Punishment for the Innocent

Yesterday’s vote in the U. S. House of Representatives to sustain Bush's veto of the popular S-Chip Program is true to the pattern of Protecting the guilty and punishing the innocent, we have come to call govenrance in this sad era. It has been like one of those Polaroid photographs I knew as a child. As you watched the picture develop, you saw what you knew was there, because you had just seen it.

The so called Pro Life* contingent of the Christian Right were suddenly and dramatically “outed” by their votes on Children’s Health Insurance. As Sister Joan Chittister has pointed out the agenda is to take responsibility up to the point of birth, then to cut mothers and their children loose. But family values are about taking total responsibility, aren't they? So what is going on? These folks are not Pro Life, they are only Pro Birth. After a fetus matures and is brought into the world, then their affections turn to the concerns of insurance and drug industries, those willing to pay so that government intervention might not interfere with burgeoning profits. There is an accountability crisis in the Christian Right.

We need to pursue an agenda that is Pro Life and responsible to women and families. It is not enough to protect children up to birth. We need to find a way to protect them after birth. First, that means trusting their mothers. It also means offering the sort of support to families that counts, like child care, medical support, a world free of shock and awe; a world where a woman's preprogatives about her body are protected, even affirmed.

For more on the subject,check out,this website: www.rockridgeinstitute.org The article, "Could You Explain a Vote Against Children's Health to the Children?," offers some actionable ideas. You may want to try them out.


*Pro Life is a tragic misnomer for the irresponsible Christian Right, where a woman's independent choice is subverted and stifled.

Fish and Cut Bait Time

My Grandmother grew up in a Quaker family in Indiana. Later, she married into an Episcopal Family and took to the life of Emmanuel Church, Hastings, Michigan like a duck to water. In those days, the church was, in reality, TWO different and “gender based” churches, a bicameral legislature as it were. One branch, headed by men, was the elected board, the Vestry. A second branch, the Episcopal Church Women Board, bore another voice. Granny presided on the ECW board. During that era, it took a vote of each board effectively to get anything done in that congregation. Granny’s Quaker roots came out in all their glory in moments of awkwardness and conflict. When confronted with another of the church women on an issue that might possibly become heated, Granny would comment, “My, what a lovely hat you are wearing!” She effectively changed the subject.

The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops today meets in New Orleans. As they meet, gender alienation surfaces in its latest iteration. On their agenda is a conversation about the future of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered persons in the Leadership of the Episcopal Church. Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has weighed in on the topic of Gays in the Church. “My what a lovely hat you are wearing,” he might have said. Concerned voices heard his response loud and clear and react with alarm. Does the Archbishop thinking that to “change the subject” might effectively stop the inclusive trends in the Episcopal Church. Is the tactic going to work?

My friend and fellow laborer in the vineyard, Larry, wrote a reflection about the impact of the Archbishop’s words on him. He shared his thoughts with his diocesan family. I will simply include some of what he said below.

I have been following some of the happenings
via the church web site and with the wonders
of modern technology have been able to watch
and listen to some of what the Archbishop has
had to say. As a gay man, I found some of his
comments to be insulting in this day and age.
In particular when trying to explain the
difference between prejudice and the more
conservative church's stance on the participation
of gays and lesbians,Archbishop William's response
was (and I am paraphrasing...) "One has to
consider the churches theology in conjunction
with the choice of lifestyle that some have taken."
(from the Q&A press conference coverage 9/21)

This is a highly offensive. . . understanding
of what it is to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or
transgendered. How, still in 2007, a bishop in
his position can continue to understand human
sexuality only as a lifestyle choice is mind
boggling. I cannot decide if I should fault him
for his ignorance or fault him for his pandering to
the conservative members of the communion.

GLBT persons simply ARE, just as left handed
people simply ARE, just as hazel eyed people simply
ARE. How individuals queer or straight choose
to celebrate their god given sexuality - with
whom and how often - that may be a lifestyle choice,
as is where we choose to live, how we choose
to earn a living, where we choose to worship
... those things are lifestyle choices. The
deliberate discrimination of a group of individuals
based simply on the gender of their life partner is
simply wrong.

I'm very tired of the fancy Anglican version of
"love the sinner, hate the sin." I rejoice in this
diocese's celebration of human diversity, and I
rejoice at those in the Greater Episcopal church who
welcome and celebrate human diversity. It is time
to let the worldwide communion know that they need
to get the heck out of our bedrooms and get back to
working on what truly matters like the Millennium
Development Goals (as our present Presiding Bishop
Kathryn is encouraging us to do.)

Listening in on the GLBT community, the issues shift into a crystal clear picture. These voices vibrate with the words of the Prophets and the teachings of Jesus. In them, scripture comes alive. (For heavens sake, the 10th Chapter of the Book of Acts is being acted out before our very eyes!) The choice to exclude the GLBT community from full participationin the church, is no choice at all. I would urge the Primates of the Anglican Communion along with the whole community of the Baptized across the globe, to give ear to their Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters. If we can but listen, we will hear a transforming and saving message for the whole communion.
Listen carefully. Stretch your heart to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.” This is no idle prodding, but an urgent call. Our inability to hear opens onto a false and desolate path. We dare not turn away from our GLBT companions.

We're way past the time to calm ourselves with commentary on one another’s haberdashery!

Practice, practice, practice

It is important to pay attention to the name the Holy One has for things.
We name everything according to the number of legs it has
but the Holy One names it according to what’s inside.
- Jelalludin Balkhi (Rumi)

We label the core activity of medical treatment and of worship as practice. We practice medicine. We practice religion. There are many who strive for a good deal more certainty in these crucial areas, who might prefer another, more definite, word. I don’t. Practice is exactly right. Practice is a word that is close to the ground, practical. It is linked to day to day actions, making do. For me, the preponderance of medical and faith decisions are of exactly that kind. Practice implies a kind of perseverance that is the hallmark of good health and good faith. These are not once and for all kinds of activities, but a lifelong quest. And practice keeps us out of a kind of grandiose way of thinking, that the ancients warn us is nearly always the prelude to a great calamity.

These are the sorts of things that crossed my mind while mowing the lawn this morning. I was mulling over how important are the names we give for things. MoveOn.org’s recent ad campaign, naming the actions of a variety of administration figures as “betrayal,” is one provocative example. On the face of it, the moniker is extreme. When one thinks with clarity about the events surrounding Iraq, Katrina, the FDA, the FCC, Scooter Libbey, to name only the top of the mind instances, betrayal is probably the right word.

The taproot of our nation’s political dilemma is that some politics are the natural outgrowth of broken religion. Faith that prizes certainty and ideological correctness over compassion exacts a heavy price. Compassion requires practice over certainty. The great souls have only their practice to show for their efforts.

I learn a lot about faith practice from musicians. The joke is telling. When asked by a tourist, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” . . . the New Yorker answers, “Practice, practice, practice,” of course.

“I wonder,” I ask, “should we impeach Bush and Cheney now or wait to indict them later for their crimes?” “How about both?” “Maybe neither.” Among other important things, law is also practiced. Justice, certainly, is a practice both of health and faith. I wonder what practicing compassion leads us to choose? Certainly betrayal is not too strong a word. It is the first step along the road to forgiveness and healing.

Burt Purrington just passed this little note along to me. It is an example of the sort of practicing I am thinking about. “Wars arise from a failure to understand one another's humanness. Instead of summit meetings, why not have families meet for a picnic and get to know each other while the children play together?” That’s the Dalai Lama’s idea of practice.

It is important to pay attention to the name the Holy One has for things.

9/11 Holiday? NOT!

Somewhere, I recall hearing a proposal to make September 11th a national day of reflection, a national holiday. I further recall saying to myself, what a diabolical idea! Maybe it is a sign of the aging of our culture when we have the need to gather ourselves around a tragic moment and recite it, like we do with the onset of diabetes or macular degeneration. September 11 will become, if it has not already, the starting point of a nation obsession as fruitless and character warping as the organ recitals of the frightened senior citizen.

I say diabolical quite deliberately. For a diabol is the opposite of a symbol. While a symbol exists to bring persons and things together, into proximity. . . a diabol explodes, alienates. A 9/11 Holiday would be the diabolical recollection of the day we bought the mistaken idea that we might render violence for the violence that had been visited on us. That is an idea that is all about alienation, a kind of worldwide game of "king of the mountain." It only leads to exhaustion, excess and broken limbs.

Of course, there is a diabolical side to every national holiday. There is nothing quite as ugly as the speechmaking that gathers around July 4th or Memorial Day or Veteran's Day. Each of these holidays has been coopted to advertise our military dependency and to foreclose thinking about alternatives to warmaking and the use of force. A little study of the origins of each of these holidays will show that they began with a purpose, mostly to expiate the grief of the mistakes of war. Mothers, mostly, grieve over lost children and spouses. They are drawn together to say never again. Only later, do these gut wrenching occasions become celebrations of the glory of war. Only in their diabolical form do these holidays become days of forgetting, days for recruiters and the folly of warmaking. We have taken the bloodbath of the war to end all wars and made of it an occasion to thank a veteran. We took our grief over the carnage of a civil war and made of it a day to plant little flags near the bodies of those most affected by the folly of warmaking.

No, we need not another diabolical day. We do not need to nurture our sense of being wronged. Nor do we need to glory in our capacity to "hit back," to create and demolish enemies.

Recently, a friend of mine interjected into the conversation, "Everything changed on 9/11." About that assertion, I am dubious. If one cannot recall the eternal dimensions of the human struggle, then 9/11 surprises. If one forgets human history, then 9/11 ambushes them. If one represses the great myths of the human heart then the treachery of September 11 astonishes.

If you must do something, let me suggest a short, but important reading for the day. Colman McCarthy has written a little book, "I'd Rather Teach Peace." Let that little tome germinate into some thinking about how we might more constructively have responded to terror on our shores. That, at least can bring our world together.

Dirt

That’s enough about me.
What do you think about me?

Among nations, the United States has a reputation as among the most religious in the world. Many around the world look upon us with the dismay with which they behold the Iranian theocracy or the Taliban. I am not one who subscribes to the notion that it is necessarily a good thing to be religious. In fact, I am deeply suspicious of a lot of what we can faith. Somehow, our highest hopes can be mired in a twisted self interest. That is clearly the upshot of the so called family values movement in the U.S.

The preacher, this morning, took on the subject of humility. I suspect that most congregations were thinking about humility this morning, as they contemplated the 14th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. There Jesus’ followers clamor for the best seats in the house, the places of honor. How does humility find itself in hot pursuit of honor?

The weakness of American religion is on clear display when the subject of humility arises. For humility always confronts us with ourselves. Like Mac Davis’ perverse song lyric, “Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way,” our prevalent faith expression traps us in a “ME ME ME” religion. And for those whose faith revolves around MY personal encounter with MY divine friend, ME is way too central to facilitate what might be called humility. Our ME ME ME religion inhabits us like dog poopie on the shoe. Our self center is both sticky and smelly.

I am helped with humility when I recall that humble is a word rooted in dirt, earth, soil. Human life is first conceived a clump of soil that is breathed into life. Dirt seems more than a fetish. It is of the essence of the human body. Dirt holds out the possibility of self understanding. We might not have faced such dire environmental damage, had we been able somehow to come to terms with our dirt side.

A teaspoon of earth is abuzz with life. There, microbes do most of the unseen maintenance on the planet. And dirt itself is anything but static. It is the dynamic source of life itself. Needed chemicals are recycled by fungi and bacteria in the soils. There is more than a little irony that the quest to sit in the high place is to sit at the place farthest away from the dirt. How much clearer do we need to have our self center spelled out? How easy it is to see our quest is self destructive. It has been my experience that the natural processes that take place in a clump of dirt are eminently more trustworthy than even the steadiest of human companions, precisely because dirt does what it is supposed to do. We can choose to be thrown off course.

We are told that children raised in a microbe free environment are more susceptible to asthma than those who ingest regular doses of dirt in their early diet. I am wondering if our faith, sterilized as it is, might benefit from a mouthful of loam from time to time. There we might find a connection to the simple elements of life, there to find a divine hand at work. Maybe, even, we might breathe a little easier. I don’t know.

After all, Luke 14 remembers that the REAL banquet is one that opens the doors to the riff raff, the unclean and the like.

WeaselSpeak

It’s important to pay attention to the name the Holy One has for things.
We name everything according to the number of legs it has
But the Holy One names it according to what’s inside.
Moses had a rod. He thought its name was “staff.”
But its name was “dragonish snake.”
-Rumi

Pay attention to language. We all know the picky grammarian who rages about how split infinitives and dangling participles are the advance signs of the demise of western civilization. Intuitively, we know that grammar does not work that way. Bad grammar doesn’t reach far beyond poor communication, confusion. Or does it?

Of late, I have been watching the public conversation around the Iraq War with keen interest in grammar. By now, most of us are catching on to the deliberate use of key words to skew public perception toward a particular point of view. We now know that “death tax” is code for “inheritance tax” and “war on terror” designates “apocalypse. The public, at last, is catching on. So, the language wars now escalate to a new level, WeaselSpeak.

WeaselSpeak is the deployment of verb voices in the service of ideology. Every verb can be expressed in an active voice (We did that.) or a passive voice (The devil made me do it.). What interests me is the clever deployment of the active and passive voices in public discourse, to be used like paints on a canvass to create a scene.

Here’s how the grammar works. Active Verbs are used for magnification. “Al Quaeda has weapons of mass destruction,” for instance. Such magnification magnifies the alarm in an already alarming statement. Active Verbs make Al Quaeda stand tall. Passive verbs shrink the significance of its objects. “Mistakes were made.” Such shrinkage make errors seem trivial. The trick is to use both to paint a picture. Preachers have known about this for a long time. To pair, “God is mighty irate” with “The devil made me do it” creates a scene of impending doom. So it is with using active and passive verbs in the public dialogue.

With the release of the recent National Intelligence Estimate, warmongering spirits are hot into WeaselSpeak to create an illusion of a Towering Terrorist Threat pitted against a Pitiable Presidential Party. Don’t be fooled. As soon as we have taken the bait, the terms will switch. You’ll hear all about the Our Mighty Mega Military in an active voice, just in time to save the day. Such scenarios are alright for cartoons. They are inappropriate in the real world, where lives are at stake.

Now what’s going to happen to us without the barbarians?
They were a kind of solution for us.
-Constantine Cavafy, "Waiting for the Barbarians"

Sister Islam

Right after the 9-11 disaster, I frequently heard the question asked, “Why do they hate us?” Since then, we have turned our attention from trying to understand to striking back. Now we're embroiled in the so called War on Terror. In the process the question has been driven underground. It may be time to explore “Why do they hate us?” again.

We were all looking for a crash course in Islam hoping, no doubt, that we might understand our way out of the crushing dilemmas we face. So, where does one start looking for a way through the maze posed by 9-11? Two books beam like a searchlight out of the Islamic world, offering vivid views of its seething cultural oppression, as well as its quirks.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s biographical work, Infidel, reads like fast paced fiction. Seeking refuge around the Arab world, and finally in the West, Ail hopscotched in and out of Muslim and westernized societies. In a brutal series of life experiences, she leaves the reader asking how this woman kept her wits about her. The second half of the book details her settlement in Holland where she was elected to serve in the Dutch parliament. In the aftermath of the murder of her filmmaking partner, Theo Van Gogh, she fled to the United States seeking refuge from the always present threat of violence from coreligionists.

A second read is The Trouble With Islam Today. It is an intellectual/biographical work. In it we watch Canadian Irshad Manji wrestle with her unique place with one foot in an Islamic world and another immersed in Canadian society. Manji is dogged in her pursuit of a meeting place between the two worlds. She is most helpful for the descriptions of the sorts of dynamics she pushes against in the conforming and closed system of the religion of her childhood. Mainstream American readers will recognize the pitfalls presented in the book as the tendencies of the dark underbelly of our own nation’s co-religionists.

These women offer some some important themes to their readers on the question, "Why do they hate us?" I'm not sure they hate us as much as they like they way things are set up.

First, is the matter of gender roles. They are a hidden, but potent source of religious culture, both in the Muslim and the Christian worlds. They also tend to “take over.” One need only refer to the frantic discussions about women’s roles and/or GLBT marriages to see gender hard at work. When religious systems surrender to gender based hierarchies, there is faith trouble. Believe it or not, faith is not primarily about sex! Yet, gender controversy and gender rules seem to subvert even the best constructed faith systems. And when they are given a central role, they ultimately create oppression.

Second, in the matter of Holy Scripture. It matters a lot what you assume as you study holy writing. The brittle and brutal face of Islam begins in dogma about a particular way of treating the Qu’ran. (Manji calls this foundamentalism. It is the attitude that occasionally surfaces in the bumper strip “God said it, I believe it, That settles it.) These are closed end systems that seek control over others, rather than truth. Isn’t this the way we in the west treat the Bible when we are at our worst? When Bible or Qu’ran are used chiefly to regulate, they lose their heart, their adventure. Holy texts, well used, can spark creativity, understanding and vision to build a world alive to God alive in it. I am never happier than when I meet a person who has the skill to use sacred texts as they were intended, as a stimulus to creative living.

The battle of world religions is not between Muslims and Christians. It is about a division within each religion. Those who treat their faith as a medium of control, of domination, populate one side of the divide. Those whose faith empowers, encourages and urges us creative living, reside on another. It is rare when looking at faith "from the outside" can give such a penetrating view into our own. Our Islamic sisters have a message for both religious communities.

Evangelical Myopia?

Get Some Glasses!

When “W” came out in the 2000 presidential debates touting Jesus Christ as the greatest philosopher in human history, eyebrows raised across the globe, particularly in Europe. Europeans “just don’t get it,” when it comes to understanding American religion. I am often surprised at the degree to which we do “get it” in spite of ourselves. Beside the fact that every hamlet in the U.S. has its own Christian Broadcasting Outlet and television’s evangelists are ubiquitous, we are a culture marinated in one basic religious message, about which we are remarkably uncritical. On this continent, at least, popular culture automatically parrots the assumptions of the evangelical line. (I am astonished at the degree to which American Roman Catholics have adopted this way of thinking.) Where did it come from?

First, a disclaimer. I consider myself an evangelical in the root sense of the Greek word. Euangelion, (lit. Good News from the angels), describes the things angels would say were they talking to you. “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people”. . . that sort of thing. Good News, it says. I wondered how it got to be such bad news in our time. While reading Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s excellent biography of General Robert E. Lee, "Reading the Man," I was surprised to find that the evangelical message of today is rooted in the life of the Old South and its cataclysmic defeat in America's Civil War. Consider the following hallmarks of 21st century American Evangelicalism.

Family Values It is the bread and butter of evangelical morality that “Normal” religion is an ordered household with a place for everything and everything in its place. In fact, family values is rooted in the plantation households of the prewar South. The truth was then that a Plantation was a rather unpleasant, often brutal, place. If there was serenity there, it was at the big house, if it was anywhere. There, you could ignore all that was going on around you. Slaves had constantly to be policed, assigned and watched. Wilderness was a constant threat to successful farming. Isolation was the normal experience of plantation life. Voila, you have the rough shape of what we know as family values. . . a normal existence forged by beating back or ignoring a hostile and encroaching world. It should be no surprise that plantation values came to church with our ancestors. Family Values as we know them today are simply those Plantation Values of yesteryear. There, the message of the angels is not good news. It is most often about suspicion, about threat and about maintaining order. The message of such angels is “Be afraid and Watch Out!”. . . and with good reason.

I’m not OK; You’re not OK. Defeat in the Civil War produced another peculiar quirk of faith. As Pryor writes, “had (Lee) been wrong to believe that God favored the South? If God’s favor lay elsewhere, as Union victory seemed to indicate, had he defied God’s will by defending the Confederacy and all it stood for? . . Evangelical theology had given Southerners a convenient way out of the corner by claiming that God loved best those whom he chastened. Self-blame was limited to small failings of pride and ingratitude rather than a breach of the most sacred commandments.” Today’s persistent evangelical focus on the tiniest of concerns is rooted here, along with an inability convincingly to grasp the bigger picture. Modern evangelicalism scrupulously directs moral concerns, often missing engagement with the greater issues of our time. Examples abound of this micro morality in the midst of some rather glaring social faux pas’. We all recognize this as a ethos peculiar to the religion we find “in the air” in these United States.

Just Me and Jesus Perhaps most memorable about the Rebel army was the degree to which its members were so personal in their approach to war. (It was an army in which the folks in the trenches elected their officers!) So, discipline in the ranks had a different flavor in the Confederate Army. Leaders often relied on and encouraged unorthodox and highly individualized fighting style. Perhaps most memorable were the raiders of J.E.B. Stuart, whose acts of individuality are remembered in the Old Confederacy to this day. Be that as it may, the Rebel armies revered the personal styles of the warriors. It should be no surprise that the ethos of evangicalism reflects those eccentric warriors.

Why don’t those Europeans understand our Evangelicals? The short answer is that they did not live through our Civil War. Maybe it is time to ask, “Are the values of the Old Confederacy suitable to the America of the early 21st century?” Clearly, our Iraq disaster, simply the latest symptom of this peculiar way of looking at the world, dicates a hearty NO! (Lest you think Iraq is an abberation, one of a kind, there are plenty more examples where that came from.) We have a job to do if we are to rebuild the theological foundations in this nation. But, where to start?

Nurturing Religious Pluralism

"Either you are with us or against us," say leaders in American Socitey. If you seek a "third way," you are in for some relief. Dr. Eboo Patel brings message of religious pluralism grown from his roots in the practice of Islam in India. He was the guest on today's broadcast of Diane Reahm's Show on NPR. His presentation offered hope for any who seek to build communities of tolerance and hope. Patel notes that the dividing line between religions is not along faith lines, but around attitude lines. There are those who have the only way. There are others whose faiths welcome conversation across faith lines. The damaging fruit of the "only way" crowd is, only now, becoming clear. We do need a different way. I recommend to you Patel's work with the Interfaith Youth Core. The organization works with young people to build mutual understanding between religious communities through shared service. What a breath of fresh air! Check out the webist at www.ifyc.org.

It is good news. Pass it on!

The Fat Lady is Humming

The end of the Iraq occupation began November 7, 2006, when the electorate spoke clearly on the subject. One by one, official voices concede that the military occupation of Iraq is a losing effort, if not a lost cause. In an Op Ed piece in the June 12th Los Angeles Times, Christopher Fettweis asked, “What happens after Iraq?” In that piece, “Post traumatic Iraq Syndrome,” the National Security Affairs Professor at the U.S. Naval War College began the post Iraq conversation. He sees a tumultuous time coming. “The consequences (of withdrawal from Iraq) for the national psyche are likely to be profound, throwing American politics into a downward spiral of bitter recriminations the likes of which it has not seen in a generation.” Clearly, the work of national reconciliation will be a long term and difficult project. Congregations of every stripe will be crucial to that effort. We can do a better job this time around, I believe.

Atop the agenda for congregations will be to assess the theological voices that have led us to disaster in the first place. One such voice demanding clear response is that of Mike Evans, the head of the “Jerusalem Prayer Team,” and cheerleader of the Apocalypse. Of course, such voices have always been present on the American scene. We have effectively dealt with them in the past. In fact, Evans may be self discrediting. His post Iraq vision is the theme of the New York Times best seller, The Final Move Beyond Iraq. What to do post Iraq? Attack Iran! He recommends stepping out of the frying pan into the fire! People of faith have something important to say about that sort of thinking.

It is not too early for faith communities to begin the conversation. Post Iraq reconciliation will be incubated starting now. Talking about the faith community’s response to the 9-11 tragedy might be a good starting point. What got us into trouble? How did faith communities aid and abet the disastrous Iraq response? What did faith communities do to ameliorate the same disaster. When you find consensus, take it to the next level. Invite resolutions, debates, conversations in your faith community and in the wider community. Publicize your conversation in local media. Build a Post Iraq agenda and circulate it.

Christian and Hebrew Congregations might contextualize these discussions with a review of the Iraq materials in their own scriptures. The Bible's Babylon is today's Iraq, a nation that was a key player in the Jewish history. The literature of the exile in Babylon can provide deep background to a conversation about Iraq. Of particular impact are the writings of Prophets Jeremiah and Daniel. The songs from a strange land in the Psalms and in the Song of the Three Young Men (Canticle 12, p. 88 in the BCP) can supplement the conversation.

Whatever approach you take, we will all benefit from forward movement toward reconciliation in the post Iraq period. The work of building a Post Iraq consensus cannot start too soon.

Sunset on the Goose Season

The other day, the Parks and Rec Supervisor passed along the news that the Goose Chasing season had come to an end for this year. With the influx of human beings into the parks and golf courses, the Canadas are wary of hanging around. It has been a wonderful experience. To take two dogs who had no experience at herding Geese and to watch them develop their tactics over the spring has been a treat. Just when they were getting some expertise, the season finished. Their last trip out was a tour de force. Wagster, the old gal, finally hit the water and took on the herding work with seriousness. Bridget, the youngster, was not falling for the old tricks that had her chasing her tail in the middle of the pond, or worse, endangering herself.

Now, the Geese that are on the water have their broods, they will not leave the place, regardless of provocation. But the dogs haven't yet gotten the message. Any trip in the car has to be a goose chase. They take off on the job, even when they are walking where there are no geese! At least they have the memory and will be hot stuff next spring.

Milestones from the spring chase: Bridget had her first run in with a swan. (one of the tricks she fell for) Geese are scared, swans are not. They confront. I got her out of the water just before the old swan was ready to clobber her. The dogs quickly adjusted to their quarry shortly after that swan run in. They don't even mess with the ducks. That big old blue heron that haunts the pond is of no interest to them whatsoever. Even the sandhill cranes, as dramatic as they are, got nothing more than a passing note from the dogs.

So that was the season past. It was a lot of fun. Meanwhile, I need to find a way to keep the fat off of them. Mutton, anyone?

Faith and T.V.: Buyer Beware

Analysis of television, its effects on our lives and the way it drives the choices we make, is a relatively recent undertaking. Pierre Bourdieu’s 1996 lectures, printed in a book entitled On Television, is one of these early attempts at analysis. That was 11 years ago! Fifty some years after the invention of t.v. we come to Al Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason. Gore starts his analysis by an examination of the disfiguring effects of television on our democratic institutions. But what has t.v. done to religion? Even the novice channel surfer is keenly aware of the myriad of channels that purport offer faith to its watchers. I believe that television is as corrosive to the practice of faith as it is to political health. Here is a short outline of the features that faux faith brings to the tiny screen.

One way conversation Television is not anything like like real talk. It is more like being targeted. It all comes one way, at you. In fact, television religionists aim their messages in the same way politicians target particular populations. At targeting, televised religion has been devastatingly effective. But faith happens "where two or three are gathered, in the context of a community. Faith is continually tested in the context of real human relationships. There, the faith involves persons and ideas that usually conflict, grate on the nerves. Here is the test of the Spirit to the test. (this sort of thing inhabits nearly every gathering in the biblical literature.) Television is a no community. Rather, the one way messages breed a kind of conformity and passivity that is the hallmark of the consumer age. Further this sort of Christianity, or Islam for that matter, is untested where people live. It has a synthetic quality to it.

Thinking in a line T.V. Christianity is of one type of thinking only, linear thinking. It starts at one point and drives to a destination. But faith is lived in a 360 degree context. Insights into the divine life and the human dilemma come upon us as surprises, often from the periphery. This "quid pro quo" faith leads to vending machine expectations about God, expectations that are continually frustrated in the practice of living religion.

The need for spectacle Writers of the Gospels were acutely aware of the seduction of spectacle. The Gospel of Matthew introduces its protagonist in a confrontation with Satan who makes some spectacular demands. Turning stones into bread or leaping off the pinnacle of the Temple are the sorts of things that are made for television. Producers and advertisers alike are on a perpetual search for them, no matter how they harm or degrade the participants.

As seen on t.v. The medium confers legitimacy even on the most harebrained or inane of suggestions. How often does one walk away from the talking heads with a sense of unease, countered by the notion, if it's on t.v., it must be true. Simply to appear on television to gain legitimacy. (the clowns of children's television 40 years ago testify to that!) Evel Knievel’s warning, “kids, don’t try this at home,” applies doubly to the consumers of television religion.

The tyranny of time Even the novice television viewer marvels at the way a drama reaches its conclusion in the allotted 22 minutes. Early television drama, the old ½ hour shows that Baby Boomers grew up on, had to wrap things up in the allotted time. But the Spirit forms us on another schedule. The greatest lessons and life skills are learned over a life time. They come slowly, often requiring at least a season. Faith lessons, meted out within the allotted time t.v. allows, are useless fare for serious life directed belief.

For those seeking to grow in faith, not all is lost in television’s fantasy land. Occasionally, one can be inspired to action by the presentation of a way of life or of a particularly pressing problem. But let’s not be fooled. Most of the time, television makes of us couch potatoes. As watching sports does not convey physical fitness; (You need to go to the gym for that!) so, television, can only offer a poor and distorted substitute for the real thing. The best place to begin the exploration of faith is in the midst of a living, breathing, serving faith community, far from the boob tube. We dare not wait. Faith communities already strain under the demands of a deluded public marinated in the illusions of t.v. religion.

Listen to the words of poet William Butler Yeats.

We had fed the heart on fantasy,
and the heart's grown brutal on the fare.

Such brutality, the companion to t. v. religion, is the hallmark of our time.

With Our Wind Knocked Out

James Arthur Kelsey

Bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan

1952 - 2007

News of Jim Kelsey’s premature death comes as a crushing blow to friends and colleagues across the nation, indeed the globe. For those in Northern Michigan, the news is an insult, like a paralyzed diaphragm that has stopped our very breath. It is not simply the loss Jim’s vigor that we feel in nearly physical ways. It is the vision of the Church to which he gave himself. We are with the disciples along the Emmaus Road. 'We stand still, looking sad.'

There is so much more to this grief than the shock of the death of a close friend, the frightening specter such a tragedy visits upon us. Jim was inhabited by a Gospel so urgent that it shone a bright light. It was as piercing as the penetrating lights of the prophets themselves. No more clearly is this light than as it shines through Jim’s reflections on the Beatitudes, And it is this world that the gospel turns upside down. Calling have-nots “Blessed”?? Can you imagine?

I want to lay Jim’s work along side the groundbreaking work of Miles Horton at the Highlander Folk School, from which sprang the heart of the Civil Right’s Revolution. It was powered by Wes Frensdorff’s “Dream” of a church of radical companionship. Jim’s church is one of great imagination, of steely commitment to a Gospel of inclusion and of astonishing gratitude. Even while he was taking on the work of reshaping congregational life in Northern Michigan, rediscovering the radical inclusion of the Good News and fighting to keep the focus on the humanizing values at the heart of the Gospel, he would write this line. Let us be thankful that we a part of a Church which is trying, at least, to figure out how to bring these matters to the table, so we might discover what future God is calling us to.

He ended a recent chronicle of the House of Bishop’s wrenching consideration of the emerging, and punishing, Covenant being proposed by many in the Anglican Communion, Jim was able to end his report saying: It's kind of cool being an Episcopalian after all! This was not an expression of foolish optimism, but of the conviction that what was being made alive among us, as yet in small ways, would one day be seen as the beating heart of the Church. We were then, and are now, becoming a people in which hope resides, where everyone is able to exercise their gifts for ministry, and all, positively all, are welcome. Jim's life's work was about breaking down the walls the kept us from the power of our own proclamation.

Now the seed is sown. Jim’s work, even now, brings tears of joy to those who live near the edge of hope. The hope he posessed is a bright light shining through his life.

The world is turning upside down. And those who are losing altitude in the transaction are not well pleased. But as those who have been held down for so long are allowed to rise, with God's new laws of gravity, we are all of us blessed with an opportunity to rediscover how we are bound one to another, to God, and to all of creation.

For now, our attention and care involves finding our breath. With Mary, Nathan, Lydia, Amos, Steve and the whole Diocese of Northern Michigan our innards strain to breathe in a living hope. For now, we are the have nots. We are blessed. Can you imagine such a thing?

Faith of Our Sisters

Sara Paretsky has published a memoir, Writing in the Age of Silence. She is beloved for her detective fiction. As the creator of Chicago detective V. I. Warshawski, Paretsky has been exploring a woman’s role in what was a man’s world. In this recent book, she reflects on the road she and her sisters have traveled from the days when “women have been property, first of our fathers, then of our husbands or brothers.”

The chapter, “Not Angel, Not Monster, Just Human,” traces the progress of second wave feminism. She dwells on a glaring irony in the attitude of the hard right.

We are in a peculiar state of mind in America these days. We want untrammeled capital markets. We think speed limits, handgun controls and taxes are unwarranted intrusion into personal liberty. But we feel an overwhelming need to control women’s sexuality.

We can trust Wall Streeters, drivers, gun owners and the wealthy enough to loosen our policy grip, while we must tighten our grip on the bodies of our sisters, wives and mothers. The rationale of the religious right is at the heart of the hypocrisy. There is a ferocious effort to turn back the clock. It shows its ugly face in a peculiar American iteration of violence. For when it comes to the control of women over their own bodies, a kind of home grown terrorism soon appears.

Paretsky unveils another, more pernicious, irony. By returning our sisters to the status of objects, we are reseeding the foundations of pornography. At its most basic, pornography stems from the confusion of persons with objects. This dirty little secret remains unrecognized in these churches. All the happy talk about healthy relationships, acceptable sex roles, so called family values, disguise a contempt for human sexuality and ultimately its abuse. “As women are bombarded with images of themselves as sexual objects or sexual monsters, . . .women seem to seek to appear harmless.” That is the prevailing dynamic in right wing congregations. Dealing with sexuality in such stereotypic terms, in fact, is dangerous.

Just human, that is Paretsky’s destination. Theologians would do well to begin their thinking there. The scriptures do! “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Faith communities are starving for such discerning voices.

Falwell la la la la la la la

The soupy obituaries in the nation’s press at the death of Jerry Falwell strain to find something significant to say. Most of the coverage is an enormous back handed compliment resembling the joke, “For a fat guy, you don’t sweat much.” What a travesty. One has come to expect that sort of dissembling from the media. “What ever happened to fair and balanced?” I ask myself. So, I decided that if fair and balanced was going to happen, I would have to do it.

In fact, the media love power, even if it's that power which corrupts absolutely. What would the truth look like about Rev. Falwell? I start with the con man, Joe “Paper Collar” Bessimer, whose bastardization of Phineas Taylor Barnum’s famous phrase reads like this, “There is a sucker born every minute.” Falwell was this generation’s P. T. Barnum, a showman. He began on television in 1956 with the Gospel of Segregation. But, you see, television concerns itself little with what people say, but with how the spokesman says it. That’s how Ronald Reagan seemed to do so well. He had mastered the “how to say it” puzzle. So did Falwell.

What one sees in the public life of a Jerry Falwell is what happens when the methods of bigotry are given their head. True, he did recant his segregationist line. But he kept on with the approach, the fear mongering, that succeeded so well. His most successful promotion, The Moral Majority, in fact, was one big media savvy complaining fear monger. Complaining about women, frightened about gays, warning of evils under every bush. . . that was his stock in trade. But it was not Gospel. It was bad news.

In all of the glitz, reality got lost. We were ushered into the grand battle of good and evil that has brought us to travesties like the Iraq war. Reality is sumberged, out of view. The Falwells of this world brought us a construction that no longer bore any relation to what actually goes on . Evolution is become a liberal bias, 9-11 has became the opening salvo in the world Muslim/Christian warfare, and a thousand complaints about the human race have won the day. No, Rev. Falwell’s meteoric rise wasn’t about the concern a pastor has for the flock. Neither was it about the search for truth. It was about the thirst a media entrepreneur has for power. Plain and simple.

There. At least somewhere, someone has tried to balance the fawning media elites. Whether it makes any difference is up to you. For me, Falwell stands as a stark warning about the price we pay when we confuse the showman with the show. There is a sucker born every minute. That may sell tickets, but it is no basis for a theology.

The View from Bareback

Along Lake Superior's southern shore, a rock face runs in parallel, less than a mile from the big water. At some points, it is a daunting climb to reach the overlooks. Marquette's Hogs Back and Sugar Loaf Mountains are popular challenges for the young. Bareback Ridge has been a particular favorite for me over the years. It is become a vision place. The unbroken expanse of water to the east and the birds eye view of Harlow Lake to the north provide a stimulating milieu. This week, I happened by the place again. I was astonished by the richness of the hike, bringing to mind the rich blueberry crops of years past, the splashes of color that illuminated the autumn there. It might be the sort of thing one might find on a hackneyed greeting card, except that over the years, the place has become inhabited in a deep way.

So, I sat on the rock promintory listening for a familiar voice. This year, it came in the form of a look back over 20 years of hiking this path, sitting on these same rocks. In all that time, one begins to notice things. There was the hike when I happened upon an enormous jackpine snapped like a kitchen match by the east wind. Last year's footholds were not always there. A tree or a rock on which I had come to rely may have moved, fallen away down the steep slope, or taken up residence across the path. New flora appeared and receded. (The first ever jack in the pulpit appeared on this spring hike.) Old paths gave way to new. A meadow expanded to inhabit what was the shade of a now fallen oak.

One tends to associate movement in the wilds with the swirling clouds of gnats, the darting of a songbird, the lumbering shape off in the brush, the gurgling of water on the move. With 20 years of noticing along the Bareback Path, I began to see that everything was on the move. Gospel visions of shouting stones; trees and boulders that amble across the landscape and toss themselves into the sea, these are not exceptional images. From bareback such swirling movement is the fundamental fact of life.

The voice from Bareback Ridge this year does not speak in the majesty of the Huron Mountains across the north; nor in the sheer expanse of the Inland Sea of Lake Superior; nor in the intricacy of the darting life forms all around. . . it speaks is in the sheer flow of it all. Like the volcano's lava, the entire creation is awash in movement. The creation dances.

I realized that I spend way too much time looking for anchors, for boulders too large to move. I'm constantly trying to put in stakes and claim stability, where movement is the only fact of life. It is most helpful to speak of the divine life as rocks and trees as one is deeply mindful that they, too are on the move. Dancing, swimming, moving, pilgrimage, these are the images that cry out to be recovered in contemporary religious experience. It may be that the terrors of Jihad (our own and that which we fear) arise from a God who does not dance. Life in the Spirit is about learning to move.

The Rabbi lay on his deathbed. His students formed a line that stretched from the bedside, down the hallway, descending the stairs, out the door and around the block. They were arranged from the best student to the least accomplished at the far end of the line. The prize pupil asked, "Rabbi, what is the meaning of life?" The holy man whispered, "Life is a river." The students passed along this bit of wisdom, one to another, clear to the farthest student, who asked, "What does the Rabbi mean, 'Life is a river?'" The question bubbled back through the line to the bedside, the prize pupil asking, "Rabbi, what do you mean, "Life is a river?" To this the Rabbi, "So, maybe life is not a river."

Wags 9 Years Old This Week

A quick post to celebrate Magdalene Snowblower's 9th birthday. She was born at the Pair a Dice Kennel, Iron River, Michigan on May 7, 1998. She has been an inspiration and faithful companion not only to us, but also to friends far and wide.

Check out: http://www.stpmqt.org/leaders.htm

Happy Birthday, Wagster

Happy Birthday, Abu Ghraib

Three years ago today, inside photos from Iraq’s prisons burst into the world’s press. I was at a conference of Prison Ministers. Their response was “not surprised.” This sharply contrasted with the Bush response. “Unamerican,” he called Abu Ghraib, thereby illustrating his continuing role of the naked emperor. The fact is that prisoner treatment is not high on the nation’s penal agenda. “Keeping ‘em inside” is. I want to explore some questions: How could this happen? Who is responsible? What are the Alternatives?

How could such a thing happen?

Abu Ghraib is the offspring of one Lane McCotter, a penologist sent to Iraq to set up the prison system. Not unlike the missionary movement of the 19^th and 20^th century, we did not send abroad our first string players. (The present rift between 1^st and 3^rd world Christians can be understood as the product of having sent the B team to the mission field.) Mr. McCotter’s work in the domestic field was not recognized as the best foundation on which to build Iraqi prisons.

Philip Zimbardo’s study now printed in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, offers a good place to start understanding Abu Ghraib along with the domestic prison system. But, if it is to be something other than an excuse, it will require wholesale rehabilitation of the prison system.

In effect, what happened in Iraq was simply a hidden narrative familiar to prison workers in the U.S. Some facts: There were in the year 2000 some 2,166,000 persons in U.S. prisons. This represented 25% of the world’s prison population in an era in which the domestic crime rate was going down. Broadly speaking, this skyrocketing population came about as the result of the fears and righteous anger of the voting public run amok. Were one to compare the imprisonment among minorities to the height of the apartheid system in South Africa, one finds that the domestic incarceration rate exceeds the South African rate some 10 times, a rate of some 7,000 per 100,000 of population.

Jeffery Reiman’s book The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Prison details the rise in for profit prisons across the country. Strong parallels are drawn between the exploding growth of the so called military/industrial complex and what is becoming known as the prison/industrial complex.

Where is there Accountability?

The problems of prisons are complex. There are no superficial answers to their present dismal state. The response to Abu Ghraib was to make Lindy Englund poster child for prison misbehavior. Later, her commanding officer was put on the hot seat, but the accountability stopped there. One needs to pursue concerns about human prisons with those who find the profit motive in the punishment of inmates. How is that system supported by the justice system? Political leaders have yet to confront the consequences of simple response to our system of retribution. We have yet to identify those who are doing a good job of running prisons. We have yet to expect accountability of the General Staff, the Defense Department and the Bush Administration for the travesty of Abu Ghraib. But such abuses do not go unnoticed in the rest of the world. Perhaps a sort of accountability is shaping up over the growing resistance to the entire Iraq enterprise.

What are the Alternatives?

The problems of our prisons are brought to our attention by Abu Ghraib. There are a lot of voices presenting alternatives that deserve our attention. Happily, theologians are making important contributions. They recognize the central importance in Christian Scriptures of the incarcerated. These resources chart a course to Restorative Justice and prison reform, each of which can benefit us all.

Abu Ghraib may have been a wake up call to our own prison system. Happy, theologians armed with their WWJD armbands can form the vanguard of reform. What congregations can now do is to educate the public that we have other ways doing things in our legislatures, courts and prisons. It may be time to "flesh out" the choices we face

Want to Know More?

Some background including Harmon Wray, theologian and prison minister

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=15821

Phillip Zimbardo’s groundbreaking study

http://www.lucifereffect.com/

More on Lane McCotter

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A212930

Restorative Justice Alternatives

http://www.restorativejustice.org/

Current Events

Morel Theology

It would help to have some rain to bring out the morels. To date, I have found none. Across Michigan this spring, there has not been enough water to bring them out. (We need no 40 days and 40 nights, one warm rain will do) This is the time they are scheduled to arrive. I'll keep looking! But we will need the spring rain.


Poetry

Last Sunday was the anniversary of the Hindenberg Disaster of 1937. I wrote this poem on that Sunday afternoon, May 6.

Hindenburg: 70 Years Ago

Were their men wearing spats
as the mighty flier
floated into Lakehurst, N.J.?
Or were they dressed casual?
And where did they eat and sleep on that big balloon?

The investigators have no answers for their questions.
They do not understand what blew the airship sky high.
It might have had something to do with the Helium embargo
enacted to punish the Third Reich.

Those who leapt from the gondola that day
did not survive.
Those who stayed, did.

At exactly 7:25 post meridian, they each
came to their decision one by one.

Where Theology Belongs

You do not think your way into a new way of living, you live your way into a new way of thinking.
-Koinonia Community

There was a time when theological disciplines were spoken of as the Queen of the Sciences. That’s one way to solve the conflict between Science and Religion, isn’t it. It reminds me of the wag who said, “I’m for prayer in schools as long as I am the one who is doing the praying!” But I digress.

The days of the hegemony of theological discourse are long gone. But as a thought experiment, one wonders, “Where in a university structure might one place theology, these days?” I think that the answer to that question determines the sort of formation that issues from theological discourse. As I posed this question to a friend of mine yesterday, he shot back, “Why, it would be in the marketing department.”

Certainly, a lot of what passes for theology these days is the product of focus group thinking; about sales. Churches that tout “come as you are,” boast coffee bars and whose worship is high on entertainment values seem to be in the sales business. There is room there for theological conviction, but a mighty cramped space. These Disney world approaches to congregational life, contrived as they are, seem to have wholeheartedly and uncritically adopted the culture in which they are swimming.

In a postmodern era, others might say, belongs among the laboratory sciences, in the R&D of human life. There is a lot to be said for the notion that faith formation is an experimental science. Clearly, this avoids the pitfalls of the sales and service branding of the faith. It opens up the possibility of interfaith dialogue, gender theologies and the reapplication of the Good News to contemporary life.

Both lose their meaning when one speaks about theology as framework for living. Sure, it is fine to have all sorts of convictions. How these are related to day to day life, it seems is the critical question. Much in the New Testament speaks of “self emptying.” Jesus himself commended the stance of servant to his most intimate friends. So what does it mean for theological inquiry to be the servant.

I want to play with the image of midwife as one that synthesizes both the framework that theological disciplines provide as well as embodying the spirit of the Jesus of the Gospels. A midwife is a servant with savvy. She has capacity born of experience. She takes the process of birth and serves those who are in the throes of it. She is not, herself, caught up in birth itself, but in the birthing process. We hurt ourselves when we so closely ally ourselves with the questions, “What will sell?” OR “What will work?”

A midwife, it is clear, attends birth. She has a gift to offer no matter how many times we are born!

We Begin. . .

My Border Collies, Maggie and Bridget, herd the Canada Geese in one of Battle Creek’s City Parks. At first, the goose chase seems an exercise in futility. Ever so slowly, the repeated visits shape the habits of master, dogs and geese. What appears to be a sudden thing, in fact, has taken weeks, sometimes months, of sustained effort. And then things fall into place. It is as if the entire gaggle has one mind.

People of faith suffer from neglect of a dialogue, a product of a highly personal and narcissistic spirituality so prevalent in today’s Church. These faith voices appear to be shouting back and forth, lacking a coherent center. This blog pursues those moments where the commonplace and the community work together to reveal the human quest with divine life. Such a sustained effort can create of a soul a community of souls. "A dialogue is a community of words," says a Quaker friend of mine. I hope that such a living community can be explored through these musings.

The conversation begins. I look forward to its emerging textures, the places where spirit and human life meet. You are invited to be a part of that conversation.