Welcome to my blogspace!

I think one of the primary characteristics of human beings everywhere is that Story is how we know who we are and what our lives mean. I think that is the urge behind the nearly universal experiences of storytelling– whether the stories be made-up stories to entertain ourselves, historical stories to remind ourselves of the larger context of our life experiences, or autobiographical stories that we use to tell others who we are– or even tell ourselves who we think we are.

This is where I’m telling my story– what I experience, how I feel, what I think it all means. My story is part of the Great Story, the story of all of us together trying to understand the lives we’re living and the Life we’re given. I hope that by trying to tell my story, you might hear something that connects me to you, and the both of us to that Great Story from which all our stories come and to which all of us belong.

So, check out my story– it unfolds below, piece by piece, in words and songs and images. Leave a comment– let me know how it is we have connected, what it is that you know that I need to know, what you’ve experienced that is also a part of the experience I describe here. I look forward to meeting you, sharing with you, and wondering with you at all of this . . . this Life.

(sound of hand slapping forehead)

People, puh-leeze. Let’s get a grip here, OK?

We haven’t even cleared the fourth Republican Primary, and already the temperature is so overheated that it’s hard to believe. Republican candidates for president using language that they know will excite racial prejudices all the while (wink, wink) denying that this is their intent. (Here) and (Here).  A Republican governor who has led her state in usurping clear Federal authority over our national borders making political hay (for her own re-election) by showing how much she isn’t going to respect the President of the United States (see here for the finger-in-your-face feistiness.) A Republican representative who decides not to even attend the State of the Union address and makes that decision public as a way of letting people know that he’s sending a strong message to the President. (Here) Of course, this is a bit less dramatic than the Republican Rep. who interrupted Obama’s first SOTU speech with the shout “You Lie!” (Here) And the silliness of grown men and women, many of who are or were captains of the business world, lawyers, or otherwise successful people before they became members of Congress, deciding whether to stand and cheer or sit and scowl at every applause line in the speech would be funny if it wasn’t such a childish display of pettiness. (It happens no matter whether the Prez is Republican or Democrat– apparently silliness and pettiness are pretty much the only things that are bi-partisan.)

The President gets good marks for his facts in the State of the Union, although most of the fact check sites point out that in many cases what wasn’t said might have been almost as important as what was said. (Here) and (Here) Meanwhile, fact checking the Republican response showed the use of fuzzy facts, in one case misleading by attributing to Obama what had actually been done by Bush (Here) and in another by pointing out a serious inaccuracy in an unemployment figure used to try and discredit the President (Here).

Romney claims great success as a job creator in the private venture capital world, although most commentators point out that private venture capital isn’t about creating jobs for workers ,it’s about producing profits for private venture capital investors (here) and (here) and (here); that the largest number of jobs created that Romney claims comes from the jobs created by Staples, and that the vast majority of jobs at Staples came into being long after Romney’s venture capital firm cashed out of that business (here); and that 40% of the ten biggest “wins” for the Romney-led venture capital team were companies that allowed Romney’s team to profit even as they drove those companies into bankruptcy(here). This would be disturbing if it wasn’t for watching Gingrich wrap himself in family values and God’s forgiveness and playing the role of victimized public figure over the reporting of his two previous marriages. The first ended as Gingrich served divorce papers on his wife as she struggled with cancer. He left her to be with the woman he was having an affair with, and whom he subsequently divorced in order to be with the third woman he was having an affair with– all the while travelling the country decrying the immorality of Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinski.(here and here)

And one of these two guys will likely be the Republican nominee.

Of course, we who follow our leaders follow them in every respect. So, today, there is a report of a 16 year old girl who became the face of a lawsuit launched by an anonymous adult to remove a prayer from the wall of a public school. The prayer,addressed to “our heavenly Father,” has been determined by the courts to be a violation of the separation of church and state. for example, one might want to worship a God who is a heavenly Mother, or even a flying spaghetti monster. or, as in the case of the 16 year old girl, not worship a God at all because when you were younger your mother was very sick and in spite of her prayers to God felt that God hadn’t responded.  (her experience, as her experience, is as valid as anyone else’s experience of God having helped them through a tough time.)

Thankfully, a grownup in an important leadership position, State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Since then, death threats have of course followed (by people who want a prayer to God posted in a public school, mind you) and three local florists have refused to deliver flowers to her house that have been sent by supporters.

So at least profit isn’t a big motive here.

And to make matters worse, the courts have decided that the lawsuit began by an anonymous adult and which Jessica has allowed her name to be attached to publicly is valid, raises the right point, and has therefore directed the school to remove the prayer. In a display of their willingness to comply with constitutionally valid civil authorities like the courts, the school has refused to remove the prayer from their wall pending several meetings to decide whether or not to obey the law as it has been explained to them.

In an interesting description found at MSNBC.COM, we read:” Last March, at a rancorous meeting that Judge Ronald R. Lagueux of United States District Court in Providence described in his ruling as resembling “a religious revival,” the school board voted 4-3 to keep the prayer. Some members said it was an important piece of the school’s history; others said it reflected secular values they held dear. “

Really– a prayer, addressed to a Heavenly Father, is valuable because it espouses “secular” values?

Enough, already.

If we want to claim the title of the greatest nation on Earth, let’s begin to try and act like it. We have elections in order to elect leaders. Let’s respect them– not just the one’s we like. Let’s insist that state reps like Peter Palumbo remember that they represent 16 year old atheists as well as all the others. (A 16 year old atheist whose father is a firefighter– hero, right?– and whose mother is a nurse, working to serve the needs of the sick. Just so we don’t begin to think this girl’s from a home of ne’er do wells.)

Let’s insist that both Democrats and Republicans quit calling campaign spin “facts.” Let’s insist that our leaders quit trying to motivate us to vote or not to vote by appealing to our basest fears. Let’s insist that they be as grown up as we try to be in our daily lives.

Or, at least as grown up as this 7-year old. A fan of the 49′s, like many of them he was sad and angry that the game they lost seemed to be because of two dropped punt returns by Kyle Williams. As he fumed and fussed, his father asked him a simple question–”How bad do you think Kyle Williams feels?”

The 7-year-old was able to actually guess that Kyle Williams felt very bad– and to think that the right thing to do might be to empathize with him. So in a week where Kyle William’s life has been threatened by rabid fans and talk show hosts have sold lots of ads for their shows by ranting and raving about Kyle William’s presumed ineptitude, a seven year old wrote a letter of condolence and support to the football player.

Those of us who actually do believe in a Heavenly Father (or Mother or Higher Power of any sort) and who claim to be trying to live according to some divinely-inspired principles would do well to listen to the God we worship as well as this 7 year old boy listened to his flawed-but-kind earthly father.

Want to be one nation under God? Then act like it.Act like one nation, whether or not you like or agree with all the people who are part of it.

Proud of the principles of our nation, the principles that make us nearly unique in all of human history? Then live by them– principles

• of mutual respect,
• of a shared commons with all who comprise our civil society,
• of a respect for the rule of law,
• of choosing to live with the dangers and difficulties that a truly free society allows as a consequence of individual liberty instead of demanding that the rights and freedoms of people who are different than the people we’re most comfortable with be limited or even violated. (See Japanese internment, WWII; see also stories of Muslims and Middle Easterners escorted off of airplanes because un-named passengers felt “concerned.”)

But enough already with the shouting, the name calling, the angry red faces. Enough with fudging facts so badly that nobody really seems to believe that there are such things anymore. Enough with “win at any cost,” enough with “too bad for you, I got mine,” enough with “I’ll show you, I’ll do what I want because I can,” enough with “because I’m right (or God’s on my side, or my team is in the majority, or whatever) I don’t have to talk with you or listen to you or try to understand you.”

Enough, already. It’s embarrassing. Let’s all take a breath and get a grip. Let’s do what we tell our toddlers to do– take a time out, go to our thinking chairs and think about it.

Let’s do what at least one seven year old was able to do– try to see something we have strong feelings about from a different perspective. And to do it with such depth of understanding that we do more than grudgingly admit that “yeah, you gotta right to think and feel however you want to,”  but rather we really “get it” and empathize and then seek common ground.

C’mon people. It’s not too late. Is it?

Is it?

These past few days I’ve been in Cleveland, Ohio where I attended the funeral of my uncle, “Wolford” as I always called him. It’s complicated, but apparently Wolford was a favorite uncle of my dad and his brother, so when his brother became my uncle he wanted to be known as “Wolford.”

Everyone else called him Ron.

No one ever gets to spend a lot of time with family these days. Everyone moves to one corner of the country or another. Life takes us hither and yon as we follow the paths laid out before us. But it seems that I see this part of my family even more infrequently than average. We used to see them more often– when I was small, it seems to me I remember seeing them all at least once a year. We’d go to Cleveland, and play ping pong or go to the Zoo or picnic in “The Valley,” a series of interconnected public parks in Cleveland. They’d come to our home in Northern Kentucky, and we’d cook out or go to our Zoo, play ping pong. You know, just be “family” together.

Now we’re all grown up, and grown apart. We all have families, and some of our families are starting to have families. I’ve been keeping up with Uncle Wolford’s health the past few years through my dad. He’s had a number of health issues, each one a little different, each one a bit more serious. In the past few months, it got a bit worse, then he went to the hospital, and while there began to decline even more. Dad and Mom went up last week to visit, and left with some hope that he’d rally and come home. But another stroke happened, and Uncle Wolford couldn’t recover from it. At age 79, surrounded by family, awash in prayers and the love of those close to him, he died.

My brother and I drove up Monday and met up with the family there. Mom and Dad had a car-full as well. Monday night we spent time at my cousin John’s house. Everyone was there, we ate fried chicken and all the fixins, and we visited. Stories were told, memories remembered, a guitar showed up and I sat with Joe (John’s son) and showed him a few chords. John came over, and he and I did some old-guy songs for the youngsters. I learned the names of the children of my cousins, some of whom I knew only from Facebook.

Tuesday afternoon, we all gathered at the home place. Uncle Wolford’s chair stayed empty for a bit until one of his daughters sat down in it. I sat in the dining room, and while we talked I remembered being young, being a visitor, and eating a spaghetti dinner made by Ron and Beth’s girls (my cousins). I remembered staying with Ron and Beth on a visit 9 years ago, when I went up to see Paul’s future college (Oberlin) and to make a tour of the Halls of Fame in and around Cleveland (Pro Football, Rock and Roll.) I remembered a birthday spent there as a boy, when my gift was a gray reel-to-reel recorder. John, Jeanne, Rob, and I played with that thing all the rest of the time– making fake radio shows, scary shows, and just having fun with a new toy.

Tuesday night we went to the church for Ron’s (Uncle Wolford’s) memorial service. That church has been their family’s church forever and ever. Beth has been a music director there, cousin Margaret was an education minister there, and Uncle Wolford served as a treasurer there. All of my cousins sang in the choirs and played hand bells growing up there.My cousin Margaret was married there– and maybe other cousins too. I went to Margaret’s wedding, so that one I know.

And, we all were a part of Ron’s memorial service there.

I sat in the pew– an unusual experience for me. Children of my cousins read scriptures and presented memories of “Pop,” as they called him. My dad shared his memories and feelings. One of the pastors at the church shared about Ron’s competitive nature in a humorous remembrance about Ron’s career as a bowling league participant and officer. We sang some hymns, and said some prayers.

My uncle wasn’t remarkable, at least in a public-figure kind of way. He was a high school math teacher for 49 years in Cleveland’s public school system. He taught math at the local community college. He bowled. He raised a family: he taught them to play ball and run races and play chess, to eat their vegetables and go to church and to school, how to love others and take up for themselves and enjoy their lives. He had his high moments and low moments, his holy moments and his everyday moments. He had his strengths and his weaknesses. Like a billion other people, like billions of other people who have ever lived.

But sitting in the pew, listening to the memories of others and reflecting on my own; seeing the gift he gave to the world in the faces of his children and grandchildren; hearing the voices of a full congregation gathered on a hot Tuesday night to remember his life and celebrate it with his family; thinking on how many thousands of students he had helped in nearly a half-century of teaching math classes day after day. . .

Thinking on the laughter he’d shared and the tears he’d shed, the hard knocks he’d endured and the achievements he’d earned . . .

It came to me how remarkable an unremarkable life can be. How remarkable and worthy of note a life full of love and sharing really is. And how much it mattered, and to how many, that he had lived and shared his life with others.

Cousin Margaret shared with me earlier on Tuesday how in his last few days, Uncle Wolford had thought some deep and long thoughts– the kind of thoughts one thinks when one’s days are coming to an end. Looking back at his life, he wondered aloud if it had been enough– if he had done enough good, if he had spent his life well. With his hand in hers she told him, over and over–”It’s all about love, Pop. It’s all about love.”

Pretty remarkable, after all.

We were having practice last night for the upcoming Youth Fundraiser. I’m helping with the band, and last night we played through all the songs with the singers. One of the songs we’re playing is from the musical South Pacific. Like Broadway musicals of the period, the music of that song is a combination of pop and jazz elements.

There’s a brief moment of music between the first verse and the second where the guitar chords move rapidly through a series of changes that frankly I would never have thought to put together. Looking at the chord chart, the chords don’t make much sense– they don;t fit the key we’re in, they’re just plain, well, weird!

But when played correctly (the first few times don’t count!) they make tremendous sense to the ear. In the parlance of musicians, they are interesting changes. (By the way, thank you to musicians who allow me to use their parlance!)

Interesting changes are, in fact, essential to our enjoyment of music. Music with only one chord would be boring music. Music with only one note in the melody would be boring. My iTunes music library has 37 gigs of music– almost 17 days worth, if played continuously. So trust me, if I could only listen to one song, I’d find that boring– I need lots of variety, lots of different kinds of music suited for different moods and events in my life.

But change can have other connotations or meanings. For the ancient Greeks, whose philosophical wonderings became the foundation for the Western culture we all share, change was a sign of the imperfection of the world we inhabit. Change was proof that the world we inhabit is flawed and imperfect-- because it has so many different variations of things, because it goes through all sorts of different changes as it moves along. They reasoned that if it was perfect and complete, it wouldn’t need to go through so many changes– change is only necessary when things are incomplete, immature, imperfect. Change, while necessary in this world, was a necessary evil. It was a continual reminder of our essential imperfection.

They reasoned that the essential element of perfection was completion. That which is perfect is finished and has no further need of undergoing changes. The realm of the Divine was thought to be filled with perfect, unchanging Forms which were the spiritual archetypes of everything we find in the material realm. These Forms were complete– they contained within themselves everything that was needed to express their complete identity.

And the true Divinity was also perfect in that same way. The Divine could not experience want or need, because the Divine was complete in itself. The Divine could not change,for change was a sign of growth,of further development, of deepened understanding or broadened experience– all of which was impossible for the Divine. The Divine was by definition complete in itself, fulfilled, without any further need of any kind.

This way of thinking find expression in various places in the New Testament, perhaps no more more explicitly than where we are told in James 1:17 that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (KJV,for emphasis) The Father of Lights is described by James here in some quaintly-turned phrases. God has no “variableness,” no change in intention or thought or action. God exhibits no “shadow of turning,” no sign of movement from the perfect position God holds within the light.That which is perfect in essence and perfect in its position has no need to move, and casts no shadow that reveals a change of position.

This view of God, fully in line with the Greek understanding of things, is a bit at odds with the more Semitic views of God expressed in the Old Testament. The depiction of God in the Old Testament shows a God who plays, who experiments, who experiences all manner of feelings (rage, anger,love, tenderness, wrath, empathy, to name a few) and who exhibits at times some changing even of mind and intention. Raging about the faithless children of Israel in the wilderness, God offers to destroy them all and start over with Moses. Moses intercedes for the people of Israel and appeals to God’s sense of how He might be viewed among the nations of the world, and “the Lord changed His mind.” (Exodus 32: 7-14) Search the phrase “God repented” in the KJV at Bible Gateway and you’ll find three Old Testament references to God “repenting” of an evil He intends to do the people of Israel for some serious failing they have indulged.

The point? Well, one point is that the Bible holds several different and sometimes hard-to-reconcile views about God. God is unchanging, except when God changes His mind. God is complete, perfect, like the image of the Divine held by the Greek world, except when God is experimenting (like all the different animals God makes for the first human in an effort to find a suitable companion for the human) or torn by Divine emotions when considering how best to deal with the people God has made. (See Hosea 11 for this kind of Divine back-and-forth, where God determines to destroy faithless Israel and then seems to take a breath, count to ten, and remind us and even God’s own self that God is Divine and not mortal, One whose ways are higher and different from the ways of mortal people. Also, I’m serious–see the above mentioned passages showing God relenting or repenting.)

Another point go all of this might be to see how all of these views about God change over time, evolve and take new shapes and forms as God’s people experience more of God and more of the world God has made. The nomadic and tribal people of the ancient Old Testament saw God as their accompanying warrior, directing them into battle and fighting on their behalf against their enemies. The more settled agrarian Old Testament people saw God as a shepherd, as the giver of the produce of the land. The urban, monarchical Old Testament Israelite saw God as a super-King, one who wielded authority throughout the creation in the manner of an earthly king who wields authority throughout his earthly realm. These images carry over into the New testament, finding expression in the parables and teachings of Jesus. But Paul, ministering in an urbanized and Hellenized (Greek-speaking and Greek-thinking) culture, never references God in the pastoral images of shepherd but rather expands the descriptions of God in Christ to include mystical ideas of the Cosmic Christ who inhabits all of creation and who holds it together moment to moment within the very being of the Divine (Colossians 1, for example). These additions mirror Hellenic culture and its religious practices and viewpoints.

Perhaps the Greek worldview that sees change as bad, as a sign of imperfection, is an outmoded viewpoint. Perhaps living in a dynamic and ever changing cosmos– a cosmos created in just that way by the God whom we worship– we could come to see change not as a sign of imperfection and lack but rather as the energy of the cosmos that provides unending creativity. Perhaps the impulse to change, to grow, to expand and deepen and broaden, is not a sign of the failure of the created order to be perfect but is in fact the gift of the Creator to all of the creation.

Perhaps change is not foreign to the Divine, but is our perception of an inherent quality of the Divine One. Perhaps what we experience by our own limited ability to perceive as “change” is really the inclusion of all possibilities within the realm of the Divine– all existing together, all in harmony, each one welcome and blessed and in the place where it was created to be. We come across something or someone different and think we have discovered a “change” when in fact we have simply stumbled across yet another example of the infinite variety of All That Is, made possible by the infinite and loving creativity of the Creator.

And like chords that make no sense to the eye as they are read but that make sweet sense to the ear when they are heard, perhaps rather than judge all of the differences and changes we encounter by our prior way of understanding things we should instead “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” (Psalm 34) Perhaps before deciding not to play the chords we are given to play because they don’t make sense in terms of our previous understanding, we should try to play them.

Perhaps  in our experience of them they will come to make even better sense than all we knew before.

Blessings!

The news everyday is full of upsetting information, isn’t it. From political and socio-economic conflicts to the news this morning of a massive earthquake near Japan that has sent a tsunami wave rolling across the Pacific, everywhere you look there is a reason to be tense, nervous, anxious, and unsettled.

Of course, for many of us the bigger world’s news is less important to us than the news of the smaller world we inhabit with our families and friends. A close friend of mine is living at her mother’s house during what are sure to be her mother’s final days. I know of others whose family lives are being mangled by issues of substance abuse, of violence, and economic turmoil. Everyday I meet people who seem to be coping with their fight against cancer, their struggle against chronic pain or illness, their concern for distant family members who are in trouble that can’t be relieved. The church I pastor has a lot of connections to the military community, and I know many families who are in a constant state of motion and commotion as they anticipate or endure the deployments of loved ones to battle zones.

Thus it is; and likely, thus it has ever been.

And so, we find this wisdom in Psalm 131:

Lord, my heart is not proud; I don’t look down on others.
I don’t do great things, and I can’t do miracles.
But I am calm and quiet, like a baby with its mother.
I am at peace, like a baby with its mother.

The painful, frightening truth about life in this world is that most of the things that affect us are beyond our ability to control. The next ring of the phone, the next twitch of heart muscle, the next visit to the doctor, could be the harbinger of some awful trouble. The next news flash, the headline on the next morning paper, the next urgent email could bring news of some occurrence that will affect our lives in ways we cannot at this very moment imagine or even prepare for. Whatever “control” we think we exercise over our lives is often simply an illusion, a story we are telling ourselves to quieten our fears and help ourselves get through the day.

The wisdom of scripture is a different wisdom. Rather than “play-at” or “pretend like” we are in control, Scripture advises us to give up. You aren’t in control, and you can’t be in  control. The peace you crave in the center doesn’t come as a result of finally being in charge of everything that happens– it comes in accepting that you cannot be in control of or in charge of hardly anything at all. “Lord, my heart is not proud; I don’t look down on others, I don’t do great things, and I can’t do miracles.” I can’t make the war stop, the earth quit quaking, the rain stop falling. I can’t make it all better for my child, my spouse, my friend. I can’t even make one hair on my head turn dark or gray by my own efforts.

But, “I am calm and quiet like a baby with its mother. I am at peace, like a baby with its mother.” Like a baby with its mother, I trust in One greater than I to take care of it all. I rest, at peace, knowing the only important things I can know– I am loved, I am Beloved, and I am surrounded by the One who is, in fact, All. In this place of safety and comfort, the rain on the roof can even sound like a comforting backdrop to my contented rest.

This psalm ends with an admonition to the people of God, in case we hadn’t been able to figure out what this short little song means: “People of Israel, put your hope in the Lord
now and forever.” Children of God, beloved ones, the only way to find that peace you crave is to hope in, trust in, God and God alone. Now and forever.

The spiritual wisdom offered by the Bible in this regard is echoed throughout all the world’s spiritual traditions. The true peace available to us comes not as we exalt ourselves more highly and seek power over more and more people and things. The true peace we are made for and are meant to enjoy comes as we become smaller and humbler, closer to the ground and simpler in our way of living. Do not hope in wealth, or power, or youth, or strength, or any vain and passing thing. Be like water, which always finds its balance by seeking the lowest level. Do not pile up treasure for yourself made out of the stuff of this world– it can only corrode, can only be lost or stolen, can only fade in value and beauty.

O Israel, all you who are Children of God– hope and trust in the Lord. Rest in the Lord’s protection, in the Lord’s provision, surrounded by the Lord’s loving presence. Accept what each day brings you as what the One who loves you wants you to have. Give thanks for all that comes your way, teaching yourself to see that everything you receive has come to you by means of the loving will of the One in whom you live and move and have your being. Know yourself truly– not as a master of all you survey, but as a simple babe napping contentedly in the arms of the One who loves you as a mother loves her child.

Let your life be like an extended, everlasting experience of those precious moments of quiet and close communion shared by a baby and a mother just after feeding and just before napping. Put your hope in the Lord, now and forever.

A personal note–

One of my favorite spiritual songs is a setting of this song by John Michael Talbot, a former rock and roll musician who turned his back on all that stuff and took up the life of a simple monk. You can hear it here. I learned it early on when I came back to the church and was beginning the journey that led to me becoming a pastor.

I was a music leader for a retreat, and just felt uncomfortable. I was brand new at being back in church, back in a spiritual community. I had been gone from church a long time, and wasn’t sure how all that I had experienced could fit into some kind of new life as a follower of Jesus. I hoped that it could and that I could become some kind of disciple, but everywhere I looked it seemed like lots of other folks had figured out all the things I was still baffled by.

Anyway, in my role as music leader I did the musical accompaniment for morning prayer. I chose this song, and sang it toward the end of our prayer time as we prepared for the day ahead. I had chosen it as my own prayer– I knew that there was something in those words that I needed for my life, some lesson I needed for myself. Afterward, a brother on the retreat pulled me aside. “I know your gift,” he told me. “You are like the songbird that wakes up the world. Thank you for waking us up this morning.” What I had sung for others out of my own need had been a way for someone else to see what I could not see, for all my effort in looking. What I could not see, and did not believe could yet be true, another was able to see and share with me. I, too, had a place on the lap  of God.

This was a first experience of many of learning that real joy doesn’t come in figuring it all out for myself; real joy comes in others helping me to discover what God has been doing all around me, and in me, and even perhaps through me. To quiet oneself, to rest in the presence of the One whose Love brings all into being and helps it persist from one breath to the next, and to receive your life from moment to moment as the gift that it is, and then give it away moment to moment as the gift it was meant to be–

Well, every now and then I find that spot. Every now and then, I know that peace.

Every now and then.

Maybe you can find it more often than that, and share it with others who hardly ever find it at all.

Blessings!

We had Ash Wednesday tonight at church. Because of my responsibilities with the contemporary worship congregation, I don’t often get the chance to be an up-front minister for all the members of our church. But tonight, people from all three of our services– people I know from my work in this church for nearly 5 years now– were there for our service. And I was part of the service that we together offered to God. Gary (our senior pastor)  led us, and brought a message that focused on our need to be “shriven, and forgiven.” I offered a thanksgiving blessing for the ashes, and a brief reflection on why we give thanks for ashes and their reminder of our mortality.

This idea has become very important to me in recent years. It is in fact our mortality, our limited-ness, our imperfection, that is the essence of our humanity. Our greatness is not in what marvels of engineering we can construct, but in how we confront the obstacles created by our limitations. Our lives are not defined by what we gain, get, build, or achieve– but rather how we cope with and even overcome what life brings our way– our illnesses, sorrows, failings, and mistakes.

I believe that the faith reminds us, again and again, that we come “from ashes and dust” and will soon, too soon, return to “ashes and dust.” But in “remembering that we are mortal,” that our days pass and then pass away, we have the opportunity to come with honest humility before the One who is forever, infinite, and limitless. In humility before that One, we find our place as part of all that has been created, and find the blessing of being just as we are– created, beloved children of God.

I didn’t say all of that. But I tried to say enough of it.

Then it was time for the imposition of ashes. The liturgy I use is this–“From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust; remember thou art mortal, and receive the Grace of God.” I said those words tonight:

• To a woman who very recently has heard those words pronounced at the graveside of her husband of more than six decades;
• To several cancer survivors, and some who still fight it;
• To the young man, only in seventh grade, who plays guitar with me in our praise band;
• To a high school aged athletic young man, for whom the thought of mortality is likely still only an unthinkable abstraction;
• To a woman who is caring for her mother who day by day is edging toward her death;
• And many, many more.

The humbling privilege of ministry is watching how people find an inner, divine strength in the face of the terrors of life. Some of those stories I knew tonight as I inscribed the sign of the cross in ashes upon their foreheads. But I have lived long enough to know that everyone I touched tonight, everyone to whom I spoke those words, knows something of the ashiness and dustiness of life. Everyone I touched tonight knows how frail, fragile, and fleeting life and it’s strengths and pleasures can be.

But I think that all of those people were there to receive the ashes and the solemn liturgy because they know something else.

From the ashes, they moved to stations where they were served communion– the reminder that the glory of God as we know God in Jesus is shown to us in the brokenness and suffering of the Cross and then in the power of Resurrection Life. As the Eastern Orthodox Church says,  “in Jesus the Divine becomes human so that humans may become divine.” The theological word is theosis, meaning to be enveloped and surrounded by the Divine. As Jesus puts it in John 15, it is us abiding in God and God abiding in us.

Our suffering is not only our suffering; our struggles and griefs and pains are not only ours to experience. God enters in to them, with us, suffering and grieving and struggling with us, as us. But in such communion with God, something miraculous happens. We who know much of suffering and struggle and grief find that in the closeness of God With Us we can also know peace, strength, comfort, and even joy.

Even joy.

In our faith, we are not left with dust and ashes. By accepting our dusty-ness and ashy-ness, by coming with honest humility before the One who loves us with an unending love, we come through it all to something like glory. In a way beyond the power of words to explain, the more fully we enter into our imperfection and neediness the more fully we become able to receive more perfectly all that we need and more besides from the One whose love for us can never end, will never die.

I wear the ashes tonight, and may not wipe them off before I go to sleep. I hope to see them in the morning, a reminder in the mirror of what I need to face everyday. From ashes and dust God has brought me into being; and soon, too soon, to dust and ashes I shall return. But I feel in my deepest self that this acceptance of my creaturliness is the way that leads to the Grace and Love God means for me to know, to experience, and to share with others.

And as I live in the midst of this undying love, I know that I share in the glory of God, the glory of being a creature of God’s handiwork and the fruit of the endless love of God.

A friend of mine– a real-life facetime friend, not just a Facebook-posting friend– posted something on her Facebook status this morning.

“In my younger days, my friend made donuts all day and then invited all the friends in for donuts and coffee. Today she is in a nursing home and doesn’t know what day it is. But I am going to take her some donuts. Blessings!”

There’s something profound and moving here– I’m typing through wet eyes. Is it about “paying it forward,” the idea that we do good in the world so that good will come back around? If so, who’s paying what forward here? Was the original donut party the first payment forward, and today is a payoff? Or is my friend who’s taking the donuts today “paying forward” into her own life?

Maybe it’s not about “paying” at all. Maybe it’s about sharing, about compassion, about living in real relationships with others. Maybe that’s what’s so moving about all of this– it’s not about “paying,” or “who owes who”– it’s about love, and remembering, and sharing. With all that’s wrong in the world– and believe me, what’s wrong in the world is all-too-obvious most days– here’s a sign of what’s right.

Maybe not just a sign, which is only a thing that points toward something else. Maybe this is a sacrament– a thing that shares in the reality to which it also points. It’s donuts today, a sign of love and friendship but also a sacrament of that same love and friendship, embodied in donutsthat are the remembrance of a happy day and a participation in that happy day– all at the very same time.

Maybe as a sacrament, it coveys the idea of true memory– not simply the recall of events long ago, but a kind of reconnecting to those events in a personal, emotional, visceral, real way. For my friend taking the donuts today, this day is linked to another day years ago when a friend made food that created fellowship and love between others.

In thank my friend Margaret for this gift today. Like a true sacrament, its power is not only for those few who were there– its power includes all who are willing to include themselves in that moment of powerful love. Its power reaches out to all those who are willing to share in the memory it communicates– whether or not that memory is personally their own. I, too, am part of that afternoon of donuts and coffee, and this morning of sacred friendship.

And, you are, too– if you choose.

Blessings!

Some random notes . . .

1. This whole Ted Williams thing. For those who aren’t sure which Ted Williams I am talking about, I mean the homeless guy “with the golden voice.” Ted was “discovered” by a media person for a local news show. He rolled up on Ted, rolled down his window, and got Ted to do some “announcer” stuff. Ted was a hit– he had a charming way about himself, and his voice really did seem “golden.” Bang-pow-boom there are dozens of news and sports organizations lining up to give ole’ Ted a job as their “voice.” He’s already on the air in a Subway commercial, has been on all the morning talk shows all cleaned up and grateful, and reports are that more than one media mogul told an underling that if they don’t find a way to hire Ted, they’ll be fired.

Yay! Let’s all feel good! Homeless guy gets a job,and all is well.

Ahh, but the real world– and a real person like Ted– is always more complicated than that. Turns out Ted’s homeless for a reason. Drugs and alcohol took him down. Turns out that in spite of his assertions to the contrary, he’s still drinking. And, turns out Ted’s relationship with loved ones in his family are conflicted and complicated as well. Turns out Ted’s problems are really sticky and messy and, well, human. So, Ted’s story is not a fairy story but a real one. Ted doesn’t need pixie dust or a magic wand– the deus ex machina of the media and money can’t solve his issues, heal his brokenness, and make it all better. He got into an altercation with his family at a forced reunion– forced so as to make us all feel better and believe in the fairy story we were being sold.

Now, it’s gotten worse, I fear. Dr. Phil– a real doctor of psychology, but one who has forgotten that real personal progress is never made as a public spectacle for ratings but as a personal endeavor– has swooped in to do a series of shows on Ted, forcing him to accept rehab as part of the deal. Phil can now cluck and scold and make moral judgments– not for the purpose of really helping Ted, although if that happens that’s great. It’s about ratings, about selling the crap that get’s advertised during the hour Phil is on your TV set.

So, real guy Ted, homeless and afflicted with human troubles, has become Tragic Character Ted in a short-term series co-created by several different producers of popular media. Ted’s story will either make us feel warm and fuzzy about his turn-around or self-righteous and judgmental over his failure to make himself a better person for our benefit. Either way, we’ll feel better about ourselves and maybe that means we’ll watch more, and buy more, and wait for the next show to come on.

But what will happen to real-guy Ted after he’s all used up by the machine and, useless, cast aside for the next big spectacle?

And what has happened to us that we would let ourselves be entertained by what’s happening to a real guy like Ted?

2. Sarah Palin’s hurt feelings. Look, I get it– Sarah wants us to think of her as important, and noble, and well qualified, and smart. Sarah looks at how close she got to the Big Job, has measured herself against the people she met there, and thinks she competes well. The beauty of the American mythos is that everybody gets their shot to try and become what they think they really are. Ambitions of being a tycoon? Go start a business and see where it leads. Believe you have the next great novel? Put it out there, and see if anyone buys it. Think you have a better idea about how things ought to be run? Then go see if you can get elected, and have at it.

Sarah’s got as much right to do that as anyone else. She ran for office in tiny Wasilla, and got elected. She parlayed that into becoming governor of Alaska– good for her. She got those jobs because when she interacted with the people who had to elect her, they liked her. She was “like them,” it seemed. And,she raised money to run for office and get elected because she seemed useful to the people who had the money and who then gave it to her. She was “for” whatever it was they were “for.” She promised to do whatever it was they wanted done. Checks were written, the campaigns were mounted and run, and voila– she won. Again, fair play to Sarah. That’s how it’s done here in America.

Problem is, her same act hasn’t played as well in the lower 48. She’s become something of a TV celebrity. Her plain spoken, pleasantly accented voice and pretty face and quirky independence is fun to watch and relatively harmless in a TV celebrity. But as a contender for the second chair at the head of the line in the halls of power, she came up short in the judgment of the political professionals who were running the campaign. She showed poorly in several media interviews. She was asked questions that should have allowed her to demonstrate her competence but instead they allowed her to show how unprepared she was for the office she wanted to win. She was happy to drag her family and it’s various stories out into the public when she thought she could benefit from it all, but then flashed angry when others commented upon the publicly paraded and revealed story of her family.

As part of trying to line herself up for a run at the big chair in 2012, she tried to help in the 2010 elections. She told people to “take aim,” “reload and not retreat,” to “take out” and “take down” the “enemy” Democrats, and published a poster with cross-hair gun sights targeting those Dems that needed to be Palinized. Now, she’s hurt because people have called that sort of rhetoric into question in the light of the recent tragedy in Tuscon. Of course,within hours of the shootings her own people had scoured her websites of all such references. (A lot like the Ministry of truth in Orwell’s masterpiece, eh?) Now it’s all about how people are blaming her, even though in truth no one is “blaming” her for the shootings. She is useful as a prominent example of how careless words by highly visible public figures can create an unfortunate climate within which deranged and disturbed people can find ways to justify their actions.

She has a right to be as political and public as she wants to be. She has a right to say what she wants to say, however she wants to say it. And, others who hear and see her have the same right she has– to express themselves, to make observations, comments, and such. And, just as she is finding out, they also will find out if their words are uncautious or ill-advised in just the same way as she now is.

As one former US president once observed, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” She seems to want it both ways– to be all “mavericky” and independent, out there and brash– until someone pushes back. Then, she’s all hurt and indignant that anyone would question her in any way. She retreats to safe territory– she refuses mainstream media interviews where she might be asked questions, issues statements and videos rather than have press conferences, all in all refusing to be accountable to the same processes that all public people have to answer to.

She’s got a right to do what she does. And if we can’t see through it, then I guess it’s shame on us, right?

3. The Big Lie. That’s what students of WWII call the rhetorical strategy employed by the Axis powers in their rise to power and their subsequent exercise of power. It also became the tool of the Stalinist government in the USSR in the post war era, and continues to be useful all around the world where a few leaders want to control the thoughts of the many they seek to rule. The principle is simple– tell a big whopper, and keep telling it over and over with a straight face, and soon the big whopper becomes the truth. If you can tell the big whopper through a variety of media, all the better. People love songs they can remember, images and films that communicate powerfully, and rousing spectacular events that stir the soul.

Sadly, it works really, really well. And in this age of mass media, where so much of our media comes from only a very few, highly corporatized sources, the Big Lie is a technique being used more and more. It happens in subtle ways, for commercial purposes; and in too many instances, it’s happening in our political discourse in subtle and gross ways.

Commercially, it works like this. Let’s say you have a restaurant chain, and you want to attract business based upon families. Larger numbers of people eating together create larger sales per table turn. So,you create commercials that tell stories that highlight family connections. You tell all the easy ones first–mom, dad, kids, even the “family” of circles of friends and workmates who eat together.

Then you make a reach–for cousins. You make a commercial about how cousins like to eat together. In the atomized families of the US in the early 21st century,you;re not sure that the whole “cousin” concept will be very powerful. How can you amplify the “cousin” concept?

Then it occurs to you– use social media. You create a “meme,” an easy-to-understand and easy-to-transmit piece of communication. Maybe it talks about cousins as the very first friends you have, and how special the cousinly relationship is to you, and then dares people to paste and repost that “meme”on their own page if they agree. So, out of nowhere, the “cousin” meme spreads to hundreds of thousands of people. And while cousinly affection is a true emotion, its sudden prominence is the Big Lie. What appears to be an innocent and spontaneous expression of familial affection is really an amplifying device created by a commercial business designed to prepare and connect you to what might otherwise be an obscure commercial about how “at family get-togethers we always make time for the cousins to go out to dinner.”

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Politically, it is happening like this. In gross fashion, it’s the appending of adjectives to words– like Boehner’s “job-killing health care bill” or “the budget busting health care bill.” Problem is, the health care bill won’t kill jobs, and in fact repealing the health care bill will increase the already massive federal deficit. It’s like saying the Democrats are all about taxing and spending, when the truth is that the last Democratic President gave a budget surplus to his Republican successors who then spent the US into the largest deficit ever.  Gross– and by gross,I mean obviosuly wrong and yet because of repeated assertion, it has become the truth.

Even though it’s not true.

Subtly, it looks like this: In Raleigh, North Carolina, the local Tea Party was successful in getting a majority of the local school board elected. That’s legal, and even ethical. It’s how our system works. Who could be against that?

The local board puts through a reorganization of the school system, making sure that children can go to schools in their own neighborhoods. Who could be against that?

The result, of course,will be a re-segregating of a community by race and economic lines (which in the South are often much the same), undoing a generation of slowly-won gains toward a more unified and integrated society there in Raleigh. Well, they say, that would be an accidental result. It wouldn’t have  to mean that the schools of poor children funded by the property taxes of less-valuable poor properties were less successful. And, if you were able to prove that, hypothetically, it wouldn’t mean that we couldn’t intervene and make sure that things worked out OK.

Maybe.

Ahh, but now this . . .

In Kentucky, where the Tea Party was successful in forcing Rand Paul on the establishment Republican Party (Mitch McConnell had to hold his nose a bit to campaign a little for ole’ Rand) and then successful in getting Rand elected, the Republican controlled Senate (led by announced Republican gubernatorial candidate David Williams) passed a motion for “local control” of school districts. This is aimed at undoing a federal court order to the Jefferson County School System that has caused a successful program of racial integration throughout the county. This order was created in response to the demonstration that schools in the combined city/county school system differed widely based on race. Schools in predominately African American areas significantly underperformed schools in richer, white areas.

So, in two different southern states, in processes led and influenced by Tea Party voices, the same thing is trying to be done– the reversal of efforts to integrate our society in order to lessen oppressive conditions based upon racial stereotypes. It’s all being done as an expression of “local control,” yet the irony that drips from that phrase is that it is obviously a nationally coordinated effort. Here in Kentucky, this motion for “local control” was put forward by a Republican (David Williams) with NO TIES to Jefferson County and passed by the State senate over the objections of Jefferson  County government officials. One wonders how many other communities are seeing similar processes put in motion,and aren’t aware of how they might be connected.

But here’s how the Big Lie works. Even though there’s no chance this will clear the Democratically controlled House, the seed is sown for Williams and his running mate (former UK Basketball star Ritchie Farmer) to say with a straight face–”Our opponents are against local control of schools.” Even though the real issue isn’t local control, but rather segregation and it wasn’t even an issue that originated locally but rather originated in a State Senate over the objections of those elected local officials this bill proposes to protect.

Sadness, resignation, a certainty that some will read everything I’ve written here and, since it doesn’t fit with the narrative they have chosen to believe, perhaps even single me out for approbation. But that’s the risk one takes– after all, I could just keep quiet.

Like so many others.

Right?

The Horror of Tuscon– and the Horror of How Tuscon is Being Used By Others

Within the first hour or so of coverage of the Tuscon shooting tragedy– the one that killed 6 people and wounded 14 others, including Congresswoman Giffords– news commentators were asking leading questions of their interviewees about “vitriolic political rhetoric” and its effects. Within a few hours, the blogosphere– or at least the little bitty part of it I pay attention to– was posting the Sarah Palin poster with 20 congressional districts targeted (literally) by gun sight diagrams, and the exhortation to “reload” and to “take down the 20.” Another item focused on the Arizona republican Party Fundraiser during the last election– one held to fund the campaign of Giffords opponent– which offered donors the opportunity to shoot a loaded fully automatic M-16, with the exhortation to take down the democrats in 2010.

Pretty quickly, the dead and wounded became (for the national media coverage) simply an excuse to create controversial conversation about “vitriolic political rhetoric.”  Tea Party folks were quick to disavow any responsibility for this guy in Tuscon– even as more liberal types were almost immediately identifying this guy as a Tea Party member. And now, thank goodness, the Westboro Baptist Church has weighed in with their  “god’s” view– they will be present to protest at the funeral for the 9 year old girl killed by the shooter, proclaiming their god’s hatred for Catholics, “fags,” and others that their god has notified Westboro Baptist about. Their view is pretty simple– every dead person who can attract a media crowd is an opportunity given them by the god they worship to come and shout ugly and hate-filled slogans in the name of “freedom of speech.”

Let me be real clear, as a reasonably well-educated theologian and as a faithful Christian: whatever god Westboro Baptist worships hasn’t got anything to do with the real God, and it might be an appropriate theological response to their hatred and ugliness to pray that at the very least their car breaks down on the way to whatever event they are trying to soil with their hateful and useless presence. The God I worship calls me to refrain from harming (or wishing harm upon) any other person, and to leave such things as vengeance in God’s hands. But I think praying for a flat tire might be OK, is and perhaps even appropriately humorous enough to happen.

Two Conversations– Related, But Not The Same

It seems to me that there are two parallel conversations here–one having to do with the shootings and the shooter who committed them, and the second about the larger issue of  “civility.” The shooter conversation is pretty simple, it seems to me. Early on, once the location of the shooter’s website on Youtube was published, I visited it and watched the videos he created to explain his worldview. They are chaotic, perhaps even inchoate– mad ramblings with no resemblance to anything even remotely political.Yeah, he talks about currency and the gold standard, and he references the Constitution, and uses words like “Federalist”– but the usage of those words in his ramblings make no coherent sense at all. The vast majority of his posts are about grammar, and how if one confuses grammar and misuses words one can be free of control by the “government.” He seems to think that “mind control” is effected by words and grammar, and that if he can use words and grammar to suit himself, he can exercise “mind control” over others. I think this supports his contention that “no one is literate”– i.e., no one understands language as he uses it.

Whether or not he is legally insane in such a way so as to not be held responsible for his actions,I cannot even begin to say. But he is certainly “crazy” enough to be an isolate from others, to be alone in a crowd, alone in the world in which he finds himself. He is a person who others found impossible to deal with or to befriend. In contrast to what we think of as typically “political”– the ability to win friends and influence people– this young man was almost literally “apolitical,” unable to influence anyone or connect in any meaningful way with those around him.

So his actions are, I believe, the actions of a disturbed and deranged personality. Tea Party people should no more be associated with this guy’s thoughts and  actions than real Christians ought to be associated with the insane assertions of the Westboro Baptist church. (And by the way, I am vehemently opposed to the agenda of the Tea Party– this is not an apologetic work for them. I’m just trying to be fair here.)

So that’s the first conversation, and it seems to me it is fairly straightforward– this guy was dangerously deranged,many people were afraid of him before he went off, and what he did was simply the outgrowth of his deranged and disturbed personality.

The Power of Langauge

The second conversation is about how we speak to one another. It is a conversation that is not negated by the realization that a deranged and disturbed man and not a political party or movement is responsible for what happened in Tuscon. Perhaps the necessity for such a conversation is heightened by such a realization.

I believe in the power of words. I believe in that for practical reasons– all you have to do is observe how your emotions can be affected by kind or hurtful words directed in your direction to see that the child’s rhyme isn’t quite true. Sticks and stones can break bones, and words cannot; but words break things in us that are far deeper and more vital than even our bones. Listen to a grown-up talk about how their parents never gave them encouragement as a child and you can still hear how much that hurt them even today. Watch someone’s eyes light up when you give a true compliment for the work they’ve done. Pay attention to how the words of an advertisement cause you to want to buy what is being sold.

Words have a practical power. Words have a uniquely constitutive power as well. It seems to be a growing consensus among those who study such things that human language and the way humans organize, interact, even “create” or constitute the world they inhabit are intertwined. Language and the cultural system it creates is the framework human beings use to create a world full of meaning, a world that makes sense.

Maybe this is why ultimately ( in Jewish/Christian theology, anyway) the creative force God exercises is Word. Word is how the infinite, transcendent, and unknowable God creates and interacts with the finite, immanent, and known world we experience. By uttering simple words, one after another, the Divine brings order out of  chaos in Genesis 1. And in the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus is “Word” made flesh– the transcendent become immanent, the invisible made visible, the creative force taking up residence (literally “pitching his tent”) in the creation.

Words are important. This is beyond dispute. Wizardry and witchcraft are practices by which persons use words (incantations and spells) to create and transform reality. Because they seek to play with the power words have to make and create, they are forbidden within the Jewish-Christian scriptures. Only God may use the power of Word to create reality. We who are created by that Word must live within the reality that Word has created.  In some sense, the modern use of words to create an enemy out of an opponent, to create a thing out of a human being, to create permission to vilify and villainize the honest viewpoints of another is to engage in a kind of “black magic,” a wizardry that transforms a person and a situation from one thing into another.

The Language of Violence, and the Violence That Arises From It

It troubles me to hear our leaders talk about hunting down and killing others– and yet, we have heard them speaking that way publicly since 9/11/2001. Like a Roman emperor offering prisoners of war for the theater of the Colosseum to appease and please the masses, our leaders have sought to please and appease us by promising to hunt down, kill, and destroy our “enemies.” Maybe not so coincidentally, over the last decade and a half or so, the rhetoric of political contests has also become more and more militarized and less “civil” (after all, aren’t these the words we use to demarcate those realities–”military”and “civilian?) Elections are verbally militarized campaigns to “take back what is ours,” to “take down the opposition,” to “destroy”what our “enemies” have done and build up instead what people like us want.

This language reflects a deep and inherent human trait– to divide the world into “us” and “them.” One of the ancient Germanic tribes were known as the “Allemanni,” literally “all the men” or “the only people.” So, if you were not one of the Allemanni, you weren’t really a human being and whatever was done to you was OK. The word “barbarian”  is a Greek word that communicated the same powerful idea. To the Greeks, who thought themselves the only truly civilized people, the languages of non-Greek speakers sounded like the babbling of children– as if they were saying “barbarbarbarbar.” Hence, the name for all non-Greek speaking peoples–”barbarians.” They don’t speak our language, they must not be real humans.

This is not only a problem for the ancients. As recently as the 19th century we can see this at play. In his book The Artificial Ape, Timothy Taylor tells of the encounter between the technology-rich European  explorers and the indigenous Tasmanians in the 19th century.  The Europeans who discovered the Tasmanians determined them to be a kind of fallen humanity because of their seemingly primitive and “degenerate” way of life. Isolated by great distances and for a great amount of time, the Tasmanians exhibited an apparent lack of technology and social structure. They lacked clothing and even permanent structures such as houses.  Because these indigenous Tasmanians were viewed as degenerate– not merely less-evolved but as having even fallen backward toward a non-human animal nature– they were exterminated by the Europeans within a few decades of their discovery. The bones of the last Tasmanian were kept on circus display into the early 20th century as an example of a kind of “missing link,” a sub-human hominid.

The sad truth is that these human beings were highly specialized in the way they had evolved culturally. The lifestyle that made them appear so backward to the Europeans who found them was in fact an highly specialized and well-adapted lifestyle for the environment they inhabited for tens of thousands of years.And even though the Europeans saw them as completely lacking in technology, the name of the last Tasmanian was, in her language, “Tool-maker.”

Need we go on– linguistic and cultural structures that justified the enslavement of Africans because they were thought to be less than fully human persisted throughout the 19th century and arguably were at the root of the American civil rights struggle of the 20th century and beyond. Linguistic and cultural structures that see females as “less qualified” human beings than males have persisted into even the 21st century. (Cardinal Ratzinger, before he was Pope, suggested that one reason females couldn’t be priests is because they were constructed of “insufficient matter” when compared to males.) American citizens of Japanese descent were put in concentration camps in our own 20th century. And rampant fear of Arabic terrorism causes us to speak of a “culture war” between the West and the Middle East. (To be fair, that rhetoric of misunderstanding flows both ways.  Within the Arabic world, this clash between civilizations is understood to have been occurring at varying levels of intensity for nearly a thousand years. apparently we see each other as equally uncivilized when compared to ourselves.)

Policy Implications–In Other words, What does It All Mean and What Should We Do About It?

All of this is to say: when our political rhetoric heats up in this way, we lose touch with the one quality contained within our national idealism that could actually make a new way forward into a more sane future. Our founding fathers– so often quoted and yet so seldom read– insisted that all human beings possess inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Further, the ability of those rights to be enjoyed by all human beings depended upon a government that ruled with the consent of the governed, and that our uniquely American form of government was structured so as to protect the rights of any and all minorities against the will of any and all  majorities. This is the reality we have sought to create by our particular and powerful use of words.

All of the political and social wrongs we have committed in American society have been corrected by our appeal to and recognition of these principles. Even if it angers the majority– perhaps especially if it angers the majority– we are not a “majority-rule” civilization here in America. If the rights of even one person inconvenience and disconcert the majority, then so be it. (That explains why the reprehensible Westboro Baptist Church gets to shout their theological obscenities at public events.) Throughout our history, our own American political rhetoric has heated up in dangerous ways and with disastrous results. Race riots, lynchings, prejudice against Irish, Italian, and Slavic immigrants– all have created historical events over which we grieve and of which we are ashamed today.

Because of this, over and over in American political discourse we argue over who is truly deserving of the rights we proclaim as belonging to all human beings. Do they belong to persons of African, Asian, Slavic, Irish, Italian, and Indigenous Indian descent? Do they belong to Women? Do they belong to Children? In other words, are such people fully “human,” since these are rights that belong to all human beings? This has been argued as part of our civic discourse in the past 200 years or so.

Do those rights which belong to all human beings belong to those who are in America without official permission? Do these rights extend across the globe, and if so, to what extent do we as an American civilization accept responsibility for asserting and supporting those rights? Should we do governmental business with other governments who do not affirm or recognize these “inalienable” human rights? Such discussions have guided our foreign policy decisions for as long as we’ve been a nation.

“Vitriolic political rhetoric” is not a new phenomenon. We have used it before, and have seen what it produces, and have apologized and promised to never do it again. And yet, when our fear grows– when our emotions carry away our better and more reasonable nature– we fall almost immediately back into such destructive language.

A climate of anger, hatred,mistrust– “vitriol”– does not cause a deranged person to become deranged. But such incautious and careless speech creates a climate where the deranged and alienated personality can justify whatever actions he or she might take. Such angry words are part of the “game” of politics. (Notice– when popular radio and TV personalities are called out on their use of such langauge, their first defense is that it’sjust a “game,” it’s only jokes or entertainment. Notice when politicians are challenged over such words, they will immediately claim that “others do it,” thus making it “fair play” in the game of politics, which is after all a “contact sport” where peopleplay “hardball.”)

The problem occurs, of course, is that such “playful” words become the fabric of reality for the many who think the “game” is real.

When people see the great figures of our society–political and social leaders, powerful entertainers who sing songs and tell stories of a better world– using such language they assume that the words being used have import and meaning. Some of those people are the deranged and unstable person in our midst– but most of these are simply unsophisticated, uncritical in their thinking, poorly educated or easily overcome by their emotions. Because they are useful as a mass to power elites, such language is used to manipulate this mass toward whatever purpose suits those who use words to create this flawed reality.Because of this, you see low-income skilled and unskilled workers demonstrating for the benefit of those who pay them too  little and use them up and throw them out. You see the phenomenon documented by many social scientists of people acting politically in ways that are detrimental to their best interests because they want to identify culturally with a particular group.

All because of the power of words.

Some Conclusions

1. While I will not lay the Tuscon shootings at the feet of Tea Partiers and the militant Right, neither will I excuse anyone on the Right or Left who uses overheated language to inflame passions and then want to back away when such passions bring a horrifying result.

2. Our better and higher selves are made manifest when we reason together, not when we shout at and threaten one another. Our better and higher natures are expressed when we understand that we’re all in this together and that we are all pretty much alike, not when we divide ourselves into groups and see the Other as less worthy than ourselves, perhaps even less human than ourselves.

3. Those who create these negative and overwrought realities by their injudicious use of words do so because it “works” — it sells product, it gets votes, it produces results. Fighting back by engaging in the same use of words to serve our own purposes is to dirty ourselves by playing the same dirty game.

4. Let’s do something different, something radical, something that really is Christ-like:

• Overcome hatred with real love
• Meet anger with compassion
• Offer calming words to those who are overwrought
• Meet irrationality and non-rationality with reasonable thought
• Resist the false reality of division and anger not by violence against it but by creating a better and truer reality by words and deeds of love and peace.

The only real way forward is really to go forward– away from our repeated past of division, anger, hatred, and rash actions which produce regret and recrimination and that feed a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence and oppression and forward to a real society of equals, a real community of interdependent persons, a real appreciation of the differences of viewpoint that our different ways and places of life and living creates.

Once upon a time there was a certain man. . . .

He was a huge, huge fan of sports. Every time sports were being played, he was interested in them. He read about the games, the players, the coaches and their strategies, and all of the other teams in the league. But when the games were played, that was all he cared about. He loved the games.

He especially loved one of the teams from his hometown. He couldn’t know enough about them, couldn’t watch enough of their games, couldn’t stop talking about them day and night. Any sports conversation he joined quickly became a conversation about his team, the Hometown Heffalumps. “H-squared,” as he would affectionately call them, were all he cared about. He loved sports because the Heffalumps existed.

In his hometown there were other teams as well. They didn’t really ever play against his beloved Heffalumps– they were in different kinds of sports, and played in different arenas and leagues. But they were from his hometown, and others in his hometown felt as passionately about their teams as he felt about his team.

This certain man often found himself at odds with others in his hometown. For example, if he entered into a sports conversation and tried to steer it toward his beloved Heffalumps, sometimes there were others in that conversation who loved one of the other teams from his hometown as much as he loved the Heffalumps. Soon, they would be shouting at one another, red in the face. “How dare you compare your team with my beloved Heffalumps!” he would say.

And oh, my– on a Heffalumps gameday, he could really get angry. Suppose he was at a store on a day when his beloved Heffalumps were playing. Sometimes, a cashier or clerk in the store who was fan of one of the other teams would smilingly wish him a happy Bogswallows game day– because even though the Heffalumps and the Bogswallows never played each other, they did often play at the same time.

This certain man would get so mad–”Today is a Heffalumps day,and I don’t care if the Bogswallows or Catshepherds or Greenflowers are also playing today– I’m insulted that you will not call this day by its right name! It’s a Heffalumps day! And that’s that!”

It was almost as bad if he ran into someone who didn’t care about sports at all. If he began to talk about his beloved Heffalumps and they smiled and said “I don’t really follow any of those sports,” he would get so mad. How could anyone be so apathetic about such important things! Sometimes he would fuss at them for their lack of interest, wagging his finger and trying to convince them to become a sports fan AND a Heffalumps admirer, like himself. Sometimes, they would smile wearily and excuse themselves from his company. Other times they might argue back, asking him why he thought they should even want to follow the Heffalumps since all the Heffalumps fans they’d met were just like him. Pretty soon, when people saw him coming at them wearing his Heffalumps button and Heffalumps hat and singing his Heffalumps Fight Song, they would turn the other way and avoid him.

This certain man could always get his other Heffalumps friends to agree with him that there was nothing more annoying or perhaps even offensive and wrong than people not acknowledging the days that were important to his beloved Heffalumps. They would sit and watch the games and cheer for their team and in between exciting plays gripe about all of those “Others” who weren’t fans of the Heffalumps with them. Sometimes they would make fun of them, even calling them unpleasant names or ridiculing their silly team names. “I mean, really– who could be a fan of a team named such a silly name as Bogswallow! Ooh– look at that play– Go Heffalumps!” During playoff season, they would even write letters to the local paper complaining that others weren’t paying enough attention to their beloved Heffalumps– that others were watching the games being played by the other teams in their hometown instead. “How could any right-thinking Hometowner watch any other team?” they would say. “People who watch other teams than the Heffalumps might not even be proper citizens of Hometown!”

So that certain man and his friends continued to enjoy their beloved Heffalumps, and never really understood why no one else wanted to come and watch the games with them. Not that it mattered, really– they were perfectly happy being all by themselves, basking in the good feeling of being a Heffalump fan.

So, I check in on my FaceBook account, and read about all my “friends” and how they feel about the election.

Some despair– they see the election of Tea-Party folks as a bad sign. They despair over the political ideology of a large group of people with whom they differ in radical ways. They despair over the hubris of Washington power brokers who now rattle the sabres, demanding that Obama now “listen to the electorate.”

Ahh, yes, the electorate– who sent mixed signals by the way they voted, who totaled less that 50% of all the people who were eligible to vote, who were whipsawed by campagn ads and media coverage that focused on demonization of opponents instead of illuminating the issues and how to solve them. The electorate . . . who sent Obama to the White House with the largest majority since Reagan’s landslide.

Others gloat– my Tea-Party friends, and others who are more on the political right. Angry at what they fear the future will hold if whatever small steps already taken come to fruition, they now hope that the warriors they’ve elected will “take back their country” from the elected officials their fellow citizens sent to Washington just a few years ago.

Does that mean that those who disagree with them don’t belong in “their country?”

I am not in despair. I mourn.

Not so much because some people I voted for lost– after all, some people I voted for actually won.

I mourn, but not so much because I think the system is broken. Perhaps it is in some important ways, but in the small community where Lori and I own property an electoral revolution succeeded. People in that community saw something that needed to be done; they petitioned their leaders, who ignored them; they ran for office, and unseated those leaders. And now, they have a chance to see if they can do what they think they can do for our small community. Seems to me, that’s the system we’re part of. It worked, in that small community, hopefully for a good result. And maybe it worked at the larger, macro level as well. And, hopefully for us all, also for a good result.

But I’m not so sure. And that’s why I mourn.

• I mourn because all of our elected officials, on whatever side of whatever divide you choose to identify– liberal or conservative, Red or Blue, Patriot or . . .whatever– all of our officials are just as contentious, just as focused on fighting with each other as they were just a few days before the election. For you see, now that the elections have been contested and won, and before the newly elected officials take the offices yet to be vacated by the defeated ones . . . Plans are already being made for the elections of 2012.
• That is why I mourn. I mourn because our political system is now an endless horserace, with oddsmakers, “dark horses,” and gamblers of all sorts scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to pick the winning wager before everyone else does.
• I mourn because those we elect to govern us never seem to focus on governing– they seem endlessly concerned with dividing, conquering, bellyaching, posturing, and most importantly, fundraising.
• I mourn because those we elect behave that way, and because we who elect them allow them and even encourage them to do so.
• I mourn because we love the race, the contest, the give and take, the yelling and shouting, the emotional rush of winning or of vowing and plotting revenge. We cheer and shout along with them, feeling our emotions rise and the flush of catharsis as we get carried away, in victory or defeat, by our own sanctimony.

There’s a scene in the classic film Gandhi which I love and with which I strongly identify this morning. Britain has granted independence to the Indian subcontinent, a goal for which Gandhi and his other compatriots have fought for over many, many decades. However, the parting of ways with Britain has also created a rift between majority Hindus and minority Muslims in India. This rift between brothers, cousins, families, has resulted in the creation of two nations– the larger India, and the smaller Pakistan.

Before the final separation, Gandhi gathers the leaders of both factions together. He hopes to create a solution that will promote unity– but no matter what he proposes from a spiritual viewpoint, his compatriots who are operating from a more political viewpoint reject his proposal. He leaves, disheartened and sad. And then, on the day when the flag of India is raised to jubilant celebration and the flag of Pakistan is raised to jubilant celebration, the scene quickly cuts to Gandhi sitting alone at his ashram, spinning yarn on his rustic spinning wheel, beside a flagpole with no flag flying.

Steven Covey writes that one of the habits of highly effective people is “win-win or no deal.” In other words, in any negotiation effective people work hard to find the way for everyone to win something of value and importance. If no such solution can be found, effective people walk away from such dealings. Zero-sum games– games with winners and losers– simply perpetuate conflict, anger, hatred, and hurtful behavior. Zero-sum games (like the game of politics as we play them now, at least on the national and perhaps even the state level) perpetuate the broken-ness we all see and acknowledge. They cause us to be complicit in our own wounding, our own damage, our own sense of alienation, fear, and anger.

If we play, we cannot help but be part of hurting and being hurt.

I mourn this truth, and mourn that so many otherwise smart and good people– who hold differing opinions about all of the important issues facing us– are so willing to play this hurtful and destructive game of politics-as-we-know-them. I mourn that so few are willing or able to say–”I won’t play this hurtful game, and I won’t yield the world I inhabit to those who do.”

I mourn that even before the dust settles, the spin-meisters are spinning, the deceivers are deceiving, and so many of us are simply making popcorn and preparing to watch the next round of the endless prize fight that has no real prize and that in fact is costing us everything we say we value about our society.

I wonder if what Jesus has to tell us is really true?

He says that the way of this world is winding down and coming to an end because the kingdom of God is drawing near; and that our only best response is to walk away form and leave behind all we think we know and understand about the way the world works, and instead trust entirely in the good news that tells us about that new Kingdom and what it calls us to be and to do. That is the meaning of his own summation of his message, remembered for us in Mark 1: 14-15.

The way of this world is winding down– “the time is fulfilled.” No matter whose face is on the drachma or quarter, no matter who the banners and yardsigns proclaim as the right next leader, the way of this world has always been the same. The powerful use power for their own benefit, and the powerless are victims. The rich seek to get more, while the poor suffer and die. People see other people as enemies and competitors, perhaps not even recognizing them as equally human. This is the way of this world.

But, “the Kingdom of God draws near.” This way of God’s realm, this sovereign society based upon endless, all-forgiving and all-sustaining Love, draws near and in so doing pronounces doom for the way of this world. Mary sings– “the rich go away hungry while the poor are fed– the powerless are brought low while the humble are exalted.” Echoing her prophetic hope, Bruce Hornsby sings “That’s just the way it is . . . ahh, but don’t you believe it!”

Don’t believe those who say that their way of using power and the way of the Kingdom of God are one in the same. Jesus himself constantly refused to accept the mantle of worldly power. He would not be king, or general, saying finally to his ultimate accuser–“my kingdom is not of this world.” The way of this coming realm is absolutely and completely opposite of “the way it is.” And the truth of its coming is our hope, and the source of our energy and action.

So, “repent”– a deep and powerful Greek word signifying geographic changes in direction and orientation. To repent is to do more than feel sorry– to repent is to turn completely away from the direction in which one is headed and the goals which orient one’s actions and energies and instead to head out in the completely opposite direction. Convinced that the “way it is” is doomed because of the drawing near of “the way it’s supposed to be,” one who hears the message of Jesus turns radically away from all of the ways that compose “the way it is.”

And then, “believe in the Good News.” Trust entirely this message that the way it is isn’t working, that the way of the incoming Kingdom of God is actually the better way. Turn from all the ways that you have been taught and which you accept as the normal exchange between people. Instead, trust in and act from this new good news that calls us to trust in God, to operate with the energy of Hope, and to seek the outworking of the abundant Love which is God so that everyone can “win” what God wants so desperately for them to have.

I don’t want to play the game of “the way it is.” And I refuse to yield the ground to those who insist that “the way it is” is the only game in town. No. No.

With all my heart and passion, NO.

I cannot follow Jesus and accept that hurtfulness and unloving words and actions are “normal.” I cannot follow Jesus and believe that “the way it is” is the only way it can be. The Kingdom of God, as I hear it call to me, speaks of different values and different goals:

• We belong to each other.
• We are our brothers and sisters keepers.
• We are called to create a society that values everyone, from small to great, from least to highest, with equal love and respect.
• We are called to share the grreat and good wealth God grants us so that no one goes hungry, no one dies from diseases others have cured for, so that no one is left to the cruelties of fate and chance– who are not gods or divine beings as some would think of them, but are in fact the careless outworking of human brokenness into the lives of people.

I mourn, but not as one without hope.

I believe. Against all my “better judgment,” against the discouraging news of the everyday broadcasts, against even the evidence of my own eyes . . .

I believe.

And one day, one great day yet to come, perhaps mourning will turn into dancing . . .