Can Zombies by Saved?
A
Worship Service by Mike Mallory
Presented
May 18, 2014
Presenters (left to right)
Historian
- Dr.
Thomas Gaskin
Mike - Mike Mallory
Worship
Associate - Marilyn Mallory
Reader - Dave
Speights
Individual
Candle Lighting
Gathering
Music: “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again”
- Netta Beryerlein
Reader:
(holding a bible) The text for this morning's service is Genesis, Chapter 7,
Verse 17 – Verse 24.
For
forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they
lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and
increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the
water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth,
and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth
of more than fifteen cubits. 21 Every living thing that moved on
land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over
the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on
dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped
out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the
birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the
ark. 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
We are only seven chapters into the Old Testament
and already we are presented with an apocalypse.
Worship Associate / Introit: My name is Marilyn Mallory and I am the worship associate this morning. We will begin with a congregational introit. Please turn to Hymn No. 188i n the Grey Hymnal “Come, Come, Whoever You Are.” I don't want to startle you the way people are startled when they open a door to find a Zombie standing there, but when we get into a round there will be voices joining in with the chorus from R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the Word As We Know It.” We will sing it once in unison then once as a round with this side (point) singing first and this side (point) coming in later.
Worship Associate / Introit: My name is Marilyn Mallory and I am the worship associate this morning. We will begin with a congregational introit. Please turn to Hymn No. 188i n the Grey Hymnal “Come, Come, Whoever You Are.” I don't want to startle you the way people are startled when they open a door to find a Zombie standing there, but when we get into a round there will be voices joining in with the chorus from R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the Word As We Know It.” We will sing it once in unison then once as a round with this side (point) singing first and this side (point) coming in later.
Welcome
and Announcements - Board Member-Laurel Nisler
Worship
Associate / Declaration: Please join me in a unison
reading of the Declaration printed in your order of service.
Delight is our source,
Delight is our course
And
Delight is the all-illumining,
All-fulfilling force
In us,
With us
And
For us.
Delight is our course
And
Delight is the all-illumining,
All-fulfilling force
In us,
With us
And
For us.
Mike:
I am Mike Mallory. The views presented
this morning are not necessarily those of the people helping me.
This service is about my mission. When I have shared my mission in the past, I
seem to get a lot of questions so I thought I would spend this morning
explaining it once in front of everybody and just get it all over with in one
go. Now, I believe that when a person shares his or her mission statement in a
public setting, the public echoes back the mission statement. So, if I say, “My Mission is “da, da, da,” then
you say, “Your mission is “da, da, da.”
The same goes with the shadow statement.
My mission and shadow are printed in the order of service for your
convenience.
My mission is to enliven the world by responding to
life with insight and delight in order to resurrect the living dead.
Congregational
Response
Mike: My
shadow is a vulnerability to the zombie infection.
Congregational
Response
Worship
Associate – Call to Worship & Chalice Lighting - I
invite Linda Hart to light the chalice.
Flame of fire, spark of the
Universe that warmed our ancestral hearth –
Agent of life and death
Symbol of truth and freedom
We strive to understand
ourselves and our earthly home.
Chalice
Response
Rise
up, O flame, by thy light glowing
Show
to us beauty, vision and joy.
Worship
Associate - Story for All Ages – “Rise and
Shine”
Verse 1
The
Lord said to Noah there’s gonna
be a floody floody
Lord
said to Noah there’s gonna be a floody floodly
Get
those children out of the muddy muddy
Children
of the the Lord.
CHORUS
So,
rise and shine and give God your glory glory
Rise
and shine and give God your glory glory
Rise
and Shine and give God your glory glory
Children
of the Lord.
Verse 2
So
Noah he built him he built him an arky arky
Noah
he built him he built him an arky arky
Built
it out of hickory barky barky
Children
of the Lord
Chorus
Verse 3
The
animals they came on they came on by twoseys twoseys
Animals
they came on they came on by twoseys twoseys
Elephants
and kangaroosees rooses
Children
of the Lord
Chorus
Verse 4
It
rained and rained for forty daysies daysies
Rained
and rained for forty daysies daysies
Almost
drove those animals crazies crazies
Children
of the Lord
Chorus
Verse 5
The
sun came out and dried up the landy landy
Sun
came out and dried up the landy landy
Everything
was fine and dandy dandy
Children
of the Lord
Final Chorus
The middle school & high school youth will be
working in the new Side Garden today as part of their spring service projects. When
released, meet Dean Smith in the garden off the parking lot instead of going to
your classrooms.
Children in Pre-K through 4th grade go to their
classrooms as usual.
Form an arch for the children as they go to their
classes.
Sing and Rejoice. Sing and Rejoice.
Let all things living
now sing and rejoice.
Reader: In 2013 “Noah” became the most
popular name for American male newborns.
Historian:
A full history of Zombies would require an extended symposium rather
than the cameo appearance I have been allotted in this worship service. I will, however, present a condensed version.
Zombies have evolved out of film. The first sightings of re-animated corpses
can be found in films such as White Zombie and Revenge of the Zombies in which
Afro-Caribbean Voodoo Priests raise and control the recently dead.
The Modern Zombie ambled into the American Pop Culture on
October 1, 1968, with the premier of
George Romero’s Night
of the Living Dead (Now Showing).
This was a low-budget independent film and the first in a series of six
Zombie flicks created by Romero. Others
in the series include, Dawn of
the Dead and Land of
the Dead. Night of the Living Dead
was chosen by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry as a film
deemed, “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
Romero, considered
to be the “Godfather of the American Zombie, ” gave Zombies characteristics known
as Romero’s Rules. A Romero Zombie has
once died and become reanimated, wanders the earth driven by an insatiable
hunger for human flesh, especially brains, has no memory, is physically slow
and awkward and is dumb to the point where tool use is out of reach.
As adversaries
go, Zombies do not present much of a threat, even if they can only be killed
(again) with a head-shot. The question
Romero finds most interesting is whether humans defeat themselves through
greed, fear, selfishness, hesitancy, cowardice, hubris and the like.
Danny Boyle, another
director in the “Living Dead” genre wanted to make Zombies into a more
challenging foe and bent Romero’s Rules.
In his 28 Days Later he increased
both their mental capability and agility.
Boyle-Zombies shift the film’s emphasis away from an exploration of human
failure to a more traditional adventure format.
“World War Z,”
the high-budget 2013 film starring Brad
Pitt and directed by Marc
Forster uses Boyle-Zombies. However,
the book by the same title, written by Max
Brooks, the son of Anne
Bancroft and Mel Brooks,
upon which the movie is based uses Romero-Zombies.
There have also
been many zombie parodies: films such as Zombieland and even the music
video from Michael
Jackson’s “Thriller.”
The award winning
broadcast series, The Walking Dead,
now in its fifth season on the American Movie
Channel, based on the graphic novels of Robert Kirkman has taken
more time to explore the effects of an apocalyptic event on the human
survivors. The Walking Dead and this
worship service both refer to Romero Zombies.
Worship
Associate: Please rise
in body or spirit and join me in singing Hymn
#1, “May
Nothing Evil Cross this Door.”
Worship
Associate / Sharing Joys and Sorrows. Now is a time for those of you with Joy that
cannot be contained or Sorrows that needs to be heard to come forward and be
heard. I will light a candle for you. Please form lines on each side of the
sanctuary. When you come forward, please
state your name.
I will now light a candle for all those joys and
sorrows that remain unexpressed.
Please create a reflective space as I recite a
Buddhist “Metta Prayer”
May all being be filled
with Loving Kindness
May all beings be well.
May all beings be peaceful
and at ease.
May all beings be happy.
Spit
Plate Offering - Testimonial Teresa Rugg
One-half of the offering will be donated to TB-Photo Voice. Please join me in the Unison Response printed in
your order of service:
This
is a Fellowship of ourselves.
Its
energy and resources are our energy and resources.
It’s
wealth is what we share.
When
we contribute to the life of this community.
We
affirm our lives within it.
__________________
May
the Greeters please come forward to gratefully accept the offering.
Offering
Muisc Netta Beyerlein “There’s a Light”
Reader: The undead rub religion the wrong
way. They are a perversion of religious
ritual and understanding. Firstly, the undead, and I refer to both
zombies and vampires have died, lost their souls and yet remain active in the
world. Immortality is
supposed to be reserved for Gods and
humans graced with salvation. The zombie story interferes with the church’s monopoly on
the meaning of death.
Secondly,
there is that consumption of human flesh and thirst for blood, which is presented
as a twisted mockery of Holy Communion. Communion for the true believer is not merely
a metaphorical exercise, but through the process of transubstantiation the
devout ingest a piece of God and become one with the Body of Christ. As they say, “We are what we eat.”
Zombies,
eating human flesh and Vampires, drinking human blood, both attempt to drag us
into the dark world of the undead
Historian: One of the most Frequently Asked Questions by
UUs once they discover that there is an historical Unitarian
presence in Transylvania is, “What is the Unitarian-Vampire
connection?” Vlad
III, (1431–1477, or so they say), known by his patronymic name: Dracula and
identified by Bram Stoker as a vampire,
was born in Transylvania. He was
posthumously given the name Vlad the Impaler based upon his excessive cruelty
to invading forces and political opponents. It should be noted that in his
homeland Vlad was renowned as a hero for driving out the invading Ottoman Turks. Of course one person’s sadist is another’s
savior. Dracula was not Unitarian, he
was Catholic. His
father, Vlad II, in
line with something out of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, was a member of the Order of the Dragon,
which was founded to protect Roman
Catholicism in Eastern Europe.
Frances David, the
founder of Transylvanian Unitarianism was born forty-years after Dracula’s
reported death. In a debate with a
Trinitarian scholar, David was able to convince the Prince of Transylvania, of the correctness of the Unitarian belief and the Prince
converted. Transylvanian Unitarianism
reached a pinnacle when it was granted legal recognition. The Prince died two months later and was
replaced with a Catholic.
There is no real evidence of a connection between Vampirism and
Unitarianism. If there were, one would
expect a rather large Unitarian cathedral in Forks.
Reader:
The Apostle Paul,
writes in Romans, Chapter 7, Verses 15 – 25, I am a slave to sin. I really don’t understand myself. I have the desire to do what is good, but I
don’t do it. What I end up doing is not
the good I want to do, but what I hate to do.
What a wretched man I am.
Mike: I've been
told that it is best to include a personal story and a joke in every
sermon. There is a lot
going on this morning, so I'm going for a short Two-fer, Okay> Here we go...... I quit
drinking booze......about 1500 times. Check and double check.
Reader: Similarly, Zombies are focused only on human
flesh. Nothing else seems to register. Zombies have a single urgent need. Like a
broken camera lens, they have "zoomed-in" and can't seem to find a
wider view.
Mike: Zombie hunger for human flesh creates
apocalyptic possibilities.
Historian: Apocalyptic stories
generally approach their subject from one of two perspectives. Either they look back to see where things
went wrong, that is they turn the present into a fictional history so that we
can learn from it as we move forward into the future,
or they end up becoming a tale of rebuilding when everything
has fallen to pieces casting doubt on the reliability of the customs, values
and assumptions we take for granted.
History helps to inform our understanding of the present as we recognize
current patterns with roots in the past.
Apocalyptic stories inform our understanding of the present by
questioning cultural features we take for granted and examining destructive
trends.
Worship Associate: An apocalypse may also be personal. Divorce, death of a loved-one and even the
termination of long-term employment can all result in emotional
devastation. When a person is stripped
of his or her primary relationships in the world he or she can end
up wandering in a psychological desert. In a wasteland there is nothing to eat or
drink.
Anthem: Hourglass an
apocalyptically themed song written by Kevin Mallory and presented by Dennis
Griffiths, Marilyn Mallory and Mike Mallory. (Kevin’s
Version)
Historian: The Rev. Dr. Arvid Straube,
minister of the First UU Church of
San Diego in his sermon, “How
Not to be a Zombie” claims that the zombie should be viewed as a carrier of
repressed anxiety and rage. He suggests
that a zombie cure is found in the work Rene
Brown by overcoming the fear of being
vulnerable.
Mike: I believe this reading of zombieism misses
the mark. Zombies aren’t angry, they’re
hungry.
Zombies have been said to represent racial oppression,
mindless consumerism and class struggle.
Yet, underlying this dialectical approach to zombieism is the personal
meaning offered by the undead. Zombies have
died, yet continue to function with a kind of self-destructive momentum.
The benign zombie, whether the condition is caused by a
personal apocalypse or some gradual loss of meaning finds the world barren and
tasteless. They are not interested in feeding because their hunger is dormant and they
cannot conceive of eating.
Reader: The
Jotter, a UU
blogger went through a period of life she refers to as being a “Grief Zombie.” She writes, “It is hard to write accurately
what it feels like to be a grief zombie because the core of my zombie life is
not having feelings. I say I try not to think about it, but what I mean is that
when thoughts of sadness start floating in, an emotionless voice says,
"Not yet." It is not conscious so much as zombie survival instinct
kicking in. I can no more will myself to feel, to not feel, or to concentrate
than I can will myself to cry.”
Mike: On the other hand, Zombies in the biting stage are feeding, but only on
a single irrational and self-destructive substance. When a person looks out on the wondrous, rich
spectrum of life and can only identify a single offering as important, whether
it is praise, money, status, drugs, sex or attention, that person is infected
with zombieism.
It is important to remember that zombies are relentless
and infectious, yet they have their apologists.
Historian: In
his article, “What’s
So Bad About Being A Zombie?” philosophy professor Dien Ho, points out
that zombie life may not be that bad. “They
are largely indifferent to pain and suffering. Short of severe head injuries,
zombies enjoy a type of immortality. Zombies do not care about most of the
pesky concerns that fill our daily lives: they do not care about the weather,
their appearance, their social status, their retirement plan, their morning
commute, and petty office politics. They are not concerned about the threat of
terrorism, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. . Indeed, if we focus on just
these qualities, the life of a zombie resembles the ideal state of a
disciplined Zen Buddhist monk who has managed to let go of his earthly
concerns.”
Reader: The Rev.
Dr. Cynthia L. Landrum
presents a well-annotated hermeneutical overview of zombies in her sermon, “Sunday of the Living Dead.” In the same vein as Ho’s article she
quotes Scott Kenemore’s, The
Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead, “Zombies
don’t worry. Not about themselves. Not about others. Not about climate change.
Nothing. Zombies have “enough” of what they need in life (with the exception of
living brains). Yet are, at the same time, ‘driven’ with a passion and
intensity that any CEO or motivational speaker would envy. Zombies don’t stop.
Zombies don’t rest. And yet, zombies are at peace with this ceaselessness. You
can be too.”
Mike: I approach a cure to zombieism as though it were an eating disorder
using the disease
model rather than a monster model.
Of course zombies are not necessarily eager to be cured.
Historian: Aristotle said that we
are wise to prefer things in measure to things in excess. In other words, he advocated moderation in
all things.
Reader: Nutritionists
advocate a balanced
diet, which is a diet consisting of
adequate amounts of all the necessary nutrients required for healthy growth and
activity. Avoid the kind
of processed reality offered by the worst of the mass media.
Mike: The cure for
zombieism requires that we take in adequate nutrition from life, but avoid binging. Cultivating varied interests is helpful in
assessing whether any particular hunger is out of balance.
Historian: The
dense-as-lead Process
Theologian, Alfred
North Whitehead, wrote that “God” is the appetite for good.
Reader: Cartoons
depicting a character in the midst of discernment with an angel on one shoulder
and a devil on the other each whispering in an ear create a similar image.
In the case of the benign zombie, the voice is
inaudible. In the case of the biting
zombie, the voice is drown-out by an overpowering single-focused urge.
When we honor our interests with attention they grow;
when neglected they atrophy and die. In
my own life I have developed a practice of varied interests. I intentionally devote attention to the arts,
music reading and writing. On average I
read over an hour each day, alternating between fiction and non-fiction. I pay attention to my relationships in my household,
my family and my community. I literally
and figuratively enjoy the tastes of a well-designed meal. Life is a participatory activity.
In service to the life of others, I rely on the
strategies of delight and insight. Delight
is the appreciation and gratitude for the
world. Insight
is the appreciation and acceptance of the way we fit into the world.
Mike: In that sermon, the Rev.
Lavanhar presents an excellent account of personal resurrection. “Resurrection” occurs, he says, “When new
life emerges from what once was dead.” Examples
from his congregation, and from ours, include a widow, resigned to a life
without romance, finding a partner and an alcoholic celebrating the anniversary
of his sobriety.
We all know
what it is like to be brought back into life.
Our senses awaken in fresh delight.
We are again receptive to the creative force of all existence.
During this song I would invite anyone who feels
infected with Zombieism to come forward for an altar call and I will join you
in prayer.
Benediction
Life is a banquet.
Come, have a seat at the Welcome Table.
Closing
Song.
Carry
the Flame of Peace and Love (3x) Until we meet again.
5/15/14
Mike Mallory
