It’s one of those terms that can make a Unitarian Univeralist shift uncomfortably in his seat.

A while back, I wrote an open letter to my faith explaining why I wasn’t in the UU meetinghouse for a year now – and why I don’t think I’ll be back very soon. One of the reasons I gave was the chronic UU skittishness about salvation.

A few readers registered their disdain, and at least one insisted that a major tenant of Universalism is that souls don’t need saving. I don’t think that’s what Christian Universlism (which is the root theology of the the “universalism” in Unitarian Universalism) teaches at all. But that’s not the point.

If UUism isn’t teaching salvation, then it’s dead in the water.

I worked with a minister as a worship associate for three years, and she was careful to tell the committee that our job was to be interpreters of the congregation and for it. In other words, we were to relay the story of UUism to congregants in ways that would best open channels for communion with the sacred. The dialect spoken in each congregation was probably unique to each group, she said. For ours, it meant finding honest ways around deep and prevailing phobias around liturgical language. A lot of times, that meant being tutored on semantics. When that minister’s interim ended, she was still correcting me whenever I mentioned “the saving story of UUism.” She even asked that I reconsider using “the good news.” (This was tough for me, being a Baylor University graduate and a United Methodist for most of my life. The formal poetry of liturgy was and is a balm to my heart and mind.) When she thought our language would mash buttons and close people down, she’d ask us to find new words. It was a drill I didn’t like. “What in the bloody hell is wrong with salvation?” I’d ask. “Exactly,” she’d answer. (It turned into a private joke between us).

The repeated prickling at the word “salvation” in my “Dear John” letter was all the evidence I needed to give her the winning point.

What do I mean when I use the term “salvation?” I mean a soul-change. I mean a transformation. I mean redemption.

I happen to think those ideals are available to everyone who will submit their heart and mind to the work of change – with or without the blood of Christ. (Jesus is Christ to me. I also think he can be Christ to all – but he isn’t the sole path to holiness.) While I don’t think people need God to be good, I do think that religion is uniquely qualified to guide the humble toward redemption. Let’s face it; There aren’t many other spaces where we can profess our brokenness and still be invited to put our hands to holy work. The marketplace hints that our flaws are the source of all our shame (which might not be far off), but its promise is that we can buy our way out of them. (Feeling fat? Go on a pricey diet or get obesity surgery. Marriage not working out for ya? Buy a divorce. Feeling all alone?  Companionship can be yours – just get your credit card out.)

If UUs don’t think the faith has anything to say about  salvation — or redemption or transformation — then the Internal Revenue Service should revoke the tax-exempt status of every congregation with “Unitarian Universalist” on its shingle posthaste. And the good people in the meetinghouse should ask themselves what the heck they’re doing there. If they aren’t there for a chance at reforming their lives, their hearts or their communities, then why are they there at all? If we’re there to stroke ourselves, or to protect our comfort, then we’re not doing religion.

Religion leaves a beautiful open space for seeking — it’s OK to come into the meetinghouse and not know exactly how you’ll live out a life of faith – or an edifying ethical code. But to return week after week, thinking that grace and good work aren’t there to be claimed?

That, my friends, feels absurd.

A lot.

I used to forward the funny (or creepy) ones to my colleagues. These days, I’m sharing them on my Google+ stream. Because my colleagues don’t like spam (imagine that!)

This one, though, merits a Wondertwisted treatment. This one came from TeleNav, a company that might have something to do with Global Positions System apps for smartphones.  I can’t be sure. From this pitch, all I can divine is that a certain someone in the PR department has been in a cold sweat ever since she realized her iPhone is still at home on the charger.

We’ll call the PR rep “Esmerelda.” She writes the following to me:

Lucinda,

If you’ve ever felt naked just because you forgot your mobile phone at home (Why, yes, Esmerelda,  I have), a new survey by GPS mobile apps developer TeleNav shows you’re not alone.

The survey sheds light on just how important mobile phones have become in Americans’ lives (ya think?). For example:

· Would you have guessed that 22% of mobile phone users—including 40% of iPhone users—would rather go a week without a toothbrush than without their phone? (I wouldn’t have guessed a week. Three days, max. Yag. Remind me not to stand too closely to anyone with an iPhone. Crap, this means I can’t hang out with most of my friends.)

· One-in-three respondents would forego sex for a week if it meant they could hang on to their mobile device. (Oh, who wouldn’t, Esmerelda? Nookie is pedestrian – stultifying even – compared to what lies ahead of me if I master this level of Angry Birds.)

· 11% of mobile phone users said they’d rather lose their wallet or purse than their phone—a number that jumped to 23% among BlackBerry users. (Same here. Because I don’t have Mr. Chopsticks’ takeout number memorized.)

TeleNav prepared an infographic highlighting some of the survey’s results, and invites you to repost it as you see fit. You can find the image, along with more fascinating results, here: http://www.telenav.com/about/pr-summer-travel/report-20110803.html

Best, Esmeralda

TelNav publicist and current victim of smartphone withdrawl.

I love these kinds of press releases. I love that they presume to report something surprising. As if we all aren’t drifitng off to sleep spooning our phones! I really appreciate a publicist – nay, an entire company –  that will survey a sampling of people who downloaded their app to back up this shocking news with sorta-kinda science!

I’d write another graf, but it’s lunchtime, and I’ve got some thieving pigs to kill.

A Friday salute to a woman who rocks my world: actress Viola Davis, pictured here as Aibileen Clark in 'The Help'

Another supporting actress to cheer for: Viola Davis. She appears in The Help as Aibileen Clark, which opened in theatres on Wednesday.

I’ve been watching Davis for years. I noticed her in Traffic, Antwone Fisher and handed her my heart when she played Mrs. Miller in Doubt.

Davis understands a thing or two about restraint. While I haven’t seen or read The Help, her performance as a mother turning a blind eye to the possible abuse of her child was heartbreaking in Doubt. In lesser hands, Mrs. Miller would have come off as a villain. Entrusted to the capable Davis, the character was one of the walking wounded, a black woman bearing a double yoke of racism and classism.  When she faces off with the formidable Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) she betrays a world of secret grief and fathoms of anger – just by dropping the corners of her mouth.

Hermione, Ron and Harry fight. In the name of love.

We all knew it would come to this. In the eighth and final film of the Harry Potter franchise, the Boy Who Lived must face his death at the hands of Lord Voldemort.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 begins where the first part ended: at the crude graveside of Dobby the house elf, just one of many allies to Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) who have died in service of the young wizard.

Director David Yates blazes through certain parts of the book: the ambling hunt for the remaining three horcruxes — those objects where Voldemort chose to hide the seven parts of his soul — and the epic battle at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yates even races through the deaths of Harry’s friends and protectors. There’s little time to mourn when the fate of love hangs in the balance. Yates wants Harry and sidekicks Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) to claim the pieces of the Dark Lord’s soul so Harry and his arch rival can get on with their final duel.

And, oh, what a duel it is. Gone is the distance between Harry and Voldemort. The Dark Lord’s legion of cronies, the Deatheaters, are even shunted off to Hogwarts for the big battle. Only the closest of the Dark Lord’s coven are present for the fight in the Forbidden Forest. But the big fight comes after Harry, helped along by the last of the Deathly Hallows, gets one last meeting with his mentor, Albus Dumbledore. The resurrection stone — a tip of the hat to the sorcerer’s stone that got this whole adventure going — affords Harry one more rich, riddle-filled conversation with the fallen headmaster (Michael Gambon). It’s almost as if Yates propels us through this protracted fight scene so we can, along with Harry, savor the few moments of intimacy with those who have come and gone, and those who will make it through to the bitter end. It is these scenes that satisfy — Harry in the forest with the ghosts of his parents, godfather and favorite professor; Harry at a celestial King’s Cross station; Harry with Dumbledore’s Army, that ragtag group of students who converted to Harry’s cause.

Then, there’s the redemption of a much-loathed character, revealed through scenes conjured up by the penseive, a magical basin where wizards can immerse themselves in a memory. This is filmmaking at its most fluent and delicious.

Steven Kloves’s script pares away what the movie doesn’t need, but keeps both the action and the heart and soul of the Potter mythology — Harry’s courage, the need for loyal relationships and the chance of winning one’s soul back. Eduardo Serra’s cinematography keeps the action in the colors of a fresh bruise, which makes Harry’s ascension a rare moment of visual joy. Alexandre Desplat’s score is heavy and sober. The 3-D effects are ho-hum.

The story, though, is simple and memorable. At the end of the Battle of Hogwarts, some loved ones have been sacrificed, but friends and lovers are cemented for life.

Voldemort is literally dust in the wind. Love remains. Love is worth dying for. Love is worth fighting for. And, at long last, love is worth living for.

I get an e-mail from some poor soul who feels utterly betrayed by one of Denton’s nonprofit theater companies.

How were these folks mistreated? Not by a testy director or their cast mates, and they aren’t up in arms over questionable content in a script. The problem is that someone asked these shrinking violets to clean the toilets in the Campus Theatre dressing rooms.

In the past,  I’ve simply clicked “delete” and gone on to take care of actual business. Squeamishness about cleaning a commode isn’t an expose in the making.

Now that it’s become a pattern for  affronted volunteers to contact the newspaper because someone asked them to – gasp! – pick up a toilet brush and help clean the bathrooms, I figure it’s time to break my silence.

Here’s my advice: If you’re so emotionally bruised to be asked  to clean a commode, the best thing to do is to make this production your last. Denton’s hardworking, nonprofit performing arts community doesn’t need entitled twits like you raking the muck about how gross it is to have to swab the powder room.

Seriously. Don’t audition again. It’s for the best. You’re too fragile for the rigors of volunteer theater.

Denton’s nonprofit theater circle enjoys a wide pool of professional-grade talent, not to mention a roster of smart men and women who work off stage to make the magic happen on a shoestring budget. When things run so smoothly, and when performances win state and national contests, people get spoiled.

Some folks  start thinking that the professionalism is the work of a paid staff.

There is a paid staff at the Campus Theatre, a space shared by a number of nonprofit performing groups in north Texas. A bare bones staff. Those staffers will tell you that the bulk of the work in staging plays, concerts and musicals is done by people who work eight hours a day before they show up to rehearsals. (After rehearsals that last roughly 4 hours, they head home to piles of laundry, children who need help with their homework and spouses.)

It isn’t often that professionalism comes back to bite a nonprofit, but it does for the companies who share the Campus Theatre, because a few volunteers think the companies should spring for a full-time janitor. (The theatre already employs a custodian, but the building is often in use 10 hours a day or more, and throughout the weekends.)

At minimum wage, a custodian working four hours a day for five days a week would cost the theater nearly $7,000 in a year. For a nonprofit theater, that $7,000 means a number of things: fewer shows in a season; a hike in subscription and single ticket prices; and possible cuts in programming staff. Since the recession, funding for the arts has diminished. In some cases, it’s dried up completely.

Think I sound like a hard-ass? I don’t. It’s not the  squeamishness about latrine duty that gets me. What bothers me is that whiff of privilege that some volunteers have. Someone asked them to pitch in, and they alerted the newspaper.

When people join a nonprofit production, they volunteer to nurture the creative soul of the city. They’re grooming an avocation, or teaching other people how to put on a show worth the ticket price. They aren’t there to  feed an ego.

Newsflash:  It’s not all about you. It’s about the effort, the ensemble, the learning and the magic of theater done well – or at least done honestly.

Denton didn’t get several companies (and at least two fledgling professional companies) without some sacrifice. Most of the volunteers? They’ve taken on backstage custodial duties without complaining.

For the few who reel at the idea of cleaning a toilet: There are no stars on the dressing room doors at the Campus Theatre. Remember that. And the next time you feel compelled to take your disgust to the local newspaper?

Don’t.

Either roll up your sleeves and help your peers with the chores, or negotiate quietly with a cast or crew mate to switch tasks. Hey, you might even ask the stage manager to give you a different chore. It’s not that bad.

And honestly? You’re not too good.

It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve decided to explore liberal Christianity. I think it’s more honest for me, at least right now.

There is so much I love about UUism. The honesty about the mystery of the sacred, and the clarity from the clergy about our habit of making meaning through stories, song and silence. I love that the UU clergy is so well-read, generally speaking. I also love many of the UUs I’ve met along the way.

What finally convinced me to leave? A lot of things, including the nagging feeling that UUism lost it’s religious heart to political liberalism a long, long time ago. And I craved so much to learn about the meaning of salvation in UUism, but no one would touch the question with a 10-foot pole. Sure, we could talk about Buddhism, pagan rites, humanist hope for a world transformed — but not salvation, and certainly not sin. I could read Rev. Davidson Loehr’s essay “Salvation by Character” and re-read Walden. But I couldn’t expect to engage in a dialog about salvation with my peers. Mostly, they answered my questions with “We can’t save anyone. We don’t sell fire insurance.” I thought we could talk about salvation from a Unitarian and a Universalist philosophy, leaving heaven and hell out of the discussion. But no. It wasn’t to be.

There are other, more tangible reasons, too.

Ambivalence about membership
In my former congregation, you could pledge $5 a year, rarely show up for worship and decline to donate any significant time to the church. However, you can show up twice a year for the congregational meetings, make a long speech about your many “concerns” about the motions presented and actually get calm people worked up. And there was so much touchiness about money! It’s as if talking about money, and how to use it, was in itself a condemnation of those without means. But even then, there was no specific expectation of what members should do to align themselves with a vision for The Beloved Community, either. As much as the phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” nettles my soul, I always felt oppressed by the resistance to articulating clear membership expectations — spiritual and material.

Accepticemia
A chief sin of cultural liberalism is its reluctance to label toxic behaviors and assign them consequences. Boundaries are very fuzzy in a lot of UU congregations, and every leadership workshop or seminar I have attended in the last four years has eventually come around to the question about what to do with disruptive members. We always seem to stub our toes on the first principle of our covenant with the Unitarian Universalist Association. Our first principle reads thus: “We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

This principle has been perverted. By what? By a blind terror of the appearance of bigotry. So we are no longer guided to welcome all people, but to welcome all behavior — even disruptive, corrosive and dangerous behavior.

Too often, I’ve seen this behavior metastasize. I’ve watched in horror as people have brought personal grudges up during worship in the messiest and most dangerous part of church life I’ve ever witnessed: Joys, Sorrows and Concerns. (For non-UUs, this is a time in the service when the congregation is invited to share. I’ve seen this part of the service go toxic more than once, and as a lay leader, I never understood the insistence that we protect this part of worship. Probably because those who love it have never or rarely had to spend hours a week doing damage control because of what someone shared. It’s very likely that the folks doing the damage were totally obtuse to the havoc they were wreaking on worship. I can forgive that. It’s harder for me to forgive lay leaders and members who either resist putting healthy boundaries around sharing in worship, or pretend what’s hurtful is somehow protected by freedom of expression. (Expecting people to behave, and to respect the worship hour is not censorship. Shame on you if you think it is. )

For any organization to be healthy — not perfect, but healthy — leaders have to identify boundaries, and then make policy and procedure to protect them. UUs have a very tough time with this. Some avoid setting boundaries all together. I failed utterly in this responsibility myself — sometimes out of ignorance and just as often out of cowardice. I own this, and it still haunts me.

Negligent worship
There’s a cartoon that lovingly skewers the UU habit of avoiding depth in worship. The cartoon shows two doors — one is labeled “heaven” and the other is labeled “lectures about heaven.” The UUs in the cartoon are going to the lecture.

I’ve spent too many Sunday mornings listening to lectures that are absolutely inappropriate for religious ritual. An example? A well-respected academic came to my former congregation and spoke (not preached) about something called “facilitated after-death communication.” The professor was obviously very credible, very knowledgeable and very passionate about her work. She wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it wasn’t worship.

UUs are more comfortable dedicating Sundays to the ethics of fair trade coffee than to bringing people together for a common experience of transcendence. I can’t speak for others, but I come to church because something is unanswered in my life and the world, and I’d like to work it out — at least a little — before I die. I want to know how I can help save the world. Or a piece of it. I don’t think I can do that by being a smarter coffee drinker. I couldn’t ignore the grain of indignation I felt when sitting in these worship services. On Sunday morning, I want to leave my consumer identity behind for an hour and reach out to the depths of me — and the depths of the others in church. I want to know why we’re worth saving.

And I can’t live with the guilt that washes over me when a visitor or member comes in, sharing that they’ve lost a child, a spouse, a job or their hope — and they have to sit through a supposed religious service that won’t deign to offer them some sort of blessing, some bit of consolation.

The bloody embarrassing hyphenates
I was at a UU leadership function. I met a really smart, really energetic and sweet guy. The kind of guy that any church elder or pastor would love to recruit onto the board. He volunteered his path to me: “I’m a Buddhist-Humanist,” he said. Then he took a swig of fair trade coffee while I told every particle of my being that, no, I would NOT roll my eyes.

You can’t be a Buddhist-Humanist. You just can’t. Religious humanism claims that there is no supernatural force directing our moral decisions or the environment we live in. Atoms do what they do, and the only help we humans have is a conscience and a heart to make moral decisions. Buddhism, on the other hand, teaches that the world is an illusion. If Buddhism and Humanism aren’t opposing philosophies, they are incongruent and incompatible. (Don’t think I don’t feel conflicted about the big differences between Unitarians and Universalists, either. But that horse died a long time ago. I’ll leave others to flog it.)

Pick a philosophy that resonates with your heart and mind, and then do the work, dammit! Be a Buddhist or a Humanist and do the work, because I suspect that claiming a hybrid philosophy might have something to do with wanting to be “spiritual” without the messy work of transformation.

So I’m leaving the faith. I never thought I would, and I am grieving. I still feel and think like a Unitarian Christian. But I’ve got to do some religious work, work that somehow rises above mere political activism, and learn how to serve God’s children. I think I can do that better in a liberal Christian community, one that won’t low-ball me in terms of expectations or covenant.

My soul depends on it.

A Friday salute to the dames who rock my world.

Occasionally on Fridays, wondertwisted will salute the women who make the world a better place, in big ways and in small ways.

Who’s that girl? It’s one of my favorite actresses, Parker Posey.  Don’t mess with Parker, folks, or she’ll rip you a new one!

What makes her special: Crazy-good acting chops. A sharp wit. And she’s a brunette!

Posey brings an awareness to the screen that makes her a joy to watch. We lift our Friday stein to a woman who has championed quirky, wacky, adventurous and smart girls in film, a medium that talks down to women way, way too often.

Enjoy, and feel free to give Posey some love in the comments.

I lifted weights and then headed upstairs to make friends with an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes.

I put in the ear buds, got the digital data loaded into the elliptical machine. Off I went, striding oddly off to nowhere.

Muted flat screen televisions line the high ceiling of the gym, the close caption scrolling as steadily as the feet pounding on the treadmills. The screens are tuned to different networks – Fox News, CNN, HLN and plenty of sports channels.

I’d chosen the treadmill closest to the television broadcasting the latest froth from E! Yes, that’s the network that actually spends money to follow Hugh Hefner’s boring “girlfriends” from spa to boutique, from the mansion to an appointment to have their vulvas molded into chocolate treats. Nice.

I’m hustling away on the elliptical, huffing perhaps a little too loudly for the trim woman on the elliptical next to me. I’m on autopilot, reading the captions on E! while Kanye West is singing “Love Lockdown” on my nano.

E! was devoting it’s coffee hour programming to — are you ready for this? — STARS WITHOUT MAKEUP. They’d assembled a panel — two guys (one gay and wearing more makeup than I own) and two women — to dissect photographs of female celebrities who commit the sin of wearing bare faces to the airport, the market or at the starting line of a 10K race. (Really, E!? Female celebrities owe it to their adoring public to slather on makeup before sweating through a 10K race for charity? Felicity Huffman should damn well be ashamed for not being ready for her close-up before RUNNING?)

The mocking take-down of these women (and Nick Nolte, the only lad who was made an example of for not being pretty while flat-ass drunk) was a romp of clever quips and jokes.

E! doesn’t pretend to be anything other than cotton candy, but when so much time and money (a full hour; we were in the second half of the show) is devoted to critiquing moneyed, powerful women for daring to go without concealer, what are we really selling ourselves?

Well, for one thing, we’re continuing the trope of starlet as commodity, which is unsettling enough when one considers that there are more women and girls being bought and sold for sex trafficking than ever before. But we’re also telling ourselves that, even off camera, our female celebrities are public property, and they’re open to ridicule and snarks when they are doing the shopping or raising money by running without maintaining the sexual allure we pay for when the opening credits roll.

And what is the expectation of mortal women who aren’t in front of the camera, ever?

They don’t call the faces and figures of starlets aspirational for nothing. While mortal women aren’t expected to schlep the kids to soccer practice dressed for the red carpet, the images used to sell everything from toothpicks to tailpipes are powerful. Cosmetic surgery is a brisk business, and its clientele is mostly female.

E! programming is heavy on the fluff. Which makes it different from the American culture how? And what was the connection between the scrutiny on the small screen and those of us on the cardio equipment? Without a doubt, some of us were there to be a little more like the stars under the microscope. Some of us were there to test our body’s abilities, to put ourselves through a time of willful stress.

In the meantime, we were all pelted with image after image of the ideal physique. It looked like this: thin (well, fat free); with slender muscles; young and mostly white.

It would be wrong to  assume this isn’t filtering into messages from the pulpit.

Part of my job is managing a stable of religion columnists. I respect the clergy, and generally refrain from challenging clergy on their perspective. Just last year, I did challenge a minister. This pastor leads the largest Baptist congregation in town, and I like and respect him. He submitted a column called “The God Bod.”

I started to read with trepidation. The God Bod? Wasn’t that a touch glib? Wasn’t there a whiff of sexism and commercialization in there? But I shook it off and dove in.

The columnist began with a thesis that any person of any faith could affirm: our bodies are sacred and temporal, and deserve care that honors that. Amen, brother! Sexual behavior should reflect the reconciliation of human and holy. Hear, hear!

Then his column wandered into territory that, to me, felt dangerous and heretical. It seemed to me that the pastor’s assertions about weight and disease were condemnations. I believe he was saying that the only body fit to serve Christ is a body that is thin, young and disease-free.

Wow. I’d hate to be a fat, 50-year-old cancer patient in his congregation. I’d hate to have juvenile diabetes, arthritis or a binge eating disorder.

It’s certainly laudable to affirm the blessings of health  – and believe me, health is not always earned or deserved, if ever — with temperance, good exercise and rest.

But do we really imagine that the Kingdom of heaven — be it in the here and now or in a time beyond our own — is cordoned off from the lame, the blind, the fat, the infirmed?   Does heaven belong to trim young men with body fat percentages in the single digits?

When Christian pastors talk about the Body of Christ, they are referring to the church. It’s people. Those people come to the altar as they are – fat, thin, old, energetic, exhausted. They come because their souls yearn for the reconciliation that blesses their humanity and makes it’s “baggage” a neutral thing in the presence of The Holy. No Christian pastor should confer status on the bodily conditions of his or her flock. He or she can and should intervene if a member is self-mutilating. But those dealing with physical and mental afflictions deserve prayer and welcome, especially if they are abiding with congregational polity. A pastor’s job is to bring the faithful into a relationship based on hope and a rejection of sin. Rejecting bodies based on how well they’re  functioning isn’t part of the job description.

The tyranny of beauty — which is now thoroughly integrated into the Western obesity panic and shady signifiers of “health” — can surely be felt in religious culture. The notion of a “God Bod” is but one piece of evidence.

This tyranny is as misplaced in the pulpit as it is in the secular world.

I challenged the pastor on his column, and he politely chose not to change it. So I didn’t publish it.  It clashed with my conscience and I worried that the overweight, arthritic and diabetic members of his church might take his inartful remarks at face value.

I thought they — and our readers — deserved better

Katy Perry, the flamboyant pop singer who soared up the charts when she sang the sapphic ditty “I Kissed a Girl (And I Liked It)” has admonished Lady Gaga.

What for?

For appearing in her latest video, “Alejandro” wearing a latex nun’s outfit, seductively putting rosary beads into her mouth and frolicking with nearly nude boys in her underwear. With a red cross plastered on her crotch. (If you haven’t seen it, but want to, go here . It is not safe for work.

Katy Perry reportedly shook her finger at Le Gaga (as I like to call her) via twitter. She said using blasphemy as entertainment is on par with a comedian telling a fart joke.

Well, Katy, no. They aren’t the same thing. It’s fair to say that Lady Gaga was treating religious symbols irreverently. I think it would be just as easy to puzzle over Gaga’s comparison of a frustrated nun and troops of half-naked boys wearing World War I-inspired helmets. What turf are these characters fighting for? Could they be wrestling for control of the red-crossed crotch?

But that’s not what piqued my interest. It was Perry’s follow up, rebutting her critics by saying sexuality and spirituality are separate things. You see, someone suggested Perry was being a touch hypocritical. In her latest video for “California Gurls,” she wears a cupcake bra, licks a pastry like she’s in love with it and then appears in a bra that shoots whipped cream out of the nipples.

But that’s OK, because there isn’t a Celtic cross bedazzled with candy or anything?

I like Perry’s pop, but her thoughts on sexuality and spirituality are lacking. Or maybe just a mite too  convenient to ring true.

Our behaviors are the purest testimonies of our values, whether we claim a religion or not. Our sexual behaviors aren’t apart from that.

There’s a reason why religious leaders speak of marriage as a vocation, and consider sex sacramental. Sexual expression speaks volumes about our ethics, our insecurities and — whether we like it or not — our priorities. The reason so many gay and lesbian couples are agitating for civil marriage is because they consider marriage a status worthy of their aspirations and their hardest work. Sex is perhaps the deepest expression of vulnerability and desire to bring peace, devotion and affirmation to our partners. This can be so — no, it is so — whether you are a believer or not. Sexuality is most fruitful when it is lived out in a covenant, in an abiding relationship. It’s the signifier that the relationship we’ve chosen is special.

Should Lady Gaga suck a rosary into her mouth like Lady and the Tramp sucked up that famous strand of spaghetti? Maybe not. I have to admit that her decision to strut around with a scarlet cross on her crotch made me wonder if the message might be subversive, an exclamation point that emphatically agrees that female genitals aren’t dirty, but sacred. Or, at the very least, the real estate culture warriors are fighting over.

Either way, Ms. Perry, if matters of the soul and matters of the groin were really so blatantly separate, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Yeah. This ain’t gonna happen. Not as a solitary pursuit, anyway. But do I want to join a Christian Bible study group? Do I want to “come out” as a Unitarian Christian who has fallen in love — again — with Jesus’ sermons on the mount?

I don’t know.

Just a few weeks ago, I was having brunch with a Unitarian Universalist minister, and we were talking about the UU movement’s way of addressing holy scriptures of all stripes. We agreed that UUism in general isn’t making a concerted effort to teach the holy scriptures of the sources. (To review the sources of UUism, visit www.uua.org.)

I’ve only attended two UU congregations for any length of time – both of them in the American Southwest. Currently, I’m a member of a small fellowship that has never had the resources or consensus to offer full-time ministry. Before that, I attended a UU Church with a full time minister. (That’s the model I prefer, by far, but I don’t want to be on the road an hour round trip on Sundays to worship.)

My experience tells me this:  UU congregations don’t offer anything in the way of sophisticated scriptural study. No in-depth Bible study. No in-depth study of Hinduism, Buddhism, Humanism, Judaism or Islam. (My fellowship has a solid, lively pagan covenant, but I don’t know if they teach a particular “brand” of paganism.)

I can understand why. Churches that teach one faith and one collection of holy writings spend just about all their time teaching that one faith. In general, it’s a small group of members who meet regularly for a guided study of the text. Credible, deep teaching on the sources that feed UUism would be herculean, to say the least.

But that doesn’t mean congregations shouldn’t try to do something. Right?

Two years ago, I joined a leadership conference for advanced lay leadership training. One conference student asked our district executive why the conference didn’t offer more teaching about UUism – beyond “the 101 stuff.”

“It’s like once you learn the 101 stuff, that’s it. Unless you go to seminary.”

Every head nodded. Seminary is expensive and exhausting. It’s not meant for the serious student of UUism who wants a deeper grasp on his or her faith. It’s meant for people who want to serve a parish.

I’m still reading manageable bits of the Bible every day, along with support references. But I need more mentorship before I go much further, and I don’t think I can count on getting it at my fellowship.

So, UUs, tell me what your congregation offers in the way of scriptural instruction? How involved is your minister? And does your congregation engage guests with credentials to teach a holy scripture?

Finally, do you think UU congregations are obligated to give members this kind of instruction?

I think it’s imperative for UU congregations to either A) connect their members with credible spiritual leaders who can advise on matters of scripture and discipline, or B) make basic scriptural literacy more of a priority than it is now.