More on NSP

Here's another reflection on last week's Network of Spiritual Progressives conference.

Tooting My Own Horn

About a month back, The Nation ran an excellent piece on the state of progressive faith. I wrote them this letter, an edited version of which will apparently run in this week’s print edition. It is important to write these things to publications, to Congress, to each other. And hey, every once in a while one will get noticed.

Thank you for Dan Wakefield's challenging "Taking Back the Faith." I'm sorry that Wakefield didn't visit with more people of faith in his travels because he might have found that there are communities and faith leaders walking the same path that Coffin, King, Heschel and the Berrigan brothers trod. On Easter Sunday, reflecting on the empty tomb and the missing body, I said to the congregation I serve in Arlington, "The Jesus who came preaching good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation to the oppressed and the year of jubilee (Lk. 4:18-19) has been stolen by Christians who don’t seem to care much about public policies to help the poor, the imprisoned or the sick, who preach a hate-filled message to gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered persons, and who embrace a gospel of prosperity for the affluent and but remain indifferent to the impoverished and indebted of the developing world. This Jesus has been stolen by those who call you a saint when you feed the hungry but call you a communist when you ask why people are hungry. This Jesus has been stolen by those who call you a good Christian when you pray for the safety of the troops in Iraq but call you un-American when you question the wisdom of the war. This Jesus has been stolen by those who call you pastor when you do a wedding for a man and a woman but call you a false prophet when you suggest extending the same rights to same-sex couples." I am not laying any personal claim to the mantle of the great leaders of the Civil Rights and peace movements of the past century, but the people we have been waiting for are among us already. The challenge lies in organizing effectively, raising voices repeatedly and getting the media -- including The Nation -- to focus on what is being said and done today rather than on what was said so eloquently four decades ago. Come and see.

If We Build It ...

The Network of Spiritual Progressives conference ended Saturday evening and my middle-aged bones are only now recovering from too many long, late, spirit-filled evenings in a row. The conference drew about 1,200 people and considerable media attention as well as progressive commentary. It drew from me the conviction that now is the time to build a network of spiritual progressives in Northern Virginia. Read up. If you're interested, let's connect on it.

Away Message

I'm at the DC conference of the Network of Spiritual Progressives this week and away from the computer. No more entries till next week. In the meanwhile, check out the network. Read The Left Hand of God. Get spiritual. Be progressive. TTFN.

Another Day, Another Agitation

John Kenneth Galbraith, who died last month, once said "The emancipation of belief is the most formidable of the tasks of reform, the one on which all else depends."
Sounds like a call to rethink, to get a new mind for a new time.
On the other hand, William Sloan Coffin, who died days before Galbraith, was fond of saying that "you don't think your way into a new way of living; you live your way into a new way of thinking."
And then there was Funkadelic, who sang "free your mind and your ass will follow."
Head first or not, we need some liberation these days from lousy belief systems and unjust actions.

Agitation #3

Abraham Lincoln once asked, "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?"
The answer: "Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
For some reason that came to mind today as President Bush assured the nation that the National Security Agency does not spy on Americans. This on the same day that USA Today writes about a massive database of Americans' phone calls. Hm ... how many legs does that dog have?
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Or is it, rather, the truth is out there?

Agitation #2

“Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a transcendent demand, freighted with divine concern. It is not only a relationship between man and man, it is an act involving God, a divine need. Justice is His line, righteousness His plummet (Isa. 28:17). It is not one of His ways, but in all His ways. Its validity is not only universal, but also eternal, independent of will and experience.”

– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Now that wouldn't have anything to do with this would it?

How Much Would You Save
Under the Plan?

Income, in 2005 dollars	Average tax saving
$10,000-20,000	$2
$20,000-30,000	9
$30,000-40,000	16
$40,000-50,000	46
$50,000-75,000	110
$75,000-100,000	403
$100,000-200,000	1,388
$200,000-500,000	4,499
$500,000-1 million	5,562
More than $1 million	41,977

From this morning's Washington Post.

Agitation #1

One jihad is as good as any other, as this divine tragedy suggests. Where have all the flowers gone, indeed. As Bonhoeffer said, "The follwers of Christ have been called to peace ... and to that end they renounce all violence. ... They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they overcome evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate."

Mid-life Crisis?

Is the American empire aging toward an inevitable end, or are we suffering a national mid-life crisis? Guys buy sportcars. Nations go to war. This one, the long war as they are calling it, drifts aimlessly into a fourth year much as a 50 year old stuck in a dead-end job.

In the midst of it I ponder the world my children will inhabit as they age. The comfort and security of their aging may somehow be connected to Jesus’ challenges and, therefore, to a theology of the cross calling forth self sacrifice from a culture unaccustomed to and massively resistant to such selflessness. That can be unpacked some other day.

The sacrifices of middle age sometimes amount to nothing more than making concessions to age, and nothing less than letting go of the illusions of youth.

I’ve given up my dream of slamming a basketball – not exactly sacrificing my first born, but no small concession for a 6’0” hoops junky who once came tantalizingly close to throwing one down.

Emmanuel Levinas reminded us that paternity is preparing for a future that is not our own; indeed, for a future in which we’ll be dead. Perhaps that explains why my vertical leap topped out the year our first child was born!

The grandest illusion of youth is that such a future of our own absence will never arrive. Letting go of that illusion, often in the midst of very real sacrifices we make for our children, is the occasion of many a mid-life crisis.

Perhaps the grand illusion of America’s youth was that we could stand alone, a colossus astride the world’s economic and geopolitical arrangements. Now America’s child – the global economy, or is it the global spread of democracy – demands sacrifice, demands the letting go of our youthful illusions of unilateralism.

Levinas reminds us that an ethical demand always arises in the face-to-face encounter with the other. Perhaps that is another way to understand the solidarity with the other that the gospels call us toward. The sacrifice that Christ call us toward includes letting go of our youthful illusions of immortality and extreme individualism, while embracing a love of life lived in community and relationship to the one who beckons us from another shore.

On that other shore today stand our brothers and sisters in Baghdad. They remind us that, as children of the same God, we are inextricably bound to one another. The bombs that continue to fall there fall on us, too – exploding then if not on our heads, at least in our hearts.

Are we, then, sacrificing ourselves at the very moment we would, according to our national security apparatus, secure our futures? No. For in this campaign there is no sacrifice called forth from us by that national leadership. Rather, we sacrifice our brothers and sisters and our own hearts become collateral damage. Mid-life crises always leave mangled hearts in their wake.

And where is the church in the midst of this American mid-life crisis?

The sacrifice and selflessness demanded of the church in this time of crisis may be a letting go of our socially secure and comfortable position as chaplain to the American way of life and an embrace of the long-abdicated prophetic pulpit that echoes Jesus’ challenge to the social arrangements of his world.

At this moment – as at every moment of national crisis – that means standing in the public square and calling loudly and incessantly for justice and for a peace build upon the foundation of that justice. Such a call is not likely to be popular today any more than it was in Jesus’ time. So some of us may age a bit less comfortably and securely than we had imagined. But a future of justice and peace can be a compelling enough vision to move a middle-aged country to sacrifice its youthful illusions.

Truth & Silence

In her story on the response to the national day of silence, NPR's Elaine Korry referred to the young people sponsoring the "day of truth" as Christian. I am wondering why she did not ask any of the students involved in the day of silence about their own faith convictions. In my experience, a number of young people who participate in the day of silence do so out of their own deeply held Christian convictions about justice, love and concern for the outcast and marginalized. To ignore that aspect of the story, especially when the so-called truth tellers' faith is named as central to the story, is to perpetuate the widespread misconception that "Christian" is synonymous with conservative. For most of the Christian young people I know -- including those who happen to be gay or lesbian -- on the national day of silence their silence itself speaks the truth.

Moyers for President

... or, at least, pastor-in-chief. His remembrance of William Sloan Coffin reminds me again of how powerful his voice is and Coffin's was.

Honoring Coffin

Two questions for spring, on the doing of justice, prompted by some conversation about how one might honor the memory of William Sloan Coffin. First, there is the question of how? How do we engage in a spiritual practice of social action and protest that does not simply devolve into competing factions shouting beyond one another in endless rounds of mounting anger? We do well to keep in mind Coffin’s caution that a “politically committed spirituality contends against wrong without becoming wrongly contentious.” That must involve the deep conviction that those we oppose in the social arena are also beloved children of God, and that we must always seek to find and honor the Christ in them even as we work to achieve an often radically different vision of social arrangements.

Second, there is that question of vision. What is the vision of justice toward which we aim and on what is it grounded? Put simply, provisionally and decidedly nonprogramatically, the Biblical vision of justice, as Walter Brueggemann puts it, is this: sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it.

So, for example, in a world of plenty food belongs to those who are hungry; in an economy of abundance work belongs to those who seek jobs, wherever they come from; in the 21^st century health care belongs to those who are sick, shelter belongs to those who are homeless, and clothing belongs to those who are naked; in our nation’s cities good schools belong to children left behind; in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ordination belongs to all those who are called; in the Commonwealth of Virginia and across these United States marriage belongs to those who are in love regardless of sexual orientation; in Saudi Arabia, freedom belongs to women; in Northern Ireland, in Israel, in Palestine, in Darfur, in Iraq and everywhere that plow shares still give way to swords and shields peace belongs to us all.

It is far past time for sorting this stuff out. It is far past time to move beyond religion that focuses only on the next world, that insists on an unbiblical distinction between the sacred and the secular, and that, as a result, blesses the status quo even as that status crushes millions beneath the weight of injustice, oppression, sexism, heterosexism, racism, militarism and neoconservative globalism.

It is far past time to recognize that the doing of justice is the primary expectation of the God of the Bible. Perhaps such words will honor Coffin’s memory and motivate as well.

From Yesterday's Sermon

It was perhaps fitting that William Sloan Coffin died the same week that The Nation, a publication to which he often contributed, ran an article recalling his work and that of Martin King and the Berrigan brothers and other religious leaders who toiled tirelessly for peace and justice and on behalf of the marginalized and outcast. The article noted that “Their inspiring example raises a disturbing question: Where are their counterparts now?” [1]

Look around you this morning. It is Easter. The hope they gave their lives for is reborn among us. Look at the scores of us who have come out this morning to a faith community that clearly discerns God’s calling to give voice to prophetic faith on behalf of the least of these, to practice radical hospitality among those abused by church and culture, and to celebrate joyously with everyone God’s abundant creation. Look around you this morning: we are the people we’ve been waiting for, and the risen Christ is in our midst.

Where are the Coffins, the Kings, the Berrigans today? Well, we may lack their eloquence and inspiration. Indeed, we may lack their courage and imagination. But we do not lack their hope, their faith nor their love, and we are walking the same path that they walked. For the path they walked was the way of Jesus Christ.

It is the way of the cross – for it seeks solidarity with the oppressed and persecuted and accepts the likelihood of suffering for their sake. But it is also the way of the empty tomb – for it is a way of unalterable hope and abiding faith in the good intention of the sovereign Lord of history. Thus it is the way through the doubt and despair of this time; it is the way through the fear of this time; it is the way through the violence and hatred of this time; it is the way through the darkness of this time.

You know, sometimes it feels like we are living in the absence of hope. Still, I believe with Dr. King that while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.[2]

Sometimes it feels like the very air we breathe is filled with fear. Still, I believe with Rev. Coffin that the Bible has it right: “the opposite of love is not hate but fear. ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.’”[3]

Sometimes it feels like we are living in a death-dealing culture of permanent war. Still, I believe with Father Berrigan that “the God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.”[4]

Sometimes it feels like we are living in the midnight of history. Still, I believe there is a new day coming and it breaks forth even now, even here. For though grief and mourning linger through the night, the dawn – the resurrection dawn – sings of a blessed hope.

That is the meaning of Easter. Love and justice join hands. Hope rises from the tomb. God and creation reconcile. A new day is come! Christ is risen!

---

[1] “Taking Back the Faith,” Dan Wakefield, (The Nation, April 24, 2006, 14-20.)

[2] This was one of King’s favorite sayings and can be found in several speeches included in A Testament of Hope. He drew it, apparently, from the writings of Theodore Parker, a 19^th-century American pastor. See Rufus Borrow, Jr., “Martin Luther King, the Church and a Value-Fused Universe,” in Encounter, Christian Theological Seminary, 2005 (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4044/is_200507/ai_n15328800).

[3] Credo, 27.

[4] These words of Berrigan are widely quoted but I am unsure of their original source. They can be found, among numerous other words from Berrigan, at the web site of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (http://161.58.58.140/quotes/others.html).

William Sloan Coffin

William Sloan Coffin, who put the militant in "the church militant," has joined the church triumphant. As we say in the church, his baptism is now complete in his death.
His was a life well lived and an eloquent voice for peace and justice. The world is a bit darker today for his light having left it. The nation, not to mention the Nation, is a lesser place for his passing, but a richer one for his having passed our way. There is a nice remembrance posted on Common Dreams. Oh, and another one, too.
Years ago, he was president of SANE/Freeze, for which I worked. Although I never met him, it turns out that he might have been my boss for a while -- I'm not sure if our tenures overlapped. Small world.

Pride Goeth Before ...

The religious left. Whatever it is, it's been getting a bit of press of late. Slate ran an interesting piece the other day, and this week's Nation has a lengthy article as well. So I'm wondering, what does the phrase "religious left" bring to mind? What questions does it raise? What challenges? What are the advantages and disadvantages of its use? What theological issues are at stake? Hm ... what would Jesus say? Just wondering, as usual.

Wow, Spring

Prayerful Thoughts

Hm, sorry for the lag in posts -- I've had many prayerful thoughts of late but few thoughts on prayer. I suppose that's what happens during a time of almost relentless bad news -- immigration policy that would have us welcome the stranger,* a mean-spirited proposal on marriage at Presbytery,** and endless war.*** Even the prospect of opening day for baseball brings its own asterisks this year, what with the steroid scandals. On the other hand, the cherry blossoms are bursting out, it was 65 and sunny and we walked to Maggie Moos for ice cream. A few prayers were answered today! The impossible will take a little while longer.

* provided the stranger has proper documentation.
** overwhelmingly defeated, thanks be to God.
*** no asterisk needed, actually.

An Iraq Prayer

We've been talking about what it means to be human and to be dehumanized. Then I ran across this essay on Common Dreams that quotes from the blog of Tom Fox, the Christian Peacemaker abducted and murdered in Iraq. His life in Iraq, I would suggest, amounted to an extended prayer for peace. Perhaps it is time for some prayer in the streets.
As the Common Dreams piece says:
Tom's Iraq blog is his sad and informative legacy. His last entry was written the day before he was abducted. Why are we here?

"If I understand the message of God, his response to that question is that we are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exists within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls."

To Be Human?

A proposition for your consideration: If prayer is what makes us human, then what stands between us and a prayerful life is dehumanizing. So, what gets in the way of prayer for you? Meanwhile, here's a little Griz for the mill:

I want to endow the elements I use with a new quality; starting fromgeneral types I want to construct particular individuals. I consider that the architectural element in painting is mathematics, the abstract side; I want to humanize it. -- Juan Griz.

When We Pray ... Then What?

When we pray, we seek the Spirit. That is the essence of prayer. Of course, it is excellent advice to be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. Jesus promises, “if you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more so will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.” The gift of the Spirit is the answer to our prayers, for it brings us peace where we need it, serenity for what requires our courageous engagement, courage and strength to change what needs changing and a loving wisdom for discerning where we are called to engage and where we are called to step back.

OK. So now I’m curious in a practical sort of way. How do we seek the Spirit? How do we know when what we feel is, in fact, the presence of the Spirit and not just, oh, say, the spirits I just consumed (one glass of red wine, in case you’re counting) or the meatballs, or anger left over from some recent unpleasantness, or sadness at a loss? How do we move with the Spirit when we’re reasonably sure that it is the Spirit leading us? What steps to you take to pray? Are there words or phrases or thoughts that you find helpful? Are there actions? Are there places? Times of day? Situations? Does circling a fire and banging drums help? Just curious, that’s all.