Punnish Tackiness

Remember the Lutheran Church of the Tacky Lighted Sign Message? It's close to my neighborhood, but in a direction that I haven't gone in for a while. Today I walked past it on my way home from the public library. Its current slogan of Christian outreach:

ANGELS DO NOT HARP AT ONE ANOTHER: THEY ARE IN A CHORD

Ha, ha. Very polyphony.

Titchy Tackiness

Spotted at the local Lutheran Church of the Lighted Sign:

TOO SMALL TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE? SPEND A NIGHT WITH A MOSQUITO!

How cute... but depressing. It's not just that there isn't anything specifically Christian about this message... It's that I've seen the same slogan tied to a picture of the Dalai Lama. Amen, I guess! I mean, who am I to question the rightness of saving up an opportunity to dazzle passersby with a bumper-sticker-sized Christian message, only to spend it on the wisdom of a Tibetan Buddhist? My protest wouldn't change anything, except people would be irritated by the buzzing sound in their ears... and maybe slap at me to make it stop...

By the way, I have seen similar slogans attributed to others, including Bette Reese. Maybe the Dalai Lama didn't even say this. With the internet these days, who knows?

Sinking Feeling

This week the neighborhood Lutheran Shrine to St. Shecky, patron of tackiness on holy ground, says:

LOOKING FOR A LIFEGUARD
OURS WALKS ON WATER

Yabbut, this Lifeguard wants to drown you and then pull out of the water a new person. Unlike the kid who made headlines this past week by being fired for rescuing a swimmer who got in trouble outside the protected zone, this One's coverage area includes everybody... But in the process of saving you, He must be rejected and die, and then come to life again through no one's act of resuscitation but his own. Having been saved by Him, your whole life belongs to Him. And when He sends you to catch men, He does so with instructions that go against all your reason and experience—and a warning that no other method will work. Just so you know what comes with the "walking on water" trick...

Chilling Tackiness

This week's lighted-sign message at the neighborhood Lutheran Chapel of Sanctified Tackiness:

TO COOL A HOT ATTITUDE, APPLY NICE

If that fails, try a cold shoulder-block. "Nice," huh? Just try being nice, that's our wisdom for the week? That's how far we've come in our catechism, is it? "Being nice" is a solution for people who have no real problems to discuss. I have a problem, however: I don't know where one would find such people... or why they would need a church...

Ungrammatical Tackiness

This week at the neighborhood Lutheran Church of the Tacky Church Sign:

HERO - SOMEONE WHO GIVES THEIR LIFE FOR SOMETHING BIGGER THAN ONESELF

Urrrgh. One would have to check their gag reflex at the door to put up with tortured language AND bad taste in church. And that's before they realize that one is hearing God's Word put through the meat grinder of gender politics.

Fuel for Tackiness

This past week, the lighted sign at the local ELCA Tabernacle of Tackiness has proclaimed:

SAVE MONEY ON GAS. WALK WITH GOD.

That's easy to say when your church is a short walk from where I live. But what about my work place, which is 45 miles away? I would have had to start walking at 3:30 yesterday afternoon to get to work on time this morning, not counting pit stops. And then I would probably have to go straight home to change my clothes. I wonder how many pairs of shoes I would go through each month. To say nothing of feet.

Meanwhile, as travel packages go, I might have gotten here sooner via hot air balloon. And that (hot air) sounds like a means of locomotion certain churches can abundantly provide...

Tempting Tackiness

This week's lighted-sign message at the neighborhood ELCA shrine of tackiness:

A SHORTCUT IS OFTEN TEMPTATION IN DISGUISE

Maybe that's why I feel such a deep desire to cut across the corner on which this church-sign stands. But I resist, because I like my car and don't want to wreck it, even if it means putting a stop to the tackiness. Besides, the tackiness would soon return anyway.

Bad Taste, Good Taste

Please forgive the omnibus post. Since my computer went the way of all silicon, I've been storing up ideas to blog about, and while I have a few minutes of screen-time on the computer in my pastor's office, I've just got to clear the buffer. First, here's a message lately seen on the neighboorhood ELCA Lutheran Billboard of Tackiness:

HAVE A FACE-TO-FAITH TALK WITH GOD.

Eurgh. Suddenly my breakfast isn't sitting so securely in my stomach.

Meanwhile, on the same page of the notebook I keep in the center island of my car in case I need to scribble something to blog about later, here's a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, which I recently finished "reading" in audio-book format:

"If one's lot is cast among fools, it is necessary to study folly."

And finally, here is a list of pizza joints in St. Louis that I mean to try, as time and funds permit. I was dining at Talayna's one night in Chesterfield last week, enjoying my first-ever bowl of paella and thinking about using my $25-off-of-a-$50-minimum-purchase gift certificate to buy their 30-inch pizza for my 40th birthday party (coming this September), when I struck up a conversation with the couple in the next booth. Big pizza aficionados, they agreed with me that Talayna's serves some of the best pizza in the St. Louis area. But they ranked the following restaurants right up there with it.

• Three Monkeys (on S. Morganford in the city)
• Ferraro's (out by Ronnie's Plaza in Sappington)
• Pizza-A-Go-Go (at Ivanhoe & Scanlan), and
• Black Thorn Pub (at Wyoming and Spring), which serves exactly the same pizza as Lemmon's (at Gravois and Dresden), since they have the same owner

All five of these places are surprisingly convenient to the area in which I live, move, and have my being. All of them are reputed to specialize in serious pizza—the kind that has a thick, full-bodied crust and lots of stringy, stretchy mozzarella cheese. I am encouraged to think there may be so many top-shelf alternatives to the toasted-crackers-and-cheese-substitute that passes for "Saint Louis-style pizza." Feel free to comment if you have experience with these places; perhaps you'll influence the order in which I try them.

PHOTOS: Examples (found online) of the pizzas served at Black Thorn Pub (top) and Pizza-A-Go-Go. Nummmm!

Where No Tackiness Has Gone Before

This week's lighted-sign fiasco at the neighborhood ELCA parish:

EPIPHANY--AN ENTERPRISING STAR TREK!

Aaargghhhh... That turns my stomach on so many levels that I feel myself becoming a ruminant. Most disturbing of all, once the vomit backs down my esophagus, is the question: "In what way do they mean 'enterprising'?" Did I miss the verse in Matthew 2 where the wise men received double their investment in gold, frankincense, and myrrh?

Categorical Tackiness

Clench your glutes for this week's theologically questionable letter-board sentiment coming from the neighborhood ELCA church:

GIVE YOURSELF TO GOD AND ALL OTHER GIVING WILL BE FUN

Wow. That so sounds like the last words a neckless thug, nicknamed "God," says to you before you black out in the prison shower.

It's also questionable how the idea that you "give yourself to God" fits into Lutheran thought. Is that how we get in with Him? I've read a lot of Lutheran theology, but if that concept belongs there, it's news to me. It seemed to me that one of the hallmarks of Lutheranism is its biblically faithful teaching that God gives Himself to us in Christ, and reconciles us to Himself even while we are His enemies; that He makes us His children, saints, and royal heirs without any prior action or decision of ours. Is that just me?

As the categorical result of getting in with God, "All giving will be fun" is equally questionable. All? So after coming to Christ we won't have any qualms, doubts, or weaknesses, and we'll find loving our neighbor to be easy and enjoyable all the time? So no sacrifice, no deprivation, no self-emptying leap of faith will ever be touched by pain or regret? I'm with Aramis (of Three Musketeers fame) in questioning whether it's really giving if you don't at all miss what you have given. But then, Aramis was a fictional French Catholic, and probably a heretic to boot. What would he know?

Fighting Tackiness With Tackiness

Fighting back against the scourge of "tackiness on holy ground" the best way I know how... by satirizing it!















Follow the address watermarked at the bottom of each image to the awesome site where I created these signs!

Strategic Tackiness

This week, the neighborhood ELCA shrine of church sign tackiness proclaims:

"FALL BACK" ON GOD

I can't wait to see what they do with "Spring Forward." Meanwhile, I wonder what God thinks about being suggested as a "fallback," in case your own thing doesn't work out...

IMAGE courtesy of "Church Sign Maker." It's amazing what you can do on the internet!

Tackiness Boogie

This week's new message on the lighted sign at the neighborhood's ELCA Tower of Tackiness:

JESUS IS THE ROCK AND HE ROLLED MY BLUES AWAY

I believe this is known, in dogmatics textbooks, as the "beat me, Daddy, eight to the bar" theory of atonement. It is closely related to the theory that the apostles were a hair band, although the general, unwashed public doesn't know this as it stumbles past this church, laughing themselves sick on a mental image of a bunch of stiff, Scandinavian Lutherans grooving to a backbeat. To me, however, it brings to mind Matthew 18:6 and the fact that one particular stone that rolls is called a millstone...

Tackiness World Series 2

This week, another baseball-related message from the neighborhood ELCA church, whose book of whimsical bumper-sticker slogans must come equipped with a pun for every conceivable occasion:

GOD'S EYE IS ON THE SPARROWS, AND THE CARDINALS!

Yeah, but what about you turkeys?

World Series of Tackiness

Hear this, ye St. Louis Cardinals! Thus saith the lighted sign at the city ELCA parish whose former pastor literally wrote the book on lighted church sign messages:

GOD'S CARDINAL RULES:
LOVE GOD. LOVE OTHERS.
PLAY A HARD NINE.

This may sound like it's coming out of left field, but... well, it is.

Looming Tackiness

This week's lighted-sign message at the neighborhood ELCA Tabernacle of Tackiness:

WEAVE IN FAITH AND GOD WILL FIND THE THREAD

OK, I'm not sure I get this. Is it saying faith is that in which you weave, like underwater basket-weaving except with faith instead of water? Or is faith a thread that you are weaving into something? It rather sounds like the latter. Which is really an odd analogy coming from a "Lutheran" church. It makes faith out to be a merit you contribute in the hope that God will notice it and be pleased, rather than the funnel God uses to pour His undeserved gifts into you.

Maybe what they mean is that God will pull the thread...

Obvious Tackiness

This week's lighted-sign message at the neighborhood ELCA Temple of Tackiness:

IS GOD A NOUN OR A VERB?

Wow. We're on that level, are we? This church is sure to be a bubbling well of religious knowledge, innit? The present sign makes the ELCA look as desirable (as a place to pursue spiritual inquiry) as a restaurant sporting the sign pictured here. And while we're asking interesting questions, how about this one: Is tackiness on holy ground a venial or a mortal sin?

Fiscally Irresponsible Tackiness

This week's message from the neighborhood ELCA church that wrote the book on tacky lighted-sign messages:

GOD'S DEBT CEILING REACHES UP TO HEAVEN

Yeah, but what's that going to do to His credit score? Maybe that explains why this heat wave seems endless. Cost-cutting measures! The air conditioning is always the first to go...

Tackiness Heat Wave

As temperatures soar in St. Louis--and between the humidity and my perpetual allergies, each breath requires so much effort that I have begun to suffer from the waking equivalent of sleep apnea--I can't tell you how refreshed I wasn't by the following bit of hoopla from the neighborhood ELCA lettered church sign:

KEEP HYDRATED WITH THE WATER OF LIFE!

Even granting that someone might see that and take an interest in the theological significance of the phrase "water of life," the Evangelical Parish of Saint Shecky doesn't quite make the short list of fountains of knowledge that one seeking enlightenment might dip into. And if you think that joke is going to lift many chuckles out of the stressed-out passersby, who like me are all but smothering in this moist heat, you really need to go back to clown school.

In short, people, you're all wet!

Self-Defeating Tackiness

This week's message from the neighborhood vortex of ELCA lighted sign tackiness:

CAUTION! GOD AT WORK, PEOPLE IN PROGRESS

This is an incomplete sentiment, however. There was plenty of space left over to have added the obvious words:

KEEP CLEAR!

Personally, I was more edified by the bumper sticker I saw on the next block up the street: BE THE PERSON YOUR DOG THINKS YOU ARE