Morning on the Dashashwamedh Ghat

Encounter...

strangers (2004) - a short film by Erez Tadmor and Guy Natti:

Non-discrimination in Salt Lake City

As presented to the world in Deseret News, the following is the full text from Michael Otterson, managing director of the LDS Church's Public Affairs, who spoke during Tuesday night's public hearing in support of Salt Lake City's proposed non-discrimination ordinance:

"Good evening.

"My name is Michael Otterson, and I am here tonight officially representing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The non-discrimination ordinance being reviewed by the City Council concerns important questions for the thoughtful people of this community.

"Like most of America, our community in Salt Lake City is comprised of citizens of different faiths and values, different races and cultures, different political views and divergent demographics. Across America and around the world, diverse communities such as ours are wrestling with complex social and moral questions. People often feel strongly about such issues. Sometimes they feel so strongly that the ways in which they relate to one another seem to strain the fabric of our society, especially where the interests of one group seem to collide with the interests of another.

"The issue before you tonight is the right of people to have a roof over their heads and the right to work without being discriminated against. But, importantly, the ordinance also attempts to balance vital issues of religious freedom. In essence, the Church agrees with the approach which Mayor Becker is taking on this matter.

"In drafting this ordinance, the city has granted common-sense rights that should be available to everyone, while safeguarding the crucial rights of religious organizations, for example, in their hiring of people whose lives are in harmony with their tenets, or when providing housing for their university students and others that preserve religious requirements.

"The Church supports this ordinance because it is fair and reasonable and does not do violence to the institution of marriage. It is also entirely consistent with the Church's prior position on these matters. The Church remains unequivocally committed to defending the bedrock foundation of marriage between a man and a woman.

"I represent a church that believes in human dignity, in treating others with respect even when we disagree – in fact, especially when we disagree. The Church's past statements are on the public record for all to see. In these comments and in our actions, we try to follow what Jesus Christ taught. Our language will always be respectful and acknowledge those who differ, but will also be clear on matters that we feel are of great consequence to our society.

"Thank you."

The non-discrimination ordinance passed unanimously. But how can we square this public position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the video the Rev. James Ford shared on his blog Monkey Mind recently, in which the security guards of the LDS Temple Square wrestled two gay men to the ground and arrested them for trespassing because of their offending the church by holding hands and kissing (peck on the cheek not tongue down the throat) while walking on the sidewalk that runs along Main Street, Salt Lake City, in the Temple Square block.

And one wonders how the church squares this support of the non-discrimination policy and its words via its spokesman that,  "I represent a church that believes in human dignity, in treating others with respect even when we disagree – in fact, especially when we disagree," with what we know about its harsh treatment of its own members who come to know themselves as LGBTQ.

But I grant them this: their position on the non-discrimination ordinance is not in conflict with their unfortunate position against same-sex marriage.

I wonder if the seeming incoherence in church policy in matters related to human dignity of gays on the street and of its own gay members vis-à-vis its support of the non-discrimination ordinance might signal some beginning of a shift in LDS ideas on some of these human rights issues. Maybe they need time and space to let something emerge?

Hope springs eternal...

Back from the Verge

JUNGLE FANTASY

MARY - An umbrella comes in handy. In the jungle.
ALEX - Jungle is not my metier.
MARY - We know. Fanny, what thousand and one uses do you find for your umbrella?
FANNY - Prodding the suddenly faint of heart. Marine soundings. Poking hippopotamii. And whacking the recalcitrant croc. Thwak! The Mighty Silurian!
MARY - So Fanny's lurid tabloids call the crocodile.
ALEX - (Working out a lyric.) Umbrella. Hmmm. Chum. Fella. Drum. Fun. Swa - swa - swa - swa - Swoon! Ta - ta - ta - Typhoon! La la - tropical fever has got me in its mighty thrall.
(A sudden downpour. The ladies blossom their umbrellas.)
FANNY - No, dear. There's no protection from a tropical downpour... It must be endured.

- from On the Verge, or The Geography of Yearning

a play by Eric Overmeyer

First in slo-mo the waterfall rewinds, the scene flickers
backwards to the source, like frames of a silent film
Wreckage of a riverboat, paddle-wheel mere splinters
swirling in eddies, battered on boulders, coalesces

With increasing speed, flesh-eating fish and crocodilians
vomit up the Victorian ladies, chunks of acid-burned
meat and bone, disgorged, healed, returning to resigned,
terrified, and quivering form

Wreckage reassembles, resurrected explorers rise,
flailing through the air, toward the riverboat's reconstituted deck
The vintage craft falls upward through the receding spray of the falls,
captain at the wheel, reaches that higher plane

Tottering on the edge for what seems an eternity
before the backflow sweeps passengers and crew up
to renewed life and ignorance of their fate
Umbrella. Hmmm. Chum. Fella. Drum. Fun.

The calm river sweeps them back from doom to doom,
ladies sipping their gin, watching the birds in the trees
being disgorged and resuscitated by pythons
releasing them again to escape their destiny and be hatched

The python slithers, tail-first, through the jungle
into his shed skin, disgorging mice and guinea pigs
who renew their breath and mate again,
absorbing their progeny back into quivering genitals

Back on the river, the ladies open their parasols
against harsh tropical sun, backing cautiously through
basking hippopotamii Swa - swa - swa - swoon! 
Tropical fever has got me in its mighty thrall.

Typhoon squalls five-hundred miles away feed monsoon
downpours that can only be endured as they rise from the deck,
restoring dirt and slime to their native positions,
filling clouds that will swirl and billow back to sea

Gin helps. Tonic is medicinal; the ladies sit under
unfurled-furled umbrellas, spitting their liquor
back into the glasses then taken away by servants,
who pour it all back into bottles stowed again in careful cabinets

The riverboat docks back where it started,
ladies under their parasols, talking in unknown tongues,
swallow their words and back down the gangplank
to rickshaws and friends come to see them off.

There is no protection, past or future
The tropical downpour must be endured.
Rickshaws receding toward morning hotels,
ladies reverse-lacing their shoes,

Undressing, emerging backward into their beds
and to anticipating, restless sleep,
dreams undreaming themselves,
only plans ahead



© 2009 by Paul Kent Oakley

read write prompt #100, liberally ignored

Joyful, Joyful

Brian Webman exposing his talents, singing joyfully in the bathroom:





Someone using the handle tarolegs left this comment on YouTube:
"CHILD! Jesus aint lookin at your abs lol, you in shape tho!"

Here, in contrast, we have the great, the fully clad Diane Bish giving an exuberant Presbyterian rendition (no, that is not the oxymoron my Presbyterian-raised partner suggested, after all) on the monumental Ruffatti pipe organ of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, FL:





Even if you hate pipe organ, I dare you to tell me that is not magnificent! Yet still, my favorite interpretation remains the one from Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit:





I told you I had a romantic admiration of the Catholic nuns who stayed behind in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods with the mission of providing a solid education to at-risk kids, an admiration this movie plays on all-stops-out. Add a Vegas show girl to the convent and anything is possible.

You can expose your joy to the light of day dressed any number of ways - in the altogether, in your Sunday best, or in comfortable clothes. And you can do it in any number of places - in a concert hall, in a church, or even in your bathroom. Just do it!  (to coin a phrase...)