Two Poets Walk Into a ... Mess

So Bob Dylan and Ravi Shankar are both picked up by the police. Sounds like the set up to a “guy walks into a bar” joke, but it turns out to be true. Oh, to be sure, it was not that Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar player made famous by his music with the Beatles, but it was that Bob Dylan, made famous by, well, Like a Rolling Stone, Blowing in the Wind, Tangled Up in Blue and hundreds of other seminal songs.
His recent encounter with the police in New Jersey is late-night comic gold. Stopped in a neighborhood where he was walking around in the hours before a show with Willie Nelson, the local cops asked him who he was and what he was doing there. He answered with his name and the explanation that he was on tour.
And the punch line? The cops did not know who he was. If I’ve ever heard an indictment of American education that is it. It’s hard to fathom not having a clue about the identity of the guy whose song gave Rolling Stone magazine its name and claimed the top spot on that magazine’s ranking of the best songs of all time, the guy whose name turns up 21 million hits on a Google search, most of which are for the Bob Dylan, the guy named to “most influential Americans of the 20th century” lists ranging from Time Magazine to National Public Radio. After all, the guy’s birth name, Robert Allen Zimmerman, turns up more than 40,000 hits on a search, and nobody has called him that in 50 years.
Ravi Shankar, on the other hand, is an English professor, so it’s not surprising that the New York City police who pulled him over did not know who he is. Since it was a Friday night in Manhattan, it’s probably not even too surprising that they made him undergo field sobriety tests. Despite being in town to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Drunkenboat.com, the online journal he helped to found, he passed the sobriety test. But that’s when his story turns strange and ugly.
In Dylan’s case, the police took him to the hotel he told them he was staying in and tour officials vouched for him. Everyone was polite and that was that except for all the jokes at the expense of the young officers.
But the New York cops found an outstanding warrant for a Ravi Shankar, and, noting that “it’s always a good day when you bag a sand-nigger,” they rousted the English prof off to jail apparently too dense to see that the warrant was for a 5’10” 140-pound Caucasian while they had in their custody a 6’2” 200- pound Indian-American. When Shankar finally saw a copy of the warrant, some 90 minutes into his nightmare, and pointed out the differences, the officer said simply, “take it up with the judge.”
Shankar spent 30 hours in jail before getting to see that judge, and getting to go home and see his wife and child. You can read his account of the ordeal in the Hartford Courant and listen to him describe it on NPR’s Tell Me More. You will not read or hear the anger of a man picked up for “driving while brown,” but rather a kind of bemused disappointment of an American come face to face with the reality of racism.
Despite his brown skin, Shankar is in the privileged position to tell his story to a national audience. Countless less privileged men and women suffer such degradations and are silenced by circumstance.
I’d like to hope that these cases are but the death throes of white privilege, as the nation slogs slowly but inevitably toward that date when there will be no racial majority population in the land. Frederick Douglas swore that power would never concede anything without a fight. With privilege comes power, and white privilege will not concede without a fight either. Ravi Shankar endured one battle in that long twilight struggle.
But, as Mr. Dylan put it almost 50 years ago, the times, they are a changing.

Packing Heat for Health Care Reform

Rose Berger, who works at Sojourners, attended a Capitol Hill health care reform rally today "packing" a water pistol, to rather hilarious results. Read about it here. What a great way to cool off the hot heads who are getting a bit carried away with the debate these days. Way to go, Rose!

Medicare for All

Back from two weeks at camp. Being tuned out for two weeks was pleasant, and I am just now catching up to the craziness of the health care town hall meetings. People showing up to prove that their second amendment guns have first amendment rights -- strange and a bit scary. Also, a bit ironic coming in the same week that saw Squeeky Fromme paroled. I would not want to be a Secret Service agent these days.
Despite the vitriolic level of public discourse, it seems to me that a public option in the health insurance field is not hard to imagine. Seniors in the U.S. have had access to one for more than 40 years, and numerous scholarly studies indicate that 80-90 percent of seniors are happy with the system. That compares with studies showing that about 70 percent of Americans are satisfied with their private insurance. Similarly, the Veterans Administration health care insurance system routinely outpaces private insurance in ratings of patient satisfaction.
So, if there is already a proven public option out there, and one that works in conjunction with private Medicare supplemental insurance coverage, why not simply make Medicare available as one option for all Americans regardless of age?
Personally, I would not have the choice, because I am bound by virtue of employment to the Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church and the health care benefits that it negotiates on behalf of minister members and families. But for the 50 million Americans who currently have no health care coverage and thus are marginalized in the health care delivery system, why not open Medicare?
Clearly, some basic level of access to health care is a fundamental human right in a society as wealthy as ours. Everywhere Jesus went, healing happened, so concern for health is incumbent upon the church. Thus, in our context, concern for health care insurance reform is also part of our calling. People of good will and faith can certainly disagree on the most effective and efficient path, but the end must be universal access and insurance.
As for me, I say, "Medicare for All." It's so simple it fits on a bumper sticker.

Tortured State of Affairs

My friend Ray McGovern wrote a piece this week on torture and the church. He is responding to survey data showing that Americans who attend church regularly are more likely than non-church goers to support the use of torture, and laying blame on the shoulders of church leadership that has failed to speak out clearly on the issue.
In particular, Ray chides local pastors for failing to speak out, even as he cites several denominational statements calling for clear abolition of torture and an accounting of what happened during the Bush years that led us down this dark path.
I wonder if I've made myself clear on this during the past five years or so. I don't speak often about the war or torture because, at my church, it is so much preaching to the choir.
Well, I'm off for two weeks as pastor-in-residence at the camp of the Presbytery of the James. I'll have some time to ponder -- broken up in mid stream by a couple of days at the Christian Peace Witness leadership planning retreat.
See you in a couple of weeks.

Empathy for the Devil

The hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court were, by most accounts, a fairly dull affair with a noticeable lack of fireworks over hot-button issues.
I confess to a lack of strong feelings about it. Assuming, fairly safely it seems, that she is confirmed, I hope that Justice Sotomayor has a long and distinguished career on the court.
Indeed, I hope that she turns out a well as two previous ground breakers -- Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O'Connor. The odds are probably in her favor because those who break such ground are exceptions to existing expectations. Thus they are, by definition, exceptional and tend to have gifts that enable them to exceed the culture's expectations.
Witnessing that ought to have been interesting, but apparently not so much.
I don't have any legal expertise. Why I don't know about the law fills lots of law books. But I found the focus on empathy during the hearings to be interesting. Empathy seems to be in disrepute, at least for judges and justices. Noting again my complete lack of legal training, experience or understanding, I would not pretend to offer a legal theory that accounts for empathy or a lack thereof. Still, I found the dismissal of it fascinating.
Perhaps that is because Jesus seems so interested in it. In the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, where Jesus warns against judging others lest we be judged, he also says this: "be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate" (Luke 6:36, Jerusalem Bible).
Compassion -- from Latin roots meaning "suffer with" -- shares at the very least an etymological allusion to the Greek pathos or passion.
Thus as we are warned against judging we are commanded to be compassionate or empathetic. Perhaps the reverse would also be true: those who judge must not be empathetic.
If that is the case, then the widespread distrust of empathy among judges might be said to have some Biblical warrant, even if it means that our judging is left to those who can't or won't or shouldn't follow Jesus.
Hm ... is it God or the devil who is in the details?

On War, Fishing, and Manipulation in the PC(USA)

My friend and colleague, Ray Bagnuolo, wrote this in response to a pastoral letter from Carmen Fowlwer, president of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. While Ray's reflections are considerably longer than most anything I ever post here they are worth the read especially as we prepare to move forward into the "legislative season" in the life of the church. Indeed, moments before Ray's letter came across the virtual transom I had sent out a plea for editorial help in crafting the theological rationale for a pair of proposed overtures to the 2010 General Assembly.

by Ray Bagnuolo, Minister of Word and Sacrament
White Plains, New York
July 15, 2009

I have read and sometimes supported commentaries and positions taken by leaders of the Presbyterian Lay Committee (PLC) on their website Laymanonline.org. This, however, is not one of those times.

Over the years, our exchanges in response to articles and editorials have exhibited strong disagreements, yet the “footprint” of these interactions indicated genuine attempts at honest and respectful discussions. With those experiences in mind, the tone of The Rev. Carmen Fowler’s recent pastoral letter: ‘War,’ ‘Go Fish,’ ‘Manipulation in the PCUSA’ was strikingly different. The bellum references describing the work of which others and I had been a part in seeking ratification of Amendment 08-B was a misrepresentation as much as it was disappointing.

I am not suggesting that that those seeking full welcoming for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) persons in our church and the PLC are always in harmony. Personally, our disagreements are real. I am an openly gay Minister of Word and Sacrament, ordained as such in 2005. I have served on the board of That All May Freely Serve and currently serve as a board member of More Light Presbyterians (MLP). I have stood alongside those seeking to delete G-6.0106b, witnessing and advocating at General Assemblies, as well as participating in workshops and panel discussions in regional venues. And, in doing so, I have stood respectfully alongside those with whom we disagreed.

The idea of our actions “playing” anyone, as Rev. Fowler suggested we did of the presbyteries who changed their historical positions in supporting the ratification Amendment 08-B, is as false as it is insulting to the presbyteries who carefully discerned the choices they made in prayer, community, and, as always, in the presence of God. This use of ridicule and fear undermines and transforms honest efforts at unity and justice in our church. A church that always has and always will made up of all God’s family, including sisters and brothers who are LGBT.

In fact, throughout the struggle, we (God’s family) have often found ourselves assembled together, from worshipping to witnessing – trying to navigate close quarters with the pronounced differences we share. Has it been easy? No, but I believe we have mostly done our best to be faithful, respectful, and honest. While the rhetoric at times has been strident, I have never felt at “war,” as if I were “gaming,” or attempting to “manipulate” groups or church members who sought to prevent full inclusion. I have never believed the solution to our very real struggle was in domination or deception.

Nor have I believed that the answers we sought were in the strictest of interpretations of the Bible. Still, such differences in interpretation never meant that I wished to diminish or demean those who came to God from a more literal belief in the written Word. I don’t think that most people who are moving with the Spirit in welcoming LGBT folk are doing so because they are shifting their way of holding the Bible in their hearts. I believe their hearts are changing because they cannot see the Bible being used any longer in any way to hurt others, many of whom are members of their families; people who are faithful in their beliefs and practices.

In the several months leading up to the final vote of the presbyteries on the ratification of Amendment 08-B, individuals and groups worked together, reaching out to members of presbyteries across the country. The work of MLP and others was rooted in embracing the guidance of the 218th General Assembly to dialogue with one another, as baptized members of the same family and Body of Christ. We were intentional in listening to each other, as we invited God, Spirit, and Jesus into our midst. Judgment was never a part of the process.

Groups in favor of ratification of Amendment 08-B worked together to undertake the massive challenge of reaching out to the majority of presbyteries in the United States. Thousands of conversations were had. Often they were not easy, and more often they were amazing. There were numerous talks with folks opposed to ordaining LGBT individuals that poignantly touched at the heart and the pain of our struggle. You may not be surprised to know that those visits often ended in prayer, praying for God’s help in the healing we so desperately needed and continue to seek. In every case, we did our best to practice the loving-kindess that reflects the unified church we were hoping to become. There was no game of “Go Fish” or of any other kind. It was Spirit-filled, real, and much more difficult to do than criticize its outcomes.

As for manipulation of the presbyteries, which connotes intentional deception and secrecy – there was none. I’ve actually never met a “tricked presbytery.” It occurs to me that such a thing is oxymoronic. At any rate, we were open and transparent with the leadership within each region about our organizing efforts. We sought out information about those who might be able to help us and who might be more inclined to consider having conversations with us. We spoke to supporters, those undecided, and those in opposition; we asked all groups to vote in favor of ratification. We wanted the amendment to pass, but we knew that ultimately it would be in God’s time.

In the process, the privilege of being in conversation with so many of our sisters and brothers across this country was a humbling and precious gift. It was quickly apparent that we are “one” more than all our differences might ever suggest. If you talk openly to hundreds of people, one-to-one about God and this church as many of us did, you will discover just how much God is with us all. All. We are a connectional church, indeed, and the outreach made that wonderfully and abundantly clear: clear that the Spirit was at work with all of us, and clear that we should not give up on one another. Clear that we need to remove G-6.0106b and work together from there. Clear, to me, as always, that his amendment has been a dividing line for too long and more and more are coming to understand that.

As for the outreach and the language of progress that was sometimes used. I agree. I never really liked the description of a “presbytery flipping” when describing a change in a presbytery’s past voting record. The language referred to the vote, never the individuals, churches, or presbyteries they represented. I am equally uncomfortable with the use of the word “target,” in any form. We know how important the use of language is, and in some ways, we fell short of a better way of expressing ourselves. We all can improve in seeking ways to describe who we are and how we go about being faithful in the midst of reunion.

The broadening sense that ratification would soon be in reach was electric and continues to be so. We are intrinsically pulled together in this incredible shift toward a unified and healed church. Yes, God is doing a new thing in our midst, and it has been a long time in the making. It’s important to remember that the LGBT community has been at the center of marginalization and exclusion by the PC(USA) for near forty years. Those opposing our full inclusion are not the ones who have been the oppressed. LGBT sisters and brothers and those who support them intimately understand what it is like to left outside of the church, essentially shunned by fear. And the church has paid an enormous price in many ways, but especially in inadvertently becoming complicit in supporting the broader social disease of hate crimes toward LGBT folk by its institutional positions. Still, in spite of it all and in formation for those who will follow us, our efforts are driven knowing that our church’s present and future is critically dependent upon our unity and healing, and that ours is a special role in that transformation. It is obvious that a growing number of members of the PC(USA) are in agreement that:

Amendment G-6.0106b, for whatever else it might be said to do, has been the cause of our disunity, not the truth that we are all God’s family.

As with quoting Scripture, these and other comments quickly raise arguments and rebuttals to support one position or the other, one belief or the other, one way of being faithful or the other. In fact, our exegetical analyses of Scripture alongside the “nature and nurture” arguments have spawned institutional structures to ensure their survival more than ours as a people. The debates, papers, books, and articles have become comfortable for many and totally inaccessible for others, establishing new dominions that push God’s family further into the chasm of the arguments and the resultant chaos and stultification. The debates roar on, and while they do, the lives of our sisters and brothers who are LGBT and those who embrace them are forced into a marginalized, misrepresented, and maligned status within the church. There can be no such classification in God’s family, and, in spite or distant echoes of debates, that truth is rising up in response from a growing majority of Christians.

We are getting to know one another. We are “personing” the argument, as my friend The Rev. Dr. Janie Spahr would say, taking our Christian and loving lives to the people. More of us who are LGBT are becoming visible, in and out of our church community. Leaders within the church and those seeking leadership roles are openly stating how they identify themselves, often accepting great risk in the process. Friends and supporters are speaking out more, filled with love the Spirit of Love. As we come to know more of our family who identify as LGBT, we are leaving the stereotypes and the debates behind. In its place, we are lifting up the mysterious ways of the Love of God expressed in the equally mysterious gifts of our gender identities and sexuality. I thank the distant echoes of those balanced, never-ending debates for tiring out more and more faithful who have been conditioned to believe there would come an answer from such places. Instead, large numbers of faithful members of this church across the PC(USA) have made up their minds based on their personal and communal faith and the witness of those who are LGBT, their families, supporters, and friends. And, I don’t believe I am the first to recognize this. It’s been going on now for some time. We are further along in this process of coming together than many suggest. Perhaps the accusation of manipulation by some is an attempt to protect their institution by more deeply hiding this truth.

The strong response to changing the Constitution of the PC(USA) has been muted over the several years. There are many reasons for this, but one of them, I believe, is that faithful were hoping that the work of The Theological Task Force on the Peace Unity and Purity of the Church would produce a solution that would eliminate the need for constitutional change. It was with this in mind, that I believe many who voted “No” for deletion of G-6.0106b over the years were actually voting “Yes” for the continuing work of the task force, hoping it would produce “the answer." While the task force did accomplish important work, it clearly did not end the exclusion of LGBT folk from the full work and worship of the PC(USA). As a result, when the time of our most recent effort of ratification came about, those who had given the task force a chance voted in favor of constitutional change. Along with the continuing number of members welcoming the LGBT community, we witnessed a dramatic shift that will soon complete its course.

The outreach of groups and individuals seeking full inclusion for the LGBT community in the PC(USA) will be as it always has been: faithful. In the post-B world, our family will be faced with the hard work of unifying and healing. This marginalized community of baptized LGBT members will stand as we have before, with all our sisters and brothers to carry the gospel message and the witness of our lives to those who have felt unwelcome and displaced by our constitutional dysfunction: G-6.0106b.

This has never been a war, a game, or about propaganda or deception. It has and will continue to be the story of faithful people in love with God and all of God’s family.

We will eventually replace the arguments of fear with the Love of God, which has been given to us so that we might embrace one another as God embraces all God’s family.

We who have been and will continue to be part of the outreach and movement for change acknowledge our role in such a call and promise to continue to love each other into family. We are grateful to the many who join with us in believing that whatever is next for us in the PC(USA) is directly beyond the infection of G-6.0106b.

Let us pray and work together, so that whatever we do, nothing we do ever separates others from the God who created us as a family. All of us included.

Italian Graffiti

Complexion Complex

It is not necessarily surprising that this should happen in the year 2009, but it is mind boggling that someone would say that allowing 60 African-American kids into the pool threatens to "change the complexion" of a club -- and in the city of brotherly love no less.
Meanwhile, here in the Old Dominion, as the "staycation" continues, I took my daughter and her friend Tasnim (whose name accurately suggests that her family is not native to these parts) to the public swimming pool. I was walking behind them across the parking lot and it occurred to me that within my lifetime a little girl with skin the beautiful shade of Tasnim's would not have been able to walk so free of care to a public pool in Virginia to swim with all the pale-skin kids. Of course, the pool here today was full of a rainbow of folks enjoying the clear blue sky and not giving a second thought to the complexities of complexion.
Why does this remain so difficult for so many?

Gotta Love the Web

I'm still enjoying some away time but managed to post a brief diary on Daily Kos. Oddly enough, it wound up here on This Week.
The net is an amazing place. You never know where you might turn up, nor under which name.
If you follow the links back you'll see that my extremely brief bit on McNamara was basically a news blast to the Kos community that wound up generating a huge comment response simply because it was the first diary posted noting McNamara's death.
As to McNamara, he was a fascinating character who lived fully into his own complete name: Robert Strange McNamara.

Gone Fishin'

Off to see the parents, sibs and cousins for a week. Hope you have a sparkling 4th of July. Here's a good Independence Day pic from our Philly get away back in May.

Dear Mr. President

I sent this letter to the White House today.
June 25, 2009

The Honorable Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

I write as a supporter and as a friend in Christ with an invitation that I make with deep reservations.

I readily confess that back in January, as news of the church vetting process circulated in the metro area, I told friends I was extremely glad that we would never be considered, and that I would hate to try to cope with all of the security and media attention that is a part of your every day.

Nevertheless, your recent statements suggesting that your religious commitments lead you to oppose marriage equality for gays and lesbians prompt me to invite you to join us for worship at Clarendon Presbyterian some Sunday morning.

If you and your family were to join us, you would hear these words of invitation: “welcome to Clarendon Presbyterian Church. We are a congregation that tries, in our common life, to live out the love and the justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we welcome everyone – and we mean everyone – to this house of prayer for all God’s children.”

If you and your family were to join us, you would find yourself sitting in the midst of a small collection of people ranging widely in age, coming from all over the place, gay and straight, families and singles, mostly of European descent but some Latinos, Asians and Pacific islanders.

You would hear the lively word of the living God preached with passion and compassion, and you would see, in your mind’s eye, Jesus extending his healing touch to those left behind and marginalized by the dominant religious and secular culture.

But, as we Christians believe that truth is incarnate and understood best in relationship, what you would see and hear is far less important than who you would meet. We both know that you are highly unlikely to set foot in the place (or even to read this letter), so let me introduce your staff to Mike and Clark, who have been members here for more than 10 years. They sing in the choir. Mike is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Clark served our country in the Army. Clark grew up in my native Alabama, and Mike grew up in Tennessee. They met in the most old-fashioned way, more than 15 years ago, at a church function. Their parents regularly worship with us when they come up to visit. They are in the midst of a home improvement project, as settled, committed, loving and boringly domestic as any straight married couple, and yet they are denied, because of their sexuality, more than 200 legal benefits that accrue without question to those of us who are married.

You might also meet Heather and Lisa, a young couple whom I was fortunate enough to make, in Lisa’s words, “unlawfully wedded wives” in a beautiful worship service this spring. They travel about 25 miles to worship with us because there are simply not that many houses of worship where they feel welcome.

On the day of their wedding, right after Heather’s and Lisa’s fathers had walked them down the aisle, I said to the gathered community, “Jesus said ‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and render unto God that which is God’s.’ To God belong our hearts, our love, our promises, our faithfulness. Caesar does not recognize what we do here, but God does and God blesses it richly.”

After the service, one of Lisa’s brothers told me that his daughter – about the same age as Malia – asked her dad if the wedding was going to be on the news. I laughed and said, “thank God, no – we don’t need that today.” But he stopped me and said, “it should be, then people would see how ordinary this really is.”

I have the same reservations in inviting your to worship with us. We certainly do not need the hassles that would bring. But, Mr. President, for the sake of your own wholeness, you need to come and see.

As Dr. King so often said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now is the time to bend it just a little further, and here at Clarendon, we are about the work of bending it. Come and see.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Dr. David Ensign, Ph.D.
Pastor

Angels and Demons?

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh, cry or scream. And then, there's this: a church exorcising the homosexual demons.
It never occurred to me that demons might have sexual preference ....
When will people learn to love the amazing variations of creation, and stop condemning difference?

A Light Read to Begin the Summer

Just finished Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato. O'Brien is among the best writers to emerge from the American experience in Vietnam, and this was his masterpiece. Strange and dreamy, it struck me as the Vietnam answer to Saving Private Ryan. Although both stories focus down on the platoon level, everything perceived as good and right about Private Ryan's war is stripped away in Private Cacciato's.
O'Brien captures the war's futility in just a few sentences toward the end of the novel:

The end was coming. He could feel. Already he anticipated the textures of things familiar: decency, cleanliness, high literacy and low mortality, the pursuit of learning in heated schools, science, art, industry bearing fruit through smokestacks. Wasn't this the purpose? The goal? Some vision of virtue? Weren't these the valued things? Wasn't freedom worth pursuing? If civilization had meaning, weren't these the reasons? Hadn't wars been fought for these very promises? Even in Vietnam -- wasn't the intent to restrain forces of incivility? The intent. Wasn't it to impede tyranny, aggression, repression? To promote some vision of goodness? Oh, something had gone terribly wrong. But the aims, the purposes, the ends -- weren't these fully virtuous and proper? Wasn't self-determination a proper aim of civilized man? Wasn't political freedom a part of justice? Wasn't military aggression, unrestrained, a threat to civilization and order? Oh, yes -- something had gone wrong. Facts, circumstances, understandings. But had the error been wrong intention, wrong purpose?

Those are the questions that arise in reflection upon American military misadventures since the "great war" of the "greatest generation." But, as events that apparently no American experts foresaw unfold in the streets of Iran, one wonders if we haven't used entirely ineffective means to pursue the intentions and purposes that we always claim guide our actions in places such as Vietnam ... or Iraq.
As always, it will take the great writers of the American experience in Iraq to bring us to deeper and fuller understanding. Unfortunately, by that point we will doubtless be already engaged in another misbegotten misadventure. Sigh.
I think I'll go back to a good, light murder mystery for these early summer days.

Standing on History ...

Always good to find yourself standing with Lincoln ... or, at least, standing where he stood.

Freedom Summer

Images of freedom. At the top, Michael Kinnemon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (and dean at Lexington Theological Seminary when I was a student there many years ago -- and a fine hoops player, too), speaking at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture witness in front of the White House last week calling for a full investigation of the instances of torture during the terror war. In the middle, a desk in Freedom Hall in Philadelphia on which the Declaration of Independence was signed a few years back (and which we visited a few weeks ago).
Bottom: the foundations of my family life and marriage shutter once again as my daughter leads the More Light Presbyterians contingent in the DC Metro Pride Parade along with the Rev. Rusty Lynn.

Tortured Faith

The photo barrage will continue soon, but first this brief interruption for some text blogging.
I was back in front of the White House today for another witness, joining friends from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to call on the Obama Administration to create a truth commission to investigate the use of torture by American forces in various aspects of the terror war.
There are all kinds of good reasons to participate in NRCAT's call, but for me one reason stands out: people who go to church are more likely to support the use of torture than those who do not.
The church has utterly failed on this crucial moral and theological issue. We have failed to teach clearly that torture violates the teachings that flow forth from the creation story. If all of us are created in the image of God, then torture of any creature debases the Creator.
Now the Obama Administration, saying it wants to look forward and not back, wants to compound the failing of the church -- or, at least, to take advantage of it by avoiding a politically costly investigation.
Truth commissions in other countries -- countries who have faced far more difficult and divisive challenges than do we -- have led to authentic reconciliation and allowed countries to move forward honestly. If we do not move forward honestly we will have failed to learn our own history.
It is only a matter of time until we repeat it.

Getting Self Reflective on Our Last Day in Italy

Confused I Was by This

Indecent and Out of Order

This sign, in the entrance to a church in Venice, cracked me up.
It also reminds me that tomorrow Clarendon hosts the third annual NoVA Pride Interfaith Worship sponsored by People of Faith for Equality in Virginia. The service is all about marriage equality -- no doubt seen as indecent and out of order by some. Ah well, come out anyway. It promises to be a great evening.

Flowers in Florence