Nuance

I'm a big fan of nuance.  It is often absolutely necessary, in understanding complicated situations, to get a grip on the many and varied facets of the problem.  It is super valuable to be able to see things from other perspectives and realize that a balanced approach is almost always best.  So few things in this world are truly black and white.  With all that we know and how we experience the world, with access to such amazing and wonderful diversity, we really should be able to put dualism to bed once and for all.
But there is a problematic nuance to the whole mess.  There are many complex issues that can be nuanced to death, which in turn pushes us back into dualism and dogmatism, because it's just frustrating to deal with people who can use a nuance to justify anything, examples:
1. Prisons are overcrowded and almost 50% of the people in them are there for some sort of drug related offense, BUT we can't de-criminalize or legalize because drugs are bad, BUT so is the fact that we have more people in prison (per capita) than any other nation in the world including China, BUT we're actually digging our own grave and not making the problem any better, and probably wasting human potential on a massive scale, BUT there's too much money to be made, and too much fear out there to do anything really meaningful to change.
2. There are children (CHILDREN) seeking asylum in this country because of poverty and the same basic, misguided "War on Drugs."  And we're treating it like a run of the mill immigration problem, BUT we're a nation of immigrants (unless your name is Standing Bear, and then I'm totally sorry about the whole genocide and taking all your stuff), and we hold humanitarian ideals pretty close to our heart (or we seem to, when it involves bombing someone on the other side of the world in the name of freedom, hold on, different nuance), you know "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," BUT apparently not if the tired, poor huddled masses are from south of the border.  European tired, poor, huddled masses only please.
3. Israel and Palestine don't get along, they haven't for a really long time.  Again, we have a  hand in starting and perpetuating this whole mess, BUT we're really not allowed to really do any hard thinking about what the right thing to do is, because ISRAEL, BIBLE, GOD's CHOSEN PEOPLE, ISRAEL IS GOING TO MAKE JESUS COME BACK QUICKER!  Oh holy snot.  There are children (CHILDREN) in Gaza who are getting bombed because Hamas cares more about kicking Israel in the shins than actually trying to improve the lot of "their" people.  And Israel, for their part, doesn't really see this as an apocalyptic scenario or a divine mandate, BUT they're pretty sick and tired of all their neighbors trying to kill them.  The last time they forbore and and persevered they had to go through Auschwitz and Birkenau (Yes, I know those were Europeans, but they're the ones running Israel at the moment).
4. Finally, my favorite example of nuance run amok: "I'm not (racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, pick your favorite), BUT those people..."  When you use nuance to defend an indefensible position, you are doing it wrong, you are searching for a way to believe what you want, and still convince yourself that you're open-minded and intelligent.
It should be an exploration in search of better understanding, not a justification of why you shouldn't actually evaluate your own position.  Saying "It's complicated," is a total cop-out, and I have done it many times. I would like to think of my dodging as a sort of survival mechanism, because I didn't want to get into a protracted debated with someone who was not willing to evaluate their own dogma, but probably more often  it was just because I am lazy and would rather not really evaluate my own dogma at that particular moment.
5. We all see that the way that many cultures treat women is pretty shabby, we look at women denied education, killed because they were raped and generally treated as property rather than human beings, and we say, "I'm so glad we're not like those people."  Yet, in our wonderful, enlightened nation, there is income inequality, domestic abuse is rampant, college campuses and the military are rife with sexual assault and harassment, and the powers that be in those settings have been horribly complicit in keeping it all on the down low, because why should one mistake ruin someone's life or career.
Congratulations, you have just vomited all over the exploration of nuance, the practice of rational thought, and perhaps even our very humanity.
But, you know, "It's complicated."

Nine

Don't be afraid to show your scars.
Whether they are inside or out.
Scars are earned.
They come from relentlessly picking at the chicken pox.
Or being relentlessly picked on for something else.
Bullets or bullies can cause them.
They come from giving birth to new someone.
They come from saying goodbye to someone you love.
Scars can fade with time,
But they never really go away.
If they are really worth it, you don't want them to.
They might remind you of a mistake, and what you learned.
They might remind you of a wound, and how you survived.
They might be all you have left of something you have lost.
Everyone has scars,
But some keep them hidden.
They don't want you to know what hurt them.
Because they think being hurt is sign of:
Weakness,
Disease,
Stupidity,
Imperfection.
But it's not.
It's a sign of being human.
Jesus has scars,
They are proof of who he is.
Yours are proof of who you are.
They're not going to go away.
Even in the resurrection.
Get used to them,
Love them.
Show them proudly.
They are your scars.

The Gathering Storm

Humans find it easier to gather their energy around death, pain and problems than around joy.

I know I do.

-Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond

July 22 has a sort of ominous feel for me.  If I try really hard I can kind of remember what it felt like to live life without a big hole in the middle of it.  On this day particularly, I remember that losing a brother once seemed like a ridiculous idea.  Even with addiction and struggles, I always kind of bought the idea that it would all work out in the end.  I allowed myself to trust that there would be a new dawn and turning around.  And as of July 22, 2005, I still had that illusion.

So here's something peculiar that I have found about the last nine years: the tragedy, the loss and the grief that beset my family on July 23rd have been an immense source of creative energy.  Things that I have written, sermons I have preached, things that I have done in life, have been imbued with a certain power and significance because of what was about to happen nine years ago today.

The most joyful moments in life do not seem to have that kind of energy.  Joy is fleeting, it can come with immense power and set your life on fire, it can have the rush of excitement like a thunderstorm or a tornado, but it is usually gone as quickly as it arrived.

Grief is more like that perpetual spring rain that seems like it has been going for days and also seems like it just will not end.  But grief is a teacher, where joy is a playmate.  Both the work of learning and the joy of play can be generative, but learning has that air of seriousness and power that play, by it's very nature, is lacking.

The funny thing about it all is that, over the years, I think I have come to feel joy more easily and more deeply than I did before, and I'm fairly certain that grief has caused that sensitivity.

Don't get me wrong, it can be cussedly uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable, in fact, that I find myself wanting avoid certain things.  The beach, for instance.  The beach is a place that I will always profoundly connect with my brother. It's not that I don't like the beach, I do, I always have, but I am also profoundly emotional at the beach.  I can be moved to tears, or frustrated to anger, or just slammed into a state that I'm not entirely able to name without being paradoxical.  The paradoxical label would be, I suppose, joyous sorrow.

It's not entirely unpleasant, if you are on a beach at sunrise, or in winter, and you are alone with your thoughts.  It is practically intolerable on a crowded beach full of blissfully thoughtless rest and relaxation.  Because one thing I can no longer be on a beach is blissfully thoughtless the way I could nine years ago.

I suppose, this is all part of living with the "presence of an absence."

There is a scene in the movie The Crow, where Eric Draven uses the pain and anguish that has basically allowed him to return from the dead, as an actual weapon.  He transfers it all in a moment into his nemesis, "I have something to give you, I don't want it anymore." And the bad guy is destroyed by the power of that pain and suffering.

I was given something nine years ago, something I didn't really want, but it is something that has been profoundly useful.  This is perhaps the most difficult thing to admit: I do not wish it wasn't mine, and I would not give it back.  Sure, I would like to have my brother around, I can imagine so many ways that his absence has changed my life for the worse, but I know that what I have gained through losing is ultimately a better appreciation of life and how precious it is.

I am now a more compassionate person, a more thoughtful person, a more self-aware person than I was then.  And while I wish these results had come via a different route, I am thankful for the road I have traveled.

Pressing the Fight

Never think that war, no matter how necessary,

nor how justified, is not a crime.

-Ernest Hemmingway

Waging war in the age of video footage and the interweb has got to be a major headache.  I mean, back in the good old days you could just slaughter people with impunity and no one would ever find out.  Now you invade one little contested territory like Gaza, and you have to start dealing with all those questions about whether your right to self defense should really include all those dead children being pulled out of the rubble.

But come on, 3000 or so years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, Tiglath Pileser used to ride into your towns and build pyramids of severed heads, Amnesty International didn't say squat.

At the risk of sounding too Forrest Gump, when I was a kid, my parents taught me that if I allowed bullies to provoke me into violence, even if I won the fight, I actually lost.  It took me a while to get a grip on that reality, but eventually I saw how it made sense.  Violence never really solves anything.  I know that, but if someone punches me in the face, I'm still probably going to hit them back.

War is serious business, and Hamas is bad people, as are ISIS and Al Quaeda, and the Taliban, and SPECTRE (Sorry, I have to laugh a little or else I'm going to have a rage fit).  But what we have done, Israel, the US, and even our old nemesis Russia, is let these little groups of terrorist/bullies draw us into a fight that we cannot win.  There's this scene in the movie The Princess Bride, where the hero has to fight a giant man named Fezzig (played by Andre the Giant).  The hero is decidedly not a giant and stands absolutely no chance of besting the Fezzig's strength, so he uses his speed and tenacity to get behind the giant and latch on around his neck, cutting off his breath.

Fezzig makes the comment that he's not used to fighting just one person, he's used to fighting gangs of people, he's used to people using different tactics.  The rather absurd and almost insane method of grab, cling and choke, doesn't seem like it poses a threat, until he starts to lose consciousness.  Typical of Goliath, to not be threatened by a boy with no armor and some stones.

The Palestinians are no match for the Israeli Army, but then again, the Afghans were not for the Russians either, nor were the Viet Cong for the US.

The more we master violence, the less effective it becomes.  We use technological violence to inflict massive damage, damage that, by all estimations, ought to "shock and awe" our enemies into submission, except it doesn't.  They dig their dead children out of the rubble and hate us even more, with greater reason, and more determination, we become less human in their eyes than we were before, more deserving of terror and tragedy.

It is the very definition of a vicious cycle.  It is a crime against the light of our Creator.

And it will continue, as long as there are axes to grind and swords to sharpen, as long as someone makes money off of making and selling RPGs and body armor, as long as giants can be goaded into fights they cannot win, as long as we keep burying children under the rubble of our fear and hatred.

At the risk of sounding naive, I would like to ask if we might not try something Jesus suggested: forgiveness.  Maybe the only way to truly break the cycle of violence is to stop being violent.  I know what you're thinking: we just can't afford to play that game, it's too dangerous, it would leave us defenseless, it would make us look weak, etc.  But how do you know it wouldn't work.  Honestly, it actually has never been honestly given a try, other than by very small groups that admittedly rely on the violence of others in society to keep them safe.

What if we beat our swords in to plowshares once and for all?

What if we actually grow up and stop playing war?

Wouldn't it bet worth it to stop seeing people (even people who don't look like us) pull their dead children out of the rubble?

Stuff

This is what you might call a confluence.
I am about to turn 40.  I've got way too much stuff, in my life, around my middle, and perhaps even in my brain.  Things are beginning to feel crowded, and a little bit stretched like that button on the front of my shirt.
Michele and I just decided last night to pay off the remainder of the loan for our camper, so that we can try to get rid of it.  The camper, which seemed like such a good idea, has become perhaps the single biggest mistake of my adult life.  I know what you're saying: "Gee Mark, world's smallest violin playing just for you.  Some people's mistakes get them jail time, or bankruptcy, or trapped in abusive relationships."
I know it's small potatoes, but the reason I have been so afflicted by the whole camper fiasco, is that it represents not just a bad decision, it represents a spiritual failure.  It is proof, which I have to look at parked in my driveway every day, of the fact that I thought things could make me happy.  It leaks out into other areas of life: it is a debt that we really didn't need to take on, it is a source of friction between Michele and me, it is the primary reason why I have to keep a large SUV (that I like okay, except when I have to visit the gas station).
It reminds me that I am irresponsible and consumerist, and most of all it reminds me that true pleasure is usually found in simplifying things rather than getting bigger and better.  But it's a lot like learning to control my diet, which means it's an ongoing struggle, which I often lose.
Even as we made the decision to start to try and erase our folly, I started thinking about what other stuff I could accumulate in it's place.  What kind of new car could I get?  Maybe we could just get a really nice tent and still go camping!  We could use the money we've been sinking into the camper to rent a house in the Outer Banks for a week!  We could go to Europe!  You know, five guitars really isn't enough... a Stratocaster might really be just the thing...
I'm freaking hopeless.
I'm starting to get why people would just say, "To Hell with all this!" and join a monastery.
All the while, God shows me that the things I really enjoy the most, barely cost anything.  Playing the guitars I already own, taking walks (which means getting some nice shoes from time to time!  See? hopeless), sitting on the back porch of my house (okay that's not free, but you have to live somewhere), are all things that make me a lot happier than pretty much anything money can buy.
So why is materialism still such a draw?
In the old days, idols were mostly about stuff too: good harvests = material wealth, lot's of kids = cheap labor and someone to inherit all your stuff.  People worshiped idols because they promised material benefits.  Despite what certain shiny TV preachers might tell you, God really isn't big on whether or not you drive a Mercedes.  In fact, if you believe Jesus, which I do, being rich might actually be a major impediment to entering the Kingdom.  It's not because God hates rich people, it's because God has no room for their stuff.
Stuff = idols, and that is no overstatement.
Vows of poverty are not punishments, they are emancipation.
As Emerson said in his Ode to W.H. Auden, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."
I would like to say that, as I creep into maturity, I'm finally ready to shed the life of serving stuff, but it only seems to be getting worse.
As Michele and I were looking at paying off our camper loan, we had our bank account balances up on the screen.  Jack looked over at it and was in awe.  For a moment I saw those numbers through his eyes and thought, "yep, here we are, multi-thousandaires."  Then Michele pointed out to him how much our mortgage was every month and some of the gleam went out of his eyes, and I felt myself clench up a little bit.
As Madonna said, "We are living in a material world."
Lord, have mercy.

The Space in Us... the Final Frontier

There is a place in the heart that will never be filled

A space

And even during the best moments and the greatest times

We will know it

We will know it more than ever

There is is a place in the heart that will never be filled

And we will wait

And wait

In that space.

-Charles Bukowski, No Help for That

I read an article this morning about scientific investigation into why humans believe things.  It was long, and full of neat little facts about how we know things and why we process the world the way that we do.  According to the article, people are sort of wired to believe in things like life after death and a higher power.  Which is why there are so few true Athiests; most self-proclaimed atheists are simply people who do not care much for religion or the various versions of god that religions present.  The article quotes an actual avowed atheist who wrote: "Atheism may be psychologically impossible because of the way humans think."

This sort of thing takes me back to Emmanuel Kant, (but hey don't all roads lead there eventually?) and his discussion of noumenal versus phenomenal.  Bear with me please, I know for most people who even know who Kant is, the very name begins to cause one's eyes to glaze over, but this is a very old dialogue and it has has developed some very profound wrinkles.

It started with Plato and his idea that there was an archetypal and ideal version of everything we see, but that we only ever see the sort of projection of that ideal, at least during our mortal existence.  This Platonic scheme infiltrates and even saturates the world that early Christianity found itself inhabiting and so has become a sort of framework for our understanding of God and Heaven and life itself.  It's one of those tacit assumptions that Atheists and people of faith alike share on some very deep level.  Such a deep level, in fact, that it often goes un-examined and is therefore taken as a self-evident truth.

Kant called the ideal realm the noumena, and posited that all things exist in this realm of ding-en-sich or "things as such."  However, the world that we can perceive through the senses is the world of phenomenal things, things that can be seen, touched, tasted, heard and otherwise experienced through the senses.

Science is an obligate discipline of the phenomenal realm.  To science, if it cannot be observed and measured in some way, shape or form, it does not exist, and thus the entire reality of the noumenal existence of things is off limits to scientific exploration, except perhaps in the cases of peculiar lacunae (blank spaces between what we know).

Science generally leaves the consideration of these spaces to poets, philosophers and theologians.  The only data that can be collected regarding this sort of thing is an actual survey of what human beings believe.  This is rather interesting because, for most of our history, what we believe has been perhaps the most unscientific conglomeration that you could possibly imagine.  It is really only since the enlightenment (when modern scientific method and even thought were essentially born) that we were even aware that what we know in a noumenal sense ought to be actually verifiable in the world of phenomenological evidence.

But evidence will never fill up all the spaces.   As my buddy Bukowski says: "There is a place in the heart that will never be filled."  Poets get it, that's why we need to keep them around.

The Chickens Come Home to Roost

"The chickens come home to roost."

-Malcolm X, when asked about the death of John F. Kennedy

There is nothing that gets me right in the feels quite as badly as suffering children.  Whether it is those children in Newtown, those girls in Nigeria, all of those kids in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq who are torn apart by war, or now the children of Central America who are showing up on our doorstep, not as immigrants looking for a better life, but as refugees fleeing the horror of their home countries.

I have been to Guatemala, I have seen orphaned children, I have had them climb all over me, and had them laugh at how badly I understand Spanish.  When I think of all those children who are now fleeing, unaccompanied, in a desperate quest for security, to our country, I can't help but see all those little smiling faces, and feel all those little brown hands that so desperately wanted someone to hold them.

All of "my" orphans are probably pretty much grown up by now, but that really doesn't change things much.  Especially when I consider that the proximate cause of this whole mess is something that I have come to understand as an extremely flawed ideology: the "war" on drugs.  We started using militaristic language in our response to the problems of drug abuse when I was a kid, but the root of the problem goes way back.  The laws of this country concerning controlled substance date back to an era where the phenomenon of addiction was poorly understood and the actual impact of "recreational drug use" had only begun to step out of the shadows of opium dens.  Other laws were made during the upheavals of the 1960's, when the establishment was terrified of all these libertarian young folk and their sex, drugs and rock and roll (it's actually kind of amazing that Rock music is still legal).

You can make pretty good arguments that most of our drug laws make very little actual sense.  They make little sense because they were written in fear and with lack of understanding and with almost no consideration to the underlying causes of the phenomenon of drug use.

I will not tell you that drugs are good.  I've seen too much of the havoc that they play.  I have lost a brother to drug addiction and overdose, I have lost all of my illusions about "harmless" drugs.  But I will tell you some things about the "war on drugs:

1. It has not stopped drug use in this country, or even significantly slowed it down.

2. It has cost us a lot of money (about $51 billion dollars a year)

3. It has created a massive injustice in the correctional system (of 196,574 people in the Federal correctional system, almost 50% are drug related (96, 426 people)).  The percentage of those who are African American is disturbingly skewed, but that takes us onto shaky statistical ground, so let's just say that more black folk get locked up for drug related stuff than white folk and leave it at that.

4. Despite all these incarcerations, drug related crime has not really waned in the slightest, nor has addiction.  In point of fact, incarceration of people for drug infractions tends to marginalize them even further, rather than contributing to their rehabilitation.  Going to prison, as many have observed, usually just makes you into a better criminal.

5. Poor people are inordinately the victims of the system, while wealthier people can afford to hire lawyers and go to rehab, poor kids go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

6. Our enforcement activity has created dangerous situations in our neighbors to the south.  Mexico and almost all of Central America are adversely effected by the edicts and activities of our government.  In Honduras at the moment, the drug cartels have completely overrun the actual police and government, and thus we have doomed an already poor and suffering nation to live under the threat of the most savage sorts of violence from men who have become accustomed to disregarding the rule of law.

I remember, when I was in Guatemala, seeing a group of four police officers in the road outside the orphanage.  I was impressed by their gear, they wore tactical uniforms and carried sub-machine guns.  But something was different about these men.  It occurred to me the other day as I watched a sheriff's deputy come into the Chik Fil-A where we were eating.  He was confident, and sure of himself, as most people carrying guns tend to be.  All he had was his side arm, but it was clearly visible and he, as most police officers do, radiated an aura of authority.  Sometimes police can actually get carried away with that "aura."

But not the Guatemalan police.  For all their intimidating gear and their impressive firepower, they were furtive, always watching the distance, always with their guns slung in front, ready for... something.  Even as these four men stood in the road talking to each other and even laughing at some joke or other, their eyes were always moving.

Law enforcement is a rather different animal in Central America, but we like to think that we have it all figured out.

We do not.

We do not have it figured out any better than we have the core issues that lead us to have such massive demand for illicit substances.  We are better at dealing with the consequences, but we have made almost no progress into learning why some people are willing to risk so much in order to get high.

And now we have thousands of children fleeing the violence of narco gangs in Central America, and we're saying that they're not our problem, but they are our problem, they are very much our problem.  They are quite literally the embodiment of our failure to properly deal with our own excess.  They are the indictment of our addictions and our penchant for solving problems with violence.

We have made the stew, and now some of us are wincing at how bitter it tastes.

We have locked up so many people for simple possession.

We have put a bunch of poor, marginalized people in a position where the rule of law is the enemy, and the narcos are heroic banditos who offer a very real way out of soul crushing poverty.

We have put weak and tottering governments in jeopardy by asking them to run the front line conflicts in our war on drugs.  And we're surprised and upset when they lose?

Meanwhile in Colorado, and Washington state, they have made marijuana legal, and the world has not ended.  Those states have not been overrun by strung out hopheads infected with reefer madness.  Girls are not being raped in the street and children are not being killed with impunity.  But they are in Honduras, not because drugs are legal, but because they're illegal.

Legalization has some problems and there will be consequences, drugs do ruin lives.  But it's hard to imagine that legal drugs would ruin more lives, in more catastrophic fashion, than the war on them has over the past thirty years.

Heck, in this country we've found out that we like Oxycontin (legal), better than Heroin (illegal) anyway.

Even the Losers...

Okay, last futbol post for a while.  The World Cup is over, and I am coming to terms with the fact that I just don't have the energy or the interest to become a full time soccer fan.  I'm not going to record the Premier League, or La Liga, which generally happen in the middle of the night, and American MLS just doesn't have the appeal because they don't have Messi, Ronaldo and Neymar.  In other words, I'm going to pay attention via headlines and Sportscenter highlights until the next World Cup, when I'll let my inner global person out again.
Germany won the final against Argentina.  After absolutely destroying Brasil in the semifinal match, Germany was the heavy favorite.  Argentina, despite having Lionel Messi, had not scored much in this whole tournament and had made it through based on a virtually impenetrable defense.  In fact, they advanced to the final by virtue of penalty kicks against the Netherlands (another team that had made it to the semis by not losing rather than by winning).
Argentina doesn't fit the mold of Latin American Futbol.  Mexico, Brasil, and Columbia, who play the beautiful game with a certain flair and with exciting offense had been knocked out one by one, and here was Argentina.  Argentina seems to have a lot more in common with Europe than it does with the rest of South America when it comes to futbol.
Argentina and Germany played a solid 90 minutes of defensive responsible futbol, they were tied 0-0 after regular time, and you started to wonder if maybe this whole tournament was going to go to penalty kicks, so much had been decided that way up to now.  Then Germany scored.  A substitute, who had come in the 88th minute, scored a virtuous goal, he controlled a high centering pass with his chest and, before the ball hit the ground he nailed it with his foot, into the Argentine goal.
There was nothing that anyone could have done.  It was pure, it was skillful, it was a little bit lucky, but it was unarguable.  There was no question.
There was also nothing the best player in the world could do about it.  Lionel Messi started to look even more solemn and serious than normal.  There were a few flashes, almost moments where you thought he might, but he couldn't.  It reminds us that futbol is a team game.  As much as we would like to make it a celebrity driven sport, it's about team.  The Germans were the best team in this tournament.  They could be overwhelming as they were against Brasil, but they could also play nip-tuck for 90 minutes and wait patiently for their break as they did in the games against the US and Argentina.  They seemed equally comfortable with either option (well at some point in the Brasil massacre, I do think they felt a little more at ease, but probably not until they had a four goal lead).
Messi, in what seemed more like an insult than an accolade, had to walk up to the award platform and accept the trophy for being the best player of the tournament.  I think he would rather have had someone kick him in the head.  He looked positively morose, and you wonder if the selection committee couldn't have spared him that.  He is one of the best players in the world, and he is a goal scoring artist, but he was playing on a defensively oriented team.
This happens in team games.  An analogy from our version of Football: Trent Dilfer, and Joe Flacco have won more Superbowls than Dan Marino.  Team is important, as much as we want to believe that it's all about the superstars, except for sports like Tennis and Golf, you need other people.
Which is why I feel a bit bad for Messi (not too much, because that guy is still living the life), but at least a little.  He was carrying the hopes of his country on his shoulders.  People would say: "It's Germany versus Lionel Messi."  Now that's just not fair.
All things considered Messi could very easily have been in the place of Mario Goetze as the man who broke the ice and scored that artful goal to win it all, but he wasn't, a man who came off the bench for the other team was the one who got the glory.  But I suspect that no one is making the mistake of naming "Super Mario" the best player in the game.
We would all do well to remember that we're not in this thing alone.

The Return of the King

Cleveland.  The Rust Belt, Northeast Ohio, an area that has become synonymous with futility: The Indians, the Browns, and the Cavaliers.  The most famous sports happenings in Cleveland history are momentous collapses, either giving up "The Drive" to John Elway or Michael Jordan stealing Craig Ehlo's face forever.
Four years ago, another infamous chapter in Cleveland's legacy unfolded when native son and chosen one, basketball Messiah Lebron James chose to "take his talents to South Beach."  People practically rioted in the streets, burned James jerseys, the owner of the team called him a "coward."  The city went into mourning.  Most people understood why he left.  Cleveland has a reputation, fair or not, for being an unpleasant place, a town of born losers, left behind by the rest of the world, despised even by other blue collar towns like Pittsburgh, and more or less ignored by the New York and Los Angeles front runners.  Miami was glamorous and they had the makings of superpower in the NBA.  James got his titles.  Maybe not seven, but two, and those back to back, narrowly missing the elusive three-peat.
Now he's coming home.
And it's big news, it's perhaps the biggest thing to happen to Cleveland since he left.
Even now, I'm listening to ESPN types wonder how Cleveland can forgive him for leaving in the first place.
They just don't understand.
He is theirs and they are his, I suspect, even more than money, that's what brought him back.
He has won, he has silenced the voices that said he couldn't win a championship, that said he would be like Dan Marino, the best that never won.
Now he wants to do that on his terms, for his people.  I don't think they ever stopped being his people, even when he was in the bright tropical lights of Miami.  He had rust in his heart.
It gets me a little in the feels, and I don't even like Cleveland, but I'm happy for them.  It's like watching that kid who everyone always picked on, get a moment of glory.
When he left, I suspect he felt crushed by the messianic expectations, now I think the King has grown up.  He's ready for the crown that people tried to give him when he was fresh out of high school.
Good Luck Lebron.
Long live the King!

I Ain't Worried

A couple of days ago I got an email from the Barna Group asking me to participate in a survey of clergy about religious freedom.  Religious freedom has been at the core of a lot of news lately, thanks in large part to the SCOTUS decision in the Hobby Lobby case, and so it's pretty clear why people might want to find out what actual church leaders think about it.
What occurred to me as I worked through the survey was that I don't actually think very much about it, at least not in terms of fearing for mine.  I am thankful for it, I mourn for those who do not have it, but I do not feel that my government is anywhere near impinging upon my relationship with God or my religious observances.
Of course, even though I am a big fan of the Law of Moses, I'm a bit of a libertine when it comes to the morality that they imply.  I feel that the law is primarily designed to keep us from hurting each other, and as such it is admirable and perhaps as near to perfect as one can get.  However, when one expands beyond the scope of injurious behavior, into the realm of morality, things get a bit hazy.  Valid Christian societies have strong disagreements about what morality is required by the commandment: "thou shalt not kill."  Some (including my own tradition) say it means murder and allows for killing on the field of battle or in self defense or in the enforcement of laws.  But the Anabaptist tradition take a stricter path and say that Jesus' ethic of non-violence and self sacrifice requires pacifism, no ifs, ands or buts.
We have had a lot of discussion about what exactly constitutes adultery and/or fornication, with regard to which the Levitical code actually provides quite a few loopholes that we modern folk would certainly find problematic (sex with servants, rape of unmarried minors etc.).  While it was rather rigorously enforced in ancient times for females, men could get away with an awful lot...
But I digress, I was talking about religious freedom and a Barna Survey.  What struck me about the survey was the fact that I assume there are some, perhaps even many clergy people who did not find the most fear-ridden paranoid questions fear-ridden or paranoid.  Which means that there are probably a goodly number of people who are deeply concerned that the government might actually outlaw Christian faith.  The problem that I see in this country, more than anything, is that Christian faith is actually privileged above other faith traditions (or the absence of a faith tradition) and has been so for such a great long time that we have gotten rather used to our privilege.  Thus when we find ourselves on equal footing (which is the way it is actually supposed to be: anti-establishment clause), we feel a bit of a pinch.
What worries me more than attack from Muslims or even Atheists is a breakdown in the actual freedom of religion in favor of a continuation of this Christian privilege.  Because I'm a lot more worried that other Christians will tell me what I have to believe about Jesus or how I need to interpret scripture than I am worried that the secularists are going to tell me that I can't believe in God any more.
I have seen recently, the rather unfortunate bully tactics that we Christians can use against those who disagree with us, and I don't think it makes Jesus happy.  I believe in freedom of religion and freedom from religion if that's your choice.  There are always those who are going to decide that God is dead, or was never alive in the first place, that's fair enough.  I disagree with them, the same way I disagree with Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists about the nature of a Trinitarian God and the Incarnation.  I disagree with them the same way I disagree with Roman Catholics about the mystery of the Lord's Supper or with Baptists about the sacrament of Baptism being once and for all.  I disagree with them the same way I disagree with some of my fellow Presbyterians about the interpretation of Scripture or the appropriate expressions of righteousness and the way in which we live out our faith in the world.
Which is to say that I value their freedom to be wrong, and I will defend that freedom, unless their wrongness starts to infringe on my freedom to be wrong, or right, or anywhere in between.

Laughing in the Dark

When I was in college, my first summer was spent working at a soda bottling plant.  We made mostly store brand sodas and the facility was not what you would call state of the art.  Most of the machines were old and didn't really work quite the way they did when they first fired up the plant.  Maintenance was highly reactive, always seeming to be a step behind rather than anticipating the obvious and trying to stay a step ahead.

It was not a great place to work.  Productivity was down and, for the most part, management had very little idea what to do about it.  And so I found myself, at 19, a summer employee, sitting in a production meeting with the plant manager and the president of the company, along with the man who ran the other machine on my line, being asked what exactly was going wrong.

In my naivety, I answered honestly.  I told them that they needed to seriously consider a major overhaul of the two machines on our line.  We ran 12 oz aluminum cans, loaded them into case trays and ran them through a shrink wrap machine.  Our line was the fastest moving line in the place and also the oldest, when things went wrong, they went wrong rather catastrophically.  I was new, so naturally they thought it was my fault.  It wasn't, and my co-worker, who had been around long enough to know what from what, agreed.  He saw me fighting the machine when things started going wrong, he knew that what was happening really wasn't anyone's fault.

However, my approach probably wasn't the best, I told them that I was really just here for the summer, I was there to make some money and skeedaddle on back to college.  My intent was to present myself as an "objective" point of view, to tell these men who didn't seem to have much of a clue what was going on right under their noses, what was what.  It was not well received.  Apparently a greenhorn, summer employee is not the right person to speak truth to power, and if it hadn't been for my partner's defense, I probably would have been fired.

As it was, we both found ourselves switched to second shift, which I thought was going to be terrible, but ended up being a lifesaver.  My partner told me it would be, but I wasn't sure.  He said second shift was run by a different sort of crew, they were a lot less uptight.

Second shift is where I met John.  John was bald, barrel shaped African American man who had being doing this job, or jobs like it for pretty much his entire life.  He was now maybe in his late 50's maybe even 60's and he absolutely knew not to take stuff too seriously.

When the stuff would start to go awry, you could hear John's booming laugh, over the considerable din of the machinery.  One time, in the wee hours of the morning, we lost power and everything went absolutely black and silent, and all you could hear was John's laugh.  It was actually very reassuring.

Sometimes, when the system is broken, all you can really do is laugh.

So much of our world is just dysfunctional, at least the parts that involve human beings.

There's a whole lot of stuff that seems like we just can't fix it.

I wonder when the right time to speak a prophetic word actually is.

The lesson that I learned on that summer job was that you can't really expect to be heard if you're the new guy.  You can't really stand apart from a situation and offer "objective" truth.  There are many places where the system is just too big for you to influence.  We like to tell ourselves that we can change the world, but we all have limits, our rights, our abilities, our very being is limited by who we are and where we are.

All things are not available to us, that's a myth.  We are not entitled to do anything we want, we have limits, and limits, despite what some might imply, are a good thing.

It's difficult to watch systems run amok, whether they're fairly simple things like production lines or more complex systems like churches, political systems or what have  you.

Sometimes the only sane response is laughing in the dark.

Bend it Back

What I was starting to say, before I went off on my Lord of the Flies tangent yesterday, is that I see some real harm in the polarization that is taking place in our world.  I'm going to put secular politics to the side for the moment, because ultimately I believe that secular politics is doomed to pursue the self interest of those in power.  What I would like to talk about is Church politics, which for a brief moment was actually newsworthy.  The General Assembly has made some moves, some would say, "big moves," I would say controversial moves.  I'm not going to talk about the merit of those moves, but rather the response to those moves in a polarized environment (that sounds vaguely scientific).
We have reached a point where true consensus is difficult, if not impossible, on some issues.  Marriage equality and Israel/Palestine, are the ones in question here.  The interesting thing about this in a religious context is the explicit involvement of the conscience and one's understanding of God.  It is a dangerous thing to challenge someone's opinion on an emotionally charged issue, but when that opinion is informed by their connection to ultimate authority...
Thus there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Some say we have become apostate, some say heretical, (there is an important difference: apostasy is about practice, heresy is about ideas).  And then again some say that we have actually removed a major stumbling block from the path of certain "little ones," and have become more like Christ, welcoming the stranger and the outcast and challenging unjust systems.
In all of this there is much equivocation and some conciliatory gestures.  However, attempts at continued dialogue from the victorious factions, are rife with the smell of smugness masquerading as humility.  How else can it sound?
After an almost forty year debate, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has finally come to the precipice of defining "biblical" truth differently than it has in the past.  A church that has historically valued our intellectual and spiritual connection with the Jewish faith, and been vocal in our support of the nation of Israel, has decided that our friends have been behaving badly towards a group of people we had largely ignored until recently.  We have made a nearly toothless, symbolic gesture, and it has offended a chunk of people.  If a symbolic gesture doesn't ruffle some feathers what good is it?
What I hope does not come of this is our fellowship to begin to follow progressivism without question.  In recent years I have found that my own experience on the journey of faith have made me feel more at home with the progressive agenda, but I still respect my more conservative friends, in much the same way as I respected my progressive friends when I was younger and tilted more towards the right.  The journey away from some of my formerly held opinions has involved deeply personal experiences of God's grace in some of the most tragic and unsavory experiences.  I have become more and more aware of the power of God's redeeming love, and as I have done so have found the idea of God's judgment less and less problematic.
At the same time I was witnessing some decidedly un-Christlike behavior from people who I thought were "on my side."  I found that asking honest questions was not acceptable and therefore true dialogue was nearly impossible.
On the progressive side, I found that questions were okay, and things began to seem alive and hopeful again.  I thought I was home.  But I made the same mistake, yet again, in thinking that we ever get home short of God's presence.  Lately, as the scales have begun to shift and the progressives have begun to win some battles, I'm seeing the ugly head of un-reflective dogma pop up again: naming those who disagree enemies, smug condescension to those "poor backwards evangelicals."
Seriously?  I thought I had migrated out of that.
Jim Wallis of all people, penned a draft of a letter about religious freedom in the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision.  Wallis, editor in chief of Sojourners magazine, was one of the voices that sort of calmly assured me it was okay to step a little to the left.  What he said was basically that religious freedom is a good thing, and we shouldn't get too riled up that the government interprets that basic premise fairly broadly.   Because Hobby Lobby and Conestoga are pretty obviously using this case to throw a wrench in the Affordable Care Act, and because, as Mother Jones has uncovered, their commitment to the issue is somewhat less than consistent, the Progressive movement has not had nice things to say about Mr. Wallis.
One comment was that Wallis was not a true progressive, he was a "liberal evangelical" and there was a difference.  The implication being that his opinion was not worthy of the high ideals of the "In Crowd."

Really?  Have we not learned anything about litmus tests and trying to enforce doctrinal purity?
Doesn't Wallis, of all people, have enough street cred to say something that might call us to a little bit of moderation in the tone of a conversation?
Another thing that caused me to jump off the conservative bandwagon is the schismatic practice of separating into smaller and smaller groups of like minded people.  Want to talk about an "un-biblical" model of community: try this on for size: only associate with people who agree with you 100 percent, never try to learn from what other people might have to say, if you disagree with them, God hates them, judge them as harshly as you want, call them sinners, and shun them from your presence.   Always remember to fly off the handle whenever someone does something you don't like, because only the strong-minded and doctrinally pure will inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Irony and sarcasm full stop.
We can do better than this people.  We don't all have to agree on stuff, but it would be a really good idea to stop labeling each other as Antichrist.
We need to stop this in all quarters, because it's making us look bad.  The thing all those people we hope to reach in the name of Jesus Christ see in the church is a bunch of bickering fools.  They may pay attention, whenever our fight is about something that resonates with the "real" world (i..e. marriage equality, middle east stuff), and then it's really important to show that we can actually think about things and try to find the Jesus way through it all.

Choosing Up Sides and Smelling Armpits

Both of us say, "There are laws to obey,"

But frankly, I don't like your tone.

-Leonard Cohen, Different Sides

In William Golding's book Lord of the Flies, there is a group of young men from a boarding school who are marooned on a deserted island.  Absent any adult supervision the group of boys devolves from the staid manners and conventions of British civilization into a savage society.  There are two distinct types of leader: Ralph, who represents the early choice of the group, and Jack, who leads the boys choir clique and who becomes the antagonist to Ralph.

Ralph's primary focus is trying to maintain some sense of order and civility among the boys, he organizes them, assigns tasks necessary to survival and, at least in the early going, is rather successful.  Jack on the other hand, sees the island as a place to live out his fantasy of becoming a hunter, and organizes his followers around the goal of procuring food in the form of wild pigs.  Ralph gradually loses the majority of his people, either to Jack's wildman fantasy or to idleness.

Then there is Simon; the mystic, perhaps an epileptic, who shuns the competition between Ralph and Jack, and who takes special care for the "little-uns" meaning the younger boys, the ones who don't know what to do in their new predicament, and who are mostly scared and want their mothers.  Simon could be the all important middle ground between Jack and Ralph, but Simon is disconnected and perhaps a bit unstable.

Ralph has a lone loyal adherent, Piggy, the myopic, chubby kid whom Jack instinctively loathes, because he represents weakness, and whom Ralph protects for the same reason.  With Piggy's often unhelpful assistance Ralph tries to hold the rapidly decaying society together, and fails.

The force of Jack's conviction, and the overall tendency of the majority towards apathy and idleness, doom Ralph and his ideas of a progressive civilization that seeks to emulate the standards of the adult world.

I loved Lord of the Flies, when I read it in about seventh grade.  I saw in the story an extreme analog of the "savage" world of adolescence, and it brought a certain amount of clarity.  However, I had hoped that someday, like what happens at the end of the novel, the dystopia would end.

But it hasn't, it has simply changed character.  The on-going clash between passionate extremists, the utter ennui and disengagement of the majority of sensible people, the dreamy disengagement and disregard of the mystic perspective, it's all still here.  I'm not going to make direct correlations between who represents which faction, because the strength of the novel is it's simplification of a rather complex socio-political struggle into a microcosm.  The characters are presented in two dimensions.  Ralph never sees the obvious truth that he cannot quench the fire of savagery in Jack, and so he is literally almost consumed by it.  Jack only realizes how far he has descended into that savagery until the deus ex machina moment, when the adult world suddenly and surprisingly reappears.

The church at it's best and at it's worst is best identified as Simon, the protector of little ones, and the one who would prefer not to get involved in the affairs of Jack and Ralph.  Simon, because he is poorly understood, can be enlisted by either cause.  Simon generally thinks Ralph has the right idea: stay calm, keep organized, focus on getting rescued, but he is also puzzled and perhaps a little drawn to Jack's passionate intensity.  But Simon, if he allows himself to be too absorbed with these political pursuits, could quickly be corrupted and become a danger to the ones he most wants to protect.

Simon's vision is too dreamy and abstract, and he is prone to get lost in himself.  When he's on task and purposeful, he is the provider of shelter and safety.  He discovers that "the beast" on the island is really just a product of the boys fears and he is the first victim of the violent cult of Jack.  Simon, in the minds of many critics, is actually the Christ figure of the story, because of his neutrality in the struggle for power, because of his mystic insight, and because of his martyrdom.

Which leads me to the point: in our passionate pursuit of causes, we would very much like it if Jesus were on our side.  Unfortunately, Jesus is a tricky character to actually have on your side.  He has this persistent concern for the least of these, and anything that runs afoul of that concern is likely going to be a problem.  It doesn't matter whether your an obvious hero, like Ralph, or an obvious villain like Jack, the place you lose Jesus as your ally is when you set power as your goal and use violence as your tool.

In our current grown up world, we have people who want to claim Jesus for their side all over the place.  Liberals/Conservatives, Progressive/Evangelical, whatever dichotomy draws your interest, it usually boils down to a choice between Jack and Ralph.

Simon's corpse floats out into the ocean, and the Lord is not on our side.

Happy Birthday America

He walked off, like the song said, “to look for America.”

Among the myths and ghosts of the west.

He heard their stories and breathed the open air of the high desert.

Tired of the emptiness and dust,

He soaked up the California sun among the flakes and the beautiful people

Feeling dry, he re-hydrated himself in the northwest and became flannel and green.

Saturated and heavy hearted, it was over the mountains and out to the plains…

Into vast spaces, where humankind are most industrious insects.

Seeking answers down the great arterial river into the Deep South,

Where the old ways and the humidity can stifle you.

Yearning to breathe free,

North again through Appalachia, green, old and poor, black with coal dust.

Missing some teeth, but holding sternly on to their dignity.

Wandering, aimless, into the iron of the industrial centers,

Factories and rust and the power of the working man.

Along the broad ways of the gleaming cities of money and power that line the coast;

Finding corruption and greed, but also culture and world-driving ideas.

What did you see my blue eyed son?

Are we living up to our potential?

Do we welcome the poor and the huddled masses as we said we would?

Has our zeal for a new nation become fevered pursuit of empire?

Are we squandering our freedom in lust for endless entertainment?

Are we shrouding the purple mountain’s majesty with smog?

Are we laying waste to the fruited plains?

Are we stepping on necks to get ahead?

Have we abandoned our high ideals in favor of mere survival?

Do things, instead of ideas, drive us forward?

Are we as good or as bad as we think we are?

You should be old enough now to answer these hard questions.

Snap out of your adolescent quest to find yourself.

The world needs you to grow up… now.

Happy Birthday America.

Decisions, Results and a Deep Breath

I never thought I would see the day when the name "Hobby Lobby" invoked such passion from the American public.  Yesterday, I read a few articles that praised Ruth Bader Ginsberg's rather snarky dissent of the 5-4 SCOTUS decision to uphold Hobby Lobby's challenge of the provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires employers to cover birth control as a part of their employee health coverage.  Ginsberg and other dissenting voices say this is a terrible assault on women's rights, that values the religious convictions of a corporation over and above the reproductive health and choice of their employees.
My personal thoughts on this whole issue drive me back to a rather growing conviction that our healthcare should never be left in the hands of those who have any other goal than well... our health.  In other words, our healthcare choices should not be made by those who want to turn a profit, who have an ideological ax to grind with the system, or in short by anyone who does not have to live in our body.  That being said the sweeping generalization that this rather narrow decision on one case is going to open a whole can of religious crusading worms, and provide precedent for massive discrimination based on selectively held beliefs, is spurious to say the least.
As was the case with the reaction to the PC(USA) decision regarding divestment from three companies doing business with Israeli security forces in the West Bank, a decision that is actually extremely focused in scope has mushroom clouded to a size that appears to be able to put our collective underwear in all sorts of bunches.  There's just enough there to make you mad, and give you the fear of some Orwellian future where the gubmint runs everything.
While I admit that the high court's consistent decisions to treat corporations as though they have individual rights is disturbing, I also think, because of the nature of the court, it is a reversible error.  With a few minor details moved around the Hobby Lobby decision could have easily gone the other way, even in the mind of uber-conservative Justice Scalia.  The nature of case law, as I understand it, is that it is a shifting sea of precedents and rulings, and the reason we need judges, juries, appellate courts and a judicial review process is because it's never "done."
Which means, somewhere down the road, a corporation is going to abuse these rights they have been given, and somebody is going to sue them.  There will be a decision, there will be an appeal and a protracted journey through the system, and eventually our dear SCOTUS, which will probably be comprised of a slightly different mix of folks by then, will make a decision that further defines what is legal and what is not.
It takes a long time, seriously glaciers move faster, but it does move.
People complain about "activist" judges whenever the judges make a decision that they don't like.
I learned this week, thanks to futbol, about a strange nuance of the game, if the two teams play to a draw for 90 minutes and then through extra time and the game has to be decided by penalty shots, it's not technically considered a result.  It's still a draw.  Now, a team can advance or be eliminated based on penalty shots, but it's a different thing that flat out winning or losing.
It means that the actual contest on the pitch was too close to call, and so they have to determine the way forward some other way.  Many of our communal decisions, legal, ecclesial and otherwise are decided by penalty shots: a very specific set of circumstances that does not necessarily test the overall ability of the team or the merit of the argument, but could really go either way based on luck or how the wind is blowing or what Justice Roberts had for breakfast.
Can these decisions be hard to swallow?
For sure, like two Belgian goals in extra time, or even worse a penalty shot given for an obvious flop (I feel you Mexico).
But we're human, and we ain't perfect, let's take a deep breath, qualifying for 2018 is just around the corner.

Catching Some Rays

Most of us do it every day in the summer; we come out of a store or an office building and into a parking lot that feels like a blast furnace.  We go and climb into a car that has been baking in the sun for long enough to turn it into the sweat box from Cool Hand Luke.
It occurs to me that we are wasting an astonishing amount of energy, all that solar radiation that is really just an unpleasant nuisance, could and probably should be put to some use.
Imagine this instead: you walk out of a store and into a covered lot where your car, while not necessarily cool as a cucumber, is decidedly less inferno like.  You are sheltered, not just from sun, but from rain and whatever other weather might be happening.  Oh, and to top it off, that roof is actually generating electricity, using photo-electric cells.  Not only is that roof and the millions like it that could and probably should be built across this nation of ours making your day just a little more pleasant, it could actually change the way we think about energy and it almost certainly would change the long-term ecological prospects of our world.
Economics assumes scarcity.  The reason why someone hasn't figured out how to charge you for air is because there's just so darn much of it.  Sunlight is another one of those things that, for all practical purposes, is not scarce (except in Seattle).
The most frightening (to some, exciting to others) thing about solar energy is the possibility that electrical energy could be freed from the economics of exhaustible resources.  Imagine if you could assume that electricity would be freely available in almost any parking lot, it would change the practicality of electric vehicles.  Imagine if you could assume that instead of draining the pool of finite resources and/or producing toxic waste materials, electricity was generated with zero waste, zero pollution, zero negative effects.
And it makes your parking area shady.
This utopia is an achievable, sustainable reality, here and now, but it is not free.  Solar is still fairly expensive in terms of start up costs, and people who have been conditioned into thinking of things in the decidedly short term, will usually turn off their long-range vision when it comes with a hefty up-front price tag.
I read today that Iran is upping their investment in solar energy (all in favor of that above a functioning nuclear program right?).  Iran, a place where they deliberately ignore much of what we would call the modern world.  They're getting on the solar power bandwagon.
Why are we not, or should I say, why are we not doing so more enthusiastically.  Our government and, perhaps more importantly the corporations that run off of our consumption, should be falling all over themselves to make this happen.  Can you imagine the shift in global politics if we, the United States of America, could tell the Saudis to take their black gold and stick it back where the sun don't shine (underground I mean).  All of the sudden the Middle east and their perpetual tribal warfare is a lot less of a problem.
Can you imagine if electricity really did manage to shuck off all of those scarcity assumptions and become a non-economic resource?  Admittedly that's a long way off, and there's plenty of capitalist lucre to be had in the process.  There would always be construction and maintenance of the solar arrays as well as the power grid itself, it's not like we would be totally free of utility companies, but they would become a different sort of animal I suspect.
The main problem remains infrastructure, and vision.
Not easily addressed to be sure, but I'm thinking we could try a little harder and see what happens.