Quote of the weekend

[at the Fringe booth, while I was putting a temporary tattoo on a woman’s shoulder]:

“Wait, are you Allegra Lingo?”

“Uh, yep.”

“Oh my god, I just got tattooed by a famous person!”

Conversation

“I like you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s 10.15pm on the Saturday of Pride, and we’re home watching Billy Elliot while the fireworks are going off at the park, and there are all these drunk people down there partying.  But I am where I want to be.”

“I love you too.”

Hmm.

I was heading out of the Fringe office yesterday to meet Schnappi for lunch, and this guy does the usual “can I bum a smoke?”  I gave me normal response of, “sorry, it’s my last one” while my fingers grazed the whole pack in my cargo shorts.  And then he continued, “well, some Vicodin, then?”

That gave me pause.  Of all the things to ask for, Vicodin?  Is there something about a bright blue shirt and khaki cargo shorts that tips off people that “hey, there’s someone with wicked stuff in her pocket”?

I laughed to myself and kept going, and made my way over to the Xcel plaza a few blocks away.  About ten minutes later, the SAME DUDE came up to me and said, “really, are you sure you can’t spare a vicodin?”

Color me confused.

Schnappi said that if I was a drug user, I’d look like someone to go after the prescription drugs rather than the illegal.  Which is probably true.

Time for my xanax, excuse me.

Thwarted

As previously mentioned in this blog, Amy and I have been attending St. Joan’s Catholic Church in Minneapolis for about the past two months.  Not every Sunday–not quite in that habit yet.  But, of course, it’s Fringe season and we are really busy.  But nearly every week.  We really like it.  We feel welcome.  The first time we went was because I wanted to see how the church handled the controversy of having the Archidiocese tell them to uninvite a speaker due to his statements made regarding abortion and abortion politics in the 80s.  They found some loopholes and handled it well. 

This week the church, and we, were thrown another curveball.  For the past few years, St. Joan’s has led a prayer service the week of the Twin Cities Pride parade / festival to honor their GLBT constiuents.  And last week, the Archdiocese contacted St. Joan’s and told them they were not allowed to hold the service on church grounds, owing to the fact that the gay “lifestyle” goes against Catholic doctrine. 

The Star Tribune has a good article about it, if you want to read it.  Not only that, the parish has been instructed to talk all of their “pride literature” off of their website.  I’m not sure I would call giving home to a GLBT church social group and a rather good quote from the Archbishop of Baltimore “pride materials”. 

You perhaps have had to climb the mountains of prejudice and discrimination, which need leveling. Or have had to contend with the winding ways of cruel humor, attitude and ignorance, which need straightening out. Or perhaps you have had to negotiate the rough roads of verbal or physical abuse.

I lead the church community in seeking the forgiveness of our living God for the sins individually and collectively the church has committed against the gay and lesbian community. We are all children of God made in God’s image and should enjoy the dignity of being a human person. For the times we have stripped you of your human dignity, we ask God’s forgiveness. Our relationships with one another should reflect the mystery and love among the three divine persons of God….For the times we have not accepted you for who you are, we ask God’s forgiveness. We are all one human family in the world and in the church. We need each other, to affirm each other’s gifts and to support one another that everyone may have the opportunity to reach his or her potential. For the times we have deprived you of those opportunities, we seek God’s forgiveness.

–Bishop William Newman

This issue is hitting home this week.  Partly because I finally felt like I found a place I wanted to worship each week, and now rulings on high are pretty much saying that I, as a gay person, should be excluded.  Partly because this is one of the topics my show is about. 

One of the reasons I was attracted to Catholicism in the first place is due to the moments of silence built into the mass for individual reflection.  For a sect whose title, by latin definition, means “universal”, the emphasis on the individual is subtle but important.  It’s not that I don’t believe in the Catholic Doctrine.  It’s not that my religion, and how and what I choose to believe, is determined by my politics.  Nor do I think it should be.  But there are two questions which trouble me.

1. What makes the sin of homosexuality, as written about in the Bible, worse than all the other sins that we have absorbed as “normal” into our modern society?
2. Why should my sexuality, which in the long run and in my life just one small part of who I am, determine what I’m allowed to believe?

The first one is an internal question that I’ve often asked myself.  I took an Old Testament as literature class while at Kalamazoo, which was absolutley fascinating–the formation of the Bible, the different threads of authors which are readily identifiable by their writing techniques (as different as if, say the Rockstars rewrote parts of the same story and mashed ’em together.  Hey, wait a minute…that’d be fun), the meetings of church officials nearly 1000 years after the death of Christ to determine which books were “worthy” to include in the sanctified Holy Text.  Homosexuality is undeniably a sin in the Bible.  I’m not trying to argue otherwise.  But is it something that should be viewed along the lines of the Ten Commandments, or along the lines of “don’t eat meat on Fridays“?  Since in the early days of the Church there needed to be a large constituency to ensure the continuation of the faith, making sure that their followers procreated was a necessity.  It also set them apart from cultues such as ancient Greece and Rome, where homosexual relationships were, well, maybe not a norm but not uncommon.  So why, in our modern culture, haven’t we let go of the idea that being gay is a sin?  Especially when the churches espout the idea that they don’t hate gay people, just the lifestyle?  Because if a person is inherently gay, doesn’t that mean it’s in their makeup, that God made? 

Question two is one formed by externalities.  As I trolled through the comments left on the Strib article about St. Joan’s, and is something I frequently see elsewhere and also have been personally questioned on more than one occasion, is the idea that a gay person would not want to be Catholic, or Christian for that matter, because of the institutionalized hatred and non-acceptance.  Some comments:

Another reason I’m no longer a Catholic.

I have yet to understand why people stay in a place that openly and triumphantly proports to despise there lifestyle. What are these people doing participating in these organization?

As a Unitarian Universalist, I’d like to thank the aptly-named Neinstadt (“No City”) for helping boost membership in the Unitarian-Universalist Association and other liberal faiths. The Catholic Church is free to be as bigoted, medieval, and in denial about reality as it wishes. Each time it rejects another portion of its ministry the Catholic Church encourages its members to question and explore their beliefs, which is one of the principles of Unitarian-Universalism. The downside of course is that this behavior is hurtful, and does not reflect what Jesus himself would have done. But then, Jesus would not have rejected an autistic boy, or endorsed living in a gilded palace in Italy, either, so the Catholic Church has already drifted far from its foundations. So thanks, Archbishop Nienstedt! We of the UUA will welcome your former parishoners with open arms…

Why should one part of me dictate what church I’m allowed to belong to?  I feel at home in Catholicism.  The rituals, the history (for good and for bad), the full belly after participating in the Eucharist (seriously.  I don’t understand it but that wafer and shot can last me the rest of the day.  It’s weird).  I don’t want to leave.  I don’t want to be a universalist.  I want to write myself into the fabric of this universal story.  In fact, I did write myself into this fabric when I converted.

I don’t expect the attitudes to change overnight, especially in an election year, when there’s such a fight by the religious right to keep some semblance of power.  When Benedict is the pope.  When Neinstadt is our Archbishop in the Twin Cities.

I’m not leaving the church. 

I just got here.

 

Overheard while temping

I’m working at a university in Minneapolis today, at the Front Desk.  A woman came in with her three or four year old son for an appointment, and ended up waiting for quite awhile.  At first it was really cute–after a few minutes he turned to his mom and said, “So, Mom, how was your weekend last night?”  Her answer was [while smiling and a slight smile at the cuteness her genetics produced] “My weekend last night?  It was good, because I was with you.  How was your weekend last night?”  He parroted back the same line. 

And then, it stopped being cute.  A few minutes later he suddenly hit his mom on top of the head and said, “Douchebag!”

The mom looked at shock at her kid and said, “where did you hear that?” 

“Daddy,” he said.  He calls me that when he hits me on the head when you’re not around.  And he calls you that too.”

“But that doesn’t mean it’s a nice thing to do.  I know Daddy calls me that, but he shouldn’t call you that.  I’m going to have a long talk with Daddy the next time I see him.”

“Yeah.  Daddy needs a lot of time outs.”

The woman was here to enroll in the Marriage and Family Therapy master’s program.

Huh.

I discovered on Thursday night that I like radishes.

Thanks Schnappi.

Really?

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve posted?  Jeesh.  That’s no way for a writer to act.

But my time is splintered right now between a few different things, and blogging fell away.

The show is coming along nicely.  I have one section left to pull together, and I can call it done.  Well, I have a feeling it’s going to be too long, so next comes the careful shaping and editing to leave the arch of the show intact.  And attempt not to lose any funny lines.  So as an apology for a lack of blogging, how about one section of the show?

Thoughts are greatly appreciated.

And there’s a good chance that a majority of the first half of this section could be lobbed off.

After the jump, section three of Tipping the Bucket.

Today’s ponderance

Schnappi was putting dinner on the table last night, and suddenly asked the question “do you think it’s a detriment to our society that we don’t have both a formal and informal tense in our language”?

I should note that a question of this sorts, seemingly out of nowhere, is not unusual for either of us.  We often walk home from work together, and while talking about our day (me in the arts, she as an observer of policy making and politics) something will cause an axiom to fire in the other’s brain a couple blocks from home.

The line of reasoning for last night’s question was that she was wondering what I wanted to drink, and was going to ask in French.  ’cause it’s funny.  ’cause I wouldn’t understand what she said.  But as she stood in the kitchen, she could only remember the formal (which I’ve already forgotten), and not the informal, which is obviously what would be appropriate as it was five thirty, I was in a robe and pyjamas and she in a tshirt.

I already knew where she fell on this.  In fact, she devoted a blog entry to informality in dress at the theatre not even a month ago.

So I thought about it.  And decided the answer was “yes”.  To have no distinction between informal and formal in our language puts everyone on the same level.  You have no recourse to address your superiors or those which demand respect in words other than what you use to the person sitting next to you on the couch eating Clam Chowder on a cold, wet, rainy day and swearing exuberantly at the semi-final French open match between Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova while the cats and dog sit patiently at your feet, flicking both of your with their tails while waiting for you to drop something off your spoon.

For example.

And to put everyone on the same level not only wipes away formality, but also intimacy.  You could say “do you like that?” in reference to a publication you’ve put together for your boss, or…I won’t finish that sentence.

In German, interestingly enough, the singular formal is the same as the plural informal, thereby linguistically equating a mass of one’s peers to one superior. 

Maybe that’s why lolspeak has taken off with its own sentence structure.  Or texting colloquialisms which tend to drive the grammar hound in me crazy. 

I don’t know the answer to these questions.  We were just thinking about it.

And a master’s thesis called “You or Tu and Vous: exploring the decline of formality in American Society through Sociological Linguistics“ would be really interesting to write.

Food for thought

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/06/walker/index.html

And yes, I will expound upon this soon in conjunction with the promised blog entry below. 

Except Amy posted that last comment after getting her friend’s opinion, so it really doesn’t count as number 10.

What’s so historical?

This is an appeal to y’all: I want to know why you think Obama’s nomination is so “historical”. 

And as soon as I get ten comments, I’ll make my own argument and extrapolate on what I think of this article.