Pronouncing Names Correctly: A PeaceBang Rant

Dearests, I was among the Broadway Faithful who let out a collective primal scream when Mr. John Travolta (whom my own dear father dubbed “John Revolting” in the 1980’s, just as a joke to tweak my mother, who had a major crush on the guy) MANGLED the name of Idina Menzel on the Oscars telecast last weekend. Mis Menzel, many of you know, provided the voice of Elsa in the movie “Frozen” and is the pipes behind the hit song, “Let It Go.” She is a DIVA. And her name is not Adele Dazeem.

“WHO THE HELL IS ADELE DAZEEM?” exploded Twitter, and henceforth skewered Mr. Travolta for his gaffe.
Richly deserved. As the popular meme goes, he had one job to do. ONE job. ONE moment. ONE person to introduce. Unlike other presenters who often have a long list of challenging, unfamiliar names to pronounce in sequence, John Travolta had a tiny bit of lead-in patter and then one name to share with the billion viewers all over the globe. IDINA MENZEL.

Here is what it communicates when someone bungles a name badly and (a) shows no signs of knowing that he has done so and (b) makes no immediate effort to correct himself: it says, “I do not care about you. I have never heard of you, you are not important, and you were not worth the thirty seconds it would have taken me to learn how to pronounce your name correctly and to therefore honor you and your ancestors by doing so.”

Have you heard that expression to “call someone out of their name?” John Travolta LITERALLY called Idina Menzel out of her name, and no excuse suffices. Perhaps John T. does have dyslexia, as some have suggested. Still no excuse. Our job as public leaders is to know and accommodate such things about ourselves before getting in front of a billion people. John Travolta has had a long career memorizing dialogue and lyrics, and he is clearly not in the early stages of dementia.

He just didn’t care enough to go over and over the one name he had to pronounce.

So how does this translate to our work, my lovely and dear ones? It reminds us that we should take the time to ask, and to ask, and to ask again the correct names and pronunciations of people’s names when we shall have the honor of uttering them in an important setting. It means that we should get the names straight when doing a memorial service so that we do not mix up the name of the first wife with the girlfriend or the granddaughter. It means that we consider it our sacred obligation never to stand at graveside and realize, with horror, that we have never set eyes on the middle name of the deceased before this moment and have no idea how to accurately pronounce it.

It means, as in all things ministerial, serious aforethought to everything we do, even though it may seem to be routine, and even though we feel that we can skip serious preparation because we have done this a thousand times before.

To mispronounce someone’s name creates a cringe experience for them, and that is never okay.

I am still beating myself up for doing a christening recently where I accidentally referred to the baby’s father as “Roger,” the role he played in “Rent” when he met the baby’s mother. We all had a good laugh, and it was fairly okay because Ken knows that I know his name is Ken, and I had already correctly spoken his name in the ceremony. Still, because I don’t know Ken personally, my slip was evidence that I think of him in my mind as “Roger,” and that’s not okay. Had I spent more time in prayer and preparation for the occasion, I would have had the name Ken in my heart and mind so thoroughly that Roger wouldn’t have had a chance to slip in there. I have learned my lesson! Next time, make sure to go over and over and over the parents and godparents’ names with as much care and intention as I do the baby’s name, and the service itself.

Not only are we responsible for pronouncing the names of those in our pastoral care correctly and confidently (without constant reliance on a script, as though one has no true connection to the people), we should make it our business to train our lay leaders and church staff likewise in the pronunciation of all names, both current and historical/Biblical. How awful to sit on the chancel and hear someone praise a loyal volunteer but mangle her name? Or to feel one’s spine stiffen with horror when the Good Friday reader pronounces Pontius Pilate’s name as “Pilates,” as in the exercise technique?

As you can tell, PeaceBang is a bit of a stone cold Fury when it comes to this subject. This is no doubt due to the influence of her late father, the frequently furious but wonderful Carl Davis Weinstein, who spent his life correcting the pronunciation of his last name (which is WINE-STINE). My daddy always told me, “Baby, the first time someone mispronounces your name, correct them. If they do it a second time, you may or may not choose to give them the benefit of the doubt, but correct them again. If they do it again after that, write them off as an idiot and a schmuck. Someone who can’t be bothered to learn how to pronounce your name correctly doesn’t really respect you, or they just don’t know how to listen. Both things are bad.”

Names are sacred. God knows they are. Take them seriously!

Kiss of peace, PB (Miss Weinstein)

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Shopping Rant, Tailor Rave

Oh, darlings. If there’s one thing PeaceBang positively LOATHES, it’s having to find something to wear for a special event. This is her idea of a nightmare. Special events and rites of passage are wonderful, of course, but it is PeaceBang’s commitment to always have something classic in her closet that will work for many such occasions so she is spared the dreadful ordeal of shopping for any particular one of them. If anything could cause me to enter the convent, that would be it. Just set me right up with a habit, please. As long as it’s not itchy fabric. Sister PeaceBang.

I have a big event coming up, as I am being Installed (like software, as we say) at my new congregation on March 16th. Believe it or not, I find such occasions intimidating and exhausting. I LOVE being invited to preach at ordinations and installations — that suits me great, and much better than being the ordinand or installee. These events are an important part of tradition but they’re a lot of work for everyone and really throw us off our regular rhythms. I wish we could elope, or just say “How about you all come over for a wienie roast and we’ll do the Act of Installation over pie for dessert?” But that is idle fantasizing, as a degree of formality and fanciness is called for here. Which means that I get to fret about What To Wear (yes, I do it just like you do!).

For me, the whole point about thinking about what fits and works for me throughout the year is that I don’t feel totally unprepared and intimidated when I have to dress myself for important occasions. I did a quick audit of my closet a week or so ago and decided that, as many a gal will say when looking at racks of clothes, “I have nothing to wear!”

In this case, it happened to be accurate. An Installation is a very special occasion and I skew to the slightly Boho/funky on one end of my wardrobe spectrum and Extremely Boring and Tailored at the other. Neither one of those options really suits the occasion. The Extremely Boring and Tailored pieces are my gear for weddings and funerals, and I jazz those up with accessories, hair and make-up when necessary, but they’re just not special enough for one’s own Installation. There is also the sad fact that many of my tried-and-true tailored rites of passage pieces are really old now, and while they’re not totally threadbare or inappropriate, they lack the requisite Specialness for the occasion.One of my favorite and dearest blazers, for example, is sun-faded and absolutely must be retired. That thing has seen way more weddings than Liz Taylor. It used to be a lovely robin’s egg blue and now it just looks white with a splotchy blue tinge. *sob*

It was my luck to find two nice blazers online at Macy’s, and one by Calvin Klein which matches the Calvin Klein charcoal grey skirt I bought last fall, so now I have a proper suit. Yay, Macy’s! And on sale!

I also decided to replace my splotchy old blue blazer with a bright cobalt blue one, and I feel just fine about either of these options with a silk blouse and heels for the Installation. Maybe I’ll go to a hairdresser and get mah hair did.

I dutifully took my jackets to my wondrous tailor, who helps to take some of the bulk out of the arms, nip in the waist so that I appear to have a waist, shorten the sleeves and generally talk me through my sartorial game plan for any big events I have coming up. My father, the late Carl Davis Weinstein, always told me that a good tailor was your best friend, and you should honor, cherish and obey him or her. He was right. And I do.

Sunny agreed with me that the buttons on the blue blazer were uninspiring. That’s what a good tailor will do: they’ll be honest with you. If you say, “Does my butt look big in this?” your loyal tailor will tell you that it does, and then make some magic happen to make your butt look better. If you say, “I don’t love these buttons,” your tailor may fix upon those buttons with eagle eye, pronounce them unacceptable, and decide to make it her mission to find better ones.

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Not being satisfied with any of these options, Sunny will be shopping for just the right buttons and texting me photos of what she finds to see which ones I like the best. Because she’s the best.

The way I see it is this: all of this feels like a lot of fuss. And it is. But, God willing, I will be wearing that charcoal suit and that blue blazer for years to come. I will be in how many couple’s wedding photos in that blue blazer (or maybe not – it may be too bright to inflict on a wedding). That charcoal suit will be my solace and comfort when I need funeral attire and can’t be bothered to think about what goes with what, and are the sleeves too long. When I have to give a lecture on the theology of covenant and I’d rather put my time and energy into reviewing Richard Mather’s theories of congregationalism than into worrying about what in the world I am going to wear, I will be very grateful to reach for that blue blazer, pull on a pair of black trousers or a skirt, choose from among a few bold necklaces and feel confident and presentable.

We fuss today so that we can devote our full attention to the work to which God calls us tomorrow.

God bless you and all your buttons, dears. Kiss of peace.

My Charge To the Minister

Here I am giving the Charge to the Minister at the Installation of the Rev. Jude Geiger at the Unitarian Univeralist Fellowship of Huntington in New York. My remark about being Alfred the Butler is a reference to the speaker who went before me who gave the congregation a charge that involved being like Batman.

The things I said to Jude are the things I say to you all the time: be yourself and do not contort yourself trying to live into some false, outmoded clergy persona, pray and be faithful, do not fall into the trap of believing that your work is more important than what God is doing through the church, and have a ministry worth loving.

Enjoy!

Contempt And Influence

I was meeting some old friends on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We happened to duck into a very ritzy little bistro for lunch; a place that just happened to be jam packed with some of the most wealthy and glamorous and powerful people on the planet. I recognized some literary and theatre celebrities, and the place just reeked of society, darling. There I was in my denim jacket and infinity scarf and black pants and boots and cross-body bag, and my friends were tourists from Sweden and we were all clean and presentable human beings but this joint was POSH.

Their menu outside only posted the food and prices, so really, I had no idea.

I realized upon stepping inside the cafe that I was in a different world. As I said, I immediately spotted various big names having a power lunch, and every woman in the place was incredibly, extremely thin, drowning in jewelry and carrying bags that cost more than half a year’s mortgage payments (and I know this for sure, because the whole phenomenon of obscenely priced bags fascinates me, and I pay attention to these brands). There were numerous victims of Restalyne and Botox abuse — top lips plumped beyond recognition as lips, faces stretched tight and shiny, skin raw pink from chemical peels, brows lifted to the hairline. It was a kind of shocking spectacle and one I have never seen before. I’ve seen money, and I have seen society, but never up this close and never at this high a level. I felt a bit like an anthropologist as I observed the amazing spectacle without overtly staring at anyone.

Then I saw her. She was sitting at the bar looking at me. She was tiny and brittle, not an ounce of extra fat on her, dressed in something so blindingly chic I have forgotten it — except that I remember her heavy polished gold chains and fitted buttery leather jacket. Her hair was cropped in a most elegant way and her face and make-up perfect. She was over sixty and had a few wrinkles, but had had work done and her eyes were unnaturally wide and her mouth pulled a bit too wide, as injectable fillers will do. Her posture was perfect. i took all of this in in seconds and almost gasped when I saw her expression. She was staring at me with a look of total and unmistakable contempt, not even trying to hide her disapproval of everything about me and not looking away when I met her eye. I was shocked for a moment but I’m not an idiot, I know the judgment of this class of people (I grew up with some of them), and I know how I look in her eyes: fat (the inexcusable crime of it!), poor (of course I’m not poor at all except in that particular context), unacceptable, disgusting. She radiated this. She radiated it at me like an arrow shot from a quiver.

The anthropologist part of me was astonished, filing the experience away for future consideration in my bulging file of Human Social Behavior. The Fat American in me was offended and defensive. But as your Faithful PB, I was intrigued. I immediately wondered, “If I wanted to have some influence in this woman’s life and community as a religious leader, what would I have in my closet — what LOOK could I put together — to address her in her own setting?”

Is not ministry about feeling called to have influence in the world?
I wondered if I could have influence in this woman’s world, or if I am simply too (to her) bumpkinish, frumpy, unchic and inconsequential.

It would depend on who introduced us. It would depend if she knew my work and achievements (maybe). It would depend if she has any respect at all for the life of the mind: she may or may not. If she does not, she will never hear me. Which to me is a challenge! I don’t think it’s that woman’s job to meet me where I am, to see my inner beauty and value and that sort of thing. The whole point to me is that I am the minister, I am the woman of God, and it is therefore my job to meet her where SHE is, to love her shallow, contemptuous little self as best I can (which was not very well at first glance, I’ll tell ya) and to try to find a way to bridge cultural and societal gaps to be able to form a relationship with her.

I think the nicest black suit I have (not very nice, and not actually a suit) with very high heels, impeccable hair and make-up, lots of corseting and nice jewelry might get me a hearing with this kind of woman. To me, that’s what this blog is about. It’s about acknowledging that we want to get a hearing with all kinds of God’s children, and that the way we present ourselves opens or closes doors before we open our mouths.

Be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves, and have ye at least one outfit in your closet that would get you a hearing with someone like this woman. Because she may desperately need the message and ministry you have to give, and if not her personally, you may need and want to have some influence with some interest or community she represents. You might want to enjoy working with her on a project of some sort. You might want to get to know the possibly awesome lady she is under all that Chanel. You can’t get your message heard by this kind of person looking like a (fat) slob. And as much as it rankles me to accept that my body size was the cause of her contempt, and much less so my attire (if I had been tall and model slim, I don’t know that she would have cast the steely glare upon me), that’s the world in which we live and serve.

When I am uber critical of what seems to my dear pigeons as a perfectly acceptable manner of dress, remember that I am always thinking of the way we are seen, read and regarded either consciously or unconsciously by the public. My job is to mediate between the worlds of insular clergy attitudes (“God loves everyone! We’re all beautiful!”) and the rest of the world (“God, what a mess”). If we want to influence the world, we must not expect the world to come to us with our own enlightened attitudes* already formed, right?

Go be beautiful.
Peace.
Bang.
xoxo MWAH!

*I was going to put this in quotes, but I won’t. We’re not as enlightened as we like to believe, for one, and then there’s the whole argument around aesthetics and Beauty as a transcendent value, but I need to get to Home Depot so I won’t get into that now. xoxo PB

Getting a Professional Make-Up Job

This is a terrific question that came to me way back in June, 2013:

Subject: Very Important Funerals
Message: Hey Peacebang!
I hope that you’re having a great time at your General Assembly.

I’ve just started a position at a church that has a “Very Important Member” (big-city mover/shaker) who is 100+. Her (already planned) funeral will be at [public secular arts venue], and a lot of the nuts and bolts of the event have already been worked out to be implemented the moment she passes away.

Here’s my question: I always strive to be professional and dignified in my dress/makeup/hear when I’m performing sacred duties for my people. It occurs to me, though, that at this Very Important Funeral, it may be necessary to go the extra mile in regard to appearance. Do you think it be appropriate to get my hair and make up professionally done ahead of the funeral? Should I find a stylist now and work out the face/hair stuff so that when the funeral is nigh I can just pop in and get it done with minimal stress?

I’d love your feedback on this.

Dear Very Thoughtful Minister,

I checked in with you the other day and you assured me that your Very Important Member is still with us, which gives us an opportunity to address this question before the event.

I see from your photo that you are a beautiful woman who clearly knows how to do her own hair and make-up. So let me say from a personal consultation viewpoint that I think you are perfectly equipped to get yourself ready for this occasion without professional help from your local equivalent of Kevin Aucoin.

That said, let me ask you this: would it help you feel more grounded, confident and faithful to get your face and hair “did?” Would doing so feel like a tribute to the grande dame whose life you will be lifting up? If so, it’s no one’s business but yours if you slip away to a salon and let pros get your ready for the service. Lordy, haven’t we seen how disgraceful it appears when an officiant clearly has no sense of occasion and utterly fails to rise to the formality of a funeral? All funerals are public, and the one you anticipate is ultra-public. You are wise and responsible to consider your appearance ahead of time. There will be photographers there and there will likely be video cameras as well. A word to fellas: this applies to you, too. Get your rump in the barber’s chair for a fresh shave and coiff before an important occasion. It’s the respectful thing to do.

Here’s what I would recommend: do a trial run. Plan your outfit, plan your hair and make-up and do it all just the way you intend to do it the day of the funeral. Sunday morning seems a good time to do a dress rehearsal. Have someone get you on film and check everything to make sure you approve of it all. If the hair was difficult to do and you think it may be a problem on the big day to repeat your ‘do, take your stylist into confidence and arrange to have it done privately the day of or day before the funeral. Or you may have a friend who’s good with hair who will arrange to come over at short notice and replicate your style.

Make these preparations prayerfully in the spirit of “making all things ready” for a rite of passage that will place an inordinate amount of pressure on you to exemplify the dignity and grace of the Church in a secular setting. If it’s one less thing to worry about, why not hire someone to do your face and/or hair?

Smart gal. Some may scoff and say, “Oh GEEZ, E., just write a great eulogy and get your robe dry cleaned and, like, use some hair spray!” But I say that this thoughtfulness and care on your part is a way of showing love and respect to the woman whose life you will be honoring and whose soul you will be praying into the arms of the Eternal. Do whatever you need to do to bring all the beauty and shine you can to this very important occasion for this Very Important Member.

Blessings and a kiss of peace, PB