Punch out hunger’s lights!

My grandad got into fights. I suppose there’s a little of that in me because sometimes I’d like to think problems just need a good punch in the face to solve them. Unfortunately I can’t think of a single problem that could really be solved that way. Lucky for me (and all of us) there’s some other ways to do things. Yesterday at the church I chose to revisit, the entire congregation was invited to write letters to reps in congress asking them to find room in the budget for programs that reduce hunger. We actually all did this together after the service was over. Then someone collected all the letters and mailed them in a group. I wrote one. And I visited this website that has info and a petition you can sign:

http://www.bread.org/ol/2013/

In the middle of the second paragraph there is text you can click to sign the petition.

In a nation as advanced as ours, hunger is a stupid problem to still have. We should fix it, so we can move on and get to fixing some other problems.

The plan for now

So, thirty churches seems an arbitrary number to stop, take stock and breathe for a little while. Also, I happen to be in the midst of a project at home that will be taking a significant amount of time. For the next month (at least) I’ll take it easy, visit some repeat churches, and write my thoughts. Expect posts to be shorter for a while. I do have a date with a second Easter this year in early May, so you can all look forward to that. Hopefully I’ll be back to regular new church visits very soon. I’ve got some exciting ones on the way, including one apparently in Spanish, so do stay tuned for eventual awesomeness.

Random Saints- the stylites

I borrowed a book out of the library about saints. I looked up the name Daniel first to see if any interesting saints share his name. There was one; St Daniel the Stylite. Sadly, stylite does NOT mean fashion obsessed. It means he lived on a pole. As in, he was up there all the time. For years.

Now, Daniel wasn’t the first guy to do this or even the first saint to do it. So here’s what I learned about the phenom.:
Saints (and other wackys I suppose) sometimes decided to leave the world and escape by climbing a pillar and living atop it. Usually only a small platform topped the pillar and they would literally stay up there for a matter of years. The less resilient ones would build a small hut up there as protection from the elements, but most just had the platform on which they stood for hours at a time. And everything I’ve read suggests they really never came down. I’m not entirely sure how they slept up there, maybe they trained to meditate without moving, or were insomniacs slowly going crazy, I don’t know. I even looked up modern pole sitting to see if that would give any insight. Apparently one modern pole-sitter lodged his thumbs into holes in the pole and took naps that way, using the pressure on his thumbs to right himself as he swayed. I think this sounds like a great way to break you thumbs, but what do I know?

Also disconcerting to think about is the call of nature. Ok you’re on a pole, what do you do? I read that boys would send up baskets of food for the stylites, so you know they ate. My best guess here for afterwards is they raised and lowered a chamber pot. One modern pole sitter used a long tube to the ground. I can’t imagine any way for them to bathe up there and I’m sorry to say they had no Purell, so stylites must have been absolutely filthy somewhat grungy.

You’d think people would keep away from these weirdos, but it was just the opposite. Folks would come far and wide to ask the Saint’s advice, blessing, and prayer. Sometimes the Saint would perform a miracle. Often he would preach from atop his pillar and sometimes he would dictate letters. Why did people flock to see these guys anyway? Curiosity? Piety? Honestly I can’t think of a single example of something even remotely similar in today’s world. Make your own conclusions; I find this one strange beyond description.

Besides Daniel, here are some other stylites:
Saint Simeon the Elder
Saint Simeon the Younger
Saint Alypius
Saint Luke the Younger

Church #30, Third Reformed Church Albany

Date: 4/7/13

Church name/type: Third Reformed Church, Albany, RCA

Pastor: The sermon was given by a Preaching Elder named Pete Pagerey. He was visiting from First Church in Albany. Not sure who the usual pastor is.

Style of worship: Formal worship structure, mildly casual

Overall Impression: Um, old vibe? Otherwise not much impression at all.

Thoughts: I didn’t get much of a strong vibe from this church. I mean it wasn’t that great, wasn’t that bad. The parking lot is at the back of the church and a fence stops you from walking around to the front door. The back door leads to a hall and rooms attached to the church, but it wasn’t too hard finding the worship space from there. The parishioners seem to have chit-chat time both before and after service in an adjoining room. I didn’t feel like trying the before-service variety, so I just collected my thoughts and waited for things to start. I like the program pamphlet at this place. It gave hymn numbers for each song and even the short responses. If I were a regular member I’m sure I’d have the responses by heart. The fact that they were included makes me feel more welcome as a guest.

The regular pastor was off, so we listened to an Elder (a pastor, I think) borrowed from another church. He did an interesting children’s time about bird calls. We need to learn about different bird’s calls, but god knows our voices without having to look them up in some way. Moving on, the sermon was about Thomas the apostle and his famous reaction to Jesus’ return while Thomas was absent. Thomas so often gets a bad rap. But maybe he shouldn’t. We heard that Thomas was lacking in faith and this was because of ’emotional’ hesitance. Thomas was upset because he couldn’t believe that Jesus would a) leave and then b) come back. So Jesus was nice enough to reappear just for him.

Honestly the message about Thomas lost me somewhere. I think the point was supposed to be -let’s not pick on poor Thomas. I dig that, but the reason was unclear. Are we supposed to see Jesus as someone who indulges us when we don’t believe ’emotionally’? If so, why doesn’t he appear to all of us? What gives Thomas the right to the preferential treatment? Or is Jesus only corporeal for limited time, like he’s running out of…I don’t know, ectoplasm or something? The message confused me enough that I started daydreaming again about the stained glass windows. They are so green and so plain. Why? Don’t stained glass windows usually have pictures? Are we supposed to imagine our own? I don’t mind!

The last thing I will add is the demographic in this church tended older. Those I chatted with after service were probably more than a decade my senior. They assured me their church was diverse, but mostly they looked old and European. The young family was also the black family, so that’s not alot. On the other hand the church was not well filled. One family constitutes a significant chunk if the number is low enough. I guess it’s a bit disappointing either way.

Their website: Needs fixing! There is a link for ‘worship’ that leads to an error message. If I want service times and don’t see them on the main page, I would click the word worship. Having to dig around on a partly broken website for when to show up is not a good first impression.

JC Superstar

So I like the album Jesus Christ Superstar alot. At this point it’s the only Easter tradition I repeat every year. I was listening to it all holy week, culminating in divvying up the parts and singing the entire thing through with an atheist friend who also loves the musical. It’s basically a passion play disguised as a rock opera. Or a rock opera disguised as a passion play. Musically I find the thing pretty outstanding. Spiritually speaking its a good way to connect me to the story of Easter.

You get to feel the rawness of the emotions coming from Jesus as he struggles with his impending destiny, the anger of Pontius Pilate as he deals with this nuisance of a ‘king’ who won’t even defend himself in the face of death, and the openness of Mary Magdalene as she encounters a man who is complicated far beyond the usual men she has dealings with.
I could muse at length upon her story. The bible doesn’t say much about her; popular cultural belief is that she is a reformed prostitute. JC Superstar hints at the latter and that is how I tend to think of her. I wonder about her untold background. How did she come to her profession? Was it a choice or out of necessity? Does she long for a way out or is she using her self-employment as a shred of independence which most women would have no access to? Obviously she is important to Jesus, perhaps closer than the other apostles. Considering Jesus in more human terms, it’s possible he was in love with her. She seems to wonder so herself. But they do a good job making Jesus an enigma. Does he love her or is he on another plane she cannot quite touch?

JC Superstar does an incredible job fleshing out the story of Jesus and Judas. Written off in the gospels as merely a thief, Superstar paints Judas as a worrier, concerned that Jesus is going to doom them all. He sees the way the priests take notice of Jesus-rabble-rouser and he fears for all their lives. He seems to believe turning Jesus in will result in a slap on the wrist for him. He is shocked that they plan to have him killed. The Judas of JC Superstar is convinced he’s doing the best thing available to him. It’s interesting how this means Judas could actually be the closest one to Jesus. I seem to remember this being the plot of the gnostic gospel of Judas- that Judas is really Jesus’ closest friend. In the gnostic version of the story Judas is the only one who understands that Jesus needs to die so he can rise again. This makes Judas a more heroic figure. In JC Superstar he is more tragic, not understanding the terrible consequences turning Jesus in would have. You really feel for Judas, wondering if it all could’ve happened some other way that wouldn’t have destroyed him.

But my favorite interactions by far are those between Jesus and Pilate. Pilate is intensely angry, perhaps because the Jewish leaders put him in such an impossible spot by demanding that he punish someone whose crime is iffy at best. Perhaps Jesus’ sense of calm determination is too much for Pilate to fathom and pushes his frustration to the limit. Pilate has some of the slickest, suavest, and evilest lines in the musical. He is charmingly terrible, almost as if he’s toying with Jesus, until he snaps and shouts out “Die if you want to, you misguided martyr!” Pilate’s part is always the best to sing; first because it is musically awesome, and second because it allows one to act very nasty and not actually cause harm. It gives me something of an excuse to feed impulses I might have to be mean. But hey, I’m doing it for Holy Week so God has to be cool with it!

I think pretending to be Pilate also brings us back to our humanity- that same humanity that Jesus took onto himself. That same humanity couldn’t handle Jesus’ ideas and had him put to death. Sometimes I think Jesus died because of our sins, simply in that our impulses to kill and have power were the reasons he died. That’s in all of us. Jesus died to show us it’s time to take that away. We can stop being terrible to each other and we can help each other more than necessary. I think that’s a decent way of looking at it.