Back and Forth

I've not been in the blogging mood lately...

My life during the last three years has been a constant nervous mess as I've gone back and forth on discernment, and I'm as sick (and increasingly bored) of going through it as you are of reading about it.

For an update in the process though, I've realized that I'm finally at peace about whatever happens with ordination. For the last month I've been thinking that I'd rather not deal with the cost that comes along with ordination, and now I'm back around to thinking it might be worth it. In any case, what happens happens.

I've decided that I'm going to be honest regardless. Generally the priest's role has involved a lot of pious lie-telling, and I'm going to avoid that--even if it means I won't be ordained. We'll see how that plays out with the community, but if I'm going to be a priest, I'd like to at least be an honest priest.

So, from here out, to hell with trying to convince people that I measure up, and to hell with pretending I'm a Christian in a sense that I'm really not.

Capitol Hill Religion: For the Jew, the Italian and the Red Head Gay

Last week, I put up this post about religion on Capitol Hill in Seattle, hinting that I'd be posting again about what I think religion should look like here. Having thought about it a bit, I've come to realize that that whole endeavor is a little bit silly. Capitol Hill is a sampler platter of culture, and religion is really just culture that's been sanctified by magic hands and holy potlucks.

The fact is that I'm glad that there are a bunch of different groups that have organized the varieties of religious experience on the hill, and it's stupid to try to distill that into one "should" of religion here. That might be obvious to some, but honestly I think that ultimately that's what a lot of religious leader types aim for--at least those coming from a Christian perspective, which I can speak for somewhat authoritatively. As an individual, at best I think what you can say about the "should" of religion on Capitol Hill is that you have to hold to it pretty loosely. You have to approach things from a generally pluralist perspective if you want to be able to stay sane in a culture that is as mix and match as this one. It's not surprising that you meet a lot of cafeteria religion types around here. For faith communities, my guess is that the best you can do is try to fill a niche. The Hill for Jesus is great, as long as you don't mean the whole Hill.

As a member of a religious community, this is a difficult tension to keep. I'm a St. Mark's Episcopalian, and despite my aspirations to religious leadership, I'm generally personally non-committal on religious suggestions that go beyond "be good" and "love people". However, I've also got an interest in seeing my community continue to survive and thrive, and that sort of saccharine religiosity generally doesn't go far enough to be appealing. We're a healthy community in terms of population and resources, but we have to figure out how to continue to be so. Because there just aren't very many Episcopalians out there anymore, it's not exactly clear how to do that. Being reflective of the culture is important, and we've done that pretty well in adopting an aggressive position on social justice issues and inter-religious dialogue and cooperation. My feeling is that people on the Hill, in all of their diversity, have a generally positive view of the St. Mark's community, which is a good thing I suppose. (See The Stranger review of their worship here: It's number 29.) We've also been aggressively gay-friendly, which goes a long way in our neighborhood. Despite it's recent troubles, St. Mark's is actually probably in a more stable position than any other church in the city besides Mars Hill. Go figure.

(On MTV's old show The State, there was a sketch called "The Jew, the Italian and the Red Head Gay" which I was going to use to preface this post. However, apparently they haven't finished putting everything that has ever happened up on the internet, so I couldn't find video. Here's the script though. Thanks for the transcription whoever's site this is)

The Jew, The Italian, and The Red Head Gay
David (Jew), Ken (Italian) and Kevin (Red head Gay): The Jew, the Italian and the Red Head Gay, we all live together on Avenue A, we have zany adventures from day to day.

David: The Jew!

Ken: The Italian!

Kevin: And the Red Head Gay!

David: Come on Ken, it's the end of the month. We need the money for the rent, where's the money?

Ken: Oh, I'm sorry Dave, I spent it all on pasta. I'm gonna make a big tomato sauce.

Kevin: Oh, I would help you with that Ken, but I'm busy picking out these pretty curtain patterns for the apartment.

David: Fine, I'm gonna go get some bagels, I guess.

Kevin: Okay. Toodleoo schnookums!

Ken: All right Dave, Ariverderchi!

Ken, David, and Kevin: The Jew, the Italian and the Red Head Gay, we all live together on Avenue A, we each see the world in our own way.

David: The Jew!

Ken: The Italian!

Gay: And the Red--Head--ha--Gaaaaaaaaaay!!!

(great 70's disco music)

Whole Cast in ridiculous costumes: The Red Head Gaaaay, the red head gaaaay, the red head gaaaaaay. The red head gay!

Do you ever get the feeling that we've already gone too far?

Apparently the oceans have already just about hit their limits on CO2 absorption, and the Seattle Times reported today that oceanlife-killing acid water is approaching our shores 100 years earlier than scheduled.

Please email if you know of any investors who would be interested in supporting my Thunderdome venture in the deserts of Eastern Washington.

Relatively Faithful Review of the Film "Prince Caspian"

Being a youth minister, I get all kinds of crap in my email and snail mail about these religious movies that the corporations want churches to promote. I usually resist, but this weekend I caved and took the group to see Prince Caspian. What a crock! Don't get me wrong, the movie was pretty good, but here's the story line: good Narnians get in a big fight with bad humans, and lots of people kill each other in fight scenes that can't decide whether they're trying to be graphic or funny. After a few beheadings and humorous murders performed by mice, the Jesus figure (Aslan) comes and kills all the bad (Spaniard?) humans for the Narnians. Thanks Disney for a helpful and nuanced Christian allegory! I'm glad you got my dollars and the dollars of countless other youth group teens around the country. Now I have to figure out how to communicate the idea that Christianity really isn't a crusader religion.

(In an interesting side note, the opening scene to the movie was filmed at Cathedral Cove in the Catlins in New Zealand. I saw it and immediately said "Hey, I know where that is"! You South Island Kiwis will undoubtedly know the spot as well.)

T&A Beyond Oyster Dome

Here are some photos from Oyster Dome, near Anacortes, WA. Angel and I went hiking there on Saturday.


Apparently our hike was a short section of the Pacific Northwest Trail, which I didn't know existed, but sounds big. Here's Angel "before". Have you noticed that photos don't capture hill grade well? This was the first view we saw, over the San Juan Islands and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
This is another shot from a little higher up.



And four more from "the dome" itself. It's apparently made entirely of fossilized oysters. Not really. It is however about a two and a half hour walk (straight) up. I'd tell you what the islands in the pictures are, but I don't know. Anacortes is in there somewhere, as is San Juan Island and Orcas Island, and some other little islands. If you click for a large view, you should be able to see the Olympic Mountains in the background very faintly. Here's a posed picture of Angel "after". She was tired, but in this photo she's just pretending.

Popular attractions...

This blog continues to get hits coming from folks Googling "short shorts on men".

I beg to differ sir. I'm pretty sure Emilio Estevez was not in "Red Dawn"

Well, tonight I WAS planning on going to a little indie theater over by OSU to watch Battle Royale which, if you've never seen it, is awesome. I find myself running short on time however and I don't think I'll be able to make it. I suppose missing it isn't that big of a deal; I've seen it before and I'd have to drive across town at 11 PM to watch it by myself. The theater was probably going to be full of fat nerdy otaku anyway and I can do without that.

When it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to make the start time I decided I better just stay in and work on getting some things done around the house. In order to accomplish these goals I found that I was going to need some Krazy Glue, epoxy putty and an X-Acto knife. To make a long story short I drove around for two hours looking for these things and wound up returning home with the Krazy Glue, a pound of hamburger (extra lean) and Poltergeist and Red Dawn on DVD.

When I left my apartment I had every intention of only getting the glue, putty, and X-Acto knife. But, much to my chagrin, every store that would potentially sell these three things closes at 8 PM on Saturdays. I finally found myself at Wal-Mart and, of course, all they had was the Krazy Glue. Frustrated and out of stores to check I decided to juts go ahead and get the glue - the other items could wait until tomorrow. So I grabbed the glue and headed to the front of the store to check out. When I got to the front of the store the lines for the registers were all at least six people long and there were only four registers open. I guess I should have expected as much. Aside from incompetent employees the only other thing you can always expect from Wal-Mart is too few open registers during peak business hours.

Rather than wait in a long line (which I hate almost as much as Sean Hannity) I decided to browse around the store for a while until the lines died down. In retrospect I probably should have just waited in line because when I "just browse" I usually wind up making impulse purchases. Tonight proved to be no exception.

I started my browsing in electronics where I perused all the fancy HD tvs I'll never be able to afford. When I got sick of that I made my way over to the $5 DVD display which, of course, was over-run by pro-wrestling fans, their screaming children and Mexicans. I've had a pretty short fuse the last several days because I haven't been smoking and I found myself getting increasingly agitated with the unwashed masses gathered around the cheap DVDs. All I really wanted to do was check out the special features on the Joe Dirt disc but Cooter, Jolene and their little kid, let's call him "Couldn't Afford An Abortion," kept getting in my way.

Frustrated, I decided to move over to the $9 DVD rack - the upper middle class neighborhood of DVD sections. Now I wasn't intending to actually buy anything but a little voice inside my head kept saying, "Come on Shayne, do you really WANT to stand in that big long line just to buy one tiny tube of Krazy Glue?" At first I fought it but it's persistence won out. If I couldn't waste money on cigarettes I was damn sure going to waste it on something else. At first I was going to get The Protector but of course they were sold out. Then I noticed they had the special edition of Red Dawn for $9 and it was settled. Call me sentimental but I'll always have a place in my heart for this movie. I don't know if it's the Reagan-era anti-Commie propaganda or the sub-Brat Pack cast but I love Red Dawn. I snatched it up quickly and then arbitrarily decided to get Poltergeist as well.

At this point I had built up a powerful hunger and remembered I had Manwich sauce at home but no hamburger. Being that I fancy myself a burly man's man I felt that I would be doing myself a disservice by not fixing a delicious pan full of hamburger and bland tasting BBQ sauce. So off to the food department I went to score some delicious steroid laced Wal-Mart beef.

At this point I was pretty much fed up with Wal-Mart and their damn smiley face logos and I decided it was time to make my escape. I found the shortest line (only 5 people in it!) and claimed my lot, much like early settlers in the West must have done. I placed all my items out on the belt and waited patiently for the cashier to get to me. After about a minute the guy standing behind me noticed I was buying Red Dawn and said, "Man, Red Dawn, I haven't seen that movie in years."

Being an anti-social douche I tried to blow him off and just said, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." This wasn't enough though. He proceeded to tell me how awesome it was and how unlikely it would be for Russians to actually invade the mid-West.

"It's not like Pearl Harbor man. We have radar and shit. You couldn't just parachute into America without being noticed" he said grinning at his proficiency for identifying glaring plot holes in films.

He was right of course. A Russian invasion of America is pretty unlikely, even during the dark ages of the 1980s. But still, I'm not going to let something like "reality" stand in the way of me enjoying a perfectly good action movie. My sensibilities had been offended and I had to respond to his allegations of "unrealism." (Is that a word?)

"Well, the Soviets WERE a formidable adversary during The Cold War. It's true that they couldn't get a Hind-D attack chopper over the border let alone an entire army but that doesn't mean the Red Menace wasn't an ever present threat to national security. I think Red Dawn really just served as a mouth piece for what a lot of Americas feared in the 80s...all out war."

I actually said that to him too. I wasn't serious of course but I was pretty sure he wasn't going to pick up on my sarcasm at this point in our "conversation." After I had finished my abridged treatise on Red Dawn and Cold War era paranoia I expected him to just pipe down but he didn't. Instead he began telling me how great Emilio Estevez was in the movie. I told him that E Money (that's what I call him) wasn't in Red Dawn but his brother Charlie Sheen was.

"No way, I'm pretty sure they were both in it," he said.

"No, I'm sure E Dog wasn't in Red Dawn. See, he's not even listed here in the credits," I said pointing to my soon-to-be-purchased DVD. "You must be thinking of Young Guns. They were both in that."

"Aw shit you're right. That's what I was thinking of. That movie was good too. I like the part were Charlie Sheen gets shot by that dude in the shitter."

I agreed with him that Young Guns was also a bitchin' movie and left it at that. By this time my turn at the register had arrived and I quickly paid the employee and left. I don't know what happened to the guy behind me in line and I probably never will. Maybe he'll return home and regail his wife with tails of "this dude at Wal-Mart who was buying Red Dawn. You know, that movie with Emilio Estevez and that Jewy looking bitch from Dirty Dancing." Or maybe he'll just masturbate to internet porn and fall asleep. I just don't know - life is full of uncertainty. The only thing I DO know is that Manwich is good and now I really want to watch Red Dawn.

Peace out yo,

Shayne

Blog Walk: Capitol Hill to Discovery Park

Today has been the best weather day in Seattle all year--80's and sunny--so this morning I undertook perhaps my most ambitious Blog Walk yet: walking 7 miles from our place to Discovery Park in Magnolia, and then walking the 3 mile park loop at the end. All for you, anonymous internet readers, and I hope you appreciate it because my legs are now hair-covered sticks of pasty white jello. Craftily, I topped the three hour walk off with lunch at Dick's, which negated any positive physical benefit I might have gained from the process.

It really doesn't get much nicer in Seattle than it was today. We had stunning views of the Olympics from the Hill:
Seattle's newest major park investment, in South Lake Union, was generally deserted at 10 am on a Friday, but I did see a bunch of highly-evolved turtles braving the sewage and enjoying the sun:


(St. Mark's Cathedral from South Lake Union)

Hearty little fellas. Between South Lake Union and Fremont is a little houseboat community. Here's what a houseboat community looks like:

And here's what the front door to Magnolia looks like:
Discovery Park was stunning today with a great view of the Olympic Mountains:
Mt. Rainier is in the shot below. If you click to view the bigger version, you might be able to see it faintly towards the center of the screen. It does strange things, disappearing and reappearing.

Here's a picture I like. It's nice here on days like today:
Sometimes I post what i was thinking about while I was walking, to make this whole experience more (pretentious) than just me posting pictures on the internet of things I saw today. Instead of doing that, today I'm going to take a shower, because I'm sweaty. In other news, I've decided again not to be a priest. Probably I'll be a deacon. We'll see how many more times my decision changes.