I am just too tired to think about much, though Jay Leno is on right now in the background and he seems to have just hosted a wedding on Latenight. How romantic ... and spiritual.
Well, the committee on civil unions and marriage at GA today endorsed a change to the church's definition of marriage from "one man and one woman" to "two people." It probably won't get us on Leno, but it will open a lot of doors that had been closed.
The committee that deals with ordination issues recommended a rewrite of G.60106b -- the section of our Book of Order that bars ordination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender church officers. The revised language removes all such categorical barriers.
It was a good day at GA. But now it's almost tomorrow, so I'm crashing.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Monday, July 05, 2010
Blogging the Assembly, Day 2
I heard this story today: in March of 2003, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, the session of a Presbyterian church in Iowa was meeting. The pastor asked elders to share their thoughts on the simple question, “what would Jesus do?” As they went around the circle, one elder became increasingly agitated. When it was his turn to speak he said, “if you’re asking me if Jesus would drive a tank into Bagdad, then my answer is no. But Jesus would be wrong!”
That story underscores for me one face of the faithlessness that plagues our nation. We really do not believe in the power of Jesus Christ to transform lives. We really do not trust in the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to have real power in the real world to bring us even one hour closer to the reign of God’s shalom.
I saw this car yesterday just covered with bumper stickers. One in particular caught my eye. It read, “atheism is the cure to religious terrorism.” Needless to say, I found the sentiment off putting, atheism being its own peculiar brand of religious intolerance.
And I thought, no, for us Christians, the nonviolent way of Jesus is the cure – the only effective response to the violence of terrorism and every other form of violence from the personal and local to the regional or global.
In the Confession of 1967, our Presbyterian forebears spoke a prophetic word calling the church to commend to the nations the way of nonviolence. As the Confession states, “The church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace […] even at risk to national security.”
A lot has changed in the 43 years since that confession, but the timeless charge to be ambassadors for Christ in his ministry of reconciliation has only grown more urgent in a world awash in violence. Just yesterday there was another suicide bombing in Baghdad and a bomb scare that briefly closed New York’s Kennedy Airport. Day before yesterday there was a murder about 8 or 10 blocks from I am right now – the 25th murder this year in Minneapolis.
I can’t help but hear Jesus saying, “enough of this. Put away your swords.”
If we are to be the body of Christ in the world, then it must be us who says, “enough of this. Put away your swords. And your guns. And your bombs.”
To say that with power and authenticity we must learn to live it in our own lives. It is not enough merely to say – or even to sing – we ain’t gonna study war no more, we must also begin to study the nonviolent way of Jesus, and to listen, anew, for Christ’s call to us to be peacemakers.
Our church, through an overture that is under consideration here this week, is inviting the whole church into just such study and discernment. We want to have a conversation similar to that which the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity invited us into a few years back; this time around the practice of nonviolence and its implications for our common life, including asking ourselves challenging questions about our own theology of war and our participation in it.
My church sits less than two miles from the Pentagon, and some of our members are connected to the defense establishment one way or another. We also live and work in Metro DC, often called the murder capital of the world. So this is very real to us.
We do not wish to see the creation of a limited study group that would bring to some future assembly a position paper to be voted up or down and then placed on a shelf to gather kudos and dust. Rather, we encourage the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program to work in consultation with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Fellowship to find or develop low-cost and no-cost ways to engage and facilitate a conversation across the church.
Both programs are already beginning to use social networking and other electronic means to disseminate information, and we believe that is but the first of many possible steps that can be taken.
As our Constitution reminds us, the mission of the church in any generation is to be found in "sharing with Christ in the establishing of his just, peaceable, and loving rule in the world" [G-3.0300c(3)(e)]. We believe GA action endorsing our overture can be a crucial step in fulfilling that mission.
We shall see.
That story underscores for me one face of the faithlessness that plagues our nation. We really do not believe in the power of Jesus Christ to transform lives. We really do not trust in the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to have real power in the real world to bring us even one hour closer to the reign of God’s shalom.
I saw this car yesterday just covered with bumper stickers. One in particular caught my eye. It read, “atheism is the cure to religious terrorism.” Needless to say, I found the sentiment off putting, atheism being its own peculiar brand of religious intolerance.
And I thought, no, for us Christians, the nonviolent way of Jesus is the cure – the only effective response to the violence of terrorism and every other form of violence from the personal and local to the regional or global.
In the Confession of 1967, our Presbyterian forebears spoke a prophetic word calling the church to commend to the nations the way of nonviolence. As the Confession states, “The church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace […] even at risk to national security.”
A lot has changed in the 43 years since that confession, but the timeless charge to be ambassadors for Christ in his ministry of reconciliation has only grown more urgent in a world awash in violence. Just yesterday there was another suicide bombing in Baghdad and a bomb scare that briefly closed New York’s Kennedy Airport. Day before yesterday there was a murder about 8 or 10 blocks from I am right now – the 25th murder this year in Minneapolis.
I can’t help but hear Jesus saying, “enough of this. Put away your swords.”
If we are to be the body of Christ in the world, then it must be us who says, “enough of this. Put away your swords. And your guns. And your bombs.”
To say that with power and authenticity we must learn to live it in our own lives. It is not enough merely to say – or even to sing – we ain’t gonna study war no more, we must also begin to study the nonviolent way of Jesus, and to listen, anew, for Christ’s call to us to be peacemakers.
Our church, through an overture that is under consideration here this week, is inviting the whole church into just such study and discernment. We want to have a conversation similar to that which the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity invited us into a few years back; this time around the practice of nonviolence and its implications for our common life, including asking ourselves challenging questions about our own theology of war and our participation in it.
My church sits less than two miles from the Pentagon, and some of our members are connected to the defense establishment one way or another. We also live and work in Metro DC, often called the murder capital of the world. So this is very real to us.
We do not wish to see the creation of a limited study group that would bring to some future assembly a position paper to be voted up or down and then placed on a shelf to gather kudos and dust. Rather, we encourage the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program to work in consultation with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Fellowship to find or develop low-cost and no-cost ways to engage and facilitate a conversation across the church.
Both programs are already beginning to use social networking and other electronic means to disseminate information, and we believe that is but the first of many possible steps that can be taken.
As our Constitution reminds us, the mission of the church in any generation is to be found in "sharing with Christ in the establishing of his just, peaceable, and loving rule in the world" [G-3.0300c(3)(e)]. We believe GA action endorsing our overture can be a crucial step in fulfilling that mission.
We shall see.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Blogging the Assembly
A few images from the first 30 hours or so of the 219th General Assembly.
Elder Cindy Bolbach, from our neighboring congregation at First Presbyterian Church in Arlington, was elected moderator. That means that four of the past five General Assembly moderators have joined us at Clarendon for worship or fellowship during the past seven years. For a little church that often finds itself at odds with the denomination we do seem connected to its leadership. And we say, "yeah, Cindy!"
Before heading in to the opening worship this morning I joined my More Light friends and colleagues in a public witness across the street from the convention center, reminding those entering worship that not everyone feels welcomed by the church. We were led in singing by a man wearing a fabulous rainbow stole that had graced our communion table at Clarendon a week ago.
Worship at GA is a pretty grand and moving affair, and it included puppets, waving banners, dancers and a liturgical artist, as well as preaching, communion, and, for the first time, a baptism.
I have spent the rest of the day in meetings or preparing testimony, and now I'm watching fireworks out my hotel window. A nice beginning.
Elder Cindy Bolbach, from our neighboring congregation at First Presbyterian Church in Arlington, was elected moderator. That means that four of the past five General Assembly moderators have joined us at Clarendon for worship or fellowship during the past seven years. For a little church that often finds itself at odds with the denomination we do seem connected to its leadership. And we say, "yeah, Cindy!"
Before heading in to the opening worship this morning I joined my More Light friends and colleagues in a public witness across the street from the convention center, reminding those entering worship that not everyone feels welcomed by the church. We were led in singing by a man wearing a fabulous rainbow stole that had graced our communion table at Clarendon a week ago.
Worship at GA is a pretty grand and moving affair, and it included puppets, waving banners, dancers and a liturgical artist, as well as preaching, communion, and, for the first time, a baptism.
I have spent the rest of the day in meetings or preparing testimony, and now I'm watching fireworks out my hotel window. A nice beginning.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Fidelity and Chastity ... Again
I’m preparing this week for the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which opens Saturday in Minneapolis. I will be advocating for change in the denomination’s ordination practices among other things. We are calling for a revision or removal of the so-called "fidelity and chastity" clause of our Book of Order that was put in to deny ordination to gays and lesbians.
As the process plays out again, I've looked back at some things I wrote prior to the 217th General Assembly about what fidelity and chastity truly mean, and about how honoring the body is a part of faithful living -- although not a part touched on at all by those who would deny ordination to some classes of people simply on the basis of sexuality.
Truly honoring the body with fidelity and chastity is a profoundly counter-cultural practice, because it reminds us that we are beautifully made in the image of a loving Creator. Honoring the body reminds us that each and every body – no matter age or gender or sexuality or appearance or sickness or health or size or status – each and every body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Honoring the body, then, turns us toward the Creator and away from images and ideologies that would devalue and devour our bodies.
As with so much in Christian practice and theology, we will understand this better if we learn if from those who are poor; in this case, poor in body. I shared a meal some time ago at the L’Arche community in the District. L’Arche is a global movement begun in France about 40 years ago by Jean Vanier. L’Arch communities create homes for people with severe mental and, often, physical disabilities, who live with their helpers in community.
Toward the end of the evening I spent with them, Andrew, a young man who does not speak beyond grunts, took me by the hand and led me around making sure that I had met each member of the community, as we had gathered after dinners in a couple of houses in Adams-Morgan. Andrew has dancing, smiling eyes, and his grip on my hand conveyed an incredibly deep hospitality.
Sometimes, Andrew has trouble walking. He had a bruise on his chin where he had hit his face in a recent fall. I was deeply moved, that evening, by the community director’s simple question: can you imagine what it would be like if falling down were a regular part of your life?
That reminded me that some people know they have a body because it hurts.
A few years back, Jean Vanier spoke at Harvard, and he said,
"Many people know they have a head because they have learned that two and two are four. They know that they have hands because they can cook eggs and do other things. Many know they have a sexuality because they have experienced strong emotions. But what they do not always know is that they have a well deep inside of them. If that well is tapped, springs of life and of tenderness flow forth. It has to be revealed in each person that these waters are there and that they can rise up from each one of us and flow over people, giving them life and a new hope."
I’m still not sure I know what fidelity and chastity really mean, or if the progressive church can really receive any gift from these words that have done such great damage to so many over the past decade in our denomination. But if there is a gift there to be discovered, I believe it has something to do with the way that honoring our embodied selves can tap that well and allow life and tenderness and love and faithfulness and wholeness and holiness to flow in and through our lives and our communities.
As the process plays out again, I've looked back at some things I wrote prior to the 217th General Assembly about what fidelity and chastity truly mean, and about how honoring the body is a part of faithful living -- although not a part touched on at all by those who would deny ordination to some classes of people simply on the basis of sexuality.
Truly honoring the body with fidelity and chastity is a profoundly counter-cultural practice, because it reminds us that we are beautifully made in the image of a loving Creator. Honoring the body reminds us that each and every body – no matter age or gender or sexuality or appearance or sickness or health or size or status – each and every body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Honoring the body, then, turns us toward the Creator and away from images and ideologies that would devalue and devour our bodies.
As with so much in Christian practice and theology, we will understand this better if we learn if from those who are poor; in this case, poor in body. I shared a meal some time ago at the L’Arche community in the District. L’Arche is a global movement begun in France about 40 years ago by Jean Vanier. L’Arch communities create homes for people with severe mental and, often, physical disabilities, who live with their helpers in community.
Toward the end of the evening I spent with them, Andrew, a young man who does not speak beyond grunts, took me by the hand and led me around making sure that I had met each member of the community, as we had gathered after dinners in a couple of houses in Adams-Morgan. Andrew has dancing, smiling eyes, and his grip on my hand conveyed an incredibly deep hospitality.
Sometimes, Andrew has trouble walking. He had a bruise on his chin where he had hit his face in a recent fall. I was deeply moved, that evening, by the community director’s simple question: can you imagine what it would be like if falling down were a regular part of your life?
That reminded me that some people know they have a body because it hurts.
A few years back, Jean Vanier spoke at Harvard, and he said,
"Many people know they have a head because they have learned that two and two are four. They know that they have hands because they can cook eggs and do other things. Many know they have a sexuality because they have experienced strong emotions. But what they do not always know is that they have a well deep inside of them. If that well is tapped, springs of life and of tenderness flow forth. It has to be revealed in each person that these waters are there and that they can rise up from each one of us and flow over people, giving them life and a new hope."
I’m still not sure I know what fidelity and chastity really mean, or if the progressive church can really receive any gift from these words that have done such great damage to so many over the past decade in our denomination. But if there is a gift there to be discovered, I believe it has something to do with the way that honoring our embodied selves can tap that well and allow life and tenderness and love and faithfulness and wholeness and holiness to flow in and through our lives and our communities.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
And On It Goes ...
So President Obama has fired General McChrystal. He fired the warrior, but he should have fired the war instead.
Afghanistan is now the nation's longest war, and it is an unwinnable engagement, perhaps the very definition of quagmire. The news is full of the McChrystal intrigue but scant attention is being paid to the substance of the conversations reported in the infamous Rolling Stone article.
I don't pretend to know much about military matters, and so I'll just take it at face value that the disparaging remarks about administration officials quoted in the article necessitated McChrystal's firing. Apparently the general and his inner circle questioned President Obama's engagement, and one aide said that White House national security adviser Jim Jones was "stuck in 1985."
There were other, ruder, remarks quoted in Rolling Stone, and the sum was clearly enough to get the general fired.
But the article also quotes McChrystal's chief of operations, Major General Bill Mayville, saying of the overall situation in Afghanistan that, "It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win. This is going to end in an argument."
When the military leaders charged with directing a war realize that there is no way to achieve anything that will even look like a conventional victory it is time to find leaders who will simply get us out quickly and responsibly.
As a soldier returned from Vietnam, John Kerry famously asked of America's second longest war, how do you ask one more young American to die for a mistake.
It's way past time to ask now about the wisdom of asking one more young American to die for an argument.
Friday, June 25, 2010
No Child Left Behind Here
Our fifth grader completed elementary school today. This morning we went to her promotion ceremony. I always love attending events at the school if for no other reason than reading the names of our kids' classmates: Uuganzul, Tasnim, Tamudgen, Mustafa, and my favorite, Dixie Espinoza.
The children at Hoffman-Boston speak dozens of languages and come from families with roots planted in soils all over the world. More of the kids there receive subsidized school lunches than at any other elementary school in Arlington, as well. Some of the families may be poor, but the school provides a rich learning environment. But it is a failing school under terms of No Child Left Behind.
Whenever I hear discussion of that law I think of Hoffman-Boston. Our kids have had a phenomenal experience there -- richer and deeper by far than they experienced in some high-achieving, affluent, suburban districts in other districts whose student populations were more monochromatic and mono-socio-economic. It's far from perfect, and, sadly, the worst educational aspects of the experience come when the school drills its students for the tests that determine whether or not the school is considered failing.
Still, as I watched the beautiful children walk across the stage this morning, I watched the future of the nation and I trust that when they take center stage perhaps no child will be left behind.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Saying Yes and Saying No
So I'm in the midst of writing a sermon for Sunday morning and I've just written something about being a congregation known in the community for the way we welcome the outcast and marginalized and there comes a rapping on my window. It was a young deaf man looking for help paying for a prescription.
I've met this young man before. He's come looking for help. Because I can't sign we communicate with short notes back and forth. It's a bit tough to communicate, to be certain. But it was clear that he wanted help with $30 worth of prescriptions. I say "wanted" because it is impossible to know if he "needed" the money -- that is to say, was he telling me the truth in his notes? Moreover, it was equally impossible to know whether he needed help from the church -- that is to say, did he have other resources at his disposal beyond asking the church? were we the first stop or the last?
The bottom line, for me, this time, was that the answers to those questions did not matter to me. I had $30, so I gave it to him. That doesn't make me a saint, but does it make me a sucker? And in whose eyes? Does that matter?
Given the bit of history that I do have with this young man, I am confident that he did use the money for prescription meds, but what if he didn't?
I am absolutely certain that I have more of this world's goods than he does. I'm confident that I am not more worthy of those goods than he is. I'm certain that I don't know what it would mean to be more worthy.
However, I remain confused about the role of the church in all of this. As a congregation we don't have money lying around to give out to people off the street.
Our mission money goes to support the Arlington Food Assistance Center, the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Program, Rebuilding Together, the general mission fund of the Presbyterian Church, More Light Presbyterians and various other organizations or institutions whose work is consistent with our mission.
We do not hold back any for distribution to people off the street. As a congregation we've concluded that our money is used more efficiently giving it to groups to use for people in need rather than giving it to individuals. Is that faithful? It does require us to say, "no" to most individuals who come asking.
And how shall we be known?
I've met this young man before. He's come looking for help. Because I can't sign we communicate with short notes back and forth. It's a bit tough to communicate, to be certain. But it was clear that he wanted help with $30 worth of prescriptions. I say "wanted" because it is impossible to know if he "needed" the money -- that is to say, was he telling me the truth in his notes? Moreover, it was equally impossible to know whether he needed help from the church -- that is to say, did he have other resources at his disposal beyond asking the church? were we the first stop or the last?
The bottom line, for me, this time, was that the answers to those questions did not matter to me. I had $30, so I gave it to him. That doesn't make me a saint, but does it make me a sucker? And in whose eyes? Does that matter?
Given the bit of history that I do have with this young man, I am confident that he did use the money for prescription meds, but what if he didn't?
I am absolutely certain that I have more of this world's goods than he does. I'm confident that I am not more worthy of those goods than he is. I'm certain that I don't know what it would mean to be more worthy.
However, I remain confused about the role of the church in all of this. As a congregation we don't have money lying around to give out to people off the street.
Our mission money goes to support the Arlington Food Assistance Center, the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Program, Rebuilding Together, the general mission fund of the Presbyterian Church, More Light Presbyterians and various other organizations or institutions whose work is consistent with our mission.
We do not hold back any for distribution to people off the street. As a congregation we've concluded that our money is used more efficiently giving it to groups to use for people in need rather than giving it to individuals. Is that faithful? It does require us to say, "no" to most individuals who come asking.
And how shall we be known?
Friday, June 11, 2010
Friday Afternoon Blog Repair Manual
Last night at the Fourth Annual Northern Virginia Interfaith Pride Celebration, a colleague read from a 20-year-old entry in her personal journal recalling the evening when, as a still closeted lesbian pastor, she sat in a church board meeting as members discussed pulling out of their denomination over its increasingly liberal positions on GLBT concerns. She wrote that evening of feeling incredibly alive and filled with the Spirit that she found empowering her to be herself and to begin speaking out.
I cannot do justice to the beauty of her writing, and after the service several of us were thanking her for her words and joking that our own personal journals read nothing like that.
Indeed, I haven't kept a personal journal in many years and when I look back at the ones I have kept I find them mostly cringe-inducing. Perhaps it is looking back at the person I was and finding that, like pictures from high school that make you say, "I can't believe I actually wore that stuff!" the words leave me thinking, at best, "I can't believe I actually wrote that stuff," and, at worst, "I can't believe I believed it."
But I did indeed sport the short shorts and tube socks of the late 70s, and I did think what I thought. The short shorts are going to make a comeback -- or so I threaten my kids. But the thoughts are rightly consigned to my own amnesia.
As I celebrated Pride last night I did so with the hope that homophobia will someday soon strike everyone the way a high school yearbook does (minus the fondness of nostalgia) -- can you believe that was really us? Did we really look like that? Did we really think like that?
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
It's Hot Out There
Well, of course it is. It's June in Virginia, after all. It's always hot in Virginia in June.
On the other hand, it's been pretty hot for a while. In fact, NASA reports that we just experienced the hottest April globally in its data set that dates back to 1880. January to April was the hottest such period in those records, and the same data suggest that the earth just endured its hottest 12 months in those 140 years.
As the Evangelical Climate Initiative puts it so clearly, "Now is the time for followers of Christ to help solve the global warming crisis."
The truth is clear. The planet is heating up. How much of the heating is driven by human activity is too complex to pin down with utter exactitude, but a century of research clearly shows that industrial activity (manufacturing, energy production and use, transportation) plays a significant role in the changes. Just as clearly, there are changes we could undertake that would make a huge difference.
The moral imperative from our Judeo-Christian tradition is obvious. We are stewards of what we have been given. We are part of creation and we do not stand apart from it. Moreover, we have an ethical responsibility to hand on to our children a liveable world. At the moment we are failing.
The gaping wound in the Gulf, bleeding crude oil into a beautiful ocean, is a symptom of our failure, and it should spur us to action. Oh, I know, it's not directly related to climate change, but it is a part of the same system.
That system must change, and it is up to us to change it.
Part of the solution is political and part is personal. I probably should have ridden my bicycle instead of my motorcycle to church today. On the other hand, I did leave the car at home (and it is a low emission, fuel efficient hybrid -- not to mention a pretty sweet ride.) Each of us can make changes that make a difference.
I also called both of my United States senators today to encourage their support of comprehensive climate change legislation as part of a Virginia clergy call-in day in support of a clergy statement on climate change.
Meanwhile our state attorney general is attacking climate change research both from the EPA and the University of Virginia.
Perhaps the AG is an authentic climate change skeptic or maybe he is cynically playing to his conservative political base. It could be both.
Whatever the case may be, the opposition to climate change legislation is clearly part of a conservative political program driven in significant part by corporate interests whose bottom lines could suffer if the United States adopts strict emissions controls. As the Union of Concerned Scientists reported several years ago, oil interests -- in particular Exxon Mobile -- have poured millions of dollars into funding climate skeptics.
And I've just fallen into their well-laid trap by getting lost in the political weeds of what should be, first and foremost, a moral issue.
Perhaps the fact that a growing number of evangelicals share a moral outrage about the state of the earth will change the political calculus on the issue. They understand on this issue that their interests are not the same as those of the oil industry.
After all, everybody sweats, and it's getting hotter all the time.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
parting shots of spring
Spring brings our own small blossom festival, which corresponded this year with the great laptop die-off. If you'd been at our house two months ago, this is what you'd have seen on the way to the front door.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
In All Things, Moderation
I don't reckon Plato had blogs and spam in mind when he suggested moderation but that's what it's come to friends. A few of you offer comments from time to time and I welcome them -- even the persistently argumentative and disputatious ones. When I started this little thing years ago I imagined that it might serve sometimes as a place of dialogue and a few times it actually has. I continue it because I find it a useful, even helpful, discipline. If a few folks find my ramblings amusing or provocative, that's an added plus as far as I'm concerned. However, when spammers start leaving comments with links to on-line Chinese pornography -- why am I surprised that there is such a thing -- I'm drawing the line. So I've turned on the "moderate comments" option. I promise never to block even the most obnoxious comments if they are remotely on point, as long as it doesn't link to something disgusting. Keep it clean, people!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Remembering
I rarely watch TV news so I don't really know how much time is being spent focused on President Obama's Memorial Day activities. I hope it's not much, because it is surely not a newsworthy item.
It seems that, like President George H.W. Bush before him, Obama is sending his vice president to Arlington National Cemetery next Monday. The president will be in Chicago and will visit a national cemetery there. Some people are trying to make a big deal out of this but I won't link to them here because I don't want to drive a single extra reader toward this one more shining example of what is so wrong with our politics.
On the same day that news of the 1,000 American casualty in Afghanistan was published we're supposed to be worried about what cemetery the president will visit to honor America's war dead on Memorial Day?
I have ancestors buried in the national cemetery in Chattanooga -- veterans of World War I. As far as I know, no American president has ever visited that cemetery. Does that make the sacrifices of those buried there less significant? Would they be elevated in death beyond what they were in life if a president did lay a wreath there? Will their deaths mean any less because President Obama visits a national cemetery in Illinois rather than one in Virginia next week? Were dead veterans dishonored when Vice President Dan Quayle went to Arlington National Cemetery each Memorial Day during the first President Bush's term of office in place of the president?
Honestly, none of those questions makes any sense at all.
The real question to be asked on Memorial Day is this: why are young men still dying in Afghanistan and Iraq?
To ask that does not dishonor their service. It is, in fact, the only question that does justice to their continued sacrifice. For if we cannot ask the central questions of our time and discuss and debate them in civil and substantial terms then nothing they have done will amount to anything more than sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Those who would distract us from that central question are the ones who dishonor the memory and the service of the men and women we remember on Memorial Day.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Russian Roulette on the Laptop
Just got off the phone with a nice Indian man who has done his best to resuscitate my practically brand-new laptop which has been randomly shutting down pretty much since I bought it two months ago.
He had me drain the power from it, which involved pulling the battery and holding the power button down for about 20 seconds. It doesn't take much to drain power.
He walked me through a couple of simple steps to reset the machines bios -- whatever that means. Whenever I see "bios" I think "life." It does seem that this machine has a mind of its own, so why not a life of its own as well.
Which brings to mind the announcement yesterday that scientists have created a cell from whole clothe. Well, that's not exactly correct. The New York Times reports it this way:
According to the Times article, the environmental group Friends of the Earth (whose KSU chapter I was an officer in a long time ago and in a strange set of circumstances not worth going through here), condemned the achievement as "dangerous new technology," and urged an end to the research.
Of course that is unlikely. Technologies, once out of the scientific bag, seldom get put back in.
Those who pull them out of the bag, Venter in this case, almost always trumpet their discoveries or achievements with promises for valuable advances for humankind. Venter spoke of new energy and medical advances that might emerge from synthetic cells that could be invented in the future using the technologies he has pioneered.
Sometimes -- often? not so often? too often? -- the technological advances have profound unintended consequences that the scientists, in their drive to discover, overlook.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was almost an exception, or, at least was cognizant enough of the consequences of his scientific work to say, upon the detonation of the first atomic bomb, "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."
The edge of science is often a kind of Russian Roulette, although some of the bullets really are magic while others are deadly.
I'm playing my own small blogging version right now. I have no idea whether or not the fixes my Indian friend recommended will work. If not the laptop will shut down with no warning and I'll lose whatever I'm working on. So I'm pausing regularly to save it -- not because it's worth any great effort, but because I'm spending the time so I might as well have some pixels to show for it at the end of the day.
I would hope that scientists working in Venter's field would likewise take enough time along the way -- pausing to save, as it were, the rest of us from unforeseen shut downs.
Wow! All the way through a brief post without a shutdown. I hope the work that Venter is pioneering does a whole lot better than that.
He had me drain the power from it, which involved pulling the battery and holding the power button down for about 20 seconds. It doesn't take much to drain power.
He walked me through a couple of simple steps to reset the machines bios -- whatever that means. Whenever I see "bios" I think "life." It does seem that this machine has a mind of its own, so why not a life of its own as well.
Which brings to mind the announcement yesterday that scientists have created a cell from whole clothe. Well, that's not exactly correct. The New York Times reports it this way:
The genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has taken another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.
According to the Times article, the environmental group Friends of the Earth (whose KSU chapter I was an officer in a long time ago and in a strange set of circumstances not worth going through here), condemned the achievement as "dangerous new technology," and urged an end to the research.
Of course that is unlikely. Technologies, once out of the scientific bag, seldom get put back in.
Those who pull them out of the bag, Venter in this case, almost always trumpet their discoveries or achievements with promises for valuable advances for humankind. Venter spoke of new energy and medical advances that might emerge from synthetic cells that could be invented in the future using the technologies he has pioneered.
Sometimes -- often? not so often? too often? -- the technological advances have profound unintended consequences that the scientists, in their drive to discover, overlook.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was almost an exception, or, at least was cognizant enough of the consequences of his scientific work to say, upon the detonation of the first atomic bomb, "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds."
The edge of science is often a kind of Russian Roulette, although some of the bullets really are magic while others are deadly.
I'm playing my own small blogging version right now. I have no idea whether or not the fixes my Indian friend recommended will work. If not the laptop will shut down with no warning and I'll lose whatever I'm working on. So I'm pausing regularly to save it -- not because it's worth any great effort, but because I'm spending the time so I might as well have some pixels to show for it at the end of the day.
I would hope that scientists working in Venter's field would likewise take enough time along the way -- pausing to save, as it were, the rest of us from unforeseen shut downs.
Wow! All the way through a brief post without a shutdown. I hope the work that Venter is pioneering does a whole lot better than that.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Honor and Lies
The sad, strange and silly saga of Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, has prompted a lot of commentary. It seems that Blumenthal has claimed, falsely, that he served in the American military in Vietnam.
It's not the first time and probably not the last that someone who did not serve in that war has claimed to have done so.
In this morning's Post, former editor and reporter and Vietnam vet Henry Allen decided to answer the question of "why they lie about Vietnam."
Allen puts it this way: "The fact is that regardless of whether a war was moral, justified, won or meaningful, having served in one -- particularly in combat -- confers prestige."
I suspect that he is correct, but in a limited way.
Chris Hedges, in his brilliant War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, writes, "the rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."
I doubt that Allen would put much stock in Hedges' opinions because Hedges only covered wars and never fought in one. After all, in this morning's piece, Allen also writes,
"Once I listened to a former war-zone correspondent who was eager to demonstrate that his time under fire was the same as a soldier's. He said, I'd get up in the morning and face the decision of whether I should head out where it was really dangerous.
But soldiers don't get to decide. They don't have choices. That's part of the hell of war."
Allen would likely have more respect for the observations of Tim O'Brien, whose towering work, The Things They Carried, includes this observation:
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
One wonders why participating in an addiction to obscenity and evil continues to confer prestige. That it does strikes me as incredibly sad. It's like the old drinking stories of recovering alcoholics -- they know that the drink could have, and maybe should have killed them, just as it did so many of their buddies, but they cannot let go of the irresistible feeling that the drink gave them.
There have been 6,492 coalition casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq as of May 20, including 37 this month in Afghanistan.
The prestige toll continues to rise every day.
As to Vietnam, well, I was 15 years old in April of 1975, when the last Americans left Vietnam. I organized and participated in my first protest against American militarism on Armed Forces Day in 1978.
It's not the first time and probably not the last that someone who did not serve in that war has claimed to have done so.
In this morning's Post, former editor and reporter and Vietnam vet Henry Allen decided to answer the question of "why they lie about Vietnam."
Allen puts it this way: "The fact is that regardless of whether a war was moral, justified, won or meaningful, having served in one -- particularly in combat -- confers prestige."
I suspect that he is correct, but in a limited way.
Chris Hedges, in his brilliant War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, writes, "the rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."
I doubt that Allen would put much stock in Hedges' opinions because Hedges only covered wars and never fought in one. After all, in this morning's piece, Allen also writes,
"Once I listened to a former war-zone correspondent who was eager to demonstrate that his time under fire was the same as a soldier's. He said, I'd get up in the morning and face the decision of whether I should head out where it was really dangerous.
But soldiers don't get to decide. They don't have choices. That's part of the hell of war."
Allen would likely have more respect for the observations of Tim O'Brien, whose towering work, The Things They Carried, includes this observation:
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
One wonders why participating in an addiction to obscenity and evil continues to confer prestige. That it does strikes me as incredibly sad. It's like the old drinking stories of recovering alcoholics -- they know that the drink could have, and maybe should have killed them, just as it did so many of their buddies, but they cannot let go of the irresistible feeling that the drink gave them.
There have been 6,492 coalition casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq as of May 20, including 37 this month in Afghanistan.
The prestige toll continues to rise every day.
As to Vietnam, well, I was 15 years old in April of 1975, when the last Americans left Vietnam. I organized and participated in my first protest against American militarism on Armed Forces Day in 1978.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
So, where was I ... Oh, yeah, Kent, 1970
Oh, yes. May 4. Kent. 1970. Busted laptop. Hm, one of these things is not like the other.
In any case, the story I wanted to tell goes like this:
In the spring of 2000 the organizers of the memorial events that year invited all of the survivors of the shootings to Kent. I don't know if that happens every year. I do know that in the early years, including the years that I was a student, the school administration really did not want the survivors on campus because they were a visceral reminder of something the university simply wished to forget.
But in 2000 the surviving victims of the shooting were invited back and many returned, which was really neither here nor there for me except that in the spring of 2000 I was serving a church in Mt. Lebanon, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
In 2000, May 4 fell on a Wednesday. It was both a work day for me and a school day for our children so we quickly concluded that the trek to Kent, about two hours west of Mt. Lebo, was not going to happen. I was at the church on that Friday afternoon later than usual, and the rest of the staff had left for the day. I was walking around the front of the church, something I rarely did because the main entrance off the parking lot actually went into the back of the place. I noticed a middle-aged man and woman and a teenage girl trying the door to the fellowship hall, so I walked over to them and asked if I could help.
The man said he had grown up in Mt. Lebanon and attended the church as a child, and was back in town for the first time with his daughter. He wanted to show her some of the places that had been important to him and the church, which had hosted dances for high school kids on Friday and Saturday nights in the late 60s, was one of those places.
One of the family, I don't recall which, was wearing a 30th anniversary May 4 t-shirt and I remarked that I was a KSU grad.
That was when Jim Russell introduced himself. He told me that he had been shot at Kent on May 4, 1970. He was standing at a 90-degree angle from and more than a football field's distance from the National Guardsmen who turned and opened fire on the students that afternoon. He was shot in the thigh and the forehead by the only Guardsman firing a shotgun. The rest had machine guns.
In 2000 he lived in Oregon, having moved west in the mid-1970s to escape the shadow of Kent. He shared with me the bitterness he felt toward the university and the authorities, who wanted either to forget the whole thing or blame the students.
He vividly remembered the calls to "shoot 'em all," and the names -- "worse than brown shirts and night riders" according to Ohio Gov. James Rhodes -- that the students were called by high ranking government officials.
He shared with me that he'd lost a job in Ohio in the early 70s when his employers learned of his connection to the shootings, a story he also shares in the story linked above. He also noted that a new university administration during the 1990s had changed the way the school dealt with the survivors of the shootings and had made them feel welcome on campus for the first time in a quarter century. While time had healed his physical wounds and many of the psychological ones as well, I doubt that Jim Russell ever felt completely at peace with the events of May 4, 1970. He died in 2007 at 60.
A memorial service was held at Kent and the story on it in the Akron paper at the time drew echos of the same response the shootings did in 1970: the students deserved what they got.
Forty years later the shootings continue to haunt the lives of those caught in the crossfire. In fact just this week Alan Canfora, who was wounded on May 4, asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to reopen the investigation of the 40-year-old case based on new evidence from an audio recording of the shootings. A Cleveland Plain-Dealer investigation this spring used new audio enhancement techniques and discovered a voice clearly ordering the Guard to "prepare to fire" seconds before they opened fire for 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others.
Doris Krause, the 84-year-old mother of Allison Krause, who was 19 when died from fatal wounds received on a campus parking lot more than 100 yards from National Guardsmen, said of the new discovery, "I'm an old lady, and before I leave this earth, I'd like to find out who said what is on that tape."
Forty years on and it remains true that the powers that be will bring to bear deadly force on those who threaten the base of the power, and they will also go to any length to avoid being held accountable for their actions.
They used to produce t-shirts each spring at Kent that read, "long live the spirit of Kent and Jackson State." I never bought one because I was always skeptical that there was any such thing as a spirit of those places and the killings deaths of the spring of 1970. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the spirit is simply the tireless search for the truth about what happened that day and the pursuit of something like justice even all these years later.
In any case, the story I wanted to tell goes like this:
In the spring of 2000 the organizers of the memorial events that year invited all of the survivors of the shootings to Kent. I don't know if that happens every year. I do know that in the early years, including the years that I was a student, the school administration really did not want the survivors on campus because they were a visceral reminder of something the university simply wished to forget.
But in 2000 the surviving victims of the shooting were invited back and many returned, which was really neither here nor there for me except that in the spring of 2000 I was serving a church in Mt. Lebanon, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
In 2000, May 4 fell on a Wednesday. It was both a work day for me and a school day for our children so we quickly concluded that the trek to Kent, about two hours west of Mt. Lebo, was not going to happen. I was at the church on that Friday afternoon later than usual, and the rest of the staff had left for the day. I was walking around the front of the church, something I rarely did because the main entrance off the parking lot actually went into the back of the place. I noticed a middle-aged man and woman and a teenage girl trying the door to the fellowship hall, so I walked over to them and asked if I could help.
The man said he had grown up in Mt. Lebanon and attended the church as a child, and was back in town for the first time with his daughter. He wanted to show her some of the places that had been important to him and the church, which had hosted dances for high school kids on Friday and Saturday nights in the late 60s, was one of those places.
One of the family, I don't recall which, was wearing a 30th anniversary May 4 t-shirt and I remarked that I was a KSU grad.
That was when Jim Russell introduced himself. He told me that he had been shot at Kent on May 4, 1970. He was standing at a 90-degree angle from and more than a football field's distance from the National Guardsmen who turned and opened fire on the students that afternoon. He was shot in the thigh and the forehead by the only Guardsman firing a shotgun. The rest had machine guns.
In 2000 he lived in Oregon, having moved west in the mid-1970s to escape the shadow of Kent. He shared with me the bitterness he felt toward the university and the authorities, who wanted either to forget the whole thing or blame the students.
He vividly remembered the calls to "shoot 'em all," and the names -- "worse than brown shirts and night riders" according to Ohio Gov. James Rhodes -- that the students were called by high ranking government officials.
He shared with me that he'd lost a job in Ohio in the early 70s when his employers learned of his connection to the shootings, a story he also shares in the story linked above. He also noted that a new university administration during the 1990s had changed the way the school dealt with the survivors of the shootings and had made them feel welcome on campus for the first time in a quarter century. While time had healed his physical wounds and many of the psychological ones as well, I doubt that Jim Russell ever felt completely at peace with the events of May 4, 1970. He died in 2007 at 60.
A memorial service was held at Kent and the story on it in the Akron paper at the time drew echos of the same response the shootings did in 1970: the students deserved what they got.
Forty years later the shootings continue to haunt the lives of those caught in the crossfire. In fact just this week Alan Canfora, who was wounded on May 4, asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to reopen the investigation of the 40-year-old case based on new evidence from an audio recording of the shootings. A Cleveland Plain-Dealer investigation this spring used new audio enhancement techniques and discovered a voice clearly ordering the Guard to "prepare to fire" seconds before they opened fire for 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others.
Doris Krause, the 84-year-old mother of Allison Krause, who was 19 when died from fatal wounds received on a campus parking lot more than 100 yards from National Guardsmen, said of the new discovery, "I'm an old lady, and before I leave this earth, I'd like to find out who said what is on that tape."
Forty years on and it remains true that the powers that be will bring to bear deadly force on those who threaten the base of the power, and they will also go to any length to avoid being held accountable for their actions.
They used to produce t-shirts each spring at Kent that read, "long live the spirit of Kent and Jackson State." I never bought one because I was always skeptical that there was any such thing as a spirit of those places and the killings deaths of the spring of 1970. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the spirit is simply the tireless search for the truth about what happened that day and the pursuit of something like justice even all these years later.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming
Forty years ago today Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of unarmed college students at Kent State, killing four and wounding 13. In the aftermath of the shootings President Nixon remarked, "when dissent turns violent it invites tragedy." Of course, it was not the dissenters who turned violent that Monday morning. It was the empire's police, armed with weapons of war trained on unarmed college students in the middle of a campus that was stirred in protest against the empire's war in Vietnam.
I graduated from Kent 13 springs after the shootings, and participated in memorial vigils each of the five springs I was on campus. I've stood in the spots where the kids were mortally wounded, and I've stood on the spot where other kids turned and fired their weapons.
In other words, I've looked at the shootings from both sides now, and from both sides it has always been clear to me that had Nixon been capable of honesty he would have said, "when dissent begins to threaten the foundations of established order then the established order will bring to bear deadly force to quell the dissent." But no president can ever be that honest.
As a Kent alum I have a bagful of memories of May 4 memorials, but the most affecting May 4 connection for me happened more than 15 years after I'd graduated during the time when I lived in Pittsburgh.
I'll share the story in a subsequent post. My laptop is, once again, seriously misbehaving -- crashed twice since I began this post. Urrrrg.
I graduated from Kent 13 springs after the shootings, and participated in memorial vigils each of the five springs I was on campus. I've stood in the spots where the kids were mortally wounded, and I've stood on the spot where other kids turned and fired their weapons.
In other words, I've looked at the shootings from both sides now, and from both sides it has always been clear to me that had Nixon been capable of honesty he would have said, "when dissent begins to threaten the foundations of established order then the established order will bring to bear deadly force to quell the dissent." But no president can ever be that honest.
As a Kent alum I have a bagful of memories of May 4 memorials, but the most affecting May 4 connection for me happened more than 15 years after I'd graduated during the time when I lived in Pittsburgh.
I'll share the story in a subsequent post. My laptop is, once again, seriously misbehaving -- crashed twice since I began this post. Urrrrg.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
with the Bishops and Elders
I spent much of the past two days with the Bishops and Elders Council of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Monday we met with Josh DuBois at the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
The first thing that should be said is that Josh DuBois is one whip-smart young man. The amount of information that he holds in his head is more than most of us hold in our electronic data bases. Oh, to be young!
The second thing to be said is what a difference an election makes. The Bush Administration steadfastly refused to engage national GLBT leaders on the pressing concerns of the community: employment and housing discrimination, GLBT poverty, the issues that uniquely confront aging gays and lesbians in health care, housing and family law matters. Monday afternoon it was clear that the Obama Administration is informed and engaged on the issues that actually comprise anything that might be called "the homosexual agenda." That agenda has nothing to do with "spreading a lifestyle" and everything to do with protecting lives and rights. The present Administration, while far from perfect on these issues, simply sees them far more clearly because they do not come at them with blinders provided by leaders from the Religious Right.
Those leaders include folks like Lou Engle, founder of The Call. Engle is reportedly headed to Uganda to support its off shoot program, TheCall Uganda, whose stated mission includes praying for help with "the challenges in our country such as ... witchcraft and human sacrifice, homosexuality and increased immorality."
While there is a certain attraction to having the Lou Engles of the world out of the U.S., we really ought to export the best of what we are not the worst. Uganda has plenty of problems with the U.S. exporting hate.
Engle's visit is timed to support Uganda's much-discussed anti-homosexuality bill, a law that would make same-gender relationships a capital crime and, if I were Ugandan, even criminalize this blog for failure to report known homosexuals and leave me liable for up to seven years in prison for my associations.
Meanwhile a bit further south, two young men in Malawi, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, remain in prison, facing sentences of up to 14 years, for the crime of professing their love for on another.
Yesterday, on the steps of National City Christian Church, a young African gay man named Moses gave thanks to God that "something good is happening" as he prayed for the safety and liberation of his family, friends and gay and lesbians brothers and sisters in Africa.
As Dr. King put it, we are all bound together in an inescapable web of mutuality. Whatever effects one directly effects us all indirectly. The freedom to love one another must not be bound by any government, and just as we must be concerned for the rights of marginalized people here we must stand in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed everywhere.
The first thing that should be said is that Josh DuBois is one whip-smart young man. The amount of information that he holds in his head is more than most of us hold in our electronic data bases. Oh, to be young!
The second thing to be said is what a difference an election makes. The Bush Administration steadfastly refused to engage national GLBT leaders on the pressing concerns of the community: employment and housing discrimination, GLBT poverty, the issues that uniquely confront aging gays and lesbians in health care, housing and family law matters. Monday afternoon it was clear that the Obama Administration is informed and engaged on the issues that actually comprise anything that might be called "the homosexual agenda." That agenda has nothing to do with "spreading a lifestyle" and everything to do with protecting lives and rights. The present Administration, while far from perfect on these issues, simply sees them far more clearly because they do not come at them with blinders provided by leaders from the Religious Right.
Those leaders include folks like Lou Engle, founder of The Call. Engle is reportedly headed to Uganda to support its off shoot program, TheCall Uganda, whose stated mission includes praying for help with "the challenges in our country such as ... witchcraft and human sacrifice, homosexuality and increased immorality."
While there is a certain attraction to having the Lou Engles of the world out of the U.S., we really ought to export the best of what we are not the worst. Uganda has plenty of problems with the U.S. exporting hate.
Engle's visit is timed to support Uganda's much-discussed anti-homosexuality bill, a law that would make same-gender relationships a capital crime and, if I were Ugandan, even criminalize this blog for failure to report known homosexuals and leave me liable for up to seven years in prison for my associations.
Meanwhile a bit further south, two young men in Malawi, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, remain in prison, facing sentences of up to 14 years, for the crime of professing their love for on another.
Yesterday, on the steps of National City Christian Church, a young African gay man named Moses gave thanks to God that "something good is happening" as he prayed for the safety and liberation of his family, friends and gay and lesbians brothers and sisters in Africa.
As Dr. King put it, we are all bound together in an inescapable web of mutuality. Whatever effects one directly effects us all indirectly. The freedom to love one another must not be bound by any government, and just as we must be concerned for the rights of marginalized people here we must stand in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed everywhere.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Earth Days
It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, as my favorite Presbyterian minister used to say.
I got a note from my uncle this morning. Yesterday was my late aunt's birthday as well as the anniversary of their engagement. He recalled that their first book was on creation care, although long before that term of art had come into use.
John's note details what is happening in his garden this spring, and notes that both of the camps that he directed over the many years, Hanover and New Hope, had substantial demonstration gardens that helped feed the camp community.
None of that particularly suprised me. I have seen John in the garden many times over the years at Hanover -- the first time he met my two sons he was working in the garden, dripping sweat and loving life.
But reading his note prompted me to wonder where his love of the garden came from. My father, John's younger brother, never muched cared for gardening. My mom loves it, but dad never had any interest that I could discern. He knows nature that way one might know a set of facts. He always knew what kind of tree was growing in front of him, but as he grew older it seemed that trees were mostly obstacles to mowing the grass.
To be sure, my dad has always been an environmentalist in his convictions, but not so much a practicing one beyond the point of basic stewardship of resources -- and on that point I have always had the impression that it was more about saving a nickel than saving the planet.
Until the past few years I would have said that I was much more like my father than like my uncle. As urban dwellers in Chicago we rarely had any green space in which to garden, and we never went out of our way to create any.
During our interim sojourn between those years and our Arlington time we did have yards, and we did some basics, but those were also the years when our children were young and so time was always at a premium.
But I think the bigger issue was that we did not stay put long enough to put down roots, literally.
Now we've lived in the same house for almost seven years, and there's no move on the horizon. We've planted a tree, an autum blaze maple, and stayed put long enough to see it grow taller than the house. We just planted another, a Japanese emperor maple, that will never grow as tall as the house, but I hope to stay put long enough to see it broaden across one half of our small front yard.
Tending to the earth requires time, and time spent in one place. It also requires focusing on that one place with considerable attention. I think this was the great difference between my father and his brother.
Now my dad is slipping gradually into Parkinson's dimentia, and he lives pretty much out of focus all the time. But long before the disease struck, my dad's restless, creative energy drew his focus always to the next thing, while my uncle not only stayed put physically, he also stayed put emotionally.
I have always been, in that respect, my father's son. The horizon has always beckoned, and I've always looked for the next thing. I'm sure that will always be true, but I have learned that the only reason the grass if ever greener on the other side is because someone stayed put long enough to make it that way.
As I watched the pictures from the Gulf oil rig disaster this week, it struck me that we need all of that oil because we are a culture that does not value roots. It is altogether fitting that the great crises of our time are and will be about what our lifestyles are doing to all of the roots that we are too busy to tend.
I got a note from my uncle this morning. Yesterday was my late aunt's birthday as well as the anniversary of their engagement. He recalled that their first book was on creation care, although long before that term of art had come into use.
John's note details what is happening in his garden this spring, and notes that both of the camps that he directed over the many years, Hanover and New Hope, had substantial demonstration gardens that helped feed the camp community.
None of that particularly suprised me. I have seen John in the garden many times over the years at Hanover -- the first time he met my two sons he was working in the garden, dripping sweat and loving life.
But reading his note prompted me to wonder where his love of the garden came from. My father, John's younger brother, never muched cared for gardening. My mom loves it, but dad never had any interest that I could discern. He knows nature that way one might know a set of facts. He always knew what kind of tree was growing in front of him, but as he grew older it seemed that trees were mostly obstacles to mowing the grass.
To be sure, my dad has always been an environmentalist in his convictions, but not so much a practicing one beyond the point of basic stewardship of resources -- and on that point I have always had the impression that it was more about saving a nickel than saving the planet.
Until the past few years I would have said that I was much more like my father than like my uncle. As urban dwellers in Chicago we rarely had any green space in which to garden, and we never went out of our way to create any.
During our interim sojourn between those years and our Arlington time we did have yards, and we did some basics, but those were also the years when our children were young and so time was always at a premium.
But I think the bigger issue was that we did not stay put long enough to put down roots, literally.
Now we've lived in the same house for almost seven years, and there's no move on the horizon. We've planted a tree, an autum blaze maple, and stayed put long enough to see it grow taller than the house. We just planted another, a Japanese emperor maple, that will never grow as tall as the house, but I hope to stay put long enough to see it broaden across one half of our small front yard.
Tending to the earth requires time, and time spent in one place. It also requires focusing on that one place with considerable attention. I think this was the great difference between my father and his brother.
Now my dad is slipping gradually into Parkinson's dimentia, and he lives pretty much out of focus all the time. But long before the disease struck, my dad's restless, creative energy drew his focus always to the next thing, while my uncle not only stayed put physically, he also stayed put emotionally.
I have always been, in that respect, my father's son. The horizon has always beckoned, and I've always looked for the next thing. I'm sure that will always be true, but I have learned that the only reason the grass if ever greener on the other side is because someone stayed put long enough to make it that way.
As I watched the pictures from the Gulf oil rig disaster this week, it struck me that we need all of that oil because we are a culture that does not value roots. It is altogether fitting that the great crises of our time are and will be about what our lifestyles are doing to all of the roots that we are too busy to tend.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Greetings from Asbury Park ...
Well, not exactly, but I did pass the exit as I was counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike on my way up to Stony Point this afternoon. And there's your two pop cultures nods for the day.
It has been a while since I last posted; in fact, it's the longest pause since I started this blog four or five years ago. I've come face to face with my own ridiculous dependence on convenient technology. It's not just technology I'm dependent upon, it's convenient technology.
As noted last month, my laptop died a sad and overheated death. I spent several day in vain hope and resucitation efforts loading and reloading operating systems and so forth, only to conclude in the end that it was a hardware issue. Apparently the video card melted down, almost literally, due to overheating.
That happened the same week I severely sprained an ankle (trying to keep up with a kid half my age on the basketball court). All of that happened just before Holy Week.
All of which was enough to make a preacher cuss -- holy @#$!, as it were.
So, just in time for Easter I got a new laptop. But by that point not only was I in the midst of the business of the season, I was also out of practice, or, better, out of the practice of writing.
We are what we practice. When we set aside practices for whatever reason, it is all too easy to leave them set aside. Sometimes that is not a bad thing. To every thing, and every practice, there is a season.
But often we leave practices set aside because they are either habits or they are not. The practice of eating well, the practice of living lightly on the earth, the practice of worship, the practice of prayer, the practice of sport or art or music require, well, practice.
Contrary to the old saying, practice does not make perfect. Practice does, however, make us. Moreover, practice is not always convenient, and for one as addicted to (or practiced at) convenience, temporary inconvenience becomes a too easy excuse for setting a practice aside.
So I'm picking this practice back up, even as I engage again the practice of making peace as part of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Fellowship at its first ever convocation of peacemakers this weekend at the Stony Point Center in New York.
I am spending the next couple of days in the company of a wonderful collection of remarkable people whose experience and wisdom humble and inspire me. The grace of being in their presence this evening has, if nothing else, given me the energy to wake up the blog and pick up the practice. Not empty and aching ... but still off to look for a new, more peaceful America.
Sorry, the New Jersey Turnpike just does that to me.
It has been a while since I last posted; in fact, it's the longest pause since I started this blog four or five years ago. I've come face to face with my own ridiculous dependence on convenient technology. It's not just technology I'm dependent upon, it's convenient technology.
As noted last month, my laptop died a sad and overheated death. I spent several day in vain hope and resucitation efforts loading and reloading operating systems and so forth, only to conclude in the end that it was a hardware issue. Apparently the video card melted down, almost literally, due to overheating.
That happened the same week I severely sprained an ankle (trying to keep up with a kid half my age on the basketball court). All of that happened just before Holy Week.
All of which was enough to make a preacher cuss -- holy @#$!, as it were.
So, just in time for Easter I got a new laptop. But by that point not only was I in the midst of the business of the season, I was also out of practice, or, better, out of the practice of writing.
We are what we practice. When we set aside practices for whatever reason, it is all too easy to leave them set aside. Sometimes that is not a bad thing. To every thing, and every practice, there is a season.
But often we leave practices set aside because they are either habits or they are not. The practice of eating well, the practice of living lightly on the earth, the practice of worship, the practice of prayer, the practice of sport or art or music require, well, practice.
Contrary to the old saying, practice does not make perfect. Practice does, however, make us. Moreover, practice is not always convenient, and for one as addicted to (or practiced at) convenience, temporary inconvenience becomes a too easy excuse for setting a practice aside.
So I'm picking this practice back up, even as I engage again the practice of making peace as part of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Fellowship at its first ever convocation of peacemakers this weekend at the Stony Point Center in New York.
I am spending the next couple of days in the company of a wonderful collection of remarkable people whose experience and wisdom humble and inspire me. The grace of being in their presence this evening has, if nothing else, given me the energy to wake up the blog and pick up the practice. Not empty and aching ... but still off to look for a new, more peaceful America.
Sorry, the New Jersey Turnpike just does that to me.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Patience
This week, in a book I'd set aside at least two years ago, I found a slip of paper on which I had written a couple of commitments: to practice patience and to find moments of joy to celebrate each day.
I was an excellent reminder to stumble across just now. We are almost to the end of Lent, and stand at the moment on the edge of Holy Week. Holy Week demands patience, as we move from the waving of palms and the loud "hosannas" to betrayal, crucifixion and the longing for new life.
Personally, I'm forced to wait right now, as I continue to be homebound with my injured ankle. Moreover, my laptop has resisted all efforts at resurrection! So, I can't get out because I can't drive or walk much, and I can't communicate with the ease we've all become accustomed to.
Obviously my Lenten commitment has gone the way of the laptop!
The situation has also challenged that old commitment to patience and celebration, to be sure. On the other hand, it has driven me back to some books I'd set aside, including John Crossan's God & Empire, in which I found the slip of paper.
Crossan invites us to confront the questions that inevitably arise when Christian faith confronts political empire. As we marked last week the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and as we mark next week the death of Jesus at the hands of the empire of his day, it seemed a timely coincidence that I should return to this book and find in it my own promise to practice patience and to seek joy.
I was an excellent reminder to stumble across just now. We are almost to the end of Lent, and stand at the moment on the edge of Holy Week. Holy Week demands patience, as we move from the waving of palms and the loud "hosannas" to betrayal, crucifixion and the longing for new life.
Personally, I'm forced to wait right now, as I continue to be homebound with my injured ankle. Moreover, my laptop has resisted all efforts at resurrection! So, I can't get out because I can't drive or walk much, and I can't communicate with the ease we've all become accustomed to.
Obviously my Lenten commitment has gone the way of the laptop!
The situation has also challenged that old commitment to patience and celebration, to be sure. On the other hand, it has driven me back to some books I'd set aside, including John Crossan's God & Empire, in which I found the slip of paper.
Crossan invites us to confront the questions that inevitably arise when Christian faith confronts political empire. As we marked last week the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and as we mark next week the death of Jesus at the hands of the empire of his day, it seemed a timely coincidence that I should return to this book and find in it my own promise to practice patience and to seek joy.
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