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You can listen here. 

"The sestina villanelle is a dull thing. Many modern poets have tried their hands, or feet at it, as they should. Unfortunately, some have published the results." --Michael Baldwin DB, unfaithfully paraphrasing Michael Baldwin

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it,

in olden times when they honor the singer.

They fit you with something to help with your diet:

A tight metal collar, locked on your gullet,

A false flute protruding, with locks for your fingers.

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it.

This gadget will make you a bit more compliant.

Molest not the muse! Harass not the singer!

Injure their ears and you may start a riot.

Bury your music, and learn to be quiet.

Learn sewing or dance if you cannot sing, or

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it.

Find you a woman to help to you pry it

from your shivering neck and sore fingers.

Nurse your rage. Let ego supply it, 

Then play, fool, like everyone’s listening,

And shape your shame into melodies defiant.

Pick up a flute, I dare you, and try it,

Or bury your music, and try to be quiet.

Listen here.

Novelist Anne Rice, ten years this side of her conversion to Christianity, has finally abandoned what she seems convinced is a flying Dutchman faith: a doomed ship, populated by horrors and believed in by fools. And she has her reasons. Like many of us, she has read one too many feature stories about Fred Phelps and his pack of mixed nuts, or ex cathedra pronouncements by the likes of Pat Robertson. And so she is done. She wants to retain her faith in Christ but relinquish her identity as a "Christian."

Tempting. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that in 2004, I wrote a post on this very blog espousing very similar ideas (my objections were more aesthetic than ideological). Christianity, as the world's largest religion, is bound to contain its share of crazies. As a seminary-trained thingamajig with a little knowledge of the bible, I find that many of the Christians who get the most coverage actually severely misrepresent the scriptures, either misunderstanding the content or the context. Worse yet, many overcook aspects of God's character (aka Fred Phelps, his anger), and leave the opposite aspects (his overwhelming mercy) out of the recipe. 

None of this is surprising; it does seem as if the lunatic fringe has won the day recently. And that is tragic, because Christianity has a wonderful heritage of people who have done incontrovertibly excellent things from within the folds of the faith: Christians like Henry Noeuwen, a self-described celibate homosexual who quit a productive academic career to care for disabled adults; or or geniuses like Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, and Sayers; or saints like Mother Theresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

The problem is that the faithful do not tend to promote themselves, and there are faithful Christians everywhere. Sure, they are hypocritical and inconsistent, but so is every atheist, Muslim, and Jew I've met. Inconsistency to our ideals seems a part of the human condition; even those who claim to believe nothing but death and futility are unable to keep themselves from acts of kindness and beauty. 

Jesus came not only to ransom individuals for himself, but to build a community. He speaks of it over and over in the scriptures: we are Christ's bride, the body of Christ, Christ's family. Do we like all of our family members? Probably not. Would we like to slap some of them? Absolutely. But Christ is not ashamed to call them his brothers.

The old Augustinian saying goes this way: "the church is a whore, but she is my mother." Who are we to abandon her? Shouldn't we stay and work for her good, instead of harassing her from without?