Plagiarism scandal du jour

We learn to speak by mimicking the sounds we hear: when we get the response we like, we make that sound again. We learn to write the same way. Good, precocious writers easily glom on to the trendy expressions and attitudes, mimicking them and putting them together in variations that appeal to the public. When a writer takes those standard, trendy modes of expression and pushes them just a teeny bit forward, we are astonished and pleased. We call that genius. Writers who push them more than a teeny step forward, are generally called Gertrude Stein. And no one reads her.

So did Kaavya Viswanathan borrow from Megan F. McCafferty? Yes. Did she intend to or know she did it? Very likely, not. Frankly, once again, my disdain falls largely upon the greed driven publishers, who latch hungrily onto a hot commodity like a Harvard-going young woman of color hailing from foreign shores (so much more appealing than a Jersey girl with an Irish name…) and rush to press, with zero quality control.

Doc Bubbles is trying to restrain her snarky laughter. Really.

Cool Bumper Sticker of the Day

Immortality or bust.

the forest for the trees

Spring has come full force to Pixieville. Every day, new trees are blossoming. Even in the unkempt churchyard of St. Jonah's (motto: "yes, Lord, angry enough to die" (Jonah 4:9)) the magnolia tree is in magnificent pink array. Those of us who toil here are uplifted as we walk to and fro, and see it from the window. In honor of next Sunday's being Earth Day, excuse me, Creation Sunday, the group of those dedicated to the environment here at St. Jonah's have set up a big triptych display--right in front of the window.

Do I even have to add any commentary?

Update on Heretic v. Heretic

As I'm sure you know by now, Dan Brown was exonerated of the charges that he unfairly reworked a single source, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, to create the Da Vinci Code. I should join in with all the free speech crowd who thinks this is a key victory: after all, what Dan Brown did, they argue, is what scholars do, transform and rework the ideas of others. Do I only want to see him fall because he totally relied on the work of one book and didn't do his own research, and instead, promulgated these half-baked theories to a gullible public? Not really... Do I want the world to learn the lesson I try to teach my students about BOTH citing sources, and checking on their reliability? Well, yes. And, I guess, it seems a little different from a free speech issue, when person 2 gets rich off the ideas that person 1 published first, but wasn't such a marketing whiz. But that, as we say, is capitalism.

Christ Among the Partisans

Garry Wills writes: "THERE is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. "---this piece articulates just what I have been brooding over lately. Read it!

Driving While Elderly

Sorry, but it should be the one allowable case for profiling: geezers behind the wheel. I just stepped out on this lovely spring morning, to run a few errands, and as I am crossing (with the flashing pedestrian beeping that it is safe) first, a women in a smallish car makes a left turn, pulling into, not a parking space, but onto the sidewalk in front of me. She is looking over her shoulder at the car close behind her, a blue station wagon, I guess trying to guide it to park as well? Not sure, really, but moments later BANG, this second car succeeds, not in pulling into the parking space, but into the tree beside it. Lady in first car (containing two kids in back seat) goes to see the old man who sits in car. The tree, for some reason, only let loose one branch, and that branch is now swinging overhead, attached by either a wire or some leftover decoration (I have been noticing that the trees seem to have some unnatural sparkle in the sunlight). Willie the parking meter man happens to be across the street, and he calls it in. Moments later, there is a firetruck, an ambulance, and a police car. All because, as a passerby says, "he forget which one was the brake and which was the gas." Seems to be likely: he was confused by unfamiliar surroundings. The woman, who was speaking Spanish, had either a DC or a diplomat license plate. Why do old people insist on driving? My Dad, the other day, referred to the fact that "until recently" he had a car (and thus, had trouble finding his way from the Visitor's parking lot, where I parked to the front door of his residence). It has been at least 3 years since he totalled it and I basically forbade him to get a new one which he (then a mere 84) wanted to do. More on his other sensible choices (like ignoring some evil looking black spots on his skin and not seeing the oncologist whom he was supposed to see for regular check ups until they had been there over three months -- at least if you can believe his sense of time, which how can you? I can't trust my own!) And now the blue station wagon is being carted off by a tow truck. Let us pray the geezer learns that the time is upon him for dispensing with driving.

Can it be?

Is the state of the world not as bleak and hopeless as I tend to think? Discovery of the website Arabs for Israel does seem to offer a crack in the dark picture that I hold, a slight chink of light. Of course, one cannot tell how many people are behind this site, and share its ideals, or have visited it, but I would like to believe that there are more Arabs and Muslims who have the reasoning powers to realize that the Jews are not behind all of their problems, than than the louder, angrier voices would have us believe.

Heretic v. Heretic

As most of my learned readers already know, Dan Brown did not originate the ideas that he spun into a best seller with The Da Vinci Code; he merely packaged them perfectly so that they had maximum appeal for a world eager to believe the worst about organized Christianity and devoid of the minimum critical skills needed to discern the difference between fantastic speculation and verifiable fact. But I have to say, I find it rather humorous to read about their expensive little squak fest over who deserves credit for originating these ideas. Haven't they even read that book they are so eager to dismiss, the part where it said: "There is nothing new under the sun..."

Good DaVinci Code debunking article.
This one isn't even from a Christian perspective, but it traces the history of the fraud from which BOTH writers borrow.

What they bleep do they bleeping know?

I had heard the film, “What the Bleep do we know” was a mind-blowing experience, tho’ I wasn’t clear on whether it was a dramatic film or a documentary. It turns out to be the worst of both worlds: a sort of simplistic-story, poorl- acted, interspersed-with-silly-animations dramatic film, intercut with unidentified scientists spouting, not so much any kind of scientific information, but rather their opinions about the implications of their scientific theories, and what they suggest to them about the falseness of Christian religious ideas, about which they have at best a rudimentary knowledge. Should a theologian with no scientific training approach them to pontificate on quantum theory, they would be just as disgusted as I am at their dismissals of the God of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. It appears they have never heard the proposition God is Love but instead have based their perceptions of Christianity on the spoutings of television preachers. And so they can assure us in good authority that God (understood in some new, quantum way) cannot possibly concern himself with the “sins” (the word is uttered with contempt) of individuals or of the entire planet. As if it never occurred to the Jews or the Christians that the universe was vast, and that God was vaster still and that what we believe is therefore all the more paradoxical than, it seems, some minds can imagine. The opening seconds of the film set the scene “In the beginning was the Void” (we enjoy appropriating religious ideas) “and it was teeming with possibility” (I’m sorry, did you say “Void” and “teeming” in the same sentence?! Once a Void teems with anything it is not a Void!---sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!)

The scientific terms and theories are presented as mantras and never elucidated or explained in any way. They seem to think that just repeating the terms, showing pictures of people who may be scientists, and having funny little animated characters impersonate quarks will convince people of all the lovely propositions they learned once upon a time in their EST weekends. “You create your own reality.” The movie can be reduced to a bumper sticker: "because of quantum theory, we create reality.” There is not a single proposition –scientific or philosophical--that is argued or illustrated in any way. One of the scientists (uh, since they are never identified, or credentialed, I cannot say more than, one of the younger, unbearded male scientists) stated that when he began his day by “creating it” “strange things” happened. He neither clarified what this “creating” of his day entailed (thinking about it? planning it? some kind of chanting it into existence that we poor bleeps can’t be entrusted to know?) nor what any of the startling occurrences might be: did red lights turn green for him, as I have heard happens to many evangelicals who like to pray while driving?

Instead of going into any detail about Quantum Theory or even subatomic particles, they content themselves with animations and illustrations. I have read The Dancing Wu Li Masters, so I have some ideas about these things, and enjoy hearing them described in the simplified terms I can understand (no math! please!). The NOVA episode “The Elegant Universe” did an excellent job of presenting string theory in all its strange inexplicability. And all these ideas make my jaw drop in wonder and awe and make me no less sure that there is an intelligence underlying and infusing all that we think of as matter, whether it be dark matter, or the infinite reaches of empty space. Advice: watch this episode of NOVA and skip the facile gnosticism cloaked as scientific discovery of What the Bleep Do We Know.

Another translation of namaste

"I see some good in you, you broken piece of turd!"
--my very wise yoga teacher's gloss on the familiar greeting.

Who was that man?

The other day a man stopped in to the church office while I was eating my lunch.

"You look like you're enjoying that sandwich."

"I am."

"You are lucky to have it."

"Yes, I am grateful for it."

He asked to use the phone and I said yes. I am oftentimes wary of people who come in asking for such favors. Sometimes, they can overstay their welcomes, or make me feel uncomfortable. But this man gave off a very calm, friendly feeling. He was a middle-aged African-American, wearing a knit cap over grayish white dreadlocks. He said he needed to use the phone, to help a friend of his get a phone installed, which seemed like an effort in keeping with our ministry. As he called the phone company, I could not help overhearing as he spoke in reasonable tones, gathering information for his friend, an older woman in Amherst. I realized that part of the reason I trusted him was because he spoke with an educated accent.

He told me afterwards that he was passing through. He always visited this lady on his way from Nantucket, where he lived, to Montpelier, where he had been invited to design a solar powered library. "How interesting," I said, and then he told me that the last time he was in our church, he had been visiting James Baldwin, who had been a visiting professor at the University at Pixieville. Having once been a denizen of the halls of the Englishland, I vaguely remembered having seen some posters dating to that era and knew he had spent some time here. He went on about how some other famous person found him and Baldwin talking and he said "oh, of course you know each other." I knew this to be shameless name dropping, but interesting nevertheless. I'm a sucker for famous writer stories. The man went on his way, and I expected not to see him again.

A day or two later, out of the corner of my eye, while driving through the grocery parking lot, I saw a homeless man moving large boxes towards some undeveloped land. I couldn't really see who it was, since I was in motion.

But then, the next day, I saw him again. Hard to miss him: he was wearing bright yellow pants, and that knit cap. It was the same man. How strange. Is he just a crazy homeless person? Is this how he travels from Nantucket to Montpelier? Is he really a solar architect? Whose reality is this?

Paradox

While driving through the orange tunnel that is tree-lined Dulcet Street at this time of year (actually, the autumn colors seem preternaturally prolonged this year: warmth and color so late into the season must be going to my head) I had a thought. The paradox of being alive in this world is that we are simultaneously healing and dying. Because we are always dying, at least once we've stopped growing up. We are not necessarily always healing, but we can be, if we seek to be. So healing is not opposed to dying. Hmmm.

This must be what happens when you make it to Centering Prayer group the previous day.

Be the Seaweed

My yoga teacher likes to use the image of kelp, floating in the waves, to describe how she wants us to flow through the sun salutation vinyasa, carried on our breath, moving into and letting go of each posture. I have gone snorkeling a couple times (never scuba diving, I don’t like any activity that involves dependence on devices for sustenance of life—yeah, ask me sometime to describe my one experience rock-climbing—and no, I do not like planes) and I have seen the motion of the oceanic plant life. Actually, the time near Puerta Vallarta, the waves were pretty strong, and the sight of all that vegetable motion rather frightened me: it was like an eerie hurricane. But I do invoke those visual images when my teacher instructs us to be like kelp. So perhaps that is why she asked me, last class, if I would mind the rest of the class looking at me as I went through a sun salutation. Apparently, I was doing a good job of being kelp. (Amazing the things the ego can take pride in: gold star kelp girl!). I was able to stay focused on being kelp while they watched me and the reason I bring this up is not to boast, but because I think my bodily connection to flow connected with a recent spiritual release. My prayer life has not been terribly active since I’ve been teaching two courses on weekends, in addition to my “day” job, but they just ended, and now I only have one online course to teach so time has just opened up for me and I’ve been able to try to return to my prayer life. And there was another thing. An email not sent. Strange liberating thing, that was. Someone had sent a church related email that irritated me, and I wrote a rather lengthy response to it, but sent it first to my co-worker to ask if she thought it was okay. She never got back to me, and I had gotten my annoyance out of my system, and the whole thing seemed pointless and petty and it was so easy to say presto its gone poof. No anger, no assertion, no self. Instead, I prayed blessings upon Mr. Functional Alcoholic, go-getter head of the social hobnobbing committee. And that, in turn, blessed me. And so, you see, it was easy to be seaweed!

And then, as I was walking to work after yoga, I saw a car parked, with a Be the Rain bumper sticker on it. I had seen those in the past, but not recently. The best I could get to with google is that it refers to a Neil Young lyric, which is about saving the planet. If you know more about this motto, please tell me.

A beautiful day in Pixieville, U.S.A.

Doc Bubbles: It’s such a beautiful afternoon in Pixieville. I went for a walk at lunch, and had a lovely meditation.
Questioner: you call it meditation. Did you close your eyes?
Doc Bubbles: no, I couldn’t bear to, the day was so stunning. I sat by the Rotary Fountain that, in all its decrepit glory, set out four streams of water from four furry mouths. Sparrows came and splashed and drank from the top, then flew down and warmed their bellies on the hot concrete. I thanked God for them.
Questioner: Did you sit still?
Doc Bubbles: I shifted my position a few times, and moved to get out of the sun. It is still that warm, in October! And the sky brilliant blue! But I did focus on my breathing, I noticed my lungs filling with air and letting it go, while the water droplets splashed in the fountain.
Questioner: Did you find silence, at least?
Doc Bubbles: I heard it all and thought:
Little boy with fighter jets in each hand, zooming in on the fountain, Praise ye the Lord!
Backup-warning-beeps of great delivery truck, Praise ye the Lord!
Maple tree starting to turn, only letting one careful leaf drop with each breeze, Praise ye the Lord!
Old Tercel, with bumper stickers proclaiming an opinion on every issue arisen in the last 10 years, Praise ye the Lord!
Questioner: yet you call this meditation? This is just a kind of fair weather practice, that depends on the, well, fair weather.
Doc Bubbles: maybe it’s centering prayer
Questioner: maybe not
Doc Bubbles: It felt so good.
Questioner: meditation rises above feelings, does not get entangled in them, or dependent. What will you do on a gray day?
Doc Bubbles: so I shouldn’t rejoice in this most glorious day?
Questioner: rejoice if you want to, but don’t call it meditation or centering prayer.
Bubbles: just prayer?
Questioner: Doc Bubbles prayer, I’d say.
Doc Bubbles: Oh well.

Another thing cats are good for:

is a morning laugh. I am standing by the fridge getting out the milk for my coffee. It's 5:30 a.m. (when I get up to go to my morning yoga class--aren't I amazing?!) Silly Wigglestein walks in meowing for brekkers with a yellow post-it note flapping at the end of his bushy tail. I'm sorry, it's early, this just cracks me up. I stand there holding my belly (which hurts when I laugh because of this "core" class I took on Monday) and laughing and Silly W. stares at me for a couple minutes, his post-it flag gently waving and turns away to go the living room until I have learned to control myself. Apparently kitties do not like being laughed at when they are not doing something funny ON PURPOSE and don't even know what it is so they can't pretend it is ON PURPOSE.

I'm St. Francis

You are Saint Francis of Assisi! You don't care
what you look like (or smell like) as long as
you can live simply and help the poor. You
should be receiving your stigmata any day now.


Which Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hmmm, so that's what that itching on my palms has been. Thought it was just poison ivy.

Good Samaritanitis

A terrible side effect of Hurricane Katrina is affecting Western Massachusetts: a disease of Good Samaritinitis. Also called ineffectual helper’s syndrome, it is a result of two factors: one is the basically good desire to reach out to one’s neighbor and in this regard, its sufferers are to be commended (and are definitely healthier than those who imagine that God’s wrath is in some way evident in this catastrophe. How did their Bibles manage not to include Luke 13?) What some people don’t recognize however is the insidious secondary cause of this disease which has to do with our innate fascination with horror: the same thing that makes us slow down and stare at accidents, read obituaries etc. we want to be close, to see, to understand how it would feel because deep down we are very very glad that it didn’t happen to us, and we are very very afraid that someday it will. It is this secondary factor that causes the victims of Good Samaritinitis to start tripping over one another in their desire to be helpful. One of the worst symptoms is the sudden need to run around frantically forming committees. They collect objects and pile them up (New Englanders love to have something to do with the stuff they don't need, other than throw it out.) Now the simple, obvious thing to do if you want to help is to send money to the relief organizations that have experience and infrastructure to help: The Red Cross and Episcopal Relief and Development are my top picks. Even if it’s a five dollar check, that is $5 more they will have to distribute supplies that they are getting at wholesale rates. But no, people would rather go to the store, buy $5 worth of supplies at retail rates, drop them off at the church where we will have to package them and then spend money to have them shipped out to the Diocese of Mississippi. One woman spoke of the joy she felt buying diapers. Might this possibly have more to do with wishing her children were not grown than with really helping people in need? Have they suddenly forgotten that it takes fuel to ship materials 2000 miles, fuel that is now three times more expensive than it has been?

Funny thing is, I’m usually so cynical about the local folks that come around to the church asking for handouts, but suddenly I’m their advocate. “Hey, remember, we got homeless people here too.” You can help them without shipping stuff 2000 miles. They’re still just as destitute as ever. Just not as glamorous.

Processing Brother Roger's death

I had been composing a Lectionary Meditation the other day, when I came across the news about Brother Roger's martyrdom. I had to delete my lame little draft and dwell on this horror awhile. I've never been to Taize, nor did I know him personally, so I should be like the rest of those around me here at Church, not terribly affected by yet another piece of bad news. Perhaps it's because I had recently read the book he co-wrote with Mother Theresa, Prayer: Seeking the Heart of God. and I love to sing the Taize chants we use at one of the services at our church that I have an awareness of Brother Roger's presence that had been in the world, a presence that brought some of Christ's love to so many. And he was slaughtered, like a lamb before the altar... there is always something more shocking about a murder in a church, like Romero, like Thomas a Becket, the real blood spilt upon the altar... And I see in this act the underlying reality that the demonic recoils from the face of love and seeks to extinguish it, love revealing our own unworthiness too sharply. Unlike many other progressive Christians, I think there are evil beings, and I think they are growing very active. Check out Pat Robertson's latest. Claiming to be a Christian and promulgating assassination!!?? God help us.

Lectionary Meditation: meek and what?

http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/1Proper15.htm

I know a lot of people who want to do what they can to make the earth a more peaceful, loving place. They believe that is what they are called, as Christians, to do, and I can't argue with that. But I wonder sometimes about the image of Jesus they evoke. These people want to ignore all the parables and actions of Jesus (like the one yesterday, in which he cursed a fig tree and whipped some people he didn't approve of, or today, where he mentions that the vineyard is going to be destroyed) that don't fit in with their image of Jesus, which seems to come from that Victorian ideal, Jesus "meek and mild." The right-wing Christians go too far in the opposite direction, and are all too eager to point out all the judgmental prophecies of destruction and damnation to those who don't understand God in the same way as they do. But I don't actually know too many people like that in real life (Thanks Be to God) and I do know the other kind, so it's their idolatry I want to talk about. It's idolatry when you create a God you're comfortable with, instead of opening yourself to a God who can't be narrowly defined. I just wonder how they've come up with this meek and mild ideal: it isn't a God after their own image, since none of them, that I know, are quite so sweet and passive. And the Jesus that's coming out of these readings from Mark, seems to be growing aware of his mission, an awareness that is concurrent with a growing anger at the way things are, anger that they aren't listening to him, anger that the vineyard is not operating the way it was intended.

Watermelons rock!

Doc Bubbles has a new diet: the watermelon diet! Now that you can buy truly seedless watermelons, they have become the perfect fruit. Juicy, cooling and filling. The best part, for me, is that they are high in potassium, (http://www.news-medical.net/?id=12199) and since I am trying to control my high blood pressure without all those icky drugs, that is important. I am sorry that stereotypical associations have made some people afraid to chomp into those juicy watermelons (especially since African-Americans are prone to high-blood pressure and like me can benefit from eating them). Eat watermelons freely everyone! Yum!