When my mother, Judy Bright, was diagnosed over a year ago with a terminal form of cancer there seemed only two choices for me: either laugh at the absurdity of it all or cry. I've done both, of course, but decided when she first got sick that I would go to bed each night laughing at something.  

So I've downloaded comedy shows and albums and each night before going to bed - even now, six months after my mother passed - I listen to them still. Laughter became even more important when in my mother's final months I was diagnosed with cancer.  Look, you've got to laugh at that.  

There we were - my mom and me, her dying and me recovering from surgery - sitting side by side taking pain medications and making fun of our predicament.  We certainly weren't going to sit there and feel sorry for ourselves all day, though we did some of that too.

I asked friends on Facebook and elsewhere for recommendations for good comedians I should try out.  Most didn't know how these voices of laughter were and still are sustaining me during a time of grief and transition.  My old friend Jim Hinds suggested I listen to a woman named Tig Notaro. Never heard of her before but I gave her a try and enjoyed her low-key approach to comedy.  I laughed a lot at her stories.

Tig Notaro is in the news a lot now because of a recent set she did just after learning she had cancer - shortly after her mother tragically died and she went through a breakup.

She jokes:  

"God never gives you more than you can handle. Never.  Never.  When you've had it God goes alright, that's it.  I just keep picturing God going: you know what, I think she can take a little more..."

"Why, God, Why?...God is insane...If there at all." 

The set is incredibly honest.  She asks the questions we all ask.  And I cannot help hearing some of my own story in hers.  I don't believe in a God that causes cancer, and I don't believe in a God who puts people in impossible situations to test them.  But these are common understandings of God and sometimes I wish there was a Superman version of God who could fix all our problems but the God I know walks the journey of life with us rather than pre-ordaining a future that we'll simply follow or who will rescue us (except perhaps in ways that we don't understand fully).

Tig Notaro is a gift from God.  She might not know that.  So are all the other comedians who have been my companions these many months of grief and, for me, also recovery.  They lift me up on eagles wings and help me see the truly funny side of the parts of our lives that are out of our control as part of the human experience.  I am grateful to Tig Notaro for sharing her story and for letting me laugh along with it. 

Christians across the United States today are honoring Trayvon Martin on Facebook with pictures of themselves wearing hoodies.  Visit The Christian Left.  

My photo is below:

Related Post: United Church of Christ joins prayers, protest in the shooting death of Florida teen

He changed the world in ways that amplified voices and shaped revolutions.  Quite a legacy. 

For the breaking news, action alerts and information on a Social Gospel-based Christianity follow my Twitter feed: @RevChuckCurrie.

Dreaming of Eden: American Religion and Politics in a Wired World, the new book by Chicago Theological Seminary's Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, is out. Just got my copy today.

Dr. Thislethwaite writes in the introduction:

The digital ages gives enormous power both to image and storytelling, and it does so with lightening speed.  Those Americans who best understand the power and the deep religious meaning of the shift to the digital age and storytelling will succeed in getting their message across.  That group of Americans will also understand the messages that are most dangerous to their point of view, and they will be better able to counter them.  And those Americans who don't understand the religious power of this time as it is generated in blogs, movies, graphic novels, Twitter, Facebook, and cable television (to name just a digitized sources of image and story) will be left in the dust, religiously and politically speaking.

Buy the book, for sure, but also visit the book's website at http://www.wiredwisdom.net and take part in the on-going conversation there.

The Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is a minister in the United Church of Christ.

I'll post a review once I'm finished.

Follow my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/RevChuckCurrie and get updates from my blogs at http://chuckcurrie.blogs.com and http://community.ucc.org/ucc-news.  

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Church life at http://www.parkroseucc.org .  

And the one place you'll find links to at all: On the web at http://www.chuckcurrie.com .

You can now follow me on Twitter.

I now have a Facebook account....to add to my MySpace Page, LinkedIn profile, blog(s), etc., etc.   

I'm not sure why but I have a MySpace page. All the sudden super models want to be my "friend."

Walter Brueggemann, author of about a thousand books on the Bible, is now blogging on Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century.  He'll be offering weekly thoughts on upcoming lectionary readings.

This morning I was on the campus of UCC-related Pacific University to take part in a panel discussion on the internet.  Panelists - all from different religious backgrounds - were asked this question:

"According to the beliefs of your religion, what sorts of electronic materials should not be found on the Internet?"

Here's how I answered the question:

A generation ago the United Church of Christ successfully challenged the license renewal of several televisions in the South which refused to provide coverage of the civil rights movement.  Can you imagine?  Television stations owned and operated by whites hoped to starve the civil rights movement of publicity and thus ensure its defeat.  They failed, of course, thankfully in part to those Christians who heeded the call of God to seek justice.   

Today the United Church of Christ- through our Office of Communication - continues to be a "leading force in the struggle to ensure that women, persons of color and low-income persons have equal access to ownership, production, employment, and decision making in media."

I suppose as a Christian that I am expected to rail about all the obscenity in the media today - particularly the internet.  In fact, I'm disgusted by much of it.  Too often the internet is used by those seeking to exploit people for profit.  Violence and the exploitation of women have become increasingly mainstream and our society is worse off for it. 

Some religious leaders have in recent years blamed the internet for spreading sexual immorality.  In large part they are reacting to societal changes that have propelled the cause of civil rights for gays and lesbians - and for women.  Those in the United Church of Christ - whose history includes the first ordination of a woman and later of a gay man - largely applaud this development in our history - and reject the narrow interpretations of Scripture used to justify continued oppression of people based on gender and orientation.

It would be a mistake to over regulate the internet so that ideas and causes become suppressed.  Every effort should be made to protect children from the content of what is published on the web.  But the danger in restricting our freedom - our First Amendment rights - is that in doing so to protect people we might in fact oppress people.

For example, many fundamentalists - including the Southern Baptist Convention - have called for economic boycotts and federal intervention against media outlets that show gay and lesbian couples in positive situations - such as loving relationships.  This is little difference between these actions and those of the Southern television stations which tried to shut down and ignore the historic struggle for racial equality.

When the United Church of Christ attempted to air television commercials that depicted a church welcoming all people - even gays - the networks banned the message as being too controversial.  Our denomination turned to the internet to get the message out.   

As a minister, I see the internet as a powerful tool for spreading the Gospel message and remain convinced - as our Founding Fathers and Mothers were - that efforts to suppress the freedom to speak will impact my freedom to worship.

How would you have answered the question?

Read the comments on this post from Street Prophets

Faith in Public Life – the new web site, blog and media bureau that launched last month – is already adding new features. Amy Sullivan will be guest blogging soon and the site now offers a “Daily Faith News Reel.” Five days a week they’ll send to your inbox the top news related to faith and politics in one easy to read e-mail. Good stuff.

Press Release from Faith In Public Life

Washington, DC – After the Religious Right's decades-long dominance of the American values debate, Faith in Public Life officially launched today as a new Resource Center to strengthen the effectiveness, collaboration and reach of faith movements that share a call to pursue justice and the common good. A non-profit, non-partisan organization, Faith in Public Life (www.faithinpubliclife.org) provides strategic organizing and communications resources to diverse faith leaders and organizations.

From the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement, faith leaders have led many of the greatest victories for justice in the course of American history. But despite a continued commitment to justice and the common good by myriad faith leaders, the religious right continues to dominate public discourse on matters of faith, often advancing a narrow and exclusive definition of what it means to be moral and faithful in America.

Yet millions of people of faith in the United States do not feel that the religious right represents them – nor do they feel they have a public voice of their own. Religious leaders established Faith in Public Life to ensure that voices for justice and the common good are heard, respected, and included in all issues of Faith in Public Life – and that those who use religion as a tool of division and exclusion do not dominate public discourse.

“Our existence represents an unprecedented demonstration of leaders from individual organizations coming together to create a resource center to serve the movement as a whole,” says Rev. Jennifer Butler, Executive Director of Faith in Public Life. “This is an exciting time in the revitalization of collective and faith voices working for justice and the common good.”

As a Resource Center, Faith in Public Life offers tools, strategic services, and informational resources to its partner groups, including an interactive website featuring a searchable database directory of more than 2,000 leading faith advocates for justice and the common good working in 21 states. Communications tools include Voicing Faith, a media bureau of faith leaders from across the country, representing Catholic, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Jewish and Muslim perspectives, as well as a comprehensive set of communications resources available to faith leaders. Faith in Public Life’s website also features a blog, a daily news reel, a movement calendar, case studies demonstrating best practices in the movement, faith movement facts, and issue resources.

Since becoming operational six short months ago, Faith in Public Life has supported dozens of groups, including We Believe Ohio, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Sojourners, Catholic Alliance for the Common Good, the Progressive Faith Blog Conference, and CrossWalk America.

Rev. Jennifer Butler, Faith in Public Life Executive Director, is available to discuss the resurgence of faith communities working for justice and the common good, and to discuss Faith in Public Life’s mission, capacities and recent successes. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Jennifer most recently served as the Presbyterian Church (USA) Representative to the United Nations (UN). During her nine years at the UN, Butler represented the denomination on a range of issues, including women’s rights, genocide in the Sudan, and the war in Iraq. Her book on the Christian Right and international policy will be published by the Pluto Press in December 2006.

Interviews with Jennifer, or other Faith in Public Life partner groups, can be arranged through Jessica Watson at 202.544.7921, or [email protected].

Faith in Public Life envisions a country in which diverse religious voices for justice and the common good consistently impact public policy; and those who use religion as a tool of division and exclusion do not dominate public discourse.

An interview with Oregonian Marcus Borg, the well regarded Biblical scholar and author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, is now available on the United Church of Christ website.

Noted theologian Marcus Borg is Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University and author of "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time." During a visit to the UCC’s national offices in Cleveland, he sat down with staff to talk about various aspects of Christianity and the UCC in today’s society.

Click here to take a look.

New web sites / blogs to check out:

"Save Yourselves From This Corrupt Generation: God-Based News, Commentary, and Nonsense" is written by Josh Tinley, a United Methodist in Nasville and includes contributions from Cole Wakefield.

Straight into Gay America is written by Lars Clausen, a "heterosexual pastor ordained by the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)." Lars went on a 5 week unicycling trip where he covered 1,000 miles in support of gay rights. He also has a blog.

An online conference exploring progressive faith started today. The Rockridge Institute is sponsoring the event:

The Rockridge Institute has partnered with a coalition of progressive religious organizations to host an online conference on the Rockridge Forums. This exciting event is bringing together progressives, Rockridge framing researchers, and religious leaders from across America to discuss the role of progressive religious values in public discourse.

When: Now through May 20th, 2005

Who's invited: Anyone with an interest in exploring progressive values and the progressive religious perspective

Where: The Rockridge Forums

How: If you're a member of the forums, you're all set! If not, sign up now!

The link address is: http://forum.rockridgeinstitute.org/?q=dialogue05

Check it out. The Rev. Brenda Peterson is one of those who alerted me to this event.

Related Link: Lakoff and Me

Beliefnet.net wants your help in coming up with the winner of their 2004 Most Inspiring Person of the Year Award. Click here to nominate your choice.

From Timbuktu to Tijuana, you know all about world
culture and politics. You've seen it all, and
what you haven't seen, you watched on one of
the "smart people channels." Your
friends tell you that you should run for
governor.
What people love: You've always got a great story
to tell.
What people hate: You make them feel like ignorant
plebians. Sometimes you slip and CALL them
plebians.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is the kind of thing you do when you're up at 3:30am waiting for the twins to wake up for their next feeding (due any moment) and diaper change (which I'm sure they could have used an hour ago... oh wait, I did change their diapers an hours ago...). Thanks to The Heretic's Corner for this link.