Movies for Churches

July 14, 2009 at 2:14 am (Christians, Movies, art, church)
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Here is an (occasionally-annotated) list of some of the A Team’s top recommendations for movies to show with church groups – movies with meaning, that are also worthwhile for all ages to watch.  Add your own suggestions, please!
1. The Straight Story, by David Lynch

2. Freedom Writers

3. The Vernon Jones Story
James Earl Jones delivers a tour-de-force performance as courageous civil rights leader Vernon Johns. Spurred to action when two parishioners are brutally attacked in racially motivated incidents, Johns — a church deacon — uses his power and charisma to begin the battle for equality that will reverberate for decades. Mary Alice, Joe Seneca, Clifton James and Cissy Houston provide first-rate support in this inspiring true story.

4. The Visitor

5. A Lesson Before Dying

6. Praying with Lior?
Lior Liebling, a Jewish boy with Down syndrome, spends his days praying endlessly to God, much to the delight — and occasional befuddlement — of those around him. Follow Lior, nicknamed “the little rebbe,” as he approaches his bar mitzvah. Ilana Trachtman’s coming-of-age documentary paints a touching portrait of a family, while raising tough questions about notions of faith and disability.

7. Millions (faith)

8. Amazing Grace (good parallels re modern abolition movements)

9. A Man for All Seasons

10. Sarafina!
Whoopi Goldberg stars in this inspirational story about a girl battling the oppression of apartheid in South Africa. Schoolgirl Sarafina lives in Soweto. Her mother lives in Johannesburg, where she works for a white family. Missing her mother, Sarafina puts her energy into fighting for freedom. When police shoot and kill protesting students, Sarafina is arrested as a demonstrator and must face prison and torture.

11. Catch a Fire

12. Cry the Beloved Country

13. The Power of One

14. Life is Beautiful (with older children)

15. Iron-Jawed Angels – Some gruesome scenes but well worth it for the reminders about how hard our foremothers fought for the civil rights we now take for granted.

16. Rabbit-Proof Fence

17. Hairspray! – A musical that’s just as socially-progressive as it is fun to watch!

18. Beautiful Boxer – If your church can handle a gorgeous movie about a trans Thai kickboxing champion.

19. Fast Food Nation and Food Inc.  – Why aren’t churches that practice communion as one of their central rituals not more active in discussions about food safety and health????

20. Renewal – Great documentary with short segments about different faith communities (not all Christians) doing what they can for the Earth.  Easy to watch in parts, easy to discuss.

21. Eyes on the Prize – series

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EARTH DAY BLESSING OF THE BIKES

May 7, 2009 at 6:39 pm (Chicago, Christians, Church of the Brethren, Schule und Kirche, bikes, cars, church, ecology, peace, religion)

Inaugural Festivity held at Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Elgin, Illinois – 22 April 2009

Liturgy by Audrey deCoursey

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 As we gather today, the words of the prophet Jeremiah ring in our ears:

“Thus says the Lord: I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination… Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water…Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, says the Lord; I will not be angry forever… Return, O faithless children.” (Jer. 2: 7, 12-13; Jer. 3: 12b, 14a)

We confess that too long, humans have decimated the land and distanced ourselves from our Creator God. North American lifestyles have been particularly destructive.

But today is a day to celebrate solutions. We join with millions of people around the world, all celebrating ways that can return to right relationship with our Creator, in their own local communities. Here, we have chosen to lift up the modes of transportation we have come to rely upon, and use this Earth Day as an opportunity to recommit ourselves to safety and sustainability in this one important facet of our lives.

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(SOME) BEATITUDES OF URBAN TRANSIT

Blessed are the bicyclists, who travel as commuters or for pleasure, who harness human energy and ingenuity to power their travel along roads and trails.

Blessed are the pedestrians, who feel the contours of the land under their feet with every step.

Blessed are the bus and train passengers, who ride shoulder to shoulder with strangers who become brothers and sisters on their daily journeys.

Blessed are the motorists who drive with care and caution, showing mercy to their fellow travelers on the road.

Blessed are the truck drivers, the train conductors, the bus drivers, whose daily labor connects us with new resources, new places, and new communities.

Blessed are you when you breathe fresh air, drink clean water, observe blossoming flowers, and yearn to create a world where every person can share in such delights, for you shall be called children of God.

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BLESSING OF THE BICYCLES

(Unison) Creator God, please watch over each of us, your people. Empower us to honor the legacy of Earth’s abundance that we have inherited from our ancestors. Help us to build communities that are safe and healthy for every one of the beings you have created. Inspire us to envision societies that will sustain life for generations to come. We place our faith in you, God, not in our own power to control or exploit.

Tonight, O God, please bless the bicycles brought to this place. May their riders be kept safe; may they be strengthened in body and spirit; may their lives further reflect commitment to stewardship of your Creation; and may the wind that blows in their hair and faces ever remind them of you. Please shower your blessing on cyclists across Elgin, throughout Chicagoland, and all around the world.

In the name of the One who is our Way, Amen.

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Sustaining Congregations

December 7, 2007 at 1:01 am (Christians, church, ecology)
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What Would Jesus Buy?

December 2, 2007 at 2:21 am (Christians, Christmas, baby, church)
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Not plastic crud from Wal-mart made in sweatshops and sold to run small businesses out of town.  No siree.

It saddens me every year to see how corrupted this lovely season of holidays has become. The generosity of the Magi on Epiphany has been perverted into materialism and shopping mall stampedes. The memory of harried immigrant parents traveling across the desert has been exploited to support global economic disparities that exacerbate international migration and miserable labor conditions. The humble beginnings of our Jesus Christ’s birth in Bethlehem have become submerged in a pre-packaged Christmas of fake snow and sucrose.  I really do wish we could put our Christ back in Christmas, and pull all the credit cards, all the consumerism, all the conformity, all the crap! out of my favorite holiday.

As you may have guessed, I just saw the new movie What Would Jesus Buy? by Morgan Spurlock (of Supersize Me fame) about Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping as they made their pre-Christmas national tour to save people from the Shopocalypse.  The movie is good, and you should go see it. It compassionately portrays real, creative, edgy, radical direct activism, showing that the people involved are real people, struggling with the same societal pressures to consume as the rest of US, but while still maintaining their ethics.  And even without coming out as Christian, it reminds us what Christmas – and all of Jesus Christ’s radical, liberatory message – is really about.

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Inheritance of Faith

October 7, 2007 at 9:48 pm (Christians, Family, church, religion)
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2 Timothy 1

The sermon this morning at the First Congregational Church of San Rafael explored the opening verses of the Second Letter to Timothy. The greetings in these epistles are always interesting, but this one is especially so, because of the way the pseudonymous writer (i.e. NOT Paul) bases his claim that Timothy stay faithful as he commences his new leadership project. He reminds Timothy who he is by reminding him of the long line of faithful followers of the way who are his genetic lineage. Most remarkably (to me, always stunned by feminism in the Epistles), the two ancestors he names are Timothy’s mother Lois and his grandmother Eunice. These two women are Timothy’s faithful forebears.

The preacher, my seminary friend Jeanette, told of how her own mother had gifted her with an inheritance of faith, even though her means were not explicitly devout. In sturdy, no-nonsense Midwest fashion, her family went to church and Bible study, but didn’t talk about it at home. Yet, they still lived out their faith, just without the Christian lingo attached to it. She would quilt and crochet blankets, for her children, for her grandchildren, and for women at the local domestic violence shelters. (If I wanted to be painfully cheesy, I would point out here that in doing so, she warmed both bodies and hearts.)

At the end of her sermon, the preacher offered time for congregants to share ways they had inherited their faith. I shared how much my family patterns resonated with the description of the Midwestern values she had described.

My grandfather, the astronomy, chemistry, and geology professor at the local Brethren college, always served as expert guide on our family hikes in the North Woods. From the time we could walk, he would make our hikes nature lessons. He would bend down on one knee to point out the slimy mushrooms on logs, or he would pick up branches to show us how to identify the trees around us. The leaves of the forest showed us curious children the beautiful complexity of God’s creation as well as the pages of the Bible ever did.

Until seminary, I didn’t recognize the lessons in my family’s interactions for what they were: the living out of a Christian faith so deep it got beyond the business of talking about it.

Growing up, I thought it was rude that my mother didn’t say “Bless you” when someone sneezed. But then I realized that instead of just saying “Bless you,” she would get up and get the person a handkerchief. She responded to the bodily need represented in the sneeze, not with trite words but with what those words should represent: a commitment to the person’s health. She revealed an inclination too few Christians exhibit: not to recite the ‘perfect’ lines of doctrine and dogma, but (dare I say it?) to feed thousands, to heal ailing beggars, to raise children from the dead.

Amen for the faith of our families!

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Top Reasons to Date (/Marry/Partner with) a Seminarian

September 18, 2007 at 4:59 am (Bay Area, Christians, church, funny, love, religion, seminary, students)
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by me and my PSR buddies

• Chances are you’ll find someone who shares similar values and/or worldviews with you—especially fellow church geeks.
• He knows a lot. In the Biblical sense.
• She’ll have a friend who can do your wedding for free.
• He probably won’t make enough money to raise your tax bracket.
• The laying on of hands takes on a whole new meaning.
• After all that theological pondering, she can make a stronger argument for atheism than anyone else.
• He’s so glad to get off campus that he’s a cheap date.
• Special moments will be enhanced by recitations from the Song of Songs. “As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” (Song of Songs 2:3)
• You just might be the partner of the next famous televangelist.
• You get a free ticket to heaven.
• You get a free ticket to D’Autremont.
• She can really greet people with the Holy Kiss. (Romans 16:16)
• Confessing sins of the flesh takes on new appeal.
• As Paul writes, “it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (I Corinthians 7:9b).
• You just might be enticed into seminary studies yourself.

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Another reason to detest the Taliban

August 3, 2007 at 6:39 pm (Afghanistan, Christians, Korea, Taliban, church, peace, religion, violence, war)
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If the harassment of girls’ schools and barbershops is not enough to make you detest Afghanistan’s version of militant conservative Islam, the latest kidnapping of Korean Christian aid workers ought to make you sad, irate, both. US press never makes a big deal out of kidnappings when they don’t involve US or UK lives, but some stories have reached even us. I broke into tears reading the pleas of the father of two hostages. This is so wrong.

My message to terrorists of every kind: Your cause loses every ounce of my sympathy when you target nonviolent aid workers. You are no different than every other imperial power that reverts to the colonial method of using violence in order to secure your fleeting earthly power. Life is God’s to define, not yours, and you idolize yourself and your own human power to make the ultimate ethical choice when you take human life. The fact that you cannot differentiate between aid workers and soldiers or mercenaries bearing arms proves the pathetic incapacity of your human power to substitute for God’s imminent wisdom, wisdom that I know speaks to your heart as much as all of ours. Why can you not listen?

I am so mad. And so sad. Please stop this violence.

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York Center Church of the Brethren goes greener!

July 27, 2007 at 6:03 pm (Church of the Brethren, Worldliness, bikes, cars, church, green, religion)

The York Center Green Fair I spoke at last weekend made it into local news, the Lombard Spectator, in a cute little story about my Pastor Christy Waltersdorff. Isn’t she adorable!

 “This congregation is very involved in a lot of environmental issues,” she said. “If we believe God created the world and gave us stewardship of it, I can’t imagine why people would not be out taking a stand.”

The Green Fair featured presentations on various environmental topics and also highlighted the church’s commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050, said Loren Habegger, a church member and the person Waltersdorff credits with coming up with the idea of a Green Fair.

That’s really quite an impressive commitment.  Too bad this climate crisis we’re living in will require nothing less.

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