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.