The Elect and the Election

Just kidding about "the elect" part, but we do have an election in Virginia in a few days, or, at least a primary. Here in Northern Virginia we are getting a good dose of Democrats, of course. Hillary spoke at one of the Arlington high schools yesterday and Obama speaks at T.C. Williams, of Remember the Titans fame, on Sunday. No sight of McCain yet.
Elections are a great temptation for churches. To flirt with power is, as Jesus knew, a fundamental human temptation. The Lenten fast traces its roots back to the Biblical story of Jesus being tempted with just such power.
The temptation of the church is to align itself with a particular candidate or party as if the desired results of any election might bring about the coming of the kingdom. Of course, when it’s put that way it’s easy to dismiss the rhetoric, but too often religious leaders speak and act as if salvation depends upon voting right.
Of late, that has usually meant also voting Right.
Scripture, although thoroughly concerned with politics, clearly distrusts such alliances. As the psalmist put it,
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.
If one does not put trust in the princes or princesses of any given moment, where does trust lie when it comes to exercising one’s democratic responsibilities as a person of faith? Surely it comes down to bringing core values and commitments into the decisions.
The issue that has been troubling me this week is torture. As the present Administration has been found to be less than truthful in its denials of using torture, the candidates for “next” have been forced to confront again a fundamental moral choice.
Here’s how the three leading candidates have said they would handle the proverbial “ticking time bomb” thought-experiment that asks, “would you approve the torture of someone with information about the bomb?”
John McCain: “Should [an interrogator use torture] and thereby save an American city or prevent another 9/11, authorities and the public would surely take this into account when judging his actions and recognize the extremely dire situation he confronted.”
Hillary Clinton: “Those are very rare, but if they occur, there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing it…. [If] we have sufficient basis to believe that there is something imminent, yeah, but then we’ve got to have a check and balance on that.”
Obama: ”The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security … torture is not a part of the answer - it is a fundamental part of the problem…. Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. … When I am president America will … [stand] up to these deplorable tactics. When I am president we won’t work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution, we will be straight with the American people and true to our values.”
There are other issues and additional core values, to be sure, and final decisions are always a collection of judgments that add up to something we hope is more than a hunch, knowing that the coming of the kingdom does not rest on our decision.
Still, it seems to me that we bring our core faith values and convictions to bear precisely when we are called to judge such issues as this, and those judgments are our best guidance when election time comes around.

For Lent: Commit to Peace

Take on the Lenten discipline of peacemaking this year!
Last March thousands of Christians filled the Washington National Cathedral to pray and act for peace, and then processed to the White House to surround it with the light of Christ’s peace. One year later, the United States continues to occupy Iraq, so Christian Peace Witness for Iraq must continue to 'speak their peace' through worship and witness.
We invite you, your family, your congregation and your neighbors to come again to the nation's capitol from Thursday, March 6, 2008 through Monday, March 10 to speak the truth in love.
As people of faith and spiritual yearnings, we are called to such witness for peace and justice. At times, our faiths compel us to speak truth to power. This is the moment in which we must show the greatest possible resolve in rescuing the fundamental values of respect for life and dignity from those who offer empty promises leading to a downward spiral of militarism and domination. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal, and that time has come for us.”
Together we will fill houses of worship, remembering and learning anew the ways of the Prince of Peace. Then we will carry our public witness to the halls of government power, calling our leaders to embody values fundamental to the Christian tradition—and shared in other traditions—that truly make for communities of prosperity, security, and justice.
We need your help – your prayers, time, talents and financial donations.
On Friday, March 7, at noon people from across the United States will gather at more than a dozen different houses of worship and centers of faith on or near Capitol Hill to worship in each of our different traditions. Then at 2:30 p.m., we will come together for a mass public witness and demonstration against the war.
Please join us for this act of faith.
The world cries out for a common voice for peace from across religious traditions and paths.
Together we can end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home. Together we can stand against fear and violence, and live into a longing for wholeness that unites us across all boundaries. Together we can offer a path toward reconciliation. Together we can learn to build security through right relationships.
Communities and individuals of all religious traditions and spiritualities are invited to participate, so long as they share a common commitment to nonviolence, a positive vision of peace through justice, and a desire to witness through both worship and public action.
For further information on Christian Peace Witness for Iraq visit: http://www.christianpeacewitness.org/. To register go to: http://olivebranchinterfaith.org/.

Imagine 10,000 Feet of Hope

Dr. King reminded us that we are all “caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” All of us are wounded by the war in Iraq, and we must work together to end it.

Whether or not you can come to Washington in March you can be part of the web of resistance by offering a strand of hope.

Here’s how: send or bring to Washington a six-foot length of light rope (multi-colored easy-tie clothesline is ideal). Attach to the rope ribbons or bands of cloth with your own hopes for a peaceful Iraq, your own prayers for peace, your own definitions of peace. Imagine something like Buddhist prayer flags.

Leave a foot at each end of your length of rope (so they can be tied together) and fill the remaining four feet. Please keep the ribbons or bands of cloth or prayer flags to two feet or shorter (so they can be carried without dragging the ground), and make them whatever width you like (keeping in mind that onlookers will want to be able read your hopes and prayers).

Let our common longing for peace bind us together in hope. Imagine 10,000 feet of hope.

Send your piece (to arrive by March 4) to:

10,000 Feet of Hope

c/o Clarendon Presbyterian Church

1305 N. Jackson St.

Arlington, VA 22201

State of the Union

Here’s to the state of the union! As we watched the president last night, the adults in the household played a small drinking game. We began the evening with a glass of wine and a commitment to watch as long as the glass lasted, taking a sip each time Mr. Bush said some version of these words: terror, security, freedom or democracy. We didn’t last long!
But we did last long enough to notice the rhetorical trope the president employed throughout the speech: “trust and empower” – as in “we must trust in the ability of free people to make wise decisions, and empower them to improve their lives and their futures.”
The president spoke often of trusting and empowering, and were it not for his evangelical Christian brand of conservatism one might have imagined that he had morphed into a libertarian with his focus on an idea of individual liberty that is opposed to any sense of corporate responsibility or commonwealth.
Whatever you think about various brands of conservatism, this picture of liberty lacks depth and focus when measured against background images that must include domestic wiretaps, Patriot Acts and waterboards.
Perhaps this time next year the state of the union will include a more creative mix balance of liberty and responsibility, of individual and community. I’d drink to that.

A Day of Some Grace

Another day, another opportunity to testify. Today it was back into the ongoing struggle over ordination issues in the church. Here are my remarks to National Capital Presbytery on the overture from Clarendon to delete G-6.0106b from the Book of Order:

... I want to raise two brief concerns.
First, some of you may question the timing of this overture given the Birmingham General Assembly's endorsement of the Peace, Unity and Purity Task Force report's call for a season of discernment. On the other hand, some of you may also say, "we've been discerning on these concerns for more than 30 years."
Wherever you find yourself on that, I think it's clear that we tend not to talk about these issues absent a moment of decision. After all, it's been two years now since the PUP task force issued its final report and 18 months since GA endorsed it. For the past 18 months there has been a great silence across the church, broken for the most part only when candidates for ordination are questioned on the floor of presbytery about their sex lives.
The time has come either to delete "b" or recast it in language more faithful to our Reformed heritage, for it is clearly failed legislation that has, for the past decade, undermined the peace, unity and purity of the church. It has done so in part because it has only ever been used to target gays and lesbians and never to cast a light on those of us who, for example, regularly fail to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
So to the question of timing I would say simply, the timing is right, for it is never the wrong time to correct an error, and it is always the right time to do justice.
Secondly, I raise a simple pastoral concern. Last month a young woman visited us for worship at Clarendon. She was among that highly desirable "young adult" demographic. At the door after worship when I greeted her she said, "I'd like to ask you a question."
I was intimidated, but I said, "fire away."
She told me that she'd checked out our website and noted our claim that "all are welcome." She wanted to know if it was true, as we claimed, that we "treat all Presbyterians equally without regard to sexual orientation" and include all members in the full life of the church.
I assured her that this was the case, and then she told me that she'd come to worship that morning on behalf of two friends -- a lesbian couple -- who were afraid that they would not be welcomed ... afraid that they would not be safe.
I was deeply saddened and also angered that a couple who obviously wanted to come to church would feel that they needed to send an emissary to see if they would be safe.
The toxic language of the present "b" ensures that millions of folks -- gay men, lesbian women, and their friends and loved ones -- will continue to eye with deep and well-grounded suspicion every church sign that says, "all are welcome," because the language in our constitution clearly tells them that some are not.
It is from deep theological conviction and deeper pastoral concern that I urge your support of this overture. The time has come.

The overture was endorsed on a voice vote and will go to General Assembly this spring. By a 60-40 margin, an additional overture that simply deletes G-6.0106b also was endorsed. A day, perhaps, of some grace.

King Day

King Day, 2008, falls in a season of hope and peace and dreams that are profoundly American – and a season of sadness and anger that we still live so far from the realization of those dreams.
Yesterday I gathered with a small group of hardy souls to continue our monthly witness for peace at Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. It was cold – 18 degrees – and as we sang “We Shall Overcome” our breath hung as frost in the January air.
As I walked to the park across the closed portion of roadway directly in front of the White House, I was struck again by a deep sense of gratitude for living in a country where one can gather in front of the elected executive’s home and lift a voice of protest. Listening this afternoon to a song that mentions Tiananmen Square reminds me of the privilege of living in a country that still has space for speaking truth to power -- and of the responsibility for doing so.
Oh, to be sure, I am just as cynical as any about the nature of this particular executive’s use and abuse of power, and I am deeply angry and saddened by the atmosphere of fear and paranoid security that surrounds my home city. As our witness moved toward its conclusion last evening I was summoned to speak with one of the guards because I held the permit for the witness. I sent back word that I’d respond when Fr. Joe Nangle was through praying. Joe prayed long enough that the officer had moved on to someone else, and I headed off into the night un-accosted – still full of the mix of hope and anger, sadness and dreams, and imagining a future otherwise.

A Future?

Years ago, when I worked for a short while on the Nuclear Freeze campaign, I recall the shock that a friend expressed when he learned that I was going to the Divinity School. “What’s a good progressive like you doing in a divinity school?” he wanted to know. I tried to explain that there was a tradition of progressive Christianity, but he had never encountered it. Most folks haven’t.
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 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?
Forty years back, Martin Luther King asked a similar question in his Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, lamenting a church drifting into irrelevance because it was too timid to address the pressing issues of the day.
Is it simply too late to ask again? Is it worth the effort?

Witness to a Dream

If these were silent, the stones themselves would cry out loud ...
Witness for peace at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Sunday,
Jan. 20 , 5:00 p.m.
Witness for peace on the weekend that celebrates America’s foremost peacemaker. King reminded us: there comes a time to break silence. Now is such a time!
Join a liturgy of peacemaking including the laying of stones at the gates to the White House representing the Iraq War dead. Their voices have been silenced; the stones themselves will bear witness.
There comes a time 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”

Convened in continuation of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq by DC Metro area clergy and laity. For more information see: http://www.christianpeacewitness.org/

Moving Mountains

The DC director of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light asked me to testify before the Virginia Corporation Commission concerning the licensing of the proposed Dominion Power coal-burning plant in Wise County, Va. GWIPL has been quite helpful to my congregation, so I was happy to return the favor by speaking against a proposal that runs counter to my denomination's stated positions on environmental justice, global warming and mountaintop removal. So here's what I offered the commission today in Richmond:
Thank you for providing this opportunity for public comment. I spent 10 years working in state government, and understand well the challenges of your work and appreciate its vital importance. The founding father of my own particular branch on the Christian family tree, John Calvin, said that public service is a sacred calling and it’s in that vein that I understand and honor the work that you do.
Honoring that work may be all that I have to offer you today. As a pastor, I cannot offer much by way of economic impact analysis – certainly nothing that you have not already heard and don’t already know better than I.
I cannot offer much by way of environmental impact analysis – certainly nothing that you have not already heard and don’t already know better than I.
I cannot offer much by way of political analysis either.
In fact, I cannot even offer you much that would be new to you in the way of moral analysis because you do not need me to teach you values.
The role of religious leaders in conversations such as today’s is nothing more than urging you to live up to those values that you already hold: to calculate economic impact in terms of the effect of your decisions on the most vulnerable, least powerful members of the community; to judge environmental impact in terms of the fundamental value of creation itself and humankind’s common charge to care for creation; to analyze political impacts not in terms of right or left but in terms of right or wrong.
You have no doubt already heard a staggering amount of factual analysis on this plant in all of those terms. So let me simply close with a brief story.
About a dozen years ago I spent a year offering some occasional assistance to a small congregation in the coal country of Eastern Kentucky. Once a month or so I drove 3.5 hours from Lexington to the tiny hamlet of Phelps to the Peter Creek Presbyterian Church that sat at the foot of Dick’s Knob. It was a long drive on a lot of windy mountain roads used by large coal trucks. Often it was a bit harrowing, and I was always relieved to cross the last ridge and see the shadow of the mountain crossing the face of the church.
It was a sight I came to expect and to take for granted, until the last time I made the drive. As I crossed the final ridge I noticed something different. The quality of light was different and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I looked up to see if the weather had changed unexpectedly, but that wasn’t it. Then I realized: Dick’s Knob was gone! The top of the mountain had been entirely removed.
Like some 300 mountaintops in the Appalachians, including in Wise County, the mountaintop was gone. Jesus said it would take only the faith of a mustard seed to remove a mountain; if he were here today he would suggest that just such faith can save the mountaintop from being removed.
That’s what we’re asking you for today: just a little faith. Faith in good-old fashioned American ingenuity that is creating more and better alternative energy sources every day; faith in our common will and commitment to becoming better stewards and more frugal consumers of energy; and keeping faith with our children as we work together to hand them a world that still has mountaintops.
When I drive through the Valley these days with my own children on our own trips down to the southern end of the Appalachians where I grew up, we stop frequently to enjoy the beauty of this commonwealth. I hope they make the same journey with my grandchildren some day, and I hope that I do not have to explain how it was that people of my generation had so little faith as to let the mountains be removed.

Happy New Year!

Good to be away for a while, and to be back at home.
Here's a poem/song for today that we used as an advent hymn:

Christ is Coming
(Tune: Hymn to Joy)
Christ is coming, light the candles
Open hearts, prepare the way
All creation, still in wonder
Longing for a Christ-filled day
Midst the darkness of despairing
From the bleak of wintertide,
Raise this light of expectation, joy and hope in us abide

Christ is coming, light the candles
Shine the light of justice here
Blind have vision, lame are leaping
Day of jubilee draw near
To the center of Christ’s circle
Every outcast welcome in
When compassion knows no limits
Everyone is kith and kin

Christ is coming, light the candles
Hope and joy and peace and love
Christ before us, Christ behind us
Christ beneath and Christ above
Invitation to this myst’ry
By God’s grace it knows no bounds
Light the Christ light in this season
Keep it lit the whole year round

(Feel free to pass it along to a music director near you. All I ask is that it be cited as "copyright 2007, David Ensign.")

Peace on Earth

Entitling a Christmas homily “Peace on Earth” in 2007 demonstrates either outrageous foolishness or audacious hope, for no matter where on earth you look these days peace is in short supply.
Of course, Gabriel’s announcement to Mary must have seemed outrageous, and the angel’s proclamation to the shepherds must have sounded foolish.
Just as Isaiah’s promise to the exiles that God was about to do a new thing, to create a new heaven and new earth.
Just as Moses’ claim that he was called to set his people free.
Just as Gandhi’s insistence that his people would be free.
Just as King’s dream of freedom and equality.
Just as Mother Theresa’s insistence, through all of her deep personal doubts, that the least of these has dignity and worth and deserves compassion and love.
Just as the insistence, today, that God desires shalom – peace on earth – sounds foolish and naïve in the face of the reality of strife and war.
I cannot help but recall the near-mythical Christmas Eve truce of 1914, when German and British troops called a halt to the nonsense of war for the Stille Nacht – the Silent Night of peace.
Is it too naïve to wonder – on this night – if one night of peace might stretch into a day, and if a single day might not extend to two, and if two … then three, and then another and another and another, and then still more until war is no more and nation shall not lift up sword against nation and neither shall they study war no more, and the angels’ proclamation from that first Christmas Eve becomes a description of our common life: peace on earth and goodwill to all of God’s children.
Sure, I recognize that many will say that this is naïve and unrealistic, and, of course, they would be right.
It is naïve and unrealistic – but so is the conviction that with each child is born anew the hope of the world.
Let down the fences and defenses that the culture builds around hope, and gather close round the manger. Listen for the songs of the angels. Peace on earth is their promise and our calling. It is before us … always before us –
… if we would but open our minds to conceive it, open our hands to receive it, open our hearts to believe it.
Peace on earth; good will to all.
This is our Christmas prayer.
Hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas. No more from here till next year. Peace.

A Dark and Stormy Night ...

OK, so it was not a dark and stormy night, but it was a cold and windy one when a couple of dozen folks gathered last evening at Lafayette Park to witness to a common desire for peace.
My 16-year-old son, who attended his first peace demonstration in utero during the first Gulf war, graded last night’s witness a 7.5 on a scale of 10. The weather knocked a few points off for him, although it added something for me. He says, “that’s why you have multiple critics.”
He also chided me for “blowing the closing prayer.”
A few dozen tourists had come up while we were standing across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House singing Silent Night, and Bud argued (well and rightly) that they didn’t know why we were there so it was a teachable moment that could have been seized by a prayer that blessed the stones we left on the sidewalk, and all those victims of the war represented by the stones, and, perhaps also the death of civil liberties here so perfectly represented last night by the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue that kept us from crossing to the White House fences due to some vague "security situation."
Instead, I wished folks “peace” and blessed them on their way through the cold and wind.
My colleague, Tara Spuhler, associate pastor at New York Avenue Presbyterian, led the worship last night and she reminded us of the transgenerational responsibilities to pass along the message of peace so that folks of her generation are drawn into movements for peace and justice and empowered there.
I do hope she felt empowered for her words were certainly filled with power, and I was reminded again of my own selfish reasons for continuing the witness. I am filled up by the experience. Last night was not a pleasant one to be out in, and I really did not want to leave the comfort of hearth and home – or couch and cocoa. I’m in the middle of a mild cold, so the couch was, indeed, enticing.
But since I am significantly to blame for this witness, I felt like I had to show up – besides that, I had the stones in the trunk of my car.
But Tara’s words, the wonderful music led by Meade Hannah from Our Lady Queen of Peace, and the opportunity to see a small but committed and ecumenical group of peacemakers refreshed my spirits and brought me closer to the spirit of Advent – the coming of the Prince of Peace.
That spirit, that power, that possibility and promise – that the peacemaker’s time is at hand – is why we witness. For in doing so we lift high that promise and place it in the center of the public square where it shines like an unquenchable flame, demanding attention as the powers and principalities shrink in the face of a fearfulness that they, themselves, unleashed upon the world.
Does the presence of 20 or 30 folks one evening a month standing in the dark in a park across the street from the White House make any difference? In the calculus of public policy probably not at all. But within the broader economy of the commonwealth of the beloved, that kingdom economy ruled by princes of peace and those anointed for the sake of compassion, the balance of power shifts when we witness.
And who knows, perhaps we are only a boffo closing prayer away from peace!
So, by way of do-over, my prayer is that we continue to witness, that we join our voices to the silent witness of the stones, that those in the way of this war find shelter and shalom, that wisdom prevail in places of power, that Advent hope sustain us through the dark winter of war, that the hopes and fears of all the years be met by God-with-us, and that each of you meet the new year full of the love that casts out all fear.

A Beautiful Day for Peace

I suppose every day could be a beautiful day for peace, but this is the day that we have been given and it's supposed to be partly cloudy and in the low 40s this afternoon: perfect weather for an Advent witness to the peace that God calls us to make. Hope to see you at Lafayette Park at 5:00 p.m.

Say It Ain't So ...

Actually, I'd more likely say, "why would you expect it to be any other way?" The Mitchell Report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball, released yesterday, confirms what common sense should have told baseball fans for the past decade as aging stars defied the gravity of time to turn in record-shattering performances at ages when they should have been collecting retirement benefits.
It should not have taken a $100-million report to confirm what our eyes and experience were telling us. I'm certainly no professional athlete, but I am a 48-year-old hoopster who had a 30-inch vertical leap ... when I was 30 years old. The past 18 years have been a long, slow decline as muscles age and take longer to recover from running and jumping. Nothing at all unusual about that -- it is a universal experience. Why then the surprise from so many quarters when it is revealed that Roger Clemens' age-defying performances were helped along a bit by chemicals?
Could it be that baseball fans do not want to believe that the good ol' Texas boy (who happens to be white) would engage in the same kind of cheating of which the surly superstar Barry Bonds (who happens to be black) stands similarly accused? That comes as no surprise. What of the role of the players' union? That they are accused of aiding and abetting the steroid era is also no surprise. Nor is the role of the commissioner, nor his refusal yesterday to take any real responsibility. (He should resign if he truly wants to clear the decks for baseball to move forward, but that will never happen.)
The only surprising thing to me in all of this is the repeated defense of the teammates who knew and said nothing because they did not want to be accused of "ratting out another player."
I suppose I'm not so much surprised as I am left wondering. What is it about the truth that is so difficult to acknowledge or articulate? Not saying what is so won't make it not so ... even if you want to say it ain't so. If the truth will set you free, why do so many in baseball seem more bound to the recent past today than they did the day before yesterday? Perhaps you have to claim the truth before it can liberate you. Amidst all the denial, freedom seems a long way off.

An Agitation for Today

I am wondering, as I read in the Post about "what the Democrats knew and when they knew it" about rendition, torture, etc., if we need to be mindful of that dynamic in pressuring the Congress to act on the occupation? It seems to me that the Dems want to have it both ways -- criticize the president on Iraq while quietly supporting the worst aspects of the general war on terror. It is that general war without end that is the problem -- Iraq is but a symptom. Neither side in Congress has the vision or courage to address it. Moreover, the relative quiet in Iraq pulls energy from the antiwar movement -- unless it can be more clearly cast as a peace movement. As such, as a movement for peace, we cannot pull punches on the war on terror, and the recent revelations about Speaker Pelosi make that all the more clear and crucial.

American Heresies, Again

As the revelations about destroyed CIA torture tapes continue to unfold here in the heart of the empire we are being told again, by those in power, that Americans don't torture. "We're not like that," the powerful say -- and, one imagines, they want to believe it.
How are we, really? Many at home and abroad paint with too broad a brush in considering the torturers, the administration that guided their actions and the Democratic leadership that turned a blind eye on it all. While all of them stand complicit, much of the rhetoric of condemnation sounds a bit like Bruce Cockburn's haunting Rocket Launcher, from the 1980s Latin American war experience. Cockburn's words -- "if I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch would die" -- stand as a signal expression of a perspective grounded on a fundamental theological error.
The heresy, shared by critics and defenders of American practices in the war on terror, denies both that all of us are created in the image of a loving God and also that all of us are broken.
The truth is, as the Biblical image of humanity makes clear, that each of us is some strange and volatile mixture of the angels of our better natures and our own profound brokenness.
We may not know anything about the spies who tortured or the officials who authorized them. Truth be told, we don't know that much about the President or the House Speaker, either. But about all of us, we do well to recall the words of the psalmist, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51: 3-5). While in the very same moment we must remember also that the psalmist says, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
All of us, are both of these things: those who transgress, and those who are wonderfully made. And we live, all of us, somewhere east of Eden.
Dr. 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, 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.”
Alas, as James Carroll said, “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. 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.”
Lost amidst the news of destroyed videos and secret briefings is the spiraling cost of occupation.
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.
For, 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 that now dominate our news.
The church’s complacency in the midst of this is shattered – or should be – as we realize that amidst the howls of protest rising in response to recent revelations nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “love one another as I have loved you.” Nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). Nowhere do we hear the voice of the one who said, “Be compassionate as your Father in heaven is compassionate” (Luke 6:36).
It seems that in this season, the voice of the Prince of Peace should be heard again.

Theories of Representation

There's a fascinating little story unfolding in a congressional election in Memphis where a white man, Rep. Steve Cohen, replaced Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., when Ford ran for the U.S. Senate. Now Cohen faces Democratic primary opposition from an African-American woman who is, according to some progressive voices, less likely to represent the economic interests of the largely black and quite poor district. Cohen's voting record rated higher than Ford's on the report cards of the Congressional Black Caucus, and his positions on report card issues are consistently more aligned with the CBC than are his opponent's.
There's a strong gay-bashing undercurrent to the race, as well.
All of it makes me wonder about theories of democratic representation. Who can represent whom? Can a white man adequately represent the interests of black folk? Can a straight man adequately represent the interests of gay men? What of the interests of women? Children? Old folks? Muslims? Atheists? Rural folks? What of the interests that cross the lines of interest group politics?
Interesting.

Nightmares and Agitations

For some masochistic reason, as I propped up the ankle, I tuned in the local news.
In DC today it was dominated by the sad story of Sean Taylor, a professional football player for the team my son calls the "racist-skins." Taylor, an All Pro defensive player, was shot in his Miami home in the wee hours of Monday morning and died early this morning.
There is much to be agitated about in a story that draws together the violent world of professional football, the violent worlds of Miami and Washington, the violent world that so many young, African-American men live in, and the violence of America's continuing legacy of racism.
I can't get past the news descriptions that reported Taylor getting out of bed when he heard an intruder in the house and grabbing for the machete that he kept near his bed for protection. What kind of nightmare world is it where some folks have to sleep with machetes near their beds?
As one Post writer pointed out, whether or not most of us live in that world, it seems to attract more than its fair share of young athletes who too often fail to connect the dots of contexts and consequences.
More than a fair share of those young athletes are African-American men. Could there be some slight connection between that factoid and cultural blindness to such things as team names like Redskins, that trace back to America's original sin? There is, after all, a connection between contexts and consequences. Indeed, linguistic contexts have real-world consequences. In other words, words matter.
I don't expect any real reflections on such connections to come out of this sad death, but Taylor's father said he hoped his son's life was not in vain. If it sparks some deeper reflections on race and violence, perhaps his life and his violent death might have some deeper meaning than just another nightmare of a young black man murdered.

a simple twist of fate

I was out running this morning and hit an uneven piece of pavement hidden under fallen leaves. So now I’m sitting in the kitchen with ice on a mildly sprained ankle searching for the metaphor that must be hidden in this minor event. I’m sure it’s there, hidden just like the crack in the roadway, ready to tip the unsuspecting and unbalanced, to stretch the ligaments that bind us together, and to leave one sipping red wine while contemplating the hidden meanings in a single misstep. Oh, to hell with it. I’ll just sip the wine, wait for the other drugs to take effect and go read the comics.

Counting Blessings in Autumn

for teachers who point out abundance
in an Olive Garden world
for friends who offer light in the gathering gloom
-- even if it's only smoldering ash from a summer campfire
for small ones with smiles too big for their faces
for big brown eyes
and for dried tears
for the songs that connect the lines
and give rhythm to the heart
for maples and running water and even grey skies
for the woods in autumn when everything smells of death
for questions that do not demand answers
for memory
and forgetting
for you and me and us, waiting for spring