Agents of Change

Church history nerd alert: I was thinking about the Reformation this morning.  As usual I have Richard Rohr to thank for setting me off on this tangent, in the daily meditation today he says:

In my opinion, whenever we see an iconoclastic form of reformation, it is an angry regression and an overreacting constriction. It is not good news.  Examples include 8th century orthodoxy, most 16th century protestants, and presently ISIS.

Aw, snap Rich, did you just compare my theological tradition to ISIS?  After all the nice things I have said about Francis? After I walked 500 miles to go to one of your frankly overwrought churches and get a huge silver incense thingy swung over my head by a bunch of priests?
Dude.
ISIS?
For serious?
Okay, deep breath. I will admit that perhaps some of the Reformers were sort of ISIS-ish, even maybe, just maybe John Calvin (cough-Servetus).  But come on man, you have to admit that the Reformation wasn't an overreaction, the Roman Catholic Church was seriously corrupt and not exactly living out the Gospel.  I mean the Inquisition was pretty ISIS-y too.  And let's face it, Y'all did more killing of heretics than we did, and the Crusades, the original desert storm, that was on you guys, and that probably set the groundwork for a whole lot of middle eastern messiness.
Alright Gaskill, remember what you said yesterday about unity and all.  You like Rohr, he's a good guy, and you know, Martin Luther, John Calvin and definitely Ulrich Zwingli could be kind of prickly.
It occurred to me as I stewed in my Reformed juices that there is a sinister tendency of humans when they are faced with an agent of change: they start picking at the personal flaws of the agent.  So yeah, Martin Luther did eventually write, Against the Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants, the title alone sort of casts doubt on Luther's solidarity with the huddled masses against the corrupt system.  John Calvin and the Protestants in Geneva did, in fact, burn Michael Servetus at the stake for heresy, and there were long and bloody "wars of religion." But do those things invalidate the Ninety-five Theses, or The Institutes of the Christian Religion?  I sincerely hope not.
If we are going to go into the business of invalidating positive change because of the moral or ethical impurities of the agents of that change, we're never going to get anywhere.  Every once in a while, you hear rumors that Martin Luther King Jr. may have had some extramarital affairs, and that suspicion is supposed to somehow invalidate the civil rights work that he did.
Because he wasn't perfect.
See how that sounds pretty ridiculous?
We have an election coming up next year, and we are already in the process of vetting those who are crazy enough to throw their hats in the ring.  I will admit, general moral suitability is important, but I think we can go much too far.  In a world where Jim Jones and Jimmy Swaggart are definite possibilities we need to have a certain level of cynicism in place to the people we allow into power.
Cults of personality are usually not healthy leaders.  Notice I said usually, because there are time, MLK again springs to mind, when it sort of works.  Maybe some of the skeletons could just stay in the closet.
We need bold ideas to lead us into important changes.  If JFK had not challenged us to go to the moon, we probably never would have tried it. If we had known he was a bit of a womanizer, we might not have taken up the challenge (look at how that same sort of charge pretty much destroyed Clinton's credibility in a much later era).
I don't think expecting integrity is wrong, but this is the way God works sometimes: with highly imperfect people (like Jacob, David, Peter, Paul, you know those guys from the Bible).  God can use people whose motivations are all screwy and whose methods might even be violent or corrupt.
So this is where I disagree with Rohr, even though our methods of going about things can be pretty screwy, even though our motivations and methods might be absurdly corrupt and sinful, even though there might be wars and rumors of wars, there is always the Good News, not because we managed to say it correctly, do it right, or even think about it righteously, but because God works in us.
It's called grace, and I'm going to hold on to that for all I'm worth.

United We Stand

I have been thinking a bit lately about the idea of unity.  The Pope's visit to the area last week was inspiring, even to a Protestant such as me, in that I saw masses of people united in their welcome of the head of the Roman Catholic Church.  It reminded me that Christianity can still make a big splash at any given moment.  Francis's remained pretty clearly on message throughout his visit: we need to pull it together people.  He encouraged Congress to work together to govern with integrity.  He encouraged the UN to stop focusing so much on divisions and find ways to emphasize our common humanity.
The Pope very rarely sounded lofty and mystical, he often sounded rather like a remarkably compassionate humanist, which may sound like a condemnation to certain religious types, but I don't intend it to be.  In fact, I have been wondering lately if perhaps, in seeking the things of God, we haven't made a false and damaging assumption that there is a way to separate "spiritual" reality from mere humanity. Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?"
That is the place we can get stuck isn't it? Between the beauty and the depravity? Between hope and despair?  Humanity gives us ample reason to believe either one has taken control.  There is certainly evidence that we are the most sinful and rebellious of God's creatures, and there is reason to believe that we are also God's beloved children.  It is possible to be both at the same time, not because we have managed some cosmic trickery, but because of the immensity and immanence of God's love.
I have sometimes joked, since Francis became the Pope, that if the Roman Catholic Church would only let their priests be married men, I would sign up.  The truth, of course, is much more serious than that though.  In fact, while I may applaud Francis for representing the oldest stream of the Christian faith so well, I do still have many firmly held convictions that separate me from the Papacy.  I believe in a more democratic form of being the Church.  I do not believe in transubstantiation during the Eucharist, or in the immaculate conception, I do not give any special devotion to Saints or relics, I only hold two things as sacraments (Baptism and the Lord's Supper), and probably most significantly to me personally, I believe in a different model of priesthood.  I do not speak to God for the people, or speak to the people for God, quite frankly, I'm not that important.  I do try to point people in the direction of God, and sort of act like a hype man for the Holy Spirit, but I'm pretty certain that anything I do or say that serves God is totally an act of grace.
That's really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the differences, but let me just tell you that doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the unity of the Body of Christ.  I'm willing to lay down all those differences and admit that they don't matter as much as I sometimes think they do.
Don't get me wrong, I like MY theology, I like MY way of being the church, I like MY part of the Body, and I don't really want to change, but I'm coming to see that, if there is any hope for our future, we're going to have to lay down our flags and banners and simply learn to be human beings.  That means white, black, Asian, that means gay and straight, that means rich and poor, that means national identity and political affiliation. And yes, most crucially it means religion too: Protestant and Catholic to be sure, but also Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, all of the big ones and the little ones to boot.  We can still have all of those distinctions, but we must learn to honor the common humanity that we all share.
Let's not worry about being perfect until we can manage to simply be human.

I Can't Believe I'm Actually Going to Say This but...

I spent a rather good sized chunk of my life being discontent.  I think it started when I was in middle school.  I started to distrust teachers and authority figures of various types.  For most of that time I seemed to suffer from a sort of delusion that I always knew better than whoever was running the show.  To be fair, no one who was running the show did so with any great skill or the sort of inspirational verve of a Roosevelt or a Churchill.  Politicians seemed as dim and ineffective as my high school guidance counselors or the managers at the supermarket where I worked.  By the time I was in college I had started to develop a serious case of proletarian idealism, in which I, and people that I deemed to be in my crowd, were the only sane beings in a world that had basically lost it's ever loving mind.
Bob Dylan actually describes this phenomenon quite well in his song My Back Pages. That was pretty much twenty year old me.  And the problem with twenty year old me, to put it very simply and avoid many of the gory details, was that I had no idea how to lead, or to parent, or to teach, or to administrate, or really do anything other than manage to feed and bathe myself (and I didn't even do that particularly well). Yet I had ideas, important ideas, passionate ideas about what was right and wrong, and "how things ought to be."
I can still get that way from time to time, but I'm trying to be different.
So, (deep sigh), I think I owe John Boehner an apology.  I think I was too busy making fun of his orange-ish complexion and the fact that he so resembled the caricature of a politician and that his general ideology was not like my own, that I did not recognize him as a human being.  I started to feel a little bad for him about the time that Ted Cruz really came on the scene, just a twinge, because I recognize in Ted Cruz the sort of uncompromising ideologue that can bring just about any democratically organized system to a grinding halt.
When Boehner would make a (sort of) attempt to work with the Democrats, Cruz and his ilk would squawk about the ruination of the constitution and try to shut down the whole mess.  I guess over the course of the past few years I have come to the realization that perhaps the only thing worse than a politician who constantly acts like a politician is a politician who refuses to engage in the good faith exercise of politics.  Tricky stuff this.
I'm beginning to recognize the tendency, and to call it adolescent is perhaps a disservice to adolescents, in American politics.  I recognize it because I was an adherent of it at one time in my life.  It is quite simply a manifestation of narcissism that refuses to compromise an ideological position even for it's own good, sort of like congress shutting down the government because they don't want to pass a reasonable budget.  The far right of the Republican Party is steadily alienating the masses of people. It's one thing if you're obstinate and uncooperative with a Democratic President, it's entirely another thing if you're that way with your own duly elected Speaker of the House.
I saw John Boehner crying as Pope Francis addressed congress and called them to start acting like grown ups and do the job they were elected to do, and I thought to myself, "hey that guy is a human being after all."  As it turns out Boehner has a bit of  reputation for getting misty, and the enemies within his own constituency count it as one of his many weaknesses.
Personally, I count it as a moral defect to judge someone for being moved to tears, it's something that twenty year old me would have done.
Boehner resigned a few days later, not because people made fun of him, but because he realized that his tenure as Speaker of the House had become ineffective and essentially untenable.
Our nation, hell our species, faces some serious challenges going forward.  We cannot continue to listen to the delusional narcissism of those who hold extreme positions and who are willing to terrorize the rest of us into appeasing them.  Yes, that is strong language, and yes, that is what they are doing.  Moderates may not be the most exciting folks out there.  They may not be as galvanizing in their rhetoric or as sure of their methods, but they are the people we need to steer this ship away from the rocks.  The root of the word politic is the Greek word Polis, which means city and implies a community.  The implication of politics is to serve the community, to lead based on what is good for the greatest number of people.  That means that a few may always find you problematic.
Sometimes your enemies define you rather more accurately than your friends.  If a politician offends the powerful, if he draws venom from the ideologues that are pulling us to the edges of things, if he makes decisions that are unpopular with those who deal in fear and anger, he may just be someone we want in charge.
Was John Boehner a person like that?  I can't really judge that now, but I do apologize for making fun of him, I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

Looking Back

Normally I don't invest much energy into dissecting all the things that litter my Facebook feed every day.  You know the ones: share this if you (insert whatever the thing is here).  They come in many variations from: share if you love your Mom to share if you hate cancer, and most are pretty freaking obvious, but there are some that particularly rub me the wrong way, they are what I call idealizations of the past.  Even some of these are pretty harmless, like a picture of a rotary phone or an Atari 2600 with "share if you remember this."  There's a popular set of them that recall the days when kids played outside until dark and didn't have any electronic devices to amuse them.  And there are even some that recall the "good old days" when we used to get beat for doing bad things.
Wait, what?
Yep, nostalgia for getting a whuppin'. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I get that the touchy-feely, timeout variety of parenting isn't for everyone, but does anyone honestly remember getting hit with things fondly?
As an aside, I am not opposed to corporal punishment in certain situations, but let's be honest here, it used to be the default way to discipline kids for just about anything.  And I don't think that in those days the world was free of  criminals, perverts and other miscreants, in fact, there were probably just as many as there are now.
The argument seems to be that the sharer of the post got smacked around a bit as a kid and as a result they turned out better than all these scurrilous rapscallions (love those words together) that the lax parenting styles of latter years produced.  The end logic here is a bit spurious to say the least: the solution to our societal ills is simply smacking our kids more.
Speaking of misplaced nostalgia, it reminds me of that Bill Cosby routine about his grandfather having to walk up hill, both ways. It's the same kind of sentiment that gets hopping mad about the way they teach kids to do math these days. (For a pretty good essay about that read this)  It is simply wearing rose colored glasses and looking in the rear view mirror.  It ignores the fact that our kids are being trained to actually be good people, people who learn to solve their problems with something other than violence and rage, people who do not bully or try to intimidate others into doing what they want.
This morning, while waiting for the bus, my daughter told me that her P.E. teacher (not a gym teacher, PE) had given them all a lecture about body shaming, about how they shouldn't make fun of people for being fatter or skinnier than them, about how they're all different and that's okay.  As a former chubby kid who was actually shamed BY gym teachers, this made me a little misty.  It made me believe in the ability of the human animal to make progress.  My children are becoming better people, despite the fact that they don't regularly receive beatings, shaming and negative reinforcement.  When my kids do something wrong, I talk to them, okay, maybe I yell sometimes, but that's probably because I was beat too much when I was a kid (just kidding, my parents were not actually like that, I very rarely got those precious butt whuppins, maybe that's why I turned out to be such a criminal).
Sorry, I just realized I am employing multi-level sarcasm, which gets confusing, so here's the honest scoop.  I got spanked as a kid, a few times, mostly for things that deserved a spanking, but I don't honestly remember what they were.  I didn't and don't resent my parents for it, and I don't think they were excessive.  But I will tell you that I don't actually think it made me a better person or a better parent to my kids.  You want to know what made me a better person and a better parent?  Knowing that my parents had some standards that they really wanted me to live  up to, and honestly those were relayed in much more subtle ways than with a belt or a wooden spoon. I have come to see that the physical stuff doesn't really work as well as the purveyors of trite memes would have you believe.  I have also come to believe that the past is not really measurably better than the present, and in many ways it was probably a heck of a lot worse.  I understand that playing outside is a good thing, I make my kids do it periodically, however, I am honest enough with myself to know that if I had Netflix as a kid I would probably have died of sloth.  Half the time I went outside because I was bored and tired of watching Hogan's Heroes reruns.  I think of all the sort of questionable situations I probably could have avoided if I had a cell phone to call my Dad to pick me up.
I don't think this tendency to idealize the past is uncommon it's just part of our nature to under-evaluate certain aspects of life, it's probably part of how we stay sane, but seriously let's not be so darn cranky about everything.  Some new things are good, and maybe our kids might just grow up to better than us, at math and at life.  Here's hoping.

There's a Lesson Here

Last year about this time my enormous Chevy Tahoe started getting on my nerves.  Stuff was going wrong with it, and the repairs were eating me up.  On top of that, it was costing me like $70 every time I went to the gas station, and I went to the gas station a lot.  It was time for a new car, a small car, a more environmentally friendly car, a car that had room for the kids, the dog and some stuff, but not a monster, no more huge gas guzzling trucks or SUVs.  I started doing research, I was semi-afraid that it might be minivan time, but I really didn't want to go that way.  Then I found it: the Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen, Turbo Diesel Intercooled (TDI).  I looked at the specs: upwards of 40 miles to the gallon, great safety ratings, good reviews, and one of the only honest to goodness station wagons out there, and it was in my price range.  If you've read the news recently, you might know where I'm going with this: my now just under a year old 2014 Volkswagen is one of those on "the List."  "The List," refers to the cars that have a nasty little wrinkle, not a defect mind you, a cheat, a dirty little cheat.  In order to comply with emissions standards imposed on diesel engines, VW put a little software patch in the car's computer that causes it to run clean whenever the testing is in progress, sneaky Germans.
Apparently this works really well, because they advertised to schmucks like me that this diesel engine was "clean diesel."  They fooled the EPA, they fooled everyone.  I, and over 11 million other people, bought cars with these engines and began enjoying the 40 plus MPG and the solid German engineering and the generally good experience of owning a Volkswagen.
I still love my VW, it's not the car's fault that some Snidely Whiplash put a lying, cheating software patch in there.  But there's now a problem, my car isn't as eco-friendly as I smugly wanted it to be.  To tell you the truth, it's probably still a step up from the Tahoe, after all, I'm still burning less fuel, which is something in itself, and it's not like this is a safety problem, like those Toyotas that had the sticky accelerator, or cars with unpredictable airbags, but this wasn't an accident, or a mistake.
Someone had to write that code, someone had to have it put into over 11 million cars.  This wasn't a small time operation, this was a corporate decision.  Somewhere in the bureaucracy of VW, an executive with enough clout and authority to do so, directed his underlings to do something unethical, and no one protested, they just did what they were told.
This is not a defect, in fact, this is a sign that the people who built my car were smart enough to fool just about everyone for six years.  But there isn't a lot of room to give anyone a lot of cover here.  A bunch of people had to be in on this, someone, somewhere gave the order to do this, knowing what it was and choosing to try and pull one over on us, and break the law, and sour my love affair with my Volkswagen.
I also read this morning about a guy who bought the patent to an anti-HIV drug, and promptly raised the price from like $15 to $750 per pill.  Tell me again how unfettered capitalism is such a great thing?
This is the problem with the idea that, as a society, we should allow finance and industry the freedom to operate without interference from the government: they are not looking out for our best interests.  The goal of any corporation is to make money, and don't get it twisted, if they have to give you cancer, or destroy the world your grandkids have to live in, or sentence poor people with AIDS to suffer because they can't afford their medicine anymore, tough luck.  This is the flaw in trickle-down economics, the basic reason why Ayn Rand's exaltation of self-interest is so crazy, it's why Citizens United has to go, and why even someone as fanatically Republican as Scott Walker knows that Donald Trump must be stopped.
The problem with pure capitalism is that it does not account strongly enough for human sin.  The Apostle Paul says, "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand." (Romans 7:21)  Which is absolutely true, and what's worse, there are people out there in the world (and at Volkswagen) don't care anything about doing good, they only want to get rich, or acquire power.  In fact, many people have adopted getting rich and growing powerful as actually an a priori good, they are not.
I'm not a litigious person, but if there was ever a time to jump into a class action lawsuit this is it.  We have to hold corporations responsible for this sort of cheating.  I'm going to wait until I have all the information before I really decide what to do, I expect that VW will be in contact soon to try and smooth things over, with all 11 million of us.  I'm going to try and forgive for my own sake, but I'm not into letting corporate greed and malfeasance go unchecked.
For today, I'm just going to remember that I do like my little Sportwagen.

The Effect of Affect

I just watched one of the worst NFL games I have ever seen.  It was the game between my Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys.  Normally I have a bit of a sour taste the day after the Iggles lose to the Cowboys (consequently when they win it's feels pretty great, so there is a balance), but today it's worse.  It's worse because I have to admit they deserved to lose the game, they played like they were tranquilized.  The offensive line apparently thought they were playing that other kind of Futbol and decided that actual physical contact with the defense was against the rules.  Demarco Murray, ex-Cowboy and the one player who seemed to actually give a hoot about winning this game, had three defensive linemen in his face a half a second after he got his hands on the ball, almost every time he got the ball.
Normally sure handed receivers were dropping balls and Sam Bradford was getting pounded.  Bradford, I'm afraid, is not a very good selection to play quarterback for the Iggles, not because of skill set mind you, but because he gets this really stupid look on his face when things are going poorly.  It's sort of deer in the headlights crossed with flatulence in an elevator, let's just say the aesthetics of "the look," aren't going to play really well with Philly Phans.  Call it Jay Cutler syndrome, in Philly, as in Chicago, if you are losing you are not supposed to look slack jawed and stunned, you are supposed to be angry.  Donovan McNabb had the same tendency, to sort of go blank when the going got tough, Philly doesn't like that.
So there is actually an even bigger problem that Bradford's "Duh" face, it's that Chip Kelly, the coach, has the same thing happening, with the slightest tinge of smugness, when, as they say in Philly, "he ain't got nuthin' to be prouda." (Grammar fairy, please forgive me for putting that in writing).
Do you want to know the coaches who Philly has loved? Dick Vermeil, who wore his heart on his sleeve and basically burned himself completely out to lead the Birds to the Superbowl.  And Buddy, I will punch a dude in the head, Ryan (father of Sexy Rexy and sasquatch analog Rob).  Andy Reid, who won them a bunch of NFC East titles, got them farther into the playoffs than they had been since Vermeil, and then, at long last, got them to the big show, who made them a perennial contender if not always a favorite? Too boring, too Mormon, get that walrus outta here.  My point here is that the wrong affect on the part of a coach in Philly is every bit as problematic as an actual losing record.
For the first two seasons of Kelly's tenure, there have been enough fireworks to distract the phanatics.
It's hard to hate a guy when his system is racking up 45 points a game and leaving opposing defenses in a shuddering heap by halfway through the third quarter.
But lose a few like the one last night?
Buddy you'd better grow some charisma.
I would offer that perhaps this tendency to judge people by their demeanor is not confined to football.  We can be too easily taken in by charlatans that proclaim things loud and with fervor, and at the same time can reject, out of hand, ideas that are presented in too bland and practical a manner.  We want to be "sold."
Look, all of us have probably been talked into buying something we didn't need, or that was just plain junk.  We distrust charlatans, but we're inherently vulnerable to them.  Often times we will forgive a "personality" more readily than we will a stoic demeanor, and this is not necessarily a good thing. I don't know whether Kelly's innovative football plan is ever going to lead us to the promised land.  It can look amazing and it can look terrible.  I'm not sure yet which one is true, but I'm looking at this thing like a microcosm for how we make decisions.  I generally think we're way too obsessed with immediacy and not interested enough in looking down the pike a bit.
By way of contrast, I offer the other Pennsylvania based NFL franchise, and my second favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Believe me there are days when I wish I had been born on the other side of PA and could just wholeheartedly root for the Steelers, because they are so much easier to like.  First of all they win Superbowls, second of all they don't change coaches every ten minutes.  They have had three coaches in my lifetime: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin, that's it, that wouldn't get the Cleveland Browns through two seasons. None of those guys has exactly been a cult of personality, and all of them had some tough years.  Cowher had to set his considerable jaw and stick with a defense first, ground and pound style of football through all those years when Bill Walsh and the "West Coast offense" were throwing it all over the yard.  All of them were tough, stoic guys, and all of them are pretty much loved by the Stillers nation.  All of them also have Superbowl rings.
Substance, is a word that comes to mind.  So does stability.  We live in a world where it's too easy to jump off the bandwagon, these things don't always get a chance to grow, in football or in real life.
So let's not panic Philly Phans, all the games can't be that bad, and if they are, hey we will get an awesome draft pick (and probably a new coach, cue the sorrowful music).

Sweet Sixteen

Michele,

Our marriage is old enough to drive.  E.E. Cummings once wrote a rather racy poem using driving language, called “She, being brand new,” but that doesn’t really fit the situation anymore.  Kids, parents and such might read this so I'm going to go a different route, but given the whole sixteen thing and all we’ve been through with our cars in the past year or so, I’m going to roll with the metaphor.

So let's talk driving, and let's start with trust.  You don’t put someone you don’t trust behind the wheel of a car.  I’ve ridden with people I didn’t trust, it’s not a good experience.  You never know what they’re going to do, and foolishness and mistakes can be painful or deadly.  I think we confuse the adrenaline rush of a difficult and dangerous (or at least novel) relationship with the passion that can really only grow between people who trust each other with everything.  We put our lives in each other’s hands, we give our hearts, and we take some risk.  We would not do this if it wasn’t worth it somehow.

In a car, and in a marriage, you have to be able to trust the stuff you don’t always see on the surface.  You need to trust what’s under the hood, and the brakes and all of that stuff in order to be able to have a good ride.  All that stuff takes maintenance, but as long as you keep at it, you shouldn’t have to worry about it every time you get behind the wheel.  Maintenance requires vigilance and being proactive, not just waiting until something goes wrong.

Let's face it, even though people who have been married forty or fifty years might chuckle, sixteen years is a good while.  we have now been married for a decidedly significant portion of our lives.  It's actually hard to remember what it was like not being married.  I know, in most romance stories there’s always this element of mystery and novelty, but at this point there aren’t many surprises. That's really okay with me. We can both get dressed up fancy from time to time, but we aren’t Ferraris, there’s no room for kids in a Ferrari, and quite frankly the maintenance is a nightmare.  It’s a sign of maturity when you learn to be satisfied with what you have and to know what you need.  We need a relationship that can handle ridiculous schedules, tweens and taking smelly dogs to the park.  Paris in the spring it is not, but it is our life, and it is good, and trustworthy, and there is some evidence that it is working out.

In one of his Sabbath poems Wendell Berry says that we must:

Love where we cannot trust,

Trust where we cannot know

And await the wayward coming grace,

That joins the living and the dead.

I took that out of context, artistic license, but I think my little snippet of the poem captures what it takes to be married.  There are times when even well-worn trust gets tested, and love has to take over.  I think that trust must involve some element of not knowing and I know that grace is always unpredictable and never shows up exactly when you expect.

Grace shows up in doing things you don’t want to do for the sake of another.

Grace shows up in accepting each other as we are.

Grace shows up in indulging your husband when he compares you to a station wagon, so here’s my poem to you (apologies to E.E. Cummings):

She, being not so brand new;

I know where all her buttons are.

I know how she handles the curves,

And I like hers.

When the weather’s clear,

Just put it in gear

And go.

When storms come,

We drive a little slower,

But we always get home.

The mirrors are adjusted pretty well.

The blind spots are very small.

I think I even know what’s in

The glove compartment.

I notice some of the dents and dings,

And maybe I put a few of them there,

But they don’t bother me one little bit.

 We're not alone on this ride anymore.

Let's roll down the windows,
And make the kids whine that the music is too loud.

Sweet sixteen.

Poking Holes

You should know that statistics are not my thing.  I enjoy the Mark Twain, Benjamin Disraeli or whoever actually said it, quote about the pliability of numbers in making arguments: "lies, damned lies and statistics."  But every once in a while I like to do a little fact checking as it relates to things arguments that are made concerning things I care about.  Economic justice is something I care about more and more.  I often hear (I will make no effort to quantify or even identify the source, because I don't want to blame specific people or groups of people, but you will know who you are), that our nation is weighed down by a massive crush of people who are simply leeching off the system, living off the sweat and hard work of good, honest middle class folks.  You know, "the takers."
I began to wonder if this is actually true.  So I went looking for numbers, which is weird for me, I'll be honest.  I have no way of knowing what has been done to things by way of interpretation and manipulation by groups who have an agenda in one direction or other so the only thing I can really think of to do is go as close to the source as I can.  I wanted to pick my numbers carefully, because too much math makes me feel kinda funny, so I decided on public assistance, as quantified by the latest Census and people on disability as reported by the Social Security Administration  because they should know, they pay it.  Why these two?  Well first of all they seem to be the favorite whipping boys for the "why should my tax dollars pay for those lazy bums" crowd, so I wanted to see if the outrage is justified.  Second of all, I know at least one person personally who is reliant on both of these means of support, and I know, first hand, what their lives are like and something about what they have to do in order to get what they get from "the government teat."
Let's do welfare first, because that is far and away the most vilified and often accused of corruption. Just by the raw numbers there are 3,341,535 people receiving welfare (this encompasses both temporary assistance to needy families TANF, which is time limited as the name indicates and General Assistance, GA benefits).  That seems like a big number until you realize that there are 320 million people living in these United States and this accounts for 2.9% of total households in the US and just barely over 1% of the total population, far from being a millstone around the neck of our great nation.  I will also mention that receiving welfare is by no means a permanent solution to poverty, nor is it easy, nor will the amount you receive pay for a big screen TV or a cell phone if you are feeding a family.  The people I know who are on welfare are actually employed and work pretty darn hard, as food servers, retail employees and other such low paying, yet necessary functions (saving minimum wage argument for later date).  In fact, if you don't show some initiative and jump through certain hoops, your welfare gets pulled.  And don't even start with the whole drug argument, states that have mad drug testing a requirement for welfare recipients have turned up absolute bumpkiss.  One state tested thousands and came back with one positive, uno, one, which I'm sure was a real gotcha moment against that one person who just couldn't stay clean in order to collect that sweet sub-poverty level income for a limited period of time.
The actual abuse of the TANF, and GA systems as well as SNAP (food stamps), public housing and such seem to me to be greatly exaggerated and based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, the actual numbers don't bear the weight.  Don't get me wrong, I deal with enough scammers and professional beggars in my line of work to know that some people have no shame and will scam anyone to get a 20 spot, but I don't think that the overall numbers justify the vitriol that gets pointed a the honestly poor and down on their luck folks that rely on public assistance to get by.
So let's talk disability, and you need to know right off the bat that the number is bigger here: 8,954,518 people on Social Security disability in 2014 (2.7% of the total population), but you also need to know that these people all paid their Social Security taxes up until the point they became disabled, many of them are ex-military, most of them would probably give up their fat disability check in order to live normal healthy lives.  Before you go assuming that people on disability are "takers," you really ought to walk a mile in their shoes.
I don't know if this captures all of the people that sometimes get lumped into the characterization of those who are not willing to work hard and take responsibility for their lives, but these two categories taken as entirely discreet segments of the population don't even make up 4% of the population.  Take into account that many of the people represented in the first category are children, and that there may be some overlap between the two groups and you are dealing with a segment of the population that is nowhere near the scourge on our nation that it is made out to be.
Want to be mad at something? How about the fact that the Fortune 500 companies received almost $63 Billion in subsidies and tax breaks (according to Forbes magazine, which isn't exactly a liberal rag). Companies that are all large and profitable are able to take advantage of our system and worm out of paying their fair share of the burden of improving our infrastructure, maintaining our defensive capabilities, and caring for those who are left out of the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  They can throw millions at politicians to make sure their little loopholes remain open and functioning.  Those millions must be worth it.
I think we are mad at the wrong people.
I think the rage and discontent of the middle class has been hijacked and misdirected.
It has been pointed at the people who eat the crumbs from the table instead of at the people who are taking the lion's share of the main course.
I'm no math whiz, but I think I have figured out that we're being hoodwinked.

Pernicious Deception

The only other thing I have formal training in, besides theology and ministry, is Environmental Science.  I hold a Bachelor of Science Degree in Environmental Resource Management from The Pennsylvania State University.  I tell you this, not so that you will consider me an expert, because I'm not, I was a pretty mediocre student and found out rather quickly that I was actually being called to something rather different.  But there is one certain area where my two educations overlap, and that is when it comes to stewardship of our environmental resources.
See, you might think that studying environmental science would make you one of those "tree hugging" types, who think we all need to ride bikes everywhere and eat nothing but organic vegan diets.  Not so, actually what I ran across over and over again was the idea of responsible use of resources.  Pristine wilderness is great and all, but you know what else is great?  Corn, wheat, rice, beef, chicken and these days even fish, these things are all a part of human agriculture.  I also am a fan of man made things: textiles, machinery and electronics.  In the heat and humidity of a Maryland summer, I love me some air conditioning, and in the cold of winter I like to sit by a warm fire.  I understand that life in an industrialized society requires a certain amount of impact on our environment.  I also understand that the impact we have on the environment can be mitigated to a large extent through technology and simple common sense.  Actually, "Green Sector" jobs are kind of a big thing in this country, and you know what, most of them are good paying, stable and sustainable sorts of jobs. It would be great if we could really turn our focus from growth that destroys our environment and helps us make better weapons, to learning things that actually help us improve the world for all of us, future generations included.
There are two things we will always need that are currently in some degree of peril: clean air and clean water.  If we don't have those things, our continued existence on this planet is not a tenable proposition.  Climate change is a problem to be sure, and I'm going to be terribly anthropocentric here, but polar bears going extinct is really a rather small problem compared to humans going extinct.
I saw a commercial on the TV yesterday, sponsored by some political action group representing manufacturing industry, which was bemoaning the arduous restrictions that the EPA puts on pollution, particularly air pollution.  The thing is blood-boiling, filled with misleading information and downright prevarication.  It starts with the fact that China doesn't impose any regulations on their emissions of smog causing substances, and that, in their opinion, puts us at a competitive disadvantage because all of this concern for the quality of the air we breathe is costing the good and holy 'Merican companies lots of dollars in the rather futile effort not to give our children asthma, pulmonary dysfunction and lung cancer.  And what good is it doing anyway because China's dirt is blowing all the way across the Pacific Ocean anyway?  It's costing us jobs people: JOBS!
Economic arguments against environmental protection are not only terrible morally, but also do not make real sense in the long run.
You know what else hurts the economy?  A parent who calls in sick every other day to take care of a kid with chronic bronchitis.  Someone who goes on disability because they lose a lung.  All the myriad respiratory illnesses that come with poor air quality.  Outbreaks of dysentery and cholera from polluted water supplies.  Severe drought that leads to crop failures and wildfires.  Massive soil erosion and non-point source pollution that leads to dead zones in the Cheaspeake Bay.  Destruction of riparian areas that make us more vulnerable to floods and catastrophic levels of pollutants in the water supply. I could go on.
Did I mention that people in Bejing have to wear respiratory protection against the smog?
Did I mention that the Yangtze river is an irreparable environmental catastrophe?
China is not a valid arguing point when it comes to environmental sanity.  I don't care how good their economy is or how much money we owe them.  I'm going to make a new rule, similar to Godwin's rule about using Hitler in an argument about violence or racism.  If you're talking about the environment and you bring up China as anything other than a bad example, you lose.
I'm a little out of date here, but when I was a youngin there were these things called the Kyoto protcols, some of the strongest international environmental standards that had been attempted by the human race up to that point.  They were an attempt to level the playing field when it comes to the environment.  They were scaled to be more restrictive on already industrialized nations like the US and European nations, because we got our shot to grow dirty.  Developing countries were given more latitude, however, standards were in place.  Almost every nation in the world signed and has since ratified the protocols, including China (doesn't mean they're playing by the rules).  Take a guess who didn't. Scroll all the way to the bottom.  Yep, it was us.  We signed but never ratified.  Canada signed, ratified and then backed out.
Our reasons?  People (meaning nations like China) aren't going to follow them anyway.  Which is sort of like saying, "Let's not put up speed limits, because we know people are going to break them anyway."
Here's the thing though, if we only ever passed laws and standards we knew wouldn't be broken, we never would have even gotten the Magna Carta.  We never would have gotten the Ten Commandments.
The thing that troubles me most about the whole situation is that I know many people, good people, who will buy the whole "it's not fair" argument, hook line and sinker.  But fairness is relative.  You know who environmental de-regulation is really not fair to?  My kids, my grandkids, the entire human race.
Mitigating our environmental impact requires a certain willingness to look beyond the immediacy of a balance sheet.  It requires a sense of duty and obligation to something more than just the here and now.  That is why stewardship of our resources should and must be a concern.  That is why it matters, that's why we need to speak, and vote, and stop drinking the Kool-aid offered to us by those with a vested interest in running dirty, it's probably got PCB's in it.

Moving Targets

September 11, 2015
It was the same kind of beautiful September day, blue sky, the barest hint of a cool down coming.  I sat down to coffee and Sportscenter, the same way I did fourteen years ago.  Then I had a class to go to, today is a day off.  Then there were no patriotic stories about how baseball brought us back from a tragedy, because as of yet there had been no tragedy.  I watched a little mini-documentary about President George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch of game 3 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks, and I remember the backdrop all too well.  The piles of rubble that still smoldered downtown, the walls of pictures of the missing and the dead.  The shock and the grief.  In addition to the usual birthdays, anniversaries and holidays I am growing a collection of horrible, tragic days that I remember every year: personal/family, July 23rd, communal, pretty much the entire first week of June, and national, September 11.
On my walk this morning I saw a jet streaking it's vapor trail across a blue sky, and I started having thoughts, but I'll be honest, I really didn't come up with anything new.  I've been down this road and also this road before.  So I'm going to reach for something a little more hopeful.
I remembered a moment when I was actually proud of George W. Bush.  It was the baseball thing that jogged my memory, but it was how he responded in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.  You had to be paying attention because the warmongers got on the scene awfully fast, but there was a moment where he didn't jump right on the revenge train.  It was before the "mission accomplished" fiasco, before the axis of evil, before we went shambling off to war.  He seemed like a pretty regular person who was just trying to do his best with a bad situation.  I remember a moment when even the President of these United States was humble and thoughtful and had no other choice than to lean into grace and hope.
Too bad it didn't last longer.
I can't help feeling like Al Quaida and the warmongers have pushed us to a point where we have stopped seeing each other as human beings.  Every once in a while (actually more often than you might think), as a fan of non-violence, I stub my toe on someone for whom non-violence is akin to a belief in unicorns, it's a nice idea but probably has no place in the real world.  My belief that the world would be a safer and better place if we had not gone all Rambo/Chuck Norris across the middle east seems to them to be dangerously naive, and perhaps it is, but to tell you the truth I think I'm pretty safe in believing it, because no one is ever going to actually test it out by foregoing the all too natural urge to vengeance.
As an interesting note, on the occasions when I have had these conversations with actual soldiers and/or veterans, I actually found more common ground and assumptions than I do with your garden variety armchair general.  I'm just going to chalk that up to a sort of silent testimony to being right.
But here's where I have to confess to being a bit un-fair.  Somewhere in the seven years after 9-11 I forgot that W was actually not that bad of a guy, I lost sight of his humanity because I don't agree with so much of what he did.  I've been on the other end of that stick, and I don't particularly care for it.  Not that POTUS was actually losing sleep over what some small town pastor thought about him playing Sheriff of the Globe, but nonetheless I stand convicted of being the sort of idealogue I often criticize.
I think this is why genuinely thoughtful, and committed Christians are so often thought of as wishy-washy, because we have realized that being right is probably not even half the battle.
It's getting a little annoying to tell you the truth, every time I get a good case of righteous indignation going about something or someone, anytime I creep near to righteous and justified hatred, God likes to  remind me: "Yep, they're my children too."
Well, I guess if I have to lay off W, there's always Cheney...
What him too?
Poop.

Showing My Work

I used to love it when teachers would give me partial credit on things for showing my work.  The theory behind it is sound, because it's not always about getting the right answer, often it is about learning the process and being able to see exactly where you go wrong.  The best teachers are good at showing you where you messed up, and the worst teachers are the ones that just tell you you're wrong, maybe in a way that seems less than constructive, and leave you hanging out there in your wrongness.
Anyway, I'm preaching on the lectionary text from James this week (James 3: 1-12, if you're a dutiful reader and want to know).  I don't remember doing too many sermons from James in the past, though I'm sure I've done a few.  One reason for the choice is that I feel like I just did the one about Peter telling Jesus he was the Messiah.  Another reason is that I think I may have neglected James, I mean aside from the fact that I just walked the Camino de Santiago (The Way of Saint James). I think I usually look at the letter of James as the one that makes Paul look less cranky by comparison.  Don't get me wrong, James has some good things to say, it's just the tone... let's just say it's a little hard to take sometimes.
When he starts by talking about teachers and how they're going to be judged with greater strictness, I start to get nervous, the same way I do when Jesus starts slamming the priests and pharisees.  Because he's talking about me, in way that's rather more specific than I would generally prefer from someone who uses the word iniquity and fires of hell, so blithely.  But I take the critique with great seriousness, because I do believe that what he says about teachers and leaders is very true, they do tend to shape their students and their followers, and that can be good and that can be bad, depending on the teacher or leader.
It's a terrifying reality that leaderless groups tend to go all Lord of the Flies in a big hurry.  And this includes groups that are lead by people who are not willing to do anything that sacrifices their popularity and likeability (also known as pandering to the base).  A good leader, or parent or teacher, is a balance of being loved and respected and being responsible.  If everyone likes everything you do, you are probably not leading, you're just following the whims of the crowd and calling it your idea.
Edwin Friedman, aka the Yoda of family systems theory, wrote a book called Failure of Nerve that can be applied to the current mindset of leaders in various arenas of the modern world.  He talks about the ways in which a leader can and should make changes in the behavior of the system, and he talks about the inevitable forms of resistance they encounter, and how "nerve" or courage or resolution is the only way to overcome said resistance.  I find myself thinking, talking and writing about this book and the ideas therein an awful lot, because it's like a diagnosis of an epidemic disease that I very well might have.
I think James has the same quality.  The Epistle of James diagnoses diseases to which our communities of faith are particularly vulnerable.  Such as making distinctions between "the right kind of people," and others usually based on dollar signs (see chapter 2). Oh and talking a good game about Jesus and all, but not really acting at all like he wanted us to act: "faith without works is dead," is perhaps the most famous quote in all of James.
This little ramble is sort of like a deleted scene from my sermon on Sunday.  (As hard as it is to believe, there are indeed things I choose not to say in a sermon).
Maybe this is me trying to get the log out of my own eye.  Because what I'm fixing to say on Sunday is that we have become too mean and nasty to really show the love of Christ with the world.  We're just entirely too homed in on "defending the faith," and the violence and vigilance that that requires has made us cranky.  My focus on Sunday is going to be: "From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.  My brothers and sisters this ought not to be so."  This is part confession and part hope that somehow or other we can turn this ship away from the waters of anger, fear and bitterness, before we crash ourselves on the rocks.

The Golden Boy

As an Iggles phan I really want to hate Tom Brady.  He beat us in the only Superbowl we have made in the past thirty years.  I am perfectly willing to believe that he would cheat to win, even by doing something as picayune as taking some air out of the ball.
But - and this really does pain me to say - I'm glad he won his suit against the NFL.  I'm glad the judge decided that the NFL overstepped and acted improperly, and basically made Roger Goodell wear the cone of shame.  It's not that I find Goodell personally problematic, but I have observed that the NFL is becoming a bit of a monstrosity, and this little thing kicks that monster in the shins just a bit.
See, the NFL is an organization that enjoys tax exempt status, while the owners of teams who comprise it are really rich and keep getting richer.  Instead of contributing to the public good by paying taxes, like you me and everyone we know, they just get to keep the change, they make a profit, in some cases heaps of it.  They are not churches (even though football is a religion in this country), they are not non-profit organizations or an educational institution, but they don't pay taxes.  The logic behind this is, I suppose, they provide a public service in entertaining people and stimulating the economy of the city where they play.  Those in government have a vested interest in keeping them around and keeping them happy. There is probably a correlation between re-election rates and NFL franchise success (just a guess, some stat people check that out for me).
But the NFL is not a scrappy little conglomeration of guys in leather helmets any more, they are freaking huge and have demonstrated rather callous corporate behavior, most tragically in the way they have slow played the effect that concussions have had on their players, but also in their approach to discipline of their players.  Football players have made headlines for all different sorts of maladjusted behavior: domestic violence, DUI, drug use, murder, attempted murder, lying, cheating and stealing.  It's to the point where if it's not a felony it barely even gets mentioned.  The problem is that the NFL only seems to care when it's a public relations issue.  When Ray Rice punched out his fiancee in an elevator, on camera, the NFL issued a six game suspension when we saw the tape of him dragging his unconscious girlfriend out of the elevator.  Ray admitted he was the cause of her unconsciousness, via his fist hitting her in the face.  Yep, six game suspension, bad boy!
No problem so far, punching women out is definitely in the realm of behaviors that society and organizations within society ought to say is a big no-no.  However, when the video of said incident, all the way through surfaces, and shows exactly the action that Ray Rice had already confessed and apologized for, now the suspension goes boom to a possible lifetime ban (which was later moderated to a season).  Why? Bad PR.  Not moral outrage on the part of the League, not legal liability, not anything that had any basis in the facts of the case, but just because it looked so much worse on film, in slow motion, replayed over and over again, so that people could get a real good look at a man making a really bad decision.
Ray Rice was a running back who was definitely on the down side of his career, he was not at all a sympathetic character because he punched a woman in the face.  He really had no grounds to do anything more than say, "hey that's not really fair."
Tom Brady on the other hand, just won the Super Bowl.  Tom Brady is pretty and articulate and married to a super model, and has super hair and a winning smile, and has won since he basically appeared out of nowhere, and is called the golden boy.  He is the guy you really want to hate, but you also kind of want him on your team.  He has also just demonstrated how people who are privileged can use their privilege to benefit the community.
When the NFL sicced their pack of lawyers on Brady, and they generated a million dollar report that turns out not to be worth the paper it was printed on, which basically says that Brady, or someone may or may not have cheated, and Brady or someone may or may not have known (call me the next time you want to pay someone to write 50 pages without saying anything), Emperor Goodell imposed a 4 game suspension, incidentally the same amount that Greg Hardy was suspended for trying to kill a woman and then either terrorizing or paying her not to testify.
Tom Brady is arguably the face of the NFL, and has been for over a decade.  He is not a hulking linebacker who can barely grunt more than a syllable, and he is not accused of some heinous act of violence, or even something really shameful.  In fact, what he is accused of could very well not be anything at all, depending on who you talk to, but that's not even the point, the point is he had a chance to stand up to perhaps the only thing that would have the audacity to try and bully Tom Brady, the National Football League.
Honestly it would take a confrontation with such a monopolistic, heavy handed corporate entity to make Brady seem like an underdog, but there he is, and he gonna fight.  And he gonna win round one.  Oh yes, there will be appeals, but it is unlikely that the facts of the case are going to change.
The thing is, he didn't have to go through all of this, he could have just taken the four games and then come back to lead the Patriots into the playoffs, again.  He could have mumbled an insincere apology, not really admitted anything and taken a reduced suspension and been back even sooner, but that would have left the next dude who gets railroaded by the Goodell public relations/discipline machine with less of a leg to stand on.  Maybe the next dude is a special teams guy who needs to launch himself like a human torpedo just to bring home another game check, maybe nobody notices that that guy is getting the shaft.  The NFL's methods and judgments have now been firmly brought under suspicion.
I can't really say that I'm now a Tom Brady fan, and he may have had no other motivation in this than pride and trying to win another game, but he has taken on Goliath and won, and I guess I'm fond of when that happens.

I'm Feeling the Bern

When Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for President a few months back, someone said by way of pithy facebook post: "Bernie Sanders, the lesser of two evils I have been waiting for all my life."  To be honest, at that point, I barely knew who Sanders was, but I had heard two things: he was a socialist and he stood almost no chance of gaining the democratic nomination let alone a general election.  The socialist part, I'm okay with, because in the current milieu it basically means anyone who is not a wholehearted supporter of  unbridled capitalism.  As a perpetual resident of the middle class, I do not support unbridled capitalism.  As a Christian, I believe that serving mammon is antithetical to following Jesus, you know, because he said so.

Over the past few months I have heard things come out of Bernie Sanders' grumpy old mouth that I have wanted someone, anyone, particularly someone with some political clout to say for a long time.  The list includes:

1. Paying a living wage
2. Reforming the system of public higher education and attendant crushing student debt.
3. Paying for such things by taxing stock market speculation and capital gains
4. Properly and stringently regulating the financial sector.
5. Even better health care solutions (single payer system)
6. Campaign finance reform
7. Ecological sanity
8. Racial Justice
9. Effective Gun control legislation

You may notice that a lot of those things have to do with getting a grip on our economic situation and tilting the playing field back towards level for the middle class.  That's simple self interest on one level, because I'm aware that I'm never going to sniff the upper echelons of the income scale or become super wealthy.  But on another level, I hear in Bernie Sanders platform, perhaps the most Christian set of values brought to this particular table since Jimmy Carter.  And Bernie is Jewish, and not even particularly religious.

But for the love of all that is holy, give me person who wants to try and create a more just society and fight oppression, and I will tell you that he's following Christ more than certain other candidates who demonstrate a rather callous attitude towards the poor (especially if the poor happen to come from south of the border).  Show me a secular Jew who wants to restore dignity to public discourse and I will show you Jesus (a religious Jew) who told us that if we call someone a fool we are liable to damnation.  Bernie rather notably refuses to attack Hilary, Biden or even any of the Republican candidates, other than stating his disagreement with their platforms and policies.  When he actually chastises reporters who would like to make some comment about Hilary's hair (or his hair for that matter), you get the sense that we are dealing with an actual grown up.

Maybe it's just because I'm in my 40's now, but I really want our next president to be an actual grown up.  I think Obama has been, and I think history will show that he was, even if the latest polls or the adolescent media don't particularly reflect that.

I have two things that I'm looking for when I vote: 

1. Do their policies and platform reflect a mature and realistic way forward.
2. Does that way forward mesh with Christian ethics.

Notice, I don't include whether or not they can win, whether they have good hair or whether or not they profess to be Christian.  I don't care about those things, those things got us Reagan and W. Bush (and Billy Clinton, just in case you think I'm picking on the Red side of the aisle).  Those things got us a mess of bad wars and rampant greed and eventually crashed us into the ditch.

I feel like we need to get our house in order, and for that to happen the focus of the conversation needs to change.  Even if Bernie doesn't get the nod from the Dems, he has still changed the conversation.  You know who is pushing buttons on the other side of the aisle? Donald Trump and his spectacular, horrible, really bad hair.  But it's okay, Bernie won't go after the hair, he'll go after the immoral and unfeasible ideas that Trump represents, that should be fun to watch if it happens.