If the film, Lady Bird, had been set in a bordello on the border ~ the cruelties and crudities of teenage bordello life would have been front and center in the promotion. If it had been set at a juvenile detention center in a struggling inner city ~ the derelict denial of resources and treatment for incarcerated teenagers would have been banner headlines in the reviews.
However, the trailer, promotion and reviews describe the setting of Lady Bird simply as “in a high school.” Yup. This coming-of-age tale of a middle-class girl, her silly friends, and her controlling mother who just doesn’t understand was primarily set in a high school.
What is not mentioned anywhere that I could find is that the high school is a Catholic, religious high school. Why is that important detail not mentioned? Perhaps it is because religion in general and Catholicism in specific are, well, currently out of vogue.
Religion, in the popular culture, nowadays, is like hemorrhoids. We know they exist out there somewhere and some people suffer under their influence. It is known to be a pain in the butt, but we just tend to collectively not talk about it. Religion and hemorrhoids are simply not the makings of polite conversation.
That said, the setting of Lady Bird in a Catholic high school is very important to acknowledge and talk about because it provides the context for the spiritual journey of young Lady Bird’s soul.
Like the poems of William Blake, Lady Bird is both “The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found” ~ not in the context of the transitions from innocence to experience in the late 1700’s ~ but in the context of a girl’s physical, emotional and spiritual transitions in Sacramento, California in the early 2000’s.
In the subtleties and nuances of this deeply spiritual film, we witness a teenage girl desperate for meaning and purpose in a superficial world populated by barely conscious people. Lady Bird yearns to fly and soar but her wings are clipped by well-intentioned people whose own lives never got off the ground and who, unconsciously, believe the solution to the soaring spirit of Lady Bird is to keep her grounded.
Lady Bird yearns to be free. She dreams of going to Yale, but with her idiosyncrasies and mediocre grades; she will, according to her own mother as they argue in the car ~ Lady Bird will be going to city college, and then to jail, and then back to city college where she will finally “learn to pull herself up.” At hearing that (spoiler alert): Lady Bird throws herself out of the moving vehicle.
That, to put it mildly, is a desire to escape that many persons, including myself, can identify with. As a high school teenager yearning to be free of the mass numbness and dumbness I saw in my family, school and society ~ I sought escape, not by hurling myself out of a car ~ but by hurling myself into a drug and alcohol altered reality that I thought was far preferable, until it almost killed me. Tis a far better thing to die interesting than to live boring. Once free of the unquenchable demons unleashed by alcohol and drug ~ I turned to the fairer angels of art through which I continued my quest to create an alternative life above and beyond the muddy wheel rut into which I had been born.
Many religious strands are woven deeply into the fabric of Ladybird. The film begins with vacuous recitations of prayers and petitions for mercy by students assembled in the high school gym as they mouth the words to “Hail Mary” and the “Lord’s Prayer” that start the school day.
I offer no rebuttal to the proposition that Lady Bird is an exceptionally troubled, yet vibrant spirit. We the viewers feel the shackles that the educational and religious institutions place on youth when conformity, not authenticity, is what is valued and demanded.
But beneath the forms and uniforms of religious education that we so readily dismissed as stupid and archaic in today’s increasingly secular world, lies a yearning for meaning and purpose.
One beacon of light in the darkness of school life is a passionate, loving and supportive priest who teaches the acting class. He believes in, encourages and supports the student actors. This priest is one of those rare teachers that can leave a positive, lifelong impression on a young, unformed, insecure soul. The priest, like his students, is deeply human. He struggles with personal grief and is the first to cry in the class he is teaching on “Authenticity.” When the school play is finally produced, he laments, to himself, that the people in the audience “just didn’t get it.” In a room of teenagers and their families after the show, his depression and Shakespearian sense of futility is palpable ~ just as is the sense of futility in Lady Bird and other students in their young lives of angst and doubt.
We later see the priest with his psychotherapist, revealing how he ~ though of a different ethnicity, age and gender ~ struggles with many of the same issues as does young Lady Bird. Shortly after the scene with the psychotherapist, the priest drops out of his job as teacher and director of the young actors and disappears from the film. He is a foreshadowing of what may be the fate of Lady Bird, and is the fate of many others who abandon their call to dream, to hope, to reinvent themselves and to be transformed by remaining faithful to their spiritual quest and journey.
Another memorable character ~ the Mother Superior of the school ~ offers wise and worldly advice to young Lady Bird, even when she is the brunt of Lady Bird’s jokes; such as when Lady Bird tied cans and a sign “Just Married to Jesus” to the back of the nun’s car. Later, when Lady Bird is called into the Mother Superior’s office; the supposedly strict nun lovingly says that she thought the prank was funny, and that she actually does feel that she has been married to Jesus “for over forty years.” It is a touching, spiritual, loving, non-judgmental encounter between two women who seek a bonding to a power greater than themselves.
The film even ends with Lady Bird engaging in a long night of drunkenness, puking, sex with a stranger, and being taken to the hospital. The following morning, she leaves the hospital and goes, with streaked makeup from the night before ~ to a church, listens to the choir in rehearsal, and has a silent epiphany, a spiritual awakening of some sort and emerges from the church with profound sense of authenticity that it seems she had been fruitlessly seeking in family, society, school and in life all along.
Like a Pope who claims a new name upon their accession; like the Biblical character, Jacob, who wrestles with an angel and receives a blessing and a name change to Israel ~ Lady Bird receives a name change as well. Lady Bird returns to her birth name. She is once again, Christine. It is difficult to overlook the first six letters of her name.

This piece is previously and recently published in The Porch Magazine.

Dwight Lee Wolter

I offer the homeless man sleeping on the front porch of the Congregational Church of Patchogue a bottle of cold water and a plastic cup of fruit cocktail with a pull-off lid before I tell him he has to move and there is no public shelter I can refer him to. We simply can’t afford it.

I have no moralizing jeremiad to lay upon anyone this Sunday morning. I simply see another collective, victimization brewing in our never-ending quest to blame. Meanwhile, Kurt Cobain’s “Unplugged” sweater just sold at auction for$334,000.

Amen

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/celebrity/kurt-cobains-unplugged-sweater-sells-for-record-dollar334000-at-auction/ar-AAJpnBy?ocid=spartandhp

Welcome to “Jesus of the People” by Janet McKenzie. I met her in Albuquerque at a Father Richard Rohr conference and have been in correspondence with her ever since. Fr. Rohr had included the major exhibition of her work as a presentation on equal footing with the talkers. AND NOW THE BACK STORY: Janet submitted this in 1999 to an art contest asking for submissions for “a 21st century depiction of Jesus.” She received hate mail, death threats, and Westboro Baptist Church planned a protest at her rural, small farmhouse ~ but it was cancelled due to a blizzard. Those are the folk who protest at funerals of gay civilians and soldiers they call fag***s at the gravesite in the presence of family and friends of the deceased. This humble, quiet, private artist has more courage and integrity than any artist I have ever met. Visit janetmckenzie.com

THE HEAVEN vs. HELL, SAINT vs. SINNER, JESUS vs. SATAN THING SEEMS REDICULOUS sometimes. But I happen to very much like the notion that rampant narcissism, cruelty, and indifference to others is not without consequences. Even if “heaven” and “hell” etc. are artificial constructs ~ it is an attempt to call people to a greater good that shall, now or later, be rewarded.

By the way, I am aware that some people take offense to the Euro-looking, Aryan-feature Jesus depiction. Others take offense to this depiction of Satan. They claim he has blonde, blow-dried hair, small hands, and orange (not red) skin. Okay. Whatever. Beauty (or the lack of it) is in the eye of the beholder. All depictions, for me, fall into the REDICULOUS category as well. I am talking about deeds and attitudes, not appearances. So, who do you thik will win this arm-wrestle?

MEET MY FRIEND WHO RECENTLY STARTED COLLEGE WITH A BRAND-NEW, BULLET-PROOF BACKPACK. Nice, huh? It is designed so that she can even fit an infant or toddler inside that she can grab as she runs for her life. When I was her age, I had a backpack with a peace sign and a Beatles quote “Give Peace a Chance” written on it. In one generation, this is what has become of us. I am not assessing blame. I am contemplating responsibility. This is a gift from my generation to hers. Peace & Purpose, dwightleewolter.com

ARE YOU WILLING TO BE BLIND FOR 15 MINUTES? (AN INTERACTIVE CHURCH EXPERIENCE) A children’s choir, in blindfolds, will sing about seeing. The adult choir will sing blind. Those in attendance will be invited to don a blindfold (or not) for part of this service. An artist has created a painting that a blind person can see that will be offered to the blind co-presenter. Being unable to see can heighten your senses. Being unwilling to see can deaden them. “Intentional & Unintentional Blindness” is Sept. 22nd at 10:00am at the Congregational Church of Patchogue (Long Island). All are welcome, regardless of religious affiliation, conviction, or neither. Peace, Dwight Lee Wolter

Is it acceptable to disproportionately incarcerate people because of the color of their skin, their national origin, or their economic class? Of course not!
Is it acceptable to disproportionately incarcerate people because they have a disease? Of course not! The prisons are not, for example, flush with diabetics who cannot consistently manage their blood levels.
Is it acceptable to disproportionately incarcerate people because they are suffering from a substance use disorder involving alcohol and other forms of drug addiction and dependency? Of course, it is!
The prisons of America are flush with all sorts of people of color; people of various ethnicities; and people born and raised under the influence of a suspicious zip code.
They have at least one thing in common: they very possibly are suffering from addiction. Some people may commit crimes under the influence of alcohol and other drugs who are not addicted in a literal sense. However, according to a New York Times article (Christopher S. Wren, Jan. 1998); illegal drugs and alcohol contributed to the imprisonment of up to 4 out of 5 inmates in the nation’s prisons and jails. And while up to 65% of incarcerated people meet diagnostic criteria for addiction ~ only 11% are receiving treatment.
Why?
Way back in 1956, the American Medical Association declared addiction to alcohol and other drugs to be a disease. Four years later, in 1960, the American Psychiatric Association did the same. But over 50 years later, we are imprisoning people whose crimes may very well be symptoms of a disease that demands to be fed by any means necessary. And yet we still often act as if addiction is a moral weakness, sin, or lack of willpower for which addicted persons should be ashamed. Why? It is an illness. Have you ever tried willpower over a case of diarrhea?
America has a mass incarceration problem. America has 5% of the world population, but we harbor 25% of the world’s prisoners. And of those massive numbers of prisoners in America ~ 60% are persons of color. A staggering number of them are young, African American, Latino, and male. They may not be saints. But they very well may be addicted and thereby, by definition, incapable of consistently making healthy choices. The road to recovery, for a variety of reasons, may be inaccessible to them.
People in prison have often done some terrible things. If you do the crime, few would argue that you should do the time. However, we can, and should, talk about color, ethnicity, poverty, mental illness and their relation to incarceration.
And it is illogical, counter-productive, unjust and downright dangerous to talk about incarceration without also talking about addiction.
We cannot arrest, judge and incarcerate our way out of an opioid epidemic and into a sense of safety. Justice and common-sense demand we do better.

Dwight Lee Wolter is the author of six books in the fields of addiction and recovery; including three on blame, anger and forgiveness.

Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer. Whether you live on Park Avenue or on park bench; whether you have been to Yale or to jail; addiction is right here, within or beside you.
There is no family, religion, school, hospital staff, police department, military branch, government, race, ethnicity, economic class, sovereign nation, rural community or urban metropolis that has not been or is not presently suffering under the whip of the cruel taskmaster named Addiction.
If you do not accept this, then you are under the influence of yet another disease. That one is named Denial. And Denial can be every bit as much a killer as is addiction. As a matter of fact, it is part of the syndrome of addiction.
People are already calling the overdose death of Saoirse Kennedy Hill part of “the Kennedy curse.” That helps keep addiction away from our own living room, sanctuary, child’s school and the driver of the car in front of or behind us. People prefer the cause of death to be suicide, depression, lost love, bad luck, karma, heart attack ~ anything rather than that of addiction. Just wait for all the rationalizations and explanations that come with a death by addiction. People will call it anything but what it is.
Individual and/or collective denial contributes to the death of someone every single day.
Addiction has many guises, masks and partnerships: depression, suicide, mental illness, compulsivity, risky behavior, creativity, obsessive thought and behavior, isolation, religious zealotry and garden variety neurosis. It will even attach itself to your most noble dreams, goals and ambitions. And then it will take you down. Never up. Always down.
Addiction will even convince you that it is saving your life while it is killing you.
Opioids are the number one killer of people under the age of 50 in America. Not handguns. Not car crashes. Not cancer. We are and have been in the midst of an opioid epidemic for a few years now and you would probably not know it if you go to church, for that matter. Church is often (have you noticed) a hotbed of Denial.
Many pastors, pontificators, philosophers and pundits have stopped reading this brief blog long ago. For those of you left ~ thank you! Mold grows in shadows and darkness. Thank you for helping to bring this issue into the light. We need more of it.

Blue Point Brewing, a Long Island brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch as a flagship, test market targeting younger customers, including hipsters and millennials, is now selling bubble gum flavored beer. Bad idea.

This is akin to cotton candy flavored vaping. What next? Candy cigarettes? Oh, I forgot; they have been doing that since I was a kid 50 years ago. But candy cigarettes are not drugs. Alcohol and nicotine are.

In December, 2018, the Surgeon General declared e cigarette use among youth to be “an epidemic.” The Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration also declared it an epidemic. Is kiddy flavoring of beer a route to a similar fate? Is this really what Amheuser-Busch wants? The Clydesdale horses are impressive! And now comes the bubble gum.

Overall beer sales were down in 2018, but craft brew sales were up. Craft breweries will get creative to attract younger drinkers, just as nicotine sales executives think outside of the (cigarette) box to boost sales and end-up with cotton candy and other flavored vaping products.

Adults want to drink? Your choice. Adults want to smoke. Okay, if you insist. But flashbacks to childhood candy is a rather transparent attempt to lure younger and younger persons to imbibe in their products.

Maybe Blue Point Brewing needs a crossing guard to get them to the playground of younger users. But the crossing guard should disarm them of messaging about how cute, silly and fun bubble gum beer can be.

Otherwise, children might get hurt.

On Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts; Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, did a live television broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and Moon seen from Apollo 8. Lovell said, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis, including the words, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light… and God saw that it was good.” Borman then added, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth.’”
And ~ almost exactly 50 years later, on July 20, 1969, on the Apollo 11 moon mission, Buzz Aldrin received communion in the spacecraft that had landed on the lunar surface, and shortly before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. The elements had been consecrated by Aldrin’s pastor at Webster Presbyterian church in Houston, Texas.
Aldrin spoke to the ground crew and his words were broadcast to the world, “I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.”
Without it being broadcast to the world, much of which he knew was not Christian, Aldrin took the wine and bread he had brought with him to space with the knowledge of NASA. He recited scripture from John 15:5. Thus, the first foods ever eaten or poured on the moon was the Christian sacrament of communion.
Aldrin later recounted in his memoir, “I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup,” he later wrote.
Lunar Communion Sunday is still celebrated annually at Webster Presbyterian in Houston. However, in his 2010 memoir, he wrote that he’d come to wonder if he’d done the right thing by celebrating a Christian ritual in space. “We had come to space in the name of all mankind—be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists,” he wrote. “But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the Apollo 11 experience than by giving thanks to God.”
The 50th anniversary of the moon landing is far more than a phantasmagoric orgy of lights, music and film footage. It is also, for many, a deeply spiritual manifestation of ancient scripture. For others, it is a fulfillment of the utterances from children and adults the world over who gaze into a clear night sky and say, “Oh, my God! Look at that!”