DreamSeeker Article

I got a nice present in the mail this week -- a hardcopy of DreamSeeker Magazine with my article in it, plus a small check.

The article is called A Brief History of Love and Suffering and it's available on the web here.

Race Row

My Smile Politely column is out today, which defends cultural houses at the University of Illinois. There's nothing like talking about race and culture to get people all fired up.

Go Pink Mennos

Folks supporting LGBT rights at this year’s Mennonite convention had a brilliant idea for protesting the Mennonite Church’s official policy of discrimination: Simply wear pink shirts around the convention center all week.

Particularly prominent were a large gathering of young adults who showed up at the big hymn sing and sat right in the middle of Nationwide arena, even singing hymns before it officially started. The message is that we may not be sanctioned, but we exist, and we aren’t going away. We even got some national press on the issue, via an AP story.

As in the wider culture, it seems to be a generational issue with Mennonites. In a church whose average age is 54 (which in itself is of great concern to the church, and rightly so), many if not most of those wearing pink shirts were people under 30. I hope this sends a strong message to church leaders. Without some kind of action on this, they stand to lose the next generation of youth and especially those most interested in social justice issues.

I’ve often wondered how today’s youth became so much more inclusive than their parents. I guess it’s because they have grown up with openly gay friends, relatives, and icons, and know at a personal level that there is nothing to fear from those with sexual orientations different from their own. On the other hand, it’s hard for those who grew up being taught otherwise to think differently, especially without any exposure to others who might challenge their assumptions. But, the reality is that Gay Rights are coming. It’s just a matter of when the demographics change enough to allow for it, and whether we are going to be leaders or followers. Actually, it’s already too late to be leaders. But it would be nice not to be last.

By the end of the week, the backlash had begun at the convention. A few youth were spotted in the lunchroom wearing green shirts with the message “Homosexuality is an abomination” plastered on the back. Sigh.

No one wants a split church. And yet, the status quo of treating homosexuals as less than fully human cannot stand. It is against the Mennonite values of advocacy for the downtrodden, the outsiders, and the underprivileged, which we have tried to embody for centuries.

And yet, there are people in my church whom I love dearly and are vital and necessary parts of our congregation, but are against homosexuality. We have to find a way to fully include our LGBT friends into our religious community, but without losing those who consider it a sin. There is no easy path forward.

Hymns and Praise

This quiz is brought to you by my upcoming retirement (after 9 years) of high school youth group leadership.

Can you identify which verses below are from hymns, and which ones are from typical contemporary praise songs?

Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it, mount of God’s unchanging love.

Jesus, you are so totally cool.
You are, like, so awesome.
I am so in love with you.
You are, like, way better than my old boyfriend/girlfriend. (repeat 4 times)

Holy Spirit, come with power, breathe into our aching night.
We expect you this glad hour, waiting for your strength and light.
We are fearful, we are ailing, we are weak and selfish too.
Break upon your congregation; give us vigor, life anew.

God, you are so worthy of me praising you.
I’m really glad about you.
You are everything I need.
You are so worthy, you are like a medieval political leader to me (repeat 8 times)

Healer of our every ill, light of each tomorrow,
Give us peace beyond our fear, and hope beyond our sorrow.
You who know our fears and sadness, grace us with your peace and gladness.
Spirit of all comfort, fill our hearts.

I’m going to praise you God, and it will feel so good to me.
I’m praising you right now God and it feels so good to me.
I just praised you God, and it felt so good to me.
Because, God, you are all about me (repeat 64 times)

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me save that thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

Answers:
1. Come Thou Fount (1758)
2. Minor Mennonite parody of praise song 1 (2009)
3. Holy Spirit, come with power (1970)
4. Minor Mennonite parody of praise song 2 (2009)
5. Healer of our every ill (1986)
6. Minor Mennonite parody of praise song 3 (2009)
7. Be thou my vision (1905)

OK, so it's not fair to compare real, classic hymns to parodies. But this is the internet, so I'm not sure why you would expect fairness, instead of selective data provided as slanted evidence to back up a partisan talking point.

The thing is, I know praise songs are not about theology, or logic, or grammar. They are about emotion. And I know that it’s good for people to reach the spirit of the divine in whatever way works for them, even if it's by pure emotion.

It’s just hard for me to see people in the spiritual buffet line bypass the poetic, weighty, and deeply nutritious meal of a good hymn and head straight for the cotton candy and Jolt Cola of the typical praise song. Plus, I fear that too much praise music is really saying My God is Better Than Your God, which I believe to be a harmful gateway idea that eventually leads to Crusade and Jihad, especially if you are hopped up on sugar and caffeine.

On the other hand, there are now some hymns that I can no longer sing without tearing up, like Come Thou Font and Be Thou My Vision. I have no idea why this happens, other than they touch some deep place inside me that I don’t understand. Maybe it takes a decade of singing them before they seep into you and grab hold.

Anyway, while I won’t be missing praise music during my youth leader retirement, I will miss hanging out with our church’s high school youth. Every class of youth has been filled with great kids, and they’ve challenged me in more ways than they know. More importantly, they’ve always been kind enough to laugh at a minimal threshold of my lame jokes. I’ll now have to rely on my own kids for that, and the outlook isn't so good on that front these days. I guess I'll have to console myself by crying during a good hymn.

The Stink of My Presence

Being the excellent father that I am, I have lately been on the lookout for summertime activities for my kids. One such activity is second-run dollar movies at the Savoy Theater at 10:30 most mornings. This week’s show is Coraline, which I missed in the theaters and wanted to see.

So, I suggested to my 12-year-old daughter that we might go together. It turned out that Jill had already suggested this to her, and my daughter was already organizing an outing with her friends. She was immediately horrified that I might want to go with them.

Being the excellent father that I am, I backed off, and said of course I wouldn’t go with her, knowing what an embarrassment of a human being I am, and how I would never want to saddle her with my presence in any kind of social setting.

However, I did want to see this movie. So, I suggested that I might let them go into the theater to get themselves settled, after which I would buy my ticket and then sneak into the theater. I would sit in the way, way back, even to the very corner itself, so that no one, especially her friends, would know I was there.

Her eyes widened, and a look of horror came across her face. Staying at home suddenly seemed a lot more appealing than going to the movies with her friends. But she did have a suggestion: “Can’t you just rent it if you want to see it?” No, not available yet on DVD.

Being the excellent father that I am, I made one more suggestion. What if I called the theater and found out whether the movie is showing on more than one screen? I could go in after her, go to an entirely different room from her, and we could still both see the movie. But alas. The stink of my presence is so terrible that even this arrangement was simply not acceptable. It would put her entire social status at risk, and she has worked too hard for the last year to jeopardize that with my being within the same building at the same time as her and her friends

Based on empirical evidence gathered over the last year, I think I now have a handle on which places are acceptable to be together, and which places are not:

1. Acceptable: In the car, driving her somewhere she wants to go
   
2. Acceptable: In our house, as long as she is in her room, and I am somewhere else.
   
3. Unacceptable: The entire rest of the world.

I would feel bad about this, except that I remember being her age. My parents became astonishingly dorky when I entered middle school, even though objective observers might have claimed they had not changed at all. And the list above pretty much sums up my middle school experience too. But luckily, my parents came out of their embarrassing stage after a few years. Being the excellent father that I am, I'm hoping that I’ll come out of this stage in a few years too.

Picking Up Dancers in Kankakee

Last Thursday, I picked up some dancers in Kankakee.

Wait, that sounds incriminating. How about this: Last Thursday, I had some semi-famous dancers in the back seat of my van.

Maybe I should back up. I guess this story starts where many tales of fame-seeking and lost innocence start: with a bribe.

We bribed our good friends Dave and Jenna Weglarz-Ward last year. Our daughters have been friends since kindergarten but they were due to go to different middle schools. Dave and Jenna were wavering though, and we used this as an opportunity to bribe them: send Madeline to Jasmine’s middle school and we would host them for dinner once a month. They accepted these terms, and it has worked out well for everyone involved. The girls like hanging out together. The Schreibers like having the Weglarz-Wards over. The Weglarz-Wards like free food.

A few months ago, we learned at one such dinner that Dave had somehow used his magical powers of hypnotism (or perhaps some other occult power) to become location manager for a movie that was going to be shot here in Champaign-Urbana. Plus, Jenna was going to be the extras casting director. It turns out that Dave and Jenna have a social life outside of coming to our house once a month for dinner, and that they are good friends with Dan Beahm and Erika Randall Beahm, who used live in town and are producing and directing the film. Also, Erika co-wrote the script with Jennifer Bechtel, who we know from local theater productions. As usual, it’s a small, small, Champaign-Urbana world.

We must have served especially good food one night, or more likely, served too much beer, because Dave and Jenna asked if we wanted to be extras in the movie. Also, if we wanted to help out in other ways, they would let us. This sounded like a great deal to me. I’ve always wanted to be on the set of movie.

I had assumed the movie would be one step up from teenagers running around town taking videos on their cell phones. After all, this is my friend Dave, who needs me to transfer his high school videos into mpeg format so he can see them on his computer. He’s not exactly on the cutting edge of the digital world. Also, his videos are exactly what you’d expect of high school friends being hilarious to each other.

So I was impressed when I found out some big-name dance stars were involved, as well as an experienced crew. The movie is called Leading Ladies, and is about an overbearing dance mom and her two daughters. They had signed on Melanie LaPatin (who dominated Latin and Ballroom dance circles for 20 years) and Benji Schwimmer (winner of So You Think You Can Dance). My entire exposure to the world of dance is the four episodes of Dancing with the Stars I watched during spring break this year with my daughters, so I had no idea who they were. But I do have access to the internet. And I am now duly impressed.

Plus, they recruited a real cinematographer in Peter Biagi, who worked on some Robert Altman films. Apparently, being a location manager (finding locations for all the scenes in the movie) is different from being a producer, director, actor or a cinematographer. And Dave is a great location manager, having secured various locations around town at little or no charge. It eventually dawned on me that this was a real movie, as they are planning on submitting it to Sundance next fall.

As the time got closer, we asked Dave and Jenna whether there was anything we could do to help. It turns out there was: we have a big house, and they wanted to have a “Welcome to Champaign-Urbana” party for the cast and crew. Would we be willing to host? Heck yes! We love filling our house with large numbers of people.

The cast and crew were all very gracious. And everyone was enthusiastic about the start of filming. At the party we learned that Melanie likes children and pets (or at least she like the Schreiber kids and our dog Jac, but really, who could blame her?). Benji likes old houses and regularly goes on humanitarian trips to Mexico. Peter Biagi is interesting to talk to but is a terrible basketball player. There were a bunch of Dans, Daves and Bretts involved in the production, but I had no idea who was who, which was good. I hoped not to fawn over or ignore anyone unduly.

We really hit it off with Dan (and later Erika) Beahm, the producer/director. The Weglarz-Wards have good tastes in friends, even if you discount their association with the Schreibers. At this point in my life, I should not be surprised by such things, but we learned that Dan Beahm’s mom lived on the same dorm floor as Jill’s Aunt Judy when they went to college. Also, his mom and dad see Jill’s aunt Bev and uncle Joel semi-regularly at church events in Indiana. It’s a small, tiny, miniscule Champaign-Urbana world, especially if you are married to Jill.

So, I’ve been trying to help out with the movie as best I can. One day, my task was to find a cello. Another day, provide a glue gun. I failed to produce enough liquor bottles in the quantity desired for one scene, but did manage to find enough futons for a different scene. Much earlier, we had provided the name of our neighbor with a 70s era kitchen as a location for the movie. Their house was on the market and they had already moved to Chicago, so it was perfect as an empty place with the right look. Also, I’ve been encouraging people to sign up as extras.

So, as I mentioned before, last Thursday I found myself driving up to Kankakee to pick up dancers, who were in the back of my van for an hour and a half. True be told, it was Dave’s van we were in, but having dancers in the back of Dave’s van is not nearly as fun to say.

The dancers were being brought in for a big dance scene at a local Jerry’s IGA (because when you make a dance movie in Champaign-Urbana, there's no better location than Jerry’s IGA). They were all on So You Think You Dance, but I had no idea who they were (see dance world knowledge, above). Dave chose me to pick them up partially because I wouldn’t embarrass myself and partly because I was the only one available. Had it been Bonnie Hunt or Marisa Tomei, I would certainly have embarrassed myself, but luckily for me, they were not asked to dance in this movie.

Why Kankakee? The dancers flew into O’Hare from LA and Dave’s dad drove them down to Kankakee, where I met them to take them the rest of the way. It is what I would imagine smuggling immigrants is like. Except that these immigrants were semi-famous dancers from LA with a lot of luggage who watched Real Housewives for most of the drive. They crammed themselves into the very back seat, probably so as to be as far away from the middle-aged chauffeur/dad/grunt/nerd guy as possible. But they were very polite about it. For posterity, the dancers were Katee Shean, Courtney Galiano, and Kherington Payne. I am sorry to report that the reality of picking up dancers in Kankakee is about as exciting as the reality of getting picked up in Kankakee by a middle-aged man.

The movie production is just over half-way done and wraps up the last week of June. Things seem to be going well. I wrote a piece for Smile Politely about being on the set, available here.

Also for posterity, I’ve been an extra in one scene, and plan to be in two more. My roles are as follows:

1. Awkward Guy Standing Near Bar at a Gay Nightclub. Words cannot describe my lifelong lack of personal fabulousness that causes no one to ever mistake me for a gay man. With truly fabulous people dancing and milling about, I wisely hung out near the bar and talked to the guy who played drums in the fake band. My only hope is that I might pass for awkwardly bi-curious. Mostly, I am hoping not to make the cut for this scene.
   
2. Single Dad of Two Teenage Daughters at a Pizza Parlor. This was supposed to be the father of a family of five at a pizza parlor, but Jill will be at a conference that week and Anthony will be at summer camp. I am hoping the girls will act bored and/or uncomfortable being in public with their dad, so it will be a realistic scene.
   
3. Face in the Crowd at Ballroom Dance Competition. They are hoping to get over a hundred people there, and I promised to bring as many people as I could.
   

I didn’t get the one extra role that I truly desired: the off-screen one-night stand of Sheri, the overbearing dance mom. I’ve never had a one-night stand in real-life, so I thought it might provide some closure to be the fake one-night stand of Melanie LaPatin’s in a movie. Plus, the only thing this character has to do is snore off-screen, which I am confident I can nail as a part, especially since it will likely be dubbed in later. But, it turns out they don’t really need an extra for someone snoring off-screen.

Oh well. In the Leading Ladies universe, I’ve decided that Single Dad at Pizza Parlor went to a gay nightclub one night to become Awkward Guy Standing Near Bar, only to be picked up by Indomitable Dance Mom, resulting in his becoming One-Night Stand Guy Snoring. Maybe his backstory needs to involve dancers from Kankakee too. At any rate, this would provide all the backstory anyone would ever need for why Single Dad at Pizza Parlor is single, and why he might later show up by himself at a regional ballroom dance competition. That is plenty of closure for me.

Lazy Tuesday Video: The Astounding World of the Future

John O'Neill sent me this one. It turns out that robots will be our friends in the astounding world of the future:

Jesus Loves the 2nd Amendment

Nothing says "I Love Jesus" like a brandishing a sidearm in church.

A friend sent me a link to New Bethel Church of Kentucky, with the following announcement:

In Celebration of July 4 and our rights as Americans, New Bethel Church will be hosting an Open Carry Celebration for all who support 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. ..We are asking responsible handgun owners to attend this service openly wearing their sidearms.

At first, I thought this must be a parody, and a not very good one either, since it is so ridiculous. But no, it seems to be an example of Poe's Law, where you can't distinguish between some religious beliefs and outright parody. There's an AP story on it here.

Up Review

My glowing review of Up is now posted at Smile Politely.

A few questions for the Terminator Salvation robots

Warning, some spoilers are below.

1. If you are a robot and your job is to kill the most important human target in the world, why would you spend all of your time throwing the human around a lab, rather than shooting the human with a gun, or simply crushing the human with your hands?
2. If you capture the father of a past/future resistance leader, why would you hold him in a cell, instead of just killing him?
3. Why go through the trouble of building a human interface in your super secret control room? Since you are a robot, why couldn’t you just download all the information to your half-robot/half-human henchman via a USB port, or even wireless technology, which will presumably still be available in the future?
4. For that matter, why would you tell your half-human/half-robot deep informant henchman that he is an informant at all? This can only lead to confusion and bad things happening.
5. If you are smart enough to send a robot into the past, why aren’t you smart enough to store plans for all the cool new technology you’ve developed, so it can be available earlier in history when you start fighting the humans? To be fair, humans are also not smart enough to do this either, so I suppose that makes it a fair fight.

All in all, I’m not sure why we should be so worried about robots taking over. They appear to be a bunch of morons.

Christians vs the gays

This week's Smile Politely column is up, and has an unnecessarily inflammatory title: "Why gays are morally superior to Christians."

It's actually just a recounting of Stanley Hauerwas' 1993 essay of the same name. Despite its age, it's still both funny and relevant.

The Writing Life Update

I've had some good news lately about some articles I packed up and sent off to seek their fortune in the big, wide world:

1. Dreamseeker Magazine accepted "A Brief History of Love and Suffering," an essay about Christian love gone bad. It should be published sometime this summer.

2. I'm one of six finalists in Geez Magazine's "Daringly Awkward Sermon Contest" with "The Bliss of Ignorance," which describes how useful ignorance can be when visiting a foreign country. I may not be terribly daring, but I make up for it in awkwardness. It's due out this month.

3. I got an email from The Mennonite magazine yesterday, telling me that "My Ensemble Experience," published last year, got 3rd place in the Associated Church Press "Best of the Christian Press" awards in the humor category. It's always nice to place in a contest that I didn't even know I was enrolled in.

However, I would be failing in my Mennonite humility if I did not also mention that my 3rd place finish was a tie, and there were 11 total entries, meaning I'm only in the top 36% of the funniest Christian writers of 2008. To what extent that is like saying I'm in the top 36% of the most fashionable farmers, I dare not judge.

Maybe I should have a new tag line: "Dan Schreiber: Funnier than 64% of other Christian writers in 2008."

Nonetheless, I'm going to wear a tux around the house for the rest of the day and demand that all my beverages be served in champagne glasses.

I like my neighbors

After weeks of doing other things for Smile Politely, my regular column returns this week: Walking and Waving in C-U, where I give some love to my city and neighbors.

But again, not in a weird way.

 

Who would Jesus Torture?

So, basically, I'm just stealing urbanmenno's content at this point. This will make 2 in 2 days. I will offer her 100% of the money I make from this blog.

In my defense, my friend John emailed me this morning with the same story, begging me to post it on my blog so he can rant about it in public. And he's Catholic, only the 2nd most blood-thirsty group of Christians studied.

The chart says it all:



So, almost half of Americans justify torture. That's depressing. On the bright side, though, if you take out all the religious folks, only 40% justify torture.

I never thought I'd say this, but I think we need more "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets in the world. Unfortunately, it's the Christians that need them the most.

100 Days

As if two wars and a depression-like economic crisis isn't enough to deal with, President Obama (..."President Obama" -- I still love hearing that), now gets to deal with a possible pandemic. What's next? Locusts? Space aliens? Robots from the future? All in a day's work, I guess.

I was going to weigh in on Obama's first 100 days, but then urbanmenno said pretty much what I was going to, but funnier:

I’d like to talk to you about your son’s progress, America.

There's been some good and some bad, mostly good, but it's too early to tell. All I know is that someone with good judgment and good values is in charge right now, and that's reassuring. That will be especially important when the zombies show up. People are notoriously irrational about zombies.