Bridgers Class

[williamdlongworth]

Dear Readers,

Before (or if) you go any further, I'd like you to take a moment to do something. Think of three or four of the most memorable meals you've enjoyed.

What came to mind? Perhaps a Thanksgiving dinner bounty spread over the dining room table with all the leaves put in? Maybe an anniversary dinner at a special candle-lit restaurant? Possibly even a picnic on a warm spring afternoon.

At this point I’m willing to take a risk and say that none of your memorable meals were eaten alone. And if you think a little more, part of the delight of each meal was the company you kept around the table.

Meals are communal, social acts. We eat and drink and laugh and talk together. Leon Kass, in his wonderful book The Hungry Soul, reminds us that a little basic Latin gives us a clue to what is at the heart of our meals. Our word company comes from the Latin cum panis, which literally means “with bread.” There are still many cultures around the world where having company in one’s home without food (without bread) is utterly unthinkable. The two are inseparable.

It’s hard for us in our fast-food culture to grasp the meaning of meals, food, and eating. Quite frankly, “fast food” is a bastardization of the meaning of food. How often do we go to the fast-food restaurant only to get food that we eat in the car or alone at our desks (while multi-tasking)? Talk to single men and women. One of the hardest parts of being single is eating alone. Ask them about the difficulty of cooking for one. It seems that there is something about the very nature of food that says bread should naturally be cum panis, with company.

How then should we think about the Lord’s Supper, the meal that is at the heart of Christian worship and is central to any discussion of Christian identity? For those of us in the evangelical community, this presents something of a challenge. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has really evolved into an aid to personal piety. It is a private, individual, inner experience largely focused on how it is a means of grace or blessing to me. Think of a typical evangelical communion service where worshipers sit quietly (perhaps with muted organ music floating in the background), more often than not with eyes closed, engaged in reflection and self-examination as the bread and wine are distributed.

The Kingdom of God should be populated with a bunch of bread-eaters. And not just eaters, but devourers and sharers of that most mundane, yet wonderful, food. The only thing we cannot do is make it ourselves.

Hanging around outside the bakery,
Your Friendly, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill

[williamdlongworth]

Dear Diners,

Occasionally one of the protesters makes it past the bouncer (what other diner do you know with a bouncer?). It happens like this: They dress and act the part of your typical Cultural Diner consumer; are seated and brought a menu by the too-happy server; and it happens.

The deceiver jumps on their table, brandishing a lighter and the menu. Shouting, "I can't take this anymore! This trash is killing us! I'm going to burn this place down, and I'm starting with this menu! Anyone who values their sanity, their life and their soul join me!"

Naturally, this customer is soon given the opportunity to dine outside for the evening. Inside the Diner, nothing changes, though. The hungry keep pushing their way to the trough, eager for the slop.
_______________________________________________

Disclaimer: No celebrities were harmed in the creating of this post.

I’m not encouraging anyone to wallow in the toxic waters of the celebrity culture. (For the record, I’m all in favor of Ms. Brzezinski’s impulse to stifle the Paris Hilton story, whether the theatrics were appropriate or not. It had no business leading the news on that or any other night.)

So apparently, Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC refused to report on Paris Hilton as their lead story. On air, she balks, hands the story to a co-anchor who crumples it. Later in the broadcast she tries to light the story on fire, but then ends up shredding it. You can watch the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdNcCcweL0

On the one hand, Mika is saying for the world, we refuse to follow the antics of celebrities as if this is the most important thing in our world. On the other hand, Mika seems to behave a bit like the spoiled Hilton herself by trying to burn the story on the air. So what do you think? How should Christians relate to the celebrity culture of our day? Who is hurt by an American society that gushes with excitement every time a celebrity blows her nose or lands in rehab again?


Following the antics of ordinary people, instead of the ESC (Entertainment Stupidity Complex),

Your Friendly, Neighborhood Food Critic,

~Bill

[williamdlongworth]

Dear Diners,

If you're like me, you want to get what you pay for. It's like that in the restaurants we frequent, as it is our other experiences in life. Most of the time, we do get exactly what we pay for.

For instance, when you order the Big Mac combo, large fries, and a Diet Coke: who are you kidding? That stuff is poison, and we know it. It is the poison we ordered, however.

Walk into Alfalfa's, and no matter what you order, it is likely to arrive garnished with grass and granola, etc. They advertise healthy food, and they deliver as promised. You likely know that when you order, too.

Alas, our Cultural Diner knows no such scruples. Honesty in advertising is, shall we say, not their greatest virtue. Maybe they are attempting to deceive themselves as well as us. If so, let them live in their illusions. I have my own, so Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Barbar Streisand, you can keep yours!!! Stop pretending to be one of us; or worse, one of the poor down-trodden.

__________________________________________


For the past several months, the media have been full of stories about outreach efforts to woo evangelical voters by candidates from the major political parties. The candidates have had faith forums, websites, as well as simply talking a lot about God.

There’s a place for religion in the public square, and any effort to make that bipartisan is welcome from me. But if Democrats—or Republicans—think that wooing evangelical voters is about “God talk,” they are mistaken. ­

At a recent event sponsored by Sojourners magazine, the Democratic presidential candidates described what the New York Times called their “journeys of faith.” They answered questions about “the biggest sin you’ve ever committed” and how their own faith has sustained them in difficult times. Questions I consider somewhat irrelevant to a political campaign, but clearly aimed at wooing faith voters.

In addition, in a much-commented-upon New York Times interview, Senator Clinton talked about the importance of forgiveness and how her faith was “crucial to the challenges [she] faced.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/us/politics/07clinton.html?ex=1186200000&en=1a7e8af4aca8d0c8&ei=5070

Similar things have been said by and written about senators Obama and Edwards, as well as the major Republican candidates.

I appreciate that the candidates are taking a risk when they talk about their faith: As the Times noted, there are “liberals who object to any injection of religion into politics,” and they are part of the Democratic Party’s base. As for Republicans, when they do it, it gives the media a clear shot to label them as right wing extremists.

The problem is that all of this “God talk” misses the point: what Christians want—or should want—is a candidate who shares their moral and cultural concerns, not just their religious vocabulary. A candidate may address a Hispanic audience in Spanish, but that says nothing about where he aligns with them on issues.

An example of this missing the point is a recent story in the Chicago Tribune, whose headline read “Democrats Pledge Support for Wide Access to Abortion.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-dems18jul18,1,639458.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

The very same candidates who had been appealing to Evangelical voters a few days before went before Planned Parenthood and promised to appoint judges that would uphold Roe v. Wade .

It’s difficult to imagine a position more at odds with the motivations of the very Evangelical voters they’re trying to court. Protecting the lives of unborn children has been the cornerstone of politically active Christians for the past thirty years.

It’s hard to know which is worse: that candidates think that talking about religion will make Evangelical Christians forget why they care about politics—or that they might be right.

Democrats and Republicans are suggesting that Christians set aside their concerns about the sanctity of life and preservation of the family: Indeed, the same period that saw all the stories about Democrats and religion saw stories about a “maturing” of the Evangelical vote on the Republican side.

By “maturing,” the commentators meant that Christians are willing to overlook where GOP hopefuls stand on abortion and same-sex marriage.

But if we do that, we will have forgotten why we got involved in the first place. Like the candidates, we’ll be missing the point.

As the country song says, “How about a little less talk, and a lot more action?”

How about a little truth in advertising?

Your Friendly, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill

[williamdlongworth]

Dear Readers,

By now your conscience should be clear of Thanksgiving gorgings. Let this be the first of the Yuletide deliveries to arrive and mark the beginning of the Christmas season. Well, maybe not, since Christmas trees and decorations invaded Wal-Mart even before Halloween.

It seems the end of Advent begins earlier each year. In this festive season celebrating the omnipresence of Christmas, we must wonder how our holy days have turned into holidays. Christmas has devoured Advent, gobbled it up with the turkey giblets and the goblets of seasonal ale.

Every secularized holiday tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year. Across the nation, even in many churches, Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year’s has drunk up Epiphany. Still, the disappearance of Advent seems especially disturbing–for it’s injured even the secular Christmas season: opening a hole, from Thanksgiving on, that can be filled only with fiercer, madder, and wilder attempts to anticipate Christmas.

We've let this thing get out of hand, using Christ's birthday as an excuse to shop. Instead of Advent we celebrate Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Our sacraments are red-dot sales and blue-light specials. Instead of the Gospels, we read the colorful Sunday ads. We drink up the holiday spirits and wake up with a credit-card hangover.

How can we reclaim Christmas?

Your Fiendly, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill

[williamdlongworth]

Dear Readers,

Eating should be fun. Wherever we choose to dine, food is the energy that drives our physiological machine. A necessity of course, yet a luxury in that we may consume whatever our hearts may cook up. Such nourishment keeps us alive, not only physically but many times emotionally. You might say it is the gift of life, as are the precious babies proud parents gaze at lovingly for hours. So why did the management at the Diner take one of its most popular items off the menu?

________________________________________________

Today is a bad day for me. Not just because I had a surgery both scheduled and cancelled within the space of 2 hours.

No, today is a bad day for me because it's January 22nd. You see, 14 years ago I ready and willing participant in a murder. Thankfully, my memory has wiped out the exact date, but January 22nd comes around each year and people mark it either with solemn marches or celebrations of individual liberty. Take your choice. Either way, January 22nd this year is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The most horrid decision ever handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Abortion is not, as the abortion lobby claims, something women will get over in a week or two. As beings who are created in the image of God, when we do violence to that image, when we destroy a life instead of nurturing it, it has a profound effect on our emotions, our psyche, and our souls.

Today, as we mourn the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the tens of millions of abortions that have resulted from this dreadful decision, we must recognize that there are likely many women and men among us who are silently suffering abortion grief decades after their babies' lives were snuffed out. These women and men need our compassion, and their trauma should be recognized and acknowledged by their care providers. I am testimony that men, too, suffer from the tragedy of abortion. Those of us who cannot block it out of our memories are always trying to answer the question, “What would she have been like?”

We must make sure young women, and men, know the truth: that abortion takes a human life; that there are alternatives to abortion; and that there are people who will help them through a difficult, unplanned pregnancy.

And they must be told that the notion that they will simply "get over" an abortion is a bold-faced lie. The truth is that if they walk into that abortion clinic, they may still be feeling the agony over taking their baby's life—even on their deathbed a half century later.

Your Grieving, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill

[williamdlongworth]

Dear Diners,

Ah, bumper stickers.

Driving in to work today, I saw a car with a number of bumper stickers that would seem to indicate the driver was a vegetarian. You know, the "Be kind to animals, don't eat them" type.

Among numerous "green" slogans, the bumper sticker that stood out to me was one that read: "If animals could talk, you wouldn't eat them."

I suppose that's right. Like if we lived in Narnia.

But we don't, and they can't.

If they were gifted with speech, with reason, with the ability to understand their origins, potentials, and destinies, if they were created in the image of their Maker, then certainly they could be considered the moral equivalent of man, and we would be wrong to eat them. On that point, I can theoretically empathize with the car's driver; surely, this is a compassionate, clear-thinking American we can be proud to call a fellow citizen...

However... the driver of that car also proudly displayed a bumper sticker that read: "A Pro-Choice Voter."

I wonder what position she would take on aborting baby rabbits...?

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a vegetarian friend. She said she felt squeamish about eating eggs, but she had no objection to abortion. It shows how people can hold contradictory beliefs without even thinking about it. It's almost fitting that the Narnia tales take place in a fantasy world, as fantasy is the main residence of most of these "moral" activists.

I love the Narnia books, but I sure am glad we don't live there, 'cuz fried chicken is sooooo good.

Your Friendly, Neighborhood Apatheist,

~Bill

P.S. On second thought, maybe we just need more information about the rabbits: is the rabbit daddy in the picture? would having babies interfere with momma rabbit's lifestyle?