Repairing The Damage From September 11, 2001

For reasons to be made clear later, I am writing now in lieu of Sunday's 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The moments from that day will be remembered by everyone who was aware. The unreality of it. The horror. The anger and sorrow. The flood of stories, many of which turned out to be false - a car bomb in DC, what happened on Flight 93, the streams of people running for their lives from the collapsing buildings in lower Manhattan - seemed to bring us back, again and again, to those fateful moments captured forever as the giant passenger jets, turned in to loaded missiles, approached the World Trade Center.

It was commonplace, after the stunned, silent searching for reasons, to hear "everything changed on 9/11". I didn't want that to be the case. No one did. The last thing most people want is to have their lives, particularly their national lives, defined by a violent attack. Yet, ten years on and we define ourselves, for better and worse - largely for worse - by the events of that horrible day.

There has been little in the years since to celebrate. Two regional wars - Iraq and Afghanistan - with smaller conflicts in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, Somalia seem to be never ending. A large swath of one of the major political parties seems determined to keep the fear brought about by the events of that day ever before us, reminding us of our vulnerability. As Newt Gingrich said last night in the Republican Presidential debate, there are folks out there who want to kill us.

'Twas ever thus. Which, for some reason, we never really admitted. Collapsing buildings, smoldering wreckage, the silence broken only by the beeping of buried cell phones whose owners would never answer them - this reality seemed to cover over the memory of half a century of Cold War in which the United States and the Soviet Union held the world nuclear hostage because each one feared the other "wanted to kill us".

There are always those who want to kill someone. The Indians and Pakistanis. The Israelis and various of their Arab and Persian and Turkish neighbors. The Protestant and Catholic Irish. White Americans and Black Americans. Intraspecies slaughter is a specialty of homo sapiens, and we kid ourselves too easily we have outgrown it. People who froth at the mouth over the barbaric practices of all those dangerous Muslims out there are blind to our own history, covered in blood, reeking of the mass grave our own history provides as a pedestal from which to look down on others. Forgive me if I refuse to listen to the preachments of bigots and fear-mongers who do not notice the trail of tears we in the west have left behind our religious and political and imperial wars. Few societies have less concern for the life of other human beings than the Euro/American west.

Over the past decade, one moment stands out for me as a single ray of light. In June, 2002, Lisa was ordained an Elder under the old rules of the United Methodist Church. The man who offered the benediction to the service said, among other things, that the only thing in human history that really changed everything was the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I felt like cheering. That was what we needed to hear. That was the message of hope, the word of truth, the promise of true victory over the forces of evil and death that seem, still, to swamp us.

There are abundant resources available to those who no longer wish to live in the shadow of those collapsed towers. Even The Washington Post, not known in recent years for its stellar opinion writing, offers up something worth mentioning from resident pseudo-liberal columnist E. J. Dionne:

After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind. As a nation we have looked back for too long. We learned lessons from the attacks, but so many of them were wrong. The last decade was a detour that left our nation weaker, more divided and less certain of itself.

Al Jazeera on-line has a series of articles that are well worth reading and contemplating. Even if one does not agree with all of it, there is much wisdom in these essays.

Cliff Schecter:

Like many Americans, I find myself having followed a long and winding road over the last decade, ending up in places I truly never expected, only in recent years coming to terms with what I saw that day. Of course, for many people, the economic crash was like a second attack.

But it is where my country has gone over this past decade that is truly unfathomable. It’s important to remember as the 10-year anniversary approaches that we may have lost our way - but buried beneath many wrong turns is a national character that has been redeemed in the past.

Joseph Nye:

To the extent that the trillion or more dollars of unfunded war costs contributed to the budget deficit that plagues the US today, Bin Laden was able to damage American hard power. And the real price of 9/11 may be the opportunity costs: for most of the first decade of this century, as the world economy gradually shifted its centre of gravity toward Asia, the US was preoccupied with a mistaken war of choice in the Middle East.

A key lesson of 9/11 is that hard military power is essential in countering terrorism by the likes of Bin Laden, but that the soft power of ideas and legitimacy is essential for winning the hearts and minds of the mainstream Muslim populations from whom Al Qaeda would like to recruit. A “smart power” strategy does not ignore the tools of soft power.

Robert Jensen:

[I]t's tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honour those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the US empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11. But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary.

We should take time on 9/11 to remember the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day. But as responsible citizens, we also should face a harsh reality: While the terrorism of fanatical individuals and groups is a serious threat, much greater damage has been done by our nation-state caught up in its own fanatical notions of imperial greatness.

Tarak Barkawi:

Epoch-defining dates like 1989 or 9/11 invoke various imagined histories and geographies. But too often the dates with which we order world politics are curiously Eurocentric. It is European exploration, the French revolution, a Congress in Vienna, and German invasions, for example, which mark out the globe's historical eras: 1492, 1789, 1815, 1914, 1939.

We are thus singularly unable to grasp the global histories and social relations that delivered us to 9/11. Within the conventional terms of analysis of international relations, it is almost impossible to see the great social, political and economic struggles between the global North and South that have driven modern world politics. European imperialism and the prodigious efforts to incorporate ever more peoples and places, ever more domains of life, into the capitalist world system lie at the origins of these global histories.

Joseph Stiglitz:

Ironically, the wars have undermined the United States’ (and the world’s) security, again in ways that Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive the US about the wars’ costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures - say, for armoured and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives, or for adequate health care for returning veterans. A US court recently ruled that veterans’ rights have been violated. (Remarkably, the Obama administration claims that veterans’ right to appeal to the courts should be restricted!)

Military overreach has predictably led to nervousness about using military power, and others’ knowledge of this threatens to weaken US security as well. But the United States’ real strength, more than its military and economic power, is its “soft power,” its moral authority. And this, too, was weakened: as the US violated basic human rights like habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called into question.

There are several others, all deserving an audience and further discussion. As we remember the events of that day, let us insist the victims did not die so that we would destroy ourselves through mindlessness. Let us honor those who cannot be here by starting the difficult task of repairing the damage done to our world not only by the terrorists on that fateful day, but by an America blinded by rage and fear in the decade since. They, and we, deserve nothing less.



A week from the day I am writing this, on September 15, my father turns 90 years old. My family is getting together, opening the doors of our lives to friends, former students, colleagues, and anyone else who may want to stop by and wish him well. Lisa and the girls and I are leaving tonight for an overnight drive so that we can be there. We are returning on Sunday so the girls only miss one day of school. So, talk amongst yourselves, check out other stuff I've written, be excellent to one another, always be civil and on-topic, and most of all - no ad homs! Whoever uses them is stupid, and ugly.

Various Musical Stuff

Over the weekend, I was checking out some stuff by The Meters, The Neville Brothers, mostly because I love it, and I stumbled across a song I have not heard in twenty years.



This bit of over-produced fluff has a certain something. That "something" is Ivan, another of the Neville's. What I was happy to find, and am happy to report, is Ivan has left this horrid LA-studio, Don-Henley-Wannabe sound behind.



While I was reading some stuff on-line Monday, I had iTunes playing. Their "Genius" app, part of a marketing gimmick, "recommends" songs similar to whatever you might be listening to. At one point, it recommended a song by a band whose name I knew, but about whom I knew nothing - Opeth. For those like me, I checked them out. A Swedish death metal outfit they have, over the years, morphed in to something melodic and progressive. Lead singer Michael Akerfeld, whom I have heard on other projects, has largely left deaths' grunt far behind. They are still dark, their videos creepy without being over the top, but I might have to set aside my personal refusal to purchase death metal because . . . well, give 'em a listen.



And now, for something completely different . . . I hope.

Undecided - James LaBrie
Love Street - The Doors
When Alpha and Omega Collide - Sieges Even
I Don't Miss You - Van Den Plas
Let My Love Open The Door - Pete Townshend
Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie (Live Acoustic) - The Grateful Dead
The Ballad of Villacamba - Bill Bruford with Ralph Towner and Eddie Gomez
Strange World - Spock's Beard
Overture, Cosi Fan Tutte - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Dazed and Confused - Led Zeppelin

"Something" by George Harrison has been called the best love song ever written during the rock era. I am sympathetic to this view, and the original is, quite simply, just about a textbook example of "perfection" when it comes to arrangement, production values, and keeping the balance between the beauty of the melody and letting the musicians stretch just enough to keep from getting bored. Like every other song the Beatles have done, it has been covered to death, but I discovered a version that has many of the same qualities, exemplifies the style of the musician doing the cover without burying the original beneath layers of alternate readings. Ladies and gentlemen - Isaac Hayes.

The Crooked Timber Of Isaiah Berlin

I find it more than bit amusing that John Quiggin has been posting at Crooked Timber for quite a while and only recently turned to the collection of essays under the same title and came away troubled by some of what he read.

I encountered Berlin's work the spring just before I married/graduated from seminary. Had I read it earlier, I might well have been able to have a more thoughtful conversation with it. As it happened, I read it - along with a few other works, like Rorty's Collected Papers; one of the first edited collections of the writings of Herder in English; and another of Berlin's favorite sources, the little-known Italian writer Giambattista Vico - at a time when my life was, needless to say, in a bit of an uproar. Trying to think through, in a critical way, all this new information, these alternative ways of seeing the world became a bit too much.

Which is not to say any of these works are devoid of positive content. On the contrary, even when Berlin is being snippy about Edmund Burke, or Rorty is insisting that we should live as if the things he claims to be the case are the case, heralding an age of lowered expectations but resigned acceptance which we can call happiness, there are things that need to be considered even as alarm bells are going off and red lights are flashing.

There is much to commend Berlin's view of a liberal pluralism as at least as descriptively accurate as a kind of philosophical realism that still hangs on to an undefined yet persistent idea of "human nature", to which our politics should be responsive. His largeness of moral vision - accepting difference, even incommensurability, as not denoting either some kind of ontological primitivism or moral viciousness - serves at the very least this function: It can keep us from believing, for even a moment, that we and we alone have stumbled upon the final theory, and are therefore obliged to impose it upon the world. Unlike Rorty's pessismistic, small-scale anti-realism - which is little more than acquiescence to an intolerable status quo because, well, things have always sucked, we just don't have the perspective to understand this, so suck it up and deal - Berlin at least have the virtue of understanding that human beings do, indeed, stake their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor for things and that this, too, is a positive moral stance.

At the end of the day, however, I am left with the feeling that Berlin got much more wrong than just Kant's intention in the line about crooked timber and humanity. Emerging from the corpse-strewn 20th century, it is too easy to surrender any commitment for which we should be willing to sacrifice because far too many human beings were sacrificed on the altars of various political and social ideas. Berlin is correct to write that the kind of liberal pluralism he advocates doesn't inspire people to do much; that is his intention. It is, in the end, a surrender to bare facts, without any sense that the other side of this same coin - about which he writes, but with far less passion - includes a willingness to sacrifice for certain social and political ends without ever pretending one has stumbled upon The One True Answer. One must face the reality that all answers are partial; one must also be willing to invest oneself because they are one's own answers to the on-going question, "How are we to live a fully human life, in a society that grants to all full access to the resources to achieve the same ends?"

Like far too many, including successive generations of the American ruling class, Berlin learned the wrong lesson from the midden heaps strewn across our recent history. One can mourn the dead, the uselessness of their loss, yet still believe and be willing to work and even fight for a world that is far better than what we have now. It is not at all "utopian" in the kind of derogatory way Berlin uses the word to believe that like-minded fellow human beings can and should be willing to work together, sacrifice together, to forward their vision of a better life for all. To acknowledge difference, and the full humanity of social and political visions far different, even antithetical to one's own, without insisting with equal vigor on the necessity to struggle against those one finds wanting in some moral way indeed does not inspire heroism. It inspires nothing more than a kind of dread acquiescence.

One can see the virtues of Berlin's exploration of the real human possibilities in other ways of living. One must also acknowledge not only how he, as George Scialabba wrote so well, made a "saw" of Kant's quip, but surrenders our very human birthright to make our world better than it is. In the face of giant steps backwards we in the west have made in recent decades, we should be seeking ways to struggle against a tide that will surely swamp us, a tide far more dangerous in its potential than any adherence to creed or vision that might inspire such a struggle. Our world deserves nothing less.

A Biblical Theme

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure* for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

James 5:1-6

One would be hard pressed to find a more persistent moral theme running through Scripture than the condemnation that follows upon the accumulation of wealth. While there is also the theme of the emptiness of so much religious observance - the prophets were eager to condemn the emptiness of ritual in ancient Israel and Judah - this was always in a context where the heart of the Covenant was already broken because of lack of justice, the absence of mercy, the oppression of the poor, the widow and orphan, and the dehumanization and enslavement of the foreigner in the land.

It would be a mistake, however, to limit this witness only to the prophetic tradition. The historic tradition, too, knows of the need for justice, for a social contract rooted in God's love for all people to be reflected in a society that lives it, rather than just laying out slaughtered animals and bunches of wheat on an altar only to let the people starve. For example, from 1 Kings, the story of the final division of the old Kingdom:

Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt. And they sent and called him; and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.’ He said to them, ‘Go away for three days, then come again to me.’ So the people went away.

Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, ‘How do you advise me to answer this people?’ They answered him, ‘If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants for ever.’ But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. He said to them, ‘What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, “Lighten the yoke that your father put on us”?’ The young men who had grown up with him said to him, ‘Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, “Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us”; thus you should say to them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” ’

So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king had said, ‘Come to me again on the third day.’ The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, ‘My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ So the king did not listen to the people, because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfil his word, which the Lord had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.

When all Israel saw that the king would not listen to them, the people answered the king,
‘What share do we have in David?
We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
To your tents, O Israel!
Look now to your own house, O David.’
So Israel went away to their tents. But Rehoboam reigned over the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah. When King Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was taskmaster over the forced labour, all Israel stoned him to death. King Rehoboam then hurriedly mounted his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.
When all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. There was no one who followed the house of David, except the tribe of Judah alone.

Please note at least one passage here that made me chuckle. Rehoboam makes the boast that he little finger is greater than the loins of his father. Seems bragging about dick size is something that men have always done.

When people start whining about "liberal" Christians who "only" pay attention to verses and sections such as these, I honestly wonder if they have really read the Bible. It isn't like this stuff is hidden away in secret teachings only we read. It isn't as if we have invented the thread that runs through so much of Scripture that condemns the accumulation of wealth at the expense of other persons. It isn't as if "social justice" were something we moderns invented as a way of bastardizing the faith. Norman Cohn wrote a detailed account of revolutionary Christianity in the High and Late Middle Ages in central Europe, entitled The Pursuit Of The Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (it was reading this and another of Cohn's books that really got me started thinking about the depth and breadth of Christian teaching at a time when I had pretty much given it up as a bad business; realizing through reading history that ours is just a passing moment in a long and varied tradition was an eye-opening experience for me).

While it is indeed true that there are a variety of concerns within the traditions of Scripture, from personal hygiene and marriage and sexual relations to matters of civil law and even dietary codes, these, like all else must be considered against the backdrop of larger thematic content, as well as within a theological hermeneutic and contextualizing that keeps one eye always on this far more insistent, and persistent, and overarching theme: at the heart of the details of the Covenant between God and the people of Israel is that, as the chosen people of this God, of this one they call the living LORD, Elohim, they are to represent to the world who this God is by living not at other kingdoms and peoples live, but as those who embody God's love and justice for all. That is the heart of covenant itself, after all - God's mercy, love, and justice, amazing precisely because it is not rooted in any merit, but the free choice of this God. While ritual and a well-ordered polis are important, they are not at the heart of what this God calls the people to live out.

When Jesus says that the law can be summed up by loving God and loving others, it is this tradition to which he refers. When the writer of James condemns the wealthy who amass fortunes while enslaving and even murdering the poor, it is this tradition within which he writes. When liberation theologians insist that God has a preferential option for the poor, it is to this Scriptural theme they return, again and again. When John Wesley went out and preached to the workers in the mines and fields, it was this tradition out of which he lived and practiced his ministry.

Of course, it is important as Americans that we not get too caught up in condemning all those rich folk too easily. Even in the midst of the worst economic troubles in 80 years, we are far richer, far more comfortable than billions of our fellow human beings. We should never forget that our ease is bought at the price of the sufferings of our fellow humanity. Our drugs are tested on poor Africans, even as the final products are withheld from them because the cost the drug companies charge is too high even for their governments to afford. Our cars run on oil, the drilling and refining and burning of which is warming the planet at an exponential rate, bringing untold havoc to the whole planet. We wear clothes, buy shoes and toys for our children made in sweat shops, where people toil for pennies and dimes (comparatively speaking) so that we can ensure a steady supply of cheap products. We even distort and ignore our own laws to make sure our fellow Americans are not paid a living wage, cannot afford health care or higher education.

The word of justice, of condemnation here, is not for some others. This theme, this insistent Biblical demand that we live together, in justice, hearing the cries of our fellow human beings for food and shelter, for the simple recognition of their humanity, is a Word for us. A Word we must hear. These days, I think it is already too late, as the organs of our government make sure large banks and companies survive even as millions of my fellow citizens lose their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods, their hope.

This theme - that we are to live not as just run-of-the-mill human beings, but as a people called by God, this God, the living God who created the universe and loved us for no other reason than this God decided to do so, and therefore are obliged to love others in a living, breathing testimony to this free, joyful, bounteous love - runs throughout the Scriptures. It is the theme of the Bible, sung in Psalms, given in the rise and fall of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It is embodied in the crucified and risen Jesus. It is the theme to which St. Paul and St. James, St. Peter and the author of the Revelation call us - to witness through our life together to God's love and justice.

Randomness Can Be Trippy

My friend Ronnie was feeling psychedelic over the weekend, and posted this, along with several other, songs on Facebook. It got me thinking about the wonderful sound experiments that center on altered states of consciousness.

Sometimes, it's just the way being stoned or tripping alters the perception of time, freeing us from the constraints and limits we impose on ourselves. Thus, some of the best psychedelia tends to last quite a while. Ten minutes seems long, but when your brain chemistry has been changed, you might not think so. Or, you might not care.



Contemporary psychedelia ranges from the traditional - Ozric Tentacles - to contemporary styles that owe a lot while forging new paths. Among my favorites is a variant of techno called Dark Psy. Techno, really, is a combination of dance music, enhanced by the understanding that those attending raves will be out of their minds, usually on ecstasy. I am not an advocate of any drug use, and ecstasy has a whole lot of nasty side-effects. Furthermore, sitting and listening - or going to a club, legal or otherwise - makes it clear the music itself is often enough to transport you outside yourself, get lost in the beat, the noise, and simply be in the moment the music takes you.



Ten minutes of this, in the proper context, will trip anyone out.

State of Independence - Vangelis
A Child of the King - Mahalia Jackson
Du Riechts So Gut (Live) - Rammstein
Sage & Spirit (Live Acoustic) - Grateful Dead
Red House - Jimi Hendrix
It Ain't Me, Babe (Live) - Bob Dylan
Improv, Live, Pittsburgh, 1974 - King Crimson
Loch Lomond (Live, Carnegie Hall, 1938) - Benny Goodman Orchestra
Just Like Lightning (Live) - Joe Satriani
The Clap - Yes



Because it's loud, that's why.

Random Thoughts On Radical Evil

I have an occasional interlocutor who insists that the only proper, Biblical way to think and talk about sexual morality is to limit proper human sexual behavior to that between two married persons, one man and one woman. Anything else, he insists - rather tirelessly - is a violation of God's law. In my haste to point out the error of this view, I have too often sounded - certainly not out of belief - as if I thought God didn't care about how we humans relate as sexual beings to one another. Even though I have written quite a bit about Christian sexual ethics, I think it is important to be clear - few domains of human life are more open to danger than sex. We humans have a remarkable capacity to do one another a great deal of harm, especially in situations where intimacy is involved. Human relationships are fraught with peril.

To insist on a moral vision, however, which limits human sexuality to heterosexual marriage, and to make the further move that this is the central moral position of the Bible, Biblical morality tout court as it were, is a gross oversimplification. The situation is far more complex than that, the Bible far more expansive on the question of the moral life and our ethical choices, and we human beings far more capable of making good sexual choices than this.

On the other hand, this view does have the merit of limiting the damage we do to ourselves and others.

I mention all this by way of introduction to a discussion of radical evil because it encapsulates so much of what I wish to say. There are views of radical evil that are over-simplistic, that sacrifice nuance for the sake of clarity of vision, contain a kernel of importance, even truth, even as they contribute to other evils. Trying to talk about evil without talking about specific instances of it is a bit like trying to sculpt ocean water - it just doesn't work.

As a senior in college, I read the second volume of Jeffrey Burton Russell's four-part study of how we human beings in the west have talked about radical evil. He began that volume - as he did all the volumes in the series - with a confession that he believed there was such a thing as "evil", and used the example of a serial killer. There are so many examples of evil, however, that using one such as this as an example causes confusion. Living in the Chicago suburbs, there is a living memory of what John Wayne Gacey did to too many little boys. What about the people who supply drugs and guns to gangs? What about the gangs themselves? Can they be thought of, too, as examples of radical evil?

We Americans personalize and individualize our understanding of God, of religion, of faith; we also personalize and individualize our understanding of evil. When Pres. Bush called the people who attacked us ten years ago "evil doers" he was both right and quite scary. It should have been obvious to anyone not a sociopath that people who would plan, organize, and then carry out an act of violence on this scale were evil. Naming it as such served no moral purpose. It did, however, give folks on the right something to scream at folks like me - we refused to agree with the President that suicide bombers like this were evil! Liberals were morally confused!

Talking about evil, when we really want to talk about it, is difficult. Like the late Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell said of obscenity, I won't define it, but I certainly know it when I see it. Is terrorism "evil"? Well, it depends on the terrorists. If we in the US were occupied by a foreign force, I might think it justifiable to take action against an occupying force, including using violence. I certainly would not rule it out a priori. On the other hand, being the resident of an occupying power - sure, absolutely, terrorism and terrorist acts are evil.

You see what I mean?

Some cases are easy. Aforementioned serial killers. Anyone who deliberately harms a child.

Some cases are more difficult. What about a member of the US military, under constant strain in a combat zone, in a situation where both tension and adrenaline run high, thought takes a back seat, faced with less than a second to make a choice, and as a result of this choice facing news reports and court martial proceedings for killing a family? Is he or she evil? There are many, including me, who would insist not; I, for one, would go further and insist that, even if a violation of military law is found to have taken place, it would be preferable to allow such a person to undergo treatment rather than do time. On the other hand, were I a member of the extended family of a victim of such an incident - and there have been far too many such incidents in recent years as the toll of years of war-fighting start to show on our young men and women - I would certainly not only demand legal justice, but view the individual who committed such an act as an evil individual.

It doesn't get easier, does it. Both sides have merit. Different views have much going for them. No view is "true", in the sense that some binding authority can determine for all parties what the "proper" way to view such cases "should" be.

As I wrote above, we tend to individualize and personalize matters of evil. Child molesters. Murderers. Psychopaths of various shades.

What about a corporation that corners the market on global rice production and distribution, then withholds its product creating global food shortages? This happened a few years back when Archer-Daniels-Midland, possessing patents on a small variety of hardy, high-yield hybrids of rice, created artificial rice panics. The price of rice sky-rocketed, even as supplies of the grain disappeared. Warehouses full of the grain sat and rotted because the asking price for distribution was too high.

What about burying tons of toxic materials underground, then lying about it, allowing home developers to build on poison ground?

What about politicians who refuse to act to alleviate dire economic and social conditions - from slavery and lynching through Depression and unemployment, which bring on a host of hardships - out of a desire for political gain, or the belief that these are not evils to be fought, but natural conditions to be tolerated?

We human beings are capable of horrendous acts of evil and violence against our fellows. Whether it is the polemicist who dehumanizes, the individual actor who strikes out, or groups and even nations who act either out of fear or some narrowly-defined understanding of self-interest, all can cause great suffering. Too often, we tend to offer excuses - it was necessary to keep the stock price up, to defend our national interest, he was an abused child, she was a drug addict - that do not name what has happened. We do not want to be the ones who are evil. Evil is they. It is those other people - car-bombers and the people who put IED's by the side of the road; child molesters and serial killers; political movements that threaten the status quo - who are evil, who want to damage what we hold precious.

Except, of course, when we insist others are "evil", we are doing an evil. No one gets free from the indictment. For me, as a Christian, this is one of the lessons of original sin; our best intentions, our most sincerely held principles and beliefs - even, perhaps especially our religious beliefs - can be a source of horrific violence and brutality.

When, at the end of her Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt wrote of the banality of evil, too many people misunderstood her point. Juxtaposing those two words has brought about arguments about which should be emphasized. Really, her point was far more simple, and disturbing. Any of us, carrying out our duties, going about our daily round, is capable of monstrous evil. The Ted Bundy's and John Wayne Gacey's of the world have a certain panache, but distract from the troubling thought that, in fact, the difference between them and us, between the Einsatzgruppen with their orders to kill the Jews and communists and socialists and local political leaders and intellectuals and the US with its precision-guided weapons and Seal Teams going after individuals is largely artificial. The recognition of the banality of evil is the recognition that we are all guilty.

Like Art's insistence that Christian morality demands limiting sex to heterosexual marriage, it rewards us for being virtuous without even trying, yet causes far more mischief, far more damage, than a different point of view. Which is not to say he is either "right" or "wrong" in any absolute sense. With him on this, as on much else, I disagree, yet I would be lying if I said I thought my position had greater moral merit than his. Like talking about evil, talking about morality always has that trap, a trap in to which we fall far too easily. I refuse to reward my position with a virtue it cannot possess. All I can do is live it out the best I can, with careful attention to make sure I'm not screwing things up too much along the way.

Which is kind of how I think we need to talk about, and think through, the whole matter of radical evil. Rather than talk about it in absolute terms, we need to remember the differences between those others who are evil and we who are not are, at the best of times, differences of appearance only. The real heart of darkness lies within all of us, and in the midst of all of us.

Peter Broke Down And Wept

While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant-girls of the high priest came by. When she saw Peter warming himself, she stared at him and said, ‘You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth.’ But he denied it, saying, ‘I do not know or understand what you are talking about.’ And he went out into the forecourt.* Then the cock crowed. And the servant-girl, on seeing him, began again to say to the bystanders, ‘This man is one of them.’ But again he denied it. Then after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, ‘Certainly you are one of them; for you are a Galilean.’ But he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know this man you are talking about.’ At that moment the cock crowed for the second time. Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, ‘Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.’ And he broke down and wept.

Mark 14:66-72 (NRSV)

Sunday, September 18, 2011 is National Back To Church Sunday. No, I hadn't heard of it, either. Until I logged on to Facebook, and one of my friends, a UCC pastor, had posted the following video.



What struck a chord in me was the simplicity, the directness, and the honesty of the message. Church is the place where you might just find what you didn't even know you needed. Like that pearl of great price - you might find that most precious thing for which you are willing to sell everything in order to possess.

Peter thought he had it all. He thought he knew it all. He insisted he was willing to go the full way with Jesus. He thought he "got" it.

Confronted with the opportunity to make good on this claim, he backed off. His tears at the crowing of the rooster are proof enough that even those we revere as "saints", those who were closest to Jesus during his life, the one who became the voice of authority for the emerging church - even he was a big old fat hypocrite, a poser. He was, in other words, like all of us, just a guy who reacted honestly - out of fear - at that moment of kairos he insisted would find him side-by-side with his Lord.

If you think you have it all figured out, if you think you "know" what God wants, what Jesus is calling you to do, if you think you have been granted special dispensation to avoid the wrath to come, then maybe church isn't for you.

On the other hand, if you're like Peter, and realize that in the midst of all your boasting, all your understanding, all your vocal courage, you are just one sad bag of fear and ignorance, that there might still be a lesson or two to learn, that your life is still open and that God might have something for you of which you weren't even aware, then maybe - just maybe - you might want to give it a shot on September 18.

Shoot, show up and dare people to prove to you that God exists, if you don't believe. Show up and call out all the hypocrites, all the posers, all the faux-brave and morally upright. Prove to all of us weak-willed ignoramuses that, by not needing what church has to offer - a place to come and be challenged, to be in community with others who are as different from one another and you as can be imagined - you are a better person, more intelligent and enlightened, more moral and insightful.

You might just get the shock of your life.

Myths And Old Wives' Tales

Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, especially of those who believe.

These are the things you must insist on and teach.

1 Timothy 4:7-10

Starting September 15, I will be leading a 30-week class on the classic doctrine of the Christian faith, Christian Believer. Please note I do not say I will be "teaching", because my goal, or at least one of my goals, is to learn as much as I can - one can never go back and start at the beginning too often. At the same time, as "leader", there are some things I would very much like to ensure other members of the class take in as a way of understanding what the discipline of doing theology is all about: as important as it is to make clear for ourselves as a believing community what it is we confess and profess, it is never that in which we believe. We believe in God, having faith in Jesus Christ through the gracious indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Living faith is not a set of principles or doctrines. It is a graceful submission to the freedom we have from God the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit.

Theology, like the faith itself, is trapped in a conundrum. We who make the audacious claim that the God who created the heavens and the earth, who dwelt with us in the Person of Jesus Christ, and breathes the breath of new life in our communities in the power of the Holy Spirit can say anything at all about these realities that either makes sense or even captures some part of this lived and living experience. All that we are is called in to question as we understand ourselves judged and forgiven. We grasp in a very concrete, existential way the contingency of our lives, our communities, and, one hopes to make clear, our words. We nevertheless find ourselves compelled to make sense of this mystery called faith, called salvation, this hope in the promise of New Life, all the while knowing we cannot do it. Like that which we confess, it seems impossible. Like that which we live, it becomes a necessity.

When the author of 1 Timothy cautions the recipient not to have anything to do with "myth", all sorts of red flags should start waving. The word "myth" here is, funny enough, muthous in the original Greek. Yet the reference, at least according to one on-line commentary, is not the pagan pantheon and their dealings with humanity. Rather, from the specific uses of the word - four in the pastoral Epistles and one in 1 Peter - the reference seems to indicate a kind of Jewish gnosticism, which included a secret study of the hierarchy of the angels. With that in mind, it should be clear that "myth" as used by the author here refers to something false.

"Myth" is one of those words we bandy about without too much thought. Like "nature" or "truth", we think we know what it means, and we think others will know what we mean when we use it. With the popularization of, among many things, the writings and teachings of Joseph Campbell a couple decades ago, "myth" returned to our popular lexicon as a way of describing an ordered understanding of our relationship to the world around us, to the communities of which we are a part, and those communities with others. Notwithstanding the many ideologically troubling aspects of Campbell's thought and life - as a disciple of Jung, and probably by personal disposition, Campbell did not hide either his reactionary social and political views, or his specifically virulent anti-Semitism, which was edited from the broadcasts of his talks with Bill Moyers yet live on in the printed transcripts - his work has influenced far too much theology to the detriment of the craft..

This rehabilitation of "myth" has created, within some, the idea that, rather than wholly negative, the word is a kind of neutral descriptor of stories and images through which human beings seek to make sense of their world. As long as we understand that these stories and images are symbolic, and therefore are signs that point beyond themselves to underlying realities, they can be considered "true" without insisting on the literal truth or falsity of the stories themselves.

Are we engaged, then, in "myth-making", then? Is theological language, to use a synonymous phrase, "metaphorical"? That we can be so confused about what it is we are trying to describe testifies, I think, to the reality that we are at pains to make clear what it is we are doing. We recognize all the inherent difficulties, even impossibilities, in the task. Yet, it is a task we find ourselves called to do.

I, for one, am hesitant to use words like "myth" to describe either Biblical narrative itself or the theological task. As the word itself, within the context of the Scriptures, is wholly negative, it seems difficult to justify its use there. Furthermore, the more equivocal contemporary appropriation of the word usually leads only to confusion. As the author of this passage from 1 Timothy makes clear - as a way of cleaning out the debris and brush from around the whole matter of word-usage - we are not in the myth business. Whatever it is we are studying, whoever this god is we insist has claimed us, we are not in the myth business.

If not myth, then, what is it? Again, following this passage, ours is a hope set on the living God. That is what we teach. Not some secret understanding of a hierarchy of angels, as back then. Not some metaphor for the relationships between human communities and the natural world. Rather, Christian doctrine is specific, refers not to myths and old wives' tales, but to the creator and savior of the world. Which is to say, when we go about doing our theological task, we do no split the difference, we do not set up the false dichotomy of either/or - either it is "true" in some literal sense or it is only "true" in some metaphorical sense, and we can substitute all sorts of new metaphors for the old ones if they don't make sense any more - we accept that we are in the midst of this weird, impossible situation. We cannot really say anything about this God. We are called to make clear that this God has created us, has called us, knows us and loves us, has saved us.

We accept that the words we say have meaning, yet we also understand that meaning is never exhausted in the use of the words themselves. We understand we must speak, yet in speaking we have not captured that about which we speak.

Which brings me to a specific exchange I had recently. I was asked if I believed in the virgin birth. As a matter of fact, I do not, nor do I quite see any necessity in it.

On the other hand, I do not think it important to disabuse those who do so believe of doing so. If someone thinks it important, even vital, to believe in the virgin birth I would never tell them they are wrong, misguided, stupid, silly, or going to hell.

I was asked, by this same person, if I believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I pointed out that I have written plenty which quite clearly states that I do so believe.

I know, however, of many, including many faithful Christians, who have not and do not.

That's OK, too.

How is it possible, one could ask, that I think it important to do theology as a discipline, yet am devil-may-care about adherence to various doctrines. The answer is simple enough, and given in this passage from 1 Timothy - we don't "believe in" or have our hope in doctrine. Doctrine, whatever else it may be, is not the thing in which we profess faith. It is the living God, to which our lives give testimony. Theology, teaching is just our attempt to make some kind of ordered sense of it all. The historicity of the resurrection, of Adam and Eve, the authorship of various Biblical books, whether Elisha sent a bear to kill children to make fun of him, whether or not the Amorites were really descended from the incestuous rape of Lot by his daughters - these are, by and large, open questions for me. God's grace covers a manifold of sins, including doctrinal error.

It isn't whether or not we get it right. Rather, it is whether we have faith in the God of life, rest our hope in the promise that this God is the God of our salvation. If we get our doctrine wrong, well, we can keep trying. It will probably still be wrong. As long as we are living at the intersection between our life and Biblical witness, reflecting on our experience together, critically aware of all the limitations within which we work and strive to understand.

We should, indeed avoid myths and old wives' tales. We should also, however, avoid making of Christian doctrine yet another myth, the teachings of the Church an old wives' tale.

A Couple Endings And A Beginning

I was sad to hear that Jerry Lieber, half the second best song-writing duo of rock and roll, passed away this weekend. Anyone who enjoys 50's R&B and early rock and roll has to love Lieber and Stoller.

There was another loss the same day.



Nick Ashford, who along with his wife Valerie Simpson, wrote some of Motown's greatest songs, has also left us. Later, in the 1970's, they decided to release some songs under their own names. It had long been Motown practice for songwriters to record demos so the performers had a template from which to work. That was how Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson started out. Diana Ross's cover of this duet is a sad piece of re-engineering; personally, of all the Ashford & Simpson songs, this is the one that, for me, stands the test of time the best.

Today was the first day of school for Moriah and Miriam. For Moriah, it was a milestone of sorts - her first day of high school. So, in honor of this momentous occasion . . .



Con Alma - Wes Montgomery
Old Folks - Miles Davis
Home By The Sea (Live) - Genesis
Into The Lens - Yes
Offertorium "Salve Regina" - Franz Schubert
Single Girl, Married Girl - The Carter Family
Closer to Fine(Live) - The Indigo Girls
Don't Leave Me Now (Live) - Pink Floyd
Rumba Mama - Weather Report
Symphony 31 in D, 3rd movement, Allegro - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

As Roy Harper's lyrics say, it is usually those labeled immoral who stand and hold back the moral nightmare.

Supporting Scientific Research

This report from NPR's Morning Edition contained, among other glorious tidbits, the latest freakout among some on the right - shrimp on a treadmill.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Who studies shrimp on a treadmill? Biologist Lou Burnnett. He learned about the senator's report when CNN called him.

Mr. LOU BURNNETT (Biologist): I was pretty irritated.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says the half-a-million dollars was actually for a lot of different research on this economically important seafood species. The treadmills were just a small part of it, a way to measure how shrimp respond to changes in water quality. Burnnett says the senator's report was misleading.

Mr. BURNNETT: It suggests that much money was spent on seeing how long a shrimp can run on a treadmill, which was totally out of context.

Then, of course, there was the toenail clippings.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Her group has also criticized other government-funded studies, including a National Institutes of Health grant for measuring nicotine exposure in toenail clippings.

Ms. LAFFERTY: They used recovery money, money that was meant to more or less stimulate the economy - interesting use of money, mailing in toenail clippings.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The deputy director of the National Institutes of Health is Lawrence Tabak. He defended the use of recovery funds. And he says the toenail study has an important goal that its critics didn't mention: trying to assess people's risk of lung cancer.

Mr. LAWRENCE TABAK (Deputy Director, National Institutes of Health): So what's scientifically sound and indeed cost-effective - to collect biospecimens for cancer research - was twisted in what was intended to ridicule an important lifesaving research effort.

Nit-picking scientific studies is a time-honored tradition in our nation's Capitol. The late William Proxmire, D-WI, used to have his "Golden Fleece" awards given to most everything from the space program to agriculture subsidies, but he usually saved a few for basic research grants.

We can have a serious, thoughtful debate about whether or not, or how much, to fund basic research through public funds. Since public funds usually go to studies that have relevance for everything from local and regional economies (finding out how shrimp deal with environmental stressers is kind of important to the folks who make their living harvesting the little critters) to public health (one can do an assay of toenail clippings and gain valuable information on all sorts of things, not the least of them being the lingering effects of nicotine addiction and how that may impact the prospects of cancer development). Getting chided by Sarah Palin for allegedly doing something ridiculous should be considered a badge of honor; after all, at least the scientists involved in various studies actually finish what they started.

The reality is this scientific research is carried out for a marvelous reason - it's in the nation's interest to have this information. Since economic growth, sustainable development, public health, and other policy priorities are things about which we need to know, scientific studies of all varieties are an important part of doing things better, more efficiently and cost-effectively, and understanding the various impacts of a variety of environmental and human factors on the country. You want to argue that there is a principle involved here, be my guest. By and large, however, you will not find too many folks who understand (a) how science works, and (b) how politics works that would agree with you.

So, hooray for the study on the correlation between penis size and sexually transmitted disease. More information is always preferable.

Being Human

The whole problem is this: how to utter God in a practice of faith where I must decide what I wish to do with the woman or man I find in my path - make of him or her a human being with a right to life or a slave for life.

Jean-Marc Ela, "Gospel In Resistance", in African Cry, p. 139

This single sentence, the penultimate one in the final essay in Ela's collection of essays on Christianity in Africa, has haunted me for eighteen years. I encountered it in a seminar on liberation theology, the spring semester of 1993, raised it as the key question underpinning much of what should constitute not only an ethics but also an anthropology. I proceeded to write what was perhaps my worst, ever, seminary paper. The professor, Josiah Young, wrote a single comment - that I seemed to have other concerns, and the paper was a muddle as a result - with which, at the time, I took umbrage. I was trying to finish my last semester of seminary, graduate, and plan my wedding simultaneously. So, yeah, I had other "concerns". It didn't take long, however, for me to hang my head and realize that Josiah was quite right. The paper was crap. Having the best of intentions didn't prevent me from writing garbage, as I floundered and flailed my way toward coming to terms with the simple question - Who are Others to us, claimed by God in Christ through the Spirit, which should also place a question mark before our own identity as well.

With recent events here in the United States and abroad pushing me toward a broader acceptance not only of certain explicitly leftist diagnoses of our malaise but also a renewed interest in finding sources for resistance, I have, in recent weeks, been doing more floundering. The summer saw me attempt a re-read of Pierre Duhem, a clear attempt at escape. I have started, and set aside, Charles Taylor's "classic", The Source of the Self as both inadequate for the task, and a hopeless, vague muddle. I went through Christopher Lasch's The True and Only Heaven, to find myself confronted by frustration that, while asking good questions, his answers tended to the unpalatable, to say the least.

Which led me, in a roundabout way, to Dwight Hopkins' Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion. Explicitly written in the tradition of black theology of liberation, Hopkins explores ways to say what it means to be human that is faithful to the intersection of our muddled reality and the claim God places upon us. That we are human, and that this word has implications for our life of faith, is a question to be answered, rather than an assumption with which to live. Our world is filled to overflowing with forces and voices and institutions that deny the basic humanity of so many, it should be obvious to even the most unreflective soul that "being human" is disputed territory. To affirm humanity in the midst of racism and sexism, that God's revelation in Jesus demonstrates God's choice to be with us in this way and not another - a marginalized, Nazarene Jew born to an unwed mother, dying a political revolutionary - already tells us much about what "being human" means. Unpacking the various ways our contemporary world places human beings - within culture, within races, as "selves" - can go a long way toward answering the question theological anthropology seeks to answer.

At its heart, without Hopkins' knowing it, is Jean-Marc Ela's wonderful question to us. This question that has plagued me, to which I gave a woefully inadequate answer nearly two decades ago. While I do not believe Hopkins' work will present a final answer, it should, I would think, provide a way of thinking and understanding that will help me stop flailing.

Wrong Wholly And In Parts

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for blogger and former and future pastor John Meunier. It is with a great deal of sadness that I have to be quite public in disagreeing, in sum and detail, with this post. Where my hackles rose was the following line:

Whatever the sins of the United States, the nation is not an empire in the same way that Rome was.

Out of any kind of context, this sentence begs many questions, but should strike most careful, Christian readers as, at the very least, misleading. In context, as the beginning of a paragraph which attempts to unpack what Meunier means, specifically, it actually gets worse.

n Rome, the source of all power was in the person of the emperor. The closest analogy we have to the exalted status of the emperor is not the nation-state or the president, but each one of us. We exalt the individual. In our world, the ruler of all, the king, the lord is each person. You and me. We are the rival to the rule of God.

This is the marvelous, and false, illusion of the sovereign individual. Sad to say, we are - none of us - "exalted", except in the empty rhetoric of politicians who want our votes so they can rob us blind, literally and metaphorically. In reality, the United States is a collapsing Empire of horrid strength, with the potential for much evil as we go down. That the political is being superceded by the economic - most clearly expressed in the shift from "internationalism", a goal for nation-states, to "globalization", a reality for corporations - in no way belies the basic imperial nature of the project, or that its most powerful and important booster and supporter is the United States. Opponents of this historical movement are even now being trampled underfoot, the foot soldiers in this battle returning home only to become more casualties of the same war (which is why I support our troops; they are mercenaries in a war they would not, under other circumstances fight; the shabby treatment they receive at the hands of officialdom should tell any sensitive observer the truth).

While I agree with the sentence-paragraph that immediately follows this - "And the claim that Jesus is Lord is just as dangerous to us as it was to Augustus." - it sits there, within the context Meunier sets it, without either meaning or even relevance. To say as Meunier does toward the end that the real scandal is that Jesus is Lord of my life and your life is, really, not very threatening at all. To anyone or anything. No one would be crucified for such a statement; on the contrary, the folks who repeat this doggerel are also boosters of the very same capitalism that is destroying our republican values, democratic institutions, and bleeding parts of the world white to keep them in line.

The scandal of the cross is not Jesus' as Lord of my life. The scandal of the cross is that the power that grows out of the barrel of a gun is not the last word. That this continues to be the only power this world understands speaks to the continued need for the Gospel being preached and lived. Not because we are atomized, anomic individuals. Rather, because we are told we are this so that we may have no resources in our struggle against the powers and principalities.

Empire is alive and well. We, sad to say, live in the heart of the beast, are nurtured by the blood and toil, the hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices for its continued success feeding the machinery of death we cannot escape. We Americans who are also Christian must first confess not that Jesus is Lord of our life, but rather that Mammon is the Lord of our Empire, and simul iustus et peccator for us lies at the very heart of our self-identification as Americans who are Christian. It is this specificity, rather than any abstract notions of "individuality", that lies at the heart of our ongoing need for repentance and metanoia.

As I said, I like and respect John a great deal. That doesn't mean I can sit idly by when I read something like this.

Sorry, John.

Random Music - Memory Lane Edition

Lisa was digging for nuggets in her past. It got me thinking, and one I came up with was this:

I'm not going to say why - too personal - but it does remind us all that some songs get linked to events in our lives, whether we want them to or not.

At the same time, since I'm still enjoying far too much time remembering my childhood and youth - did we really party at the Horseshoe? What were we thinking? - someone asked if there was one song that reminded us of high school. In all honesty, no, not one song. There were some songs, though, that when I hear them now, sounding timeless and earning that weird epithet "classic", reminds me that I am old enough to have heard them when they were brand new. For example, I distinctly remember the very first time I heard this one:

I had never heard anything like it. Listening on my little clock radio, after the DJ announced it as "the first single" (God, would any band release a song like this as a single today?) from "the new album", I couldn't believe it. To this day, I think Brian Johnson's nails-on-a-chalkboard vocals are some of the best ever.

When I saw Rush at the United Center in Chicago in 2002 for the first time in a very long time, they opened with this song.

Another one of those that I remember hearing for the first time as a new song.

I don't have the best soundtrack from my youth. At least, though, I have one.

Circles - Joe Satriani
Symphony #35, Second Movement - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In The Cage (Live) - Genesis
Black Crow - Joni Mitchell
Slainte Mhath (Live) - Marillion
Hope - Mahavishnu Orchestra
Who Are You (Lost Verse Mix) - The Who
Freaks - James LaBrie
Two Lovers - Mary Wells
Knife Edge - Emerson, Lake, & Palmer

I like songs about death. I swear I'm not morbid.

That Fascist Groove Thing? It's Back

At least one periodical is describing events in Britain correctly. They bury it in the third paragraph, after a recounting of the offensive PM David Cameron and the courts are waging against "rioters".

The crackdown comes . . .

When non-democratic states face opposition and respond with mass arrests, police brutality, and across-the-board shelving of whatever civil or human rights may be recognized in that country, it's a crackdown on opposition. When democratic states face opposition, we cheer on the attempt to address waves of violence, thuggery, and even, in the words of a British judge sentencing two men to four years in prison for inciting a riot that never occurred, "evil acts".

I haven't really read a whole lot of commentary by US pundits on current events in Britain; to be honest, I haven't really read a whole lot of commentary by US pundits on pretty much anything because, apart from Paul Krugman, most of them are abysmal. All the same, the silence in the face of what is, quite clearly, state sponsored repression of political dissent is telling. After a year that began with the Tunisian revolution, the Egyptian revolution that the world watched on Al Jazeera, anti-government movements in Bahrain, Yemen, and Morocco, the civil war in Libya, the pre-emption of demonstrations by the Saudi police state, and even anti-government protests growing in Israel, one would think an awareness of the general situation in Britain would encourage at least some besides those on the far left in the United States to be a little more vocal in support of those called "rioters" by police and "lazy" by their Prime Minister.

Part of the problem may well be the wide-spread looting and the violent expressions of social frustration the British have been using. Lord knows American liberals don't want to support violence. Even a casual acquaintance with the history of British police action toward working class and racial/ethnic minority groups, however, might temper that kind of categorical refusal to understand that violence might well be, at the very least, an understandable if regrettable final, desperate choice. Kind of like in Syria.

Americans are narcissistic enough to wonder if recent events in Britain are relevant to our own situation. Some have submitted that such violence may well be just over the horizon; others insist it can't happen here. I think it is possible, because many of the same dynamics are in play - bad economy made worse by public austerity; long histories of police violence against the poor and minorities; the probability of a spark like in Britain, viz., the police shooting someone. I do not relish or welcome such events, but we should be clear-eyed and honest, admitting that being sick and tired of being sick and tired sometimes leads people to express their lack of anything left to lose in ways good liberals don't like and just can't condone.

Whatever the end game may be in Britain, the ugliness there isn't the rioters. It's the government-led crackdown on dissent disguising itself as law-and-order, with politicians and judges using the word "evil" to describe what most people think is a human right - to protest inhuman living conditions and dissent against state-sanctioned violence against the poor and minorities.

Being Read

I've given a few accounts over the years of my own approach to reading Scripture, to my insistence that all the canon is open to us, that we need to have the courage to face those places in the Bible that challenge us most deeply in order to name them as such, and the honesty and humility to admit our own limitation when we are reading the Bible. I would like to take a moment now to endorse a position articulated most clearly (if that phrase can be so used) by Karl Barth, that we in the Church do not so much read the Bible, but are read by it. In the meeting of Scripture and ourselves, the questions go both ways, with the question the text puts to us far more cutting, more critical, than anything we can do to the text.

I have always put it slightly differently. I usually talk about "wrestling" with the text. I have in mind the story of Jacob and the angel of God, wrestling all night, Jacob overcome by the angel, yet demanding a blessing nonetheless. We in the Church and the Scriptural text confront one another. We too often get caught up in talking about interpreting or appropriating a given passage, or the text as a whole, without acknowledging the flip-side. The text interprets us, appropriates us, or it is a lifeless thing.

Without getting in to a chicken-egg discussion - is it our experience of God that informs our understanding of the Bible or does the Bible provide opportunities for such experience? - I will say that unless we are willing to forego our sense of privilege vis-a-vis the text, and grant to it demands on us, our reading will always be one-sided. Unless we are willing to admit our own limitations, our own failures, our narrowness of vision, we will always be stuck, and the text will be a dead letter for us. Inspiring, to be sure, but more in an emotive or perhaps intellectual way than something more visceral. When we acknowledge, in faith, that the Biblical text places demands upon us, we are opening ourselves to the Spirit that informs the text. When we as a community of faith hear the words and acknowledge them as the Word in the Spirit, we are accepting the invitation and rising to the challenge the text places before us.

Most of all, when we allow the text to confront us, to question us, to challenge and interpret us, we are admitting that we cannot know everything about a given passage, or the text as a whole. We are also admitting that we cannot know everything about ourselves, that the dark places in our lives are dark because we refuse to shine a light in to those grungy corners out of fear. Just as there are places in the Bible that seem ugly, hateful, or just downright odd to us, we should at least be honest enough and admit there are places in our lives that are so, too. Were we really, really honest, we would admit that nothing in the Bible is as ugly, or hateful, or just odd as some of those corners of our lives we refuse to acknowledge. When light shines upon them, we cringe, we deny, we lie, we do pretty much anything but admit that this, too, is who we are. When we allow ourselves to be confronted by the Scriptural text, the fear is this - we will be forced to own our deepest regrets, our most base hatreds, our deepest sorrows. When we allow the text to interpret us, the challenge we face is the challenge to our best idea of ourselves.

To me, this is what real love is, though. Being beloved of God, expressing our gratitude in loving others includes accepting that we are complete creatures, not only the game-face we show the world, but the scared child we can sometimes be, the mean-spirited bigot we wish would go away, the time we passed the poor woman on the corner and refused to even acknowledge her let alone give her some money, a few minutes of time that really isn't ours to help her, the silence in the face of injustice. When we admit that, at the end of the day, we really are no better than our worst characterization of our worst enemies, only then do we understand what it is to be loved of God. Only then have we shown what it is to be read, and challenged, and interpreted, by God.

I Guess 2003 Was Too Far Back To Remember

"Americans are angry. Why aren't they protesting?" reads the headline. The piece, written by a sociology professor at UC Irvine, talks about the need for organization, structure, and focus - and uses the Tea Party phenomenon as a recent American example. He talks about James Madison's insistence, in Federalist #10, that the Constitution, in part, allows for funneling dissent and dissatisfaction through the system, and uses the politics of Wisconsin as an example.

Apparently, he, like most of the rest of the world, has forgotten the largest mass protest movement in recent years. For example:

Huge crowds of anti-war demonstrators jammed into midtown New York on Saturday as protesters in dozens of U.S. cities joined large crowds worldwide in voicing opposition to war with Iraq.

Demonstrators converged near the United Nations to protest the possible war in just one of the more than 600 anti-war rallies around the globe. Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 375,000, but Police Commissioner Ray Kelly estimated turnout at 100,000.

Besides protests in large cities such as Chicago, Illinois; and Los Angeles, California; rallies were held across the United States in smaller towns such as Gainesville, Georgia; Macomb, Illinois; and Juneau, Alaska, according to the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice.

Here's some more:

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of London to voice their opposition to military action against Iraq.
Police said it was the UK's biggest ever demonstration with at least 750,000 taking part, although organisers put the figure closer to two million.

There were also anti-war gatherings in Glasgow and Belfast - all part of a worldwide weekend of protest with hundreds of rallies and marches in up to 60 countries.

In February, 2003, Patrick Tyler, writing in the New York Times, said that "there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."

Now, it could be argued that these protests weren't discussed because they weren't effective. The Tea Party, while never having the numbers, received mainstream clout when candidates it supported stormed the Republican Party in the mid-term elections last Fall. Nothing succeeds like success, as the old saying goes, and the anti-war protests failed miserably, as we are not only still in Iraq and Afghanistan, but have added Libya and Yemen to the list.

These protest marches were singular events, historic. Massive demonstrations world-wide, with millions of people around the globe shouting against an invasion of Iraq. They disappeared, by and large, from mainstream discourse, at least in the US, because it was clear for months the Bush Administration was determined to go to war, regardless of cost or consequences. Focusing on the demonstrations distracted from the real story, it seems.

Even though the marches didn't change the course of policy, they did show that there is power in grassroots organizing, that the interconnections among thousands of small, local groups, churches, union locals, and other groups can actually generate a huge mass of support, with millions in cities here and around the globe demanding an end to the preparations for war. Unlike the Tea Party, there were no business executives tossing around seed money, or Washington lobbyists or former Congress members to set up new firms that claimed to represent various local interests. It was just people hitting the streets.

So, yeah, it can happen. Personally, I wonder if mass marches and protests against US austerity imposed by the "super-committee" would be noticed in the mainstream press, unless they turned violent. We in the US love our peaceful protesters. When rocks and bottles and tear gas start flying, good liberals click their tongues and wish people would act more civilized, with more restraint. Funny, though; we never click our tongues over the lack of restraint on the part of the powers-that-be that strip people of their jobs, their incomes, their homes, and their hope. Let us believe it is possible for us Americans to get out there and actually get our voices heard. I do hope we are more effective than those massive marches against the invasion of Iraq, and more sensible and sane than the Tea Party, but unafraid to show our rage and frustration.

The Kingdom Of God Is Like This

What follows isn't really a parable. It really happened.

I've been enjoying reminiscing for the past few days, as I wrote a couple days ago. Of all the memories, places, teachers, old stores, make-out spots, and other things that this has dredged up, the one that has touched me most deeply is the discussion that was sparked when someone mentioned Keith Kellogg.

If you grew up in Waverly, NY in the 1970's, 1980's, perhaps in to the 1990's (I was long gone by then, so I don't really know for sure), then you knew Keith. He would be sitting on his bike, usually around the corner of Broad Street and Fulton Street, or riding up Chemung Street, perhaps even hanging around the High School if it was a summer day. Keith had a smile and greeting for everyone. His smile lit up his face, which was usually shaded by a grungy old baseball cap.

In a less enlightened age, people would have called Keith retarded. What Keith was, really, was a simple, beautiful person who loved his town - he was at every sporting event he could get to, football games, basketball games, wrestling matches - and the people who lived there. Kids knew, without having to be told, that Keith was their friend. If you rode your bike to the business district, Keith might challenge you to a race in the parking lot behind one block of businesses. Quite often, if you had stopped at Harper's News Stand and bought some candy, you would probably share some with him. Not because he had asked. Because you knew, somewhere you couldn't really name and without being able to put words to it, that Keith was special in a way that went beyond the limitations the accidents of genetics and birth had given him.

It wasn't just the kids, though. Adults would be greeted by a smile, a wave, an offer of a high-five, even out an open car window as you drove by. No store owners chased him away from in front of their buildings. No parents complained to the police or his parents that he was a menace to their children. Everyone in town understood that Keith was more than just "that guy that hangs around downtown". He was a part of the community in a way that even the stores and streets, the homes and families were not. Heaven protect you if you were from out of town, or just stupid and insensitive, and called Keith a name, or spoke ill of him to others. Keith wasn't a marginal character. His presence helped make the town a little more human, a little more fun, a little more like home. Keith was, it seemed, eternal.

Except, alas, he wasn't. Keith died a couple years back, and I was sad when I read his obituary. Waverly, it seemed, was now a little less than it used to be. No longer would kids be challenged to a bike race, have someone with whom to share their gum and cans of soda, or high-five as they rode by on their bikes. The football team would have one less super-fan. On that corner where he sat on his bike, watching the cars, smiling and waving, those of us who remember Keith can probably still feel his presence. I, for one, hope they still smile and wave, maybe stick their hand out for a smack as they drive through that weird, three-way stop on a four-way intersection.

The woman who started this little Facebook gathering site, Tawny (Keene) Villalobos said it best and most beautifully: "God put both of them right where they needed to be, In the Valley. Where they were/are loved and supported by a GREAT community."

That, I submit, is true. I would also submit that even though most wouldn't know it, or note it if they understood, we, the folks who lived in and near Waverly, NY, in our mutual respect and love and support with Keith - and everyone should know he gave far more than he got, but he got so much - is a glimpse in to what Jesus meant by "The Kingdom of God". A place where people love, and are loved in return, and are counted as special despite how the world defines them ("retarded") and would seek to lock them away.

More Smiley Faces Don't Make Things Suck Less (UPDATE)

I heard this story and really, really couldn't decide if laughing, barfing, or crying made more sense. Apparently, one London neighborhood has a "Peace Wall" where people write notes, telling the world that if everyone just loved themselves, and felt better about themselves, there would be no need for rioting.

It should be obvious that working class, ethnic minority communities in Britain, beset by racist, classist police harassment and a Tory-led government that thinks destroying the welfare state and cutting benefits to people who have no other lifeline of support should be irrelevant to how they feel about themselves.

One person said that the people should love their neighborhood, and if they did, they wouldn't be violent. Because no one has ever protested to the point of violence out of love. Ever. The Egyptians in Tahrir Square? They hated their country. The Syrians in Hama? The military is gunning down a bunch of traitors. We shouldn't forget all those outside agitators in the South in the 1950's and 1960's, commies and the rest of them, stirring up trouble among the happy Negroes.

Maybe the US could start supporting the folks protesting the deplorable conditions in working class urban Britain. Maybe send an aircraft carrier to the Irish Sea, just to send a message?

UPDATE: This article says what I've been saying, only better.

THE REBELLION ripping across Britain in the last week was only the latest example of how the working class and the poor will not quietly accept austerity as the "solution" to the economic crisis. From Cairo to Lisbon, to Santiago, to Madison, and now to the streets of London, there is a growing global revolt against a resurgent neoliberal agenda that advocates the destruction of the remnants of a weakened public sector.

The London revolt has also shown how the brunt of the cuts and austerity have fallen disproportionately on Black and brown youth--prompting even more savage behavior by police to keep those communities contained.

As they always say, read the whole thing.

Not A Legitimacy Crisis, Yet

So, yesterday, I wrote a bit about the British riots to highlight some pretty good working-class British protest music. I didn't really spend a whole lot of time on the post, because my main concern was music, not the British riots. After some time to think, though, I think some general observations are in order.

First, like Great Britain, the broad public is fed up the apparatus of the state. In Britain, however, the reach of the welfare state - from housing assistance and the National Health Service to unemployment benefits - was far larger. The decision by the Conservative government of Prime Minister David Cameron, working without a clear majority (he rules in tandem with the Liberal Democrats, the tattered remnants of the great 19th Century British Liberal Party that hasn't had a significant presence in British government since the end of the First World War), to introduce extreme austerity measures at a time when the British economy, like much the rest of the world, bumbles along, has created far deeper tensions and resentments against authority than in the US. When a still-unclear incident in the Tottenham section of Greater London started a protest against the use of deadly force by police, the peaceful protests turned, once the sun went down, to angry riots. The riots have spread from Tottenham to various other sections of London as well as the cities of Birmingham and Bristol.

Yesterday, during an emergency sitting of Parliament, PM Cameron made clear his position - he was doing what Hosni Mubarak did not do; he was calling in the police to stop "mindless violence and criminality" (one got quite tired of hearing this stupid, mindless phrase, as if repeating it made it true). While we push for reform in Arab states where youths socially, economically, and politically disenfranchised by despotic, sometimes kleptocratic, regimes have taken to the streets - even taking sides in the Libyan Civil War - when similar conditions create similar reactions in Britain, it seems the ruling classes are happy with bullets and batons, with ignoring the realities that created the conditions. That fascist groove thing, it seems, is back in a big way.

The unfolding fake crisis over the debt-ceiling revealed our entire political class for what it is - tone-deaf, ignorant of basic economic realities, and not averse to thinking it possible to drain the water from a sinking boat by drilling a hole in the bottom - and the resulting crash-landing of public opinion regarding the institutions of governance has been met with chirping crickets. The right has been intellectually and morally, not to say politically, bankrupt for over a decade, holding on by sheer force of will to a nihilistic desire for power for its own sake. What people mistakenly call "liberalism" in the US accepts the basic framework set out by the right, but only wishes to use better PR to achieve, roughly, the same ends.

The problem should be clear enough. The real solutions to the ills that beset us are well-known. Paul Krugman, perhaps our most intelligent, most persistent, and least regarded (in official circles) political commentator, has said that over and over again: We know what needs to be done to solve the interlinked economic and fiscal problems we face. Those solutions, however aren't so much unknown as a priori ruled out of the realm of political possibility. So, we drift along, neither major party enjoying anything like support, certainly not confidence. Yet the American people, certainly as beset at the British, are not quite ready to hit the streets. Not quite.

My guess, however, is that if we continue with fiscal austerity as summer shifts to fall, then winter, without any serious improvement in the economy (and, no, there won't be because I do not believe in the economy fairy sprinkling confidence dust in our eyes; if we all clap our hands, things will still suck), we might just see isolated incidents in some urban centers. Detroit, perhaps; Los Angeles, certainly. Once it becomes clear that there are no more attempts to address the issues the people understand are central - jobs, jobs, and I should mention jobs - what is now a loss of confidence may well turn in to a crisis in legitimacy.

Unlike all Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and even, now, Israel, where the people have taken to the streets to demand state action for the benefit of all, we won't read too many pundits talking about an "American Spring".

London Is Calling

So is it just mindless criminality, as Prime Minister David Cameron insists? Or, perhaps, is it the final refuge of a population that has suffered so many indignities since Margaret Thatcher became PM in 1979 they feel there just isn't any other way to make their grievance heard? Is it a bunch of hooligans running wild? Or is it a bunch of people who don't believe in the police, tired as they are of rampant race and class bias? Is it people who want free goodies, or people who no longer believe the state, or the economy, or any institution has any legitimacy anymore?

For now, I'll just say that I don't think looting is a really awesome political statement. On the other hand, I don't think PM Cameron's decision to go overboard with the police will win him a lot of friends out in the country. In Parliament, it will probably be a winner. With the aristocracy, which still holds the bulk of British private wealth, I can only imagine the cheers in the ridiculously anachronistic House of Lords. Out where people feel they have run out of options, though, it might just backfire. As London, and Bristol, and Manchester, and Birmingham, and other cities start to burn, let's remember this - capitalism really got going in Britain first. We might just be watching it start its final unraveling there, too.

At least we got a soundtrack!



Harm's Way - Spock's Beard
So Long Ago, So Clear - Vangelis w/Jon Anderson
Wonderful Remark - Van Morrison
Prayer For Light - Renaissance
Revolution - The Cult
Woodpecker From Mars - Faith No More
Ra - Jordan Rudess
Southern Scene (Live at Carnegie Hall) - Dave Brubeck Quartet
Significant Other - Steven Wilson
Wanderings - Lunatic Soul