The Other Inconvenient Truth

Below is the final draft of my class editorial. My intention with it is to ask the question where our violent habits, traditions and condoned public practices ulimately lead us, further away from God's Kingdom or closer to it?

Am I the only one to see it? This gaping window of opportunity situated in the brush and eucalyptus of the Hollywood Hills. Unprecedented globalization is the chance for Hollywood’s royalty to take a stand against human on human violence while proselytizing for the environment. The catch is I’m not talking about the violence we hear about in Iraq, Darfur or Burma, but in their blockbusters and bombs. This is not a call for censorship nor is it a hollow scolding but a real plea to each and every actor to take responsibility for and genuinely reflect on the messages they send out into the world through their work.

I admit, as a child I had a voracious appetite for cult horror flicks like Friday 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. The bloodier they were the better. The more chopping of human parts the more thrilling it was for me. Then I grew up. As a young adult (and certainly now) each time I watched an ultra-violent or excessively psychologically traumatic film I felt sickened and sad and knew that it was changing a part of me. It is time Hollywood grows up too.
What got me thinking about this is all the big talk about the environment coming out of Hollywood. Not to mention all the talk about genocide, AIDS, Katrina, the Iraq war and animal rights. There is no question that the world (the industrial world predominately) watches Hollywood so buying the Toyota Prius, now as fashionable as a nymph-like Stella McCartney dress or Versace handbag, is a good start to helping spread the word about the importance of being green. However, there is one very large component an avid environmentalist like Leonardo DiCaprio is missing. He fails to see that the very work he produces in his movies, predominately with ultra-violent themes, (like The Departed or Romeo and Juliet) severely compromises his environmental efforts and sends contradictory messages to the public. By shooting another human in the head with potential (at best) pretend consequences of contrition, DiCaprio loses power and authority to share with us his passion for the environment. The nexus between environmentalism and nonviolence is the sanctity of human life and dignity.

As the saying goes we are what we eat. Bare with me. We are also parts of passages of books we’ve read, lines of poetry rest somewhere deep within us, art we have seen in museums or handed to us created by our children become a part of who we are. The same can be said for what we witness in our homes, on our streets and on the big screen, make believe or not. The more violence we consume the more violent and immune to it we become. We don’t need scientists to prove this, to chart it for us and quantify the results. There are some things we know to be true, whether or not we see them. That is called faith.

The way we treat one another is inextricably linked to how we view and treat the environment. The most elemental fact about our lives as humans is that we live in community within an astoundingly complex and interactive ecosystem. As one eco-theologist put it, “humans receive from this system, impact on it, dwell inside of it, depend upon it; we are not in any sense of the word apart from the natural order, but bound to it for our very survival.”
The same can be said for our human community. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite, President of Chicago Theological Seminary, argues that we must acknowledge “the inseparable unity of the human community that either brings healthy humanity into being, or warps, distorts and ultimately destroys healthy human beings, their communities, and the planet.” We are bound to each other for our survival, thus we must view the handprint of the Divine in one another, as well as in creation, if we are to survive. As Christians we are commanded to love one another. If we are not deliberate in our loving one another our environment ultimately suffers, as can be evidenced in our poorest communities like New Orleans where environmental degradation threatens human existence. Human justice issues are involved in every aspect of environmental destruction. There is no way to separate the way we live and think from the health of the environment.

We, as humans, cannot expect to elevate our compassion for the environment until we practice and are committed in our actions, by choice of occupation and life-style, (on screen and off) to elevate our compassion for our fellow humans. It is a convoluted and erroneous notion that the more we display and showcase violence in film and television to “explain” or scrutinize it the more we’ll understand it and expose it. In reality, we only perpetuate the violence in our society and world and we move no further from it to get a better perspective. Instead we fall more in love with it and allow for it to take deeper root in our hearts. That is its power. Furthermore, any attempt by Hollywood to convey a message of morality laced in the bloodshed is trumped by the gore and the devaluing of human life.

This is not an argument positing moral absolutes. It is simply common sense. Perhaps it is the other inconvenient truth. That if we do not start speaking out against human violence in movies, on television, in video games, and in our homes, we will continue heading down the wrong path in regards to saving the environment. Hollywood is wasting its leverage with the part of the world that is paying attention by not having an equally aggressive stance against human violence in its movies as it does on violence against the environment.
Certainly we are all scared to make the radical re-ordering of our world views but our intellectual support for environmental causes is insufficient. We cannot save the planet without considering human relations, the impact on the most vulnerable, the global dynamics of poverty and underdevelopment, and neo-colonial exploitation of peoples and the earth. To succeed, we all must adopt a new set of values and standards that might be considered countercultural today but will be the norm tomorrow. Perhaps the stars can lead the way.

Where Does Our Violence Take Us?

I believe society must first determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer, "Yes."

- Governor Jon S. Corzine, announcing the abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey. Corzine also stated, “Other good people will describe today’s actions in quite different terms — in terms of injustice — particularly those who carry heavy hearts, broken hearts from their tragic losses. This bill does not forgive or in any way condone the unfathomable acts carried out by the eight men now on New Jersey’s death row. They will spend the rest of their lives in jail.” (Source: The New York Times)

Despair Everywhere

My mother just shared with me that recently on a number of occasions she has found my father kneeling at his bedside in the middle of the night. She assumes he is praying but I have never even heard my father say the word "pray" or the word "God" for that matter. Only half jokingly he used to say to us "God doesn't bother me and I don't bother God". This was to relay a message to his four children that he was not in need of God to survive, to make it through the day or his life. Then he found himself later in life in an ugly lawsuit that aged him, that drained him and made him consider God. He began to attend church for a couple of years and I know that it gave him great comfort. His life brought him face to face with despair and he reached for God's hand.

I don't think this is uncommon. I think for many, if not most, of us we go along about our business too busy to consider God, our lives, our own despair until one day it comes knocking so hard on our door that we have to answer. I too am guilty of seeking God not in a moment of great joy or celebration but during a time when I doubted Love and any reason for being. I wanted order to the chaos I was spiritually experiencing. As I was not raised in a church I began my search for some moral absolutes by reading various religious texts. I know of, in some small sense, the despair that author Chris Hedges discusses in his chapter Culture of Despair, that leads people to Christian fundamentalism. The weight of our suffering and unanswered "Whys?" is too much to bear alone.

If our fear and isolation drive us toward God and perhaps even to religious utopianism there is danger, as Hedges points out, of abolition of critical thinking distinct of an open society. Totalitarianism rises from the mountains of despair experienced by the impoverished and disconnected. Fundamentalism often represents destruction of "the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense tell you something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to advocate for change and accept that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable." In our search for God and for finding comfort for our despair we must celebrate life and difference and not find strength in our fears or remain embedded in our suffering by building walls around our hearts and communities.
Amen.

Bringing Torture to Life

One of the questions posed during the YouTube/CNN Republican debates last week asked whether or not waterboarding is torture. Senator McCain definitively stated it is torture and the US should choose to take the "higher ground" and not participate in the practice of any form of torture. Romney, on the other hand, made the embarrassing remark that it was to the disadvantage of the US to even discuss interrogation techniques thereby sidestepping the question all together. I wonder how his prayers to his God can lead him to give such a non-committal and harmful statement. Harmful because in his non answer he more or less said to the world that this is not a moral issue, a human rights issue of value to be met head on. By not discussing it it does not exist. By not giving waterboarding shape or sound Romney fails to bring it to life and it remains a hypothetical method of interrogation and not a formalized technique currently used to deliberately induce human trauma.

If anyone questions whether or not waterboarding is torture then maybe we should look at it another way. I don't like to check the news on CNN but every now and then I do despite the sorrow it brings me. It seems that almost every time I do I find a story about a child who was beaten to death. Just the other day I read about a little girl whose head was repeatedly dunked in a bathroom tub for not saying "thank you". I would guess that most Americans would agree that deliberately submerging a child's head in a tub of water to elicit a particular response from her would be deemed torture and not just an unusually austere method of discipline. If it is considered a form of inhumane treatment (torture) for the toddler then it must certainly be deemed torture for any man or woman held in captivity. We should be horrified by the treatment of this child and equally as outraged for any human subjected to such intentional cruelty.

We Said Nothing

I should have written a before and an after post. One before I watched The Passion and one after just to see where it has taken me. For our Public Theology class we were instructed to watch Mel Gibson's movie The Passion and I very reluctantly found it in our video store and brought it home. I find violent movies to be damaging to my spirit and I choose not to damage my spirit as much as I have choice in it. So, where did this movie take me? There is too much to say in this one post.

I have to admit, I don't know the story of Christ's Passion. I didn't sit in a single Sunday school class as a child and I am just beginning to recognize the power in the Bible. I have so much to learn! I didn't know that Judas got money for turning in Jesus to the authorities or that he hung himself in sorrow due to his betrayal. I didn't know that no one who was expected to come to Christ's aid did not. To me, this was the most heartbreaking part of the story. I wept when his friends kept quiet while he was beaten and called blasphemer. He was alone in his suffering as the crowd watched, perhaps some cheering, some in awe, some frozen with terror. Gibson had Satan walking through the crowds of onlookers. This immediately reminded me of Professor Thistlethwaite's recent op-ed where she wrote Gibson's portrayal in this scenario was sadly and disturbingly accurate in that "the Devil is always in the crowd that stands by and in so doing abets horrific mass torture and death."

Why do we say nothing? This is the first place this movie took me. I wept for the fact that we watch suffering and betrayal in one form or another on a daily basis and often do nothing. Maybe is this one of the greatest lessons we are taught in the Bible. Loyalty to humanity and God means speaking up when you don't want to, when you fear for your safety, reputation or status. Am I to take from this that we failed to speak up for God? Is this sin to be repeated again and again?

Sometimes it is the stranger, the one we fear or have ignored in the past who comes, even begrudgingly, to our assistance, carries our cross with us, holds our broken heart and hands and gives us comfort. That is why we love the stranger for just when the world gets dark there is light that can come from unexpected places. This is a testimony to the power of God's love for us all. He is everywhere.

Amen.

1. Believe More

I don’t think it’s too soon to make my New Year’s Resolutions. I can start with the usual like eat less, exercise more, keep in better contact with family and friends, learn how to mediate, start practicing yoga – baby steps…. This is a good start I think. It is missing something though. I just read an op-ed in the New York Times called Taking Science on Faith by Paul Davies. It is about the inevitable and ironic intersection of science and religion in faith. He remarks that as a student he was told the job of the scientist “is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance.” This did not stop him from wondering about “why the laws of physics are what they are.” In other words, what is the source of these laws? Davies asserts that scientists, for good reason, are generally not too comfortable with this type of questioning. If reason desserts us at this point, “then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.” Ultimately, like religion, science must rely on faith, “namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too.” We must believe in those things unseen, not “based on testable hypotheses.”

What my list is missing is believing more. Faith needs to be at the top of my list in red ink and underlined in bubble letters. Critical analysis and skepticism are healthy, productive and necessary but they are at some point useless. I can question the laws of the universe and the evils of humanity and will likely never know the truth of origin, of reason, of purpose and despondent give up the church, the Book, living life in its fullest but I don’t want to do this for where else would I go? Barbara Brown Taylor writes that it is with Jesus and within the church community “where we have heard the words of eternal life.” Here is “where we have come to believe and know the Holy One of God.” So, nurturing my belief, my faith in human goodness, in Christ, and in the good news gives me life and energy for the rest of my endeavors.

Amen.

Bottomless Blessings

On the eve of Thanksgiving I will take a moment to count my blessings. I can tell you that last week, at peak fall color, I got to sit on my couch in my living room around noon and watch the gold fall from the trees and pool at their bases. I know that God cushioned the blow for them when they came to rest. I am blessed every time I get to witness, unhurried, earth’s cycle and glory.

I am blessed. I can’t be afraid to say it in fear that it will go away. Alternatively, I read in an article by a 9/11 widow that she believed that by voicing the blessings she and her husband shared in love and life they were insuring themselves against tragedy. Perhaps nothing can protect us from harm. The only thing we do know is that we must get back up after tragedy, after failing, after hitting bottom.

The blessing of abundance is due every human. So while I list my joys I need to keep in mind my brothers and sisters who are not partaking in the feast today or tomorrow. Yes, I love my family. My children are love in flesh. The amazing gift they give is they show me that the human heart’s capacity for love is bottomless. I am grateful for friendship, excellent health and my church community. I love my books and my Seminary and the silly things that make me smile and take my mind off of the hungry world for just a minute.

What about this hungry world? Mark Winne recently wrote an article in the Washington Post about canned compassion. This is a wonderful term aptly describing our holiday overindulgence of both cake and compassion. Today we would like the hungry fed but as Winne states, this “cycle of need -- always present, rarely sated, never resolved -- will continue.” It will continue past Thursday and into shopping frenzy Friday. I don’t mean to judge. I like to shop too. I like the things wrapped in pretty papers that don’t change any systems or people for the better. I understand that trying to fix poverty is much more difficult than dropping cans of corn and boxes of pasta into a plastic bin. However, we must understand, and care once we understand, that these offerings are maintenance. Winne asserts that the donors and those relying on them are “trapped in an ever-expanding web of immediate gratification that offered the recipients no long-term hope of eventually achieving independence and self-reliance.” Most people are too tired or too disinterested in the “task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States.”

Food insecurity is one symptom of the larger problem of poverty and if we continue down the endless road of creating more and more food banks for the ever increasing hungry population then we are merely helping to dig a deeper hole for us all.

I believe that the abundance in our lives is meant to be shared. It is not meant to shrink our hearts out of fear or inspire tighter fists around our coins. Our abundance is tied up to the abundance of our neighbor and stranger. This Thanksgiving I pray that the blessing of compassion does not stop with a can of soup for compassion born of love is bottomless, creative and hopeful for those in need of more than just a sandwich and a prayer. Let us, let me, have the courage today and tomorrow and after the philanthropy party has ended to stare hunger and its begetter in the face. If even a few of us named it and demanded change the lines would shorten and all of our blessings would grow.

Maybe...

In light of our class discussions on torture and definitions of what it means to be human I wanted to share a way my congregation took a step to humanize those who are collectively dehumanized, prisoners.

I have been very interested in the prison ministry Companions Journeying Together and saw an opportunity for my congregation to get involved by writing Christmas cards to incarcerated men and women. It is difficult at times to distinguish between giving charity versus giving justice and I pray that today we gave a little bit of justice with our words of love and hope.

Those who participated, many who were the youth of our church, thought long and hard about what to write in the cards. At every opportunity members of the Mission Committee spoke with the children and adults who struggled with what to write to strangers we are often taught through media to view as having little to no human value and dignity. We asked them to imagine being away from their families for the Holidays and how if would feel if one's sibling or parent were incarcerated. We stressed they are ordinary people just like us who might have made some bad choices, might be innocent, might have just been trying to survive. We are all just trying to survive.

Sounded mostly like charity to me but then I read some of messages in the cards and our children said things about God's love, joy and peace in the world, new beginnings and hope. They all wrote about Hope. There is the justice. I don't think we share our hope with strangers we think are less human than us. Maybe. We all need Hope. That is why we have God. Maybe, just maybe, a prisoner became a person to one of these children or to their parent. Then, maybe they will be a little less tolerant of torture, a corrupt criminal justice system, and the dehumanisation that occurs when a man, a woman or a child drops their identity into a cardboard box and walks into a place where fear and complacency reign. Maybe one card reaching one person might change her life by reminding her of her humanity.

Amen.

Some More Thoughts on Torture

In regards to Torture, and specifically to waterboarding, we, as Christians, have further dishonored God by using the same Baptismal waters (in essence all water can be seen as healing and cleansing and thus sacred) we wash ourselves in and with for our personal and spiritual rebirth, to destroy the God given human dignity in another person. This is sacrilegious and a sin in its greatest sense. We have sinned against our God by taking away the humanity of a soul made in the image of God.

Jesus stepped into the river with us because, to paraphrase Barbara Brown Taylor, he did not want to be separated from us. Baptism is the new gift of life and we “invite the newcomers to step into the river with Jesus, so that their beings are wrapped up with all other beings: the well ones, and the hurt ones, the brave ones and the weak ones, the successful ones and the ones who cannot seem to get anything right.” Waterboarding sanctifies evil and dismisses as insignificant Jesus’ communion with us at the river’s edge.

I pray for those souls we have abandoned and violated through deliberate acts of harm and for those, especially Christians who understand the sacredness of Baptismal water, who have lost their souls, which are, as Professor Thistlethwaite asserts,” the root from which decency arises”. The truth is we all fall a little farther from our Father when someone is tortured. The intimacy of torture carves out the heart of the torturer and leaves an empty shell for the world. Emotion and compassion are entirely suppressed. Whoever was the torturer stays the torturer and the tortured are likely never to fully reclaim their humanity again.
Help us to remember our Baptisms and our vows to love one another, all made in the image of God.

Amen.

Here I Go Again.

I am afraid it has happened. I have yet again become what it is I most fear. One would think I would have learned the lesson of restrained judgment from years of having falsely judged others. Take the time, pre-baby, I was horrified by mothers who chose not to breastfeed. I then of course found myself crying over my imperfect anatomy that made nursing agonizing and almost impossible. I cried giving my baby a bottle of formula but was also so grateful there was an alternative. I have also been scathing in my criticism for the desperate mothers and fathers who run through McDonald’s drive thrus to quiet the raging storms in the back of their vans. Needless to say my kids yell out as we drive by the golden arches, “EIO!!” (as in Old MacDonald). French fries are their best friends.

Well, clearly the lesson did not stick. The more I read and learn and think about Jesus the more I want to talk about him (usually in very inappropriate settings like the gym or in the concessions line at the movies) and the more I have to remind myself that up until a couple of years ago I couldn't even fathom to speak his name or would begin to perspire if anyone in my company spoke his name. As I might have mentioned before, I was not raised in church. I think I went to Easter one time in a plum denim two piece suit with heart pockets my neighbor gave me. Maybe I didn’t even go then. I can’t remember.

Today though, as I walk down the pharmacy isle or the sock isle in a department store, I see Jesus everywhere, in Christmas ornaments, red and green candles, babies in mangers. He is with me every step I take in almost every environment. However, mostly it is the secular Jesus we see painted on the twirling ornaments or printed on the cards. We tend to think to ourselves only of presents and chocolates and family. Not bad things, but what about the revolution he represents (and he does so I argue even for non Christians)? What about his making the heads of the Empire and Temple spin by preaching to the crowds about love and healing and yes, judgment.
I know why some folks get mad that God is lost somewhere in the stacks of gifts and pretty colored magazine pages selling bijous or the latest must-have electronics. I fall for it too. It is consumption at its best. Where I was blind, now I see. I also understand why people take their Good Books and knock on stranger’s doors to talk about the good news. In some small way they want to save a piece of the world from falling into darkness or pull someone out of it. I get it. Today I love Christmas, but for different reasons than I did a few years ago and especially as a child. It is a sacred day we set aside to celebrate the birth of the Light of the World.

Amen.

Yes, It's True. All Life is One.

In our ongoing Public Theology class discussions about the nature of the human and the definition of human we have mostly spoken in theological terms but my eyes have been opened to scientific interpretations of humanity’s undeniable connection to all of creation and more specifically our genetic connection to one another.

James Lawson, describes in his heart-felt essay on race, Higher Ground, what he believes continues to plague our country, impedes human development and reconciliation with God. He remarks that in the United States there “are many who see their normalcy in terms of seeing me as a nonbeing.” The racist’s denial of our “profound relationality of humanity”, as Susan Thistlewaite states in Adam, Eve and the Genome, of not sharing and deriving from one blood starves humans of human intimacy and creates a culture of death. It is our collective expression of an “enmity toward life.” How can we deny our spiritual connections when our genetic ones are so absolute? Based on findings from the Human Genome Project, Professor Thistlethwaite writes that humans are “more than 99.9% the same.” We should all have taken a deep breath at this revelation. The burden of hating the other is no longer scientifically rational. In truth, we are each other’s brother and sister.

Reading this chapter from Professor Thistlethwaite’s book reminded me of my grandfather, Dr. Charles Richard Drew. He was the first Director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank and he was African-American. During World War II he saved thousands of lives, of all races, by discovering how to separate plasma from red blood cells and store it for later use. Incredibly, during the war American military policy ordered segregation of blood from black donors. He argued that from a purely scientific perspective there was no difference between black blood and white blood but fear of “contamination”, of mixing of bloods was greater than the potential life source. Once again, science was manipulated to discriminate, diminish another and sever human bonds.

Science shall not intimidate religion to “stay in its corner.” The Human Genome Project has opened the door wide to further evidence of some divine order, some exposition of our irrefutable interconnectedness and thus our utter dependency on one another, on love.

Amen.

Torture is Not The Way

I am beginning to finally understand the significance of connections in the good news. Why God came to earth, why Jesus loved love and literally embraced and healed those suffering from physical pain, rejection and isolation. I know the story does not end on the cross or on glorious Easter Sunday. Yes, there was resurrection, Christ’s triumph over death to show humanity (Christians as members of humanity) how to fix their part of the world with God’s love as model and the church as symbol and actor playing the central role for Christianity to reclaim compassion, forgiveness and mercy in so many dark places in the world. This is the New Life, the New Humanity John deGruchy describes in Christian Humanism.

In order for this new humanity to be realized here and now, Christians as individuals, and specifically within the church family, are required to stand in opposition to systems and institutions that flourish unchallenged because of our inhumanity to one another. Torture immediately comes to mind as it is currently making headlines in the news. It is a fallacy to believe that torture is an isolated incident that does not amplify the crimes, or suspected, crimes formerly committed, scattering the iniquity like dandelion seeds in the wind. These seeds plant themselves deep in the soil, our souls, and we readily harvest them for future consumption. Shouldn't we, the United States, be on the side of good, of upholding human dignity, of simply stopping the chain of violence in the world? It must start somewhere for there to be peace.

The truth is, as Susan Thistlethwaite recently expressed in a Washington Post op-ed, “the community that offers a license to torture is fundamentally degraded in its claim to be a civilized nation.” We are certainly not the Christian nation some claim us to be once we lose sight of right and wrong, good and evil. One of my classmates wrote that many humans, and particularly Americans, “tend to think it irrational that all people, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, class, gender, sexual preference, etc. should be treated equally and with respect.” However, he continued, “it seems that if Jesus is an example of the way that God sees and wishes to interact in the world- then it is totally rational to believe in the dignity and worth of all people.” When we condone torture we no longer value life or the life of God in another human. We all suffer, whether today or tomorrow, once that seeds comes to plant itself in our front yards, by our children’s footsteps, touching our palms as we dig in our gardens trying to grow things. It grows and becomes a part of our landscape. It is shame and darkness. James Lawson reminds us in his essay, Higher Ground, that in our constant struggle to learn from and honor Jesus, we know there to be another way. We must "live out of love" by refusing to imitate evil and instead emulate Christ.

Amen.

The Healing Church

For my book group at church we are reading a wonderful selection of sermons by Barbara Brown Taylor. I am continually stirred and amazed at the power of her words, at their potent simplicity and remarkable insight.

I just finished her essay Hands and Feet and saw a clear nexus between this writing and our deGruchy chapter reading, A Christian. His description of God’s calling to the Christian community to form a church body that “does not exist to promote its own institutional interests but the gospel of Christ’s peace that reconciles those divided by enmities, both ancient and modern” is in essence Taylor’s model of the new humanity inspired and engendered by the appendages we take for granted in labor and feeding and holding, our hands and feet. She writes that Jesus healed with his hands, walked into the lives of those starving for promise and wrapped his love around the unlovable. As a church community, the appointed body of Christ, we must also grow calluses from giving our hands over to healing and wear our soles thin and raw by spreading the good news near and far. In the vision and reality of the new humanity the church must play the role of healer and reconciler. What we do with our hands and our feet will determine whether or not the church becomes, as deGruchy states, “an anticipatory sign of a true globalism of justice and peace, a globalism in which people who are different from each other find themselves at home together, a celebration of God’s jubilee.”

Establishing the reign of God, reviving human wholeness, is the sole end of the church and therefore it must “challenge all forces and processes that are dehumanizing and depersonalizing, and especially those that are blatantly crimes against humanity.” This becomes clearer to me everyday and with every lucid articulation of our prophetic role. In the case of torture, currently being debated in regards to the President’s recent attorney general nomination, churches, synagogues, mosques, should cry out that in this deliberate act of dehumanization we all fall further away from God, from our humanity, thus our salvation.

What does the smoothness and unmarred condition or perhaps the cracks and scars on my hands and feet have to say about my care for this new humanity? What of those extremities belonging to the church? “Where have they been, whom have they touched, how have they served, what have they proclaimed?” In the end, like Jesus, it is the state of our collective hands and feet that will tell the story.

Amen.

Our Peculiar History of Becoming Human

In reflecting on "Who is the Human Being?" and Professor Thistlethwaite's lecture on God and the Human, I began to think about my family's peculiar history. There is an American story that is unknown and is almost never told and rarely acknowledged by this culture.

As Professor Thistlethwaite pointed out race is a cultural construct and integral to our culture's definitions of who is human and even to the extent of what percentage of you is more human than another. In my family, we were told some portions of our genes were more human than others. You see, there were the masters and the slaves and often the slaves bore the master's children. That is why I look the way I do. That is why I have cousins with long tight little curls, what we call kinky, and big blue or green eyes. Some have fine caramel colored skin with bone straight hair, and others pale, milky skin with lovely broad features. My grandmother's siblings had fine features and light colored hair and they, in order to become more human, "passed" as white. Out of ten children in her family only a couple chose not to "cross over". The ones that did pass as white moved to various parts of the country only to reconnect with the ones who "stayed" black on occasion and always in private. Incredibly, we still have family today who will not acknowledge us publicly as family because they live as "white" (again, thus more human) and don't want the shame of their African heritage to be exposed to the world. Why?

I believe that as a result of the slave society and enduring racist ideology the development of the notion of what is human came to be something other than a person with "black blood", engendering the creation of the One-Drop rule. It amazes and saddens me that one minute some of my ancestors were invisible, sub-human in the eyes of the majority and then in a single moment, or perhaps after a slower more deliberate transformation in becoming white, they were no longer tainted or insignificant to the world. They became "fully human" by crossing that line of race. I imagine they lived better material lives. They were able to live in finer neighborhoods, eat in any restaurant, sit in any seat on a train or bus or in a theatre without shame or humiliation. I want so much to disapprove of their choices but I know why they did it. Who doesn't want to be considered more human, more worthy of love and respect and freedom? Becoming human required their sacrifice and courage. Or maybe they simply believed that the racial categorization of Negro (or black) for people with fair skin and light hair was preposterous and they chose to defy our racist culture. Either way, they crossed over into being and into a "legitimate" existence in the face of arbitrary and oppressive laws. They became the agents of their own liberation.
May we all be liberated into full humanity.

Amen.

The Cost of Salvation

It occurred to me while reading a chapter in John deGruchy's book Christian Humanism that personal salvation is costly. This is it. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." I think "losing" one's life can be taken both literally and figuratively. One can "lose" one's life by sacrificing it for a cause like Christ did or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi. The giving of one's self, one's physical body and spirit, over to death is perhaps the greatest of all costs but there is another. There is the cost of abandoning one's prejudices, confronting one's hatred and desire to live in this world without sacrifice, without obedience to Jesus as Lord.

I am forever in conflict of whether we must we put down our nets in order to walk wholly with Christ or whether we can bear our crosses and love like our Lord, as deGruchy states, to "put God's reign first", have our lives rescued from darkness while living with our feet firmly planted in this world, working and parenting and not always sharing our bread. We are saved when we lose ourselves, when we render our lives in the service of our fellow humans but how do we do this and continue to live life devoted to "the gospel of prosperity and ego-satisfaction"? I don't know how to strike a balance between living a semi-ascetic lifestyle, devoted to prayer and service, and being preoccupied with materialistic successes. It makes pure discipleship impracticable. What a cost! I do know that salvation in this life is a commitment to humanising one another. Perhaps I can begin here. By somehow humanising my enemy, my neighbor or the stranger, I am forced to find in them the Divine also found in me. It is my humanity and your humanity fully alive.
Amen.

Where are the Women?

One fundamental problem with complaining about the Catholic and conservative evangelical Christian club is that it is a boy's club. In my last post I expressed, as gently as possible, my disappointment with the movie Bella. While sharing my opinion about the movie with some of my female counterparts, I came to realize what I was most frustrated by was that it was yet another man who was writing and telling the story about a woman. In my class we have discussed how women are often viewed as lacking adequate moral agency to make certain personal decisions, like having an abortion or not. Without proper matured morality, like that of a man, we remain children and in need of a parent to make decisions for us. The female character in the movie was portrayed as not capable of making her own informed decision so the compassionate male hero stepped in to "aid" her in her decision making about having her baby.

Similarly, I read in an article today by the Associated Press, that Pope Benedict XVI expressed "that pharmacists have a right to use conscientious objection to avoid dispensing emergency contraception or euthanasia drugs - and told them they should also inform patients of the ethical implications of using such drugs." How can a man be so clear about what is right and wrong concerning the goings-on in a uterus?! How can he claim authority over a woman's body? Millions of women suffer greatly because of pregnancy. How can it be the morally right thing to do if pregnancy means more poverty, more domestic abuse, more fear, less freedom to create a safer and peaceful life? I had bad pregnancies with each of my three children. I had an abscess with the first which made a cesarean section necessary and the other two had their own complications. Pregnancy was not kind to my body. I suffered through most of it. My children are precious to me but my body could not handle another physical challenge like that. Are women to literally sacrifice their lives (for sex!) to bear a child? That appears to be the message these men have for us. They do not take into consideration that contraception may be one of the only ways we can save a piece of ourselves. Since sex is considered a right of the male, when and where they want it, how is a woman to protect herself, especially if violence is threatened?

Where are the conservative evangelical women's voices? The empresses of morality? What do Catholic women have to say about their Pope denying them (and the rest of us) contraception? They must exist. Perhaps the media does not find their messages relevant or of interest. We talk about broadcasting a progressive Christian agenda but what really needs to happen is women in this country, this world, need to begin speaking up for themselves. We will define our world, our rights, our futures.

Amen.

The Beautiful Fantasy

The last time I went to see a fairytale there was a witch, a princess and a strapping prince. Well, in the highly promoted movie Bella, written by Director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, there is the evil witch named Abortion, a princess named All Unborn Children and Jose, ex-soccer player turned prince.

First I should say it is a beautiful movie and I did my share of crying. The scenes of New York are typical and for those of us who secretly desire to have a studio there for weekend trips to Manhattan it was a great vicarious excursion to the little Island. The actors were more beautiful than the cinematography. It was a pleasure to watch the intensity in their eyes, to hear their voices, to listen to the passion in the Spanish language. Independent film is one more way to promote democracy and in this case hopefully love.

That said, I must now confess I was ultimately disappointed by the film. This is the synopsis: Unwed waitress gets pregnant and Jesus looking-friend offers to raise the baby on his own to prevent her from having an abortion and to fill a huge, gaping hole in his heart. Interestingly, Jose, the Jesus-look alike, is from a loving and presumably middle class family – though not originally from money. There is lots of love and wisdom flowing in that house, in contrast to the childhood home void of intimacy for the waitress. I wanted to hug Jose's mother and sit at their dinner table to feel the familial embrace. I kept thinking throughout though, what are the chances that such a young man in search of purpose and redemption asks a broke pregnant mother to raise her child? I would guess that this almost never happens. That is Hollywood. That is called a fairytale. I don’t mean to be cynical but when the Catholic Church and Focus on the Family are on a promoting mission one has to wonder about their motives. We all have them.

We also all celebrate fantasy. In fact, that is why we love the movies. We love to lose ourselves in emotion and our daydreams. In my class we have been discussing how Christian progressives, evangelical progressives I might add, need to become better acquainted with emotion as a part of our agenda. As Professor Susan Thistlethwaite stated, “To be effective in public theology we have to have an emotional connection with how people really live their lives and their lived theologies. Lived theologies are very emotional and intimate.” A classmate also brought up the fact that people are very emotionally tied to their worldviews, especially if the worldview will keep them out of hell. It stems from the base and perpetual fear of being separated from God.

While rationality does not always change hearts, it does keep us grounded in reality. I think emotions can lead us to believing in fantasy and that is, in my opinion, a sin. It is often a lie. It is a tale told to reinforce the status quo and it can destroy lives. Were the people (by the way my theatre was packed with people opening night in Warrenville, IL) clapping at the end of the movie because there was finally triumph over the evil witch abortion, for the love shared in the family, for the miracle of life? I am sure it was for a little bit of all the above but for one to walk away thinking Choice is no longer necessary for a woman because a handsome young man or someone, some thing (her sanity, God, her courage) will come to her rescue, is false. It is usually just her, her mind, her will, her sense for what is right and wrong that will aid her in her choice. Instead, I am hoping that some of us walked away from the movie motivated to take a risk to love another human just because we can see in their sorrow our own brokenness. This is where the healing of the world begins.

We Can Do Better

In our most recent class discussion we touched upon the need for a progressive voice and movement to, as Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite stated, “take back the family and deal with the REAL threats to ourselves and the lives of our children”.
One obstacle to creating such a progressive family agenda is that we simply don’t like to be told what to do. I think most “liberal” Christians have become so accustomed to a secular framework of thinking and living that any organized effort to articulate a set of shared principles might frighten some who enjoy their freedom of choice in a broad spectrum of areas. This comfort and expectation of freedom is natural. We have come to worship individualism over community and become skeptical of any corporate agenda that requires our critical thinking to extend into those personal realms that might be considered off limits like one’s sexuality, choice of entertainment (like violent movies and video games), drug use, and family dynamics.

We can do better than the Value Voters who manufacture fear concerning homosexuality and abortion. In my opinion, by rooting their movement in hatred and misunderstanding, Christian conservatives have effectively proclaimed their rejection of the teachings of Christ. I don’t think this is too extreme a view. Clearly their dogma, not taken from the Gospels, trumps the teachings of the one they call Savior, Light of the World. His call to love one another, to care for the orphaned, the widowed, to embrace the forgotten, the hungry and to fear lust for money and power are regarded as musings of the Son of God. According to the Value Voter agenda, our concerted attacks against abortion and homosexuality will almost single handedly heal our families and our country. We can do better.

We need to begin setting the agenda and not just responding to one thrown our way. We need to be pro-active and creative with our language and vision of a society in which children, families, community, education and health come first. We can’t always be afraid to offend. I know I am constantly tiptoeing around certain issues and language in order to keep everyone happy but how can peace come second, how can responsible family planning be a hushed subject? Roll up our sleeves, roll out the butcher paper, take out the pens and let us forge our way toward the Kingdom of God.

Dear Mr. Dobson

Dear Mr. James Dobson,
Regarding your theory of a wider Satanic conspiracy against the "traditional" family, I'd like to add to your list of the top two (and seemingly only) threats, that being abortion and gay marriage, some other forces at work against the family you fail to mention. You might want to consider putting these at the top of your little list of the works of Satan.

Minimum wage forces countless mothers and fathers to work longer hours, away from their children (who are likely in mediocre daycare, if at all) to provide the bare necessities of living, usually not including health care or having access to good schools. It creates familial tensions, fuels rage and depression linked to domestic violence. Well, what about domestic violence? I hear no protestations from your party about the epidemic of women and children suffering and fearing for their lives in their own homes. Though, perhaps like in many other cultures where women are second class citizens, dependent primarily upon their husbands for survival, you might think a little abuse is good for the lady, a little fear of the head of the household is Biblically blessed.

Linked to the problem of minimum wage is poverty. Poverty often times creates home environments inhospitable to self-fulfillment, self-definition and peace of mind. Poverty can lead to incarceration. I am working with some women in prison who tried to make ends meet for their families but had to turn to illicit means to survive. Now they are sitting in prison, dreaming about the children they cannot touch or read to or help nurture into adulthood. The number of women in prison keeps growing and they are leaving their children behind. Your anti-gay focus is not helping them to keep their families together, their households intact.

This brings me to your sacred household. How is it that so many women, previously living in the sacred heterosexual marriages, are now single mothers left almost entirely with the job of raising their children? Where are the fathers? Why are you not exposing their sins to the world? Is their rejection and abandonment of their children, financially and emotionally, that much lesser of an evil than gay marriage? Your rote cry for the "45 million unborn children" says your heart is more with them than for those who are already here, already searching for stability, a future, reprieve for a parent, a way out, joy and someone to give them a voice.

Furthermore, considering the fact that more than half of all heterosexual marriages now end in divorce one might think they have it wrong. Is abortion and gay marriage to blame for the failing heterosexual marriages in the United States?

Though doth protest too much! Your obsession with gay marriage and abortion signals your own fears of internal conflicts, your own aversion to mystery and beauty, to equality, to ambiguity and life's inevitable chaos. You prefer, as Chris Hedges states, the "petrified, binary world of fixed, immutable roles..." This you believe will provide you with personal security, salvation and ultimately power.

Jesus never spoke about homosexuality. He did speak about poverty, charity and love of one's enemy though. Do you value your cause of an anti-gay agenda more so than the words of Jesus? It appears to be so. You strive for salvation not through living the words of your Savior but by acting on your biases, cultivating your hatred and that of your followers.

Please reconsider your list of evil things. Reconsider your life's message to the millions who listen to you for guidance, for comfort. It will help you to find your soul again and, as Susan Thistlethwaite says, "live a truthful life".

Amen

Love Thy Neighbor, Love the Environment

I wasn't quite sure how to articulate my position on gross human exploitation of the environment and its connection to our culture of violence because I have been waiting for a theory, a fundamental theological doctrine connecting the dots to fall into my lap. It just made sense to me that we cannot be successful saving the environment if we do not first stop to evaluate our own human interactions, our relations and whether or not we follow the commandment to love one another. I believe that this commandment is not just applicable to Christians but to all of humanity, the secularists, "believers", agnostics, and atheists alike. We may not like it but we have the choice to either love one another, though imperfectly, or to perish together as a species.

As one of my very erudite classmates observed in a recent class forum, "Christianity is always a little scary for me because I know that the deeper I go into the faith the more it demands of me. It seems to me that church at once is the place of solace where we can get nourishment and support as we go deeper and extend ourselves more widely but it is also the place that pushes us to be instruments of God’s in all that is most scary and raw." Yes! The discomfort I feel and that a listener or reader might experience upon evaluating the theory suits the profundity of the revelation. We should all take pause to reassess our every step and belief.

In my frantic search to find some truth to this connection between love of self, and other and the environment I stumbled upon the Evangelical Climate Initiative. www.christiansandclimate.org I was struck by this particular statement located in Claim 3 of the Initiative:
Christians must care about climate change because we are called to love our neighbors, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to protect and care for the least of these as though each was Jesus Christ himself (Mt. 22:34-40; Mt. 7:12; Mt. 25:31-46).

This was the doctrine I needed (though perhaps obvious to others) in order to make the claim that our actions extend beyond what car we drive or what cleaning solution we use but challenge our very purpose for existing and finding peace and fulfillment in life. I don't know of any other reason of why I am on this earth other than to love my neighbor and God. Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.

In this quest for a doctrine I also came upon the book Serve God, Save the Planet by Dr. Matthew Sleeth. I find he is a true non-conformist in the greatest sense because he calls us to fulfill the commandment to love one another by leaving a smaller footprint on the planet. What made my spirit jump for joy was reading that in his commitment to God and to creation, in the radical reordering of his life, he came to be closer to God. There were less "things" in the way to salvation.

“Although I believed in the “environmental cause” before I accepted Christ as my Savior, my belief did not translate into action.” He also states that after he “became a Christian, I went through a process of examining my life, and I found it was filled with sin and hypocrisy. I decided to conduct an assessment and figure out a rough estimate of the actual environmental impact by my family. This honest inventory indicated what the Christian faith required of me.” Furthermore, Dr. Sleeth writes, due to “these changes, we have more time for God. Spiritual concerns have filled the void left by material ones. Owning fewer things has resulted in things no longer owning us.”

I think God is found in the trees, cleansing breezes, sunrises, glacier lakes, falling snow, and rambling streams. I think that is why Jesus went into the wilderness. To be challenged but also to be closer to God. I know what is required of me. I pray I take the necessary steps to love my enemy, my neighbor and the stranger to restore the earth to her glory in honor of our Creator.

Amen

Why Now?

If I had the time I know I could have done my homework to find out why the Bush Administration is boldly defying China's orders not to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I am just happy to see this gentle spirit arm in arm with a man who is much in need of the Dalai Lama's teachings on compassion, kindness and selflessness.

In the fall of my junior year at Smith College I lived with Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, India, the home of the Dalai Lama. I knew almost nothing about him expect for the fact that he was the political and spiritual leader of the Tibetans. I barley even knew who the Tibetan people were or where they came from. My life changed after I started reading the works by His Holiness. It was really when I began to develop my faith as a human and later as a Christian (though Buddhism is still very close to my heart).

At this time, I also came to understand the connection between one's faith and human rights. Human suffering is intimately connected to the politics in a neighborhood, a nation. We cannot address the issue of suffering without looking at the policies of a particular government.

I know he is human but he practices every day, every minute to be a better person, to help alleviate the suffering of his fellow humans. "My religion is a religion of kindnes." That is why he is such a threat to those who oppress and count on human suffering to keep people silent.

God bless the Dalai Lama. Thank you for showing us your smile and your strength to love your enemy as we have also been taught by Jesus.
Amen.

The Problem with Waste

The irony surrounding the S-Chip controversy seems to be the issue of waste. President Bush does not want to appear to be throwing money at a problem that in reality his agenda (the war agenda primarily) has exacerbated. The “problem” here is poverty, the biggest waste in terms of loss of potential, productivity and social and cultural renewal. His veto of this health program, aimed at covering poor children, comes as a surprise when he has demonstrated again and again that his Administration’s policies are based on the principles of waste. This is not to say the program is a waste of time or money. In fact, it is quite the contrary. We actually have an opportunity to prevent some waste, to give families some relief, some peace of mind, but mostly to share the love of Christ, which Mr. Bush supposedly knows so much about.

I admit to not knowing (who does?) how this program would turn out but I bet that it would not end up costing as much as the war in Iraq and I am certain that with brilliant minds and compassionate hearts some things could be tweaked to make it a model for the world.

I’m deeply disappointed with his decision. I am sad not for liberals or for those conservatives who dare to speak for the underrepresented, but for Christians who are getting a bad rap. I am sad that we have a President who claims to love God but all we do is war with poorer nations and deny hard working families the opportunities to succeed. Can it really only be about not wanting to pay for a few extra children? Would that be so horrible? So costly? So threatening to capitalism?

Maybe the super wealthy of this country simply don’t want to share the space at the top. Maybe they truly believe that they accomplished everything, every victory in their lives on their own and that the government has no place in our lives except to help corporations thrive and “defend” the country from nameless, faceless terrorists. This is selective governing that benefits only a few. Perhaps they just don’t care because they will have departed from this life in a decade or two and every man, woman and child must fend for him and herself. To hell with the future generations. The truth of the matter is that this will cost all of us at some time.

Now, what excuse do the “Value Voter” Christians have for not pouring into the streets to protest his veto? As writer Marilynne Robinson inquired, did Jesus tout laissez faire capitalism? One would expect to hear from the Value Voters Summit in Washington this weekend about the waste, and not only about the lives they pray, cry and stand in line for at health clinics. What about the wasted potential in America’s youth, the waste in war, the waste in efforts and spirit to fight the love between two grown adults who happen to be the same sex and the wasted joy and vitality of those children who, by chance because they are lumped together with a smaller group of kids not “entitled” to this program, will not make it on a list to receive the health care so many of us take for granted. Jesus gave us a social gospel bound to the individual gospel of salvation as a guide for our lives. Are we listening to his call? Are measuring up to our Savior's expectations? I believe we are squandering God’s grace and eternal love for us. That is the greatest waste of all.

Amen.

The Other Inconvenient Truth

This post is a preview of the editorial I am turning in for class. It is a work in progress.

Am I the only one to see it? This gaping window of opportunity situated in the brush and eucalyptus of the Hollywood Hills. Unprecedented globalization is the chance for Hollywood’s royalty to take a stand against human on human violence. The catch is I’m not talking about the violence we hear about in Iraq, Darfur or Burma, but in their movies. This is not a new request or a call for censorship. Nor is it a hollow scolding but a real plea to each and every actor to take responsibility for and genuinely reflect on the messages they send out into the world through their work.

I admit, as a child I had a voracious appetite for cult horror flicks like Friday 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. The bloodier they were the better. The more chopping of human parts the more thrilling it was for me. Then I grew up. I had spoken like a child, reasoned like a child but eventually put an end to my childish ways. As a young adult (and certainly now) each time I watched something ultra-violent I felt sickened and sad and knew that it was changing a part of me. It is time Hollywood grows up too.

What got me thinking about all this is the big talk about the environment coming out of Hollywood. Not to mention all the talk about genocide, AIDS, Katrina, the Iraq war and animal rights. There is no question that the world (the industrial world) watches Hollywood so buying the Toyota Prius, now as fashionable as a nymph-like Stella McCartney dress or Versace handbag, is a good start to helping spread the word about the importance of being green. However, there is one very large component an avid environmentalist like Leonardo DiCaprio is missing. He fails to see that the very work he produces in his movies, predominately with ultra-violent themes, (like the Departed, Romeo and Juliet) severely compromises his environmental efforts and sends contradictory messages to the public. By shooting another human in the head with potential (at best) pretend consequences of contrition, DiCaprio loses power and authority to share with us his passion for creation.

As the saying goes we are what we eat. Bare with me. We are also parts of passages of books we’ve read, lines of poetry rest somewhere deep within us, art we have seen in museums or handed to us created by our children become a part of who we are. The same goes for what we witness in our homes, on our streets and on the big screen, make believe or not. As a result of ubiquitous violence in film we become a little less critical of cruelty in our lives and world, imperceptibly so perhaps, but our tolerance of inhumanity increases. We become more accustomed to hate, to the rejection of forgiveness and develop a refined aquaintance with lust for power and retribution. We don’t need scientists to prove this, to chart it for us and quantify the results. There are some things we know to be true, whether or not we see them. That is called faith.

The way we treat one another is inextricably linked to how we view and treat the environment. The most elemental fact about our lives as humans is that we live in community within an astoundingly complex and interactive ecosystem. As one eco-theologist stated “humans receive from this system, impact on it, dwell inside of it, depend upon it; we are not in any sense of the word apart from the natural order, but bound to it for our very survival.” The same can be said for our human community. We are bound to each other for our survival thus we must view the handprint of the Divine in one another, as well as in creation, if we are to survive. If we are not loving one another our environment ultimately suffers as can be evidenced in our poorest communities like New Orleans where environmental degradation threatens human existence. Human justice issues are involved in every aspect of environmental destruction. There is no way to separate the way we live and think from the health of the environment.

We, as humans, cannot expect to elevate our compassion for the environment until we practice and are deliberate in our actions (on screen and off) in choice of occupation and life-style, to elevate our compassion for our fellow humans. It is a convoluted and erroneous notion that the more we display and showcase violence in film and television to “explain” or scrutinize it the more we’ll understand it and expose it, thereby lessening its occurance and weakening its grip on us. In reality, we only perpetuate the violence in our society and world, we move no further from it to get a better perspective. Instead we fall more in love with it and allow for it to take deeper root in our hearts. That is its power.

This is not an argument positing moral absolutes. It is simply common sense. Perhaps it is the other inconvenient truth. That if we do not start speaking out against human violence in movies, on television, in video games, and in our homes, we will continue heading down the wrong path. Certainly we are all scared to make the radical re-ordering of our world views but our intellectual support for environmental causes is insufficient. We cannot save the planet without considering human relations, the impact on the most vulnerable, the global dynamics of poverty and underdevelopment, and neo-colonial exploitation of peoples and the earth. To succeed, we all must adopt a new set of values and standards that might be considered countercultural today but will be the norm tomorrow. Perhaps the stars can lead the way.

The Christ Pogonia

The article begins "I knew right away what it was." Paul Knoop found it while walking on a wooded trail in Ohio. The "small whorled pogonia, a tiny five-leaved white and yellow flower, is typically difficult to spot because some years it doesn't even bloom or emerge from the soil." This article was placed below an article about We Believe Ohio, likely in an Ohio magazine covering local stories. I was struck by the image of a rare pogonia emerging mysteriously, spontaneously almost, exemplifying our "wonderfully diverse planet."

Perhaps We Believe Ohio is this rare pogonia, revealing itself in a time when most needed, most unexpected to signify the wonderous, sacred diversity and beauty of our world. We are always searching for miracles and there is one right underfoot. Just when we think complacency rules, there, sprouting from between the cracks of pavement or under a plain fern, grows new life, the rare orchid, the voice of Christ resurrected to speak out against darkness and death.

I'm crossing wooded trails, peering under bushes to find my whorled pogonia. When will We Believe be in every state? United we cannot be defeated. This incredible diversity "remains vibrant in our corner of the world." Let us nurture it. Let us create an easement around it so that it may never be disturbed.

Amen

Jesus is My Billboard

I was at a flea market this weekend and I got it in my head after reading an essay by Anne Lamott that I would look for a pendant of Jesus. Lamott wears a medal of the Virgin Mary around her neck as a reminder of hope and forgiveness and of God’s enduring patience and love. I found one, perfectly tarnished and simple with an image of Jesus exposing his crowned and glowing heart. I put it on a silver necklace I found beside it and paid the kind woman a mere $8.00 for my daily reminder to (as We Believe Ohio so passionately states in their call to action) “act and speak in public ways on behalf of the poor, the voiceless, and the unrepresented”.

As Jesus dangles from my neck, I hesitate to say like a billboard, I am called to speak out and fight the urge to remain silent due to the weight of sorrow and sin in the world. The older I get though I see that there is little else in the world to worry or care about other than those who suffer beside me. I also know that I can’t help to heal the world if I don’t love myself and my God. The Reverend Tim Ahrens, We Believe Ohio (organization of diverse religious voices committed to the intersection of faith and public policy) founder, recounts a story about his mentor The Reverend Dr. Washington Gladden, an influential and inspirational soul in the Social Gospel Movement, speaking to his successor about public theology and social justice: “Every time I spoke out on issues of social justice it took something out of me. It drained my energy. It was the hardest thing I ever did. I never felt fully adequate to the calling. But what was harder still was looking into the eyes of the poor, the powerless, the oppressed, and the voiceless and considering that if I did not speak on their behalf, who would? I could not live with my silence in the face of such injustice.”

His statement sums it up for me. If I don’t speak up and respond to God’s calling, like so many of my Biblical brothers and sisters did (who often times initially resisted the calls), then who will be the voice against evil? We know that God is with us in the struggle to feed, clothe, educate and liberate people from poverty and oppression. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. famously repeated the statement that “the universe is on the side of justice” and is “under the control of a loving purpose”. I choose to believe, like We Believe Ohio, in justice for all, in the sanctity of pluralism, political expression and in a reconciling God.

I bring the pendant out of my shirt every now and then to let the light of day reach it, to give it some air. If I do not have Jesus as my billboard what do I have? I am still hesitant to leave the medal out at the grocery store or when I pick my son up from school but I know I can’t be silent any longer. There is too much at stake. Silence is draining as well. I want to help build bridges, heal broken communities and show love and justice as best as I am able. As I hold the silver piece in my hand, I feel as if I am coming to know and love my God more. I pray this medallion of Jesus revealing and sharing his heart with me, with us all, reminds me to give mine to the world in return.

Amen.
http://www.webelieveohio.org/

Just More of the Same

I know, call me square or not with the times but I have to say I find it strikingly odd and depressing that some churches are attempting to lure youth to their communities of faith through a titillating ultra-violent video game conveniently named Halo. I won’t go into the specifics of it but imagine lots of heady gore, spraying of bullets and boisterous cheers from its participants. Though most of the churches employing this new tactic likely have good intentions, as the parents and ministers of our children (including the larger community of children) we must ask if we are helping our youth or hurting them by giving them more of the same.

There is already too much violence and age inappropriate material in our homes and our culture. Halo is rated M for mature audiences but some churches are disregarding the label and are marketing it to the youth they seek. Perhaps those congregations would argue desperate measures for desperate times. Matt Richtell recently wrote an article for the New York Times titled Thou Shall Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church and posed the question at what cost to the children (I assert spiritually, psychologically and socially) are churches willing to “relate” to them and get them through the door.

The sin is not so much that we as humans are drawn to violence, and selfishness and other acts exemplifying our recurrent temporary losses of grace from God, but it is that we too often fail to deny our desires, and redirect them, for the benefit of our relationship with God and our community. What these churches are teaching children is violence (even holocaust) is “Ok” in the right environment, particularly if there is some Biblical lesson pertaining to Good and Evil and the End Times hidden amidst the bloodbath.

What is surprising is that a number of evangelical churches are using this recruiting tool as well. In some small, very small, way I had hoped that they would be the ones to uphold the standard for the rest of the Protestant churches to attain. Clearly they are just like the rest of us. We are failing our youth. We are unimaginative in our efforts to draw them into our churches, to give them God in a way that they find has significance in their lives. As a result, we have resorted to giving them some more of the same: more soul crippling images that nestle into their hearts and shape them. Isn’t it the role of the elders, parents, teachers, and ministers to show by example, to stop the chain of violence? We all must practice love by training our minds and hearts. This training is moment by moment, day by day, in every act we commit to, every thought we nurture.

We have to practice loving our neighbor and enemy (yes, even the ones we so desperately want to send into oblivion)and take deliberate steps to move towards God. Violent video games have no place in a church where love and peace are preached and taught and believed to be sacred and essential to life, to following Christ. Virtual human slaughter is sanctioned by some of these churches but sex and alcohol are intensely discouraged. Where is the logic in this?

There has to be someone who says “No more!” What happened to the city upon the hill? All eyes are watching us, particularly the eyes of our children. Let us be the non-conformists that Jesus, Thoreau, Gandhi and King were and countless others. Let our hands shape our children’s hearts by acknowledging our human brokenness and joy and not feed them more darkness that pulls them farther from their God.

Amen.

Evangelical Organizations Must Denounce Blackwater

I was up all night thinking about Blackwater's connection to the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. As Christians we should be sending out emails, connecting by blog, writing press releases reading:
FOCUS ON THE FAMILY, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS

Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater USA, has donated millions of dollars to the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. These organizations purport to be Christian based with core principles of reverence for life, freedom and democracy, despite evidence of adherence to Christ's most basic teachings about caring for the poor, loving one's neighbor and making peace in the world.

Blackwater is currently under investigation for lawless activities and brutal killings in Iraq. Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council should publicly denounce the activities of Blackwater and no longer accept donations from this mercenary and immoral company that resembles a growing, well funded private army. If these Christian organizations do not publicly condemn Blackwater for its illegal and anti-Christian activities then they can no longer be considered the representatives of rational Christian Evangelical Americans but must be viewed as radical, extremists who accept donations from unscrupulous persons and businesses to the detriment of our troop safety and to the United States fostering peace in the Middle East and around the world.

The Christ Killing Machine

God exists and is sovereign over all creation. He created human beings in His image. Human life is, therefore, sacred and the right to life is the most fundamental of political rights.
From Family Research Council Core Principles

I am too stunned almost to write. I am more saddened than anything I think. Just when I think I cannot possibly be surprised again by the evil in the world I always hear of another story to top the last. I hope this is not evidence of corrupting cynicism staking majority ground in my heart. Maybe Jesus wants us to keep being surprised so that we don't become complacent.

Maureen Dowd wrote an op-ed today in the New York Times about Blackwater USA, the mercenary organization who has successfully evaded the transparency they claim and has profited in the billions during the Iraq war. If there is any person who still does not see this war as an opium den for war profiteers then they are blinded by ignorance, their own inability or unwillingness to see the truth.

How is the Family Research Council (FRC), the well known, well funded, powerful Evangelical political entity linked to the killing machine Blackwater? Is it possible? Billionare, Erik Prince (CEO of Blackwater) is, remarkably (I don't think a fiction writer of horror novels could be so creative to come up with this!) , the son of one of the founders of FRC. Am I the only Christian who is grief stricken by this connection? I just keep hoping that the words the FRC, and Prince and the likes preach are the ones in their hearts, but I am most certain now that they are lost. Those who claim to know and love Christ through war and militrary supremacy are on the side of darkness. Christ brings light and love into the word, with evidence, not just with words! It is amazing how words, just those spoken and printed are taken as gospel, as truth when there is no action to support them as such.

Erik Prince will likely walk away from this war with more money to build his Nazi-like empire. Where are we heading? Will history books be talking about how at this very moment something should have been done to stop him? Amazingly, he walked right into this treasure trove because of his ties to the current Administration.

The FRC should have Prince's face plastered on their site as one of the greatest threats to the sanctity of life today. Why would they consider him a threat to their core principles though when he contributes so heavily to them? What else are we to think other than their proselytizing is composed purely of lies? When will our government (and the American people) begin to call it like it is and label Blackwater a killing machine, a privitized army, sanctioned by one of the country's most influential political movements crusading under the banner of Christ?

Wake Up.

God help us.

Amen.

On Her Moral Grounds

Congratulations Aurora Planned Parenthood!! http://ppaurora.blogspot.com/
Today is your official first day open. I was thrilled and relieved to hear that you finally received your occupancy permit from the City of Aurora. Most significantly, you have given all women the right to spiritual, intellectual and moral discernment.

After reading an essay by Chloe Breyer entitled Women, Childbearing, and Justice, I understand that the issue of abortion is not simply relegated to the debate about life and death, the definition of personhood, and whether the health of the fetus or mother take priority, but it is also about the way in which many Christians (and non-Christians) still view women and their ability, or lack thereof, to make a right moral decision. Perhaps the pro-life advocate would argue that when the life of a fetus is concerned there is no right or wrong option, just the position to carry to full term. Ironically, this position is one based on false notions of a perfect morality. As Breyer points out, there is criteria upon which the pregnant woman can weigh her decision (for it is her decision and not the decision of the state or the community) whether or not to obtain an abortion. Criteria that includes analysis of historical and religious perceptions of women as deviants from the norm, (seductress while at the same time nurturer, “domestic creature”), just cause (abortion as just due to quality of life for self and others in family), and last resort (is abortion the most logical solution in her particular case?) applications.

Controlling a woman’s reproductive function is in effect controlling their lives. If a woman has little or no access to birth control then she is often at the mercy of males who, if not welcome by the woman, easily make demands on their own terms due to their physical and psychological domination. A woman must have the right of choice when in many other areas of her life she may not. Unwanted pregnancies can tether a woman and her family to despair.

I have read that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is proliferating in part because large percentages of women don’t feel they have the right or the ability (due to fear of repercussions) to insist a male “suitor” use a condom. If a woman is raped or has voluntary intercourse with an infected man who refuses to use protection then the woman is exposed, her children are exposed, her family, her community is threatened. The ripple affect of her status as male comforter, provider of services, creates a complex web of suffering.

I recall a conversation I had with a woman at a food shelter a number of years ago. She was volunteering there so her son could attend a local camp for free. She was a petite woman with a small voice and gentle demeanor. One day she told me the story about the time when her ex-husband had followed her to another state and upon entering her home he raped her. I imagine that this scenario is not that uncommon, appearing in various forms, contexts. If a pregnancy were to result, it is the prerogative of this qualified moral agent to make the decision or not to give birth. I now there is disagreement about what constitutes a person and when a soul enters a body but the sin here is to let this woman lose herself, her right to be safe and free from her own personal death. This example is of course in the case of rape. The right to reflection and the choice of whether or not to remain pregnant is inherent in every woman, in every circumstance.

What is the pregnancy prevention agenda for the majority of pro-life advocates? (In a culture as diverse as ours, politically, religiously, ethnically, I really don’t think the sole prevention agenda of abstinence is at all realistic. Perhaps a component but not adequate in itself.) Where are their health centers and hot lines that provide education, support, and the ability to develop greater moral discernment that treats the woman equal to man based on the doctrine of imagio dei, that all humans are made in the image of God? In the words of Planned Parenthood of Chicago President, Steve Trombley, “we know that the preventative services offered by Planned Parenthood do more to prevent the need for abortion than our opponents will do in a lifetime of protesting.”
Thank you for your efforts PP and supporters to provide all women with the right to be active moral agents in their own lives.

Amen.

Who's Afraid to Say Born Again?

It seems these days that we should all be talking about being born again. Our world, the United States in particular, is in need of some regeneration. I have to admit that I am new to the term but I have to say I like it. I really, really like it, for as the famous evangelist Reverend Billy Graham wrote in How to Be Born Again, the "greatest news in the universe is that we can be born again!" I do not take this news lightly as the very survival of our human race depends upon our ability for rebirth, to change for the better. Otherwise, there is no such thing as hope. Now, what confounds me is that there are some who tend to treat being born again as a club (or in some cases a menacing gang), with the very specific initiation of recitation of prayer or a solitary moment of conversion. Others, like myself believe being born again is about attesting to the power of God in my life and accepting the role as disciple of Christ. Graham writes, the "encounter with Christ, that new birth, is the beginning of a whole new path in life under His control." This is the spiritual transformation all Christians seek, all people of faith hope to achieve in some capacity.

I have not said a prayer for my salvation for I believe that, as Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite recently said, you "are always working out your salvation in fear and trembling in relationship to the world and the way in which you participate in building up the Kingdom of God." My personal holiness, my salvation is dependent upon my dedication to the good of my community and world. In other words, am I willing to bring justice to those who so desperately need it? Graham also wrote that some "churches preach good works, social change, government legislation, and neglect the one thing that will help solve the problems of our world- changed men and women." We need to nurture and develop our inner lives to have a change of heart and be right with God and neighbor.

I can't say there was one defining moment of my conversion. I am struck by God's love again and again and again. Each time I sense this I know I have new life. So, why is it I am afraid to use the phrase born again when describing my life of faith, my conquest (though ongoing) over personal death? Perhaps I choose not to apply the description because I don't want to be associated with a political movement. On the other hand, I feel compelled to say it for these words belong to scripture, to God, and not to a team or an esoteric association. These words are for the world to use and hold dearly. No one can claim to own them.

Also, I have always been afraid of certain words that are used by some churches to exclude (like "saved" and "converted") and create superficial litmus tests marking one's degree of holiness. Mostly, however, I never wanted to threaten or offend America's promise to freedom of religion. I figured that if I just stayed silent then we could all get along. This of course left me with no public faith to express.

As a Christian, I cannot be afraid to use born again, and other words I find intimidating, to work for healing and wholeness. So, I dash my fears against a rock and proudly proclaim I am one more changed heart, one more believer in the love of God, in being Born Again.

Amen.

I Sought My Brother and I Found All Three

I took a seminary class last year about personal and social transformation and I was assigned with a small group to research Martin Luther King, Jr. I can’t say I was thrilled. I grew up attending various MLK Day celebrations, usually at Howard University in Washington, D.C., hearing mostly about his I Have a Dream speech. We would sing Lift Every Voice, I would get chills and then we’d hear about how far we had come and how far we still had to go. We'd watch some children sing and the event would be over. So when I found out that I was going to have to dig into who this person was I sighed heavily to myself wondering what his life and writings could possibly have to offer me and my classmates. Hadn’t we heard it all before? The answer was a resounding “No!”

There is probably no greater shame as an African American (or as an American for that matter), and even more so as a Christian, than having complete and utter unawareness of Reverend Dr. King’s messages of truth, sacrifice and the essentiality of overflowing love for fellow humans. I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about his deep sense of love of God, the world, and his respect for the multitude of expressions of faith. Needless to say, I can’t stop thinking about his writings and his words and hopefully never will. Why we don’t teach our youth (save for the month of February – Black History month) about his democratic and liberating philosophies, his instruction in non-violence, civil disobedience, the requirements of good citizenship and reconciliation is a mystery to me and for another post. I am writing today about how his vision of a complete life clarifies for me what personal and social holiness are.

Imagine a triangle where one side is the Love of God, the second side Love of Neighbor and the third Love of Self. We must have all three sides, in synchronicity, in constant motion in order to create the Kingdom of God today.
Personal holiness is, from what I am slowly grasping, acknowledgement of my sacredness and utter dependence on God and my community. Personal holiness is, as Marilynne Robinson writes in her essay Hallowed Be Your Name, "in fact openness to the perception of the holy, in existence iteself and above all in one another." For it to exist it must dwell and subsist collectively amongst other souls.

Personal holiness is the love of God working in my life, through me, which inevitably and ultimately is expressed as positive action in God’s world to bring about justice, more love and the Kingdom of God. It is in my attempt to mimic Jesus's life and practice obedience to God where one finds social holiness. Sin is the separation of self from the collective and God, thus the collapse of the triagle King described.

The sacred occurs within us as well as between us. We risk losing touch with our sacredness if we only focus on the holiness of the community and conversely we abandon the truth of our interdependence if we only seek our salvation and right relationship with God. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about God’s “upsetting sense of community” in her essay The Company of Strangers. She states that “in order for our public life to work, we do have to respect each other’s dignity as human beings, which is what we have in common, and to act with honor among strangers as well as friends.”

We pray and meditate to find God within us while engaging with our world to fulfill Christ’s ministry. I cannot understand my personal holiness until I first look to God and to my neighbor.
I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see,
I sought my God, but he eluded me,
I sought my brother, and I found all three

Amen

What About Her Human Rights?

The article I copied below speaks partly to my post on the "pro-family" agendas. I am astounded at the disconnect between wanting to save the babies but not the mothers. As Blackman notes in her article, the clinic in Aurora provides more that just abortions. I am sorry that the health and well-being of the fetus seems to always trump the health of the mother. What does this say about how we think about women in our country? By denying access to this clinic they are denying a woman a basic human right to health and medicine and a multitude of other services. Where can we meet eye to eye in this eternal debate? When and how do we enter into dialogue about saving families, dignity and preserving one's right to life (yes, the woman has a right to life as well!),to be autonomous and self-define? Give us guidance oh Lord. We need peace.


Clinic's protesters don't all speak for community

By Joni Hirsch Blackman | Daily Herald Columnist
Published: 9/22/2007 1:51 AM

Tobacco kills.
No one disputes that, yet tobacco is sold in countless stores throughout the country and in our community. In fact, there is a tobacco shop not far from where I live in Naperville, and I -- someone who has watched people die because of tobacco -- sneer when I drive by.

It's tempting, but I'd never harass the people who go in there or try to have the store shut down -- even though the whole purpose for the place being there is to sell something that eventually will kill whoever is using it. Tobacco is legal and the store has a right to be there. So instead, I, and others who feel the way I do, try to educate people about the dangers of tobacco.

That's not good enough for those opposed to abortion. They not only voice their opposition, they want everyone to be "protected" from a new health clinic in Aurora near Naperville offering many necessary health care services besides abortion.


From Planned Parenthood's Aurora location Web site: "At Planned Parenthood, we believe the preventative services this health care center will offer will do more in one day to promote responsible family planning and prevent the need for abortion than our opponents will do in a lifetime of protests."


To "protect" the community -- the new comprehensive facility will replace a small Naperville Planned Parenthood -- opponents of the facility have gone to great lengths, including harassment and intimidation of employees of the clinic. Thanks in part to their protests, the clinic's opening was delayed.

Opponents of the clinic placed newspaper ads misrepresenting why the clinic exists and what its goals are.

But the newspaper ad I found particularly interesting was one that ran Sunday on page 17A in the Daily Herald. The ad supported the clinic, accurately noting it will offer a wide range of reproductive health care services and bring "high-quality, affordable and accessible health care to women who currently do not have such services in their area."

Perhaps surprisingly, this ad was placed by a long list of religious leaders. Yes, religious leaders supporting a Planned Parenthood clinic. Some would have you believe that anyone tolerant of such thing must be a heathen.

"There is an incorrect impression that all religious people are anti-choice," the ad stated. "Within every major world religious community, there are strong voices that understand their tradition as supporting a woman's right to choose.
We believe that people of faith and goodwill can disagree on this issue and have the right to express their opinions freely."

Sound familiar? Sounds like the First Amendment to me.

The ad was signed by 19 members of clergy of various churches and synagogues. It was paid for by Planned Parenthood.

People whose religious beliefs differ are often able to co-exist peacefully. Mormons who don't drink alcohol don't harass bar owners or patrons. Jews who keep Kosher don't picket or protest places that sell cheeseburgers. Muslims who fast during Ramadan do not attack those who eat. It's not for them, but it's legal. Why can't religious people who oppose abortion behave in the same way?

Better than using this health-care facility as a target of anger and hostility would be to work to change laws they disagree with, while others will work to keep them the way they are.
Why can't those who oppose abortion try to educate others on why they are opposed to it, and let those who choose to be a patient at this facility do so in peace, no matter what their appointment is for?

Simplistic? Perhaps. But also a better example for our children and a better atmosphere for our community.

Our community. Two things have surprised me: how much press and interest this has generated outside of our community and how little I hear people in our community talking about this issue.
Community members should speak up. Don't let extremists from around the country make decisions in your neighborhood.

Spilling Into God

I just read the sermon The Company of Strangers by Barbara Brown Taylor where she admonishes us (those inclined to some level of introspection) to "not confuse our own ideas of God with God."
I must remember this. It is so easy to want God to adjust to me and my desires versus my having to "spill into the will of God."
Amen

Is it Really Pro-Family?

I just wish we could all sit down and decide once and for all what all these categories really mean. For instance, what does "pro-family" imply? I think those of us who are in family units and or have been touched by familial relationships are pro-family. When married or in a committed long-term relationship hopefully we are all devoted to our partners. We are all pro-family. This is of course unless what is really meant by pro-family is anti-gay or anti-equality of the sexes, races etc. If this is the case then don't couch in empty euphemisms, call it like it is, anti-homosexual, misogynistic etc. If "pro-family" advocates were really pro-family they would be marching in the streets about the domestic terrorism that goes on daily in so many households across our country (unless of course this is considered a private matter and should not be discussed publicly - this is the easiest way out of the debate). It is much easier to discuss matters and rights pertaining to a human not present versus those who might ask you for a dollar or a bite to eat, a warm place to stay and a hand to hold.
After reading the Associated Press article Christian Right Rebounds, where the pro-family agenda of a Florida Baptist church was highlighted, I began to wonder what might a pro-family agenda consist of, instead of just being anti-gay.
On the Pro-Family Network there is a notice for a Pro-Family Lobby Day in Ohio. On the sign-up form there are the following "pro-family" agenda items:
Issues and Legislation before the 127th
Ohio General Assembly:
Covenant Marriage
Banning Homosexual Adoption & Foster
Parenting
Total Abortion Ban
Community Defense Act
Abstinence Funding, School Vouchers Plus many
more

"Plus many more...." What didn't make it to this particular list? I hope help for single moms and dads who are struggling alone to raise moral and healthy children is on the agenda. How about some legislation that would assist all those mothers in poverty to get the alimony checks they are entitled? Yes, and what about poverty as one of the biggest factors that breaks families and marriages (the good and desirable heterosexual marriages) apart? Why isn't poverty number one on the agenda? I think Jesus would approve.
How about instead of focusing on the end result of a mistake or carelessness or rape, as pro-family people we create communities that nurtures self-respect in our youth, provides guidance and counseling to those in need, before the need to decide between abortion or not is necessary. A ban on abortion does not solve the spiritual, emotional and societal problems. What about health care for all those children in these pro-family families? Why isn't that on the top of the list as well?

Is this really about the family or are they merely phrases and "hot button" topics used to rally a community to organize their biases better?
Abortion, pornography, gambling, stem cell research... (Social issues from Focus on the Family site) Where are the agenda items about lessons in becoming a peacekeeper, learning to love one's enemies, creating safe homes for our families?
Instead of asking our politicians what their position is on abortion, when will we change the agenda and begin asking "What is your position on poverty and what are you going to do about it?"
God help us. Help us to love more and find a way to come together on these issues. We debate while people continue to live in fear and isolation, live without a proper meal or a proper hug. Teach us all to bring the kingdom here and flow in the same direction as your life.
Amen.