Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Looking back, I realize that I haven't posted a Thanksgiving sermon since the sermonette in 2011, and though I preached on this year's Thanksgiving Day lectionary on November 24th, I must confess that I didn't feel as confident in that sermon's worth.

So, in case anyone's interested, here instead is an off-lectionary sermon from Thanksgiving of 1992:

( I CAN'T GET NO SATISFACTION )

The 30 Day Buffy the TV Series Meme (snagged from shadowkat67 because as soon as I saw it I realized it had been far too long since I'd last talked about one of my very favoritest TV series and most-favorite-ever source of fanfic)

Day 1: Favorite Season of BtVS?

SEASON FIVE. Hopefully, the following long walk down memory lane will explain why:

( How I Learned to Love BtVS Even More When It Became a Grown-Up )

Looking back ten years later, I now suspect that a big part of my love for season 5 was the underlying and very grown-up themes of family (families bound together by choice and willingness to go to the mat for one another) and vocation. Watching the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997-99 as a thirty-something minister recently returned to students status in search of a PhD, I felt an emotional and intellectual joy in the idea of 'My High School Really IS the Gateway to Hell', and soon found that there was a whole lot more going on than just high school developmental issues and supernatural metaphors as a backdoor approach to addressing 'Stuff That's Too Touchy or Scary for Me to Talk About'. But the issues addressed still weren't necessarily my issues.

I recognized the family part of the BtVS season 5 equation at the time (and we had a lovely panel on that subject at the Atlanta "WriterCon" in 2006), but I think the vocation part took a while (say, 10 years or so) to dawn on me -- no pun intended.

Yet, so much of that season was about the characters finding their adult calling for the first time, or finding a new calling and purpose in the face of drastic life (or even unlife) changes.

For instance,

( Light Years Beyond 'Career Day' Counseling )

Okay, this has taken several hours longer than I'd planned, and it's only the first day. I think I'm going to have to skip over some of the rest of the days and just post on the ones I actually have a strong feeling about, or else the 30 days will last through next Christmas.

As a final note, I see that NONE of the days in this meme ask, "Which Season of Buffy First Inspired You to Read and/or Write BtVS Fanfic?" Too bad, too, because I could probably post another incredibly verbose essay on SEASON SIX as the answer to that one, most likely bringing in all that Good Enough Media Mother-Text stuff from my 2004 posts.

Oh, well . . . again!