By Melody Wilson Shobe

A few months ago, I began going to spin classes at the local YMCA as part of my exercise routine. Spinning is a group exercise class in which an instructor leads a group of people on stationary bikes through a cycling routine designed to simulate an actual bike ride. The students increase or decrease the resistance on their bikes to imitate climbing hills, sprinting, or intervals. It is a great workout, and usually a lot of fun. My husband and I make a habit of going to a particular class on Thursday nights, because it’s the one night of the week that neither one of us has a standing church commitment.

On Maundy Thursday, however, we had a service in the evening. So I decided to try the Thursday morning spin class instead. Little did I know, the Thursday morning class is “Devotion in Motion:” an hour-long spin class during which the instructor plays praise and worship music and talks about God. The instructor, a layperson who attends a local non-denominational church, uses the idea of a bike ride as a metaphor for the spiritual life to direct his devotional comments throughout the class.

The class was problematic for a number of reasons. The first problem was merely a matter of my personal taste. The instructor, who seemed like he was a very nice guy, had the unfortunate habit of singing along to snatches of the praise music pulsing through the room. This in itself would not be so bad, except for the fact that the instructor in spin classes wears a headset microphone in order to give directions to the class. So, throughout the class, interspersed with the instructions, we got a miniature concert. It was all a little too Brittany Spears for me.

The second problem was purely practical. As I mentioned earlier, spinning is a class in which “the students increase or decrease the resistance on their bikes to imitate climbing hills, sprinting, or intervals.” This instructor, however, starting telling us to increase the resistance on our bikes from the minute we began riding. Then he kept yelling, “Increase!” every two minutes for the rest of the class. By fifteen minutes in, I was at the maximum amount of resistance on my bike, waiting for him to tell us to decrease so that we could build back up. By twenty-five minutes, I was physically incapable of riding at maximum speed any longer. As a spiritual metaphor, it didn’t work very well for me; if, in fact, my faith journey is like a bike ride, it has both hills and valleys, steep climbs and long smooth descents. My relationship with God, at least, has not been all uphill. But regardless of the spiritual implications, it certainly didn’t work as an exercise regime. Asking a room full of people, some of whom have never been on a spin bike before, to “increase” every two minutes is neither feasible nor safe.

But my biggest problem with the class that I attended was theological. It was obvious from the beginning that the instructor and I differed on a number of theological points. He spent a good bit of time talking about the lies that the Enemy (you could actually hear the capitol E) whispers in our ears, which revealed a different understanding of evil than mine. He made a remark about God conquering your depression that revealed a different understanding than I have about mental health. But our theological differences weren’t an obstacle until, in between repeatedly saying, “Increase,” he yelled, “There is no ‘I can’t’ in the spiritual vocabulary!”

I almost fell off of my bike. In the midst of Holy Week, those words struck a deeply dissonant chord inside of me. Because “I can’t” is what Good Friday is all about. When we look at the cross, we are forced to acknowledge that Jesus did something there on that day that I cannot do for myself. And the same is true of Easter and the empty tomb; resurrection is something I can’t do. The transformation of places of death into places of life, the victory over death and the grave, life after death: these are all things that I cannot reach or accomplish. Through his life, death, and resurrection, God does for me something that I can’t do for myself.

In fact, I think the words “I can’t” aren’t just Holy Week words, or Easter words. They are the foundational words of the life of faith. They are integral, not inimical, to the spiritual journey. I grew up going to Baptist summer camp, and each summer counselors would give their testimonials, telling us how they had been saved. As an Episcopalian, I had a great discomfort with that language. But I was also uncomfortable because I felt out of place. My counselors always seemed to have dramatic stories: they had been saved from a life enslaved to drugs or alcohol, they had been saved from illness or injury or anorexia, they had been saved from dangerous or depressing home situations. My own life seemed, by contrast, inadequate and boring. Just what, exactly, was there for God to save me from?

It took me a long time to figure it out. But now, when I’m asked to talk in “salvationspeak,” I tell people that God saved me from thinking I could ever save myself. As an oldest child, I’ve always worked extra hard to be good and do the right thing; I’m the classic over-achiever. But through the years I’ve come to know there’s nothing I can do to earn God’s love, and nothing I can do to make God love me less. God saved me by teaching me to say: “I can’t.”

Holy Week is over, and my Thursday evening is open again. I’m back to my usual spin class this week, and I think from here on out, I’ll try to keep my spinning and my salvation separate.

The Rev. Melody Wilson Shobe is Assistant Rector at a church in the Diocese of Texas. She is a graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary and is married to fellow priest The Rev. Casey Shobe.

By Sara McGinley

In a twenty minute drive the other day I heard at least three advertisements that claimed to offer people rest, for a price.

America doesn’t need any more things to keep them awake. What we really need is something to help us sleep better. Buy a mattress.

Buy this condo and spend more time doing what you want to do – even if what you want to do is nothing.

Get mom what she really wants. A day of relaxation.

These are not self-help things. There is nothing inherently spiritual about a condo or a mattress or a pedicure, although I have several friends who would disagree certainly about the pedicure and perhaps about the condo and the mattress.

People are aching for rest. For a break. For a time out.

Large companies are selling a break. They’re selling a rest. They’ve spent thousands of dollars trying to figure out what will sell their product and their answer is rest.

The beginning of our bible starts with God doing a whole lot of work and then resting.

Jesus was known to even annoy people by resting when he needed it.

Despite that fact, many of us still over-work. Many of us schedule one day off a week which we rarely take. Many of us are given vacation every year that we don’t use.

I’m getting more and more accustomed to hearing people brag about how long it has been since their last day off.

I’ve heard and read sermons in which clergy talk about how long its been since they had a break as if this is normal, healthy, expected and something that should earn them a badge of honor.

Why are we doing this?

What is stopping us from scheduling and taking two days off every week?

What is stopping us from scheduling vacations? Why aren’t we scheduling actual vacations that last at least five days during which we don’t check our email or voice-mail.

I’m sure the answer to those questions are good, important, valid things.

So many good, important valid things that we’re all tired.

It seems that tiredness has been around so long we think we invited it to our party.

It doesn’t have to be here. It really doesn’t have to be here. We were made for good hard work. We were also made for rest. Rest with integrity and regularity.

Amazingly, rest has become something that is hard to come by and hard to admit to.

A colleague recently apologized for not coming to a meeting because he was going on a much needed weekend away with his new wife.

Since when to we apologize for making our families more important than meetings?

There is a way to invite rest back into our lives and to encourage it to stay.

It means pulling out our planners and that good old ‘just say no’ skill Nancy Reagan encouraged us all to propagate back in the 80s.

It means sticking to it even when other people get annoyed, when you’re tempted to schedule just that one little, tiny meeting, or when everything feels absolutely weird.

In the last five years of working with people as a life coach I’ve seen people make significant and life-giving changes in their lives.

Many of these changes are simple things that change the whole way in which they order their lives.

Finding rest by taking time away from work is one of the most profound I’ve seen.

When you’ve had enough rest your mind will work better, your body will feel better, your ideas will be more clear, you will be more inspired and inspirational.

Here is the challenge:

Find two days a week, preferably in a row and schedule them as days off. Meetings, email and voice mail are off limits.

Experts say it takes 60 days to create a habit. I say giving a whole 3 months to a new habit means it’s really there.

The summer is a perfect time for this new habit. Others will have less resistance to your new, free-er schedule and you can hopefully enjoy those days off outside.

After committing to this for the three months of summer it will be part of your life by the fall and you can continue it more easily than if you started this in September.

When you’ve had enough rest and it’s a part of your life again others will catch the bug. They’ll get what mattress companies, and spas and real estate developers are trying to sell them for hundreds and thousands of dollars.

Rest.

Sara McGinley, irreverent priest's wife and mother of two, writes the blog subtly named, Sara McGinley.

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Hat tip to Lionel Deimel who noiticed that Peter Berg, executive producer of NBC's Friday Night Lights, who also directed and co-wrote the 2004 film of the same title, will be a guest on NPR's Fresh Air program today.

The season finale airs tonight at 8 EST. In a cruel twist of fate, I will be unable to watch. So if you see me on the street, DON't TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS, I plan to watch it online over the weekend.

The season finale--and possibly the series finale of my beloved Friday Night Lights airs on Wednesday at 8 on NBC. The AV Club says this is a show worth saving.

Our favorite network television show has won a prestigious Peabody Award.

Said the judges: "No dramatic series, broadcast or cable, is more grounded in contemporary American reality than this clear eyed serial about the hopes, dreams, livelihoods and egos intertwined with the fate of high-school football in a Texas town. (Produced by NBC Universal Television Studio in association with Imagine Entertainment and Film 44.)"

The season finale airs next Wednesday at 8 p. m. on NBC. I can't emphasize enough what an excellent program this is to watch with teenage children. (Or youth groups!) Almost any issue that arises in the course of high school life is examined with great intelligence and sensitivity. If you have to talk to your child about sex, for instance, you will want to say more or less exactly what Tami Taylor said to her daughter Julie. (See Episode 17.)

My friend Desson Thomson reviews the film about life in a Carthusian monastery. (An earlier item on the film is here.)

He writes: At first, the silence feels imposing -- practically deafening -- as we watch the documentary "Into Great Silence" and the monks of the Grand Chartreuse monastery praying, reading the Bible or simply sitting in quiet contemplation.

But as we become acclimated to this muted atmosphere (we have plenty of time, as the film is nearly three hours long), something extraordinary happens: Our senses sharpen. The whispering of snow outside, the occasional clearing of a throat and -- sweet mercy! -- the clanging of a bell that summons these befrocked Carthusians to prayer reach our ears with a resounding purity. We may not experience their inner glories, but when we hear the monks' Gregorian chants, it's as though we have slipped from our seats into the back pews of Chartreuse."

A documentary about life among Carthusian monks is getting terrific reviews. The LA Times loves it. So does Newsday. A. O. Scott of the New York Times, writes: I hesitate, given the early date and the project’s modesty, to call “Into Great Silence” one of the best films of the year. I prefer to think of it as the antidote to all of the others.

The Boston Globe's story about filmmaker Philip Groning is here. It includes this summary.

... the austere, 162-minute film, with its sublime, painterly images and ambient sounds, is contemplative, meditative , and intensely introspective, capturing the poetic, unhurried rhythms of everyday life in the monastery. Gröning, who directed, produced, shot , and edited the film, sought to collapse the dividing line between the screen and the audience, immersing viewers into the world of the monastery and allowing them the opportunity to surrender to the rituals and repetitions of its inhabitants and the changing seasons that occur outside the windows of the stone charterhouse.

(Hat tip to Robert Ginn)

If the Anglican Communion should collapse between 8 and 9 p. m. EST, you will ned to read about it elsewhere. Like all right thinking people, I will be watching Friday Night Lights.

The show is a sometimes guilty pleasure for me. Jane Mayer examines the politics of the men behind Jack Bauer in The New Yorker, with particular attention to the torture issue.

I seldom mention the unusual questions I sometimes field from members of the press, because, really, it is my job to be asked unusual questions and to help whoever is going to write about us to feel comfortable in their knowledge. But in this case I can't resist. I just had a call from a reporter from an overseas news agency asking me what we as a Church thought about the commercialization of Saint Valentine's Day in America. I admitted that I had never given the issue a moment's thought, and was willing to wager that not even Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity would see the profusion of ads for pendants and posies as a sign of resurgent secularism.

Ken Tucker on actor Gaius Charles: [H]e's offering one of the most nuanced presentations of a young black man on TV.

Read it all.

The most annoying sentence of the week was written by Lee Siegel in an otherwise insightful, not to mention exhausive examination of the peculiar genius of Norman Mailer in Sunday's New York Times Book Review.

He writes:

"Early on, Mailer understood that in a democracy in which the most radically different types of people are thrown together, a harmonious encounter with “the other” is an American dream (e.g., the national obsession with the Relationship), the reality of which often becomes an American nightmare (e.g., popular culture’s obsession with crime). For the Brooklyn-raised, Jewish, middle-class Mailer, who once wrote about himself that there was “one personality he found absolutely insupportable — the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn” — a perfect sense of the more extreme forms of otherness became artistic and intellectual mother’s milk.

No surprise, then, that Mailer’s previous novel, “The Gospel According to the Son,” in which he attempted to inhabit Jesus Christ, felt less like a creative vision than a head-butt against eternity. The material had a built-in obstruction to Mailer’s gift of sympathetic self-surrender: Jesus was a nice, middle-class Jewish boy from Nazareth. Now Mailer has returned to the right side, which is to say, the wrong side, of the tracks." (Italics mine.)

You needn't believe in the mystery of the Incarnation to find this characterization of Jesus preposterous. Jesus taught that the values of the Kingdom were the obverse of those of the world (Blessed are the poor. Woe to the rich.) He challenged the religious and imperial leaders of his day with a directness that got him killed, and he moved his followers so deeply that they continued to believe he was alive, even after his crucifixion.

Jesus was not "nice"; he was ferociously good.

It is hard to imagine that the Times would allow so uninformed a characterization to appear in its pages.

My favorite network TV show is facing fourth and long, says Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly.

Go figure. FNL may be the only show on television that treats religion authentically in the context of daily life. It is one of few willing to look issues of teen sexuality--and its consequences--in the eye, and it features perhaps the most realistically happy marriage on television. Yet it can't seem to find an audience.

Tucker writes:

In real life, Lights is the underdog series that a rah-rah cult audience and critics love, but one that can't find even a modest victory in the ratings. It consistently finished third in its original Tuesday-at-8 p.m. time period, and isn't doing much better in its new Wednesday-at-8 p.m. slot, still averaging around 6 million viewers. Indeed, the drama of whether NBC will commit to a second season of this gridiron soap opera is as awkward and tense as whether the wheelchair-bound former star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) will break up with his devoted but conflicted cheerleader girlfriend Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly). NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly professes love for the show but also cites ''the biggest disconnect'' he's ever experienced: ''People talk and write to me to say they love it, but not enough people watch. It's a sports show, but it's a relationship show; it's a soap, but it's got social issues. What makes it great makes it hard to market.''

Wednesdays at 8, Eastern. You don't have to like football to love the show. Give it a try.

If you are in search of a thought-provoking chuckle, check out Geez magazine.

"Geez has set up camp in the outback of the spiritual commons," it's Web site says. "A bustling spot for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable. For wannabe contemplatives, front-line world-changers and restless cranks. A place where the moon shines quiet, instinct runs mythic and belief rides a bike (or at least sits on the couch entertaining the possibility)."

They won me over with their Make Affluence History campaign, which urges low-income families to sponsor privileged children in the hopes of showing them a less-cluttered more grounded way of life.

On behalf of the Diocese of Washington, I am authorized to wish you a Happy New Year.

On behalf of my older son, I am authorized to say: Go Blue!

And on behalf of myself, I direct your attention to an article in today's Washington Post which lists my beloved Friday Night Lights, among the shows in "Decent Shape," meaning it will endure at least through the end of this season. It's new time slot is Wednesday nights at 8.

I realize that I am out of liturgical season here, but the end of Frank Capra's Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (which we watched tonight) always reminds me of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. As George Bailey's friends come forward in joyful procession with the contributions will save him from prison, I am reminded of all the leftovers from that scanty meal that Jesus offered to the multitude. It was in giving himself away that George Bailey became, in his brother Harry's words, "the richest man in town."

Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz discuss the heart-wrencing last episode of The Wire on Slate. Here and here.

Kotlowitz offers a trenchant quote from Nelson Algren, the great Chicago novelist:

"We are willing, in our right-mindedness, to lend money or compassion—but never so right-minded as to permit ourselves to be personally involved in anything so ugly. We'll pay somebody generally to haul garbage away but we cannot afford to admit that it belongs to us."

The first reviews that I read of The Nativity Story were negative, and I decided to ignore it rather than trash it. But recently I have come across some more positive ones, and decided to provide some links. If you have seen it, weigh in.

We've got a nice audio-visual meditation based on The Magnificat here. (It's the second one down on the right.)

Slate has an excellent interview with the creator of The Wire. My wife and I watched the next-to-last episode of the current season last night, and just sat on the couch afterwards, worrying about the four kids around whom this season's narrative is constructed, as though they actually existed. The show is that powerful. And if you've never seen it before, you can probably (depending on your cable system) call up the first episode of this season and watch it straight through, as though you were reading a novel. We did that with the first three seasons, renting them one at a time, and it was incredibly engrossing.

My wife and I thought Stranger than Fiction was much better than the reviewers did. That may be because we would pay to hear Emma Thompson read meatloaf recipes. And Helen Mirren is not to be missed in the new (and final) Prime Suspect on Sunday night on PBS.

For your weekend reading, can I suggest this column by Martin L. Smith. It is about finding a "spirituality of shopping," and seems appropriate to the season.

It is only fitting that a blog that was brought into existence by one doomed TV show should champion the cause of another possibly doomed offering from NBC. But believe me, Friday Night Lights is a much better show than The Book of Daniel (except for that one stellar Daniel episode when they flashed back to the death of one of their children.)

Even Tom Shales, television critic of The Washington Post, a man who is not free with praise, speaks well of it:

"Friday Night Lights" has plenty of realism -- as well as passion, soul and heart at levels rare in episodic TV."

Like regular commenter Widening Gyre, Shales thinks that the show may be misplaced at 8 p. m. on Tuesdays. (That's tonight: hint, hint.) "Even so," he writes, "and whatever it takes, a place just has to be found for 'Friday Night Lights' on the prime-time schedule. It has already won a place in many a serious viewer's heart.

"I’m sick of theology done by cocky salesmen, atheistic or otherwise," writes Giles Fraser in his review of Richard Dawkins latest argument for atheism.

"The God of Israel is the God of the burning bush, the God who exists in the cloudy mountain-top, whose face cannot be seen. This is not the God who doubles as my best pal, or who fits a snappy one-line definition. The God who has been at the centre of the Church’s life for centuries is a God who is disconcertingly inscrutable, and utterly resistant to cheap certainty."

I can't tell you what a delightful change of pace it is to read a liberal Christian arguing about faith with an atheist rather than with a conservative Christian.

Slate is hosting a fascinating discussion of my favorite TV show, The Wire. I've extolled the virtues of the show here, but not with this kind of insight. One of the participants is David Mills, a writer for the show, who once upon a time sat across a divider from me in the Style section of The Washington Post. (And yes, if you pick his name up, I will drop it again.)

Frazier Moore, a television critic for the Associated Press, laments the small audiences tuning in to Friday Night Lights. (Tuesdays at 8 on NBC.)

He picks up on a point I've pushed a couple of times:

"Friday Night Lights" has claimed a world far from TV's beaten path, and depicts it with such honesty that we viewers behold its ordinary people (and, by extension, ourselves) with new eyes. In the writing, acting and on-location filming (the production is based in Austin), "Friday Night Lights" debunks the "TV AP version" of things, depicting real life on its own indigenous terms.

"That, alone is a powerful reason to watch.

"Here's another: It includes religious faith among the forces at work in Dillon, Texas. Viewers who complain about a spiritual void in TV drama should embrace this show for how it weaves prayer (along with Panthers football, barbecue and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) into the community's belief system."

I’ve found another fan of Friday Night Lights the new NBC show on Tuesday nights. Slate has a glowing review today.

Troy Patterson writes: "If you understand that a touchdown is worth six points and have a rough idea of how many feet are in a yard, you should be able to follow the show. If you're interested in thoughtful, low-key riffs on community, Christianity, and youth culture in America, you should love it."

I wrote about the way religion was handled in the first episode last week, and I continue to be impressed. The second episode, which aired last night, began on a Sunday morning with various characters at their various churches. The head cheerleader, whose quarterback-boyfriend has been paralyzed while making a tackle, says a prayer for his heeling while lying on this chest in this hospital room. All of this is handled matter-of-factly, as part of the wharp and woove of everyday life. The series’ creators do not keep their characters at an ironic distance in these moments, and I appreciate that.

A new television show, based loosely on Buzz Bissinger's marvelous book, made its debut on NBC last night. I thought Friday Night Lights was pretty good, except for the clichéd outcome of the big game. I am calling it to your attention, though, because it featured some of the few instances in which I've heard people pray on a prime time television show. Players recited most of the Lord's Prayer in one scene, and a star halfback offered an extemporaneous prayer for the healing of an injured teammate in another. Add to this mix the question that a Pop Warner player asks the team's star quarterback--Do you think God likes football?--and you've got an episode that takes seriously the role of faith in people's everyday lives. I am eager to see whether this theme is sustained.

Some day when I am in good paen-writing form, I will extol the many virtues of my new favorite television show, The Wire. It is an astonishing achievement, both morally and artistically. But paen-production is on the back-burner for the moment, and you really shouldn't miss a single episode. So read Jacob Weisberg's review of the current season on Slate, and then hustle off to the video store to rent the first three seasons on DVD.

If you need more convincing, look here, here and here.

The last of these articles, from Newsday, begins as follows: "A critic for this paper once declared "The Wire" "the greatest dramatic series ever produced for television" and as the fourth season gets under way Sunday night, there's no reason to quibble with that assessment."

I imagine that the creators of the series would balk at this characterization, but if The Wire isn't urban ministry, I don't know what is.

Or so says an article I just came across in the Ottawa Citizen.

(as told by Emo Phillips)

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!

"Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

What are the implications for the Episcopal Church? Discuss.

When it comes to engaging your propensity for intellectually enriching procrastination, there's no place quite like Arts and Letters Daily.

A few morsels from today's buffet:

the moral theology of Homer Simpson (not fresh, but well-done)

the aesthetics of athletic performance

and an examination of whether Gnosticism ever actually existed.

I am in Day One of attempting to be what church people (and probably therapists) refer to as a NON-ANXIOUS PRESENCE.

(Do all those upper-case letters work against the impression I am trying to create?)

So, rather than link to various predictions about what will happen when our General Convention gets underway in Columbus next week, I thought I would mention that I agree pretty much entirely with Heather Havrilesky's downbeat assessment of The Sopranos, which wrapped up its most recent season last night.

Watch a brief ad, and then read it on Salon.

It is a happy day in our house when Alan Furst publishes a new book. Not quite as happy as the days on which J. K. Rowling publishes a new book (and Jim Dale does the book on tape!) but happy nonetheless. Furst's writes intensely atmospheric, historical spy fiction set in Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His latest is The Foreign Correspondent (reviewed here) about an expatriate Italian journalist running an antifacist newspaper that is written in Paris and then smuggled into Muzzolini's Italy. It appeared in our house about three days ago, and my wife has already finished.

You can read an interview with Furst, and read his Wikipedia entry.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have apparently named their child Shiloh. This is a better choice than, say, Vicksburg or Cold Harbor, but perhaps not as sonorous as First Manassas. Meanwhile, comedian/magician Penn Teller has named his second child Zoltan. The first is named Moxie Crimefighter.

These developments confirm that celebrities cannot be trusted to name their own offspring. Society must step in. I propose the following legislation:

Anyone who has appeared in a) more than one top twenty television show; b) more than two motion pictures or c) the Billboard Top 40 will be required to submit the name they wish to bestow on their newborn to a panel composed entirely of people named Kathy and Bill. The panel will decide whether the name will inflict undue hardship on the child.

If the panel decides in the negative, the ruling may be appealed to a panel composed entirely of people named Jane and Doug. Its decision will be final.

However, the name will be held in escrow until the child's 15th birthday at which point he or she may adopt it of their own volition.

All in favor signify by writing to Us magazine.

As I mentioned in the entry just below this one, my wife, younger son and I saw the new X Men movie on Friday night at a packed theater in Silver Spring, Md. We'd been planning this for awhile, but an obstacle to my attendance arose earlier in the week when the son in question (he's 11) told my wife that he had "a very strong opinion" that I should not be allowed to see X Men III until I had seen X Men I and II, or at least I.

So, for the sake of family unity, I spent a few hours in front of the TV viewing the earlier installments, and, to my surprise, I liked them. I was actually eager to get to the theater on Friday night.

I don't want to give too much away, but let me give a quick summary for those of you who know as little about the X Men as I did a week ago. The X Men are mutants--good mutants. There are also bad mutants--bent on world domination, or course. In this installment, the non-mutant world discovers a "cure" for mutancy, thus confronting the mutants with a choice about whether to take the cure or not. The non-mutant world also has a choice: does it simply offer the cure, or does it impose it?

Some of the mutants are glad to get rid of whatever special characteristics their mutancy gave them. Some are unwilling to sacrifice what they regard as the essence of their identity. If you've followed the controversy over homosexuality in our Church, the parallels here are obvious.

For further ethical reflection, there is also a subplot involving a mutant whose powers are so great she may not be able to control them. Should she be liberated to do with her powers as she pleases? Should she be controlled so that her powers can be managed? Or does she present such a great threat to the world that she must be killed?

I am not a fan of special-effect-heavy set-piece battles, but the one that ends this film is a doozy. My favorite scene, though, is a brief, heartbreaking moment toward the beginning of the movie when a young boy is locked in the family bathroom trying to scrape away the physical symptoms of his mutancy. The look of desperation on his face as he struggles against these changes in his body will put you in mind of every adolescent you've ever known who suddenly felt betrayed by their bodies--including yourself.

A couple of weeks ago, poster Widening Gyre and I agreed that we would take a pass on The DaVinci Code, but not on X Men III: The Last Stand. If the crowds in Silver Spring tonight, where the movie was showing on four screens, are any indication, it will be the top-grossing film of the weekend. My 11-year-old, not given to understatement, has proclaimed it the "greatest movie ever."

It is better than the reviews led me to believe. More tomorrow.

I have taken an interest recently in the welfare of two children whom I know only through the media. One is the offspring of Brittney Spears. I can’t believe that having the paparazzi following his mom around all the time attempting to document her maternal failings is going to be good for young Sean Preston in the long run. Who is in charge of making them stop?

I don’t know the other child’s name, but I know that his father’s cancer was cured by a drug manufactured by a major pharmaceutical company. In a radio commercial I have heard at least a dozen times, this father says that now that he has his life back, he can realize his dream of teaching his 4-year-old son to play baseball. So far so good. Then he says that he believes he is coaching a future major leaguer.

I am deputizing readers of this blog to find this man and sit him down for a long talk.

Tell him as gently as possible that the counter-example of Earl Woods notwithstanding, there are few surer ways to blight his son’s life than by aiming him at athletic stardom at an early age. And let him know that there are men who make their living figuring out who has got the stuff to play major league baseball. These men have several significant advantages over him. They evaluate young men at a much later stage in their physical development, and they bring professional expertise to the task. . Nonetheless, they are wrong more often than they are right. (I covered the New York Mets in the mid-1980s when two nice young guys named Sean Abner and Kyle Hartshorn were thought by some of the best mind’s in the game to be the future of the franchise. They weren’t.)

Tell him not to ruin baseball for his son by making every swing of the bat another step in a lifelong journey toward a destination his son may have neither the desire nor ability to reach.

There's no sense in having a blog if you can't call attention to your friends when they've done something wonderful. At this Web site you can read about the forthcoming book The Good, Good Pig by Sy Montgomery. The book is a memoir of a pig named Christopher Hogwood and the people who loved him--particularly Sy (who has written a number of wonderful books about animals, and the way humans perceive them) and her husband Howard Mansfield, whose own books In the Memory House and The Bones of the Earth (to name just two) are meditations on the importance of place, the manipulation of history and the old Faulknerian dictum: "The past is never over. It isn't even past."

I went to college with Sy and Howard, worked on the campus newspaper (The Daily Orange) with them, and lived just a mile from them in New Hampshire twenty years ago when I was writing my first book. My family and I still visit them in New Hampshire about once every other year or so, so I had a chance to know the pig in question, and I can testify to his good-goodness.

Christopher Hogwood was named after the classical music conductor who, at the time of the pig's birth was, I believe, the leader of the Hayden and Handel (or vice versa) Society. He is just a cute piglet in the pictures on the Web site, but each year, in the photos that almost always graced Sy and Howard's Christmas cards, you could see him growing toward his full magnificence. At top weight, he was about 650 pounds, I think, but that pig could dance like Fred Astaire. Okay, I exaggerate, but he could move like Barry Sanders in the open field. He was a muse, and a pal for Howard and Sy, who also sheltered a border collie named Tess who'd been abused as a puppy and had once bad leg, but could really soar for a frisbee. (She's featured in the slide show on the Web site.) Like a lot of border collies, she was also given to trying to "herd" small children, which was kind of comic when my sons were younger.

Tess and Chris died within a few months of each other, and that was a sad time. I'm eager to read the book, and renew my acquaintance.

Read an interview with Sy here. The interviewer never asked her if she made stupendous pies. So I would just like to put that on the record.

Why, yes. Yes it is.

The Washington Post poses the question quoted above in what I found to be a disappointingly superficial special issue of its health section. It isn't so much what is in the issue that bothers me. It's what isn't.

Reporter Elizabeth Agnvall surveys the public health data, she compares attitudes toward teen sexuality in several deveoped nations, and she provides decent tips for parents. She righfully points out that American teens receive mixed messages about sex: "No, no, no," from many churches. "Yes, yes, yes," or at least "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge," from the culture at large. And she suggests, perhaps plausibly, that the resulting confusion may have something to do with the fact that while "levels of teen sexual activity look remarkably similar here and abroad," the U. S. has among the highest rates of "teen pregnancy, childbirth, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases" among industrialized nations.

So far, so good. But there is little discussion about the emotional impact of teen sexual activity, nothing said about the effect of such activity on one's attitudes towards one's self, one's partner or one's future partners. There is no discussion of whether one can diminish or damage the gift of one's sexuality through precocious experience. There's also nothing that deals with moral issues of when, with whom and under what circumstances the profound, complex act of mutual self-giving --with all its generative and destructive potential--should take place.

These are not strictly health section issues, but the headline asks "Is Teen Sex Bad?" not "Is Teen Sex Healthy?" I hope the Post takes another pass at this issue, perhaps on its religion pages where the conversation might have greater depth.

Have all you "Soparanos" fans out there seen the new commercials for Deadwood? What do you make of them?

For those who don't watch HBO on Sunday nights, these ads feature the various characters of the gold rush boom town of Deadwood, South Dakota reciting verses of Scripture as they go about their business or turn dramatically toward the camera. The first of these commercials took the Beatitudes as its text; the second took 1 Corinthians 12 on the unity of the body.

I gather that if you watch the show, you get a deeper appreciatiion of why character X is reciting verse Y. But I don't watch it, and I still think the commercials are pretty compelling. The shots are perfectly framed, and each character reads with quiet intensity.

These spots have led me to wonder why we in the Church haven't attempted to present the Bible to the world in similiarly innovative ways.

I've hunted around a bit for a link to these spots, but come up empty. If anybody has one, please let me know.

... the television networks find for the celebrities.

Just in case you were wondering whether television news executives thought you were a shallow individual obsessed by trivial concerns, The St. Petersburg Times provides decisive evidence: They do.

Reporter Susan Taylor Martin's story begins:

As a measure of what the broadcast and cable news networks consider important, here’s how many segments they devoted last June to the runaway bride, Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise: 8,303.

Here’s how many they devoted to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, that has killed at least 180,000 people: 126.

''There is a discounting of African lives that is complex, but what it comes down to is that the people of Darfur are poor, black, Muslim and don’t sit over any valuable natural resources,’’ said Eric Reeves, a Smith College expert on Sudan. “You can’t get any poorer than that geopolitically.’’

To the paper's credit, the story doesn't remain fixated on the imbecility of television news (fish in a barrel) but explains why it is in American's self-interest to be concerned about crises in distant lands.

Says Edward Kissi of the University of Soth Flordia: “It is very imperative — and practical — for the American people to do what they can to encourage their government and Arab governments to stem a tide of what is likely to be a very serous refugee inflow to the United States or other parts of the world.’’

After Somalia, another country in Africa’s eastern “horn,’’ descended into civil war and chaos in 1991, Minnesota, Maine and other states absorbed an estimated 40,000 Somali refugees. Critics say they have put a serious strain on schools, housing and social services.

(My thanks to FaithStreams for pointing this one out.)

Here is an LA Times story that really gives me the willies. The video gaming industry has found God.

Dawn C. Chmielewski reports from the Electronic Entertainment Expo that the creators of video games are trying to reach a Christian audience by giving gamers an opportunity to do all the horrible stuff you can do in Grand Theft Auto, but do it in the name of God.

"One game, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," which debuts today at the expo, features plenty of biblical smiting, albeit with high-tech weaponry as players battle the forces of the Antichrist in a smoldering world approaching Armageddon.

The creators hope the game packs enough action to appeal to a generation of kids reared on such titles as "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and subtly coax them to consider their own spirituality....

The game is based on the best-selling series of "Left Behind" books, which offer an account of the end times as predicted in the biblical book of Revelation. One of the series' authors, Tim LaHaye, said the game had the potential to communicate ideas such as salvation to people who might not think of themselves as particularly interested.

'We hope teenagers like the game,' LaHaye said. "Our real goal is to have no one left behind."

But critics counter that, in an effort to make Christian games appealing, developers such as Lyndon and Frichner are doing little more than putting a religious veneer on the same violent fare."

A valid criticism. But what bothers me more is the possibility that kids who play these games might abosrb the warped theology of LeHaye, and begin thinking that they are competent to pass judgement and mete out punishment on God's behalf.