Jack Twist

Your comments are too kind. It was a combination of homoerotic and sadistic pornography of violence - a constant in many Gibson movies, including his newest. This thread was interesting with the intervention of a fundamentalist, what was that about.

One of the many things that I love about liturgy - and thank you for your beautiful post - is that it involves me as a worshipper in the communication between God and the the assembled congregation. Worship is not a show, an intellectual head trip where we are to wallow in our ability to engage in verbal word play which passes for the profund. It is to communicate - through Word and Sacrament - in the ongoing conversation between God and God's people. In non liturgical events, one can starve to death waiting for nourishment. Liturgy, no matter how well or poorly done, allows at least a moment to reach transcendent communication.

Since Jesus actually rejected an eye for an eye, and said a few other things in Matthew 5-7 that are appropriate, what else is there to say on that? As for the death penelty - and one of my first cousins was shot to death - picture Jesus hanging on the cross - picture Jesus being pro death penalty - I can't - if I as a Christian bear the name of someone who was wrongfully executed, I can't support executing anyone else.

from the new issue of New Yorker excerpt: If you are inclined to think that the unjustly awarded election of 2000 led to one of the worst Presidencies of this or any other era, it is not easy to look at Al Gore. He is the living reminder of all that might not have happened in the past six years (and of what might still happen in the coming two). Contrary to Ralph Nader’s credo that there was no real difference between the major parties, it is close to inconceivable that the country and the world would not be in far better shape had Gore been allowed to assume the office that a plurality of voters wished him to have. One can imagine him as an intelligent and decent President, capable of making serious decisions and explaining them in the language of a confident adult. another excerpt: But in the context of the larger political moment, the current darkness, Gore can be forgiven his miscues and vanities. It is past time to recognize that, over a long career, his policy judgment and his moral judgment alike have been admirable and acute. Gore has been right about global warming since holding the first congressional hearing on the topic, twenty-six years ago. He was right about the role of the Internet, right about the need to reform welfare and cut the federal deficit, right about confronting Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo. Since September 11th, he has been right about constitutional abuse, right about warrantless domestic spying, and right about the calamity of sanctioned torture. And in the case of Iraq, both before the invasion and after, he was right—courageously right—to distrust as fatally flawed the political and moral good faith, operational competence, and strategic wisdom of the Bush Administration. the whole article http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/arti...ta_talk_remnick OZONE MAN Issue of 2006-04-24 Posted 2006-04-17 David Remnick The imminence of catastrophic global warming may be a subject far from the ever-drifting mind of President Bush—whose eschatological preoccupations privilege Armageddon over the Flood—but it is of growing concern to the rest of humanity. Climate change is even having its mass-entertainment moment. “Ice Age: The Meltdown”—featuring Ellie the computer-animated mammoth and the bottomless voice of Queen Latifah—has taken in more than a hundred million dollars at the box office in two weeks. On the same theme, but with distinctly less animation, “An Inconvenient Truth,” starring Al Gore (playing the role of Al Gore, itinerant lecturer), is coming to a theatre near you around Memorial Day. Log on to Fandango. Reserve some seats. Bring the family. It shouldn’t be missed. No kidding. “An Inconvenient Truth” is not likely to displace the boffo numbers of “Ice Age” in Variety’s weekly grosses. It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scène. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone—or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room—for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. “An Inconvenient Truth” is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important. The catch, of course, is that the audience-of-one that most urgently needs to see the film and take it to heart—namely, the man who beat Gore in the courts six years ago—does not much believe in science or, for that matter, in any information that disturbs his prejudices, his fantasies, or his sleep. Inconvenient truths are precisely what this White House is structured to avoid and deny. In the 1992 campaign against Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush mocked Gore as “ozone man” and claimed, “This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme we’ll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American.” In the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush cracked that Gore “likes electric cars. He just doesn’t like making electricity.” The younger Bush, a classic schoolyard bully with a contempt for intellect, demanded that Gore “explain what he meant by some of the things” in his 1992 book, “Earth in the Balance”—and then unashamedly admitted that he had never read it. A book that the President did eventually read and endorse is a pulp science-fiction novel: “State of Fear,” by Michael Crichton. Bush was so excited by the story, which pictures global warming as a hoax perpetrated by power-mad environmentalists, that he invited the author to the Oval Office. In “Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush,” Fred Barnes, the Fox News commentator, reveals that the President and Crichton “talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement.” The visit, Barnes adds, “was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more.” As President, Bush has made fantasy a guide to policy. He has scorned the Kyoto agreement on global warming (a pact that Gore helped broker as Vice-President); he has neutered the Environmental Protection Agency; he has failed to act decisively on America’s fuel-efficiency standards even as the European Union, Japan, and China have tightened theirs. He has filled his Administration with people like Philip A. Cooney, who, in 2001, left the American Petroleum Institute, the umbrella lobby for the oil industry, to become chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he repeatedly edited government documents so as to question the link between fuel emissions and climate change. In 2005, when Cooney left the White House (this time for a job with ExxonMobil), Dana Perino, a White House spokesperson, told the Times, “Phil Cooney did a great job.” A heckuva job, one might say. Last week, Gore dropped by a Broadway screening room to introduce a preview of “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dressed in casual but non-earth-tone clothes, he gave a brief, friendly greeting. If you are inclined to think that the unjustly awarded election of 2000 led to one of the worst Presidencies of this or any other era, it is not easy to look at Al Gore. He is the living reminder of all that might not have happened in the past six years (and of what might still happen in the coming two). Contrary to Ralph Nader’s credo that there was no real difference between the major parties, it is close to inconceivable that the country and the world would not be in far better shape had Gore been allowed to assume the office that a plurality of voters wished him to have. One can imagine him as an intelligent and decent President, capable of making serious decisions and explaining them in the language of a confident adult. Imagining that alternative history is hard to bear, which is why Gore always has the courtesy, in his many speeches, and at the start of “An Inconvenient Truth,” to deflect that discomfort with a joke: “Hello, I’m Al Gore and I used to be the next President of the United States.” Those inclined to be irritated by Gore all over again will not be entirely disappointed by “An Inconvenient Truth.” It can be argued that at times the film becomes “Death of a Salesman,” with Gore as global warming’s Willy Loman, wheeling his bag down one more airport walkway. There are some awkward jokes, a silly cartoon, a few self-regarding sequences, and, now and then, echoes of the cringe-making moments in his old campaign speeches when personal tragedy was put to questionable use. (To illustrate the need to change one’s mind when hard reality intrudes, he recalls helping his father farm tobacco as a youth and then his sister’s death from lung cancer.) But in the context of the larger political moment, the current darkness, Gore can be forgiven his miscues and vanities. It is past time to recognize that, over a long career, his policy judgment and his moral judgment alike have been admirable and acute. Gore has been right about global warming since holding the first congressional hearing on the topic, twenty-six years ago. He was right about the role of the Internet, right about the need to reform welfare and cut the federal deficit, right about confronting Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo. Since September 11th, he has been right about constitutional abuse, right about warrantless domestic spying, and right about the calamity of sanctioned torture. And in the case of Iraq, both before the invasion and after, he was right—courageously right—to distrust as fatally flawed the political and moral good faith, operational competence, and strategic wisdom of the Bush Administration. In the 2000 campaign, Gore was cautious, self-censoring, and in the thrall of his political consultants. He was even cautious about his passion, the environment. That caution, some of his critics think, may have cost him Florida, where he was reluctant to speak out on the construction of an ecologically disastrous airport in the middle of the Everglades and Biscayne National Parks. But since the election––especially since emerging from an understandable period of reticence and rebalancing—Gore has played a noble role in public life. It’s hardly to Gore’s discredit that many conservative commentators have watched his emotionally charged speeches and pronounced him unhinged. (“It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again,” the columnist and former psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer wrote after one such oration.) It may be that Gore really has lost his taste for electoral politics, and that, no matter what turn the polls and events take, an Al-versus-Hillary psychodrama in 2008 is not going to happen. There is no substitute for Presidential power, but Gore is now playing a unique role in public life. He is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it.

who mumbles in latin? It is sad that ;iturgical worship is so misundrstood, and condemned. The treasure of the Church is what it passes down from generation to generation for continual reformation. I suggest that if every day people sang the Magnifcat daily (perhaps Morning Prayers...) ot would have more impact that any words not authord by the Spirit through the Church (the ^s are for the chanting, one long note, thre short notes, found in Litheran and UCC hymnals, know a few tones and anythign cvan be sung and I love sing the song of my God) "My soul proclaims the greatness ^of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in ^God my Savior, who has ^looked with favor on this ^lowly servant. From now on all ^generations will ^call me blessed; the Almighty One has done great ^things for me, and holy ^is God's name. God has mercy on ^those who fear him in every ^generation. God has shown the strength ^of his arm; God has scattered the proud in ^their conceit. God has cast down the mighty ^from their thrones, and has lifted ^up the lowly; God has filled the hungry ^with good things, and the rich God has sent ^away empty. God has come to the help of his ^servant Israel, for God has remembered the prom^ise of mercy, the promise God made ^to our ancestors, to Abraham and Sarah and their chil^dren forever." Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

not to give offense, which I do, and don;t mean to - but one of the problems facing Christianity in America is our very parochialism. I once styopped ina Christian bookstore and asked if they had anything by Bonhoeffer. I was told no, that it was a Chrstian bookstore. William Sloan Coffin was one of the giants of our age and no small potatoes in the news for much of his career. An excellent book to start with is Credo. Another problem is, in my opinion, 16th century battles. I think sounds more like a quote from the battle between Frankfurt and Starsbourg durng Mary Tudor's era than the churches of today. The Church is always in need of reform, not the condemnation and judgment of which it is accused. Liturgy is simply the words of Scriptures used by the people to involve the people in worship. I find non liturgical worship too often bordering on putting on a show and far too much staked on a sermon a if worship is for an intllectual discourse rather than the communal gathering of the people of God. Pietism was a reaction to cold worship practices - and opened again the way to a heart felt sense of worship. Between something that someone thinks up and the rich treasure of worship that has been preserved for the Church by the Church, attested to through the generations with ever reforming reflection on our own time and place, liturgy is a way to focus on the essentials, on the Word of God for the day. Anyhing can be cold and sterile. Iconclasm should have by now gone out of style. I am always amused that in my yoga classes we have many movements for centering outselves - but some of those same people reject the use of liturgical body language to do the same thing, center ourself, and not in yoga but in God. Liturgy is also dialogue, and involvement of the people in the worship experience. And it speaks when our words cannot. To ignore these tools whch the Spirit has given to us is to hurt our own selves as we cut off our ties with the faith community through the generations.

Excerpted from "William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience," by Warren Goldstein Between the early 1960s and the end of the 20th century, William Sloane Coffin Jr. was, after Martin Luther King Jr., the most influential liberal Protestant in America. The qualifiers are important. Protestants constituted a majority of American Christians during this period, but only by combining liberal and conservative denominations. The conservative Billy Graham, for instance, had almost unbroken access to the White House during this entire period and preached to many millions in revivals and on television across the United States. A host of right-wing radio and television evangelists have also had large and regular audiences. During this time, also, Martin Luther King Jr. dominated the liberal religious landscape for a dozen years by leading the greatest movement of his era and achieving unanticipated preeminence. Never rising to King’s level of influence, Coffin’s effect remained more varied and diffuse, and less momentous. He preached nothing comparable to King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, for example. Neither, of course, did any other minister in the twentieth century. But the sheer force of Coffin’s personality, his deceptively simple condensations of Christianity, his invariably ebullient, often witty, example, were felt intensely by--depending on the occasion--dozens, hundreds, thousands, or (on TV) even millions of Americans. Neither a theologian nor a denominational executive, Coffin ought not to be compared with his fellow liberals John Bennett and Robert McAfee Brown, or Abraham Joshua Heschel, Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, or the Presbyterian Eugene Carson Blake. His controversial public stands at Yale University and at Riverside Church, his television appearances, and his frequent national press attention from the early 1960s through the 1980s all made him a household word--indeed a religious celebrity--like none of these colleagues. The closest parallels to Coffin may be those other flamboyant religious figures of the period: Daniel and Philip Berrigan. The Berrigans were willing to follow their God down nearly any path, dramatically attacking the war machine and creating a mystique that fed the sixties’ appetite for "authentic" action. As a result, they drew so much attention to their own personal "witness" that many, even in the antiwar movement, found their example off-putting. By surrounding themselves with other Catholics, and by speaking a relatively impermeable language, the Berrigans showed little interest in the ecumenical movement in American religion that sparked so much clergy involvement in civil rights and the antiwar movement. Finally, while they had many admirers, they had relatively few followers. Coffin’s similarity to the Berrigans lay in his eagerness to stake out risky political positions grounded in a clear extrapolation of Christian faith and in his willingness to make his own actions the subject of controversy. His effort to send medical supplies to North Vietnam, for example, appeared to be a publicity-seeking kick in the teeth to the families of American soldiers then facing danger in Vietnam. But Coffin used the occasion gladly to explain to critics the fundamental, unimpeachable Christian principles on which it was based. Similarly, in 1979 Coffin celebrated Christmas with the American hostages in Iran because observing Christmas with captives was a more important Christian act than worrying that the anti-American government of Iran might be using him. He sought situations that would force people to rethink their assumptions regarding war and human community. Coffin consistently used his position in the heart of the American establishment to raise questions that people could answer without feeling they had to go to jail. And if he could not lead others, Coffin had little interest in an issue. He never heard the call to martyrdom. As he saw it, the biblical prophets were called to name and seek redress for the sinfulness and affliction of their people--not wander in the wilderness: to speak the word of God, to risk censure but not martyrdom. Moreover, while never abandoning his own Christianity, Coffin preached to Jews as well as gentiles at Yale and elsewhere. Profoundly influenced by the ecumenical spirit of American religious activism in the early 1960s, Coffin lived in an ecumenical world, relied on ecumenical audiences, and worked on political issues in an ecumenical manner. While it shocked some Riverside Church members when Coffin hired a Jew to run the Disarmament Program, he himself gave the question no thought at all. Deeply affected by Heschel (and later by the Rabbi Marshall Meyer), and drawn above all to the Old Testament prophets (and Paul in the New Testament), Coffin preached a more open theology than his Catholic counterparts. His language invited listeners into the world of his belief--it appeared not to pose tests that most mortals would fail. Jews, by and large, did not respond emotionally to the language of Catholic radicalism, with its emphasis on witness, its monastic flavor, its rituals steeped in blood. A surprising number could respond to the morally charged language of Niebuhrian prophetic Protestant liberalism, perhaps because Niebuhr himself preferred what he called the emotional Hebraic-prophetic roots of Christianity. Like Martin Luther King Jr., Coffin did not remain fully in the postwar Niebuhrian tragic sensibility. He either followed or paralleled King’s turn toward a modern Social Gospel, combining Niebuhr’s skepticism about human goodness with Gandhi’s insistence on the transforming power of love. Coffin used Niebuhr as critique--of sentimentality, of self-righteousness, of pride--but thought and felt more like King and St. Paul when it came to love. In practice, for Coffin, that meant he preached the glories of a large God whose power he celebrated and praised (as he said over and over, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done"). The gap between this relatively distant God and suffering, sinful humanity could be bridged only by love. That was a version of Christianity to which Catholics and Jews could relate easily; many, Jews in particular, found Coffin’s preaching and religious advocacy not only congenial, but also moving and powerful. Precisely because Coffin could represent his Christianity in such ecumenical terms, he was gradually able to claim the role--previously held by Henry Ward Beecher in the 19th century and Walter Rauschenbusch, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the 20th--not only of liberal Protestant preacher, but of liberal preacher to the nation. As such, Coffin was the liberal counterpart to Billy Graham and, from the 1970s on, the true successor to Martin Luther King Jr.

One of my difficulties with what gets discussed on this site is the separation from the Church, from the life of the Church -- discussions seem devoid of any concept of liturgy, of Christian spirituality rooted in the liturgical riches of the Church, of what the call of the Gospel is, the call of the whole of the Scriptures, as opposed to the words of trendy current gurus and rock musicians and William Sloan Coffin has died - on a baseball board (a baseball baord of all places!) where I post, the most hardened of heart paused to pay tribute to this giant of our times for his sincerity and the depth of his convictions ... on another church list his passing was noted instantly with remembrances of the brave, courageous, witness that this man has given to us -- today leaving Good Friday services NPR was playing an extended iterview with Rev Coffin discussing the death of his son and such clear, cogent, faith centered teachings washed over me so I had to pull over and listen rather than drive and here... silence. For the love of Christ, do some google research on this man, make a point to read his recent book Credo (published by Westminster John Know, found on Amaxon, etc.), and let us recall and discuss someone - and more so what he taught us - since he lived the way that people here claim to wish to do.

may God spare us John McCain he is anti choice, he has been a huge cheerleader and supporter for all of Bush's economic programs and wherever you find Bush you find McCain rolling back taxes for the rich, slashing programs for the poor McCain tosses you a cookie and offers an anti torture bill, Bush signs and says he doesn't have to abide by it, and McCain has noting - everyone has done their PR work about a year ago the New Yorker ran a very revealing article on McCain in which among other things he pronounces his affinity for the very conservative - he is anti chocie, anti gay rights, anti programs for the poor, pro tax cuts for the rich, has never done a thing much for minorities in this country and was right there when the money was being passed out in the Keating 5 scandal. Had McCain - Bush's warm up act on stages all across the country last fall - really wanted to do something new, he would have joined with Kerry on a fusion unity ticket to oust Bush. Instead, this man gavce you four more years of Bush so he could have his shot at the top job. That he palces ambition over country - just say no to John McCain. Because when push comes to shove, he will say no to you.

Not yet. I do not generally see movies in theaters, maybe 2x a year. Will I enjoy the movie as much if I read the book first? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> see the movie. read the story. they both are brilliant and don't worry about anything but missing the movie on the large screen in a threatre with other people and reading the story by yourself - in any order, but do it soon.

now has anyone seen the movie other than me (5 times as of tonight) or ready Annie Proulx's short story (about 50 times for me as of yesterday, but then I started in 1997)?

and in the UCC Association that I belong to, overheard at a recent meeting of the Church and Ministry Committee, "we already have four of them."

I apologise for my bad typing in prior posts and it is too bad there is no edit function to edit one's own posts to correct such typos, even though Invision chat software offers such a feature at no charge I am not trying to hit up the UCC to which I belong although (and hence the logo in my sig) I do not feel that the local or national scene is so glowing - there are local churches leaving the UCC around here because of the stance of gay marriage, and there are only a handful of local congregations in our association where I think anyone gay would be comfortable I am reflecting that it is philosophically ok to be gay in some people's minds, those people yet prhaps very uncomfortable with it all - at a recent O&A meeting in my congregation on eo fht most affirming of straight folks mentioned his uncomfortableness with two men kissing and the way he said it, he was really uncomfortable - in 2004 we saw anti gay measures passed in every state where it was on the ballot, and by healthy majorities - who voted for that - call it "pro family" and "defense of marriage" and that is not even the issue, the issue was a chance to attack gays and look how well it did - where was the church? where were progressive Christians? notably silent and hence my question by the way, I am one person - couldn't decide to use Jack's name or Ennis' name so I used both

No, not at all. That is my personal statement in my sig. I don't expect the UCC to be financing any Hollywood movie. I am asking a lot of things. One of them is a lot of folks say they are against discrimiunation against gays and lesbians and are yet very uncomfortable in the presence of two gay folks ho,love each other. Is it all a mental thing, or are people, especially incldung people ehre whoi proclaim themselves progressives, able to accept that, say, two men can kiss and yet eb fear of violence against them ebcause they do so. Have you read the book, seen the movie?

I am wondering what discussion might ensue on \(1) Anne Prolux's short story (first published in the New Yorker in 1997, now avalable in a novellette or in the collected Wyoming Stories) and the Ang Lee movie - what comments would be as Christians, in the Church, in response to these works