Sunday, December 5, 2010

Christmas In Metairie



Last year I went to a Christmas lights show in New Orleans... this year it's a show in Metairie, which is a drive-through show, mostly made with little tiny lights. The LED lights don't show up the right colors on my camera, but you'll get the idea of what I saw.

Here's old Nick!

And nine tiny reindeer... actually.

And I didn't have to walk a mile for these!

Which is lucky, because tonight is cold and windy in Louisiana!

Oh! the little teddy bears... and santa in a roadster?


And I think what he said, as he drove out of sight...


Was Merry Christmas to all.. and to all... brrr! it's cold... I'm going inside.

(finally posted in JUNE, 2011)

Monday, November 22, 2010

Another Pre-Thanksgiving!

First you make the onions...

Then you serve:

Turkey
Cranberry compote
Stuffing & dressing
Gravy
Butter
Butternut Squash
Celery
Rolls
Onion & Mushroom Quiche
Creamed Onions

yum
Oh yeah, my own 'customized' pumpkin pie and sugar-free vanilla ice cream too...

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Lonely Women...

Below is an old assignment from my preaching class... It is far from perfect, but I thought I'd post it, maybe it will help someone, somewhere.

Homily Lonely Women March 9, 2009
"No one knows the blues like Lonely Women do."
These are the words of Laura Nyro, a composer and singer of the 1960s and 70s in her song "Lonely Women"
"A gal could die, without a man. And no one knows it better than, Lonely Women"
How do we honor this observation? How do these words from forty years ago resonate today?
I think they resonate all over the place.
"Blues, the blues that make the walls rush in..."
How many of you know a lonely woman? And if you know her, how do you describe her? Do you use adjectives to keep yourself safe... like "she's the crabby lady who lives next door and hates my kids" or "she's a most peculiar woman"?
Now the purpose of the homily is not to blame you for their loneliness... or put responsibility on your shoulders-- heaven knows we all have too much responsibility on our shoulders already.
The purpose, I suppose, is to spend a few minutes thinking about worth and dignity. To make a brief acquaintance with the blues and perhaps examine our automatic actions, our unthinking life, and maybe find a way to look at this shared life from a different angle-- to quote from the Broadway musical "Le Cage Aux Folles"
But I don't want to spend this time spouting lyrics... though I do have one more, one very important one to me and to my life. It's from the musical "Hair", and specifically a tune called "Easy to be Hard":
"How can people be so heartless, How can people be so cruel?" the singer asks... and then "How can people have no feelings, How can they ignore their friends?" "Easy to be proud, Easy to say no"...
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who say they care about social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend"
and she continues saying: "I need a friend"

I heard this song, and the Laura Nyro song when I was in Junior High School... and the words have stayed with me. "I need a friend".
So where do people find their worth? Where do they store up their dignity to weather the indignities of society?
Friends is one way.
I want to shift my thinking for a bit, shift to a movie called "The Full Monty". It's a movie with almost no lonely women in it, but it is full of lonely men. In fact, it is a study of male loneliness, and the blues which make the walls crush in for them.
The movie takes place in the former steel center of Sheffield, England.
Gaz is a divorced father, unemployed and living on the dole. His loneliness is reinforced by his ex wife and her new husband, who want sole custody of his son-- and the movie follows Gaz as he struggles to say "I love You" to the boy.
Dave, played by Mark Addy, is also unemployed, but still married. His struggle comes from a negative self-body-image. He believes the folks who say thin is beautiful and fat is worthless or disgusting. And he sees himself as fat.
Scrawny, mousy, Lomper is an obedient son to a disabled mother. Unlike the others, he has a job-- a lonely job guarding the closed steel mill.
In one pivotal scene we see Lomper in his car, trying to kill himself with carbon monoxide, but the car won't start... and who should wander by but ever-helpful Dave-- who helps him get the car started. After being rescued, Lomper confessess that he has no friends, and his life is worthless. Dave replies that he is Lomper's friend-- after all, he helped him try to kill himself!
Now, the movie's plot revolves around these men's desire to be Chippendales-- or rather, male strippers-- as a way to make money and pay off one of Gaz's debts.
But it's really about self respect-- a journey where they help each other to see their inherent worth. And... to see themselves as "SEXY THINGS"
It takes friends to do that.
In "Walden", Henry David Thoreau penned the line "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation", and certainly the men in The Full Monty are in that mass...
Thoreau attributes this despair to "when you are the slave-driver of yourself." He observes a wagon master taking crops to market, working all day and whipping the horses with his frustration, never thinking higher thoughts. He observes ladies "weaving toilet cushions" as a way of pretending that they are not concerned with the future... and he calls these people slaves to "the slave driver of yourself."
I don't agree that the slave driver is within. I don't agree that we all have the wisdom to get out of desperate cycles by ourselves.
I see the master in Society. The master who makes fat men and women go on diets of self-denial. The churches, states and armies who make gay men and women deny who they are in order to make a living. The abusive partner who keeps a woman pleading for respect rather than reaching out for help. All these masters are the shapers of society.
But here's the prophetic moment. The bondage can be broken, but not by those people who worry about social injustice. The bonds can be broken when someone takes your hand and says:
"Come, I need you to be my friend."

Monday, November 1, 2010

Pumpkin Party



Actually, I had two parties. Robert and Johnny couldn't make the main one, so we had a little pre-party.




And then the main party on Saturday Afternoon...


That's all for this year!


ps: I had trouble posting for a while... but now it's working again!

Friday, July 9, 2010

Well that was fun.

Graduation at last!

This was actually back in May. But like so many things, it doesn't exist until you get the photos back... this one from Starr King's photographer.



The school allows each graduate to speak for two minutes.
Here's what I said at graduation:
------
"Spirit of Life, Come unto Me
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion."

My name is Charlie, I'm just finishing up a ministerial internship in New Orleans, LA,

And I have one bit of learning I would like to share with those who are going to be ministering, where ever that may be...

And this learning has to do with compassion.

Now "Compassion for" is the usual form of compassion-- helping the poor, feeding the hungry.

But Starr King introduced us to a different paradigm, "Compassion WITH"-- the idea of being an ally. Companioning others on THEIR journey. COMPASSION WITH is an important tool for social change.

And when I took the job in New Orleans, I thought I would be present for the congregations, in a compassionate way.

What I did not realize was that there is a third compassion--
"Compassion OF"-- Being a part of a compassionate community.

THOSE WHO COME TO WORK with those in southern Louisiana learn it...

Even in OUR struggle there is joy.
Even in disaster,
YES Tears!
But also dreams,
and music,
and deliciousness.

The Compassion With keeps us separate.

Ministry, as I see it NOW, is all about compassion OF.

I AM Singing in MY heart, all the stirrings OF COMPASSION.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Always Use your Best China!

So this past Sunday I preached a sermon at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans.

The title was "Always Use Your Best China" and it was inspired by a set of tiles in the Rockridge BART station in Oakland, California.

Here are the tiles:







Do you always use your best china?

If you right-click and save the images, you'll save them full size... or right-click and "view image" to see full size.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Last week I went on a retreat in western North Carolina at a place called "The Mountain"


Yep, that's the view from the cabin's front porch.
A very magical place.

Charlie goes to Jazz Fest!



I went to day 2 of "New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival" to hear two acts...

The first was Cowboy Mouth... I've posted on them before!

The second was Simon and Garfunkel!! really.

While the tornadoes missed us... the bad weather had made the whole field muddy.

By the time S&G appeared, though, people were standing in the puddles, and the sun came out! The music was nice... they played almost entirely old covers, though one of the songs... maybe Cecelia(?) had what sounded like a Grateful Dead tune stuck in the middle of it... which was fun.
I wonder if this is the last reunion.

That's all for now.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Gay Easter Parade, French Quarter, New Orleans

Ysterday there were several Easter Parades... this was the latest one in the afternoon... the gay one!

As the crowds gathered on Bourbon Street....
Easter


First a band...
Easter

Then lots of carriages, and pickup trucks








That's it... caught some beads... some other guys caught teddy bears or teddy ducks.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Aint life in New Orleans strange?

New Orleans... what can I say?


Saturday afternoon... here come horses

And a coffin!

And mourners wearing paper bags!

It's the Ain'ts funeral... the end of a tradition of loving the Saints even though they never win anything.

So now the Ain'ts have had last rites, and are gone for ever.

Who dat?

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Last Parade of Mardi Gras!

Well, all those parades... I felt very much like an observer at Carnival... But that changed on Fat Tuesday itself.



I took part in the Saint Ann's Parade... from Marigny to the French Quarter. It was nice to be something other than an observer, and I didn't care that there were no fancy doubloons being thrown.

But first, a bit of Zulu, the parade traditionally done in blackface (sort of)





Zulu started at 8 AM... and went on for a long time. I only caught one thing... a mini-frisbee. Unlike others, this parade had a sort of tailgating aspect to it... clearly a family affair, smaller in scale, and more about community.

I also caught two cups... and promptly gave one away.

I left after a few floats to catch up with my friends Dale and Dave in Faubourg Marigny (The Marigny Suburb) just outside the French Quarter. The goal was to follow a parade of home-grown costumes. If I had known better I would have created a more elegant costume. For example:

Dave got dressed up a bit...

As did a couple at their B&B... I guess they'd be house organs then? They had a small cassette player playing Bach under their frock.


Folks were gathering in Marigny, just milling around.







this is us...








He looks super!

At some point things started to move...

I bet his name is Jack...



These women were dressed as "Air Nagin" flight attendants... hoping Mayor Nagin flies away soon.


Once in the French Quarter, there was a costume competition...


Costumes are from the various balls...
This one was from a ball called "things that have vanished"
The French Opera house burned down almost a century ago.

And K&B was the local drug store chain.

By the way, the other costume was De-gas-ga a sort of combination of lady gaga and Degas.

It was a zoo in the French Quarter!


There were lots of others in line... but the crowd was a CRUSH... so we took a few snaps and split (or actually popped out of the crowd like watermelon seeds!)


Charlie, reporting from Mardi Gras!

"Merry Christmas!"

want more? Here's a pre-K view of the parade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHg7ZUtKVsU