It's Not The Cover-Up, It's Definitely The Crime

The attempt to create an air of controversy around the White House last week, which appears to be as successful as Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign, had some folks bleating, as if on cue: WATERGATE!

This would be funny if it weren't for the fact that "Watergate" became shorthand for the wrong idea that the crime in question was not nearly as bad as the years-long effort to prevent a full legal and public accounting not only for it but for all the crimes of the Nixon Administration.  In fact, the original crime was a dreadful piece of offal that, once removed from the damn, released not water but the lake of sewage that was the criminal enterprise some people called the Nixon Presidency.

The best account I've read isn't Woodstein's All The President's Men, which has the singular virtue of making the reporters look clueless.  Far better is the book written by a group of journalists working for a British newspaper (and, no, I can't find it because it is packed with the rest of my books and Google is being singularly unhelpful on this matter).  They don't begin with the break-in.  Instead, they begin with the Nixon campaign in 1968, then move through the creation of the plumbers unit after the Pentagon Papers leak; they include the burgling of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office; the plan to bomb the Brookings Institution; the near-miss when Jack Anderson nearly got targeted for murder because G. Gordon Liddy wasn't bright enough to understand Nixon didn't mean "kill" when he said he wanted to "get" Anderson for leaking classified sources in a story Anderson wrote about the Soviet Ambassador to the US; the failed first attempt to bug DNC headquarters; the money-laundering scheme set up to provide clean money for dirty work through the Committee to Re-Elect The President; the direct bribing, or at least attempted bribe, by ITT; planting an individual in the IRS to direct audits at a list of "enemies" that someone at the White House was stupid enough to commit to paper; the white-washing of the Kent State massacre to support a narrative that placed blame on the protestors; all this as context, of course, doesn't include the multiple crimes of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who left office for prison because he took bribes while governor of Maryland; lest we forget, Nixon was so desperate to hang on to office he managed to create an atmosphere where those most involved in the dirty business - aides H R Haldeman and John Ehrlichman - scurried after deals that would save their butts while making sure as many other people fried as possible.

So, (a) no, even if there was some kind of "scandal" here, none of them, even in some fantastical combination, come close to what the word "Watergate" represents; and (b) the cover-up is never as bad as the crime; after all, if they're covering it up, it must be pretty horrible.

Women Behaving Like People

Women behaving like people continues to shock and outrage society in general.

The past year has seen a rise in pushback against persistent sexism in a variety of groups, including the gaming community, the New Atheists, and the Skeptics.  Let met admit up-front that I am of two minds on this.  Most of me sides with the women and men calling out the misogyny and male privilege that has resulted in women being harassed, threatened, and silenced for so speaking out.  On the other hand, it's nice to see groups, especially the arrogant and ridiculous New Atheists get called on their arrogance and ridiculous pose as intellectual elite.  The expressions of anti-Islam attitudes are being called out, which is a good thing; yet there continues to be expressions of surprise that this kind of bigotry accompanies other bigotries as well, including cultural, pro-Western biases as well as misogyny and the expression of male privilege.

The latest example, thanks to a link from Lawyers, Guns, and Money, involves a post written by Rebecca Watson at Skepchick reacting to a speech given by Ron Lindsay at a conference called Women In Secularism 2.

In his talk, Lindsay didn’t give any examples of men who have been silenced, though he has promised to provide some. In the meanwhile, the audience is forced to examine the only example provided: Lindsay himself, a white male who is CEO of one of the largest skeptic organizations in the world and who delivered the 30-minute introductory lecture at a women’s conference. There doesn’t seem to be much danger of his voice being silenced, though of course I may not be aware of some behind-the-scenes campaign to drive him into obscurity.

Meanwhile, nowhere in Lindsay’s speech did he mention feminists like Jen McCreight, who has been so bullied and harassed that she did in fact quit attending conferences and she quit blogging and being active on social media in the hopes the anti-feminists would finally leave her alone. They didn’t. That is silencing. Nowhere did Lindsay mention that every day I and other feminists get slurs, rape jokes, and death threats from fellow skeptics and secularists. That is an attempt at silencing, though it is an attempt that will not work until the day one person follows through on the threat.

When faced with my criticism of his tone deafness, Lindsay didn’t hesitate to include me in the list of feminists trying to shut him up. He seems to be confused, assuming any discussion about how race, gender, and other attributes influence our outlook and our biases is a call for people of privilege to have no say. This is quite obviously absurd – I myself am incredibly privileged as a white, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied, middle class educated American, but do I demand that I and anyone like me never engage in discussions of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or class? Of course not – I merely hope that we engage in these conversations with compassion and understanding, ultimately encouraging the people directly affected by those issues to have a voice and an audience.

The idea that talking about privilege as a social reality is somehow oppressive is no different than being told that calling out racism is the real racism, or that pointing out that defending legal discrimination might well be evidence of bigotry is not a personal attack; it's crap, in other words.  Guys like Lindsay, while certainly well-intentioned, tend to miss the point that when someone else notes they are speaking from a perspective of social and cultural privilege, it's just that.

What is not at all pretty, however, is the barely-repressed rage one reads in comments at the Skepchick article.  That a woman had the audacity to call out a man seems to stir something horrible in some people.  The discussion at LGM is far more restrained, and by and large favorable to Rebecca Watson (which is one reason I visit there a lot; even their trolls are fun).  At the heart of the discussion, however, is the largely unexamined idea that, being privileged in one way - feeling superior because they are skeptics rather than gullible goofs like us religious types - won't somehow extend to the rest of their lives.  Skeptics and atheists will just naturally be better at all these things (remember how the Soviet Union decried the sexism and racism in the United States, all the while being pretty horrible on these matters?  I thought not) including how men relate to women.  And since it's men telling everyone how much better they are, it must be true.

It is odd that the sexism in these groups comes as some kind of shock.  At least some of us in the religious communities, recognize the reality of sexism and struggle with it openly; for some reason, a woman pointing out that the skeptical/atheist community has similar issues is just wrong, as many men are quite willing to explain, with force if necessary.

The fact is these prejudices are inherent, particularly in groups whose membership is preponderantly male.  I'd be more surprised if there wasn't widespread misogyny in such groups.  The least that can be done, I suppose, is allow women to behave like people without it becoming somehow oppressive to the powers-that-be.  It is working out pretty well in some churches; shouldn't these folks strive to do at least as well?

United Methodists And Chicago

Unless you were paying close attention, you probably didn't know that yesterday was "United Methodist Day" in the city of Chicago.  It was official; Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the declaration.  The reason for the declaration was the convening of an Urban Strategy Summit on the South Side, bringing together community leaders and activists and organizers, clergy, church members, and city officials to begin a discussion about ways to combat the horrific violence that has been bleeding parts of the city for over a year.

In the center of this photo is Mayor Emanuel.  To his left (our right) is our bishop, Sally Dyck.  One thing about this photo surprises me; I had no idea Emanuel is so short.  He's not much taller than Bishop Dyck, and she's tiny.  Also, as an aside, I think overhearing a private meeting between the two would be interesting, considering Emanuel's nickname from his days working in the Obama White House was Rahm Fucking Emanuel because of his colorful vocabulary.

This, however, is trivia.  What's far more important is we have church leaders in our denomination who are willing to stand up and speak out on the violence and death that goes on with no purpose and no end.  Our churches in Chicago are trying to do some things in their communities; Bishop Dyck used to summit to highlight examples of work being done as well as call for a more systematic, integrated, and connectional approach.  One of the advantages of being a United Methodist is the connections among congregations; we have the ability to share resources, ideas, programs, and sharing extends beyond clusters of churches to whole areas, large cities, even the denomination.  Bringing the weight of the office of Bishop to this task is welcome.  Bringing it to bear on this matter demonstrates the church still has a beating heart, and is willing to take risks to be the church in those places where people need it.

Now, I don't know how effective a single meeting can be.  I do know, however, that if there is follow-through - something that doesn't always happen or happen very well - and follow-up and most of all structural support, a meeting such as this can accomplish good things.  Maybe even great things.  So, like most folks of good will, I hope and pray for success to flow from a meeting such as this.  If it accomplished nothing else, it demonstrated to Chicago that the answer to Charles Wesley's hymned-question, "And Are We Yet Alive?" is a resounding "Yes!"

It's A Beautiful Spring Day

So rather than do the same topics everyone else is doing; or, perhaps, making some point I've made over and over again; or even make the banal point that calling someone who defends discrimination prejudiced isn't a personal attack but a description of their actions; nope - just gonna play some music for a Spring day.

Like Joe

And Marillion

Crosby, Stills, and Nash

And something of a recent vintage (released last month here in the US; in January or February in Europe)

Nekulturni Kampf

There are few things I enjoy more than reading right-wingers attempt cultural criticism.  Whether it's how horrible Girls is because the star, Lena Dunham, is unafraid to appear in the nude despite being a normal-looking young woman; how Mad Men is a conservative blockbuster because all the men smoke and drink and treat women like crap, the way God ordained it; or disparage this or that musical performer or even whole musical style because it's too loud or the songs are about things the church-ladies on the right disapprove (imagine young people singing about sex and having a good time!  it's never happened before!); the resulting combination of ignorance and stupidity and what the folks at Lawyers, Guns, and Money call "cultural Stalinism" is hilarious.

The latest entry in the "Conservatives Can Be Cool" contest comes to us from the American Enterprise Institute (which gives the game away, if you've been paying attention for the past few decades).

Yet at the same time — and discussions about discursive practices aside — there is a strong undercurrent of deeply conservative thought expressed in songs by a wide range of some of the most famous rap artists of all. And it is not just the kind of classical-liberal concerns over government overreach in specific policy areas (narcotics, law enforcement) that one would expect based on the attention rap music has received in the public debate, though there is quite a bit of that. As I will show by analyzing the twenty-one greatest conservative rap songs, selected based on a mix of ideological purity (primarily), musical quality, and popular appeal, all three legs of President Reagan’s “three-legged stool” are represented.

The songs I discuss express support not just for pro-family social values, but also for small government and peace through strength. That said, domestic policy receives more attention than foreign policy, a common feature of most contemporary popular music in the West, and partially for that reason, the relative size of the legs reflect the Republican Party’s primary electorate better than its policy platform

If you're wincing, then you're normal.

First of all, the musical style under discussion isn't "rap".  It's hip-hop.  Old white men talk about rap.  Trust me, I'm an old white man.

Second, who judges any work of art this way?  Reagan's "three legged stool"?  The person who wrote this is clearly out of his depth before we reach the "songs" - and calling them songs is also a tell; hip-hop artists talk about "joints", as in, "You heard the new Naz joint?"  I'd weep for anyone else this clueless; the whole exercise, however, is an apologia for Marco Rubio's expressed enjoyment of the music.  Someone had to tell a party made up by and large of aggrieved white people that the musical style in question wasn't inherently bad.

We haven't even reached the list yet, and already anyone with a lick of sense understands what will follow is going to be pathetic.  Sure enough, readers aren't disappointed.  Number 21 on the list is Justin Bieber's  (ft. Busta Rhymes) "Drummer Boy".  What scares me most is, despite this, I just know the list will actually go downhill from here.

For a brief flicker last fall, there was a bit of chatter about the fact that Rep. Paul Ryan was a fan of heavy metal.  In an interview he said his iPod ran from AC-DC to "Zeppelin".  My immediate reactions was, (a) there is no band named "Zeppelin", and (b) neither of the "bands" mentioned are heavy metal.  Still, as a way of attempting some kind of cultural credibility (with people our age; Ryan is roughly a contemporary of mine) it wasn't too bad.  All the same, it wasn't surprising a young forty-something listened to hard melodic rock.  That's what was popular in his youth and most people stick with musical style that are both familiar and comforting.  So, too, with Sen. Rubio; hip-hop probably surrounded and infused his growing up, so obviously he's going to continue to find comfort and pleasure in it.  Neither says anything about the politics of the men, anymore than Hitler's love for Wagner's operas said much about him (despite many long tomes to the contrary; yes, Wagner was a despicable anti-Semite, but that makes him as unique in late-19th century high culture as a bearded man).

When politics are explicit in contemporary music, the result is usually pretty bad, regardless of the perspective.  I enjoy listening to some of Ted Nugent's old material, by and large for nostalgia; it was popular when I was in junior high, and songs like "Strangelhold" and "Cat Scratch Fever" still hold up well.  That he's gone pretty far off the deep end, politically, doesn't matter at all.

I'm not sure I want to follow up with this list as it grows; if it includes "All Summer Long" (whose only brilliance to my mind is the mash-up of "Werewolves of London" and "Sweet Home Alabama"), which I just know it might (unless it's "Cowboy"), the game is up.  A song about youthful responsibility-free living - including paeans to pot, sex, booze, as well as Lynyrnd Skynyrd - is about as "conservative" as Mad Men's Don Draper, who is a sociopathic fraud.

The only really conservative hip-hop song I can think of, off the top of my head, is NWA's "Fuck The Police", for its protest against institutionalized, state-supported violence against local communities.  Being an old white man, though, what do I know.

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Clash Of Cultures: When A Middle-Aged Clergy Spouse Goes To A Death Metal Concert

Last night I drove down to Joliet and saw the Swedish band Opeth.  First, let me just say that this was the first concert I've been to in a while where I wasn't close to the average age of those in attendance.  Despite being around for over 20 years, Opeth still draws a young crowd.  There were folks my age and older, but most of those at the show were in their late teens through early 20's.  Which made me wonder what the hell I was doing there.  Rock, especially heavy metal, is for young folks.

The band is the brain-child of the very talented Mikael Akerfeldt.  At first, there didn't seem much to differentiate Opeth from the run-of-the-mill Swedish metal band.  Death metal was a variant popular in that country; with an emphasis on the futility of life, the lyrics are delivered in a growl the fans call "Death Grunt".  It became apparent pretty quickly, however, that Akerfeldt was emphasizing melody in a way you don't normally find in metal, with it's preference for rhythm.  Akerfeldt gained a big following among fans in his native Sweden, across Europe, and especially among fellow musicians.

The past few years, the band has moved beyond simple metal arrangements, with Akerfeldt singing in a clear baritone.  The band even released an all-acoustic record, Damnation, which was a big risk.

Their last recording, Heritage, has the feel of a jazz fusion record.  There's nary a grunt nor growl to be heard, as the band moves through a variety of instrumental, time-signature, and key changes in a more low-key way.

Which doesn't mean they don't shred concrete.  Last night was almost "The Many Moods of Opeth", even performing a very early, very heavy song, "Demon Of The Fall" with Akerfeldt and lead guitar player Frederik Akesson playing acoustic guitar and Akerfeldt singing clear a melody that lurked underneath the growl and pulsing rhythm of the original.  Still, when push came to shove, they had the crowd screaming and banging heads.

Which brings me to this odd juxtaposition.  Here I am, a middle-aged father of two, married to a United Methodist minister, pressed up against the security barrier in front of the stage, everyone around me screaming, rocking, head-banging, and singing along as Mikael sings the key-line of the opening number, "The Devil's Orchard": God is dead.  Was I in the right place?

The night made it clear that, indeed, I was.  Setting cares and fears to one side for a couple hours, losing oneself in the power and joy of a concert experience; letting the music be the guide to how I felt and reacted, this is a nice moment of freedom.  It would be easy to focus on a line like the one above and think, "Blasphemy!"  Since there's more going on than outrage for it's own sake, why not take it on its own terms, and enjoy the moment?

Besides, I might really be to old next time around.  Best to get a concert experience like this under my belt while I still can.

Add "Law" And "Consent" To The Encyclopedia Of Things Right-Wingers Don't Understand

With the announcement the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office might seek homicide charges against Ariel Castro because he beat one of the women he held captive until she miscarried, the fetus-huggers are turning this horrible story of abduction, rape, and violence in to some gruesome anti-choice commercial because they can't help themselves.

Never mind that we are dealing with two different laws- abortion law on the one hand; criminal law dealing with homicide on the other - and in the specific case in question the legal question of responsibility for the destruction of the fetus hinges on consent, specifically the consent of the woman.  Never mind that so much of the talk on the right talks about "aborting babies", which doesn't happen, ever.  Babies are born then murdered, as in the Gosnell case.  In Cleveland, a psychopath beat a pregnant woman until she miscarried, which under Ohio law is covered by homicide statutes; it doesn't make the fetus a "baby", just a beaten, dead fetus.

Along with science and education and empathy and compassion and family and human sexuality and economics and race relations and civil rights and American history, it isn't so much that folks on the right don't understand so much as they find this a convenient stick with which to beat others who disagree with them.  Pointing out the murky waters of reality in which we all swim doesn't really matter all that much, because, as in most other things, they are far more interested in themselves being right and their opponents wrong than anything as messy as facts and law and real human lives.

Most folks who nod their heads approvingly don't quite get that it is precisely the choice and consent of he woman that makes all the difference in the world between a legal abortion and an illegal homicide (at least under Ohio law).  Which is why it's called "pro-choice".  That's why we are a nation of laws, not "morals" or "values".

The howling and frothing and charges of "baby killer" will continue, regardless of reality.  Because, twas ever thus.

The Walking Wounded

To believe in Christ’s rising from the grave is to accept it as a sign of our own rising from our graves. If for each of us it was our destiny to be obliterated, and for all of us together it was our destiny to fade away without a trace, then not Christ’s rising but my dear son’s early dying would be the logo of our fate. - Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son

"You can't know how I feel!"  If ever a phrase should be banished from our lexicon, it is this.  Well, OK, maybe not the phrase; rather, a defense of the attitude that creates conditions in which the phrase becomes some kind of meaningful defense of selfishness.  We've all heard it before, of course. The declaration from someone who insists that others cannot speak to their current emotional state because they inhabit some space above their interlocutors.  "Do you know what it's like to have lost a job/a spouse/a child/a parent/a lover?  If not, then don't try to talk to me because you can't know what it's like."  It is often physically painful for me to restrain the urge to dope-slap people who wield this phrase, insulating themselves both from very real consolations from others as well as from participation in the normal run of human life.

We who inhabit a particularly small, very privileged subset of humanity for some reason believe with all the passion once reserved for things like the pearly gates or The White Man's Burden that our status protects us from the simple human reality of suffering.  Whether it is the personal loss of a loved one who dies out of time, the communal loss of a sense of security due to economic disaster or natural disaster, or perhaps that not-so-rare event that impacts whole nations such as a violent attack or even civil war, most human beings who have lived go through one or more - and perhaps all! - during the course of their lives.  That suffering is a shock and a surprise is as much a result of our insular, individualistic ideology as it is a consequence of our abundant means of protection and (mostly false) security.  Far too many of us really and truly believe we are safe.

Not only is suffering a reality for most people most of the time in most places.  Joy and love and family and, most of all, the support of communities of extended family and friends are also part and parcel of human life. Indeed, these realities exist side-by-side with the pain and loss precisely because they, rather than any material security we possess in which we invest far too much effort and hope, are what prevent us from the worst pits of despair in the midst of grief.

This is not to say that I would say or do something so crass to those whose wounds are fresh.  On the contrary, it is important to remember that this impulse only arises when some refuse to allow these wounds to become old.  Notice I do not say "heal".  We never really recover from the loss of those we love.  Those spaces are always empty now.  The difficult thing, in the midst of our grief and pain, is to keep living; the beautiful thing down the road is that we've kept living.  And we keep living, immediately, because there are others around us who hold us up even if we are too blinded by pain to realize it.

I recently contacted an old friend who rendered such aid to me a long time ago.  I let him know how much his friendship meant to me precisely because, in the long years since, it was his simple kindness, his offer of friendship at a time when I felt friendless and alone, that I remember far more than any pain in which I was then wallowing.  The years since have deadened the pain.  I have carried on, loved and lived and rediscovered joy and the simple pleasures of life precisely because someone took the time to be there for me.

Which is where I return to those who insist, for some odd reason, that the pain in which they live is somehow unique.  It is not.  It is a human reality, this grief and sorrow, this emptiness that eats away at us, wanting to tear our hearts out of our chests and feed on our aching, self-centered blood.  This is how monster death thrives: by whispering in our ears that our pain is ours alone, not to be shared, and most definitely not to be understood by those who have not lived our loss.  From there, our grief sweetens the meal, rendering our lives open to devouring.

We are, all of us, walking wounded.  Even the most buoyant among us has sat alone in the dark, our eyes sore and red from weeping, wondering if it will ever be possible to live as we once did.  The fact is no, we will not.  We will, should we open ourselves to the friendship and kindness of others, learn to live in new ways, live on with our loss with us but no longer defining us.  This is our challenge and our hope. 

The Blast From The Past Tour

The things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just value; but value and perspective change with the individual or the nation that is looking back on its past. - Friedrich Nietzsche

[W]e need to distinguish between nostalgia and the reassuring memory of happy times, which serves to link the present to the past and to provide a sense of continuity. The emotional appeal of happy memories does not depend on disparagement of the present, the hallmark of the nostalgic attitude. Nostalgia appeals to the feeling that the past offered delights no longer obtainable. Nostalgic representations of the past evoke a time irretrievably lost and for that reason timeless and unchanging. Strictly speaking, nostalgia does not entail the exercise of memory at all, since the past it idealizes stands outside time, frozen in unchanging perfection. Memory too may idealize the past, but not in order to condemn the present. It draws hope and comfort from the past in order to enrich the present and to face what comes with good cheer. It sees past, present, and future as continuous. It is less concerned with loss than with our continuing indebtedness to a past the formative influence of which lives on in our patterns of speech, our gestures, our standards of honor, our expectations, our basic disposition toward the world around us. - Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, pp. 82-83

This is a special year for our family.  For that reason, we are taking a vacation this summer that I have dubbed "The Blast From The Past" vacation.  30 years ago this June, I graduated from high school, so my class is having a reunion.  After that, we are driving from my hometown down to the nation's capital where we will spend a few days touristing around.  Lisa and I will also be showing our daughters some of the places we went, and places that became special to us during our courtship and first year of marriage.

The whole memory versus nostalgia thing; the way memory works and doesn't work; the way our memories, and our thoughts about those memories, change over time; the way impressions we carry with us for so much of our lives can be wrong; all this and so much more is a fascinating topic for me.  My wife often remarks that I have an uncanny memory; she insists that I can give not only the year, but the month and date and day of the week a particular event occurred; I can recall whether it was sunny or cloudy, what I and others were wearing, and what song was playing on the radio.  The fact of the matter is this is true, for the most part.  I do have that kind of memory.  The thing is, however, it isn't comprehensive, nor does it escape the trap of them being my memories.

No matter how detailed a recollection might be, no matter the vivid colors and smells recalled from a walk through a field on a summer afternoon, or the sound of a lover's breathing while sleeping beside you, these are, for all their life-likeness, partial, a snapshot rather than a panorama.  For all that I can recall events and people and places with a particular kind of accuracy, I rarely rely on these memories because they are just that: my memories.

Furthermore, while the sensory information is complete down to the small tear in an item of clothing or that it occurred on a hot rather than just warm day, because I can remember the feel of the sweat on my face, a crucial aspect of these events is lost forever: the emotional backdrop against which they occurred.  Thus, for example, I can recall, say, being at a dance in the Junior High Gymnasium back when I was in high school; I cannot nor will I ever be able to recall what I was thinking and how I was feeling at any of those particular events.  What I and others did, how we looked, what we said - all that is there.  Why we did these things and not others; how we felt when we asked this girl to dance and were turned down, or when that girl asked us to dance and we said yes, beyond the assumption that the former felt bad while the latter felt good, how is it possible to recall the roller-coaster of emotions that is adolescence?  How is it possible, to delve back a bit further, to recall the emotional life of preadolescence?  I can remember events from when I was 7, 8, even younger; I cannot, nor should any claim that I could do so be accepted with any credibility, recall at all what it felt like to be such an age.

The fact is, I find it difficult to reconstruct the emotional weather of my life two or three years ago; ten years ago; twenty years?  Hardly.  So it is that I plan on spending some time with people and in places from my past.  By and large, this won't be in service either of nostalgia or memory.  I'm attending my high school reunion not because of who any of the people were; rather, I want to celebrate who we've become, now that we've reached what I call the safe shore of middle age.  So, too, while Lisa and I will share stories and places with our daughters while in DC, we will also be enjoying all the changes that have occurred there over the years, seeing the sights and visiting the museums and such because they are enjoyable in and for themselves.  Memory will help; nostalgia, too, won't be a horrible guide because, as Lasch says, it freezes moments in time.  As such, I should be able to navigate a confusing city without too much effort because I have a fondness - one might say even rose-colored - for the mess of north/south and east/west streets intercut by the angular state-named avenues.

I hope I never forget the limits of memory, even one that works as well as mine seems.  I also hope I never forget the difference between real memory, which includes the horrible and the boring and the mundane, and nostalgia.  Even as we take nine or ten days and revisit the past, I want it to be in the service of the present.

The Last Enemy

Elements of the gospel which I had always thought would console did not. They did something else, something important, but not that. It did not console me to be reminded of the hope of resurrection. If I had forgotten that hope, then it would indeed have brought light into my life to be reminded of it. But I did not think of death as a bottomless pit. I did not grieve as one who has no hope. Yet Eric is gone, here and now he is gone; now I cannot talk with him, now I cannot see him, now I cannot hug him, now I cannot hear of his plans for the future. That is my sorrow. - Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. - 1 Cor. 15:20-26

There are few things more pleasing than discovering a new thing that surprises at its beauty and power.  So it is that my occasional reading of the blog Eclectic Orthodoxy has turned to awe as the blog's author, Fr. Aidan Kimel, exposes the never-to-heal wound of his son's suicide for the world.

This is Holy Week for those of us in the Orthodox Church. I had intended to provide daily patristic citations from Holy Wednesday through Easter Sunday. But I have changed my mind.

This morning I drove past the parking lot from which my son Aaron jumped to his death on 15 June 2012. I began to weep. When I got home I found myself sobbing on the floor for twenty minutes. I had not cried like this for several months.

In his inaugural blog post, he is up front about how blogging and the death of his son are related:

There is one other reason I have decided to begin blogging again—for the sake of my sanity. On June 15th my second son Aaron died by suicide. His death has shattered my life and the lives of my wife and children. On June 22nd I preached his funeral homily and prayed the committal over his casket. Aaron’s death has changed and traumatized me at the core of my being, in ways that I have not yet begun to fathom. On most days I am overwhelmed by sorrow and grief. Curiously, only two things seem to provide some measure of respite—walking my dog, Tiriel, and theological reading. And so I continue to read St Gregory, for my sake and for the sake of my beloved son, Aaron Edward Kimel. Memory eternal.

 A bit further above this paragraph, Fr. Kimel writes the following:

I used to read theology ravenously. I had even reached a point where I thought I was fairly fluent in the language of faith. For a few years I wrote a now defunct blog, Pontifications. Through the culpable negligence of those who hosted it, the original Pontifications has been lost; but some of the constructive pieces that I wrote for it have been archived at a resurrected Pontifications. But God has broken me. The Pontificator is dead. Much of what I thought I once knew has been, quite literally, stripped from me. Five years ago I became incapable of reading theology of any sort. When I tried to read a theological article or book, the words did not make sense. I almost lost my faith.  Six months ago this began to change. Suddenly I had a desire to read theology again. It was as if a cloud slowly lifted from my mind and I could finally make sense, at least a bit, of the theological reflections and arguments of others. My brain has not returned to its previous level of functioning, but I am finally enjoying theology again.(emphasis added)

Many people believe the great un-talked-about issue in the Christian churches is sex.  I do not believe that is the case.  We talk about it, just not very well, or clearly, or honestly.  I am of a mind that the real elephant in the sanctuary is death.  When we speak of it at all, we limit our talk to those special worship services called funerals.  We skirt around the matter of Jesus' death on Good Friday, consoling ourselves that Easter is coming so as to mitigate our reflection on the possibility of death being taken up in to the life of God.

I do not exempt myself from this.  On the contrary, I think I have by and large avoided the topic, or been far too glib, perhaps even thoughtless, on what rare occasions I did write about it.  Part of the reason for that is fear.  What Christian wants to admit fear of death?  After all, aren't we supposed to face death without fear?  As we read or hear the words of the twenty-third Psalm, aren't we reminded that even in the valley of the shadow of death, the LORD is with us?

Last year, while leading the Christian Believer class, we had a discussion of death in the section dealing with "eschatology", or "the last things".  Death itself, for all we try to manage it - the whole "stages of grief" business that, while real enough, makes death something to get through rather than an event in the lives of families and communities - or wish it away or fantasize about either clouds of joy and streets of gold or lakes of fire; for all that, the experience here and now for far too many people is this: death is a monster.  The deepest faith, the calmest mind and heart in the face of the death of a loved one, cannot shield anyone from the gaping jaws of death.  Never satisfied with a single life, it works its way in to our lives, destroying joy and sense and hope.

Death will rip apart families, even whole communities.  It has, on occasion, grabbed hold of whole nations, making a meal of millions of lives before something, some Other from outside with the power to bring death to heel, cries, "Stop".  From my own family's history, I know the terrible toll death will wreak when it strikes a child.  I have watched adults break under the weight of grief death heaps upon them when a parent passes, even when that death was long in coming and a final rest from suffering.

Talking about death is considered "morbid" in our society.  For some reason, it is a social faux pas to admit that a final end comes to all of us, to all things; it is declasse to admit that our peculiar, human reality as creatures both social and communicative, create a situation in which death can spread like a virus, engulfing us in waves of sorrow and emptiness and even terror.

I long for the day when the last enemy lies under the boot of God.  I hope and pray for the courage and strength to face the inevitable deaths of my family and friends without allowing death's insidious hunger to touch me before I am ready.   Along with hope and faith, or perhaps a part of them, is the honest communication to others the toll death takes upon us.  For that reason, I invite you to travel through the Orthodox Holy Week with Fr. Kimel, as he shares his own pain, using the words of Wolterstorff to say what he wishes he could but cannot say.  One would need to be heartless not to be moved by the power of Wolterstorff's honesty, and know the silent tears Fr. Kimel sheds as he shares his grief with the world.  In our turn, all we can do is demonstrate to them and all those who know that monster death far too well that they are heard, and that we grieve with them.

No Worries

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. -1 Corinthians 10:23

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. - Galatians 5:1

If I have a theme for my life, it's my oft-repeated "It's not about me".  Whether or not I'm happy on any given day; whether or not my wife says or does something that makes me sad or angry or happy; whether or not my children are or are becoming the people I want them to be; whether or not the world conforms to my wish or demand that it be a certain way; these things, even any one of them, would be an indication I was in need of some kind of therapeutic intervention.

The same is true when it comes to my faith.  The whole Christian story, the person and work of Jesus on the cross and the empty tomb, the movement of the Holy Spirit through my life in the body of Christ and the friends and loved ones who have made a difference for me - none of it took place with me in mind; none of it would be any less real, any less true if I didn't exist, or if I refused to believe it.  Were I to utter the words, "God does not exist.  I am in no need of the salvation wrought in Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection.  The Church is a group of deluded fools pouring money down a rat hole," it would be as meaningless as claiming I danced on the Moon with Gene Kelly.  The great mistake, the great sin, is the insistence that our professed beliefs make any difference.

It is with this in mind that I find Mike Lindstrom's musings at United Methodist Insight more than a bit disturbing.

In my life I began to realize that God wasn’t trying to control my actions, God was trying to capture my heart. God didn’t want me to figure out the best way to be a “good” Christian; God wanted me to spend my life with Him. I began to see it more like a marriage or a friendship. Instead of asking my wife: “what can I do to make certain you don’t divorce me?” I ask: “What can I do to honor you and love you?” Instead of asking my friend: “what can I do so you’re not mad at me when I call every few months?” I ask: “What can I do to make your life better or help you accomplish your goals?”

For me, the question had to change. If I wanted to have a relationship with God in Jesus Christ and through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, if I wanted to know the love and peace and strength of God in my life then the question had to change. Instead of ”Why can’t I____?” or “Can I____?” My question has become: “What would you have me do?”

First of all, I cringe whenever I hear or read the words similar to "God was trying to capture my heart." Even as metaphor, this is an epic fail.  The heart is a pump.  God doesn't want a pump.  God isn't interested in any of our internal organs.  God has zero interest in Mike Lindstrom's or Geoffrey Kruse-Safford's "emotional center", as if somehow it were a "thing" that, should we just allow Divine access, then things like "salvation" and "new creation" will follow for us regardless of other circumstances in our lives and the world.

Second, the phrasing here - "God was trying to capture . . ." - is more than problematic.  Really?  God was trying to capture your heart, Mike, but kept failing for some reason?  What about the power of the Holy Spirit, moving through the lives of the faithful around you, and the testimony of the witnesses to the Passion as the once-for-all Divine work of salvation for the world?  All that, yet something in you or about you managed to prevent God "capturing" your "heart"?

Finally, and no disrespect to Mike, I a quite sure he is, as are all of us Christians, living his life as faithfully as he can, I can only wonder about the constant first-person pronoun.  Part of the freedom granted us through the Spirit in the Son for the Father is the freedom from ourselves.  From that peculiarly American obsession with what "I" say or do or think.  The Christian story, the event of salvation for the broken, sinful world, is not our story.  It is first, last, and middle God's story.  Whether or not Mike Lindstrom prays every morning, or every other morning; whether or not my wife and I give eight-and-a-half percent of our income or ten percent of our income; whether or not someone somewhere says just the right words about who God is; these are all evidence we are still trying, desperately and rooted in love to be sure yet nevertheless also a broken, sinful love, to earn the salvation that has come to the world freely in Jesus Christ.

Living in the light of that event, in the light of the salvation granted all of us, the judgment that is pardon frees us - or should, anyway - from worrying about ourselves.  Freedom, real freedom, the kind of freedom Paul writes about in Galatians, then clarifies and qualifies in 2 Corinthians, is the freedom from fear that we might be doing something wrong.  We have been granted our lives.  Our lives for God.

The dichotomy "Religion versus Relationship", like most dichotomies, is wrong precisely because it assumes itself the answer to a question that isn't even asked; furthermore that every question has only one right answer.  Thus the spiral down the rabbit hole of "I", which is much like Nietszche's abyss.

We are free.  We are free by God, for God.  It isn't about me, so I neither worry nor care whether or how I live will be pleasing or acceptable because that is no different than trying to perform all the works of the Law and earn salvation.  The only thing God wants from me is praise in and through a life lived with and for others to make known the simple message of the Gospel, summarized in 1 John: God is love.  The rest, to quote St. Thomas, is all straw.