Questions & ANSWER

We continue to get the run-around on the permit for the planned peace witness on Sunday evening. The parks police (comically closed due to a power outage on September 11) initially told us that all permits for the entire weekend have been issued to the ANSWER coalition for the major demonstration they are holding on Saturday. A couple of calls to their DC office revealed that they have absolutely nothing planned for Sunday, leaving us wondering why the police won’t issue a permit.
Perhaps it’s because the powers that be understand something that most of us don’t want to grasp: there is genuine power in witnessing. The tools of nonviolence in acts of resistance can become a force more powerful.
That prospect may be threatening to the powers that be; they are sometimes even more threatening – terrifying, in fact – to those of us who would try to employ such tools, for they demand of us a willingness to let go of our own agendas and align ourselves with the long arc of the moral universe as it bends toward justice. Nonviolence requires a certain release of self interest and ego.
So as I look ahead to my own participation in an act of nonviolent witness on Sunday evening, what frightens me most is not the potential encounter with the police so much as the encounter with myself.

Why We Witness

I don’t know how this will turn out, but I do know how it began. I don’t know whether or not the witness some of us have called for September 16 will result in arrests, and I certainly have no coherent thoughts – hopes or fears – about anything like “results” in any larger scale.
But I know it began with an e-mail from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq last month calling upon those of us who had participated in the March 16 witness and worship at the National Cathedral to initiate a continuous witness for peace beginning precisely six months after that initial liturgy.
When I received the e-mail I did what I suspect most recipients did: I checked the handy “event search” function on peace witness web site. I assumed, living and working within a few miles of the White House, that I’d find a witness in the District and, presuming my schedule allowed, I’d show up.
When nothing turned up from a zip code search, I responded the way most participants in the earlier witness probably would have: I assumed that we hadn’t given enough money when Rick Ufford-Chase, executive director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, called the offering at the Cathedral in March and so no staff was available to keep the events calendar current. (I thought that was a shame since Rick gave the only offering call that I’ve ever known to draw an ovation from those being asked to part company with their money.)
So I did what, again, I assume most folks would have done: I e-mailed colleagues in the area to ask whether or not anyone was aware of any peace witness on the 16th or if they had any plans to put something together.
I quickly heard back from a number of folks with the same basic message: “no, I’m not aware of anything, but if you wanted to put something together I’d like to hear about it.”
My immediate response was to think, who am I to do that?
Then I heard this persistent, small voice asking, “who are you not to do that? After all,” the voice continued, “this war is begin waged in your name with your tax dollars? Who are you to sit silently when you could speak?”
I could speak mostly because I am blessed to know faithful people who are unafraid and who carry me along when I am too timid and tepid to engage what needs engaging. So I connected with them, and together we imagined a witness that might, in a small way, help in breaking the long silence of the church since the war began.
As we did the work of imagination, we talked about what it means to witness, about trusting that the outcome is in God’s hands and that therefore to witness is to be liberated from crushing concern about results. To witness, thus, is to trust that the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice and to put one’s hands to the arc and bend a little harder.
That’s what we’ll be doing on the 16th.

The Stones Themselves ...

If these were silent, the stones themselves would cry out loud ...

Witness for peace at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Sunday, Sept. 16, 6:00 p.m.

A liturgy of peacemaking including the laying of more than 4,000 stones at the gates to the White House representing the Iraq War dead. Their voices have been silenced; the stones themselves will bear witness.

The time has come to break silence!!

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ... Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "A Time to Break Silence"

This gathering is being convened by a group of metro-DC area clergy and laity in response to the call to commitment from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq -- the group that put together the peace witness at the National Cathedral last March. I hope some of you can join us in front of the White House on the 16th. Peace. See listing.

The Way of Doubt

Since we just marked the 10-year anniversary of the death of Princess Di, I reckon we just marked the same for Mother Theresa. In one of those coincidences of time that almost make believe in "God-the-body-snatcher," two of the most recognizable women of the age died on the same day.
It struck me at the time that so many people so publicly and emotionally mourned the death of a woman they wanted to be like but, by dent of commoner's birth, could not be, while a relative few were so moved by the death of a woman whom they could certainly have been like but, by dent of culture, would never choose to be.
Now, as the loud remembrances of Dianna's death are marked by the publication of check-out line picture books, Mother Theresa is remembered through her own words of deep doubt -- again, an all too human response to her own calling and her own faith.
The way of faith and doubt remains open to us all; the way of royalty -- not so much.

I Don't Like Poetry

Here's a poem for today:
I don’t like poetry.
Oh, sure, there’s that Billy Collins thing.
It’s pretty good.
And Ted Kooser –
He makes me laugh.
And Wendell Berry always makes me
Want to move to the valley and raise alpacas
But still, I don’t like poetry.
And I don’t like Republicans.
Jim, from college, doesn’t count.
Neither does my next-door-neighbor, the mayor,
who I voted for
And my boss from Chicago
Best boss I’ve ever had
She doesn’t count either
I don’t care that Democrats are no different
I still don’t like Republicans.
And I really don’t like Christians.
Sure, mom and dad are elders in the church I grew up in
And some of the folks I went to seminary with …
Yes, I try to follow Jesus, but
I don’t like Christians.
I googled “Christian Republican Poetry.”
Nothing.
Thank God.

What's Next

I had lunch today with a retired CIA analyst who is deeply troubled by the saber rattling coming out of the White House concerning Iran. In what I guess is typical analyst-speak, he offered about a 51-percent chance of military action against Iran soon. I suppose the detention of Iranians in Iraq doesn't count as military action, so the conclusion of any bet remains to be determined.
We talked about the role of the church in ending the occupation of Iraq, and I suggested that perhaps the most difficult challenge facing people of faith is to act without regard for the results. I don't mean that actions against the occupation ought not aim to be effective, rather that prophetic action measures itself as witness not as accomplishment. It is not that I don't care about the outcome, but I know that the outcome is not in my hands.
The question then becomes, "what is faithful action against this ongoing, unjust war and occupation?" How do we witness to peace amidst war?
While results may not be foremost in mind, it is nevertheless faithful to remind ourselves that September is going to be a crucial month in the American political process regarding Iraq and Iran. It would not be unfaithful to desire, to pray for, to work for results next month.

Are We There Yet?

There was a story in the Post this morning about unexplained smoke that has shut down Metro service a couple of times recently. It seems that no one is quite sure what's causing it. What struck me in the story this morning was the ready assumption that this could be terror related. Obviously, in this city, the threat of terrorist actions is real and constant, but the fear fomented by an administration that sees a terrorist behind every bush, as it were, leaves everyone looking first for terrorists whenever anything remotely out of the ordinary happens.
Dick Cheney's one-percent doctrine -- roughly stated, that if there is a one-percent chance of terrorist activity the United States should respond as if the suspected action was certain -- spills over to infrastructure maintenance. Indeed, it spills over in advance, such that we spend billions on homeland security but, my bet at this point, not nearly enough to prevent some run-of-the-mill electrical glitch that has now shut down the main arteries of the capital city's public transit system.
Are we safe yet?
Fear also explains this additional report in today's news: Americans own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms.
Are we safe yet?
The same fear explains a study, now more than 15 years old, that reported that the radius children are allowed to roam outside of their homes had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been 20 years earlier. At that rate, by now most kids must never step outside unaccompanied by an adult.
Are we safe yet?
Somewhere in all of this there is a meditation on fear waiting to be born, but I've got to run now, because I'm currently sitting too close to the Metro station for comfort.

Signs of the Times

So we're trying to get our 16-year-old enrolled at the community college as part of home schooling him. In some ways, our experience with him is a story as old as adolescence itself ... which means about 150 years.
Say what? Sure, parents and children have had their struggles throughout human history, but the distinct stage of adolescene is a relatively new thing, a product of industrialism, the growth of child labor restrictions, and universal compulsory education. We can't just marry off or employ away our teenagers these days.
So we have to struggle with them through school. Perhaps it is a sign of the times -- times of shifting epochs -- that bright, creative kids find public schools such desultory places. Such kids are like the canary in the mine of postmodernity -- they tell us the gases are getting too thick for good health.
So we try to tunnel out, to find fresh air, to recreate space for growing up in a world that seems often a very different place from the one in which we grew up. Hang on. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Hold Lightly

The best advice I’ve received in a good while came from a friend who said, “hold lightly your own agenda.”
I’m trying to follow that advice these days while serving as pastor-in-residence at Camp Hanover. As happens often at such places, the enthusiasm of young staff outpaces their experience and that’s nowhere more evident than in worship that they lead.
It tends to focus on pretty orthodox ideas about Jesus – especially when it comes to understanding the cross. The primary – perhaps the exclusive – way of explaining it reflects the fundamentalist embrace of substitutionary atonement, e.g., Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice to take away the sins of the world.
That theology leads into some places I simply cannot go. A God of love whose entire story in Hebrew scripture is that of leading the faithful away from barbaric forms of sacrificial worship would not traffic in such an exchange. Moreover, the orthodox atonement theology addresses itself to a problem that is not, from what I can see, the major problem that young people bring to camp.
Their problem is not some sense of sinfulness; rather it is one of meaninglessness. That doesn’t have to manifest itself in some mid-20th century existentialist angst. More likely it’s the experience of not knowing what to do with the one life we’ve been given.
The synoptic gospels don’t traffic in atonement theology and neither is that the principle concern of the Johanine community. They are far more concerned with discipleship – with following Jesus to the cross. In some sense, following the common play on the word, the gospels are more concerned with being at one with Jesus than they are with being atoned through him.
Nevertheless, all of that is my own baggage, my own agenda. When I leave myself open to being led by young people who are at a different theological place than I am, I find myself deeply enriched by their leading. When I hold lightly my own agenda I find myself building relationships that open up space for the deeper conversations necessary for bringing into the light some different perspectives on the gospels that are more attuned to – or, perhaps, at one with – the concerns that real people bring to this real place.
And then I am blessed along the way.

No Pain ... No Gain?

What is the value of experience ... of an experience?
Seems a reasonable question for summer time, that season when folks hit the road. As Kerouac said, "all that road going, all the people dreaming."
But what do we gain from the going? Do we pile up memories in so many mental zip drives or drawers of old photographs?
We privilege experience in most every field of human endeavor believing that it teaches us something, that we gain ... what? Wisdom? Facility? This seems expecially true of experiences of pain and suffering. But what wisdom, what facility, is to be gained through pain?
Two random and apparently disconnected observations prompt the questions:
First, watching a bit of a political debate recently I noticed how military service is a distinctly privileged experience in political discourse. The rhetoric of unrestrained praise for military service always seems to imply that if you have not served the nation in its armed forces then you have not authentically served the nation. Moreover, if you have not served under arms -- especially under fire -- then you are deeply suspect on any question that can be considered a matter of "national security."
This rhetoric serves to marginalize women -- who were barred from such service until the present generation of soldiers -- and anyone who is unmanly enough to imagine that war as a means of addressing international issues may have outlived its usefullness.
Listening to that line of thought bleeding through various comments during the debate I wondered, "would you have to have been in a war to know that war is hell"? I doubt it, but, then again, I am of a suspect group and my doubts are marginal at best to such a debate.
So then I wondered, "what wisdom would one gain from the experience of war"? Certainly war is about suffering and pain and death. Rule number one of war: young men die. What does that fact have to teach those who survive? Does the experience of such pain bring wisdom that is useful for engaging the future in a way that leads a community, a nation, toward "peace and prosperity"?
With those unanswered questions nowhere close to the surface of thought, I was watching a baseball game on TV last night. Andruw Jones was at the plate for the good guys. He took a mighty swing ... and missed. The movement jolted something in his body and left him in obvious, if momentary, pain. The next pitch was delivered and as Jones began his swing it was clear to see that the involuntary memory of pain stopped his body well short of a full cut and he grounded out weekly to shortstop.
What wisdom had he gained by experience? What had his suffering taught him? Was he better able to serve his purposes and his community's -- er, team's -- by virtue of the experience?
To be sure, the fields of play are of a different category and have their own imperatives. But that one at bat raised for me a series of questions about how and what we learn from pain.
If, as in the stories that dominate political discourse, we simply valorize it and reduce it to categories of courage and heroism, then pain and suffering have little to teach us.
But, if we widen the categories through which we come to understand pain, perhaps we can learn something after all. At least enough, perhaps, to avoid swinging for the fences next time around.

Thoughts on the Run

I was out for a run this morning -- before the 95+ degree heat rolled in -- and I came upon a stone marker that I must have run or driven past scores of times but never noticed. It marks the western corner of the original District of Columbia, whose confines include what is now Arlington, VA.
I've often wondered why my house is in Arlington instead of DC. A century and a half ago, my neighborhood was forest, as was much of Arlington. When the Virginia part of the original federal district was ceded back to the Commonwealth the move was part of the politics of slavery. Alexandria, then a significant port, had a booming slave trade and represented additional pro-slavery votes in the Virginia legislature.
I'm sure these days, with the most progressive voices in Virginia resounding from what was once federal territory, the downstate conservatives would be perfectly happy to see us return to the District -- except, of course, for the billions of dollars in taxes that drain south.
The politics of any given moment give way to the passage of time and leave behind easily missed markers of stone or memory. It is easy from the present vantage to see both the moral blindness of Virginians in the time of Lee and the economic blindness of the District fathers who so easily ceded the forest and swamp land back to Virginia.
Such blindness strikes every age. As I ran past the marker this morning I wondered what moral blindspots plague our time. What are we missing that is as obviously wrong as slavery, as obviously stupid as giving away Arlington?

Section Bleed

You know the day is off to a bad start when you open the paper to an entertainment section only to find news. It's certainly not unusual in this tabloid era to find an addicted or otherwise addled celebrity's police blotter taking up the column inches once reserved for movie or theater reviews, and it's been a generation since you could open the sports section without finding stories about off-field misadventures of athletes, coaches and fans.
But this month marks a new lowpoint. First there's the ongoing steroids-shadowed home run record chase of Barry Bonds. Then the background noise of more performance-enhancing drug use by riders on the Tour de France. By themselves, those stories are old news.
But when an NFL quarterback is indicted for trafficking in dog fights and an NBA ref is the target of a federal investigation of gambling and fixing games -- all in the span of 10 days -- well, all I can say is "thanks be for Harry Potter!"
I want my summer back!
Of course, I suppose that's what fans of the 1919 Chicago "Black" Sox said after their heroes were accused of throwing the World Series. Boys will be boys ... even the boys of summer.
All of which is to say, Calvin was right on two scores: human beings are totally depraved; and if you don't have grass stains on your knees at the end of the day you ought to seriously reexamine your life.

Tending

I haven't done much blogging of late -- been traveling some and tending my own garden a good bit. Indeed, I've been thinking that I ought to share both some photos and some reflections on such tending. Then this evening, as I was out watering said garden, a fire engine and rescue vehicle pulled up our quiet street. This is not particularly unusual, as we live just down the hill from a station and they sometimes run the trucks up our way -- perhaps for practice.
But this time they stopped right in front of our house. I was pretty sure nothing was on fire, but having the fire department stop in front of the house does give one pause. They were here to tend to a neighbor across the street -- a middle-aged man in poor health with diabetes and kidney issues.
We met him some months after we moved in four years ago, but only after many months of scornfully referring to him as "boat man" because he kept a big-butt boat parked in the street and drive a honking SUV. In our environmentally concerned, liberal superiority we scorned and mocked him.
Then one day he approached me and said, "you have dogs."
It sounded like an accusation and I was instantly defensive anticipating some complaint about barking.
Instead, "boat man" held out a bag of dog biscuits and told me that his aging dog has been diagnosed, like him, with kidney disease and could no longer eat the biscuits. He wanted to know if our dogs would like them.
A few weeks later he knocked on our dooor. I answered, surprised to see him. He said, "you're a preacher, right."
Again, having just been in the news a great deal, I was defensive and anticipated an attack on my liberal views.
Instead, "boat man" -- whose name I now knew -- told me that his father was in the hospital dying and, though he was estranged from his dad and from any faith community, he thought his father would like to have the Roman Catholic last rights administered so he thought I might be able to help him find a priest.
These days I tend the garden, which is in the front yard, in large part so that I can be connected with my neighbors, so that I don't dismiss the ones I don't well know, so that I might be open to the grace that happens when the boat man becomes a neighbor instead of a stranger.
Now he's in the hospital and we will tend to him as best we can.
Meanwhile, Cheryl is across the street engaged in a long conversation with the extremely conservative man who lives just up the street from us. And it all makes me wonder, which of these is my neighbor?

Whither the Progressive Church (question or answer)

For most Americans, Christianity has become synonymous with a particular legalistic, conservative, evangelical movement whose vocal, media-savvy leaders are quick to condemn anyone who sees the world differently than they do.
Gays and other sexual minorities? An abomination. Women? Remain silent and “gracefully submissive,” in the words of the Southern Baptist Convention. Jews? In need of salvation. Feminists, lesbians, the ACLU, People for the American Way? Responsible for September 11, according to Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell.
At a meeting of conservative Presbyterians a while back, one speaker said that liberals were like bugs devouring the foundation of the church. He called for stomping as the appropriate response to such an infestation. I’m not sure, but I believe they broke into a spontaneous version of “Guide My Feet” at that point!
In the face of such attacks from some conservatives and such widespread ignorance from the population as a whole, we have to ask: is there a future for progressive Christianity?
As for me, I firmly believe and have dedicated my own life to the conviction that God is calling forth a progressive, inclusive, engaged, diverse church upon which to build the beloved community. Now this future remains to be worked out in our living together as church.
Yes, there is a future. But whether it is a future of exile, decline, death and memorial stones or a future of foundation stones and building together and vibrant worship and call and response … remains to be worked out in our living together as church.
Just a thought from summer vacationland.

Don't Just Do Something; Sit There

I was sitting in the coffee shop one afternoon last week reading Karl Barth’s Prayer, when the barrista put on a CD with Paul Simon’s old standard, The Sound of Silence. It struck me as the perfect – and most perfectly ironic – soundtrack for my meditations, for whatever else we might think of prayer, it often sounds to us like nothing more than the sound of silence.

We can read Barth for the great neo-orthodox theologian’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, and even appreciate his simple yet profound conclusion that “wherever there is the grace of God, [humans] pray.” And yet we can still experience nothing but an unspeaking silence in prayer.

In the same way, we can follow Henri Nouwen and note the two times that Jesus invites his closest friends, Peter, James and John, to join him in the solitude of prayer – once on the mountaintop of transfiguration and then in the garden of betrayal. With Nouwen we can acknowledge that Christian prayer invites participation both in power and in weakness. In other words, in Anne Lamott’s words, prayer says “thank you” to God for the grace evident in creation and in our lives and it says “help me” to the God of the cross – speaking from our weakness and brokenness to a God who knows weakness and brokenness.

We can even begin to understand some of this, and yet still experience nothing but cold, empty silence, for like the disciples, all too often we just don’t know how to pray. I take some encouragement here from the simple fact that it took a long time for the disciples to come to this understanding themselves, and to ask Jesus for guidance. We’re not alone in our confusion here.

In our foundering, silence becomes an enveloping darkness whose only end is desolation and we are reduced to the nihilism that haunts Simon’s song. The silence of prayer invites us to listen for something else, but it is profoundly difficult.

It is difficult, in part, because prayer is radically countercultural. I don’t just mean that the call to prayer is an invitation to participate in a mystery that resists reduction to the modern scientific worldview, although that’s also true.

As James Washington puts it in the introduction to his moving collection of prayers from African American traditions,

“The denial of the reality of God has become fashionable among the affluent. Such secularity often belittles folk thought as if learning how to read and write in the halls of academe is a guarantor of our supposedly greater wisdom. But one need only observe the stars on a clear evening to register the unimaginativeness of such cynicism. Indeed, stargazing, a favorite pastime of those, such as unmolested children, who still cherish wonder and curiosity, offers awesome, transporting access to the utter beauty and terrifying grandeur of the universe. Such stargazing is pleasurable precisely because it defies the banal interests of our utilitarian age.

Prayer is an attempt to count the stars of our souls. Under its sacred canopy, an oratory of hope echoes the vast but immediate distances between who we are and who we want to be,” or, I would add, who God wants us to be.

More than that, though, prayer calls us to inaction. In the midst of a culture whose motto might well be, “don’t just sit there, do something,” the call to prayer says, “don’t just do something, sit there.”

In a culture that demands action, prayer demands inaction. In a culture that prizes individualism, independence, speaking out and utility above all else, prayer insists on community, interdependence, silence and a certain uselessness. As Nouwen puts it, “Being useless and silent in the presence of our God belongs to the core of all prayer.”

I cannot think of anything more radically opposed to contemporary American culture than suggesting that we seek to become useless, that we practice uselessness. Indeed, I cannot think of a definition of prayer more at odds with contemporary American understanding – or, better, misunderstanding – of prayer itself. For even in those places where prayer is accepted, it really is not often opposed to the crushing orthodoxy of rationalist pragmatism.

Instead, prayer is generally understood as yet another tool in the utility belt of life. When the tools of modernity fail – whether they are medical, financial, psycho-therapeutic, social-scientific or military-industrial – when the tools of modernity fail, we turn to a tool from the premodern world precisely for its presumed utility here and now.

The bumper-sticker, “life is hard – pray harder,” reflects this understanding of prayer. According to such a perspective, we pray in order that we might triumph over life, that we might conquer life’s challenges.

From such perspective, God plays two major yet shrinking roles in our world: placing stumbling blocks or tests before us and giving us assistance in overcoming them. These roles are major because they concern some of the most striking events of our lives – natural disasters, premature deaths, recovery from illness – yet they are shrinking because they concern only events which cannot yet easily be explained by rationalist pragmatism which, of course, gains deeper and deeper knowledge and understanding of such events every day and thus further delimits the scope of what belongs to God, in that world view.

What we really seek in prayer, in this understanding, is control. Thus, according to such a perspective, we pray in order that our will might be exercised upon creation.

I just don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he invited his disciples into a practice of prayer that says, “Abba, your will be done here and now in our midst as if the household of belovedness were already realized among us.”

Such a practice of prayer does not seek to give voice to our will, but rather seeks silence in order to listen for and allow God’s will to speak to and through our lives.

You see, the way we pray reflects deeply the way we imagine God. Theology matters.

Jesus clearly calls us into a deep and personal relationship with the God of abundant and steadfast grace and love, from whom one can anticipate gifts sufficient to the needs of the day. The prayer also invites us to participate in jubilee – in the forgiveness of sins and debts, and, moreover, invites us to live into the household of God in which human relations are no longer determined by economic standing and power. In this community of belovedness, all things and all people are made new.

The God made known to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is not a God who capriciously places stumbling blocks before us to make life more challenging. God is not the author of our pain and suffering. God does not bring us to the time of trial.

And yet, we do suffer. We do face times of trial and even persecution.

And sometimes, in the midst of such darkness, prayer yields only sounds of silence.

What then?

What then, when we want a divine puppet master who will pull all the right strings to deliver us from evil, from illness, from loneliness, from suffering, from death? What then, when we want a prayer that will direct the puppet master to deliver us not necessarily from evil but from the vicissitudes of embodied life? What then, when we want a prayer that conforms God to our will?

Against those all too human desires, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples works instead to form and shape us according to God’s will. More than the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps these words should be known as the Disciples’ Prayer, for this prayer casts a vision of the Beloved Community into which we are called to live and work and die following Jesus more closely day by day. These words work to create in us an open and yearning place for God’s Spirit to dwell and work. Remember Jesus’ words? “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

This is a Pentecost prayer – it opens our hearts to the Spirit of the living God and creates new space for the wind of God to work within our lives.

Still, I want to ask, right with the disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray.” God, I want to know, what happens when I am enveloped by silence and it falls as a darkness that no light will penetrate, as a veil that no wind will remove, as a coldness that fire itself cannot warm? In other words, how can I open myself to the working words of prayer? How can I find a silence that speaks to me even as I find words to say, “thank you” or “help me” or “thy will be done in my life, here and now, as it is in your beloved community”?

If we are to make prayer a central practice of our common life, it must also be a central practice of our individual lives. For that to happen, for prayer to become a practice of our lives that shapes and forms us as disciples, we need to find some answers to the disciples’ question: how do we pray?

Karl Barth, Prayer (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962) 24.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out (New York: Doubleday, 1975) 150.

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies (New York: Anchor, 1999) 82. Actually, Lamott says, “Here are the two best prayers I know: ‘Help me, help me, help me,’ and ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’”

James Melvin Washington, Conversations with God (New York: HarperCollins, 1994) xxx.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, 136.

See Sharon H. Ringe, Luke (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995) 162-165.

Theology Matters

Martin King said that we must develop the capacity to forgive, for without that we cannot claim the power to love. Forgiveness begins, he said, when we recognize that the evil actions of our enemies do not express all that our enemies are. “This simply means,” he said, “that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.”
That vision, which seeks as its goal forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration, sets a standard most of us don't care to aim for. After all, it demands that we consider the humanity of those we oppose. It stands in stark contrast with the notion, given voice by the leader of our nation, that we are engaged in a war to “rid the world of evil.” Of course, at the same time, it demands that, even in opposing that leader, I look for what is good in him.
At the very least, it that standard demands that opposition focus on policies and not on persons. Predictably enough, the policy of waging war to rid the world of evil has unleashed the worst in those who pursue the policy in the first place. One does not have to wage an attack on personalities to see the necessity of steadfast opposition to such policy and its makers.

As James Carroll noted a few years back, “evil, whatever its primal source, resides, like a virus in its niche, in the human self. There is no ridding the world of evil for the simple fact that, shy of history’s end, there is no ridding the self of it.”
Indeed, the notion that this nation, or any nation – no matter how nobly conceived or dedicated – could of its own actions rid the world of evil is perhaps the fundamental heresy upon which so much of our current foreign policy rests.
We cannot rid the world of evil when we so clearly participate in it ourselves. We cannot; any more than we can bring justice to the world by means of an unjust war; any more than we can bring democracy to the world by means of a war that the vast majority of the world’s people oppose. No surge of troops will change this fundamental reality. And the further into the morass of this war we go, the more we become like the very thing we hate.

/

Some 35 years ago, Martin Luther King said that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

I've lost track of just how much we're spending on the war now, but it's too much. The release of Sicko this month stands as a vivid reminder of what is lost in spending priorities weighted toward war.
It is not the job of the church to correct the state’s political and military strategies, but it is most certainly our job to correct errors of theology. It is also quite clearly our role to warn of the approach of spiritual death.
In this case, the two are so closely related. We lie and deceive ourselves at peril to our souls. We follow the false gods of power and security, and develop theologies of nationalism to honor them, and we wonder how it is that we become the very thing that we hate.
Theology matters. Show me your image of God, and I will show you your image of humanity. From those images of God and humanity grow the strategies of nations. And when those images are skewed by heresies, and those strategies perverted by false premises, from them develop the images of death that dominate the news in days of endless war.

Curious Signs

So I was riding my bike through a neighborhood near my house and I noticed dozens of yard signs calling for the impeachment of President Bush. I thought, "well, I live in Arlington: inside the Beltway, liberal enclave."
But then I thought back to the impeachment of President Clinton, and where I lived then. During the drive to impeach Clinton, I lived in central Kentucky -- where the only thing "Blue" is the grass. By the time the process was underway in Congress we had moved to Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania -- a rock-ribbed Republican suburb of Pittsburgh where registered Republicans in outnumbered Democrats about 9-1 in the precinct where we lived.
Throughout that period in the late 90s I cannot recall seeing a single yard sign calling for Clinton's impeachment. It could be that we lived then in a "yard service" neighborhood where the proper folks simply did not stoop so low as to put a tacky sign in the yard. Who knows? In any case, we were not then surrounded by "friends of Bill." I certainly heard a great deal of political opposition to Clinton's policies and disgust at his personal behavior, but even in the conservative places where we lived you rarely heard calls for impeachment that did not come from right-wing talk radio.
But these days, I see ordinary folks calling for removing the president and vice president, and see poll numbers suggesting that it's not just in my neighborhood.
Yet nobody in the mainstream media wants to mention it, and nobody among the political elite wants to touch it. I'm just asking, isn't that curious?

for the 4th of July

I saw purple mountains once. I will never forget it. We were driving up Interstate 81 through the Shanandoah Valley at dusk on an early spring evening, and the fading sunlight hit the mountains just right and they were deep purple.
So I can truly say, I have seen purple mountains majesty. I’ve seen the amber waves of grain, too, on drives across the Illinois prairie. I have seen the prodigious spires of the Colorado Rockies, and I have looked into the vast depths and stark beauty of the Grand Canyon. I have hiked a mountain in Maine and stood on its bald peak and pondered the beauty of northern forests. I have dipped my toes in the waters to two oceans and strolled lonely beaches at sunset.
I have walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and marveled at the audacity of those who built it, and I have stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and marveled at the audacity of the timeless dream that Martin Luther King articulated on that spot. I have climbed the steps of the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July, and marveled at the audacity of liberty itself, and of this country conceived in that liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all of us are created equal.
I have seen America, and I love her dearly.
I have also seen mountains in Eastern Kentucky stripped of their peaks, standing naked against the sky, opened like some sprawling tin can so mining companies in distant cities can take the coal and leave not much behind but mountains moved and wealth removed.
I have seen the people in the hollows in the shadows of those stripped mountains, with their satellite dishes pointed toward distant dreams, struggling to make ends meet in an economy that has left them behind without a second thought.
I have seen the children playing in open fire hydrants in the July heat of Chicago’s West Side, blissfully ignorant of the social and economic and political forces that have conspired to leave them with inadequate housing, “underperforming” schools and crime-ridden streets.
I have seen the homeless on the front porches of Manhattan churches – dirty, disheveled, dispirited seeking sanctuary at the doors to the sanctuary.
I have seen the highways crisscrossing the land, jammed with July vacationers and heard in my mind Jack Kerouac’s line: “all that road going, all the people dreaming.”
I have seen America. And I love her dearly.
I have seen faithful people trying to make a difference in all of these places: an orthopedic surgeon relocating his practice to an Appalachian clinic; successful business people working to create opportunities in the inner city of Cleveland; teenagers hammering in the hills and in the cities to help where they can with what they’ve got to give; I have stood with the demonstrators joining in the spiritual discipline of political action saying “no” to war, saying “no” to unjust economic practices, and saying “yes” to equal rights and equal access to the wealth of this nation. I have marched with the crowds protesting war, calling for justice and shouting “this is what democracy looks like.” I have walked with faithful people holding audacious hope for the future in spite of the evidence of the present time, and danced with joy with them as the evidence itself changed and we marveled that God might, indeed, be doing a new thing in this country.
I have seen America. And I love her dearly.
I have heard New Yorkers curse as Greg Maddux hurled a shutout in Yankee Stadium. I have heard the crowd explode as Michael Jordan amazed the old Chicago Stadium. I have heard Bob Dylan sing Blowin in the Wind, and I’ve heard the Cleveland Symphony under the baton of John Williams playing the theme from Star Wars as lightning cracked around us and the heavens themselves echoed applause – I kid you not. And I have heard homeless men singing in a church choir, and heard, too, the cry of forgotten children.
I have heard America. And I love her dearly.
Many times, I have played pickup basketball in the crowded parks along the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago. I’ve played capture the flag with middle schoolers running around under a Kentucky moon. I’ve jumped off a cliff into a lake in West Virginia as my youth group looked on and said, “well, if David’s gonna jump, I’m gonna jump, too.” And they did – into cold, clear water that was like a joyous baptismal font. And no matter that I was run out of town by the leaders of the church whose young people jumped off a cliff after me – I see signs all around that our nation is moving, too slowly but moving still, to ever broader understandings of who is included when we say “all men are created equal”; and our church is moving as well, all too slowly, but still moving, to ever broader understanding of who is included when we say that God calls “women and men to all ministries of the church.” More and more, all means all – regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation or any other distinction all are created equal and all are called to serve. I see this, and I believe that God is doing a new thing.
I have worshipped across this country: sitting in silence in a Quaker meeting in Sante Fe; praying at a Temple service in Kentucky; receiving communion – against the Pope’s wishes – at a Roman Catholic wedding service in Chicago; I have sung praises to our God with teenagers on a mountain top in Colorado and on a rooftop in Manhattan; I have sung with my Jewish brothers and sisters; prayed with Imams; and worshipped with several thousand of my closest Presbyterian friends. I have barely tasted the rich religious diversity of this nation, but it makes me think that God might just be doing a new thing in this country.
I have seen and heard and felt and tasted and prayed with and for America. And I love her dearly.
It does not strike me as wrong, as inappropriate, as unfaithful to my calling to be a voice of progressive Christian faith to say, also, that I love my country.
If you drive past our house this week, you will see the American flag flying out front. I went right out and bought it after I heard that conservatives, in their voter registration and get out the vote drives target houses flying American flags because they have decided that only conservatives display the flag. I figure if nothing else, I’ll confuse them!
Since when, I want to know, do conservatives have a corner on patriotism, on love of country? Since when, I want to know, can only conservatives sing O Beautiful for Spacious Skies? Since when, I want to know, can only conservatives pause, this time of year, and speak of God and country?
I am not here to sing a naïve love song to this country. I will continue deep and profound criticism of her present leadership and its direction, of her militarism, her unjust economic practices at home and abroad, her willed-ignorance of international affairs and her abiding racism, sexism and homophobia. Indeed, true patriotism must always arise in the tension between the nation’s founding ideas and its present reality. True patriotism is a lover’s quarrel.
As William Sloan Coffin put it,
How do you love America? Don’t say, “My country, right or wrong.” That’s like saying, “My grandmother, drunk or sober”; it doesn’t get you anywhere. Don’t just salute the flag, and don’t burn it either. Wash it. Make it clean.
How do you love America? With the vision and compassion of Christ, with a transcendent ethic that alone can fulfill “the patriot’s dream that sees beyond the years, her alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears.”
You see, the signal theological insight that we progressive people of faith can give to the nation is both simple and profound – and it strikes me as quintessentially American, too. It’s capture in a passage from Isaiah: “God is about to do a new thing! Behold! Can you not see it?”
Sure, we sing the songs of this nation this week, because that’s what we do on her birthday. But we sing them knowing that the God we worship is not America’s God, but rather the God who spins the whirling planets and holds all of creation – all nations and all peoples – in loving hands.
So I’ll sing the old national songs with gusto this week – because I’ve heard Arlo Guthrie sing This Land is Your Land; I’ve heard Aaron Copland conduct the National Symphony on the steps of the Capitol; and I’ve heard the Beach Boys sing California Girls in the shadow of the Washington Monument on the 4th of July – and all of that incredible mix of music rises like of hymn and fills my heart.
Indeed, when we pause to give thanks for the incredible richness that we enjoy in this nation, how can we keep from singing?

Trees in Autumn

A poem I found a few weeks ago that's been running around my brain for some reason:

In autumn we planted a maple.
Why then? Who knew.
A city boy, all I knew of seasons was shovel and sweat.
But, well-schooled
I researched: fall is planting time.
Thanksgiving marks hope as much as gratitude
that what will be is more than what seems.
Many seasons on, my children's children
play in that maple's shade.
City children, yet rooted still to the soil
and to the turning of the world.

bomb, bomb, bomb ... Iran ... sigh

Well, may that friend of a friend of a friend did say what he was said to have said (sounds like something Dr. Suess might have written.) In any case, he'd have the backing of Sen. Lieberman, whose saber shaking words over the weekend were another trial balloon for extending the war without end across the border into Iran. This balloon floated without the Beach Boys' background music that Sen. McCain gave his attack Iran thoughts. The noise level increases these days much as it did in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, but America's problems won't be solved in Iran either.
I'm reading a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, and ran across this factoid: the United States has spent $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons since the days of the Manhattan Project.
One wonders how the post-war history of the country -- and the world -- might have been different had we spent half that much on something akin to a global Marshall Plan instead of a global empire strategy whose foundation was the massive buildup of weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, it might have looked something like what Oppenheimer himself, the father of the bomb, suggested in his farewell address to the scientists at Los Alamos, when he said:
"But there is another thing: we are not only scientists; we are men, too. We cannot forget our dependence on our fellow men. I mean not only our material dependence, without which no science would be possible, and without which we could not work; I mean also our deep moral dependence, in that the value of science must lie in the world of men, that all our roots lie there. These are the strongest bonds in the world, stronger than those even that bind us to one another, these are the deepest bonds -- that bind us to our fellow men."

Accountability

I always love it when a story begins, "a friend of a friend told me ..."
I love it, but I seldom put much stock in it. So, weigh this one accordingly.
An acquaintance of a friend of a friend of mine (is that distant enough) is, so I'm told, a policy advisor at the White House. Said acquaintance (of friend of friend) says, so I'm told by one who was told, there's a 60 percent probability that the President will authorize strikes at Iran. I'm not sure whether that means opinion inside the White House is 60-40 in favor of an attack on Iran or if it's just the early betting line.
Either way, the story got me thinking again about why holding the current administration accountable is crucial. Whatever the chance that they will attack Iran, it surely seems less likely to happen if they are held accountable for what they've already done in Iraq.
Not only that, but whoever succeeds them will be less likely to engage in imperial actions if the current occupant's imperial ambitions are restrained by the quaint provisions of the Constitution. (And, no, I don't trust a Democrat with unrestrained power any more than I trust a Republican. If Lord Acton doesn't convince, perhaps the lectionary psalm for the week -- 146 -- serves as a good reminder there.)

Don't Stop Beating the Dead Horse

I've heard from a number of folks -- mostly off-line -- concerning my tilting at the windmill of impeachment, and the basic tenor of could be summed up as, "why bother, it will all be over soon." If I believed that the next election would end the nightmare born throughout the Bush years I'd probably agree, but the mere end of this administration will not likely constitute even a small undoing of the damage of the past six and a half years. Novelist Jane Smiley, responding to a New York Times editorial, underscores the long-term damage done:
When those in power exercise it in an unjust manner, they destroy the sense of trust that average citizens have in their own government and their own society and they open the society to the return of revenge as a sentiment and as an act. American history is replete with examples of how long it has taken and how difficult it has been for us as a nation to escape vengeance as a social mechanism–Kansas and Missouri, vigilantes and lynching, gangs and outlaws. Cheney’s specific crimes are reason enough for the New York Times to take impeachment seriously, but his larger crime against the nation has been to roll back the clock and infuse people like me, liberals like me (whom we all know are wimps, right?) with vengeful sentiments and fantasies. We have the crimes, then we have the arrogance–since the 2000 election, Cheney has been adding insult to injury, here and in Iraq. The combination is a potent one–the injuries damage our lives; the insults make us mad (both angry and crazy). The antidote is the exercise of laws, such as Kucinich’s articles of impeachment. I have news for the New York Times–if you assume that this is all going to pass away with another election season, you are dangerously wrong.

Still on the Straight and Narrow

When Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler said that there is a biological basis for same-sex attraction he set off a bit of a firestorm in evangelical circles (see a Time magazine story). For conservatives who have long held that homosexual behavior is a sin -- in other words, a moral choice -- the suggestion that such behavior is grounded in basic human biology causes some consternation. On the one hand, some evangelicals have suggested a kind of genetic "reparative therapy" that brings to mind Nazi eugenics. On the other, some have simply held on to traditional conservative perspectives on the issue. Some have offered a twist on the old line by noting that human behavior is not reducible to genetic determinism, and note the moral dimension involved in choosing not to engage in heterosexaul sexual behavior outside of marriage.
I don't know which way this emerging dimension will move the overall debate. I do know that I'll join the MLP contigent at the Capital Pride parade this Saturday and continue to insist that, no matter its basis in nature, nurture or choice, same-sex sexuality is part of God's good provision for a wonderfully diverse creation. My kids will be there too, because, as for me and my household, we'll serve the God of love and justice.

Get Shorty

OK, I've been on vacation of late and wonderfully disconnected from the e-world. Sabbath time is in such short supply for all of us these days. I have pondered it a bit of late and will share those ponderings down the road, but for now let me just note that Sabbath time may make you crazy. How else can one explain this picture of the newest member of our household -- yet another four-legged beasty? Could it be all of those big brown eyes? I am such a sucker for big brown eyes. So now we have Shorty, a third dog for the pack. One per child. Oy.

A Faith-Based Case for Impeachment

OK, this one is a good bit longer than most, but what the heck ... it was fun to write. Plow through! I hope you enjoy it.
Reading this week about the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell got me to thinking about a claim he made, during the 2004 presidential election campaign, that you could not call yourself a Christian unless you voted for George Bush. I disagreed with his judgment on both political and theological grounds but these day I find myself pondering a similar, if opposite, question: can you call yourself a Christian and not support the impeachment of George Bush?
I was considering the question just the other day over Chinese food with a friend. We talked about our shared distress at the endless war and the dishonesty of the administration that led us into it. We talked about the community organizing that we are involved in with an eclectic, interfaith coalition of congregations in Northern Virginia. We talked about the struggles of women, gays and lesbians in our respective ecclesiastical traditions. Then the cookies came, and my fortune read, “strong and angry words do not win the cause.”
I thought, “well, maybe that’s true in China, but where I come from if you want people to organize you have to find out what makes them angry and then you have to speak truth to power with power.”
Jerry Falwell certainly understood the power of strong and angry words, and no matter that he was consistently on the wrong side of every significant issue from Civil Rights to Iraq, he was consistently influential.
Nowhere was he more wrong than in his unhinged response to September 11, and his bellicose support of the president and his war. While most people did not share his list of 9-11 culprits – gays, the ACLU, People for the American Way and the other usual liberal suspects – his hysteria and war mongering were hardly out of step with the national mood in late 2001.
Fear was the order of the day, and hope was in short supply. Strong and angry words dominated the public discourse. No one was uttering a word about impeachment, much less asking if might be a matter of faith. Such a future was unimaginable at the moment, especially, I imagine, to some like Falwell. But then again, imagination may be way was always most lacking in his own thought.
Today, of course, impeachment is in the air if officially “off the table.” Nevertheless, strong and angry words still seem to be the order of the day. These days they come from different mouths, and the silencing of Falwell’s voice underscores the change I have been considering since attending the World Can’t Wait coalition press conference on Capital Hill a few weeks back. As the coalition presented the case for impeachment of the president and vice president, I was struck by two overwhelming impressions listening to Rocky Anderson, Chris Hedges, Dennis Kucinich, John Nichols, Cindy Sheehan and others:
First, the progressive case for impeachment is undeniably strong; but, second, only those who already believe in it will ever listen to the case because it is made with so much more anger than hope.
The distance from anger to hope cannot be traveled merely by way of critique and analysis; it requires the work of imagination. Ultimately it demands what Walter Brueggemann might call a move “beyond analysis to alternative, and finally [to] the evangelical task of empowering the faithful to alternative forms of citizenship, alternatives that are informed by loyalty and love for country” and shaped, I would argue, by the deepest values of our faith traditions. Such a move is deeply spiritual.
I attended the impeachment press conference representing the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and while the progressive legal and constitutional case for impeachment is clear and compelling there was little said that might be called a spiritual case for impeachment.
Of course, if one conflates “spiritual” and “moral,” then the case is simple. In other words, if all “spiritual” means in this case is living according to conventional middle class morality and abiding by civil law, then clearly there is a strong case to be made for impeachment. It is, in general, morally wrong to break just laws. Even if extraordinary situations might call for breaking just laws in the practice of civil disobedience, it strains credulity to suggest that the present administration – or any administration – could make a claim of civil disobedience. Civil authorities, acting as such, do not have the option of being disobedient to civil law even under the extreme circumstance of wartime. As Justice O’Connor put it, writing for the majority in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, “We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.” When disobedience of civil law rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors the moral case for impeachment is at hand. A “moral majority” might even understand that reasoning.
But what if “spiritual” includes more than what is conventionally moral? What if spiritual has to do also with the wholeness and health of an individual or a community, with shalom? With that broader and deeper understanding, what might the spiritual case for impeachment look like?
If the bill of particulars in the case for impeaching the vice president and president includes misleading Congress and the American people into the war in Iraq, then is there a particularly spiritual case to be made for the value of honesty and can that case lead beyond analysis to alternative?
If the case for impeachment includes violating international law in leading the nation into a war of aggression, then is there a particularly spiritual case to be made for the value of international community and can that case lead beyond analysis to alternative?
If the case for impeachment includes violating the FISA statute prohibiting warrantless wiretapping, then is there a spiritual case to be made for the value of privacy and for the value of limiting the power of the state, and can that case lead beyond analysis to alternative?
If the case for impeachment includes violating the Geneva Conventions barring torture, then is there a spiritual case to be made regarding the treatment of prisoners, and can that case lead beyond analysis to alternative?
Finally, if every case for impeachment can be made successfully, are there spiritual values that ought to guide the way we pursue the process and treat those who are tried and convicted?
Before rushing to construct such a spiritually progressive case for impeachment, one pressing question remains: is there a spiritual value in pursuing impeachment even if, as appears at this point, the prospect of impeachment proceedings in this Congress is exceedingly dim? Given that Speaker Pelosi has not budged from her declaration that “impeachment is off the table,” and given that Congressman Kucinich’s articles of impeachment of the Vice President remains without cosponsors, clearly the odds against impeachment are long. Thus it is incumbent upon spiritual progressives who favor impeachment to make a spiritual case for going forward with a politically divisive strategy that is not likely to succeed in its stated goal. Can such a case be made?
If accountability, responsibility and truth-telling are spiritual values, then the answer must be yes. These values are certainly part of conventional morality; indeed, they are buzzwords of corporate leadership these days. For the general cause of impeachment, it may be enough to make a case for that conventionally moral value of bringing the truth to the bright light of C-SPAN, for determining ultimate responsibility for the laws that may have been broken, and for holding accountable those who broke them. After all, in a nation governed by the rule of law, what better lesson in conventional morality than holding accountable to the law the highest officials in the land? If we fail to meet that fundamental responsibility we fail to meet the most basic measure of civil society: no one is above the law.
Beyond that commonplace, however, responsibility, accountability, and truth-telling are spiritual values and where they are not honored there can be no shalom. Moreover, they are foundational for moving beyond analysis to alternative, for imagining a future otherwise, for holding forth hope that extends beyond our anger at the present situation.
From the moment of their swearing in, the president and vice president have a sworn responsibility to uphold the constitution and to obey the law. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, “Responsibility means … that the totality of life is pledged and that our action becomes a matter of life and death.” For Bonhoeffer, “God and our neighbor, as they confront us in Jesus Christ, are not only the limit, but … they are also the origin of responsible action. Irresponsible action may be defined precisely by saying that it disregards this limit, God and our neighbor. Responsible action derives its unity, and ultimately also its certainty, from the fact that it is limited in this way by God and by our neighbor. It is precisely because it is not its own master, because it is not unlimited and arrogant but creaturely and humble, that it can be sustained by an ultimate joy and confidence and that it can know that it is secure in its origin, its essence and its goal, in Christ.” Of course, within Christian thought, the definition of neighbor and thus the question of borders is always complicated by Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Similar concerns for the return of responsibility to its source in the divine spirit and for non-tribal understandings of neighbor can be found in other religious traditions, and those concerns are broadly pertinent with respect to the prosecution of the so-called global war on terror and the various charges against the administration related to that open-ended, ill-defined conflict.
When actions are irresponsible, when they transgress the limits of law or the lives of neighbors, the best of our spiritual traditions demands an accounting. Indeed, the best of our traditions often provides a means or practice of such accounting. The African-American spirituals were one such practice that was reinvigorated during the Civil Rights struggles in the American south during the 1950s and 60s. The struggle often resulted in jail time for activists, and jails were often filled with the sounds of freedom songs and spirituals. Often the guards would try to shout down the singers or mock them as they sang such hopeful lyrics as, “I’m gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah.” But imagine the feeling of the guards at a subsequent verse: “I’m gonna tell God how you treat me one of these days.” This accounting did not change the apparent situation nor the legal relationship of prisoner and guard, but it affected the spiritual context profoundly and bent the arc of the moral universe a bit closer to justice and thus moved the world a step closer to shalom. Such an accounting of the present injustice is equally necessary for the cause of justice and peace.
The truth-telling involved in such an accounting may be the most important spiritual imperative driving the impeachment movement. The structure of law and constitution and the values of conventional morality are impotent in the face of the silence of people of faith and spiritual commitment. As Stanley Hauerwas puts it,
Truth about the way things are … cannot be isolated from the kind of people capable of acknowledging the way things are. For the way things are, the God who creates the way the world is, is revealed by a people trained to be truthful. Holiness and truth are inseparable, which means that no metaphysics is or can be sufficient if a community has lost the skill to recognize lies. Such a skill, moreover, requires constant attention since truth at one time or in one context can so quickly become the lie.
In other words, conventional morality means little outside of a vision of the future otherwise. Only when a community holds a vision of shalom, a vision of the intention of creation itself for peace and wholeness, does the shattering of that shalom compel action. For the strategy of the big lie works perfectly well within a conventionally moral society, but it fails when confronted by a larger truth.
Some will argue that holding high officials accountable to the rule of law has ethical value in and of itself, regardless of considerations that we might consider spiritual. Nevertheless, without some alternative future, ethics in the meanwhile is vanity. In particularly Christian terms, one might say that “ethics without eschatology is desperate and futile.” In other words, without the broader meaning articulated through spiritual narratives we are left to engage in ethical struggles whose bleak prospects seen within the limited perspective of our moment in history can leave us mired in cynicism and despair.
The Biblical reminder that “with God all things are possible,” is more than mere platitude; it is the ground of hope for naming responsibility, holding accountable, and speaking truth to power when none of those actions seem likely to make much difference within the body politic as presently constituted. The spiritual narratives that tell us who we are and how we are related one to another give us the secure identity necessary to pursue the impossible. In other words, we seek to hold officials accountable not because we expect the Constitutional process to work its way out, but because we are so constituted ourselves as those who are called and commanded to enable truth to stand straight in the public square once again. Or, as they say in organizing circles, we are the ones who we’ve been waiting for. Moreover, as ones who trust that the moral arc of the universe, however long, does bend toward justice, we understand that our work of the impossible is but a single part of the larger work of the divine spirit moving toward justice. Our small part in bending the arc, in this case through holding public officials accountable for their responsibility before the law, is enough for the day.
Before the law, then, stand officials who could be charged with various high crimes and misdemeanors. Impeachment activists have named more than a dozen specific charges that could be raised against the president and vice president; four of those resonate particularly from a spiritual progressive perspective.
The president and vice president have been widely accused of misleading Congress and the public in making their case for invading Iraq. The broad movement that arose after disclosure of the “Downing Street memo” has produced numerous accounts of efforts of the administration to create a case for war even when the intelligence did not fit the facts. While the complex details and evidence for those charges should emerge through official investigations and hearings, they raise one simple question: is honesty an important value in public life? The stakes in such a question are clear when framed in terms of cynicism. When public officials twist the evidence to fit the agenda – in any issues, but all the more so in the life and death question of war – they breed and intensify deep public suspicion of government. Moreover, the disconnect between the apocalyptic and often religious language of ultimate concern that is employed by various administration officials concerning the war and the reality of on-going unmet real social needs deepens the cynicism that undermines American democracy.
The value of honesty and the call to accountability for those who have been dishonest about the most significant policy decisions facing the nation are not optional for spiritual progressives who want to offer an alternative politics informed by the deepest values of our spiritual traditions. Indeed, they are central to the alternative. For while critical thought and honest disagreement are good, right and necessary aspects of the spiritual journey and the functioning of a democratic government, cynicism is an unfaithful response to the world and undermines democracy. If for no other reason, the deep cynicism engendered by the words and deeds of the president and vice president warrant their being removed from office. Simply letting the clock run out on their administration is, in itself, a cynical response to the present situation.
The president and vice president have been accused of violating international law in taking the nation to war without the blessing of the United Nations. A decent respect for the opinions of humankind, not to mention the UN charter, suggests that the blessing of the international community is valuable in the decision to go to war. The larger spiritual question though remains: what is the value of international community?
The deepest values of our spiritual traditions encourage kindness, generosity, compassion and community that transcend borders and boundaries of nation, tribe and kin. In his prophetic vision of a future beyond exile, Isaiah proclaimed, “See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you” (Isaiah 55:5). The spiritual vision of shalom, of peace, of community, always transcends borders and calls all people into relationships based on values of generosity and compassion. That vision is fundamentally anti-imperial. While no national or international system or institution will ever perfectly embody these values (just as no human being ever perfectly embodies them), that fact does not obviate the spiritual calling to pursue such relationships and build institutions to support them. Likewise, the treaties that create such institutions and the charters that guide them have a moral force that must be respected. The reality of near-sightedness should not prevent us from pursuing far-sighted visions, for only the visions of a future otherwise can move us beyond analysis to alternative. An end to this administration that does not repudiate its imperial designs will leave the next administration – whichever party prevails – operating within the same paradigm with no alternative vision. Impeachment should not simply end this administration, it should declare an end to its worldview and inaugurate an alternative that reflects our deepest spiritual values.
The president has been accused of violating the FISA statute. While this accusation alone, if borne out by the facts, meets the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors, the particular allegation raises an additional question: what is the spiritual value of privacy and of limiting the power of government with respect to privacy? The value of privacy when it comes to religious or spiritual practice seems clear on the face of it. The constitutional principle of separating church from state protects individual religious practice from government intrusion or coercion. The founding impulse of the nation recognized this value, and includes the express protection of the free expression of religion from state interference. By extension, one could posit a spiritual value in a more generalized right to privacy absent a judicially reviewed warrant for the government. In a statement opposing the use of torture, the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), acting at the behest of the 2006 General Assembly, requested that Congress protect “the right of privacy for U.S. citizens against intrusion by government or private entities.”
Beyond the specific violations of the FISA statute, the larger privacy concerns reflected in the Bill of Rights, include the imposition on the people by the government of a single religious world view. An administration that will tap phone lines of its perceived enemies should be stopped. An administration that too often employs religious symbols and language as it defines its enemies should be feared. As Chris Hedges has warned, “A group of religious utopians, with the sympathy and support of tens of millions of Americans, are slowly dismantling democratic institutions to establish a religious tyranny, the springboard to an American fascism.” Impeachment strikes at the head of that movement, and thus opens a public space for the much-needed conversation about building a politics of meaning and compassion.
The president and vice president have been accused of violating the Geneva Conventions barring torture. Compassion lies at the heart of each of the world’s great religious traditions, as does a core commitment to the sacred value of life. Spiritual progressives share a belief that each individual reflects the divine presence, and thus each human being is endowed with certain inalienable rights that include freedom from torture. While administration officials have repeatedly denied condoning torture, they have gone to torturous lengths to find linguistic escape routes from photographic evidence and mounting testimony to the contrary. Using terms such as “extraordinary rendition” and practices such as secret prisons, kidnappings and extradition to countries known to use torture, the administration has systematically denied that fundamental human right to be free from torture. Simply running out the clock on this administration is insufficient repudiation of this ongoing practice that violates our deepest spiritual values. If for no other reason than the strongest possible insistence that this shall not stand, the president and vice president should be impeached.
Finally, having set forth a spiritual progressive case for impeachment, what spiritual values ought to guide the way we pursue the process and treat those who are subject to it? One need not endlessly study the ancient texts of our various traditions on this point. Indeed, Neil Young may have put it best back in the 1970s, when he sang, “Even Richard Nixon has got soul.” Just as the victims of torture have intrinsic value as human beings, George W. Bush and Richard Cheney have intrinsic value as human beings. While anger at their actions may continue to motivate the drive to remove them from office, only a true compassion for them and for their supporters can begin to temper that anger and move the nation toward a path of hope. Thus, even as we hold their actions up to the bright light of truth, we hold George Bush and Dick Cheney also in the light of love, trusting that such love drives out the deep-seated fearfulness that has driven this nation and its leaders so far from its founding vision. As Martin Luther King, Jr. often observed, hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
Moreover, if we trust that the truth liberates us all, then uncovering the truth of the past six years is necessary for moving into the future not bound by the fear that has so dominated all national discourse through this dark season. Simply waiting out the next 18 months until a new administration takes over is not enough, for until we confront the truth and experience its liberating effect we will continue to be bound by fear no matter who holds the highest offices in the land. Impeachment is not revenge; it is revelation. Revealing the truth can free us from the bondage of fear.
Only on the far side of that fear, manipulated and distorted as it has been since September 11, can we begin to reconstruct national policies that reflect and grow out of the core values of our deepest spiritual commitments. Only policies founded on generosity, hope, compassion, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation, can lead us forth from the long national nightmare of fear and suspicion that has marked the past six years.
I’m not sure I’m at the point of making any Falwellian pronouncements about one’s faith being at stack in the position one takes on impeachment. Lord knows the last thing the world needs is a progressive version of the Rev. Falwell. But surely the question of impeachment touches on the deepest values of our spiritual lives, for they are at stake when we live in a world of fear and hostility.
Freed from that fear to embrace these values and pursue policy alternatives founded on them, we can move from analysis to alternative, from anger to hope, from the present darkness to a future otherwise. Impeachment is not about what they have done, it is about who we can become.

Sacred Cows

So I was noodling around on line, looking for some graphics for a flyer for an event called, "Is Nothing Sacred?" Perhaps I should have Google imaged searched "nothing," but instead I chose "the sacred." I got this sacred cow.

So, what is sacred to you? Is it a game? Is it a place? Is it an idea? Is nothing sacred? What do you think? Oh, and how would you picture it?

Pondering Supernovas

An item in today's paper mentioned a star in our galaxy that might go supernova one of these days. It could provide a great sky show (in the southern hemisphere) or, much less likely, it might spew us with radioactive gamma rays and pretty much wipe out life as we know it.
On the list of things to worry about, this one falls somewhere lower than starched boxers, but it does pose some interesting questions for end-of-time folks. Would Jesus use gamma rays when he comes back to destroy his enemies? Or would it be the antichrist using gamma rays? It couldn't be that "we are star dust, and to star dust we return" could it? Could we get super-hero powers like Spiderman? (OK, so that's not an end-time prophecy, but it would be cool anyway.)

Away Message

Sorry to be dark this past week. We're undergoing some home improvements. Some minor inconveniences in access to computer and major inconveniences in access to time! But a beautifully refinished basement office should be up and running by next week!

Impeach

When Does Impeachment Become a Matter of Faith?

A Call to Action to Spiritual Progressives

When the fundamental spiritual values of the world’s great religious traditions – compassion, generosity, love – are violated repeatedly by the actions of the highest civil authorities, people of faith must defend those values and work to remove those authorities in accordance with civil law.

When an administration engages in torture, under whatever Orwellian term of art it may employ, we who believe in the sanctity of human life and the fundamental equality of every human being must move beyond opposing torture to opposing the administration that enables it.

When the nation’s religious leaders call a war unjust and issue dozens of theological statements[i] opposing it, yet the administration continues to pursue that war, we must press for an end to the administration.

When prisoners languish for more than five years uncharged and untried in tropical prison camps under the administration’s guidance and authority, we must follow the call to do justice by working to end that administration.

When “justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance, for truth stumbles in the public square,” we must speak truth to power and call for Congressional action.

We have been silent for too long. For those who believe in peace, the time to break silence comes when the executive arrogates from the Congress the power to make war; when it does so contrary to just war theory, contrary to international law, contrary to the United Nations charter, and contrary to the will of the international community. For those who believe that “the truth shall set us free,” the time to break silence arises when the president and vice president continuously use false claims to justify going to war.[ii] For those who believe in the sanctity and integrity of each human being, the time to break silence arises when the administration creates secret prisons, authorizes kidnapping and torture, and disregards the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.”[iii]

Therefore, the actions of the president and vice president having risen to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, we call on the Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President and Vice President of the United States in accordance with the Constitution.

At the same time, we call on Congress and the American people to pursue new policies based on a strategy of generosity that recalls one of the great moments in our proud national history: the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe following World War II. Such a strategy at this moment will restore our international standing and rebuild shattered relationships, it will address the life-threatening poverty and hopelessness that are the breeding grounds of international terrorism in parts of the developing world; and it will reflect the best of who we are as a people.

Now is the time for a new national direction. We can wait no longer.

[1] The web site of the National Council of Churches contains links to more than 100 such statements. (See http://www.ncccusa.org/iraq/iraqstatements.html.)

[1] There are dozens of examples of Bush Administration misstatements about the war, and a growing body of literature documents them. For one mainstream media list that includes several of them, see http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/28/politics/main646142.shtml.

[1] Attorney General Gonzales called some provisions of the Conventions “quaint” in a memo to the President justifying the setting aside of the Conventions for the war on terrorism (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b79532.html).

Impeachment. Status Confessionis?

At what point does opposition to a regime achieve status confessionis? In other words, when is the integrity of the gospel itself at risk if one fails to speak out against a regime? For the church in Germany during the rise of National Socialism, Barmen represented the recognition that opposition to the Hitler regime was required for the sake of the integrity of the gospel itself. One does not need to fall to the rhetorical depths of comparing the present American administration with Hitler to raise the question, "at what point would outspoken support for impeachment become necessary for the sake of the integrity of the gospel itself?"
When an administration engages in torture, under whatever Orwellian term of art it may employ, at what point must followers of the prince of peace move beyond opposition to torture into outspoken opposition to the administration that enables it? If we follow the Christ who said, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," at what point must we move from opposition to an open-ended war to opposition to those who prosecute it?
At what point does it become a matter of faith to press for impeachment of the president?
Oh, and this is not just a rhetorical question, as I may be asked in the next few days to speak directly to this issue in a very public way.