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

A Little Nostalgia Is Good For The Soul

First, let me stress "a little".

Someone had the genius idea of starting an open group on Facebook called "Growing Up In The Valley Memory Lane". If you have to ask "What Valley?", then you don't belong in the group. It now has over 700 members, and it is astonishing the stuff people are bringing up. Dredging up is more like it. Old bars and restaurants and hang-out spots and ice cream stands. Stores in the business district that don't exist anymore - we used to go back-to-school shopping on Broad Street in Waverly, not at the K-Mart, or Grants, or Ames Department Stores on Elmira Street in South Waverly and Athens. The New York Store and Yanuzzi's for clothes, Triange for shoes. Philadelphia Sales for school supplies.

It's been fun to read stuff people are remembering. Most of the folks in the group are like me, long since moved away, indulging in a bit of "remember when?", and sharing - even if we didn't know one another existed - the ways we have been shaped by common points of reference. Most of the "Memories" are either from childhood and a time when the Valley seemed the whole world, and parents would let us wander hither and yon without too much worry (a whole lot of people are talking about leaving the house in the summer just after breakfast, and getting back home around dark; yeah, I did that, too), or our youth when it was possible to get in to bars and liquor stores pretty much any age. And what bars! I'd forgotten the Chemung Hotel, but there was the Cork 'N' Bottle - with its balcony and bands and even the more-than-occasional fight, either inside our out in the parking lot where most folks smoked some weed before going in. Billy Joe's with the cat behind the bar. Stuffed, as in taxidermied. It had been a live cat, but it got itself hit and killed by a bar patron, and the owner kept it around. . .

I remember the first time I went to Putz' Place on the East Side of Sayre. I was underage (weren't we all?) and scared out of my mind and the bouncer didn't even look at my ID. The one time I really got carded - at Billy Joe's in Waverly - the bartender had to know I was underage, but smiled, handed me back my license with my beer. Another case of money talking and BS walking, I guess.

Then there was summer in the Valley. Ice cream at The Valley Creamery before it became a cheese plant. The Jolly Farmer, where if you were in high school, you might stand around and chat with the girls who were selling you cones, because they were classmates of yours. And, of course, Mr. Softee.

Waverly and Sayre high schools both had open swimming. It was two hours for a quarter, then fifty cents, at Waverly. The same amount got you four hours at Sayre, so we would ride our bikes down to Sayre High School. You had to have an iron-on "S" patch on your suit to get in, so I wore my brother's. You put your shoes and shirt in a basket, and got a pin with the basket number on it to put on your suit. They had a three meter diving board at the Sayre High pool, and it seemed to be a mark of some kind of courage to climb that ladder time and again and dive or jump off. Also, as I pointed out on FB, Sayre had better looking lifeguards.

There are so many other memories, touchstones for all these disparate people now spread out across the country. Sharing memories we didn't even know we shared. Laughing at the stuff we forgot we remembered. Kidding ourselves that life was easier then, or simpler, or less confusing because we have forgotten the emotional weather of youth, and remember only the freedom for which we now yearn. Part of that freedom, of course, included doing things that were unbelievably stupid, even dangerous, and, of course, illegal. Most of us, most of the time, indulged without considering just how stupid and/or dangerous. That, too, is a part of being young. Being too ignorant to understand how closely you are dancing with death, always with a smile, even laughing at the prospect.

It has been fun, to be sure, strolling down others' memory lanes, joining in with a smile and shake of the head. Best of all, even more than the memories of stuff that's long gone - like most of the business district on Broad Street in Waverly, either boarded up or burned down or torn down - has been the chance for a whole lot of people, some of whom don't know one another, to share bits and pieces of our lives, how similar they were because the places and names were all there. I have very little desire ever to return to Waverly. All the same, it was a great place to grow up, be a kid then a youth, then run from as fast as you could before the gravity could pull you back in.

My father told me once that the Valley was like the legend of the secret elephant burial ground. If you weren't careful, you'd find yourself back there and it was only a matter of time before you just couldn't get out again. He should know, of course. All the same, it was a great place to live, and with, just a few minutes after having started to write this, membership over 800, it seems a whole lot of us are enjoying sitting around and sharing our memories.

I Don't Believe In Talking Snakes, Either

Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."

This is from a report on NPR this morning on the growing refusal among some conservative Christians to give a literal reading to the creation accounts in Genesis. Among the many interesting, funny, and quite stupid things in the report - both from the folks quoted and the reporter, who apparently has no idea that there are over two centuries of serious, critical scholarly work on the Bible, as well as thousands of years of doctrinal interpretation of the Genesis passages, in tandem with various "creation Psalms" - was some fun stuff from Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

"When Adam sinned, he sinned for us," Mohler says. "And it's that very sinfulness that sets up our understanding of our need for a savior.

Mohler says the Adam and Eve story is not just about a fall from paradise: It goes to the heart of Christianity. He notes that the Apostle Paul (in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15) argued that the whole point of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection was to undo Adam's original sin.


"Without Adam, the work of Christ makes no sense whatsoever in Paul's description of the Gospel, which is the classic description of the Gospel we have in the New Testament," Mohler says.

A point of view which would, I think, have surprised the Apostle.

Let me state categorically that I do not believe for an instant that the stories in Genesis 1 and 2 - mutually exclusive accounts of creation from different sources, hundreds of years apart in origin, saying very different things about who God is, not least who this God is who is doing this creating thing - tell us anything factual. No Adam. No Eve. No Garden. No trees with fruit with magical powers.

No, no talking snakes, either (and just where, may I ask, is there any indication this snake is really Satan or the Devil or whoever? Not in the Bible!).

That doesn't mean these stories don't tell us stuff that is important for our faith as Christians. If that were the case, we could stop talking about them all together. We could lump them with all those texts which are, to be polite, equivocal in their intellectual, moral, or other content. I believe these stories, in tandem with the Psalms that praise God as Creator, the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel that states categorically that the Word was with God at Creation, and it was through this same Word that creation was accomplished, tell us all sorts of things that are necessary for understanding what it means to say, "I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth."

This statement is not a declaration of how or when. To claim that one believes God creates is to say something first about God, and only secondarily about creation. To state that God creates, but to limit that creative activity to some point six thousand years ago, is a kind of implicit Deism. God gets the whole ball of wax rolling downhill, then leans back and enjoys the show.

The profession of belief in God as Creator is a profession of God's freedom. It is a profession of wonder that there is anything at all. It is a profession of our own dependence, at all times, at each moment of existence, on something outside ourselves. It is confession of our awareness that this confounded world, with all its troubles and beauty, flesh-eating bacteria and orchids and quasars and Lindsay Lohan could, given a power of less patience, less humor, and certainly less love, not be. When we confess God as Creator we are stating that we understand existence as completely, utterly contingent. There is no necessity in anything. Not in gravity, not in power abhorring a vacuum, not in capitalism, not in spring following winter. It is all there for us to take in, neither as "stuff" for us to exploit nor as blind forces against which to struggle. It is, rather, here for us to live in, to use with care and love, and always - always! - something for which we should give thanks.

When we tie God's hands, creatively speaking, to some point in time, we are forgetting that the point of the stories isn't about creation. It isn't about Adam and Eve or naming animals or trees with magical fruit or conniving snakes who will get their heads ground in to the dust. It is about God being whimsical enough, free enough, loving enough, to refuse to be alone. When the Bible says we are created in God's image, it isn't because we are bipedal primates. We are God's icons because, like God, we are free, we have the capacity for joy and love in being with others, and because we recognize that all that is could not be, yet is not of or for itself.

A literal reading of the Genesis stories impoverishes so much. Our understanding of God. Our understanding of the odd idea that God, through no in-born necessity, decided that it would be fun to have all sorts of things around. And keep them around. Creation is an on-going project. God didn't wind the cosmic clock, and now sitting back in the Divine sitting room, fingers greasy from popcorn as the show flows across a mammoth LCD screen. Each second of our existence is a Divine Creative Act. Sitting around arguing about Adam and Eve makes no sense for many reasons, not least because it misses the point that God is making me, and you, and the rabbit sitting in my front yard, the cosmic ray that is breaking through the atmosphere right now striking the genetic material of some creature, slightly altering it.

The doctrine of creation is about wonder. The wonder that the God we profess continues this whole weird thing called the Universe, which may well just be one of potentially infinite multi-verses, stacked up against one another like old LP albums on a shelf. If we get bogged down in nonsense like whether or not Adam and Eve had belly-buttons or where Cain's wife came from, we lose that wonder.

We also, needless to say, miss the point.

In Which I Admit I Got Rolled

So I decided to go back and check out what I wrote three years ago during the Democratic primaries. I am astonished to read this post which, despite a bow in the general direction of Obama's obvious weaknesses, I am revealed to all the world as someone who was willing to swallow a line. Even worse, I wrote the following:

- I believe that electing Barack Obama President of the United States will open up vast energies of enthusiasm and a sense of arriviste that a younger generation of Americans (even at 42, I include myself in this cohort; Obama is only three years older than I) both needs and will welcome. The boomer's have proven themselves ill-suited for governance, not once but twice, with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The new generation to whom a torch should be passed is one thatis quite tired of Republican nonsense, and the constant drumbeat of "must"'s that we hear from conservatives. The government, the economy, the society - they are ours, and we will fashion them for all our ends.

- Hope is not the same as blind faith. It includes faith, indeed, but is an active, rather than passive thing. It is working towards realizing that which in which we believe. All the tired dismissals of Obama's talk of hope misses the simple fact that for far too long both Republicans and Democrats have not told us we not only should be better than we are, but that we have the power to be better. We are not called upon to believe in Sen. Obama, but ourselves.

That last sentence, without a doubt, is one of the most embarrassing things I have ever written. It would be nice to say something like, "Well, I admit up front I have no illusions that Obama is a real progressive!", and I did do that. Except, if I really believed that, I never would have written that last bullet point, let alone that last sentence.

In retrospect, the Democratic field in 2008 was horrible. I had flirted with supporting John Edwards, but really wanted to get behind a winner early. I still think Hillary Clinton was unelectable for a variety of reasons. I think she would have been little different in matters of economic policy than Obama has been; she entered his Administration, after all, and I don't see her falling on her sword over his many failures.

The simple truth is I got rolled. I bought the whole, "Yes We Can" nonsense. Not only because I saw that Obama understood the most important lesson of Presidential electioneering - sell the voters a positive message, an upbeat message. I actually believed that Obama would be a different person than he had already shown himself to be.

The air-space between the Obama Administration and Bush Administration on a host of issues from the endless, stupid wars in Asia to the economy is almost non-existent. For all the right has this weird idea that Obama is some crazed Muslim sleeper-socialist, he is, in fact, that most dangerous of political creatures - a defender of the status quo.

Need I remind the world that on the day I'm writing this the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 635 points? Need I remind the world that Obama came out today and insisted we need to get busy cutting spending? Need I remind the world that Duncan Black is quite right - no one really knows what the hell to do?

I cannot sit around and blame Republicans or Tea Partiers for the mess we are in. I can, however, make clear that I got fooled because, after eight years of George Bush, I was ready for just about anything that sounded better. I surrendered the one thing I never should have - critical thought. So, sure, I am, in some small way, responsible. Because it seemed I was willing to buy the idea that all that rhetoric, all that "hopey-changey" stuff actually meant something.

It didn't. I owe apologies all around to those who said, "You're getting rolled, man." Because I was. It isn't the Republicans or the Tea Partiers fault that Barack Obama is in the White House, buys in to the same set of assumptions and priorities as they do, and has enacted policies on the economy that are indistinguishable from what a Republican President would have.

Today, as the system tumbles, yet again, I want to do the one thing no one else seems to want to do. I want to admit I am, in my own tiny way, complicit in all this. I really have no one to blame but myself.

It Isn't Just The Republicans' Fault

Throughout the just completed "crisis" over the debt ceiling, and previous "negotiations" between the Obama White House and Congressional Republicans, I have said, in essence, "The President has not negotiated properly. If he had, he would have taken position x as his starting point." After the "deal", I found a link on Facebook to this roundtable discussion on the President. This link includes, at the top, a link to a Glenn Greenwald piece. Even before checking the abundant evidence to which he links, there is little with which I could argue in his main point:

It appears to be true that the President wanted tax revenues to be part of this deal. But it is absolutely false that he did not want these brutal budget cuts and was simply forced -- either by his own strategic "blunders" or the "weakness" of his office -- into accepting them. The evidence is overwhelming that Obama has long wanted exactly what he got . . .

As I wrote back in April when progressive pundits in D.C. were so deeply baffled by Obama's supposed "tactical mistake" in not insisting on a clean debt ceiling increase, Obama's so-called "bad negotiating" or "weakness" is actually "shrewd negotiation" because he's getting what he actually wants (which, shockingly, is not always the same as what he publicly says he wants). In this case, what he wants -- and has long wanted, as he's said repeatedly in public -- are drastic spending cuts. In other words, he's willing -- eager -- to impose the "pain" [The New Republic's Jonathan] Cohn describes on those who can least afford to bear it so that he can run for re-election as a compromise-brokering, trans-partisan deficit cutter willing to "take considerable heat from his own party."

With that as a starting point, the discussion at Corey Robin's blog post swirls around the question - is Obama getting what he wants, or is both stupid and incompetent, repeatedly rolled by a group of fire-eating Republicans? If one takes the fight over the stimulus package in early 2009 as one's template, it is pretty clear that, right down the line, Obama has received what he wanted. In that case, the Republicans in Congress kept pushing to keep it smaller, the Democrats adding bits here and there only to have them taken out until the stimulus was almost exactly the size and scope the President originally asked for.

From regulatory reform for the financial industry to health care reform to the various incarnations of the budget and debt limit debates, the results usually end up where the President wanted them. Furthermore, that the President didn't push harder for a jobs bill, for cap-and-trade legislation, for the card check bill that has been a long-sought piece of legislation from labor, that he has not only continued but extended many of the Bush Administration policies on the use of drones in Pakistan, indefinite detention, domestic surveillance, ignoring the role of Congress in committing American troops to combat in Libya - all of these make clear that, rather than a dime's worth of difference, there isn't even a penny's worth of difference between the positions Obama works for and the general goals of the Republican Party.

Don't forget, last year Obama could barely be pushed out of the White House to campaign for Democrats in Congress. Is that because he wanted to appear above the fray? Or is it, perhaps, because he saw the Congressional Democrats as a hindrance to the achievement of his preferred policy goals? Because the leadership, particularly of the House Democrats, is far more liberal than he or the leadership of the Senate Democrats (Harry Reid is best described as Rockefeller Republican, is pro-life, and receives a whole lot of campaign money from Wall Street), getting the Republicans in charge of the lower chamber would allow him to work with a group that has a similar set of policy goals while at the same time giving him political cover in the face of partisan complaints from liberals.

The constant lament among liberals that the Republicans are being unreasonable, that it is all the fault of the Republicans that we are in our current mess is just blind to the reality that we are exactly where Pres. Obama wants us. I don't blame Republicans. I see the entire system as working exactly as it is designed to work.

Which is an even more frightening thought. . . .

Twelve Years And Counting

August 1 marks an anniversary for our family. On that date in 1999, we officially moved in to the parsonage in LaMoille, IL, marking our move from the South to the Midwest.

It was, without a doubt, the most insane thing we did. It was also the best thing. No disparagement to the folks in Jarratt, or the Commonwealth of Virginia, but neither Lisa nor I fit in there. Lisa wanted to be near her family as our children grew up. We were young - 34 and 32 - and had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Finally, we had 9 weeks to arrange the move, pack, figure out the logistics of getting a two-year-old, two cars, a very large Great Dane, two cats, and ourselves to the prairie.

Somehow, we managed to do it all, and then some, but not without creating a whole lot of memories in the process.

In the intervening time, our family has expanded. We lost our precious Gretchen and gained Dreyfus, a marvelous St. Bernard who knows nothing more than love. Both our old cats have gone to wherever cats go when they pass, replaced with two new cats. We've added guinea pigs, and a livelier and more interesting pet I cannot imagine. We've moved twice since, and those moves have seemed more of a hassle than the massive trek across country.

Along the way, we've made more friends, enjoyed more laughs, shared special and wrenching moments with all sorts of people. And folks have been there with us. When Miriam was born. When Lisa's father passed away suddenly just a few months later. Helping out when the basement in LaMoille flooded. Painting the living room and kitchen in Poplar Grove. Building the safety fence around the backyard in LaMoille when Moriah, not yet three, took advantage of her parents' attention elsewhere for just a few moments, walked out the back door and decided to practice her high-wire balancing act on the retaining wall behind the church, giving us both heart attacks.

There are times it doesn't seem possible that so much time has passed. Some days, though, the thought of so much living can be a comfort. Either way, we are happy with our lives, and our life, and look forward to celebrating so many more years out here on the prairie.

A Natural Moment

In the upper left is one of a number of orb-weaving spiders that make their homes out here in and around the grain fields. They are distinguished by their brightly-colored leg joints and their tendency to hang upside down. In the lower right, a daddy-long-legs has stumbled in to the web. The web's proprietor, sitting pretty in the center of the web either doesn't know or is a bit too scared because a large, roving hunting spider has taken advantage of the harvestman's oopsie, climbed on to the web, and is feasting away on it.

I love little moments like this. Don't ask me why. The usual run of things often includes little moments of drama like this, little stories that don't follow the usual narrative rules.

No Rhyme Or Reason

On Sunday, I heard a radio program remembering Studs Terkel. It was marvelous for many reasons, but I loved hearing him talking about the first time he heard Mahalia Jackson, standing in a small Chicago record store, the clerk playing him a 78 RPM single. Studs claimed the other customers stopped and just listened, the music catching them. I can believe it.



I've been craving Atlanta Rhythm Section, God knows why.



I just read an article that mentioned Throbbing Gristle. Besides having one of the best band names ever, they invented Industrial music, back in the early post-punk days of the late-1970's/early-1980's.



Let's see what luck and a shuffle button bring us. What do they bring you?
Moonloop (Live) - Porcupine Tree
Everything In Its Own Time - Indigo Girls
Not To Be Forgotten (Our Final Hour) - Pat Metheny
Lord, I've Been Changed - Tom Waits
Amelia - Joni Mitchell
Still Raining, Still Dreaming - Jimi Hendrix
Then - Yes
Lookin' For Another Pure Love - Stevie Wonder
Walking In The Wind - Traffic
Drained - James LaBrie

My wife bought The Beatles Rockband, and it confirms what I've always known. There never has been, and never will be, a band like them.

Sluts And Celebrity

This is the cover photo from Lady Gaga's Born This Way release. I do hope that the irony here - an image of a woman so enhanced by make-up and prosthetics that she is unrecognizable - is clear enough. In any case, an intrepid and tireless critic of mine has named Stefanie Germonatta, pretty consistently, as one of three celebrities whose public image is a moral hazard when trying to talk about the word "slut".

Another is Britney Spears

Of course, no discussion of celebrities whose names are tied to sexual hedonism would be complete without Lady Madonna of Detroit.

It is dodgy to use celebrities as exemplars, either positive or negative, precisely because we in the public are exposed to an image. We encounter an artifice, a carefully crafted public-relations product rather than a human being. When we see Madonna in a bustier singing to women to express themselves if they want their man, we are watching a commercial. When we hear Lady Gaga sing a song, using a card game as an innuendo for oral sex, we are listening to product placement. When we hear Britney Spears tittering in her breathy soprano, "Oops, I did it again," it is not phony intimacy we hear; it is much worse - the phony come-on of the coquette, made doubly false by its inherent illusory quality as well as the inherent refusal of the coquette.

When anyone uses persons in the entertainment industry as examples of moral turpitude, we are playing the game the industry wants us to play. Whether or not Madonna, or Stefanie, or Britney are or are not sluts is a question they want us to ask so that we will pay attention to them and, hopefully, buy their music. Of course, the persona they create is what we are really purchasing, with the music the soundtrack to our thoughts about them; pushing the boundaries of bourgeois sexual propriety is not only the method by which we are enticed to buy. It is what they are selling.

More than anything, calling these women sluts, bad examples young women should not emulate, is to accept the lie of the image. Even if you believe the constant barrage of carefully placed "rumors" and "stories" in the celebrity press, alleging bad behavior, you are still participating in the game. Here in the entertainment industry, its insistence on visibility and image, we have one of the best examples of capitalism eating itself. On the one hand we have bourgeois morality, with its tsking and tutting about what is and is not "proper" dress and behavior. On the other hand we have millions invested in ensuring these boundaries and mores are clear precisely because they are traduced so thoroughly and consistently.

Which is all the more reason I don't buy moral scolding. Morality has always been a product sold. Whether in ancient times, or feudalism, or in high or late capitalism, the ruling classes have always set out rules for proper conduct, including sexual conduct, which they have refused to apply to themselves. The best examples, of course, come from high and late Victorian England, when a whole striving middle and upper-middle class refused to use the word "breast" when talking about chicken, or covered the legs of tables because it might induce sexual thoughts; all the while the aristocracy was coupling like ferrets in spring time, the only rule being that none of this behavior actually be discussed.

When a group of young women insist that the police not hold them responsible for their possible sexual victimization by labeling their dress or conduct "slutty", this is not acceptable, either, because the word is as much a way of managing the conduct of others as it is a moral epithet. Celebrities can and do dress and act slutty for the public's enjoyment and their profit. A young college student, or a group of friends out on the town, however, are forbidden from imitating this behavior.

Rather than play the game, which is rigged from the get-go, isn't it far better to encourage people to ask uncomfortable questions, including questions regarding how moral epithets are applied? Dragging celebrities in to the mix not only confuses the matter. It also continues to play by the very rules that are being questioned.

Just A Word

Q: What's the difference between a whore and a slut?
A: A whore will sleep with anyone. A slut will sleep with anyone but YOU.

I first heard this when I was in high school. Say, a sophomore - the year we are all wise fools. Like my classmates, I laughed at it, even as I failed to grasp just how horrible it is all the way around. To say I am, in my middle age, ashamed now of things I did as a thoughtless adolescent would be a bit much. Nevertheless, buried within this horrid little bit of hate-filled humor is all we need to know about why the SlutWalk movement is so controversial.

If any of us really thought words were unimportant, the inclusion of "slut" in the title wouldn't upset so many people.

Without us even realizing it is happening, the word conjures up images and feelings in all of us. We associate the word with people. We associate it with the way some people talk about other people. We associate it with lax morals, or low self-esteem, or bad parenting. We associate it with privilege and dominance, with subordination and power. We hear the word and the whole web of inter-related meanings and emotions and incidents from our lives and interactions with others rise up and confront us with the question: Why this word?

In the offensiveness of this word, we hear our own culpability in continuing the power this word has. In seeking to claim it, that power is stripped, because all the questions and associations that hover around it like some dark cloud suddenly turn and demand, "Why?" Why does this word have power? In what lies the authority it seems to have to dredge up images of women free with their favors, dressed to seduce and entice, demeaned and considered of less worth and inherent dignity because of actions and decisions in their lives?

It is easy, I think, to fall back on stereotypes, images dragged from the media, and our own, usually feeble, grasp of who others are by their appearance. When answers are easy, they are usually wrong.

The most dangerous thing any individual or group can ever do is ask the question: Why do use this word to define me? Choosing to reject a name used by others, or even more hazardous, embrace the label and call it "good", takes from the powerful the most important weapon they have - defining reality. The reality of what is and is not proper behavior. The reality of what is and is not proper dress. The reality of what are and are not proper moral and life choices. When the powerless do this, it is more insidious, more threatening than any general strike or armed rebellion. Before either of those things can happen, a people who was no people - defined as "the mob", say; or worse, deemed beneath our moral and social concern as "sluts", deserving of whatever befalls them due to their own morally bereft choices - becomes a people by stealing away from the powerful the self-imposed right to define who others are.

So, sure, it's just a word. There are lots of words that are just words. If I wrote some of them, I would pretty much offend the world precisely because words are not just words. They carry with them the weight of social, political, and moral approbation we all recognize but will not admit. Is it OK for some women, due to privileges that befall them due to race, or income, or other general social status, to demand the right to make the choice to dress in ways that others deem "slutty" if they so choose? A good counter-question is why is it that some find it necessary, let alone permissible, to use that word to describe the actions of others?

The SlutWalks are by no means perfect. There are conversations that need to be had about the very real limitations inherent in it. Were I to support only those social or political movements that perfectly aligned with my political and social beliefs, I would have to found them all myself, and they would have a membership of one. When I encounter a movement founded by a group of people dedicated to asking why those in power deem it both permissible and necessary to label and demean the choices, including dress and life-choices, even when there are problems most acknowledge, I think it is worth supporting.

It's All About Women Being Naughty

I came across two very different blog posts yesterday, offering very different views on the SlutWalks, and why the people writing these posts were in one way or another supporting them. The differences between the two pieces are many. For example, the piece at Feministing is largely critical of the movement, for reasons that should sound familiar:

Slutwalk – in its slick branding – runs the risk of facilitating the dominant discourse of ‘liberated’ women as only those women wearing mini-skirts and high heels in/on their way to professional jobs. In reality, capitalism mediates the feminist façade of choice by creating an entire industry that commodifies women’s sexuality and links a woman’s self-esteem and self-worth to fashion and beauty. Slutwalk itself consistently refuses any connection to feminism and fixates solely around liberal questions of individual choice – the palatable “I can wear what I want” feminism that is intentionally devoid of an analysis of power dynamics.

Historically, this has come at a great cost to low-income women and women of colour who bear the brunt of institutionalized sexism – from lack of access to childcare and denial of reproductive justice to stratification in precarious low-wage work and disproportionate criminalization. In the post 9/11 climate, the focus on a particular version of sex(y)-positive feminism runs the risk of further marginalizing Muslim women’s movements who are hugely impacted by the racist ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate and state policies against the niqab. This marginalization has, at least in part, been legitimized through an imperialist feminist discourse that imposes certain ideas of gender liberation and perpetuates the myth that certain cultural/religious identities are inherently antithetical to women’s rights.

I should note, for the record, that I agree pretty much completely, with this. Indeed, I find much of what passes for feminist discourse in the United States to be, whether conscious of it or not, class- and race-biased, an exercise in the newly-powerful making sure they pull the ladder up after them. From rhetoric about abortion (more on that anon) to discussions of jobs (see Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed for a marvelous example of truly stupid pseudo-leftist nonsense from an alleged feminist), the combination of ignorance, arrogance, and condescension among elite feminists is so thick you could cut it.

While harboring these, and many more, misgivings, the author of this piece, a community activist in the South Asian community of Vancouver, BC, decided to march. Here's why:

I attended for the simple reason that I am committed to ending victim-blaming. The Slutwalks in Toronto and Vancouver came out of the specific contexts of comments by police officers in Toronto and Saanich that were reinforcing to young women about how to avoid getting raped. In Manitoba, Judge Dewar commented that a young Aboriginal rape survivor acted “inviting”.

Even though I did not march under the banner of ‘sluthood’, I marched to mark the unceded territory of women’s bodies. I marched because language is a weapon yielded against the powerless. I marched because rapists causes rape and sexual assault can never be justified. I marched to end the policing of women by other women. I marched because that day, though understandable, I happened to be tired of the Left ruthlessly eating itself alive. I marched in defiance of right-wing pundits like Margaret Wente to make visible the staggering reality of rape and violence against all women in so-called civilized countries like Canada.

The other, at Feministe, is different in tone and approach, and comes from a speaker at the San Diego SlutWalk, a man who is an independent film maker and Planned Parenthood activist named Echo Zen. A speaker at the rally, he was stumped as to what to say:

Trying to think of a fresh angle from which to approach the issue of slut-shaming, I remembered the last time I debated an anti-choice, anti-rights activist who wanted to see women stripped of access to family planning services. Naturally the argument he ultimately resorted to after all his others had been debunked was: “If girls don’t want to get pregnant, they shouldn’t be opening their legs to everyone.”

“Wow,” I’d chuckled to myself, “he didn’t even wait 5 minutes before falling back on old-fashioned slut-shaming. Most anti-choicers at least pretend it’s about the fetus for a little while longer.” Suddenly I realised what I needed to talk about at SlutWalk – the intersection between rape culture and the anti-choice movement.

He then sets out the speech he gave, the key paragraph of which follows:

This is what rape culture looks like – the belief that what women do between their legs should have some bearing on what legal, medical and emergency services are available to them.

It is a reflection of a society where girls are taught in abstinence-only classes that men are such slaves to their hormones that girls are the ones who must take responsibility for keeping men out of their pants. It is a reflection of a society where a woman can be denied emergency contraception by her doctor, before being told, “Well, you should have kept your legs shut.”

While always dangerous, the attempt to reclaim and reimagine words that are ugly, hateful, and used by the powerful as weapons against the powerless (to quote Ms. Walia), it is also an important exercise. The word "slut" is an ugly word, used to demean not only women's actions, but to set a moral threshold by which society can and should determine our level not only of empathy, but legal and other services provided to them.

No movement is going to be perfect, no issue-advocacy pure, no statement of intent free from ambiguity and trouble. As these two very different pieces make clear, however, at the center of the SlutWalk movement is not a defense of privileged women to continue the privilege to define their sexuality and femininity at the expense of women of color and women of other cultures and classes. At the heart of the movement, as I have stated again and again, is the fight to ensure that women are treated by society, the legal system, and the medical services, as competent moral agents who are not responsible for their victimization.

The continuity between the SlutWalk movement and the pro-choice movement should be clear enough. Just as the leaders of the anti-choice movement are, at the end of the day, concerned far less with the fetus than they are with punishing women for being bad, so, too are efforts to redefine rape, to insist that women shouldn't dress or act slutty in order to avoid becoming victims of sexual violence, and the general effort to define what is proper, acceptable behavior and dress for women. The effort by various powers-that-be to police women's lives, bodies, and restrict their moral choice not only offend against the notion that women are capable of making informed choices about their lives; it also institutionalizes certain acts of violence against women as acceptable because some women, by choosing to dress and/or act in ways some would deem "slutty" deserve to be treated that way, and are not deserving of legal protection, or medical treatment.

Every effort to redefine rape, to restrict women's access to health care, to police women's behavior, comes down, in the end, to the belief by many powerful individuals that women, not being competent to make decisions about their own lives and bodies, are in need of protection from others. Failing to accept that protection - opening their legs, in other words - renders them outside the bounds of social empathy. This is why I support the movement, even for all its limitations. This is why, if I had the chance, I march. This is why I will continue to highlight efforts of supporters to make clear the stakes.

It isn't about being slutty. It's about taking that word away from the powerful as a weapon used to demean and further victimize women.

Reading

There are few things that almost guarantee a yawn than reading something about method. Telling other how one does anything, from putting up a tent to reading a book, is by its very nature dull stuff. All the same, I think a few comments are in order in light of some of the comments made on yesterday's post.

It shouldn't need to be said that when we are reading the Bible, we are reading an assortment of literary styles, written over hundreds, even thousands of years, collected together in its final form over 1800 years ago, in languages that are no longer used. Except, of course, it does need to be said. It shouldn't need to be said that the people who wrote and edited these various writings carried around with them, usually without even thinking about it, all sorts of things - ideas, assumptions, mores - that are completely foreign to contemporary readers. Except, of course, it does need to be said. It shouldn't need to be said that reading and interpreting and appropriating any part of the Bible is always a provisional thing, a process that is never complete, and to be done together as a community in conversation (even heated conversation!). Except, of course, it does need to be said.

The discovery of history as a category to be applied to human society is a relatively recent invention. It was first applied as a critical tool to the Christian Scriptures in the newly invigorated Prussian University of Berlin. While it is not correct to claim, as many have, that prior to this little critical reading of Scripture existed - one need only consider the careful textual analysis the High Scholastic applied to various received texts to determine authorship to understand the error of this view - what became known, in its first incarnation, as Higher Criticism took a new approach to the Bible. While never calling in to question the inspired nature of the works under scrutiny, in treating the Biblical texts as the specific products of a specific people in a specific time and place, historical criticism put a distance between them and contemporary readers. This distance needed to be bridged through careful study, attention to revealing details, and an understanding of the many things we do not know about the authors, let alone editors and compilers, of the works. This space created both problems and opportunities for people of faith; by relativizing the textual witness, we can understand our own always partial grasp of the experience of faith and its subject. We also, of course, raise the specter of privileging one perspective over another - either that of the text, or of ourselves - in the process.

It is important to keep in mind that the historical critical method, as it grew and developed, was itself a product of certain historical forces, unstated assumptions, and specific to a time and place - a newly reformed Prussian Kingdom yearning to break free of the choke hold of the Holy Roman Empire. In the tragedy and triumph of the Napoleonic Wars, many saw the hand of God moving the give the German people a land of their own. The triumphalist philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling became reimagined and reworked in Hegel's works, which saw in History the movement away from barbarism and toward true humanity and freedom. In the 9th Symphony, Beethoven - whether he understood it or not - expressed this same sense of triumphant renewal and possibility.

Inherent, however, in all these various intellectual and artistic movements were sinister moments, minor notes among the major themes. Antisemitism is rampant in the writings of the moralists Kant and Fichte. The naked nationalism of Hegel, the inherent superiority of the German people over other nations and races is "proved" through the movement of the Idea expressed in History. The discovery of history was as much about proving the superiority of the present moment over the past as it was recognizing the simple, banal reality of temporal distance creating social and cultural difference.

Historical criticism, then, carries as much baggage as any intellectual movement, is limited in how far it can take us in to any text (Biblical or otherwise), and recognizing and acknowledging that is an important part of using it.

I always find it fascinating to read people who use the Bible to support odd ideas. Leviticus to support discrimination against gays and lesbians; the admonition that women are to give birth in pain as punishment as justification to keep anesthesia from them; St. Paul's letter to Philemon to justify slavery. What is fascinating to me is not only the lack of critical acumen involved in doing this. It is also the absence of any theological hermeneutic. The purpose of Scripture is to give to ever-new generations of the faithful an account of the original witness to who God is, by showing us how God interacts with humanity. We see a piece of that puzzle when we read the Bible. It helps us, if we are faithful and carry on the tradition of reading and figuring it out together, to fit our own piece in to the picture that is not yet finished.

It is important to recognize the limited nature of the Biblical witness. It is necessary to insist that the description of the LORD's presence and action as given in the passage from 2 Samuel quoted yesterday is socially and culturally light-years from us. It is important to call it what it is - a view of the Israelite's God, carried around on his little wooden box throne from place to place - of a piece with ancient views of deity. It might even be necessary to note that the story in question - the striking of Uzzah for daring to reach out his hand to the Ark of the Covenant - an example of a kind of magical thinking about divinity that is completely foreign to us.

Historical criticism can tell us these things. If we stop there, however, we are only telling part of the story. Unless we are willing to insist that this story, for all that it comes from a time and place and people who ways of thinking and living bear no relationship to ours, the story becomes unintelligible. It becomes historical artifact, rather than living testimony to the living God we profess in faith. The story becomes an interesting piece of historical fiction, rather than something that tells us who God is. It isn't enough to proclaim historical continuity between the faith of Israel and Judah and discipleship to Jesus Christ, if we are unwilling or unable to claim texts which are strange, or socially or morally offensive, or simply unintelligible (try reading Numbers and making sense of most of it, which is little more than a census roll, interspersed with legends and tales of the Israelite "murmuring" against God) for our living faith today.

The very different example is the way texts from Leviticus are used to justify bigotry against sexual minorities. No matter how hard pressed to justify lifting these texts above the rest, the only thing we continue to hear and read is that, having been included in the Bible, they are there for our instruction. My own view is slightly different. Yes, the texts are in the Bible, but it would seem ludicrous to lift just these couple verses and privilege them above all the others, when the church jettisoned the rest of the Levitical code almost from its founding. At the same time, it is necessary to acknowledge, in both sorrow and repentance, that they are a part of our Scriptures. We cannot ignore them. We cannot set them to one side, or explain them away. We are called to wrestle with these texts, no less than those we find more acceptable, less offensive. We cannot dodge the reality they exist as part of the Bible anymore than we can dodge the triumphal calls to military slaughter in Joshua, or the talking donkey in Judges, or Lot's wife turning to a pillar of salt.

It is never easy to make sense of the writings in the Bible. Anyone who says otherwise has never really tried. It is necessary, however, if one wishes to be faithful, to use whatever critical tools are available, to take the texts seriously as witness to the Divine life with creation. In order to make sense of who this God is whom we claim to worship, we need to be willing to refuse to privilege our own prejudices, even when we so clearly see the prejudices of others. We need not to set aside whatever we may call texts of terror. To do so, for me, betrays a fear of confronting our own faithlessness in the face of offense to our own sensibilities, sensibilities we so easily see as limited in others.