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.