New Website!
January 2, 2012
Transmission has a new website! Go to transmissionchurch.org
Benediction for International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
December 21, 2011
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<p style=”width: 320px;”>VIDEO: <a href=”http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/violence-against-sex-workers-20111217″>Violence Against Sex Workers : MyFoxNY.com</a></p>
<em>Transmission was a Co-Sponsor of the <a href=”http://www.redumbrellaproject.org/events/december-17/” target=”_blank”>NYC service for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers</a>. Here is the benediction I offered at the end. ~ Bowie Snodgrass </em>
<div>O Creator, Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Spirit, God -</div>
<div>We pray -</div>
<div>For all who are abused,</div>
<div>For the wounds, hurt and anger that can take years and decades to heal.</div>
<div>For all victims of violence – verbal, physical, and fatal.</div>
<div>For all who have died, named and un-named today,</div>
<div>And for all who mourn:</div>
<div>Friends,
co-workers, lovers, family, parents, and children.</div>
<div>May we never forget.</div>
<div>May the world hear our cry</div>
<div>And may God be with us.</div>
<div>We pray for healing – body, soul, and spirit.</div>
<div>For justice.</div>
<div>For safety.</div>
<div>For the strength to forgive.</div>
<div>We pray that in 2012 not one more person is a victim of abuse, violence, or murder.</div>
<div>Send us out in peace, shalom, salaam, today and always.</div>
<div>Amen.</div>
Christmas Gathering of Communities
November 26, 2011
Save the date: A Gathering of communities on December 21
The night will include a progressive journey through a candle-lit house, engaging in various traditions and ways of celebrating God With Us.
Place: 299 E. 13
9th Street, the Bronx. One block from 3rd Ave./138th Street stop on the 6 train
Date/Time: Wednesday December 21, 7-9:30 pm
What to expect
Each room of the the house will offer a unique way to engage, from art and music to contemplation and tradition. Expect to journey and engage in small groups as you move from room to room, then to have a time of pot-luck foods, celebration and getting to know each other at a central room at the end. Expect to meet people from living-together communities and worshipping communities around the city, as well as with our friends and neighbors in the South Bronx.
How to participate
Bring a pot-luck dish if you can. Come as a community, as a family, or as an individual. Bring friends! An RSVP by Dec. 19 would be helpful. I’ll send out one more reminder closer to the date.
How to contribute
We would like the 4 to 7 rooms to be facilitated by folks from different communities, nationalities and traditions! A room might include:
- Christmas traditions and foods from a particular country or culture, or
- worship through the creation of art or music, or
- contemplative writings, lyrics or images, or
- a provocative and challenging engagement around issues of justice and brotherly love
If you, or your community, are willing to facilitate a room, please email transmissionchurch [at] gmail by December 7.
GODSPELL Back in My Life after 20 years & on Broadway after 40
October 24, 2011
by Bowie Snodgrass
Like the kids in Glee, being part of a musical theater group in middle and high school helped me find a place where I fit in. And growing up a priest’s daughter, being in Godspell at age 14 made me feel like Jesus could be fun and cool.
Godspell shaped my teenage theology. There are still passages of Matthew that I hear and think of the corresponding Godspell scene, joke, or song; lyrics I see in the Episcopal hymnal and my mind clicks over to the Stephen Schwarz melody.
Godspell is an ensemble piece about Jesus’ love for his people, their love for him, and how Jesus teaches them to love each other (above money, hypocrisy, grievances, etc). “Come sing about Love! That made us first to be. Come sing about Love! That made the stone and tree. Come sing about Love! That draws us lovingly.” “So thank the Lord, Oh thank the Lord for all his love.” “Day by day, Three things I pray: To see thee more clearly, Love thee more dearly, Follow thee
more nearly, Day by day.” It’s sincere and simple (very little modern-day irony or Broadway glitz).
I really did love the rest of my troupe in the Olean Theater Workshop when I was 14 and twenty years later, we’re still friends, many now parents, some in ministry, spread-out and in touch via Facebook.
The show was already twenty years old when I was in it in the 90s. I used to listen to my parent’s copy of the original Broadway soundtrack on vinyl.
I knew the new production would need to improve upon the thousands of high school, college, and community theater productions out there for it to be worthy of a Broadway revival. And it was. Amazing. It kept most of the beloved original material, yet felt completely fresh with up-to-date cultural references and dance moves.
In last night’s production, lines struck me with new power. Lyrics resonated deeper. I cried, laughed, and clapped (in that order).
A few people I went with commented that Jesus was blond and John the Baptist/Judas was black, but I was struck by the diversity of the rest of the young cast: Latino, Asian, African American, Jewish, gay, straight, thick and thin. They looked like NYC and America. And it felt like they really loved each other.
In a Playbill interview about Godspell, composer and lyricist Stephen Schwarz says, “there’s a joy that comes from the story and also from the theatrical experience… actors and energy and words and music and the exhilaration that the theatre provides.”
I pray this production runs a long, long time, so that a new generation can be exhilarated by a fun, cool Jesus musical. And I want to go back once or twice more!
what we worship
October 5, 2011
After a lovely ritual we talked some tonight about the Occupy Wall Street protest. Then I came to look at the Lectionary Readings for the week.
Guess what the old testament reading is?
that’s right.
making the golden calf.
and I quote:
So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” — exodus 32:2-4
just to refresh your memory if you have forgotten the story, God and Moses are not at all happy with this and bicker like a pair of exhausted parents:
God says those are “Your people who YOU brought up out of Egypt.” and tells Moses to stand aside.
But Moses says oh no honey, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?
thankfully Moses wins this argument, but the major issues at stake don’t seem to have changed for 4000 years.
What we worship matters.
when we worship what we build with our own gold, we forget about the love of God who frees us from all kinds of slavery. We look to wealth and security as real things, but they have no more power to liberate us than a golden idol.
0;width: 0″>икониRELIGION- a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies…
A few nights ago, I was at an East Village bar with some friends and we
started giving our take on Terrence Malick’s love-it or hate-it epic The Tree of Life. When someone mentioned that it depicts the creation of the universe, Sharon, a young photographer, asked, “Is it a religious film?” her friend Mike immediately said, “No” as if that very idea would be insulting. “No no,” Mike said, “Malick’s background is in philosophy, guys like Heidegger and all that. He’s into asking metaphysical questions.”
I now think that Mike was way off, and that the Tree of Life is an intensely religious film. It’s just not necessarily a very Christian film, or at least what one might expect of that label.
“The Tree of Life” is about a Christian family in the 1950s, as remembered by their eldest son Jack (played by Hunter McCracken.) Christianity is a huge part of the family’s life, though each parent emphasizes different aspects of religion . Mother (Jessica Chastain) raises her sons to live with grace, love and selflessness, while The Father (Brad Pitt) demands discipline and obedience and teaches them to be suspicious of the evil in the world. That conflict brews confusion and resentment in the children, over how they ought live.
Above all this is the central question hovering over the film, which is the question at the heart of every religion. It’s the question we ask when we go to church, synagogue or mosque, when we kneel down to pray, or when burdens fall on us-”Where is God?”
This is the question that haunts Jack as he grows up in a home supposedly infused by Christianity but filled with violence and fear. It’s what his mother demands to know when one of her sons dies. It’s what his father fears to ask as he watches his dreams start to crumble.
Where the film loses its Christian thread is when Malick tries to answer the question. Instead of somehow making a case for Christianity, Malick argues that God is all around us, in creation. To make the point, he starts the film with a graphic showing God’s words to Job:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?..When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?” JOB 38:4-7
He then follows this with a film version of the beginning of the Genesis story: 25 minutes showing the creation of the cosmos, set to a background of hyms and requiems.
However just like God’s response to Job, Malick’s answer is unsatisfying. Showing the divinity of creation doesn’t answer WHY God allows us to suffer, why he allows evil in the world and good people to be punished. And when Malick tries to go further, showing images of an “Earth Mother” reaching out to The Mother in grief, or a beach where all people from all time meet, his images become as vague and frustrating as they are beautiful.
In the end, the Tree of Life works best as a coming-of-age story, as Jack struggles to grow from both his father’s fearful discipline and his mother’s selfless grace. His bigger questions about the presence of God are definitely worth asking, but Malick’s answers seem so far outside the lives of his characters that they ring untrue to the story.
Even with its imperfections, though, The Tree Of Life remains one of the most visually stunning and affecting films I’ve ever seen. It absolutely will leave you frustrated with unanswered questions about the nature of God and the universe, but the very fact that I could leave the film in that state is proof of its power.
I have walked out of church on Sunday on many occasions, feeling numb, my mind on brunch or the afternoon’s activities. Many pastors spend a lifetime trying to get their congregations to leave their doors with an impassioned curiosity about God and humanity. Malick has accomplished that here, along with creating a visual masterpiece.