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Your Power

If we had any doubts before that we needed to claim our power and show up looking like we have some, I hope the election of President Trump, leader of the Fourth Reich, will squelch them.

So let’s stop with the fake fights and resistance, my warrior pigeons. These archives of irreverence and support are for you. Read them. Read about self-care. Read why it’s ridiculous to brag about not owning a suit through the lens of what happened in America last night. Read about your comfort, and why it is not nearly as important to be comfy as it is to make an impression that you are somebody to be reckoned with representing an institution that will not cede to representatives like Mike Pence.

Henceforth, my cookies, PeaceBang will be even less self-censored than before (imagine that!) and cuss freely. Swearing is entirely appropriate — it always has been — so cover your delicate ears if you must or let me name the fuckery as I feel called to do. If you feel called to speak in more dulcet tones, I am grateful for your sweetness. My love doesn’t sound sweet. It sounds nasty, because I am a nasty woman.

One thing I urge us not to do is to blame each other. I will be TOTALLY blaming third party voters for as long as I have the breath in me to do so — (YOU FEWLS!) — but I do realize that’s more of a self-indulgent diversion than a worthy endeavor. I’m just licking my paw and I know it.

Get out of bed, take your Xanax, open your doors, be there for your people. Be there with your people. All we have to do is remember that we were made for this. Truth is always something we can work with. You are called to interpret these times for your people through the lens of God’s reality. Let’s have something more solid to give our communities than “God is still in charge.” If you say that, what does that look like? What does it require of us?

Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with our God. Walk fiercely with our Muslim neighbor, our Mexican neighbor (I literally have both), our sister who is unexpectedly and very unhappily pregnant. Show up fiercely for them. Keep hollering that black lives matter and that “all lives matter” is a sorry rejoinder to that necessary cry of resistance. Keep studying, writing, and witnessing. Feed the hungry. Mobilize your communities. Work hard at keeping networks strong. Worship mightily.

Pray for that fascistic, fear-mongering, completely and utterly unprepared sexist, materialistic, predatory, lying, cheating, thieving humorless, narcissistic asshole who just got elected 45th President of the United States.

It couldn’t hurt.

No need to put that pantsuit away forever. Keep it out. Maybe wear it on Sunday.

Everything we have been talking about on here, everything I have been writing to you for ten years had this coming Sunday and moments like it in mind. Tomorrow morning I have a coffee date with Christian and Jewish colleagues. Tomorrow evening I have a community gathering in my city to strategize local justice initiatives. There will be white folks and black and Latinx folks and gay and straight and young and old. Friday night I will be attending a movie about Syria with a diversity group in the town where my church is. There will be Muslims and Christians and Unitarian Universalists and LGBTQ and disabled and men and women and trans people together. All of these gatherings were planned way before Election Day.

My America looks like that and I have seen all of my American reviled and threatened by Trump. I can’t stay in bed, and neither can you. I send you a large mug of coffee, a hug and all of my love. Go be beautiful. Go be powerful.

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Election Edition

Let’s gather ’round the campfire, kids. Auntie PeaceBang wants to tell you some stuff.
These are challenging times so I gave you a whole sermon here. Make a nice cup of something and I won’t judge you at all if you add a shot of bourbon to it.
We are having a community gathering at my church for the election returns — to network and plan for what’s next in local social justice initiatives — and I told people that there won’t be booze but I won’t see any flasks that happen to come out.
Seriously though? All our addictions are prone to flare up under this kind of communal anxiety, so please be careful. Get the support you need lined up now. Get it lined up yesterday. Me, I just keep going to Sephora and eating popcorn.

If this supports or ministers to you in any tiny way then I’m glad I posted it. Let me know. Kiss of peace. MWAH.

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Madame President’s Look

Pigeons of America!

If only PeaceBang wasn’t semi-down with a cold and desperately trying to finish an article and a sermon, she would write a much more substantive post about Hillary Clinton’s quasi-Nehru suits and uniform. For now, let me say that HRC has been extremely strategic about her appearance and been just as wise (IMHO) to settle on a uniform of monochromatic suiting. What she has done is taken the traditional, generic male suit concept and had designers reimagine it for her figure and her historical moment. Tailored. The off center buttons are lovely. Simple but elegant head to toe. No “creative” or trendy details to distract or generate stupid articles or diversions. Almost futuristic in its Star Trekian lines. Beautiful, striking bracelet. Mumsy earrings. I notice an improvement in tailoring from earlier versions of this suit. Her people are figuring out her how to tailor her pant legs.

When you are poised to become the first woman President of the United States, a country whose most influential export is the Hollywoodized, pornographic version of femininity — a country with a bunch of misogynist, fundamentalist Christian legislators in Congress and a population of Kardashian-addled mouth-breathers who can’t think critically about much of anything EXCEPT women’s looks and bangability factor, you can’t take be too careful.

Consider: just this week, her opponent argued that he could not have possible committed sexual assault against certain women because they weren’t sexy enough.
Not because he wouldn’t otherwise grab them by the vagina, but because they’re NOT HOT ENOUGH.

So Madame President has this modified Nehru suit going on last night for her third debate, and it’s no accident that it’s white (cream) and that it’s — dare I suggest — a wee bit clerical around the collar? [Click images to enlarge]

hillary-3

hillary-clinton-third-debate-lead1

third-debate

Trust me when I say that every inch of this look from head to toe was strategic. Whether or not the designer of this suit meant to invoke the clerical association or not, I cannot say. I am heading back to bed after doing another neti pot flush and will Google details later.

Swing state pastors, please tell me that you are out there registering voters like mad.

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Natural Woman

You know what we needed today, pigeons?
We needed to look at some godliness.

And here she is, singing at the Kennedy Center Honors.

A friend and colleague posted this today on Facebook as “an antidote” and YES, it is. Yes, it is.
It is black power, beauty and talent. It is women writing and singing songs about how we feel and how we love. It is women claiming center state and electrifying a huge group of people with their spiritual intensity coming through God’s gifts of voice and experience. It is an old woman standing in glamour and glory, graciously claiming all the respect and adulation due her. It is a moment of true diva presence, that word that should be reserved for just such commanding artistry as this.

Let this be an antidote to your soul against all the racists, the white nationalist xenophobes, the grabbers, bullies and stalkers, the losers who try to snatch your magic and vampire your power.

Let this be a reminder of your godliness and beauty, to step into it and sing it and honor it.

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Election Hell

It’s a very tough time.

It has been awful. Let’s not kid ourselves!

But last night, when that big, hulking bully literally stalked Hillary Clinton on the debate stage, I reached a new level of contempt and disgust.

The moderators did what they could to keep the conversation fairly timed and on focus, but I so wish one of them had said, “Mr. Trump? What are you doing? Are you trying to physically dwarf and intimidate your opponent right now? SIT YOUR ASS DOWN.”

That national conversation today is heavily focused on male violation of women’s boundaries. Follow the #notokay hashtag on Twitter.

There will be people in your spiritual care who excuse Trump and justify his behavior or try to compare it to Bill Clinton’s. I hope that nothing will prevent you from saying exactly what you think to those people no matter who they are, no matter how venerable, no matter how much they pledge, no matter how much you’d prefer to spare both of you a difficult conversation. Unless you have evidence that they’re actually not in their right mind — in which case you should ignore them — this is an opportunity for conversation.

Thanks, Donald, I guess, for inspiring countless sermons on consent, “locker room” conversation and why it degrades everyone who participates in it as well as those who are the subject of it, and stalking.

Did you happen to catch Trump calling Hillary Clinton the DEVIL? I didn’t catch it but a friend of mine did. I was too busy hyperventilating at Der Trumpster’s threatening to imprison her. Jesus, he is a pathetic, unhinged dude.

Hang in there, good people!