Auld Lang Syne

The whirlwind is about to start.  It feels like that blur of stars as the Millennium Falcon enters hyperspace or the Enterprise goes to warp.  It's going to be 2013 before I get to take a breath again, and the new year is going to bring a lot of changes, so I think it would be good to take a minute to reflect on the year that was.
First, let me say this to 2012: good riddance.  I don't feel this way about every year, in fact, there are some that I would have liked to last a little longer, but by any standard that I can imagine at the moment 2012 was one of the worst years on record.  However, I will try to find some good in at least a few aspects.  First on a micro level, I enjoyed reasonably good health.  I didn't have any diseased organs removed or find out I had any new diseases (that was for 2010, the year we were supposed to make contact).  To the bad, there was more than enough earthshaking personal tragedy in our immediate context to give 2005 a run for its money (that was the year my brother Jonathan died, just to give you some idea of the scale of sadness we're talking about here).  There was a tragic accident where an Amish boy died in my neighbor's silo, followed a week later by a triple homicide where a father killed his two little girls and his estranged wife (and I had been counseling them, and the family attended the church where I'm the pastor and I had to do a triple funeral), then as the icing on June my neighbor's sister suddenly passed away at 34, leaving two little kids and a stunned family behind.  I put that all in one sentence because it happened in a three week span.  I didn't even mention another tragedy in the community involving a domestic incident where an estranged husband shot his father in law in the neck (that was bad too, and it happened one day after the triple homicide).  Pardon me if this is starting to read like some sort of cruel joke, but that's actually what it felt like.  At the end of the summer a really good man from my other congregation rolled a tractor on himself and left the world a little poorer for his absence.  Finally, after Thanksgiving we had to have our chocolate Lab, Maggie, our good friend of almost ten years, put to sleep.  Amidst all this local and personal stuff there were the national tragedies in Aurora Colorado, a mall in Oregon and an elementary school, a freaking elementary school, in Newtown Connecticut.  That's why I say to 2012: Good Riddance!
But let's not leave it at that, because that would let the darkness win.
Let's move on through this mess into something hopeful shall we?
First word: Peace.
We need some peace.  We need peace in our hearts and minds, we need peace in our families, our communities, our nation and our world.  Are earth shaking tragedies going to stop?  No, but that's precisely why we need peace.  We need peace that does not depend on external circumstances.  We need peace like an Amish man, who had just lost his 18 year old son, had when he came to console the man who had been working with him when it happened.  We need peace, like the strange inexplicable peace that I felt when I stepped into the pulpit to proclaim the resurrection behind the caskets of two dead children and their mother.   We need peace that can face the rage of the void and say: "Be Still!"
Second word: Enough.
We live in a world that never has enough.  Part of the reason why tragic things happen is because we never have enough.  Some of us honestly don't have enough, some of us are threatened every day by a sense that everything we have will be taken away.  Some of us just don't have enough time.  But, truth be told, most of us have too much and it's eating our souls.  Some people have too much because they take from others.  Some people have too much because they just can't learn to say, "no more."  But for the people with a little or a lot, enough is an important word.  It's a word we need to learn to say with more frequency, clarity and conviction.  Unless we get a grip on the concept, the reality will be that we will never have enough.
Third word: Trust.
What is happening in our world right now is a failure of trust.  Nations don't trust each other, factions and political groups don't trust each other.  Often times, families don't even trust each other.  I would say it's a failure of love, but I know thanks to Wendell Berry that "we must love where we cannot trust."  We can love someone in the abstract, but trust is a personal thing.  You either trust someone or you don't, you can't really help it very much.  Some people seem to be trusting by nature, not many, but some.  For most of us though, it's rather an uphill slog.  I've loved certain people I did not trust, but I've had a hard time trusting people that I already love.  The most tragic failure of trust is the fact that we, as a species, and even as a segment of of our species that pursues a quest for God known as religion, do not trust God.  We'll give it lip service, but when the rubber hits the road, we would rather do it ourselves than have to trust God.
If there's one over-riding good lesson that 2012 has taught me, it's trust God.  This year taught me that by putting me so close to the chaos of the void that I had no choice.  It put me so close to a situation where children were harmed that I could not, simply shrug it off and move on.  2012 has given me the faces of two little girls that are never going to grow up and have lives, which is a sadness that I will carry for a long time.  It has also forced me, as a pastor, a father and a human being, to trust that those faces and those lives are in the everlasting arms of God.  I must trust that.

May old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.
May old acquaintance be forgot, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.

It's Time to Consider Our Symbols

And then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"

"My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many."

-Mark 5:9

As a modern person, I find Jesus interaction with demons a little unnerving.  Maybe it's because I have been trained by my secular education to disregard the possibility of supernatural evil, after all don't we have enough natural evil to go around?  But when it comes to things like the shootings in Connecticut, demons all of the sudden begin to seem awfully real.  The man that Jesus confronts in the region of Gerasa, across the sea of Galilee from his usual stomping grounds, is described as living among the tombs.  People had tried restraining him with chains, but he broke them, in other words the standard practice of treatment had not worked.  Living among the tombs is a powerful image for people in pre-industrial societies. These tombs were not the sanitary, well manicured graveyards that we all automatically picture.  These were caves and cairns where bodies lay decomposing and vermin of all sorts scurried about feasting on human remains.  And the Legion drove a man to live there.

Rather than being disgusted and angry with the man who was afflicted by these demons, Jesus has compassion for him.  In many situations, like the one I experienced here in June and the one that Newtown CT is living through right now, that is difficult, if not nigh impossible, for human being who is not the embodiment of a merciful and loving God.  And the Legion would be just fine with that.  Legion was not afraid of anyone, not the people who could chain them up, not the anger of the townsfolk or the power of the secular government, but they were afraid of Jesus, because he could cast them out.

Another facet of the biblical accounts of demon possession that troubles my soul is the rather confusing dynamic that is created when we begin to consider mental illness.  There is no doubt in my mind that much of the pathology that was once labeled demon possession was in fact mental illness.  The frightening corollary of that belief is that at least some of what we now classify as mental illness may be demon possession.  

Camouflage is perhaps the devil's most cunning skill.  As Goethe's Mephistopheles said in the play Faust, "Not if the devil had them by the neck..." would most people even be aware of the grip that sin and evil has on their lives, and of course that is the great dilemma we face.  It is not a problem of classifying mental illness over and against demonic possession, it is rather a need to recognize that both are tools by which human lives are broken apart and evil lashes out at the world.

When people are trying to deal with that lashing out, we often come to an impass.  Yesterday, in the unofficial religion of most of America, the NFL, players had moments of silence, they hugged children, they put decals on their helmets, they wrote words of sympathy and remembrance for the victims on their gloves and shoes.  In short, they revealed a rather poignant example of what sets human beings apart from most other animals: the use of symbols.  Words are a rather specific kind of symbol, but as a species, we can attach symbols to just about anything.

If you have read the blogs from the last few days, you know I am rather obsessed with wrapping my mind around the large cultural forces that create an environment, where someone, even a mentally ill or demon possessed person, would direct their violence deliberately at children.  Violence of this particular sort seems new to us.  Children are far too often the victims of physical or sexual abuse.  Children are far too often the collateral damage of large scale catastrophes and violence, but this seemed to be different, because there was no motive other than simply to kill children, on a rather massive scale.  Something that holds our humanity together was seriously broken in Adam Lanza.

What circumstances produced this unholy anomaly?  "My name is Legion, for we are many."  Broken home, mental illness (and maybe demon possession), a culture of violence, access to weapons, disconnection from a stable community and God only knows what else.  The end result was catastrophic, and we want to blame someone or something.  The problem is that the devil is good at camouflage, he attacks from many angles and leaves little forensic evidence in the midst of all that carnage.

In the absence of a clear answer, perhaps it would be good to analyze our most powerful symbols as a culture, not to assign blame, but to try and understand how we got out here among the tombs of all these dead children.  The first symbol that I can't seem to get away from in all this is the gun.  A gun is a symbol of power, you could say our country would not even exist if it weren't for the invention of the firearm.  The American Revolution would not have been numerically or strategically possible without the ability for the colonials to attack the British troops from a distance.  Without guns we would still be subjects of the Crown, without guns it is very possible that democracy would not be possible.  It is quite possible that the gun is wired into our cultural DNA.  Guns give us the ability to kill from a distance.  If you are going to kill someone with a knife or a sword, it's an up close and personal kind of thing.  Guns are not dependent on physical strength and with a minimum of training they can make a five foot woman every bit as formidable as a six foot man.  After all, killing from a distance was how David slew Goliath.

This is not good or bad in any a priori sense, it just is.  Guns have real power and symbolic power.  They symbolize freedom to a people who have made freedom one of their highest virtues.  When symbolic and actual power align, things are truly dangerous, not just physically but spiritually.  Our obsession with guns is closely tied to an underlying symbol that is perhaps the most definitive symbol of American culture: the individual.

How can an individual be a symbol you ask?  Easy, you just divorce the idea of an individual from any actual living individual and invest your thinking in a concept of individuality, without ever asking the hard question (that many of our founding fathers actually spent a great deal of time thinking about), what is the responsibility of the individual to the community.  There is no doubt that if the gun is part of our DNA than individuality is practically our entire genome.  We idolize the mythology of the mountain men and the cowboy, we hold on to the image of our founding fathers as the rugged individuals that tamed a new continent, we easily forget that their greatest challenge and accomplishment was actually forming a community, a great union upon this continent or something like that.

The biggest challenge for Americans has never been how we take care of number one, but how we stay together as a society.  We easily forget that in the idolatry of personal (individual) rights.  We have to get better at the community thing if we as individuals are going to be truly free to flourish.  If our children are going to be safe in their schools and community.  It was an individual that fired those guns, but the factors and forces that put the gun in his hand and gave him the sickness to use it on children were indeed Legion.

The Day After Yesterday

You who build these altars now,

to sacrifice your children,

You must not do it anymore.

A scheme is not a vision,

and you never have been tested, by an angel or a god.

-Leonard Cohen, The Story of Isaac

Some of the shock has worn off, but I'm still pretty angry, I'm even more sad.
It's in my nature to start to try and analyze things that impact me this strongly.  I have read many articles and blogs about various aspects of the Newtown shootings.  I have heard people blame our rather poor gun control measures, which certainly seems to be a conversation that needs to happen. I have heard people blame the fact that we don't let teachers pack heat to work, which, quite frankly, is insane and is a conversation that doesn't need to happen.  Let's just say that guns are dangerous, and as such should be regulated, and those who want to own them responsibly should have no trouble doing the paperwork and paying the cost of that regulation.
What is far more interesting to me is the discussion about the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) of the culture in which we live.  There have been a few who have observed that America is rather obsessed with violence, there have been a few who have observed that the media make monsters into celebrities.  This is not a new idea, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is almost 20 years old.  The role of the media in this disaster is right in our face.  They're on the scene, they're frantically breaking news as fast as they can.  They engage in speculation about motive, they misidentify perpetrators, they hang on every word that already overwhelmed emergency responders and, even worse, survivors and victims families can mutter into a microphone.
Ultimately though, I can't blame the media any more than I blame drug dealers, they're just supplying the needs of the addicted.  Our culture is addicted to the next big crisis, we wait for it, we prepare for it, and yet somehow we're always surprised when it turns out to be worse and different than the kind of calamity we were anticipated.
The question is: why?  Why are we so addicted to catastrophe?
This was the first dramatic national news event that I witnessed via Twitter.  I had a moment where I felt like Neo when he first started to see the Matrix.  The Tweets gradually all focused on Newtown, they moved into a fairly synchronous expression of sadness and outrage, for about four hours.  Then the blockheads got their bearings and the people who said this happened because we banned prayer in public school started to pop up here and there.  The radical gun control people started shouting, "We told you so!"  A few hours later the anti-gun control people responded, with almost maniacal zeal that the problem was really not enough guns, because as you know, if you ban guns, only the bad guys will have them.  Sorry, I thought I really had dealt with that above.
The point is that the twitterverse moved like a living creature, it adapted, it expressed emotion and eventually it lapsed into neurosis.  This morning, things are more or less back to normal, except for hashing out the details and the occasional reaction/analysis piece.  I began to see the potential, and the danger, of the electronic social sphere that many of us, most of us under 40, inhabit.  You can see information undulate before your eyes: fact and opinion, sanity and mania, honest wrestling with issues and propaganda.  The problem is, unless you have a fairly solid intellectual, emotional and spiritual grounding in the "real" world you are fairly ill-equipped to tell the difference between the helpful and the harmful.
As I discussed yesterday, our culture seems to be living in a perpetual state of spiritual dysfunction.  Our parents (the leaders of our nation, and the experts and celebrities who become defacto leaders) are having a rough patch, they have been for a long time.  They don't communicate, they just shout at each other and they can't even pull it together long enough to have a nice Christmas dinner.  The kids (us) are starting to act out.  The most vulnerable and unbalanced wonder what they can do to get anyone's attention, apparently the answer is kill children.  It certainly gets our attention.
I can't help but think of the parallel with the old gods of paganism.  Pagans would invent a system that they thought would please their gods, it usually involved sacrifice.  You make the right sacrifice, the god is pleased, he/she gives you what you want.  The problem is that those gods tend to get progressively thirstier; at first grain and fruit is good enough, then it has to be animals, then it has to be humans (no worries there though there are always some enemies you'd rather get rid of anyway), but even that doesn't work so it's on to virgins and then eventually, you guessed it: children.  Think that's not how it works?  Read the Bible and just about any history of the collapse of Aztec and Mayan civilizations.  It's way too consistent to be coincidence.
I'm sure there were some sane, level-headed people who said, "hey wait, we can't do this to our own children."  They probably became ancillary sacrifices, just to make extra sure.  I'm going to go out on a limb and be one of those people.  We have to do better.  Our "modern," "educated," secular society is living out some very old patterns, and the only thing that can put those old gods to death is the One True God, who instead of demanding the sacrifice of children, became a child instead.
We need to get better, we need to get better at handling mental illness, we need to get better at how we treat each other from top to bottom.  Most of all, the thing we need to put to death is the idea that violence solves problems. We will never be able to protect those we love perfectly, but we can do a lot better than we're doing now.

Dysfunctional Behavior

I am really happy that 2012 is almost over.  This year has been full of tragedy, ranging from the sort of unavoidable sad things that happen every day, to things that are unspeakable and horrific.  As I watched the coverage of the shootings in Newton CT, I couldn't help but hear haunting echoes of the voices in this community about six months ago.  Here, in the beginning of June a man killed his two little girls, and his estranged wife.  I heard many of the same things that the people of Newtown are saying today: "I'm in shock," "I can't believe this could happen here!"  The hard reality we need to face is that this kind of thing does happen "here," wherever here happens to be.
One of the diseases of our culture is the dislocation that we so often feel.  We can shrug off too much tragedy, as long as it happens somewhere else.  What we need to get a grip on here is that we are part of a big family.  When violence like this takes place it diminishes all of us.  We can read about peoples lives being torn apart, we can hear about people's children dying, but until we realize that those children are our children, these tragedies are going to come.
I consider it a blessing that I knew Amanda and Sarah Beatty (the two girls who were killed here in June) and their mother Christine.  It was a blessing because they were nice people, but it was a blessing also because the tragedy that overtook them has given me an unshakable awareness of our connections as human beings.  Today, when I think about those kids in Connecticut, those kindergartners (like Sarah), I see those two little girls.  It is not a disconnected tragedy that happened two states away, I can hear the sobs of parents whose lives are forever changed.  This is not okay, it's never going to be okay.
The soul-less media machine even momentarily acts stunned.  I watched President Obama shed tears on national TV, which is interesting for two reasons.  1. I don't think I've ever seen a President cry during a press conference.  2. The media seemed positively shocked at the genuine reaction of a politician, who, by the way, happens to be a father of two school aged girls.  Why don't we expect our leaders to be human beings?  Is it because they so rarely demonstrate that reality?
Of all people Dr. Drew gave some rather bracing advice to the leaders of our country: we need to start modeling healthy relationships, because the dysfunction and divisive nature of our society is beginning to take its toll on our culture.  Amen to that.  Edwin Friedman pointed out years ago in Generation to Generation, that dysfunction will manifest symptoms within a family system, often in rather unexpected places.  The trauma of poor relationships between parents, for instance, can make children sick.  How is the zeitgeist of our age effect the most vulnerable members of our society?  Well in this case, if you buy Dr. Drew's analysis, which surprisingly, I think I do, the violence in our rhetoric and our deeds has warped folks, who are probably mentally and emotionally unstable to begin with, into monsters who will open fire on innocent people, even small children.
The dysfunction that Dr. Drew was talking about is manifest in our national conversations about many topics from marriage to economics, but it is perhaps most eerily present in the debate about gun control.  In the wake of shootings like this, a very powerful gun lobby will begin to try and shape the discourse, soon and very soon.  The conversation will degenerate into a shouting match between those who tout "bearing arms" as an inalienable right and some vague enemy of freedom that they perceive is trying to rob them of their rights.
I like guns.  I have two of them (not loaded, stored and trigger locked), they are both shotguns that were given to me by my Grandfather, when he used to take me hunting.  I don't think those guns, in and of themselves are dangerous, but I am a reasonable and stable person, who respects them as weapons and does not feel at all that they imbue me with any sort of god like power over life and death.  I do not want my nine year old son to have access to them, thus the trigger locks.  I am practicing gun control, as I think is the responsibility of any sane parent.
I also happen to believe that gun CONTROL, is a rather reasonable expectation to have our our government and law enforcement officials.  I do not see the harm in having to fill out some paperwork and wait a couple weeks, or even as long as a few months, if I would like to own a handgun.  If I am law abiding, and sane, I will be perfectly able to go through that process.  I wouldn't mind having to take a safety course similar to the one I took in order to get my hunting license.  I wouldn't mind having to demonstrate competency in the understanding and practice of safe gun handling, like I did when I got my driver's license.  I don't think anyone who is thinking about these things like a functional adult, should have a problem with such things.
We need more functional adults.  In politics, and in other sorts of leadership roles.  We have idolized adolescent fantasies long enough, it is time for us to grow up, or else our children are going to pay the price.  And when I say our children, I mean OUR children.  Amanda and Sarah Beatty were our children, those children in Connecticut were our children, yours, mine, Barack Obama's, OURS.
Don't let the insanity of the world destroy any more of OUR children.
Grow up, act like an adult, and for God's sake stop the violence, it's tearing us apart.

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

This was Maggie:

This was before she got sick.

This was the way she was for over nine years: healthy, happy, faithful.

She was our first "child," she helped us raise our human children.

She was gentle and good,

She allowed crawling infants and unsteady toddlers to poke and pull at her.

She loved to lay her head on my lap and have me scratch behind her ears.

She loved to go for walks, and rides in the car.

She loved to eat a little more than was good for her, just like her owner.

She got diabetes, just like her owner.

But we couldn't get it under control,

She was sick and weak and I couldn't watch her suffer anymore.

So I said goodbye, as hard as it was,

Because I want to remember her like this:

Election

I went to vote this morning.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No one challenged my right to be there (they didn't even ask for my ID, even though I had it ready).
All the ladies working at the polls were nice and friendly, even though one thought my name was Haskill and was having trouble finding it in the book, it was easily corrected and I still didn't have to show my ID.
Now, I know, a lot of the friendly, laid back atmosphere at the polls in my little town is due to the fact that, basically, I live in Mayberry, where everyone knows everyone else and things like elections are relaxed little affairs where they give out candy if you actually show up.
However, it doesn't stop me from considering how blessed I am, that I can go cast my ballot for the lesser of two evils and not fear recrimination.  Especially in a year like this one, where I suspect I am voting for a different candidate than many of my neighbors. I never felt intimidated, or confused.  I was not even accosted by an exit pollster.
I did my duty in a matter of about five minutes, including the time that it took to walk over to the firehall.  Now I can sit back and wait and watch to see who wins, and actually, miracle of miracles, I know that no matter who wins, life will go on.  The government will continue to be an inefficient, maddening and dysfunctional monstrosity, but it will be our inefficient, maddening and dysfunctional monstrosity.  I know that neither Mitt nor Barack are secretly longing to be Mussolini or Stalin.  I know that my freedoms, even those I don't particularly care about, like whether or not I can own an AK-47, will be protected.  I know that Penn DOT will still put up plenty of those orange cones in the summer time to repair the thousands of miles of road that I regularly travel.  I know that the IRS will faithfully take my money, put it together with everybody else's money, then turn it over to people that will waste much of it, but ultimately take care of some things that we as a society need done.
I know that I will not be happy with everything the government does.
I know that I will be happy that they do most of the things that they do.
I know that I do not agree with every plank of either party's platform.
I know that I do not agree with every thing my own wife and children think either.
I know that if I want to live in a free and democratic society, I'm going to have to put up with some things I don't like, in order to get the things I really need.
I knew all this stuff when I went to vote.
And I still voted...
Because I'm a grown up...
Because I'm American...
Because I can.

The Choice Before Us

It's one of the choices that help define us in a media obsessed culture:
Beatles or Stones?
Coffee or tea?
Boxers or briefs?
Coke or Pepsi?

But this one perhaps will tell more about your personality than some of the other dichotomous preferences. And this one definitely has bearing on how you might vote in any given election.  In fact, I'm surprised that pollsters haven't taken to asking this simple question when they call you up at dinner time to bug you.
The question is:

Kirk or Picard?

If you don't know what I'm talking about then one of two things is probably true about you:
1. you've been in cryogenic suspension since about 1960, in which case welcome back to the world, I'm afraid things are worse than you thought they would be, but hey congratulations on the whole thawing out thing.
Or
2. You just don't watch too much TV, in which case congratulations, you're probably smarter than I am and you don't need to keep reading.

Still reading anyway?

Okay, James Tiberius Kirk was the Captain of the Starship Enterprise in the campy but brilliant television show Star Trek.  The original show was a little ahead of its time and was cancelled after a fairly brief run.  However, over the decades the show just wouldn't go away.  Despite being cancelled Star Trek got more and more popular, spawning several movies, large amounts of merchandising and fanatical conventions of fans who dress up like Klingons and Vulcans and generally revel in their collective Geekhood.
Kirk was a space cowboy, played with incomparable bravado by William Shatner.  Kirk was the guy you wanted if you had to fight a giant lizard in some sort of gladiatorial bloodsport.  Kirk was always up to making romance with sultry alien females who find stocky Kirk Douglas types irresistible.  Kirk blasted his way through the galaxy on a mission that vaguely qualified as scientific exploration, but was mostly just a series of predicaments that had to be conquered by sheer gall and intuition, rather than by the cold logic of science (represented famously by Leonard Nimoy's character: Mr. Spock).
But the real genius of Star Trek were those moments where the questions of human nature and our relative place in the universe came into focus, where the blessings and curses of technology were examined.  They were rare, but they were there.
Fast forward 25 years to the late 1980s, Star Trek is reborn as a television series, but this time the feel is a little different: Star Trek, The Next Generation is embodied by a different sort of Captain: Jean Luc Picard, played by a classically trained, dignified and very bald, Patrick Stewart.  Picard lacked Kirk's swashbuckling presence as well as his unruly pompadour.  Picard very rarely had a love interest and never got in a fist fight with a giant lizard.  Picard was a diplomat, a lover of music and art, a cultured intellectual, in short, the polar opposite of James T. Kirk.
The creators of Next Generation knew that certain parts of the Star Trek formula were worth keeping, but Kirk got a demotion to first officer in the character or William Riker, Spock became the Android Mr. Data and Mr. Scott the bombastic engineer became the well mannered (and blind) LaForge.  They gave us a Klingon serving in Starfleet, the long-time enemy of the Federation, now at peace.  We got better special effects and better thought out plots, but the biggest difference was in the Captain himself.  Picard faced a challenge that could not be overcome by might or phasers in the very first episode.  He was hijacked by a near omnipotent being known as Q, who would become Picard's nemesis and grudging admirer
Q's indictment of humanity couldn't have illustrated the difference between Picard and Kirk more clearly.  Q expected humans to go in with guns blazing and never see the predicament that was staring them in the face.  Kirk would have certainly failed the test, but Picard, with observation, diplomacy and an open mind was able to solve the riddle of Farpoint station and save the day, and all humanity from Q's judgment.
So what does all of this have to do with say, foreign policy, the subject of last evening's debate between Obama and Romney?
A whole awful lot actually.  See, up until now there has been a lot of harping on the Economy, but the funny thing is that the President, as head of the Executive branch of government, has fairly minor ability to shape our economic policy.  Unless someone is going to go full on FDR and haul out a new New Deal, the President can, at most, massage the legislature into trying to go along with his vision and plans.  He's not powerless to influence the economy, but he's not really in charge.
What he is in charge of though, is the State Department and the Military.  He can basically start a war (although he can't call it that without an act of Congress).  What the President is the face of our nation when it comes to foreign policy.  That's why last night's debate, which focused on foreign policy, was so eminently important.  This is actually the area where the President is going to have some real clout!
Which is why it was disturbing to hear both candidates do their best James T. Kirk impersonations and keep Picard locked in the closet.  Neither Romney or Obama is ever going to be able to out-Kirk George W. Bush, but what I really want to see from the leader of my country is a little more Jean Luc Picard.
This is where I may give away a bit of Obama bias, because I think he has leaned that way.  He has not led us into any new intractable conflicts in the Middle East, and he has actually extricated us from one of them.  He has refused rash and categorical action in Libya and Syria, and he actually had the restraint to watch and learn as the Arab Spring unfolded.
The Kirks of the world are chomping at the bit for some giant lizard fighting, saying that O is exuding weakness and we need to crack down, but actually I tend to believe that the world respects us a lot more now than they did four years ago.  Maybe they don't fear us as much as when Bush and Cheney were doing their Vader-Tarkin act (sorry I had to give Star Wars a shout out), but there is evidence that the people in the streets of Egypt, Libya and even Iran are not buying the portrayal of the West as the Great Satan, quite as fully as they used to.
Picard often proved that restraint in the use of force was of greater value than raw power.  I would hope that our next president, whether it is Obama or Romney, will follow the path of the diplomat rather than the way of the fist.

Autumnal Reverie

What is it about fall that starts you thinking about the passage of time.  I know that there is a good reason why Frost's poem about two roads diverging in a yellow wood has been so violently overused.  I suspect that there is something about harvest time and the impending freeze of winter that resonates deep in the collective unconscious of people who descend from races that made their home outside the tropics.  There is something about watching the world literally go to sleep all around you that makes you aware of your own mortality.  There is something primal about the urgency of the harvest that still moves us, even in a world where we can buy bananas any day of the of week.
Technology has insulated us from many of the rigors of winter.  We are not facing four months of living off of beets, potatoes and salt pork, but the changing leaves still make me feel like I need to enjoy every last bit of sun and warmth.  This time of year, I want to get outside every chance I get.  I want to take long hikes in the woods as they prepare for their long sleep.  I can imagine, at any moment, that the white blanket of snow will begin to descend and I can wish that it would hold off just a little longer.
We rake the leaves into a pile and the kids play in them.
We get out jackets, gloves and hats.
We surround ourselves with pumpkins, field corn and all the signs of the harvest.
We do these things as a last statement of life that will hold us through the freeze.
We do these things to hold on to consciousness through the winter coma.

In My Opinion...

It would seem a great many people are afflicted with the fear.
Fear of what?
Fear of them.
Who are they?
They are people who disagree with us.
Who are we?
That, finally is a good question.

I was about to embark on another snarky political column inspired by the rancorous debate of last evening, but as I sat down to write I was afflicted with sympathy for the many Americans who are going to approach the polls next month with fear and trembling.
First, let me say this: breathe.  No matter who gets elected, God will still be in control, and America will still be the best nation on earth for its citizens.  The highly contentious atmosphere of the election will subside and we will settle in to see if the opinions and promises that have been foisted off as facts and doctrines actually bear fruit.  I suspect that a year from now, we will probably (once again) come face to face with the grim reality that politicians cannot be trusted.  As long as politics embodies a power struggle more than it embodies truly serving the people, we are doomed to repeat that dire discovery.
Nations always rage and people always plot in vain.
Second, let me say this: Sennacherib.  Aside from being fun to say, Sennacherib was an Assyrian King who terrified ancient Israel during the reign of Hezekiah.  He made Bashir Assad look like Mr. Rogers.  Assyrians in general were known for their brutality and sudden violent conquests.  Yet Assyria never conquered Judah, God just made them go away.  Empires, no matter how grand and glorious, always decline and fall.  It happened to Assyria, it happened to Rome, it happened to Britain, and it will happen to us, the question is: how do we deal with it.  Do we simply dissolve our civilization and fade into the sands of history like the Hittites or do we remain with dignity and resolve like the Brits.  We share more raw material with the Brits than we do with the Assyrians, maybe there's an outside chance that, as our hegemony fades, we might become something even better than a colonialist police force.
Third, and last of all let me say this: fear is the mind killer.  I have heard too many reasonable people begin propounding the most enfeebled conspiracy theories with regard to the machinations of the political machine. I have no great love for the propaganda and the vitriol, but please the type of manipulation that has been suspected under every bush is not a reality.  It is not a reality because, even if there is a will, there is no way to accomplish such chicanery.  If Obama could "cook the books" on the unemployment figures or magically make gas prices drop, don't you think he would have tried that a little sooner?  There are plenty of lies to go around on both sides of the fence, but the perception of the truth is generally more flavored by the opinions that people share or do not share with the candidates.  It became rather apparent to me that Romney truly thinks he can fix things, which may be true or it may not, but it's not technically a lie, because he thinks it will actually happen.  Obama has been disillusioned of the notion that grand bargains can be reached in the current political climate, but he thinks that maybe, in his next four years, without the specter of trying to get re-elected, he might actually get some important things turned around, it's not a lie, it's a belief, an opinion.
Remember that Presidents and congresspeople are human beings, there are things that they can fix and things they cannot fix.  We could do with less vitriol and rancor and more reasoned discourse.  It would be nice if we could advance to a point where fact checkers are not necessary, where honesty and integrity were more important than winning, but that's probably just a pipe dream.
Large Sigh.

Sometimes Nothing Is a Real Cool Hand

Last week, I was shocked and saddened by the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl from Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out in favor of education for girls in Pakistan.  She had become something of a celebrity in the cause of Muslim girls struggling to be treated as equals, at least when it came to education.  The Taliban labeled her as a disruptive peddler of western ideology, who was obviously trying to destroy the morals of the entire Islamic world.  Did I mention she was fourteen?  Did I mention that a Taliban gunman stopped a bus full of school children and shot Malala in the face?
I'm no expert in Islam, but I'm thinking that, if Allah bears any resemblance to the God that I know through Jesus of Nazareth, someone is really on the wrong track.  In my earlier blog entry I wondered how there was not outrage among Muslims everywhere.  Well, it turns out, there is, it turns out that people everywhere are rallying around Malala and turning against the hatred and fear of the Taliban and others like them.  You may offer thanks to God, using whatever name you prefer.
Once, when I was going through a trying time, my Dad said something regarding the spiritual conflict between good and evil that usually proves true: "the Devil always overplays his hand."  Evil sometimes seems to be holding the best cards, but if you play it right there will always be a mistake, it will always reach too far.     Evil is perhaps most dangerous when it masquerades as something other than what it is.  When the Taliban can pretend they are freedom fighters battling the great Satan, they have the support of many people and perhaps some sympathy from those who have suffered under the boot of a colonial power.  But when they start shooting 14 year old schoolgirls in the face... their friends and cheerleaders get awful scarce.
I don't fully understand Islam, and I can't really wrap my mind around what it's like in Pakistan or Afghanistan at the moment, but what I do know is Christianity, America and Cool Hand Luke.  The title of the movie comes from a scene where Luke bluffs the other inmates in the camp at poker.  He stares down his opponents with a hand that is absolutely worthless.  He wins, not because he has the best hand, but because he has more guts and more patience than his opponent.  The courage of the man with the stronger hand fails and Luke says: "Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand."
Jesus, very dramatically, told his disciples that they ought not to resist the evildoer and that when someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other.  Christians have applied that standard with varying degrees of faith, and with varying degrees of success.  Mennonites and Quakers (among others) have adopted the strict code of pacifism, which most of Christendom has often found cause to abandon.  Sometimes that abandonment seemed necessary or even unavoidable, but it has always required a rather sophisticated theological jog around the block.
However, I think it would serve us well to remember that Jesus understood the real world circumstances that faced his followers quite well.  Usually, when people have taken up arms, even in the cause of justice, peace and freedom, even when it was to protect the innocent, a lot of evil has ensued.  Violence is a card that the Devil always has in his hand and we usually find ourselves trying to stare down his pocket aces with a King-8 off suit.
I'll take, as an example, the KKK, which is the American equivalent of the Taliban.  An organization founded on hatred and fear, which liberally uses the name of God to justify their atrocities.  At one point in our history (and it wasn't really that long ago) the Klan had influence and power, they could inflict terror with near impunity.  Then it all went too far, racist terrorists started blowing up churches and killing little black girls.  They weren't just lynching big strong black men who most white Americans were secretly afraid of anyway.  Now there were little girls in their white Sunday dresses on the news as the latest victims of racism and hatred.  Fairly suddenly racism and hatred didn't sell so well.  The Devil had overplayed his hand.
Now the KKK is silly in the eyes of most people.  We let them have their parades, because we support free speech, but those hoods no longer strike fear in the hearts of too many people.  Now they're just an ugly reminder of a dark time.
I hope, for the sake of girls like Malala Yousafzai, that this is the start of something similar in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It would prove Jesus absolutely right, because the ultimate demise of the Taliban would not be the United States Military and all their guns and bombs, it would be a defenseless fourteen year old girl who just wanted to go to school.  She had nothing, she is one of the most vulnerable people in the world, and now she's got the world on her side: sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.

Adaptive Challenges and other Scary Monsters

I was watching the debate between Biden and Ryan and keeping tabs on the Steelers game at the same time.  Besides being a demonstration of my mad-crazy remote skills, it was actually rather more instructive than anything talked about by either of the candidates.  Let's start with what I noticed about the debate, granted it's not an earth shattering revelation, but it came through loud and clear as I watched the debate.  It is a reality that challenges the very mythology of American democracy and Western supremacy: they don't know what to do.
They want you to believe they know, they may even have deluded themselves into thinking they know, but they don't.  I don't either, nor does anyone else, and if they say they do they are either selling you something or they are perhaps just maniacal enough to believe their own delusions.
It all started to seem very familiar.  I had heard this sort of futile wishful thinking somewhere else... but where?
Oh right, at church, and in Presbytery committee meetings!  See I'm a pastor, and as such I am a leader of a group of people who hold certain core convictions, but who also have very different ways of living out those core convictions: a lot like America as a nation.  What I heard last night was a larger scale version of the same angst that has riddled the church for about 40 years.
The reality for the church and for our nation, is that the world has changed.  The world has changed fast and it has changed completely.  A global economy that was not even remotely possible in 1950 has emerged and, thanks to technology, has accelerated to a speed that seemed like science fiction, even in 1980.  Empires have collapsed and America, the youngest of the bunch, is the last samurai.
The church has come to realize that this reality is not going away, and we have at least started to grapple with what that means.  Fortunately we have 2000 years of history and intellectual tradition to tell us that we can survive such things.  Our nation, however, in fact nations in general, have no such track record.
The characteristic traits of the global culture are complex, the stakes are high, and the conflicts are often intractable.  Which is why it is so disturbing to me that politicians so blithely offer up their dogmatic positions, claiming that all will be well if we listen to them.  Just once, I want to hear someone admit that the challenges that face us are not surmountable by political sleight of hand.  Just once, I want to hear someone admit that, if we are going to grow into facing the adaptive challenges of the world, we are going to have to adapt.  Just once, I would like to hear someone honestly tell the American people that adaptation might hurt.  I would vote for him or her.
Football, and sports in general, have rules that are well known and enforced.  The rules change a little at a time to tweak the safety or the fairness of the contest.  If, at halftime, the referees of the Steelers - Titans game had suddenly re-written the rule book and not told any of the coaches or players then you would have seen what adaptive challenge was all about.  You would know what our politicians truly face.  Trying to devise a good strategy would be impossible playing by the old rules.  The reason why we love sports and hate politics is because sports are technical challenges: plan better, practice harder, execute more perfectly and you will win.  The world is a lot more complicated than that, and all I want is for someone, somewhere to at least understand that the rules have changed.

Judge Not?

Normally, I try to give people from different cultures the benefit of the doubt.  When things seem strange and different I try not to get too upset, because you never know, you could learn something from folks who are different than you.  The first time I tried sushi, I was pretty suspicious, but now I love the raw fish.
However, there are some things that I just can't have an open mind about.  There was a story in today's paper about the Taliban gunning down a school girl.  It wasn't a mistake, it wasn't collateral damage, she was the target: a girl, a child, was the corrosive force that the Taliban thought needed to be purged from society, so armed men stopped a bus load of school girls and opened up on them.  Pardon me being judgmental, but that is subhuman.  Maybe our war against the Taliban really is a righteous war after all.  Maybe we got in for the wrong reasons, maybe it's a futile effort, but if it makes the world safer for little girls (and boys) in the long run, it's worth it.
I have been aware of the practice of honor killings for years and it always turns my stomach.  Sure, I'm a privileged, educated, western white guy, but one of the things I feel genuine righteous outrage about is the treatment of poor, uneducated, brown girls from the other side of the world.  For once, you really can't blame this one on the colonial/capitalist oppressors.  The blame for this one lies squarely on their fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins.  How does the average Muslim father tolerate a world where his daughter could be gunned down for wanting to get an education?  That's not a rhetorical question, if anyone out there knows please use the comment line.
Why isn't every father, who has or ever had a little girl, hopping mad about things like this?
It's not just a cultural difference, it's pure evil.
It's not just a difference between serving Yahweh or Allah or following Christ, it's a matter of doing violence to the most vulnerable members of society: it is serving the Devil.
Jesus said if you cause any of the "little ones" to stumble, it would be better for you to be thrown into the ocean with a millstone around your neck.  So what is going to happen when you shoot a schoolgirl in the face in the name of your god?
I'm not judging (well maybe I am sort of), but I know someone who is going to, and Her name is The LORD. (and I use the feminine pronoun there because I'm pretty sure when God judges the Taliban, what they'll see is a schoolgirl bringing them a millstone).

And the Winner Is? Certainly Not Us.

Maybe I was born in the wrong century...
Maybe I just read too much...
Maybe I just glazed over at the wrong moment and missed something...

I'm trying to figure out why the debate between Obama and Romney is still turning my stomach 18 hours later.  Most people think Romney won, but the analysis of his "win" reveals the deep tragedy of American politics at this moment in history.  Romney "won," because he didn't say anything disastrous, or try to sing the national anthem or basically do anything to reinforce the opinion that he's a stuffed shirt with good hair and a lot of money.  Obama "lost" because he came across as what his detractors (at least the more reasonable ones) are always saying he is: cerebral, aloof and a little bit cranky.

We all "lost" for a whole bunch of reasons.

First, because the debate was structured, first and foremost, to be a television program.  I knew Jim Lehrer was in deep sheep dip as he was outlining the schedule: way too many questions and way too little response time.  I've heard these two talk before and I thoroughly believe that trying to get Obama or Romney to stick state their position on anything, other than who might win the Bears game, in less than two minutes, is a futile pursuit.  We may expect it from a high school debate club, but from two politicians of such profound obtuseness?  For shame!

Second, because they were trying to pack as many soundbites and talking points into their answers, what we got in terms of dialogue was a rhetorical nightmare.  Practitioners of the art of argument from Aristotle to Abraham Lincoln were weeping eternal and bitter tears over the utter disdain for the requirements of basic rational discourse.  They did avoid ad-hominem attacks and spewing profanity, but beyond that it was grim to say the least.  Neither candidate, either in statement or rebuttal felt the need to use many actual facts.  Obama was apparently buoyed by the wildly popular "Math" speech given by President Clinton at the Democratic convention, because he at least made reference to the fact that he had some numbers, arithmetic and possible even some ciphering on his side.  But whatever ground these actual numbers may have gained for him was lost when he doggedly insisted that he had figured out Romney's numbers, despite Romney repeatedly saying that those numbers were fallacious.

Romney and Ryan have persistently avoided giving any details of their economic plan, but they swear to their individual deities that they have one, and doggone it, it's a good plan, it's a new plan, and it's gonna fix everything!  The genius of this strategy became apparent when Obama kept accusing Romney of planning a 5 trillion dollar tax cut.  Romney could, quite plausibly say, "I'm not going to do any such thing you big silly head."  Obama should have seen that coming, but instead of beating a careful retreat he just kept saying it and gave Romney a chance to get in the highly coveted zinger of the evening: "I have five boys, I'm quite used to dealing with people who just keep saying something over and over, in the hopes that somehow I'll believe it's true."

Obama was using a study of the Romney/Ryan plan, but apparently the greatest strength of the Romney/Ryan plan is plausible deniability and Romney proved last night that he is a convincing... let's just say salesman.  Fact checkers and journalists are having trouble figuring out if Romney was being truthful when he denied the 5 trillion dollar tax cut.  The Obama camp, today, is crying foul; saying that Romney was misleading and disingenuous in his descriptions of his policies.

Personally, I thought he was so vague about what his policies might be that it would be hard to make that charge stick.  That's what worries me.  Romney seems pretty sure that he can fix what ails our economy, but his "plan" sounds an awful lot like that car salesman who tells you a 1982 Buick was only ever driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady.  It might be true, but it doesn't quite pass the smell test.

Obama seemed sullen and a little off balance, and unwilling to make the sort of grand promises of a brighter tomorrow that swept him into the White House four years ago.  He seems, to me, humbled (and maybe a little worn out) by the failures of his tenure.  He tries to trumpet his successes, but without telling lies or engaging in artful obfuscation, he can't really say much more than "It could have been worse."

Lehrer's questions were (in design only) supposed to give the American people a clear idea of what it would mean to vote for Romney or Obama.  The actual debate, as off the rails as it was, did give me a fairly clear contrast: Obama has spent four years learning what doesn't work, having his grand plans thwarted by circumstance and an adversarial congress.  He may have finally figured out that grand plans aren't going to work, that only hard work and compromise are going to get the job done.  Romney may know that (in which case he'd be ahead of where O was four years ago), but he's trying his best to confuse, inveigle and obfuscate his way through the election.  If he succeeds I hope his "plan" is actually as good as he keeps saying it is.  Scratch that, I just hope he actually has a plan with actual real numbers and lists of things to do.

I still want there to be a "none of the above" option on the ballot.  Can we make that happen?

Brain Lock

My daughter is having trouble with brain lock.  It's not life threatening, in fact, it's pretty common for a seven year-old.  Actually it's pretty common for people no matter how old they are.  Here's what happens:
You don't want to do something (in Caitlyn's case eat cabbage or clean her room), but unfortunately for you the thing you don't want to do is required by people in authority (in her case Michele and me, her parents).  Instead of accepting that the unpleasant duty is simply something you must perform in order to avoid negative consequences, you decide to throw a tantrum of some sort.  This tantrum precipitates negative consequences of an entirely different order, most notably that the authority is now irritated by your very existence and immediately seeks to put an end to your presence (via early bedtime).  Rational thought processes would allow you to see that the unpleasantness of the duty at hand is not nearly as unpleasant as the punishment that will surely be forthcoming from the authority that demands your obedience should you fail to render said obedience.  Your own emotional state, however, does not allow these rational processes to take place and therefore makes the more drastic negative consequences practically inevitable.  That is brain lock.
It would make me happy to say that it only afflicts children, but it afflicts adults as well, and the consequences of adults, especially at a national level, getting brain lock can be rather disastrous.
Let's take the most frightening and possibly catastrophic instance that is taking place at the moment: Iran's nuclear capability.  In this instance Iran is the child and the international nuclear non-proliferation agreement is the dictate of authority.  It has been recognized, as surely as broccoli is good for you, that it is no good for more and more nations to gain the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons.  We understand that we can't put the genie entirely back in the bottle, but we can at least make sure we don't accidentally wish for the world to become a smoking cinder.  For decades, the idea of mutually assured destruction has more or less held the nuclear powers in a state of detente.  It hasn't always been comfortable, but for the most part, it is stable.
Enter Iran, which has demonstrated a rather troubling proclivity towards irrational and violent behavior.  Most of the parents agree that it would be a good idea to keep little Iran, what with his extremist theocracy and "death to America" t-shirt, away from things that can vaporize entire cities.
But Iran appears to want what he wants, even though it is fairly clear that no one is just going to stand back and let it happen.  His parents try to reason with him and get him to see that it's just a bad idea, nukes are not   something you really want to use on anyone, no matter how much of a raging hate you have for them.  The US used them on Japan and we have felt so guilty since then that we paid to rebuild their country for them, set them up in business and then watch them get insanely rich doing the things that we used to do better than anyone (build cars and TVs and such).  Using nukes is really a bottomless pit when it comes to public relations: yeah you win the war, but everyone gets to look down their nose at you because you unleashed a horrifying destructive force on largely civilian populations.  But they will make your enemies surrender in a big hurry, even the Japanese, who officially sanctioned their soldiers committing suicide in the course of war, as long as they could take some of the enemy with them.
The parents are trying to warn Iran, "don't do it! It's not worth it! and besides if you do, we might just have to demonstrate why these things are so bad."  It's like the old punishment of making the kid smoke a whole pack of cigarettes and get sick as a dog, that ought to learn them (or perhaps speed up the process of nicotine addiction, but who can tell).  The only problem is that there is this crazy uncle, who never much cared for little Iran very much in the first place, in fact they've had a long standing animosity going back about  5000 years.  That uncle is the nation state of Israel, and they are telling Iran and the parents that if that kid even looks like they're going near the gun cabinet Uncle Bibi Netanyahu is gonna pop a cap in them so fast they won't know what hit them.
You can't really blame Israel can you, they have to live virtually next door to Khomeni and, if there's one thing Islamic maniacs hate more than America, it's Israel.
Reagan and Gorbachev started to end the Cold War by looking at pictures of each other's grandchildren.  I don't think that strategy is going to work here, because their grandchildren would probably be hatching plots to blow each other up.  It's the definition of the word intractable, especially when everybody's got the brain lock.

Fear and Loathing in the Middle East

The Middle East has never been what any rational observer would call stable, and I do mean never (read the Bible because that goes pretty much back to the beginning).  Conventional foreign policy since the creation of the nation state of Israel has generally been to support monarchs, dictators and other autocracies that would rule with an iron fist and keep the supply of oil flowing.  This worked out okay for the most part, except for those occasions where we were forced to recognize the reality that most Arabs hate our guts, including the autocrats that we helped establish.  Empire building is such tricky business!
And so, you get what we had here last week... which is the way he wants it... well he gets it!
Sorry, I just lapsed into the warden from Cool Hand Luke, it happens sometimes.
So, now we have Benghazi, and a whole bunch of other places where chaos, fueled by anger and fear, breaks out.  Most of the talking heads on the idiot box have no idea how to process a situation with such deep historical roots, and such intractable animosities.  I find that Tom Friedman, NY Times columnist and author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (an absolute must read, if you even want to pretend to understand the Israeli-Palestinian slice of the general ME chaos), is a good source, and luckily, even my questionable local paper carries his editorial columns.
Yesterday's paper, which probably means the Wednesday edition of the Times, talks about the "Backlash to Backlash."  It is THE most hopeful thing that I have read concerning the situation in the Arab world at least since the hopeful days of the Arab Spring, which now seems like it happened years ago.  Friedman notes that moderate voices in the Arab/Islamic world are beginning to speak up, and in Benghazi particularly, take to the streets to challenge the extremists.  Friedman writes that a group of men stormed the headquarters of Ansar al Sharia, the group that claimed responsibility for killing American Ambassador Chris Stevens; their message?  Knock it off!
Not surprisingly, this counter-riot has not received the kind of attention that the earlier riots were given.  Partially because, in our rather shallow understanding of the Arab world, we do not realize that there are many people who do not particularly like Al Qaida.  There are, in fact, many Muslims who do not support the imposition of Sharia law.  There are, in fact, great levels of complexity and nuance involved in the situation in the Middle East, which is at least partly why it so regularly gives us the fear.
The twenty four hour news cycle, which could be absolutely well suited to providing the sort of in depth analysis needed to understand the fact that not all Muslims hate America and not all Arabs are ready to blow themselves up, spend most of their time chasing headlines and trying to keep up with the "latest news."  The Tom Friedmans of the world are left to inhabit the stodgy old world of print journalism and make the occasional appearance on those news programs that cling to the older and less exciting forms of journalism.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the mighty western empires are never going to master the Arab world, we've been trying since before Jesus was born, but we never achieved more than a temporary hold.  It seems to me that the only hope is for the people in that culture, who actually understand their own world, who actually understand their own people, who actually realize that, while the west may have done a little too much monkeying around with their lives, they can't blame everything on us for too long and not end up destroying themselves.  The Arab spring is going to need to grow up pretty fast, because there is enough fear and loathing to go around and some of those fearful people have nuclear weapons.  We may not be able to fix the middle east, but we can permanently turn large parts of it into glass and ashes.  That's not a threat, that is a terrifying fear that I have about what might happen if Islam doesn't get its house in order.
Christianity has gone through some violent, irrational phases in its history. I'm not claiming any sort of high ground here.  The difference was, during the crusades, the inquisition and the wars of religion that tore across Europe, none of our external enemies had their finger on a button that could fry millions of people to a cinder in a matter of seconds.  Sure we burned some witches and heretics, but we had to do it one at a time.
Netanyahu is a pretty serious man, with some pretty serious weaponry at his disposal, when he starts talking about red lines, you should really listen.  The fact that there are certain people who don't seem to listen to each other let alone their adversaries, gives me the fear, big fear.

Let Them Eat Cake! (Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that.)

What do Marie Antoinette and Mitt Romney have in common (besides big hair)?
A massive case of foot in mouth disease.
Luckily for the Mittster, we're not likely to set up the guillotine on the Mall in D.C. anytime soon (though sometimes...)
Mitt was talking to a group of rich people, trying to get his hands on some of their money, and he delivered a Mr. Burns-like indictment of "those people," you know the ones who are on the dole, the ones who feel "entitled to healthcare and food," imagine that.  The now infamous 47% who support Obama because they like to be victims of society, who pay no income tax, who are there mainly because they're not smart and hard working enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps just like Mitt Romney... or, um, well just like his George Romney anyway.
Mitt doesn't want to backpedal too fast because, for the first time, the Rush Limbaughs of the world are giving him props for being a "true conservative," which if I read it right means someone who doesn't give a hoot about the middle class, let alone the poor, because they're not the ones who really matter.  This is a dangerous way to structure a society, ask Marie.
Karl Marx may have gone too far when he started talking about abolishing religion, families and private enterprise, but he at least diagnosed one of the fundamental divisions in modern society: Bourgeois from Proletariat.  Mitt is the prototype of the Bourgeois, rich (because he was born that way), power-hungry and rather disdainful of all those who don't fit into his caste.  Obama, on the other hand, is a rather stunning example of the Proletariat dream, a man of the people who worked his way up through community organizing and public service.  The funny thing is that the Proletariat, as Marx portrays them before he goes off on his "let's throw our entire cultural system out the window because it's just too corrupt" rampage, is actually much closer to the "American Dream," than the sort of aristocratic nepotism that Romney embodies.
We saw in the 20th century that communism was not the way that the proletariat, the common man, was going to rise up and cast off the chains of oppression and stand on his own two feet.  In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect, creating more oppressive, soul-crushing circumstances for the majority of people.  Now, we're finding out that unhindered capitalism is not really any better.  Oh it works for some people, it works for Mitt Romney, but it definitely does not work for everyone.
I am a perfect example, for nearly 15 years, I have had zero or close to zero federal income tax liability.  First, it was because I was a Divinity student who made no money.  Then it was because I was a Pastor starting out near the minimum salary of around $30,000/year.  Then I had a couple of kids, my wife stayed home to be a mother (of all the silly, lazy things to do), so I got a deduction that more than kept pace with the growing tax liability.  Now I have two kids and, thanks to taking on what amounts to a second job (adding another church to my charge), I make nearly $50,000/year and still pay almost no Federal Income tax.  I work, I'm a Pastor, a community leader, I have a Masters degree, I am not a leech on society, but I am part of the 47%.
When my kids started school, they were eligible for reduced lunches and we were glad they were, it helped and every little bit helps for those on the lower end of the middle class.  Do I believe that the government ought to take care of my every need?  No, but I do believe that they ought to do what they can to help out those who are working hard and barely making ends meet.  I do believe that they ought to help out those who are born into poverty instead of the governor's mansion (I'm talking to you Romney).
Society is measured by how it treats its weakest members, a sentiment that has been trotted out by many wise folk, from Dostoevsky to Pope JPII, is thoroughly resonant with Christian theology, but not with the current dialogue coming from the Republican party.
Just so you know, I've got issues with Obama and the Dems too, but that's for another day.

Confusion to Pretty Much Everyone

I'm not going to try to be funny about this.  I don't understand it enough.
Muslims all over the world are attacking US Embassies; killing people and burning flags because of a video that pretty much no one has seen.  This is crazy on so many levels; so what I'm going to try to do here is sanely analyze the reality that I have gleaned from various news outlets.  I have tried to read a bit from both sides of the political spectrum and for once Fox News and the Huffington Post pretty much agree: there's enough crazy to go around.
First, let's start with the video: a low budget, anti-Islam propaganda piece produced by an Egyptian Coptic going by the name of Sam Bacile, or some similar alias.  The Innocence of Muslims, apparently is a piece designed to disillusion Muslims watching the film by depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a negative, insulting and vulgar light.  However, since Muslims consider any depiction of Mohammed to be blasphemy, it probably was not ever going to have the intended effect, which makes it not only an act of poor taste, but an exercise in futility.
The movie was made in America, but its vision, as nearly as we can tell belongs to an Egyptian Coptic Christian, which begins to make a little sense.  The Coptic Christians have been hanging around North Africa for a a very long time, being oppressed and persecuted by one empire after another and generally developing a bunker mentality that makes the modern state of Israel look like Switzerland.  It's no wonder that an Egyptian Coptic would have an ax to grind with Islam, his people have been getting a royal stomp down from the "peaceful" servants of Allah for centuries.
Enter the American dream, with all our inalienable rights, like free speech.  We are allowed to say anything we want (within limits, but I'll get to that presently).  If an American wants to be a Nazi, or join the KKK or the Westboro Baptist Church, or (until 9-11) be in Al-Qaeda, they are perfectly within their rights to do so.  It's one of the things that makes our nation great, we allow everyone to have a voice, even (for the most part)  our enemies.
The vast majority of Muslims do not live in a world where that is true.  In Egypt, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Syria and all over the Islamic world, what you can say and do is strictly limited by the imposition of religious laws like Shariah, it is limited by totalitarian governments and theocracies, it is most limited by the fact that they are poor, uneducated and oppressed by systems of global economics and politics.  It's a powder-keg of angry young men, and a hatefully bad movie or some Danish political cartoons can set it off just like that.
I notice a lot of side stories being played out surrounding this whole drama, and it's the side stories that make it really complicated.  We have Christians in America and Jews in Israel sounding the alarm of Muslim aggression: "See?  We told you this was going to happen again!"  We have Republicans criticizing Democrats  for offering an apology for the movie in an attempt to diffuse the bomb.  We have Democrats (and some other Republicans) criticizing the Republicans who criticized the White House, because they talked before they thought.  But mostly what we have is fear, which is becoming really dangerous.
Americans like free speech, but we really hate being afraid.  If there's one thing that the last eleven years should have shown the world it's that you really don't want to push us too far.  We believe in freedom, but we'll take yours and even give up some of our own if it's necessary to be safe.  We believe in peace, diplomacy and democracy, but if we can't reason with you, we have bombs, lots of bombs.
I'm sure Osama Bin Laden felt triumphant on 9-11, I'll bet he thought that Allah had rewarded a faithful servant.  I doubt he felt that way when Seal Team Six showed up in the middle of the night.  I have no doubt that Ambassador Steven's blood is going to be avenged seven fold in good Biblical fashion, however, this time it's not going to be against a terrorist mastermind, it's going to be against a bunch of poor, angry young Muslims who took to the streets to protest something someone told them was an affront to everything they believe.
Which brings me to the limits that we all need to start taking seriously.  First, this sort of violence is not okay, I don't care what you're mad about, storming the walls of an embassy and killing diplomats is not acceptable for any citizen of a civilized species.  Islam, the peaceful, just, Islam that I keep hearing exists out there somewhere needs to get its house in order.  I don't know how they're going to do it, but I do know that religions are not going to survive for long in the world that is coming, if they don't learn to exhibit simple human decency.
Christians, particularly American Christians, need to understand that we live in a bubble of freedom and security, and that bubble is fragile.  Our freedom is maintained not only by military might but by the hope of many civilized people of all races and creeds that somehow this "liberty and justice for all," thing might actually work.  We are free to say what we want, to believe what we want, but there are always limits.  The famous example of limiting free speech is that you're not allowed to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  If you do that you are putting others in danger.  In my humble opinion, given the Arab spring, given the ongoing tension within Islam between moderates and radicals, given the general crushing effect of poverty and desperation felt by so many young Muslims, a movie like The Innocence of Muslims, is EXACTLY like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and therefore does not deserve the protection of our First Amendment.
As a Christian, I believe that one day wars shall cease and the nations will cease their raging, but that day is not today.  Until God saves us from ourselves, the best we can do is try to treat each other with Love and Justice.  Surely, all of us, Christian, Jew, Muslim, pagan, atheist, whatever, we can do better than this.

The War on War

I want to declare war!  It seems like everybody's doing it.  We had the war against Communism that spawned two armed conflicts (Korea and Vietnam) that some people didn't even call wars (notably the people who actually fought in those wars and their families don't suffer such semantic confusion).  Of course the majority of the 20th century was consumed by what we refer to as the Cold War, which was actually a lot less of a war than Korea and Vietnam.
Wars apparently are popular.  We have the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, both of which have become terrible quagmires that make Vietnam look like a well-defined and executed operation.  These wars illustrate the difficulty of waging war against an abstraction.  We should learn that perhaps declaring war on enemies that you have a hard time defining, let alone locating, is a bad idea.
That brings us to the many and various wars that people think are being fought against them and their interests.  The War against Families, the War against Morality, the War against Freedom, who is fighting these wars I'm not sure, but judging by how often people talk about them someone must be.  I have noticed lawn placards around my area that talk about a war on coal, surely this is the first time in human history that anyone has declared war on a mineral, but before I launch into some absurd analysis of the semantics of the phrase, "war on coal," I'm going to stop.
Because what I think I really want to talk about is how ridiculous it is that we use the word war so lightly.  Anyone I have ever talked to who has been a part of an actual war has at least mentioned that it was about the most awful thing they've ever been through.  My Uncle, who was an Army Officer in both Korea and Vietnam, said one time that it was always a little difficult to figure out exactly why the people "over there" wanted so badly to kill you.  That sort of thing tends to leave a mark on your psyche.
Maybe it would be better if we stopped tossing the word war around quite so much.
There's this thing that happens, call it a semantic phenomenon: the more you use a word, the less it means.  The perfect example of this is the F-Bomb, in some circumstances (Church services and kindergarten classes) it is shocking, profane and completely unacceptable.  In other circumstances (construction sites and Tarantino movies), it's punctuation.  I would argue that the ideas and realities implied by the word war should always be a little bit shocking and terrifying.  Maybe the word should hold onto the horror of all that it inevitably entails.  Maybe if we stopped calling everything a war, we wouldn't be so ready to start them.

The Revolution Will, in Fact, Be Televised (but probably by accident)

Visual media is virtually inescapable.  The Inter-web has taken things three steps beyond the saturated, sensory blitz that was television.  Now, viral videos make people instantly famous with the sort of demographic numbers that would send ecstatic tremors through the psyche of a TV station manager.

Half of the things that become massively popular are completely inane, and many of them are rather vulgar.  It's hard to see how this is possibly making the world a better place.

Most likely, it's not.

The level of discourse demanded by a society with a collective consciousness shaped by Twitter is perhaps tenfold more disturbing than anything Orwell or Huxley envisioned (though Huxley was closer to the mark).  We cannot follow even the simplest rhetorical path, or evaluate the dozens, if not scores of logical absurdities launched at us from every quarter.

Gil Scott Heron sang: "The Revolution will not be Televised," in the 1970's.  While I love the song, while there are certain prophetic edges that are still sharp, there is absolutely no way anything so significant as a revolution will not be televised.  Because television has become more ubiquitous and the progeny of television, including the Inter-Web, are legion.  We have a 24 hour news cycle that was just coming into its own during the LA riots in the wake of the Rodney King incident.  In fact, Heron's wonderful line: "there will not be pictures of you and Willy Mays pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run or trying to slide that color TV into the back of a stolen ambulance," was proven absolutely false, as such behavior, minus Mr. Mays, was in fact displayed for all to see on the evening news.

It's fairly certain that soon, probably sooner than any sane person would like, almost everything we do will be televised, or tweeted, or... God only knows what's coming next, but viewers will probably be doing more than tuning in for details at eleven.

Back to School

Synchronicity is more than just the best Police album.
Earlier this morning I was reading more Neil Postman, this time from Technopoly, specifically a section that describes the relative absurdity of defining intelligence numerically (ala IQ tests).  First of all, intelligence is a word that can possibly signify an incredibly wide range of mental faculties, and as some of the wiser guides will tell you there are different kinds of intelligence.  Second, as Postman points out, intelligence is a word that signifies an idea, not an object.  If I were to say I have five cans of soda, you would know exactly what I was talking about.  If I were to say I have five intelligences, you might think I was talking some sort of new Oprah-self-help-babble, or, if you were actually intelligent, you might realize that I actually had very little grasp of the English language.  Yet, when we rank people in order of Intelligence Quotient, essentially that is exactly what we're doing.
I have taken IQ tests, I know what they test.  I have had psychology courses, and I know that, in some frames of thought, there is certain validity to such instruments.  However, if we are to assume in a pseudo-scientific manner that IQ is the only measure of intelligence we are probably proving that we have an IQ of about 90.  The fact of the matter is that IQ tests only test a very narrow band of human intelligence, and the idea that a number defines our intellectual potential is a little offensive to our humanity.
So, dinner comes and we are talking about the fact that Jack will have a new teacher this year in the Gifted program at his school, which he is in primarily because he performed quite well on those tests that like to grade intelligence numerically.  Cate, teacher's pet that she is, wonders if she should be in the program as well.  She almost certainly will be once they apply those numerical intelligence meters to her.  While I am explaining these realities to my privileged and gifted children I had Postman's spot-on critique of the very idea ringing in my ears.
I am certainly proud of my children and their precociousness. I am certainly glad that their school will give them the opportunity for a little extra push.  But I wonder how many intelligent and wonderful children we will fail because we don't happen to have a good number to define them.  Jack is artistic and mechanically inclined, and his talents in these areas probably far outstrip his numerical scores, he's lucky that the numbers opened a gateway that will allow him to more fully explore his talents.  But what about the children who don't have a high enough number?
The challenges of mass public education are such that it is probably impossible to function without numerical measures of intelligence, but maybe, just maybe, we should at least ask a few questions about the nature of intelligence that prove that it's more than just a number.

Isn't it Ironic, or at least what most people think of as Ironic.

See if you can follow this, because something keeps striking me as peculiar, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.
I read a blog post that someone linked on Facebook this morning.  The blog post mentioned Neil Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness.  It was a book that I had heard of in several conversations and thought might be worth reading, but somehow, probably because of my technology depleted attention span, I could never remember to buy it, borrow it or otherwise obtain a copy.  Upon reading the blog post, I was reminded and did not waste time.  I had been looking for something to read for about a day and a half (in the age of my Kindle Fire that's a long time), since finishing some short stories by Flannery O'Connor.  For those of you not familiar with O'Connor, which also means those of you who have never been clinically depressed, let me recommend A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and Other Stories, for that troubling day when you feel like human beings are basically good.  If you ever want a refresher in the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity or a general refresher on sin, pick up some O'Connor.
I digress, there's that short attention span again, back to Postman, I guess he needs to ring twice (snare drum please).  Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985, in the heart of the Reagan years.  He observes in a rather more serious manner the same thing that Doc observes in Back to the Future: "No wonder your president's an actor, he has to look good on television."  Postman's premise is that television as a medium was in the process of changing the nature of public discourse.  The book as a whole is filled with prescient observations of modern American society that have only become more true as time marched on, but he was only talking about TV.
In 1985 we were playing Atari and the only thing personal computers were good for was writing book reports and playing games like Choplifter in monochromatic green and black.  And yet Postman was so right, so very right.  "Change changed," the speed at which the culture has changed and is changing is facilitated and defined by the ability to communicate and exchange information.  This is sort of a raw data flow phenomenon, meaning it doesn't matter what the quality of the information is, as long as it can move fast and grab people's attention.  Which, I think, probably explains why the Fifty Shades of Gray Trilogy is atop the bestseller list.
The book, using mainly the age of "new" cable networks like MTV and CNN, traces how television defines and limits cultural discourse to a decidedly more shallow milieu than the age of print media.  Ideas had to "fit" into soundbytes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard that grumpy old man talk a thousand times since then: public discourse blah, blah, blah... I wonder what those crazy Kardashians are up to now?
Oh, dear Lord, maybe we need to change Amusing to Amused, past tense.  Whatever damage television may have done to the public discourse, the internet, has visited a hundred fold.  Now any idiot (like me), with a computer (like the one I'm typing on), can become part of the public discourse.  No vetting, no requirements, no accountability; an easy, anonymous voice to spew nonsense, hate, dirty pictures, whatever you want, whatever people will read or look at, or tweet about.
Great googly moogly, we is in trouble!
Oh yeah, so here's the funny thing:  I read about a book that discusses how technology is changing the public discourse in 1985, on a blog by some guy who I have no connection to whatsoever, and an hour later I've downloaded that book on my Kindle Fire and am reading about how an electronic media has supplanted the good old fashioned printed word, but I'm reading the printed word on an electronic medium and now I'm writing about the printed word on another electronic medium, and maybe tomorrow, someone will read this and go read the book about how electronic media are changing the public discourse, and then maybe they'll write a blog about it and so on and so forth and this is getting to be a really long sentence and if I was talking I'd need to take a breath right about... Now.
I think this whole thing might be ironic, at least in the Alanis Morrisette kind of way, which at one time made me really angry because none of the things in that song were actually ironic by the correct definition which is: when the intended meaning of a word is the exact opposite of its actual meaning.  But now Alanis doesn't make me angry, she kind of makes me nostalgic for a time when an mediocre looking girl who sang angry songs, even if they were rhetorically flawed, could actually be popular.  That is, I guess before the public discourse regarding music shifted from Nirvana to Nickelback, Chuck D to Lil' Wayne, Alanis to Christina Aguilera, or whatever other junk the kids are listening to today.  I'm probably a little behind on those changes, because I'm 38 now and I like me my old timey music, like Nine Inch Nails and the Beastie Boys and I don't want to have ANYTHING to do with Justin Beiber, because I lived through Milli Vinilli and Vanilla Ice, so, in the words of the Who, "we won't get fooled again."

So, did you notice?

Are you lost?

Or could you actually follow that incoherent rant?

If you could, congratulations, you're probably a member of Generation X, just like me.
If not, don't worry, you're probably a sane reasonable person who has not been completely corrupted and discombobulated by the rapid changing of change.  Hold on to your sanity.  Read a book, while you still can.

Editing

Since discovering the ability to self-publish kindle books a couple of months ago, I have felt rather excited about the prospect of putting some longer form writing out there onto the inter-web.  However, given my occupation, I have also felt the keen need for some good editing.  Most people, especially in the blogosphere, feel they are entitled and perhaps even compelled to say whatever comes to mind.  Experience has taught me that this is not a good idea; it may get you into trouble, you may say things that you regret, you may say things that hurt people, you may just end up giving people who have it in for you ammunition.
Editing yourself is not censorship, it is being a responsible member or society.
So I came to the task of editing the rather prolific amount of material that I have written surrounding the life and death of my brother Jonathan.  Written over the course of seven years, it ranges widely and wildly in content and theme, some is raw, some is polished, some is poetry (see the below blog entry, Seven), some is prose, narrative, discursive, theological, there was just a heap of dissimilar parts.
There were some shiny things in the pile, there were some painful things in the pile, there was also a lot rusty, maudlin junk that needed to be done away with.
But that was not always easy, because that rusty, maudlin junk was a record of some very deep water, like an old ship that once proudly sailed through a horrific storm and came out a little damaged. It represented some things I thought and felt, at moments when my approach to life was less than circumspect and pastoral. We all have a right to such times, such thoughts, such words, but perhaps, unless we're C.S. Lewis, we should not inflict them on the world.
Freedom should come with responsibility.  Freedom to drive a car comes with the responsibility to obey the rules.  Freedom to own a gun should, despite some who would frame it in more rhetorical terms, be accompanied by the responsibility to register the weapon, keep it away from those who would misuse it, and learn the proper and safe handling of the weapon.
Words are weapons sharper than knives, quoth INXS.  In an age of Twitter it seems that we are throwing knives rapidly and blindly.  How many times in the past year or so have you heard about someone "catching it" for something they said on Twitter and then acting surprised that anyone took notice?  Haven't we figured it out?  Even with the way language is cheapened and devalued these days, the right words can still move mountains and the wrong words can still ruin lives.
Be careful, little children, what you say

Planning a Mid-Life Crisis, and other Modern Vanity

I'm about to turn thirty-eight, which is interesting, because there was a point in my life where I did not think 38 seemed like a real thing that could actually happen to me.  I masked this startling delusion of perpetual youth under an equally delusional fatalism.  Turning 38 is the latest addition to a long list of things that the 19 year-old me said were categorically impossible: getting married, being a pastor, having kids, listening to country music, drinking diet coke and generally caring about much of anything.

But here it is, my last day of being 37.  I am one day closer to being undeniably middle aged.  In fact, figuring  in that 80 years is probably optimistic for a guy who's had high blood pressure since he was 26 and diabetes since he was 35, I might as well get on with a decent mid life crisis.

The problem is that I'm Generation X, which means I've spent my entire working life in an economy where these darn things called bubbles keep bursting like my youthful idealism did when I was 19, so I can't afford a red sports car.  Beyond that, it turns out I actually like the wife and kids that I never expected to have when I was 19, so getting a divorce, abandoning my kids and trying to sail around the world or some other nonsense is pretty much out.  Besides all that, having a mid-life crisis is pretty much a Boomer thing to do, and as a Gen-Xer, I resent anything that has to do with Boomers, so maybe I'll just skip the mid life crisis, or just find another way to deal with the inevitable ennui that comes with growing up and growing old.

As it turns out the wife and kids I never thought I would have are in the kitchen making a blueberry pie, which is going to do terrible things to my blood sugar and certainly not help my drive to lose weight and live healthier.  Which brings me to perhaps the only nugget of wisdom that one can truly own at 38: Life is better with blueberry pie.

I figure that if I make 80, I'll probably write a blog or put something on whatever technologically incomprehensible format is available at the time that says I never expected to make it that far.  I'm pretty sure that, no matter how much has changed at that point, life will still be better with blueberry pie.