Call Me a Snob

Call me a snob, but, really, I'm just a chicken.
Let me explain. Apparently a serious candidate for a major party's nomination to the presidency of the United States seems bent on discouraging Americans from going to college ... or something like that. It's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what Rick Santorum really means, unless he's talking about gay people. He's crystal clear on that: he doesn't like them.
Maybe he doesn't want Americans going to college because they'll change their minds about gay people. The conservative wiki site, Conservapedia, citing a study of exit-poling from several years ago, sternly warns:

"The fact that the strongest predictor of support for same-sex "marriage" is level of education shows that brainwashing into professor values has a corrosive effect on morality."

It really says that. Maybe that's where Rick goes to get his info, or maybe they go to Rick to get theirs. As I say, I find him confusing.
On the other hand, maybe kids who choose to go to college are just more open-minded even before President Obama gets the chance to remake them in his image. Polling seems actually to bear that out: college freshmen are almost twice as likely as the general public to support same-sex marriage, according to a Higher Education Research Institute survey a while back. Maybe the brainwashing is just that good.
Or, maybe, Santorum really is just that crazy. As I said, sometimes it's difficult to tell.
Still, crazy as he may be, Santorum's thoughts on education did get me thinking. More accurately, the reaction of his audience got me thinking. Speaking in Troy, Michigan, over the weekend in the run up to today's Michigan primary, Santorum said:
"President Obama has said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."
The crowd shots at that point showed folks applauding, laughing, smiling and generally nodding their heads in approval. Then came the big applause line:
"There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day, and put their skills to test, who aren't taught by some liberal college professor (who) tries to indoctrinate them. I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."
Sure, it's easy to dismiss this as typical campaign fear mongering. Santorum raises the "liberal" boogie man and panders to latent American anti-intellectualism. Moreover, I certainly wouldn't expect a Republican candidate to point out or praise President Obama's personal journey of using higher education opportunities to lift himself to the highest rung of American power.
Even so, I wonder why the speech resonated with the crowd. After all, according to various surveys, 94 percent of parents believe their kids will go to college, 75 percent of Americans think college is very important, and 60 percent believe it is essential to success.
Maybe Santorum found the six percent of parents who don't think their kids will go to college.
From where I sit, ridiculously over-educated, white, middle-class, living inside-the-beltway, enjoying incredible privilege, it's easy to dismiss Santorum's supporters as ignorant and bigoted (and there are, no doubt, ignorant bigots out there who support him). But as I watched video of Santorum's speech, I couldn't help wondering what the people are afraid of.
I'm convinced that what they're afraid of is the future.
While Troy is a relatively affluent suburb of Detroit, it's still, well, a suburb of Detroit. That is to say, it sits in one of the country's most hard-hit areas economically, and in a place whose people had, at the depth of the recession, just about the most negative economic outlook in the nation.
Going to college is an inherently optimistic decision because it is almost always about hope for the future. Maybe Santorum's supporters consider that snobbish because they are so busy longing for a past -- not "the" past that actually happened, but "a" past that they imagine.
I feel for them in their fear, but I do not wish to join them in that imagined past. Talk about scary.

The Fast I Choose

So my friend Nichola (see comments from yesterday) posted this morning on Facebook:

So, at last night's Occupied Ash Wednesday gathering, the one person present who had no substantial connection to Christianity was blown away by Isaiah 58, and at the end, said something like, "Oh my god, this is so beautiful! If your book says this about 'raising your voice like a trumpet,' and 'shouting out loud about the rebellion of the people,' and 'feeding the hungry,' why isn't this plaza packed with church people?" Those of us who are Christian just looked at each other sheepishly.

Why isn't the public square packed with church people? Is that part of a more basic question: why isn't the church packed with church people? Or is it the other way around?
The list of reasons is long and complicated, to be sure, but it gets down to some basic questions of faithfulness. Do we really believe the prophet's vision:

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

It is beautiful. But do we believe it, and not just in the manner of giving intellectual assent to the proposition that God is with us and thus we shall be the repairers of the breach, the restorers of the streets? Do we believe it such that we are willing to give our lives to it?
The evidence -- in the public square and in the church house -- is not promising.
On the other hand, many of us continue to show up in those places and more, and we continue to lift up words of hope, of love, of justice.
Oh, and here's a hymn inspired by Isaiah's vision for singing in the public square or the church:

This is the Fast

Is this the fast I choose for thee
Of ashes, tears and empty misery?
Or rather this: To share abundant bread
That all my children will be loved and fed

Why do you fast yet still not see
Your sisters suffering in poverty?
Their children cry and still you do not hear;
their fathers bowed and broken by their fear.

This is the fast I choose for thee
Of justice, peace and human liberty
Not forty days, but all your yearning years
My love will wipe away all human tears

Break, bless and eat; then drink this wine
The fast I choose makes ev’ry midnight shine
You shall be called restorers of the street.
Arise, now shine! And make your fast complete.

Tune: Truro (Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates; Christ is Alive!; Live Into Hope!)
Feel free to use it. Copyright, D. Ensign, Lent, 2005

Lent and the Impossible

It has been a very long time since the days when I was doing doctoral work on 20th-century French philosophy. Indeed, it was actually in the 20th century! But for some reason as Lent begins this year I've been pondering the impossible.
The impossible was a recurring theme in Jacques Derrida's writing, and while none of that work is ready-to-hand at the moment (search engines notwithstanding), I'll reduce it violently to one observation: the answer to any question worth posing is (the) impossible.
You can trace the impossible, the impassible, the entirely and unutterably other through much of Derrida's work, and, in particular in his lengthy dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas. Their conversation was central to my ancient dissertation.
What's any of this got to do with Lent?
Levinas was fond of interesting equations. I recall, for example, his observation that "paternity is a relationship with a future that is not my own." I'm pretty sure I remember that after all these years because I was playing with it in a paper I wrote while we were anticipating the birth of our firstborn -- who turns 21 this week.
Other of Levinas' equations were pithier: ethics is liturgy. That one I recall because I teased it out in work that I was doing even as I was beginning my own turn, or re-turn, toward what we too easily reduce to "the religious."
I don't recall if Levinas actually wrote "ethics is the impossible," or if I'm making that up. But, hey, this is a blog post not an academic article -- thanks be to God, or the impossible I Am, or that which, in this very moment, calls me by my name. In any case, his various observations about "ethics" drew me deeply into the long conversation that he and Derrida conducted through various texts over many years. In those writings they regularly addressed, indeed their conversation turned on, "the impossible."
I got to thinking about that in terms of practices one "takes on" or "gives up" for Lent. Most of the time we go for the low-hanging fruit of the the imaginable, the possible. There's nothing wrong with that. Picking up something that one can actually accomplish is always worthwhile, in this or any season. Letting go of something that one needs to let go of, and that one can, in fact, let go of is also always worthwhile.
But what if we aimed deeper or higher toward "the impossible"? What would it look like to practice "the impossible"?
In their own distinctive ways, both Derrida and Levinas focused considerably on encounters with the other. Levinas wrote extensively about face-to-face encounters and confrontations with the face of the other. Derrida wrote a good deal, especially late in his life, about hospitality and the politics of friendship. All of that work was about the impossibility inherent in the claims that others make on us.
I can't recall at this point -- again, blog post not academic paper -- whether either Levinas or Derrida riffed on Paul's eschatological observation that "now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
Such knowledge is at once the impossible and the fundamental demand that others place on us. We all want to be known. The essence of hospitality, the root of ethics, perhaps even the ground of politics and certainly of justice is found in that basic desire to be known fully.
To the extent that any of our Lenten disciplines aim, ultimately, at deepening our relationships -- with God or with others -- they aim at the impossible.
What if we took on "the impossible" for Lent?

I Am a Witness

I am a witness, standing on the side of love.
Sometimes that is the most important calling to which we respond. We show up. We stand together. We witness. We speak of what we have seen and done.
I was asked this morning to say a few words of blessing at the Valentine’s Day public witness for marriage equality at the Arlington County Courthouse as two of the elders in my congregation sought a license to make true in law what has been true in fact for more than two decades: they are married. Anyone who has ever spent any time at all with Ron and James knows that they are married. Indeed, any definition of marriage that excludes them misses the mark completely when it comes to describing a loving, committed, life-time, compassionate, faithful, joyous, creative relationship.
As I noted this morning, at Clarendon we stopped signing legal documents for straight couples until that day comes when we can sign them for all couples who come to us seeking to celebrate their promises to create and sustain the beloved community of two within the larger context of the beloved community of all.
Since that time, we typically begin services of celebration for all couples with Jesus’ words, “render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and render unto God that which belongs to God.”
Our love and our promises belong to the God who, in sovereign love created us all equally in God’s image, called us good, and promised to stay in relationship with creation through all time – through, as it were, richer and poorer, sickness and health, and, because God is God, even in the time beyond time itself. Thus to God belongs our love, our commitments, our compassion, our faithfulness, our joy, our creativity – all those foundational values upon which good marriages are built.
What then belongs to Caesar? The truth. That is to say, what we owe to the commonwealth is the truth as we have been given to see it, the truth spoken in love to the power of the state. The truth is that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. For many of us, straight and gay, those foundational rights can only be authentically claimed when our lives are joined together with the one we love. The truth is, there is no compelling reason for the state to deny to same-gender couples what it so freely grants to straight couples.
We owe Caesar the truth, for the truth will set the commonwealth free from the weight of oppression, the blinders of bigotry and the shackles of its own history.
This morning, several dozen of us joined Ron and James as witnesses to the truth. Though sometimes the moral arc of the universe seems mighty long, when we do the work of love, when we speak the truth in love, when we stand as witnesses on the side of love, the arc bends the whole world round.

Pissed-off Presbyterian Pastor Passes on President to Pitch Pots

I’m a beginning potter, or more accurately I am taking a beginning pottery class, so perhaps I can be forgiven for pitching pots instead of throwing them, but I am a lifelong Presbyterian so I know process, and I know when process is being used to obfuscate rather than to clarify.
This evening National Capital Presbytery voted down an overture to General Assembly from the session of the congregation that I serve seeking concurrence with an overture already passed by the Presbytery of East Iowa seeking an authoritative interpretation from the Assembly affirming that pastors in civil jurisdictions that have legalized same-gender marriages can solemnize such vows without fear of being brought up on disciplinary charges in church courts.

That’s Presby-speak for saying we wanted assurances that pastors can conduct legal same-sex weddings, including signing marriage licenses, without worrying about be defrocked by the church and we wanted National Capital Presbytery to go on record supporting that position.

I’m not pissed that the overture was defeated. Disappointed, yes, but not angry at the result. If I have any anger at the result it is entirely self-directed because I failed to do the organizational legwork to get out the vote tonight, wrongly assuming that the long pattern of NCP voting about 2-1 in favor of GLBT-related issues would hold.
The first (or maybe second) speaker against the motion introduced a motion to defer arguing that the Presbytery needs time to talk about marriage. I suppose since it took the church 30 years of “talking” to get to the point of ordaining gay and lesbian clergy and lay officers there may be a point to that perspective. After all, we’ve only been “talking” about marriage for about a decade. The first overtures on same-sex unions came to and through the General Assembly in the late 90s.
But the truth of the matter is, and always has been, we only actually talk about any of these “uncomfortable” issues when someone proposes an overture and we vote on it. Up or down. The denomination empaneled a study group that issued a lengthy report on marriage at the 2010 assembly and invited the entire church to engage the question. As far as I know, nobody in NCP took them up on it.

The bottom line is now and always has been this: a motion to defer is a motion to do nothing at all until the next time somebody forces a vote.

To suggest otherwise is simply disingenuous, and I’ll stick by that charge until the maker of the motion invites the long-time married same-sex couples in my congregation to dinner for some conversation on the meaning of marriage.
I use the word “disingenuous” perhaps disingenuously here, for that word was what really pissed me off tonight. The makers of the motion – that would be my session, and, let’s be perfectly “out” here, that would be me – were called “naïve and disingenuous” during the debate on the overture tonight, and our capacity for compassion was called into question.
When colleagues who have performed same-sex weddings in jurisdictions where they are legal have been brought up on charges in church courts (and they have) it is not disingenuous to ask for clarity from the General Assembly.
When pastors in this Presbytery (including yours truly) are being asked to perform legal same-sex weddings in the District of Columbia, it is not disingenuous to seek some assurance that the church courts will not be used to block us from following the dictates of conscience and pastoral responsibility.
And when a same-gender couple who has been together for more than 20 years asks a pastor about the possibility of being married in the church, is it disingenuous to suggest that the call to compassion might have something to do with that couple’s suffering?
Supporters of the motion tonight were asked to consider the suffering of our conservative sisters and brothers, and, in particular, the ones who met in Florida last week to talk about forming a new denomination. As I noted at the beginning, I am a life-long Presbyterian. I am sorry, truly, that some folks feel like they no longer have a home in the PC(U.S.A.). But if the call to compassion has any meaning whatsoever in this debate, it must begin with consideration of persecutions, pogroms and pink triangles. Conservatives are not being bashed, beaten, or killed. Queer folk still are right here in this Presbytery. Conservatives are not being harassed to the point of suicide. Queer teens still are. If you want to talk about the passion, let’s begin there.
So, yes, the evening pissed me off – enough that I skipped the State of the Union Address entirely in favor of session two of my pottery class. I threw my first pot tonight. I’m far from an artist, and this piece of clay will never shout out for gallery space. But as I sunk my fingers into it and worked it at the wheel, I realized that the clay wanted to be a cup – not really a chalice because even if that’s what the clay wanted the potter’s hands were not up to the task. I also realized that the cup wanted, eventually, to find its place in the home of the married, gay, Presbyterian elder who introduced the motion tonight. Clear a spot Travis!

Happy Christmas. War Is Over!

December 24
How many clichés about time could be gathered around Christmas trees or hung from their branches like ornamental clock faces? The halls are decked with memory and expectations as cards stretch out as if hung on a string stretched between the hopes and the fears of all years, and the dream that they might be met tonight.
So a very merry Christmas from our household to yours. May your hopes be realized and your fears be, well, as minimal as possible in such times as these.
The annual year-end stock-taking finds the Lederle-Ensign family well, albeit one dog short of this time last year. Our 14 and a half year old Jack Russell, Norm, is killing mice in the great beyond, an image that raises all kinds of eschatological questions. I mean, if your great joy in life is “killing things” then what would happen to the things you kill in an afterlife? Do mice have as many lives as cats? And do they ever live into an existence in which they are no longer hunted by cats or Norm? On another note, how many Christmas letters do you receive containing speculations about rodent eschatology?
Moving along to the surviving members of the family then …


Hannah continues to stake her claim as the studious member of the family, following in her high-achieving mother’s footsteps even as the slacker men in the family try to keep her grounded. She’s pretty much loving life as a seventh grade girl. While the great changes that come with her age keep us on our toes, she’s living into them with grace. As a friend visiting this week said, “What happened to that little girl who used to live here?” Indeed. While she is becoming a young woman, 2011 was the year that she laid claim to a youthful love that could last a lifetime: baseball. We made it to a half dozen Nats games, and Hannah celebrated the 4th of July lying on her back in the outfield grass of a minor league stadium in Chattanooga watching fireworks and clutching a foul ball that came our way during the game. “This was a good day,” she told me as we watched the peaceful bombs bursting in the warm summer air.


Always precocious, Martin has had senioritis since 8th grade. Finally, at long last, he can have it for real! With graduation looming in spring, he’s been busy with college apps and visits this fall. He seems likely to follow his older brother to Mary Washington, and we’re all quite pleased with that prospect if it turns out that way. In the meanwhile, Martin continues his musical explorations, adding the banjo to his mandolin and violin playing – he could be a one-man bluegrass band if he’d grow a few extra arms. He’s planning to deepen his understanding of the southern folk heritage this winter as he hits the Crooked Road as part of his senior project exploring part of the history of the banjo in America. His Bach-on-the-banjo rendition of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring was a highlight of the Christmas Eve service at Clarendon. Who knew that piece could sound so nice on the banjo? I’m not saying that there’s a connection, but the curly haired musician kid always has a cute girl beside him, and the current love interest (a friend from camp) is a brave enough soul to have accompanied the nattily attired (floral print skirt) Martin to the gender-neutral dance that his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance sponsored (and that Clarendon hosted). The father-son picture from the dance was called “the greatest thing on the internet” by one discerning friend on Facebook. Personally I think it was dad’s tie-dyed clerical shirt, but some disagree.


Down the road in Fredericksburg, Bud continues to have a generally fantastic college experience at Mary Wash. He’s moved off campus for his junior year and is sharing a house with two good friends from Arlington. We gathered with the three young men, all the parents and most of the siblings the Saturday evening after Thanksgiving, and it was immensely gratifying to see what nice, smart young men they’ve become, and to realize that there’s every good chance that they will hold onto this core friendship throughout their lives. They are living the all-American college life, and loving almost all of it. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of it for Bud is his continuing relationship with Monica, a delightful young woman who is a first-generation Chinese-American immigrant. Cue My Big Fat Greek Wedding, as we get set to meet her parents at New Year’s. I want to bake a bunt. In addition to the swirl of academic and social circles, Bud has devoted a huge amount of time and energy to the club level ultimate Frisbee team. We got a chance to watch them in a tournament in Fairfax this fall, and came away impressed by the skill and intensity with which these young men play a game that many of us played at a far lower level years ago. In the classroom, Bud has decided to complete a double major in English and computer science, and it seems possible that he may actually be employable upon graduating in the spring of 2013, though graduate school is also a distinct possibility. His summer internship at the Library of Congress will certainly look good on applications to potential employers or schools.

As you’d guess, he got that internship through his good connections at the Library, where Cheryl continues to love her job of eight years. Happily, albeit sappily (and dully) she reports that the highlight of her year was staying married to me. At the risk of too much happy-sappy, I’d say the same is true for me, as I come toward the midway point of my ninth year at Clarendon. We’re looking forward to celebrating 30 years of mostly blissful married life next spring, and are happily soliciting suggestions for ways to mark the occasion. The year has been filled with small but joyous moments and events: a family ski trip to Pennsylvania last March, time at Camp Hanover in the summer, trips to Chattanooga to visit David’s family in July and to Ohio to Cheryl’s mom’s in August, work trips for Cheryl to Chicago and New Orleans (and lots of pizza and Mel Brooks for the left behind), an early-December 15k run to celebrate my 52nd birthday – hey, you celebrate your way and I’ll celebrate mine!

There were, of course, world events of great import during the year, and we played our very small role in them -- delivering cake to the Occupy Wall St. group in McPherson Square, continuing to advocate for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the church and culture, and trying speak out for, and live into a world more welcoming, just and peaceful. Christmastide '11 we celebrate the long-overdue end of the war in Iraq, with hope that Christmastide '12 may see the end of the decade of war in Afghanistan.
I suppose there is something quietly wonderful to be said for living into comfortable middle age where the passing of a year brings mostly simply gratitude for work and family. As Wendell Berry wrote years ago, “Work done in gratitude,/Kindly, and well, is prayer.”
If that be true, then we’ve passed a year of prayers, and as it comes to a gentle close, we lift up a common prayer for our friends and loved ones, that 2012 find you in good health, in good cheer, keeping faith with the work you have been given to do, and planning a visit to our nation’s capital, where there is always room in our inn for you.
Grace and peace,
Hannah, Martin, Dylan, Cheryl and David
A post-script from the next generation: Martin says, ”our pater familias has way too much time on his hands. Please, help us find him something useful to do with that PhD. “ Hannah says, “our father is a ridiculous man.” Bud says, “I love my father very much.” (OK, Bud was not available for a post-script so I had to guess what he might say.)

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