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.

Serious Business

N.B.: If reading some thoughts on a Biblical passage isn't your cup of tea, you can move along.

David and all the people with him set out and went from Baale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who is enthroned on the cherubim. They carried the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart with the ark of God; and Ahio went in front of the ark. David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs* and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.

When they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God.

2 Samuel 6:2-7

If you aren't made uncomfortable by this story, then you aren't paying attention. If you aren't challenged by this story, then you don't really care. If you want to skip this story, then you are a coward. How is it possible that we Christians can proclaim in faith after this story, "This is the word of God"? How do we reconcile the murder of Uzzah with our profession of the boundless, unmerited grace of a God who wants only to live with us?

Rather than just skip over this story, or try to create some way of squaring a circle rhetorically, I think it is best just to let this story stand here and tell us what we are about as people of faith. When we are met by the risen Christ, the question we all must ask is, Who is this God, who has given all that we may live in blessed community together for this God? More than any profession of creation, more than any doctrinal statement regarding incarnation, more than any words lifted in song in praise of some abstract idea of "God", this story stands as testimony to the One who meets us.

When Moses encounters the LORD in the burning bush, he is commanded to remove his shoes as he approaches because Moses is now treading upon holy ground. When we proclaim, with the Psalmist, that the LORD alone is holy, we may if we give the word a thought, consider Moses' bare feet on the rocky hillside. Uzzah, however, his lifeless body lying next to the Ark of the Covenant, isn't much remembered or remarked upon. I contend, however, that this moment of Divine wrath and destruction tells us what we really need to know about holiness, about Divinity, about the God who meets us in Jesus Christ. The fire of the Spirit that warmed the heart of John Wesley, that kindles in our hearts when we sit in the quiet of prayer, is as nothing compared to the inferno that struck out at Uzzah, who, in his defense, sought to protect the Ark of the Covenant.

This needs to be kept in mind. Uzzah and his brother, Ahio, are in charge of chaperoning the Ark with the royal company and the army. As they are moving along, the Ark jostles. Uzzah does little more than any one of us would have done. He reaches his hand to the Ark to steady it, to keep it from falling, perhaps breaking. It is more than just a box holding the stone tablets of the Law. It is the throne of the LORD, traveling with the King and the King's army, Emmanuel, God with them.

For this perfectly understandable, all too human response, Uzzah is struck down because, as the author of 2 Samuel says, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah.

This story seems to confirm the old, naive idea that in the two testaments of the Bible, we have to do with different gods. Even more than the Divine genocide in Sodom, the divinely inspired wars Joshua waged against the Canaanites in which whole cities were slaughtered and razed to the ground, the wiping out of life through the flood, this death of one man in Divine wrath indicates this is a God who does not regard human life as worthy. A sane person would be perfectly sensible in wanting nothing whatsoever to do with a god who views human life so cheaply. If we are, indeed, God's precious creation, it seems insane to insist this same God would strike out and kill a man who did little more than reach his arm out toward a wooden box.

I contend, however, that this is, indeed, the same God of whom the author of the first epistle of St. John could say, "God is love." This is the same God St. Paul proclaimed as being in Christ, proving God's love for us. This is the same God whom Jesus called Father, and in whose name and for whose purpose went willingly to die on a Roman crucifix.

God is love, to be sure, and shows us what this love is in Jesus Christ. We can never forget, however, that the subject of that sentence is not "love". Love is the predicate. While the true meaning of love is exhausted when applied to the subject, the subject is not swallowed up in the predicate. God is also holy. We can play around with doctrinal discussions of "divinity" and all the fun, Greek stuff about omnipotence and omniscience, play word games about the self-contradiction inherent in these words, and satisfy ourselves that we can therefore prove that God, as so described cannot exist. Without referring to who the Bible says God is, however, it is all meaningless drivel.

I will go further. God killing Uzzah makes us uncomfortable because it betrays the smallness of our faith. Far too often I believe that, if we think of "God" at all, we think either of a cosmic Mr. Fix-It, or an indulgent parent. In our decadent, bourgeois day and age, we have lost the memory that, once upon a time, holiness was about more than just moral rectitude or the clarity of personal faith. We in the western Protestant churches, for all our insistence on adhering to Scriptural norms by and large are little more than liturgical mimes, going through the motions of worship with no sound or substance. We use words like "God", and "holy" and we never consider these words have meaning, specific meaning, powerful meaning.

Deadly meaning.

I have said off and on over the years that being a Christian is serious business. The rampant shallowness, the silliness, the ignorance of so much of what passes for discussions about and the practice of faith boil down, for me, to either not knowing or caring that being a Christian has nothing to do with me. Or us. All of it, the whole thing, has to do with God. Not just any God, not some idea of God, not a set of definitions dredged up from somewhere. When we profess our faith in the God revealed in the fullness of Jesus Christ crucified and risen, we are professing our faith in a specific God, a very real God, a God with a history, a God who neither knows nor cares about how we choose to understand what "divine" or "holy" or even "God" may mean, because this God has already shown us, if we have been paying attention, what those words mean.

Being serious means, among many other things, paying attention. If we are paying attention, we may realize that the business of faith isn't easy, or pretty, or fun. It definitely isn't cool, you won't win friends and influence people. If we are paying attention, we may notice that God's love and care for us revealed in Jesus Christ, the God in whose sheltering wings we are cradled, who preserves us and sustains us each second of our existence, also calls us, in the words of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Mark, to hate our families. We are called, indeed, to hate our own lives. We are called to preach the love of God, pursuing God's justice even if it kills us. Unless I am mistaken, Uzzah is hardly the first person whose corpse can be laid at the feet of God. Nor the last.

The God we proclaim to follow, whose claim on our lives is total, is the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It is the God revealed, also, in the wrathful killing of Uzzah. This is a God whose holiness is defined not only by the life and love that flow out to all creation, but also on making clear that this holiness is for God. Our lives are not ours anymore. Uzzah, as a protector of the Ark of the Covenant, may well have thought he understood what that meant, but he did not. To his peril. We are no different from Uzzah, forgetting that words like "God" and "holy" and "obedience" actually mean things, things with specific referents. We need to remember, as Uzzah did not, that we are dealing with God.

This is serious business, folks. Having died and risen with Christ in our baptisms, our lives are not our own anymore. Being claimed by God is dangerous. The lifeless body lying next to the new cart carrying the Ark of the Covenant is mute testimony to just how serious.

Who Is My Neighbor?

I have no wish to pick continual fights. Really. That's not what this is about. At the same time, I want to address something I read on Facebook yesterday (you know who you are. . .) with reference to moral/political disapproval of the Slutwalk movement. A friend made the perfectly valid criticism that the Slutwalks can be construed as an elite, white phenomenon, an effort by privileged persons to have even more privileges, at the explicit expense of others. I have heard this criticism, and it does temper any serious enthusiasm for the movement. At the same time, the specific issue addressed by using the word "slut" in the title is the on-going victimization of victims of sexual violence by implicating them in their own victimization. It is for this reason, more than any other, I support the movement, and would walk if there were one close enough.

At the same time, I find more troubling the stated preference for "solidarity" with women in Saudi Arabia and other countries with gross violations of basic standards of women's rights, or in the Sahel in Africa where female circumcision is still common practice. While these are, indeed, issues about which to express outrage and for which more work needs to be done, I find it troubling, to say the least, that one would "prefer" such solidarity, which while morally admirable entails no risk of personal involvement through the messiness of actually getting to know those subjected to such treatment, or risking one's own personal freedom by stating such solidarity from a distance. It sets up a false choice - either we support a bunch of rich white women or we support a bunch of poor, suffering women of different races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs. On its face, it should be obvious why such is false.

More to the point, involvement in the morally messy lives of persons whom we may well encounter each and every day places a far greater level of moral commitment and potential cost upon us. Regardless of the socio-economic status of the women in question, I doubt few would believe it in any way justifiable to say, as far too many in both law enforcement and the media have, that victims of sexual violence are somehow complicit in their own victimization because of how they dress or otherwise appear in public. To be blunt, slutiness is in the eye of the beholder. A woman returning from a night on the town, dressed to attract men at the club, is not in any way morally culpable for violence visited upon her for that reason. This whole movement began in Toronto for precisely this reason; a police officer was quoted as saying of a victim of sexual assault that she was dressed "slutty", in no small way implying that she should have expected some kind of unwanted advance.

It is easy to stand way far away from horrible situations and call for them to change. In particular, when doing so entails little more than the cost of internet access, we reward ourselves for our concern without any real involvement. On the other hand, a young woman down the street, a friend of a friend, perhaps even a somewhat prominent member of the community, attacked for no other reason than there are men who believe that women exist solely for satisfying their momentary lusts, should call forth a more immediate, and far more dangerous (for us) response.

Finally, just as an aside, when Jesus was asked the above question, according to the narrative in the Gospel of St. Luke, he responded with the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is our neighbor? The person we encounter who is in need. It is this encounter, this involvement, this risk-taking, that lies at the heart of it all. Not just this story, but my preference for supporting something that, while certainly not perfect, nevertheless addresses head on the continuing moral infantilizing of women. In the end, it isn't about who is or is not privileged, or who is more in need of expressions of concerns. It's about who is right here, in or near my life, asking for help. I don't pass out questionnaires before doing things for people. Someone right here next to me needing my help is my neighbor. That's it, and that's all.

Something Soothing This Way Comes

Happy birthday yesterday, Bobbie Gentry!

I've been overwhelmed by a mixture of sadness and an anger I wish I could root out of myself. In my desperation, I've decided to turn to some slightly moldy oldies that remind me of my childhood, of times when my biggest concern was what my Mom was fixing for dinner. This song brings to mind childhood trips to visit relatives in Dayton, OH, my wonderful cousins, my . . . interesting . . . maternal aunts and uncles, the time my brother tried making popcorn in my Aunt Joan's kitchen and covered the floor in the stuff. Simple stuff. A reprieve from the madness of the moment.



This was the song that was playing the very first time I kissed a girl at a high school dance. If that makes me a late bloomer in that regard, that's OK, because I think I made up for lost time. She's a friend on FB now, and I'm happy about that for any number of reasons. Maybe Jo Nesbo is right, we can't really recapture those moments that will always linger in our lives. That they linger, though, is evidence of just how special, how important, how vital they are. I may never be not-quite-sixteen again, surprised at the warmth of that moment when I first kissed a girl there on that dance floor, but I can recall it so vividly, and all the tangled adolescent emotions that, really, I don't need to do it again.



Early mornings, it's nice to have music playing. It has to be the right music. Soothing, itself rather quiet. Music that doesn't intrude too much, but adds something to the ambiance of the sun rising, the birds feeding and chattering. More than just background music, less than mood-setting. More reflective of the moment, as my wife and I sit together, reading, drinking coffee, chatting in quiet voices.

Now, I think I'm ready for whatever might come my way.

Improv (Travel Bleary Capricorn) - King Crimson, live, 1969
Refuge of the Roads - Joni Mitchell
Good Lovin' - Grateful Dead (1980, Nassau Colloseum)
Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3 (Live) - Pink Floyd
Ripples - Genesis
The 13th - The Cure
Play With Me - Jeff Beck
Eleven Four - Dave Brubeck Quartet, Live at Carnegie Hall, 1963
The Acid Queen - The Who, The Complete Live At Leeds
Vicarious - Tool

Because it's in keeping with the theme, here's Joni, who in her old age has turned in to a bit of a crank.

The Blood Of Abel

The bodies have yet to be buried, the families are only beginning the long journey of mourning and grieving, Norway is only beginning to struggle with this eruption of murderous violence, and all anyone seems to be able to do is either make sure that Anders Breivik's Christianity is disallowed or defend his beliefs without defending his actions. Does anyone, anywhere, want to stand with the families of the victims, while admitting culpability with the ideas that spawned one man's murderous rampage? Breivik is just the latest in a line of bloody-handed Christians, going all the way back to Constantine's decision to put crosses on the shields of his warriors to ensure his victory in battle. Jews and Muslims, Christian minority groups labeled "heretical" and women accused of witchcraft, Protestants and Anabaptists, African slaves and indigenous people in the newly-encountered Western Hemisphere have all felt the sting of the spear at the end of the cross Christians carried.

The steps from "They are living in error," to, "They pose a threat to our way of life," to, "Let's kill 'em all and all those traitors in our midst to save ourselves," are so small, it's a wonder it hasn't occurred on this grand a scale elsewhere. Every dehumanizing word uttered against Muslims and gays, against non-believers and those seen as appeasers of enemies of Our Way Of Life is just more ideological ammunition, helping to support those who wish to make the same kind of decision Anders Breivik did.

We Christians of all stripes bear an enormous burden of guilt and shame. History is strewn with the corpses of those who stood in the way of the victorious cross. All of us - I don't care what your denomination is, what your ideological or theological self-identification may be - share a certain amount of responsibility for what happened in Oslo. We just have not done enough - we can never do enough - to atone for the mass graves brought about by those who call themselves Christian. We haven't done enough to make clear that we are servants of all. We haven't made clear that ours is not a claim of certainty, but of faith. We haven't made clear that, rather than tell the world how wrong it is, we are called to live out how much God loves this world.

The blood of Abel cries out, and we do not hear it. Instead, like Cain, we make our excuses. To paraphrase Jefferson, I tremble for myself and my fellow Christians when I remember that God is just.

Defaulting While At War

I know I have written about this issue before. I just want to say it again for those who aren't paying attention. We are on the brink of defaulting on our sovereign debt at a time when we have troops in combat in three different places (please don't say, "But we're out of Iraq!" because we have 45,000 or so troops there in the midst of an on-going civil war), with obligations to a fourth - Libya - that strain the credulity of the Obama Administration's arguments that it doesn't count as a war.

When terrorists attacked the United States 10 years ago, Congress had just passed a massive tax cut, weighted heavily toward the highest income brackets. As it became clear there would be a military component to our response, the first thing to be tossed to one side should have been those tax cuts. Please remember, even Pres. Bush claimed the war would be long and difficult. We had troops and advisers sent not only to Central Asia and the Middle East, but the Philippines, Indonesia, Africa - pretty much anywhere there was a potential or actual threat of Islamist activity. Rather than seek a formal, Congressional declaration of war - as the Constitution demands - the Bush Administration merely rode a wave of public favor in sending troops to Afghanistan. This was an odd choice, as Congress would have made such a declaration easily.

Had there been a formal declaration of hostilities, the Administration and Congress could have acted under its authority to mobilize much of the economy and industrial infrastructure to support it. Wage and price controls could have been enacted. Tax rates that under normal conditions would have been considered unduly confiscatory would have passed without a dissenting vote. Consumer economic activity would have become secondary to keeping the United States on a war footing.

Most important, with a formal declaration of hostilities, a formal end would also be clear. The various war-time economic mobilization measures would have been removed slowly, to reduce the amount of shock to the system. The tax rates could have been lowered, at the very least, to Clinton-era rates, and the drop would have felt like a huge cut, freeing up billions of dollars in demand.

Instead, we did the whole thing, from Afghanistan through Iraq and now to Yemen and Libya, as if we could finance a major military venture on a wing and a prayer. Bush Administration officials appearing before Congress made up numbers about the cost of an invasion of Iraq, then speculated that we would either confiscate their oil wealth, or they would gladly give it to us for having invaded their country.

The on-going wars have been fought not only on the cheap, but by and large invisibly. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen are called upon, again and again, to return to the field of battle, using equipment that is taking a beating from the use. Not just regular troops, either. National Guard and Reserve units are sent over, performing support roles yet still exposed to the hazards of combat in a war without fronts. The toll on their bodies and minds continues to rise, as evidenced by Pres. Obama's decision a few weeks back to send condolence letters to the families of military personnel who commit suicide.

And now we are weeks away from defaulting. While most people are pointing fingers, insisting it is someone else's fault for the situation we are in, it would be nice if everyone stopped for a moment and realized where the fault really sits - on all of us. This is our problem, and we need to find and demand a solution to it as soon as possible. We can no longer afford, in any sense of that word, to pretend we have the capacity to operate as a nation at peace even as hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters face combat.