Five Things Before Friday

Jesus, reading Twitter during the night.

I was going to do Three Things on Thursday, but the internet yesterday (and during the night) turned out to be my Dream Come True. There are so many things, I just can’t pass by on the other side of the road without noting them with relish and delight.

The First Thing

The wondrously clueless people over at Union Seminary, like sheep wandering around banging into each, unable to hear the voice of any shepherd let alone the Good one, yesterday became utterly and nightmarishly confused about the purpose of a chapel service. Here is an article rounding up responses to the original tweet that sent Christian Twitter into a flame of brilliant jokes (in case you aren’t on twitter). Please, I beg you, click on it. You will not be disappointed.

My personal favorite is the “clarification” that the inimitable Jeff Walton aggregated from the twitter feed of Union Seminary. Not sensing the precipice of irony and humor over which they were careening, they said this:

But it’s also important to note that this isn’t, really, that radical a break from tradition. Many faiths and denoms have liturgy through which we express and atone for the harm we’ve caused. No one would have blinked if our chapel featured students apologizing to each other. What’s different (and the source of so much derision) is that we’re treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own right—not just something to be consumed. Because plants aren’t capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldn’t engage with them?

Well, I know people who talk to their plants. I’ve seen it happen. I don’t talk to my plants but I do mutter audible threats to the slugs devouring my plants as I crush them beneath my delicately-clad heel.

My favorite response was the person who remembered Jonah. Jonah loved his luxurious vine, and the Lord Literally Killed It on purpose to be mean to Jonah. I mean, if God himself is going to go around killing plants like Vines and Fig Trees, as if they are not “fully created beings, divine Creation”—which, I wonder, what does that even mean?—well, what kind of a God is he even? Someone should tell God he’s ruining everything.

This is what happens when you refuse to read the bible “literally.” You “literally” miss all the metaphor, all the simile, all the imagery, all the actual point of the words on the page. Hey, Union Seminary, ‘member that tree that was cut down (killed) so that it could be hefted onto the bleeding shoulders of that Man, that “fully created” and at the same time “divine being,” who willingly carried it, stumbling, through the streets of Jerusalem and was nailed to it and died for all the little created beings who have completely lost their ability to do the most basic things like read an actual book? #sob #entry459intheannalsofchristianirony

The Second Thing

I kind of wanted this to be first, but, well, there was the plant thing. That’s right, the Prime Minister of Canada had some embarrassing photos surface. He thought it would be fun, some number of decades ago, to paint his face a much darker color than it’s ordinary hue for some party or other. My goodness, what is it with people insisting on painting their faces and then later insisting on running for public office? I heart 2019.

Asked if he should resign his position as Liberal leader based on both incidents, Trudeau made the case that incidents like this should be treated on a “case-by-case” basis. “There are people who make mistakes in this life and you make decisions based on what they actually do, what they did and on a case-by-case basis. I deeply regret that I did that. I should have known better but I didn’t,” he said.

The Third Thing

Speaking of creepy, I recently found IFB Pastor Clips on Twitter and I have Not been disappointed. Basically some person who has too much time is taking the trouble to clip up the crazier end of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preaching and share it with all the world. This is the absolute best.

I wish I could embed the tweet so you could watch without having to go to twitter, but I don’t know how to do that. Basically, a poor nice man loses track of where he is (he is in the pulpit, preaching a “sermon”) and begins to describe how much he loves his wife’s feet, and how he massages them of an evening, and…well, I better not go on, but you better figure out how to watch it.

The Fourth Thing

Kanye West has found Jesus and is so thrilled about it that he has taken to preaching on Sunday mornings, and, I think, selling “merch,” a term I had to look up. It means “stuff” like T-shirts and hats and stuff. The best part is Kim trying to wrap her mind around his newfound life with that fully created divine being who so confuses Union Seminary. Here is what she said on the View, when asked about it:

“Kanye started this, I think, just to heal himself,” said Kardashian West. “It was a real personal thing, and it was just friends and family, and he has had an amazing evolution of being born again and being saved by Christ.” “People always ask, ‘Well, what are you worshiping?’ Or, ‘What is this?’” she added. “It is a Christian service, like a musical ministry. They talk about Jesus and God.”

The Fifth Thing

And finally—and maybe this is the best one, I’m not sure—Body Positivity is out, Body Ambivalence is in.

In a Glamour cover story Jamil says she’s embracing body ambivalence or body neutrality. “I don’t think about my body ever,” she says. “And because of that, I swear to God, I never would have been able to have this success that I have now. It opened up all this time because I spent hours a day thinking about my food.”

I don’t quite follow. If I stop thinking about food I will have time to do lots of other things? Or I should start thinking about food? I’m not sure, but here is some clarification, maybe:

She wants you, above all, to just stop thinking about it. “Imagine just not thinking about your body. You’re not hating it. You’re not loving it,” she says. “You’re just a floating head. I’m a floating head wandering through the world.”

Witness that Jameela Jamil is drop dead gorgeous. I look forward to her not worrying about what she looks like anymore.

I’m going to try this one, after I’ve arranged all my plants on my kitchen counter, which is made out of dead trees, and apologized to them, I’m going to stop thinking about what I look like and just be a floating head wandering the wastelands of God’s green leafy creation. It’s going to be great.

Happy Thursday!!!