GetReligion

View Original

Life imitates art imitating life

NARRAGANSETT -- Sitting along a couch in the small office in the back of St. Peter's-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, Ms. August, 81, Ms. October, 71, and Ms. September, 73, laughed and chatted with the rector yesterday afternoon as they leafed through a handful of photographs. The women, Ruth D. Toupin, Virginia S. Bucklin, and Ruth Lilla, are unlikely models in an unlikely calendar aimed at raising money for the church. The photos are of nude seniors, themselves included, with critical areas tastefully, sometimes humorously, covered.

Initially, there were indications that the calendar, conceived and created by the independent initiative of a small group of female congregants and inspired by the movie Calendar Girls, would face determined opposition from the rector, the Rev. Russell G. Ruffino.

. . . The photos that were passed around the room feature women smiling brightly, shoulders bared and chests covered by a number of seasonally-appropriate props. In one, Bucklin, Ms. October, dons a witch hat, holds a makeshift broom and lifts a bare leg suggestively.

"When she put her leg up on the bench for that pose, all the ladies started to cheer 'go, go, go,'" said [photographer Kathleen] Almonte, who at 57 is 13 years younger than the youngest of the 12 models.

-- Church's 'calendar girls' get the green light by Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, The Providence Journal.

Here's a Top Ten list of films that right-thinking people should pray will not provide further inspiration to the impressionable septuagenarian and octogenarian members of St. Peter's-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, Narragansett:

The Full Monty (1997)

The Da Vinci Code (filming)

The Crying Game (1992)

Chariots of the Gods (1970)

Harold and Maude (1971)

The Passover Plot (1976)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Whose Life Is it Anyway? (1981)

Cocoon (1985)