Rainey Blogs on Some Days

A few years ago in December, we went to see a play called “ No Child ” at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village in New York City. After it was over, we were walking to the car and saw Jesus walking his dog, a Dalmatian. I was surprised to see Jesus in Greenwich Village, let alone with a Dalmatian. I would have thought Jesus would have had a collie or chocolate Labrador. Oh, it was him alright. I’ve seen enough pictures of Jesus to know him when I see him. Most celebrities wear dark sunglasses and try to hide their identity, but not Jesus. He was out in the open for all to see, walking his dog . . .  in Greenwhich Village! Go figure.

Enough said.

I think this is self-explanatory.

"Happy Holidays!" the store clerk announced as John Thunderburk picked up his wife's pantsuit that had been hung on a hanger and covered by a red, plastic Macy’s bag. He started to walk away from the counter to go home to be with his family on Christmas Eve, but something bothered him. The sermons at his church about keeping Christ in Christmas and how Christmas’ continued evolution toward a secular holiday were getting to him. He felt he had to take a stand and defend Christian family values. He was edgy, irritable, because the whole world seemed to be turning Christmas into a mere winter holiday. "Merry CHRIST-mas!" John shouted as he walked away from the sales clerk—giving the word “Christ” a little extra emphasis to show her he meant business—and then began mumbling mostly under his breath. "Can't you just say, 'Merry Christmas'? Or since we're working for a big corporation, we have to say something generic so as to not affect the stoc

I wrote this not long after Benedict was made Pope. I thought becoming pope would be a happier day for me. I mean, I’ve waited all my life for this. Why am I so upset then? Well, I guess it’s the name. Benedict. I hate that name. My successor was John Paul. I get Benedict, the 16th no less! Joseph Ratzinger is a good name. But Benedict the 16th? Good grief. When the masses cheered for John Paul, it had kind of a ring to it—John-Paul, John-Paul. But when they cheer for me, it will be Ben-uh-dict, Ben-uh-dict. But what can you do? I had to choose something, so I chose common papal name. I am 78 years old, so chances are I won’t be around that much longer. But what would have been so wrong with using my name—Joseph. It’s Christian and Jewish. One of the all time great Bible stories is about Joseph and his brothers, that coat of many colors. I wear a colorful robe too. So how about Pope Joseph? Maybe with all of the Cardinals still here, we can reconvene and get my name changed. Then I

Allison Park is in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River I saw a man sitting on a bench in Allison Park Rain was pouring down from the skies Tears were running down his face from his eyes The sky was misty, gray. Fog was everywhere, enveloping the man, his world, his town. Not far away were lovers in a car. Not sure if they meant to go for a walk, but not today. Rained in. They didn't care. A man is sitting in maroon Ford Taurus with the windows halfway down. He's reading the newspaper. He seems to be reading the weather forecast-- "Mostly sunny, high of 74." He chuckles and thinks to himself, "It's pouring down rain and 61--so what, didn't affect me!" The man got up from the bench to go for a walk. The trail was different--new trees in the place where he used to pray. "I should come here more often," he thought to himself. But he probably won't. He's not the pastor anymore. I saw a man

What can you write when the first thing you see out of your window on a Monday morning is an expanse of seas surrounded by an orange hue breaking through the dawn darkness? When your hear the water’s rhythmic waves wash up on the shore and slide back down into the ocean, drowning out all but the sound of birds flying nearby? My last memory before going to bed last night was seeing the Caribbean moon light up the night sky and ocean in the distance, and now I see the Caribbean sun peeking trough the clouds to announce the day. This is where we are for our 25th anniversary, an inclusio to this first quarter century that began on another little island halfway around the world called Okinawa and ends on another little island called Jamaica. I cannot help but think about our first year of marriage when I hear the sound of the ocean. After arriving in Jamaica and picking up our luggage, my first impression of Jamaica is that they are not a purpose-driven people. They have not read the Seve

New York. Fallen rock star Prince ’s musical comeback through last year’s CD and tour of the same name— Musicology —brought a mixed response from old and new fans. Long-time fans were excited about Prince’s return to the quality blend of rock and funk that made him a superstar in the 80s and early 90s. Unfortunately, Prince’s comeback was not without controversy among his newfound religious brethren. His etymological explanation of the term “musicology” frequently given at the nightly opening of his 34-city tour upset Jehovah’s Witness church officials. In each concert, Prince explained that the original Greek word behind the -ology portion of the word musicology is logos , a word that means "word" or "study." He then summarized his overall point by saying that the word musicology meant the study of music. As an example, when Prince opened his Madison Square Garden concert in New York, he emerged from a small guitar case in a haze of purple fog with black horned-ri

“I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I`d look like without plastic surgery.” -- Joan Rivers During the summer I dropped my daughter Alyssa off at her summer day camp job each morning, and then I would go on to work. I had to go through Franklin Lakes, New Jersey on the way, and even now during the school year I still go through there sometimes. I have yet to see any of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, even though they supposedly live there. I saw ten minutes of one episode early in the summer, the one where one of them was going in for breast implants. I turned it off because I think this kind of vanity is over the top. I much prefer the authentic and natural over these extreme makeover types who go in for alterations. I’ll take a smaller inconvenient truth over a bigger, cosmetically altered lie any day. A few years ago a woman in my department at work was out for a couple of weeks. She was already attractive. But when she returned, her face looked like she’d gone toe-to-toe w

We used to go to the Jersey Shore at Long Branch to a place on the beach near the back of the Ocean Place Hotel , right on the ocean. It was odd having people on the beach kind of mixed up with the wedding attendees. We watched one wedding and I couldn't hear what they said, but imagine it must have gone something like this. Man: Let me give you a hug. I've never seen you cry like this. You must be so happy! Woman: Happy? Are you kidding? I just married your brother, and he didn't even tuck his shirt in. Can you believe it? On the biggest day of his life, your brother doesn't even tuck in his shirt! Man: Well, it is a beach wedding. I think he thought casual was Okay. Woman: And it was a button-down collar, but did you notice? He didn't even button down the collar! What an idiot! This is the worst day of my life. Untucked, unbuttoned . . . unbelievable. I've never been so humiliated in all my life. Man: Well, I thought the wedding was beautiful. Wom

I called my Grandmother to wish her a happy Mother's Day. "He's not feeling too good. He's turning 90 on his birthday. July 18," she said. "Does he stay active?" I said. "Well, he hires the lawn out, but he does little stuff around here," she said. "At least he does not clean the gutters himself anymore," I said. I hope they are not buying twelve-month certificates of deposit or extended warranties. They do not need a deep freezer for frozen strawberries. They should only buy fresh. They should not wish for the Cardinals to try to build a team from their farm system. They need them to win now. He's turning 90 on his birthday. He was my age in late December back in '63, the year his son and my mother got together, just as the song says. Maybe they were still mourning Kennedy’s assassination and thought they should steal a moment in the back of a ’60 Ford Falcon. But the moment turned into a baby boy and a life together. Then th

I went to get a haircut at Adolfo's Haircutters in Cliffside Park yesterday, the barbershop I have been going to for the past fifteen years. Adolfo's is a real barbershop. It has a swirling red, white, and blue barber pole outside, and you don't need an appointment. Just show up, wait your turn and read the paper or a magazine until it is your turn to get in the chair. I only have to tell him "short" or "really short." No complicated layering, styling, or anything like that. I just want a regular haircut. I use the 97-cent Suave shampoo from Shop Rite, and I don't use styling gel, mousse, or any of those fancy hair products, so there's no need to try anything crazy. Just a regular haircut. It's not as if I'm the Jonas Brothers or anything. Each time I go to Adolpho's, I get a good look at my face in the mirror. I see the lines deepening on my forehead. I see the weariness that grows around my eyes. Some of these visits to the barbe

This was a written and read at a men’s meeting at our church in April 2008 on the topic of “Our Need for Friendships and How Governor Eliot Spitzer Fell.” If a Jew has not seen a friend in over 30 days, tradition calls on that person to greet that friend with this blessing: "Praised are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings the dead back to life." The blessing is a response to the rabbis' belief that when we lose touch with a friend, we lose a little bit of ourselves too. The author went on to explain: "To renew contact is to reawaken the part of us that no one but our friend animates. For each friend enlivens a specific constellation of our spiritual lives, impulses, our desires, our strengths, our hopes, and our memories." As I thought about this, I felt the rabbis were on to something important. What they seem to suggest is that the richness of a person's life is determined by the friendships they have. The blessing affirms this b

Growing up in Southern Illinois meant you had to listen to Country Music. At least that’s what it meant for me, especially since my home spanned three generations and our summer vacations were usually spent in Nashville, Tennessee. But I didn ’t much care for Country music. I remember my first 45s that I purchased at Featherstun ’s, an appliance store that sold records. I bought Jim Croces ’ "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" and Billy Preston’s "Will It Go Round in Circles." A white artist and a black artist. Kind of like our town: black and white. As time went on, though, I grew to prefer Soul and Disco music over Rock or Country. As an only child, I spent hours in my room, by myself, exploring music. Kiss. Peter Frampton . Sweet. The Brothers Johnson. Village People. The Bar- Kays . Con Funk Shun. Bootsy ’s Rubber Band. Johnny "Guitar" Watson. I watched American Bandstand and Soul Train on Saturdays. My friends were leaning toward Rock music like Aerosmith , but

I realized yesterday that the only song I have ever heard with the word “porridge” in it was Bob Marley’s “ No Woman, No Cry .” Bob Marley, Rastafarian, ganja-smoking, Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley used that word in a song. “Porridge.” P-o-r-r-i-d-g-e. I have the song on a Jonathan Butler CD from the library right now. I listen to it over and over. I like Butler’s more polished version a little better than Marley’s version. No matter who sings it, though, the lyrics have this beautiful innocence to them that I could never explain. I would play it sometimes for Marcia or one of the girls and say, “Isn’t that a beautiful song.” But they didn’t hear what I heard. I didn’t even know what I heard. I just loved it, but you can’t love something without knowing why you love it. Finally, I understood yesterday. It was the porridge. The porridge takes me back to the innocence of childhood. Back to “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” the children’s story that puts me back on my mother’s lap li

The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) is the biblical passage that a worshipping Jew recites more than any other passage. It is recited daily in the morning and evening prayers, on the Sabbath, and as part of many liturgies. But when it says, "The LORD is one," what does it mean? I like to think of God as often working in the world incognito and showing up in places that you would least expect Him. For example, I think God goes undercover as a pop musician sometimes and His truths show up in the poetry of the songs. One of the recent times this happened for me was a few months ago after I had gotten the Jackson Browne  CD, I'm Alive , from the library. I was struck by this 1970s and 1980s star whose songs were so content-rich. Somehow though, when he was at the height of his popularity, I mostly missed him and his everyman lyrics of love, loss and pain. (I managed to miss Shakespeare too, but that is another story.) So I explored his music to find out what all the fuss had been

When I was growing up in Southern Illinois, my grandparents liked to vacation where they could listen to country music. Most Saturday nights, my grandfather had the Grand Ole Opry on the radio--AM 710 on the dial--so I became familiar with names like Roy Acuff, Grandpa Jones, Minnie Pearl, Ernest Tubb, Chet Atkins, Porter Waggoner, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette. This was not the new, Disney-commercial, theme-park fancy, Grand Ole Opry-land. This was hardcore Ryman Auditorium Opry. But one year, we broke with tradition and went to Florida. I think it was 1976. I had never been to Florida, never more than a state away from Southern Illinois. My grandpa always avoided driving through cities on our trips, preferring to take the bypasses and go around them. He said this would save us time in the long run and avoid the big traffic jams that always occur in a city. So early on, cities were places of great mystery for me that we always avoided. I will never forget what he said about New Yor

This is a satire piece that I wrote to express my feelings toward many of the songs we sing in church today: they are long, but short on lyrical content. Similar to what I remember about disco. During the 1970s, many people were saved out of disco to become Christian believers. Few would have thought that people could ever be saved into disco. Times have changed, though, and no Christian worship industry executive, pastor or theologian could have predicted the meteoric rise of a new type of worship music churches are currently using throughout the U.S.: Disco Worship. Disco Worship Fast Approaching Pop Worship in Popularity According to spokesperson Sergio Vandermaas of CRLI (Christian Royalties and Licensing Incorporated), the company that tracks worship song popularity and pays royalties to artists, CRLI has added several Disco Worship songs to their top song playlist and may even add a new Disco Worship category to their other category—Pop Worship—for tracking song usage. “Over t

With the success of American Idol on Fox Television, the network decided to try to reach the more conservative Heartland population with its new “American Idol Preacher's Edition.” The show pits preachers from around the country against each other in a competition for who will be America's next “idol” preacher. Although producers of the new show considered using “experts” in evaluating preaching, they finally decided that anyone could evaluate preaching and decided to stick with their popular trio of judges from their prime time American Idol program: Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. In early rounds of the competition, the three judges seemed tentative with their remarks and dismissed some preachers rather arbitrarily. By the time the competition reached the finals, though, they were back to giving their usual insightful, reflective feedback that quality of the preachers’ performances. Here are a few excerpts of the comments of Jackson, Abdul, and Cowell during a r

Thursday, the temperature climbed into the 60s and we felt the warmth of spring, but it turned out to be teasing us because it is raining and cold again today. We managed our first softball practice last night for my daughter Rachel's 7th and 8th grade girls’ team. Then we came home and watched Survivor and the series finale of ER, a show I greatly admire because there seem to be so few good ones anymore. ER lasted 15 years. Saying we watched the finale is mostly true. Marcia and I lasted until the final segment. We fell asleep during the last set of commercials and missed what happened in the final scene, and whatever final message appeared before they launched the credits for the last time. We woke up and it was over forever. There remains an ever so slight and subtle lack of closure for me because we missed the end. What I saw when I woke up looked like every other week, with credits crawling across the bottom of the television screen as channel 4 news anchor Chuck Scarborough t

This will sound strange, but I found comfort last week in the death of actress Natasha Richardson because she died of a close head trauma just like my Mom did. Ms. Richardson was taking taking beginner ski lessons and fell on the bunny hill. My Mom was getting out of a friend's car to go to her job at Sally’s Beauty Supply at a strip mall in my hometown eight years ago. Neither activity is fraught with life-threatening risk, but both women were dealt a fatal blow, suddenly, without warning. "Life changes. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends" is what Joan Didion said about how suddenly death can come to someone we love in The Year of Magical Thinking . The comfort to me is that someone else died from a closed head injury. After my Mom died, over and over I kept hearing stories about people who survived closed head injuries. I know it can't be true, but they all seemed to survive and do well. The news anchor Bob Woodruff