Archive for the ‘Hollywood’ Category

« Older Entries

Living and fighting AIDS, Hollywood remembers.

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Here we are again at another World AIDS Day (begun in 1987), and 25 million people have died of this disease. Progress in fighting it has been so remarkable that people don’t use the term “pandemic” any more, which is good.

But the burden and the horror of AIDS has shifted — from white homosexual males who transported HIV around like so much airline baggage, and shared freely if unwittingly — to the third world, to women, to children, and to minorities. The bad side of this generation-long struggle against AIDS is that access to health care is not fair, justice or equal. Those who can afford health care have gotten access to today’s wonderful medications which allow them to manage the immune deficiency and get on with their lives.

Those who cannot get access to such medications (including the millions in third world nations who can’t even get clean water) still suffer the same pain and the same potential future as those whose names are on the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

I am proud to be on the Board of Directors of a fairly new local non-profit entity here in Los Angeles, Hollywood Remembers. Two nights ago, in anticipation of World AIDS Day, Hollywood Remembers staged its third annual consciousness– and fund-raising event, premiering the new rock/blues musical “Red Ribbon,” conceived and written by Joe Lawrence and directed by Jerry Craig. It tells the courageous story of six people whose lives were so heavily impacted by HIV and AIDS in the early 1990s just as the red AIDS ribbon was becoming a national symbol of the fight.

At the end of the evening our Board present $2,500 to Women Alive L.A., a grass-roots organization helping mostly minority women in their struggle against HIV and AIDS. Executive Director Carrie Broadus was here to speak to the audience—preach, really, about the fight we will not give up until AIDS is conquered—and to receive the check. I am hopeful that when our annual accounting is done, we’ll be able to send Women Alive even more. Much of our work has been generously underwritten by corporate and other non-profit sponsors, including Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles, but many small donations at the door provided more than a thousand dollars and proof that people still care.

hr-banner2009-sm.jpg

During the intermission, ushers collected scribe tickets on which people in the audience wrote the names of loved ones they have lost to AIDS. Every year I get teary just jotting down a few of the names of those friends I lost, but I was overwhelmed again this year to see that the enormous red ribbon on the banner (pictured above) being hoisted to the ceiling was not big enough to hold the names. Perhaps the heart of God is bigger than our banners, bigger even that the AIDS Memorial Quilt itself, which is the largest work of folk art in the world (nearly 1.3 million square feet).

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, the 576 square feet on exhibit at Hollywood Lutheran Church will be up through Sunday, December 6. Come and pay your respects, light a candle, and make a donation. It will be well used to help people with HIV/AIDS continue living and fighting.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in History, HIV and AIDS, Hollywood, Living by Grace, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Not dressed up, and no place to go.

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

I was glad to see my street friend, Eric [ok, not his real name], who showed up at my office door tonight just before Choir practice. He has gained a few pounds, which has taken away that total emaciated look he had a few months ago. Since leaving the streets six months ago, his appearance, demeanor, and interaction have all improved immeasurably. He is now living with a family member (who is gay; he is straight), which is a gigantic victory for those of us who struggled against numerous obstacles to get him off the streets.

As we talked, I found myself thinking how sane he was. And that is not how I viewed this 30–something man just a few month ago. I am beginning to realize how much his previously weird mental state must have been influenced by his “street spouse” of 17 years, a woman who did have some mental issues.

After her death last winter, I brought Eric into the church building and let him camp there for months, until the leadership put its foot down about the bad smell of his clothing—the stuff he had already worn but had not laundered (he kept himself clean enough).

But we had mistaken for mental illness what was only a neighborhood legend— that Eric was afraid to be inside of buildings and that was supposedly why he chose to be homeless all those years.

[And as this came to light, the metaphoric parallel with being homosexual also came to light: if its not a mental illness, then it is a choice. And if people choose to be gay or homeless, then others can easily rationalize their lack of care and compassion. The more I thought about this parallel, the angrier I felt.]

No, it turns out, he was just loyal to and inseparable from his street spouse, and no one would offer them shelter as a couple.

As a pastor in Hollywood, California, I’ve run into this repeatedly. There are all kinds of programs—some run by government agencies, some by churches that get government funding, some by independent evangelical organizations that God alone knows how they are funded.

Many programs, including the warehouse-sized “missions” downtown, all have strict rules. Many of them try to force Christian faith down the throats of the homeless, for example expecting them to get up at 4:30 a.m. for Bible Study before breakfast. Most of these programs have very targeted audiences: they are there for young people, or for drug addicts in recovery, or for kids at risk of slipping into prostitution, etc. Almost all of them are only for individuals, not couples or families.

But Eric and his common-law spouse didn’t fit those criteria. They didn’t have a drug or drinking problem; they were not youths between 18–24; they might not have been classifiable as mentally ill in the clinical sense. They didn’t have HIV or AIDS. Because they didn’t fit any of the categories laid out in each agency’s “needs assessment,” they simply didn’t qualify for anybody’s help.

For five year I kept trying to lift their self-esteem (knowing very well that every night spent on a filthy blanket against a block wall that reeks of urine is lowering their self-esteem). “You deserve more out of life than this,” I said. “You really have to want more out of your lives before you will be able to have more in your lives.”

How do you give the gift of motivation to someone who just wants a hot meal and a real bed? I frequently thought of the man who begged in Acts 3:1–10 and the gift which Peter and John gave to him.

Sadly, motivation came from something else entirely: the death of another homeless man half a block from the church. That fellow, whose name I never learned, was sleeping just behind the end building of a shopping center, in a makeshift shelter of cardboard appliances boxes. Early one morning in complete darkness one of those huge trash trucks simply backed right over the boxes, crushing his skull and killing him instantly.

cardboardtrash.jpg

That was the second death in his street world in two months. Eric, whose street spouse had just died of breast cancer, felt very alone. He became profoundly depressed, but with patient listening on my part he began to open up about his real fears. No, he isn’t afraid of being inside buildings. He is just used to being outside. But, with the tragic death of that nameless, homeless man, Eric was legitimately terrified to remain outside.

The story is not over. I’m not sure this family thing is going to work out, in the long run. The family member he moved in with has his own mental and emotional issues. And there’s the gay thing, about which Eric is not judgmental but not thrilled either. I’m just worried that this three-month reconciliation might unravel, and Eric would again have no place to go.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Hollywood, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

The view from the middle of Sunset Boulevard.

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Some wisecracker years ago said that “the church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.” As more atrocities from our armed services come to light from both Afghanistan and Iraq, that may not really be true, but you get the point. Christians are not successfully warring against the forces of darkness on behalf of Jesus if we are constantly beating up other Christians. It is no wonder that millions of people today want nothing to do anymore with any church, because they can’t distinguish between good church and bad church.

How can we let them know that we trust in God’s grace, and don’t believe that God is trying to trick us all into stumbling headlong into damnation?

Today I sat at our parish’s booth in the local street fair, Sunset Junction, which has been going on every August for 30 years to build bridges between ethnic groups and across the chasm between straight identities and gay people. The astonishing diversity and I guess even perversity is palpable when watching it point blank from the middle lane of Sunset Boulevard, closed to traffic for 36 hours.

This is the first year that our congregation has put up the effort to get a booth, think up a theme, and take banners, tables, chairs, literature, free giveaways (we ordered New Testaments from the American Bible Society) and ask volunteers to staff 2-hour shifts. The street fair is decidedly a party atmosphere—the music is deafening and a lot of beer is consumed to wash down either Mexican, Salvadoreno or Thai food—and yet it is surprising how many people actually did look at our banner and posters and take home flyers and a New Testament. We even had a real mail box for people to leave written prayer requests, which we will lift up in our parish life this week.

The reason I mention all this is because this afternoon a woman stepped up, and her first question was, “You’re not Missouri Synod, are you?” She had been raised in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and went through a K–8 parochial school in the Chicago suburbs. Now she won’t go near an LC-MS church. “Too many rules,” she said flatly.

Ten minutes hadn’t past since another woman had stopped to stare at our banner, and weigh whether it was worth stopping to talk, before one of us noticed and called out a “Hello” to her. The banner, in addition to our congregation’s name, etc., bears this slogan:

“Where Religion Doesn’t Hurt.”

She told me a heart-breaking story of having been expelled—she used the word excommunicated —from her church eight years ago. She had been publicly humiliated in church for her sin, which I deduced must have been over a marital break-up. Years later, she is still deeply wounded but also still longing for a spiritual community where she will not be tested or questioned about her sins or failings, or pushed out the door.

Clearly, our church is a place where wounds are healed, but people don’t always recognize the different between a church that continues to wound and one that wants to be a place of healing.

It convinces me all the more that Christian ethics are first and foremost a matter of personal discipline and discernment. As a community, our first duty is to stand with someone who is struggling with difficult ethical decisions or choices, and stand with them even in a failure or a mistake, before the community even begins to talk about condoning or not condoning a behavior.

Martin Luther rebelled against Roman Catholic Canon Law. To this day, the Lutheran Church has no such “code” by which a member can be tried or excluded. We hope and expect that each person, guided by the light of the Holy Spirit, will measure him or herself against the Law until it is clear that each person is in need of God’s forgiveness and grace. Once I am thoughtful and clear about my own need for grace, it also becomes clear that I am in no position to judge another. When you have a whole collection of individual Christians who are clear that none of us can play the divine judge (“Let the one who has not sinned cast the first stone,” John 8:7), it ought to temper the temptation of a congregation or a churchbody to condemn anyone, to pass judgment, or to exclude even a single sinner from the community of grace.

What interested me, too, was that both of these women were heterosexual, and weren’t wounded over being lesbian or gay. Yet both of them had felt judged, even condemned, by harsh religiosity that has forgotten the place we all must have before the throne of grace.

Dear sisters, this is not right. This should never happen to you. Please give us a second chance to proclaim the good news, not wallow in the self-righteousness of those who imagine they are “holier than thou.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Faith, Hollywood, Living by Grace, Ministry | No Comments »

Perception and deception, hype and hypocrisy.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Flipping through some papers I had saved from months ago, I came across a “Naked City” column by Christopher Lisotta from Frontiers Newsmagazine last January—an interview with publicist Howard Bragman, who recently wrote the book on P.R., “Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?”. There was an interesting comment:

Frontiers: “You write PR no longer means “public relations.” What does PR mean?”

Bragman: “PR stands for the concepts of perception and reality. We live in a society where perception has become more important than reality.”

No kidding? But never mind the fact that the advertising and P.R. industry has made this true. We are a nation of plastic, imitation, phoney, lights and mirrors, “truthiness.” I once read the fine print on a 0 calories soft drink can, and it admitted to “artificial imitation flavors” on the ingredients list. Not just imitation flavors, but artificial imitation flavors. How much more phoney could you want? How American!

It is true that “perception” and “reality” are the defining elements in a public world made transparent by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and IP addresses.

When it comes to LGBT people, the reality of our lives still doesn’t really matter to the public. Their perception is that we are weird, sex-crazed, pleasure-loving creatures with no ethics but huge wads of discretionary income. We are muscle-bound girlie men –both gays and lesbians. We all carry the AIDS virus, we hate heterosexual marriage, we all molest children and we are bringing God’s judgment down on America, a nation of “fag enablers.”

That’s the stereotype. That’s the perception. Never mind that we work and pay taxes, that we make decent (and tasteful) homes, raise the best kids, volunteer for everything and donate to all kinds of causes; that we serve our nation both in uniform and in every kind of job and profession. Never mind that we are often care-givers for the elderly and those with HIV.

And never mind that millions of us go to church, for God’s sake. (If it weren’t for gay organists, choir directors and florists, the church would be a dreary and silent box of self-righteous people.)

But the perception is that we shake our naked boobs and butts on pride parade floats, and secretly want to sodomize our neighbor’s pre-teen children.

So how do we change the public’s idiotic perception and derail the lying machine which cranks out hateful speech and packages it as truth? In my view, probably not by hiring P.R. firms. They did that the fight Proposition 8 a year ago, and gay/lesbian coupledom was so sanitized for the public that we ceased to exist.

The best thing any of us can do is to come out—because unlike Hollywood’s movie stars and publicity seekers, we won’t get photos in People magazine. Most of us just come out to friends, families and close neighbors. Since the already know us, we have enormous influence over their perception of other lesbian/gay people and will actually change their perception by bringing it into line with the reality of what they know in our lives.

Bragman talks about clients who come to his firm because they believe their reality is better than the public perception, so they want to improve the perception. There is, in my words, a perception deficit which good publicity and solid integrity can correct.

a1030×135.jpg

Not so with “truthiness,” a word minted by friends of the Bush administration. All something needs is the “look and feel” of truth whether or not it is true. In short, public perception is more important than deception of the public. This month’s Advocate, for example, questions whether the LGBT community has been deceived by the Obama administration. Our perception before last November was that he was our hope for solid, systemic change. But have we been deceived, because we’re now seven months into Obama’s 48 months and we have nothing to show for it: not DOMA, not the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and only a gutted Hate Crimes legislation. Of course, Congress is only concerned with the public’s perception, not with systemic change, not with a new reality.

What about people who have a public perception which is better than the reality? You mean like many heterosexuals? Like family values? Bragman calls this “hype.” Like anybody or anything that claims to be the biggest, best, hottest, or most important in the world, for example. Like everybody on Facebook or in those chat rooms and personals.

Frontiers: “What was your perspective as a PR guy on the No on 8 campaign?”

Bragman: “My number one mantra in PR is if you do not define yourself somebody else is going to define you. And you’re not going to be as happy about them defining you as you are about defining yourself. So I think we committed the PR sin of letting our opponents define us. . . ”

My take on being Christian, of course, is that Jesus used to have good PR, good perception. But many of his followers, who puffed themselves up on hype (I would call it hyp-ocrisy), their reality has nearly destroyed his perception by the public.

And my take on being LGBT/Christian is that since countless other (heterosexual) Christians don’t worry too much about integrity and truth (they tell facile lies about us with no qualms), or bringing disgrace on the name of Jesus (think televangelists), it may well be up to us to restore the public perception of what a follower of Jesus Christ is like with traits like: honesty (come out), integrity (not a patchwork, but made of whole cloth), generosity, sacrifice, and the readiness to “turn the other cheek” to false perceptions. For example, Matthew 5:11 from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” In other words, walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Coming Out, HIV and AIDS, Hollywood, Homophobia, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Sex | No Comments »

Via Negativa: Just Vote No!

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Every year or so the various mainline Christian denominations hold their national conventions, and homosexuality seems to be back on trial again. Conservatives blame it on us because we refuse to sit down and be quiet. We blame it on them for digging in their heels against us, other Christians, experts, society and the Holy Spirit. “And they’ll know we are Christians” to paraphrase an old folk song, “by what we say NO to.”

Next month, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. meets here in Southern California, and it is probably going to be contentious again. Since the last meeting, several Southern California Episcopal congregations have bolted from the national church body, been told they were forfeit their real estate to the Diocese, fought that in court and lost, etc.

Unlike the old Hollywood cowboy and Western movies, there never seems to be the final “showdown” which settles everything. One “showdown” leads to the next, which leads to the next.

Whether conservative or renegade, break-away Episcopalians like it or not, the Episcopal Church has found itself on the leading edge of acceptance of LGBTQ people. Early on it recognized the truth that “the body of Christ has AIDS” — to de-stigmatize the fact that Christians are living with HIV/AIDS. It recognized that many of its own clergy are in fact gay or lesbian. One local diocese, New Hampshire, elected the Rev. Gene Robinson as their bishop. And “all hell broke loose” in the Anglican worldwide communion when the Episcopal Church ratified his election as the right person for the job, but the ultra-conservative and reactionary bishops elsewhere in the world, refused to recognize the validity of his orders.

This painful drama continues to be played out in the Episcopal Church. I hear that the local diocese is so preoccupied with the coming convention that it decided to completely ignore and bypass the Christopher Street West Pride Parade this weekend in West Hollywood —which every prior year in recent memory has seen a huge marching unit representing the Diocese and its parish churches.

In the meantime, the larger but less well-known Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has played its own drama. It meets in a church-wide Assembly every two years, and that comes up this August 17–23 in Minneapolis.

Just like other denominations, our LGBTQ lives are being put up to a vote again. The Lutherans have gotten bogged down over and over in “studies” in which the only people who actually learn anything about human sexuality and homosexuality are the individuals who wrote the study. Even though the papers they produce are routinely made available to the larger church (well, at least the last several times they have been), the faithful who occupy our pews and elect delegates to conventions don’t necessarily learn anything from the careful work of study commissions.

The last Lutheran study of homosexuality didn’t produce any tangible benefits. Every proposal to open up ordination and ordained service to lesbian and gay clergy met with resistance. The ELCA continued to polarize. A handful of congregations have said they will bolt the denomination, and they have plans well underway to vote themselves onto their own little island.

If my memory of the history is right, one of the arguments against changing the ordination standards was that the ELCA had no standing social teaching about human sexuality to guide it, so it shouldn’t talk about ordaining practicing homosexuals until it had an overall theology of sex in place.

Four years ago, the national ELCA Assembly authorized the drafting of a social statement on sexuality. Two years ago in Chicago, additional instructions were given to the study group doing the work on the social teaching. Even though the working group did not want to deal with church policy about homosexuality it was finally ordered to come back with recommendations on ELCA policy at this year’s Assembly.

This latest study, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, and its ministry recommendations voices the fact that we don’t all agree on matters of sexuality and homosexuality, and we need to commit to finding ways to live together without being in complete agreement.

Surprisingly, the ELCA may actually change its negative policies in August if it accepts the recommendations of the study group. Simply referred to as Ministry Policies (and downloadable here), the Assembly will have the chance to undo some of the damage done in 1990 when Vision and Expectations and Guidelines for Discipline were swiftly adopted and promulgated without review by the clergy of the church in an attempt to “preclude” lesbian and gay people in relationships from serving as clergy or lay professionals.

What we are doing here, in church body after church body, is trying to get rid of the Christian equivalent of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policies. The United Church of Christ did that more than 30 years ago.

More importantly, maybe Lutherans will join other Protestants in continuing to ditch the via negativa theology (and if you’re really interested, check this out) of sex that has captivated the majority of Christians for more than a thousand years. Maybe.

In the Lutheran system, the clergy and lay people elected to represent the congregations at the churchwide Assembly are not “delegates”–they are not required to vote on matters as their home synods or congregations instruct them, but are free to vote their own minds and hearts as the Holy Spirit guides them.

Which is why I say “maybe.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, ELCA, History, Hollywood, LGBT Christian | No Comments »

The arts and the sacraments of community.

Friday, June 5th, 2009

One of my other hats in the community is as an organizer of new ventures in spirituality and the arts. This being Hollywood, involvement in the arts is almost required. Every week I meet more people involved in film, music, theatre, design and visual arts.

Deacon Roberta Morris came to me more than a year ago and proposed that we launch a new organization for spirituality and the arts. It is still in formation now and will incorporate shortly as a non-profit. But in the meantime, we launched the Los Feliz Art Walk, one of a growing number of grassroots neighborhood arts enterprises to allow emerging artists to exhibit their work, and some of the surrounding galleries, studios and public art spaces to reach new audiences.

lfaw4indwellingspirit.jpg

Tonight was our monthly First Friday Art Walk. The informal center of the cluster of galleries and stores is our church’s work in progress—Courtyard Studio & Arts— which is being created out of junk classroom space and a back playground now filled with grass and a bubbling fountain. It is amazing what space, light and water can bring together. Since last September, we’ve had the Courtyard open for art exhibits, and the number of talented but unknown neighborhood artists who want to exhibit keeps growing. Three artists brought their work for tonight’s exhibit, two accomplished plein air painters and a sculptor.

Our hope is to eventually capture some modest grant money to pursue spirituality and the arts in many forms, including performance, film, music and other media. You can see some of our proposals as www.LosFelizArtWalk.org.

In these ten months, the most gratifying part of the Art Walks has been conversations with people who admit they are not religious but are trying to express or find (or both) their native spirituality in a way which is graciously received by others.

Without the formal structures of religion, spirituality is comfortable with all the arts, probably because it is not concerned to present, impose or enforce specific content or message. The arts speak with their own voice. So far that has included decorative work, crafts, sculptural nudes, both art and documentary photography, documentary film and spontaneous unscheduled music. For World AIDS Day , in conjunction with Hollywood Remembers, we also exhibited huge panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest work of folk art in the world.

So far I have not drawn people directly into the church but I’ve had many conversations with total strangers who enjoyed our wine and cheese receptions, who were much more open to talking about faith, love, hopefulness in an age of cynicism, the spiritual search, and the spiritual lessons of life experiences with an openly religious parish priest. Most of these people were churched people at one time, but no longer. Some were wounded. Most became bored. Many were shown the door, made to be unwelcome at some point in their lives, yet felt happy to be able to be honest about their wounds, their boredom or their distance with a “man of the cloth.”

Of course, both because of people Roberta and I know, and because this is Hollywood after all, many of the artists and the public who come to see their work, are gay or lesbian or transgender. For them, being this near to a church can have an element of surprise or uncertainty. I try to put them at ease, both with my art and my faith and life experience.

To me, these chance encounters with lapsed Christians, non-practicing Jews and others, have almost been sacramental. The arts are sacraments, in one sense. Conversations can be confession and absolution. Simply for me to be present to unchurched people and to speak easily and openly about my own faith and life—including creativity, spontaneity, and hopefulness—is a genuine proclamation of the word. When I read Acts of the Apostles and some of Paul’s writings I realize that for every formal sermon he may have delivered to a gathered audience, he probably had a hundred informal one-to-one conversations first.

Maybe the biggest reason that the church as a whole fails so much to engage its culture and its neighborhood is that typically its doors are open only for the religion business, rather than for art, spirituality, community service and simple conversation. While we are growing only modestly, I have every confidence our trend will continue because of our creative ventures and our straightforward openness to people we don’t know. We will all learn from one another, and I suspect the Holy Spirit of God will find ways to be heard in those settings.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Faith, Hollywood, Ministry, Public Affairs, Spirituality | No Comments »

Rest in peace, Rosemary!

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

“As they were going along the road, someone said to him, `I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, `Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” — Luke 9:57–58It is unsettling to think of Jesus as homeless, and yet that is how he is characterized in the Gospels, because throughout his entire ministry he not only was an itinerant preacher and healer, he depended on the kindness of others who welcomed him into their homes. (In Galilee, he was the guest of an unknown person or family. In Judea, he presumably stayed with Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. It was probably from their home that he moved with determination and triumph toward Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday morning.)The Nicene Creed states in formal terms what Christians accept from the Scriptural witness: Jesus is “true God and true man.” We know that Jesus completely shared our humanity, and in many ways which sadden us and appeal to our conscience. As an infant, when Joseph and Mary fled from King Herod, Jesus and his family became “political refugees” in Egypt for a time (some might say “illegal immigrants”!) Jesus wept. Jesus agonized over the suffering he would face. Jesus was betrayed and denied. He bled. He died. These are very human experiences!

But perhaps most jarring of all is this passage above, telling us that Jesus was homeless. Who among us would not find some way to take Jesus in, to get him off the streets, if we met him in Los Angeles today?

homelesswoman.jpg

It calls to mind Isaiah’s prophetic utterance, which tugs at the heart during Lent:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” — Isaiah 58:6–7

The “problem” of homelessness is always with us in these times.  So many in our society wishes “the problem” would just go away!  But our homeless neighbors are still human beings, created in God’s image, and still our neighbors.  Our neighbor and friend Rosemary succumbed to breast cancer in mid-February.  I led a memorial service for her in the Sanctuary two weeks ago, and it was well attended by members, friends and neighbors.  A candle burned day and night in her memory for 40 days in our Sanctuary.

Rosemary is survived by Matthew, her companion of nearly 20 years, and by a cousin in the Midwest. She was nearly 70 at the time of her death, and still homeless, along with Matthew.   [See:  LA's Homeless Blog"] Over the years, our community has done a lot to feed, clothe and help these two special people, but now we face a different “problem” or opportunity. It may cost as much as $400 to pay for the cremation of her body, and to gain the legal release of her remains. But we would also like to help Matthew start his life anew, off the streets, by helping him find temporary shelter and then long-term housing and employment.

In situations as these our faith and discipleship are being tested, to see if we can truly follow Christ wherever he goes, wherever he leads. We are at the threshold of Holy Week, the one week of the year in which Christians are most keenly sensitive to the humanity of Jesus, and to the power of God to change our world. Please join me in prayer for Matthew, and in doing anything we can as a community to honor Rosemary and to help the homeless poor get a fresh start. It would be our most fitting celebration of the Resurrection.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Hollywood, Ministry, PRAYERS, Public Affairs | No Comments »

The real gift of Christmas, oh my!

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

I’m still trying to get out a decoration or two at this hour — why bother, except that we are expecting a couple of dinner guests, lonely hearts who had no other place to go. Ordinarily I wouldn’t take time to blog on Christmas Day.

But after a rich and rewarding Christmas Eve service last night, I am still thinking about those who have no other place to go or to be on this day, to give and receive some love.

Fortunately, we had enough gifts come in last night so that I will be able once again (our fifth year) to take our annual gift cards to the 24 young people at the Jeff Griffith Youth Center in Hollywood. This is a residential program for runaways, throw-aways, kids who are trying to get back up after a hopeless descent into drugs or other addictions, even street prostitution or crime. Their stories would break my hart, except for the tangible love and spectacular results that the Center gets in helping youth get the life skills and job applications it takes for them to be self-sufficient and self-respecting.

But there are so many others out there. The Jeff Griffith program only has 24 beds, and the number of homeless street kids in Hollywood and Los Angeles is fearful — by some estimates in the thousands.

And I am thinking about the tens of thousands of LGBT people (and those for whom the four initials do not describe their life experience and self-understanding) who may be alone at Christmas simply because they have no one who listens, no one who understands or wants to understand, their hearts and the psyches.

The trouble with Christmas as many people see it is as the ultimate family holiday — where people who fit nicely into conventional families get to celebrate their normalcy and belonging, to the exclusion of those who don’t fit or don’t even have family.

But the Christmas Gospels tell a story which doesn’t support this, and tugs at our hearts to be open to those who aren’t in “conventional” families. (Of course, what is conventional nowadays, when more than half of all marriages end in divorces?) The Christmas Gospel tales touch on all the things that “nice” people want to forget or avoid, especially at the holidays.

  • Mary and Joseph weren’t married. Were it not for Joseph’s willingness to swallow his pride and to avoid his legal rights to have Mary severely punished, Jesus would have been illegitimate.
  • There was no room for them. The night Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph were far from home and actually homeless.
  • Where were their friends? Where was Mary’s mother, for Christ’s sake? The story implies the two of them had to deal with the birth themselves, in a dirty stable. Obviously, they were not economically prepared for this birth, the sudden travel, the lack of accommodations, the dirty conditions.
  • Within a short time (weeks?) the “Holy Family” had to flee for their lives. They became political refugees in a foreign land, in order to avoid the genocidal and evil King Herod, who had all the infants of Bethlehem murdered out of jealousy of a potential rival.
  • Most of all, they had to trust their own visions and dreams — their own discernment that God was working a great deed and a wonderful miracle through their faithfulness. That is the Christmas Gospel in a nutshell.

None of us knows 100% if God is working through us, either, unless we trust our own discernment. I haven’t been sure since launching this blog—primarily to reach out to LGBT Christians and others—that it is a god thing to do, or worth the effort. But then I checked the web statistics, and see there have been over 29,000 unique visits. That totally humbles me. It sort of worries me that I must personally probe more deeply, asa gay Christian, to discern what God is already doing that I should be a part of.But today God is doing what we understand so beautifully: God is coming to us again, and it is a gift of pure grace. If we can only discern this grace (Christ is a gift, life is a gift, we are God’s gifts to others), we can turn the world upside down. And we can find the home, family, warmth and welcome, that so many people do not have today. Quoting Mother Teresa—which I saw not in some pious book but painted on the wall of a nearby restaurant on Vermont just a block from our church—”Noone can help everybody, but everybody can help some one.”

We can be God’s gift to another person—to listen, to understand, to welcome, to uphold when lonely and confusing times in her or his life seem overwhelming. Forget the stuff and the gift wrap and the tinsel. Be the gift someone is longing to receive.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Faith, Hollywood, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Ministry, Spirituality | No Comments »

Dangerous new activists write mission statement

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Last night I attended the back half of a long meeting of Act Up Now (morphing from Unite the Fight), as they continued to organize themselves into a new movement for direct action for equal rights for lesbian and gay people. Specifically: marriage rights, but they may not stop there. The meeting, involving about 25 women and men, was primarily a double committee meeting gearing up for the next big thing:

Next Thursday, their first Town Hall meeting will be held December 11, 7:30 p.m. (at Hollywood Lutheran Church, 1733 N. New Hampshire Avenue, Los Angeles 90027, the No On 8 Church).

What was interesting to watch was the dynamics of a new movement being born, and the temper of today’s activists. This group in Los Angeles (“Son of Act Up”) has a new mission; these are new times, and they are finding new energy.

Although it might seem that “direct action” is highly confrontational or angry or violent, this group of thirty-somethings and older were hardly any of that. They have careers after all, even SAG cards. And they peaceably used their basic knowledge of Roberts Rules of Order to make and second motions, allow for discussion and then vote, for example, on their mission statement. Some were concerned that “direct action” tends to sound violent to the media, and in its coverage of recent street marches, we were portrayed as angry (correct) and dangerous (not correct). “Carry candles,” I whispered. “You always look peaceful carrying candles.”

Another snag was whether to speak for the rights of Queer people, or should that be Queer folk? Or Lesbian and gay people?  Or gay and Lesbian people?  What words are inclusive, specific, not too cumbersome, not alienating? Passed over were acronyms like LGBTQ.

The man next to me wondered what “Q” meant in that string. “Questioning,” I whispered, temporarily feeling like I am very much “in the know,” enchufado. Truthfully, where has he been?

But why use the word “questioning” as part of the beneficiaries of direct action to secure equal marriage rights? Would a “questioning” person have to propose to another “questioning” person in order to enter a same-gender marriage?  The group more or less reached consensus that they are ready to fight for equal marriage rights for Lesbian and gay people because those are the people who have lost their equal rights with the ballot “victory” of Proposition 8 one month ago.

Not that bisexual and transgender, queer and questioning people haven’t also been set back by ballot box bigotry. The folks on the other side, who pretend they are protecting or preserving traditional marriage are still the same people who wanted and have fought hard for two decades to deprive all of us of all of our rights: the right of a gay/lesbian person to teach in California schools (the Briggs initiative), the right to secure housing and employment.  They could hardly have used a “preserving traditional employment” argument, for example. When Anita Bryant mounted her successful campaign in Dade County Florida more than 30 years ago to rescind the rights of Lesbian and gay people, it was to deprive them of their inherent right to work. “Homosexuals will wear dresses to work,” she cried with her sweet Florida orange juice smile, as if that should be self-evident to all decent people.

bryant-glory.jpg

As if to illustrate what “decent people” (my term) might mean to activists in 2008, the term “all sexual minorities” was also rejected by consensus. Why? Because, as one person ventured, that could imply we were fighting for all kinds of sexual fetishes. Others nodded in recognition of a dangerous semantic opening for our enemies to slam us again.

There are a lot of fringe people out there, like the men of NAMBLA who want to legalize “inter-generational” sex (sex with underage kids), or who simply pursue sexual expression through fantasies and acts that I can’t fully imagine let alone want to describe (including heterosexual ones). Is this avoidance of such fringe populations another sign that an oppressed minority in willing to step on other oppressed minorities below them in order to climb higher?

Hardly. For years in this so-called culture war, our detractors have successfully been able to portray all Lesbian and gay ~ and bisexual and transgender people (although those categories are hardly on their radar) ~ as twisted sexual perverts who want to carry on all kinds of really depraved sexual acts. Well, today’s activism for marriage is not an effort to decriminalize the statutory rape of minors, or to legalize sex acts in public parks and restrooms (sorry, Senator).

Activism for marriage is a movement toward accepting responsibilities for another person and seeking equal civil rights to protect one’s own relationship from the harsh realities of the world.  We aren’t trying to protect marriage in general, in the abstract (and not in the imagination of Christian conservatives).  Marriage can take care of itself. This movement is fighting to protect our own commitments with the equality to which we are entitled under the law.

As to these other groups? If they have serious civil rights issues, they will have to light their own candles.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Hollywood, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Sex | No Comments »

Presbyterians Against Proposition 8

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

I applaud Rev. Dan Smith both in his courage and in his reasoning why Proposition 8 is wrong and unfair:

For public release  October 28, 2008

Brothers and Sisters of many faiths,

Let us be absolutely clear that in our opposition to Proposition 8 we are asking nothing more than what already exists in the respectful balance between the beliefs and practices of our many faiths and California constitutional law.

Within the many communities of faith in our State we have conflicting doctrines and beliefs that already govern the practice of marriage.

Our Roman Catholic, Mormon and many of our evangelical churches do not and will not marry persons who are divorced. But that does not mean that those who are divorced are constitutionally prohibited from the right of legal marriage in our state.

immanpresvotenoon8.jpg

Likewise, our Roman Catholic, Mormon, and some Jewish and Muslim faith traditions will not marry persons of different faith traditions. But that does not mean that interfaith couples, or those of no particular faith tradition, cannot be married in our state.

Our California constitution honors all religious traditions by respecting our differences about religious marriage while at the same time providing and protecting the right of all couples to marry the person of their choice.

Prop. 8 would ELIMINATE the constitutional right of same sex couples to marry. That is unfair and unjust. California constitutional law already honors and respects religious differences. No religious institution is forced to marry anyone. But that does not mean that any person in our state should lose their constitutional right for legal marriage.

I urge you to protect our constitutional rights as well as our right to religious diversity and pluralism by voting NO on Proposition 8.

Thank you.

Rev. Daniel E. Smith, Pastor, West Hollywood Presbyterain Church, 7350 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046

Posted in Catholic matters, Hollywood, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Historic Hollywood Church Opposes Proposition 8

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

At a special congregational meeting convened today, September 7, the voting members of Hollywood Lutheran Church unanimously approved a motion to endorse the No on 8 campaign, adding its public voice against the ballot measure that would eliminate marriage rights for same-sex couples.The congregation received and discussed information about all 12 measures on the November 2008 general election ballot, as well as information about taking positions on matters of public policy from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Office of Public Policy in Sacramento, and other faith and justice organizations.

Today’s decision-making process was broken into two parts. The first decision was whether or not the congregation should take a position on Proposition 8. After a detailed explanation of what tax-exempt religious organizations may and may not do in matters of public policy, lobbying and endorsements, a motion passed unanimously that Hollywood Lutheran Church take a public stand on Proposition 8.

The second decision concerned what stand the congregation would take. Specific information and a brief history behind Proposition 8 and the Marriage Equality efforts was presented. After lengthy discussion, a motion passed unanimously that Hollywood Lutheran Church is opposed to Proposition 8.

Clarification of this decision included a discussion of its implications for the congregation’s public ministry. The Pastor, officers and Church Council of the congregation are authorized to publish this decision in all its regular publications, including bulletins, newsletters, and internet sites.  Pastor Hooper is specifically authorized to communicate today’s decisions, and to speak on behalf of the Hollywood Lutheran Church in opposition to Proposition 8. It was also specifically noted that no allocation of funds was involved in this decision.

Hollywood Lutheran Church was founded in 1921. A member congregation of the Reconciling in Christ program of Lutherans Concerned/North America, the congregation adopted a resolution nearly a decade ago to welcome and fully include gay/lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in its activities and ministries. In 2002 the governing Council of the congregation adopted a policy to permit blessing or covenant ceremonies for same-sex couples in its sanctuary.   Hollywood Lutheran Church is a member congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), a Christian body of approximately 5 million members in over 10,000 congregations in the United States.

Posted in ELCA, History, Hollywood, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Congratulations, Roberta!

Monday, March 31st, 2008

The honor of your presence is requested by his Grace

The Most Rev. Robert Mary Clement, Archbishop of the American Catholic Church

at the Archbishop John Darcy Noble Center

to Celebrate the ordination of Roberta Morris to the Diaconate

Saturday, April 12, 2008 1 p.m.

Hollywood Lutheran Church 1733 N. New Hampshire Blvd., Los Angeles

Join us for Dr. Roberta Morris’ ordination and the inauguration of this LGBT-friendly ministry with the arts community in the Hollywood/ Los Feliz/Silver Lake area, across from Barnsdall Art Park.

Dr. Morris trained for this ministry, obtaining her Masters of Divinity from St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, and her Doctorate in Philosophy at York University. She has worked as a writer, university chaplain, instructor, director of religious education, mediator and peace activist.

As a deacon with the American Catholic Church, she will work ecumenically in a LGBT friendly environment to support the spiritual lives of artists and other members of our community.

Come celebrate the Ordination Mass with us.  Reception follows 

RSVP 323-668-0008

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Hollywood, Ministry, Spirituality | No Comments »

A fine-feathered, feel-good story.

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

This past week I’ve been having a little fun wearing my other hat as an amateur webmaster.

Yesterday I launched a new web site as a birthday gift to Carl, www.ijustlovemychickens.info. The phrase comes from his videography — he’s been featured on four television shows with his now-celebrity chickens. (How many chicken web sites have you seen with a videography list?) On a segment taped for “Beverly Hills Vet” for the Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet, Carl is captured saying very sincerely, “I just love my chickens!”

Doing the site was totally fun and frivolous because his hobby of raising free-range chickens brings him a lot of pleasure, and brings a smile to everyone else’s face. I hope this site will help Carl connect with a lot of people who are interested in raising chickens, and other birds, in an urban setting.

nov02-01.jpg

Carol, a Japanese Silkie hen, says hello to some admirers.

I’ve also included a link to our church for a good reason. Carl’s generous plan for the use of the extra eggs he receives from his hens (in good weather, he can get nearly a dozen per day) is to donate them as a fund-raiser. Eggs are “auctioned off” at Hollywood Lutheran Church in half-dozen cartons. The winners of the eggs make a cash donation to the church’s Food Pantry fund, so that the Pantry can afford to buy less-exotic necessities and fresh foods for distribution to the poor and hungry in Hollywood.

Of course, Carl is doing all the work, and paying for the food to keep the chickens producing all those extra eggs. But he would say the cost is negligible – it’s “chicken feed.”  (There’s a whole page of chicken clichés and trivia, including a Bible study on the question, “Which came first …?”)

Such “chicken feed” projects remind us that generosity is not expensive. Ordinary people can do a lot to help others without costing them as much as a latte per week.

The Food Pantry is one of the Community Services we try to maintain at our church. Another one that I hope will take off as spring draws near is our Community Garden. Neighbors who sign up to till some of the soil and grow vegetables or flowers promise to share a tithe of the land’s produce with the Food Pantry. Our merciful God, and the Department of Water and Power, provide the water. Generosity does the rest.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Environment, Hollywood, Ministry | No Comments »

A view of the wilderness from here.

Sunday, December 16th, 2007

In church we had another reading this morning about John the Baptist (Matthew 11:2–11). Nine days to go until Christmas (!) but we had a passage when Jesus is a 30-something man about his cousin John in prison for condemning the adulterous and murderous “King” Herod.

By my lights, we should have been reading another passage. But the appointed reading prompted me to look at John the Baptist and his place in the prophetic tradition of Israel.

“Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind?’”

John is described as a wild-eyed prophetic type who called a nation to repentance and baptized people in the Jordan River as a sign of their change of heart. According to the biblical evangelists, he described himself as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

Church people read this stuff just so literally! We picture this wild-eyed John dressed in camel-hair clothing and eating insects out in the desert, the wilderness. We take it literally —and because we don’t particularly care about the desert or insects— we nod off.

But perhaps, like the prophet Hosea eight hundred years before, John used his life as a metaphor to make a point. Hosea literally married a prostitute as a metaphor to illustrate Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. John lived, and served, and cried out in a literal wilderness as a sign of the spiritual wilderness of his people.

Is there a sign, a metaphor, a “lesson” for us today, living as we do in a fat and lazy nation of both privilege and poverty—split by racism and prejudice, polarized (or should we say balkanized) into so-called liberal and conservative camps? Is 21st century America a wilderness?

It is certainly easy to feel like I am not heard — that no voice standing up to the prevailing cultural values (wealth, appearances, greed, power, hubris, entertainment and pleasure) can be heard in our society. It is literally impossible now to “speak the truth to power.” Power does not hear anything but more power.

Is that cynical? Do you believe that you make all the decisions about your life? Or do you see that politics, culture and huge corporations tell us all what to do, what to spend, what to think, what to believe? There has never been a better educated era, with access to all the greatest minds of human history and the important movements of our times, yet our culture is more and more shallow by the minute. (Google “shallow society” and get 1,020,000 hits; Google “Paris Hilton” for 45,100,000 hits.) There has never been a more affluent generation, yet what we buy mentally and materially —as individuals or as a society—has never been more worthless.

As I said recently, there are no true leaders left, only “handlers” and “spin doctors.” Anything can be “sold” to the American people, including the unbelievably stupid myth that the world is “out to get us” so we need to have guns at home, bombs in every silo, and the U.S. military on every continent; we need to build thousands of miles of “Berlin wall” in order to keep out the people who are stealing minimum-wage jobs from native-born American couch potatoes who have given up looking for honest work.

In 1959 Stanley Kramer released “On the Beach” (starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins), about a doomed planet after someone pushed the button that started World War III in 1964. The film takes place mostly in Australia after the entire Northern Hemisphere has been wiped out, and everyone left is waiting for the inevitable end: for nuclear radiation to gradually kill everyone else. In the last desolate scene I remember, a wind-whipped banner in a deserted public square reads “There is still time.”

t05229mpnlu.jpg

Is there still time?  “On the Beach” made a huge impression on me as a pre-teen. (I remember how shocked and confused my brother and I were with our Dad because he refused to dig up our back yard and install a fallout shelter!)

Is there still time? Nearly 50 year have passed, and a literal nuclear war has not taken place. But from my perspective of the wilderness out there, we are seeing the aftermath of a neutron bomb which, in popular understanding, would kill all the people and leave the buildings behind. Is the one “crying in the wilderness” the only one who sees that a spiritual neutron bomb is killing/has killed most of the sentient beings on Planet Earth and left all “the stuff” intact?

Is there still time? John the Baptist “flourished” (as biographers would say) around the year 30 c.e. Within a mere 40 years, an uprising of nationalism triggered the brutal annihilation of Judea and the wholesale destruction of Jerusalem. There was no nation left to repent.

Is there still time? The Zealots (we get the word in our language from this political faction of ancient Jews) believed that the only way for the nation to survive was to fight the foreign invaders. But perhaps John the Baptist had it right, crying alone in the wilderness: unless the people repent, the nation would be destroyed from the inside out.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Hollywood, Public Affairs, Spirituality | No Comments »

In bed with evil?

Monday, December 10th, 2007

I’ve been thinking over and over about the issue of torture, for obvious reason that the approval of what amounts to torture by the White House won’t go away. A few weeks back I had reason to consult ancient history on the figure of St. Martin of Tour (for whom Martin Luther was named at his baptism). Catholic On Line: Saints and Angels has this about St. Martin and his relationship to civil power and torture:

Martin of Tour (315-402)

. . . . However it was this compassion and mercy that led to what he considered his greatest mistake. Bishops from Spain including a bishop named Ithacius had gone to the emperor soliciting his help in destroying a new heresy taught by a man named Priscillian. Martin agreed completely that Priscillian was teaching heresy (among other things he rejected marriage, and said that the world was created by the devil) and that he should be excommunicated. But he was horrified that Ithacius had appealed to a secular authority for help and even more upset that Ithacius was demanding the execution of Priscillian and his followers. Martin hurried to intervene with emperor Maximus, as did Ambrose of Milan. Martin stated his case that this was a church matter and that secular authority had no power to intervene and that excommunication of the heretics was punishment enough. He left believing he had won the argument and saved the heretics but after he left Ithacius began his manipulation again and Priscillian and the other prisoners were tortured and executed. This was the first time a death sentence had been given for heresy— a horrible precedent.

The word “torture” almost slips by, along with “death sentence.” What were they thinking in the late 4th Century? Probably the Emperor Maximus wasn’t terribly concerned about either torture or capital punishment. If religious heresy could foment great public passion and thereby de-stabilize the society, the means would justify the ends: put down the dissenters, the rebels, the heretics, swiftly and decisively. Make an example of them. (Capital punishment as a deterrent.)

Am I safe to assume that “Who Would Jesus Torture?” was not a question the Roman Emperor pondered.

But what were they thinking—Bishop Ithacius and his ilk—who thought that going to a civil authority to trounce a religious opponent is anything close to what Jesus would approve? It may not be fair for a historian to ask a rhetorical question of a Bishop 1600 years later: “Are you nuts?” But it is fair for a blogger to ask: At what point did the growing power and influence of the Christian Church first fail to notice that it was no longer following Jesus of Nazareth and had gotten into bed with evil?

Is there a lesson in this for our own times? Well, duh!!

But it is not enough to decry the adulterous relationship of one particular political party with religious conservatives in America. The separation of church and state is a huge and important issue for our own times as much as ever. But the various parties in both religion and politics come and go with every generation. Even if unchecked fundamentalism is voted out of office in the next national election, we cannot dust off our hands and sit down in complacency. The bigger issue is always before us if we are followers of Jesus. Are we really following Jesus, or simply manipulating him to conform our cultural, political and capitalist affinities?

The film “Amazing Grace” has just recently passed like a pious wave through our cinema houses. It tells the story of 18th Century William Wilberforce who fought hard to end the practice of slavery in the British Empire and certainly had a big hand in bringing slavery down in all of civilized society.

wilberforce.jpg

I am interested in the film, and the figure of Wilberforce (1759–1833)—a member of Parliament, a politician, who while in his 20s had a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian. Was he the last politician (or the last evangelical Christian) to do something noble because it was the right thing to do rather than because it was politically expedient or advantageous?

william_wilberforce.jpg

Slavery is evil. Astonishingly, it still goes on in the 21st century, mostly in the form of involuntary sexual servitude. But it is only an example, one folly among hundreds into which Christians have allowed themselves to wander from the path of Jesus.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Hollywood, Living by Grace, Public Affairs, Violence | No Comments »

« Older Entries