basis?” “We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy,” Hyam replied calmly, wiping his mouth and brushing a few crumbs off the table. “‘Right practice’ rather than ‘right belief.’ That’s all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it’s not important in the way you think. It’s just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. We Jews don’t bother much about what we believe. We just do it instead.”

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May

30

I Renounced the Blessed Face

Filed Under books, from the heart, local, quotes, solitude, spiritual practice | Leave a Comment

I am currently reading Karen Armstrong’s memoir, The Spiral Staircase (see sidebar for link), and it is deeply moving me. Although this book is about her life after seven years in a Catholic convent, so many details about her transition into the secular world are familiar to me. So many things.

Like so many of Tennyson’s people, I too longed to join in the vibrant life that was going on all around me, but found myself compelled to withdraw by forces that I did not understand.

I remember clearly the awkwardness, the loneliness, the dreadful sensation of having nothing to do with the world, mental anguish … the disembodiment of one’s spirit.

Interestingly, I have had spiritual experiences in Catholic sacred spaces, and I do not know why. Armstrong writes that several years after leaving the convent, she had still never had a “consolation” - never heard God speak to her. Does it make sense to say that I don’t believe in “God” and yet believe some voice did speak to me more than once in those crumbling churches and empty sanctuaries? What was it that spoke to me?

Yesterday I visited one of my favorite places in Portland, The Grotto. I went with a friend who was visiting from out of town, but normally I go by myself. It is more than just a park. It is a place of devotion.

I’ve long felt the need for a new devotion. I miss that aspect of being religious; however, I must be careful. I don’t want to become some type of A-holic, possessed to endlessly consume and acquire more and more.

(photo by Elandria; statue at the Grotto. 2006)

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May

28

Jose Saramago

Filed Under books, people | 3 Comments

By the way, courtesy of Wikipedia (a great example of the power of the people), a brief biography of superb writer, Jose Saramago. Despite the article’s statement that he is a “self-described pessimist,” I find his books to be hopeful! Then again, maybe I am one of those pathetic people who finds joy in the acceptance of (not acquiescence to) life’s puzzles and difficulties.

Excerpt:

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998 …. He was in his mid-fifties before he won the acclaim of an international audience. It was the publication in 1988 of his Baltasar and Blimunda that first brought him to the attention of an English-speaking readership. This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award. Saramago has been a member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969, as well as an atheist and self-described pessimist - his positions have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. José Saramago’s novels often deal with fantastic scenarios and situations such as the one in his 1986 novel, The Stone Raft, where the Iberian Peninsula breaks from the rest of Europe and begins sailing around the Atlantic. In his 1995 novel, Blindness, an entire unnamed country is stricken with a mysterious plague, or “white blindess”. In Saramago’s 1984 Novel, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym survives for a year after the poet himself dies. With these highly imaginative themes, Saramago succinctly deals with the most serious of subject matter with boundless wit and keen insight. He sprinkles many quirky segues and asides into his sparsely punctuated, but richly decorated narrative thread. His greatest asset as an author is his empathy of the human condition and the isolative nature of contemporary urban life. In 2002 he stated “What is happening in Palestine is a crime which we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz.” His characters struggle with their need to connect with one another, form relationships, bond as a community, and their need for individuality, to find meaning and dignity outside of political/economic structures. Harold Bloom has considered José Saramago the “most gifted novelist alive in the world today”.