Word: sacrament
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...piece has some eerily effective moments. The sponging of a condemned man's head makes electrocution seem a sacrament: baptism and extreme unction in a single dab. The healing scenes will evoke tears, some of them earned. And there's a lot of sharp acting, led by Hanks' pained restraint. The two villains are vigorously portrayed: a sadistic, craven guard (Doug Hutchison) and a strutting, rabid inmate (played with a daringly lunatic, dark-star quality by Sam Rockwell), whose crimes are even worse than we feared. At the core, though, one finds a slacky, sappy film. The human mystery that...
After a period of sustained applause, Gore said that he and Bradley have similar positions on the issue of domestic partnerships. But, he said, same sex unions should not share "the same sacrament, the same name...because I favor the institution of marriage as it has been understood between a man and a woman...
...Vatican sent a note of protest. Mockaitis sued, and won a $25,000 settlement after a federal court said the taping was wrong, in part because it violated the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The reasoning was that the D.A. had interfered with Mockaitis' religion by taping a sacrament. But in 1997 the Supreme Court struck down that law, saying it was too broad; Congress could not dictate terms of religious conduct to every community with a single law. So the new bill, an effort to achieve the same goals within more limited boundaries, applies only to individuals...
Jones draws connections throughout the collection to images in "Elegy," referring, for example, to the church language of "thous" and "thines." Within the "Elegy" are two amusing anecdotes of family euphemisms for persons' (NOT READABLE) of the collection, Jones presents a poem entitled "Sacrament for My Penis." Obviously no longer holding the reserve of his past, the speaker and Jones have voyaged to another side. The language, its accent and its vocabulary, have died, and Jones demonstrates in his last section his own personal growth from his southern drawl...
There are no easy answers to such objections. But for most of us, they will remain in the background so long as--during its journey from sacrament to science experiment to possible nostrum--forgiveness becomes neither a foregone conclusion nor an obligation, but remains a mystery within the heart of the forgiver. Only then will people like Mitchell Wright feel free to continue their struggles. Wright knows that far from being the recourse of wimps, forgiveness is the hardest course...