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?