Words Matter

I'll admit, I'm probably more into words than the average person.  I talk for a living.  Beyond that the thing that I talk about is basically words, which we call Scripture.  I also do a fair amount of writing and even more reading, some of which is job related and some of which is just for fun.  I love playing games with words, like crossword puzzles and Scrabble (Words with Friends as well).  There are certain words that I find amusing in their own right, regardless of any context (salubrious, halcyon, coniferous).  One of my college English professors challenged the class with defining the following: sesquipedalian logophile (neither part of which is recognized by the Blogger spell check).  It means someone who likes big words, which I knew, because I am one.
I fairly regularly get quite angry with the way words are being used and abused in our current culture, whether it is through the mercenary (possibly sinister) efforts of advertisers, or the blatant disregard of the rules of rhetoric and discourse evident in politics these days, or whether it is just the run of the mill illiteracy of every day folks (actually that last one bothers me the least, because there is no malice in it).  Because of my awareness of the power of words and language, I want to be very careful how I deal with today's subject.  It feels almost like reaching out to grab a hot wire, and knowing you're going to get shocked, but here goes.
Let's talk about Abortion.  I'm not going to hedge and say something like reproductive rights or women's issues.  I'm going to talk specifically and as directly as I can about the practice of terminating a viable pregnancy through a surgical intervention.  Since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on the case of Roe versus Wade in 1973 women in this nation have had the legal right to choose this procedure for reasons other than imminent danger to the life of the mother.  In the 1980's some religious groups seized on the "Abortion issue," as a key moral issue facing our nation.  Ever since then it has been a dividing line for our nation.  Politicians have to clearly declare whether they are Pro-Choice or Pro-life, and only the most careful parsing of the "legal but rare" stance is allowed to those who would seek to stand in the gray area.
I am trying to become more comfortable in this gray area.  Here's what I believe for what it's worth: Life is sacred.  I am in this sense extremely Pro-Life.  I try to be as consistent about this as I can, I believe that all life is sacred.  This means I am an advocate of non-violence, I am anti-capital punishment, I am pro-adoption (my mother was adopted by my grandparents, I'm so in on that one), I am also in favor of Planned Parenthood and the help that they give, especially to poor women, in the arena of healthcare and birth control and general care and support to women who are pregnant.  I would like to live in a world where no woman felt like she needed to choose between her own health and life and the life and health of her child.
But we don't live in that world.
We live in a world where sometimes children are conceived in terrible circumstances.  Their mothers are too young, too poor, too something, to be able to care for them, or even carry them to term.  A choice is made. It is not an easy choice.  It is often a choice that leaves lasting emotional scars.  It is a choice that is rarely made casually or quickly. It is not a choice that I would ever want to make myself.  So I do not presume to make it for anyone else, nor do I believe it ought to be made by the government.
I am extremely skeptical that even the politicians who so gladly accept the votes of the Pro-life crowd, are ever going to do anything constructive and meaningful in that direction anyway.  After all it has been almost 43 years since Roe V. Wade, we have had Republicans in power and Democrats in power, we have had a conservative SCOTUS and a Liberal SCOTUS, and there has not been even a meaningful challenge to the fundamental decision on Roe.  I think maybe what we have now is the only legislative answer that is available to us, the only one that truly accounts for the weight of this issue. This means that all the division and anger has been for nothing.
These words: life and choice, are words we should use with reverence.  They are not words that should ever be used for crass political posturing, but they have been.  They are not words that should be shouted by angry mobs or waved on picket signs, but they are.
And people (born and unborn) are dying.
I'm not going to blame anyone in particular for the guy in Colorado who shot up Planned Parenthood.  I would like to suggest that terrorism is a product of cultural forces.  Within a certain segment of Islam, anti-western sentiment runs strong enough to create things like ISIS.  Within a certain segment of White-American Christianity, racism runs strong enough to create the KKK. The rhetoric and the emotions surrounding the abortion issue have been overheated for decades.  You can't just deny culpability when some unstable person blows a gasket and starts shooting. Does accepting culpability mean blaming or taking blame? No, but it might serve well to watch how you speak.  Does being shocked and appalled by the latest act of terror mean you should re-evaluate your position about the value of unborn children? No, but it might serve you well to be kinder about how you express those convictions.
I think we're capable of looking around the obvious defensive reactions on these sorts of things.  I think we need to start to address racism and not just write off Dylan Roof as a deranged lunatic, but rather understand that his violence and terror was directed and channeled by a culture that fed him on racism and hatred of black people.  Robert Dear (The Colorado Springs shooter, in case you haven't had his name seared into your memory yet), apparently was absorbed with enough rage at the baby killers, abortionists and President Obama (another story entirely) that it was time to unleash the terror.  Some will undoubtedly explain this away, but I think we do so at our own peril.  It's time to stop writing all of these people off as lone wolves and start to take stock of what is really driving them to murderous behavior.  I think our words have a lot to do with it.

Persistent Problems

A God without wrath brought humans without sin into a kingdom 

without judgment through ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

-H. Richard Niebuhr

In the world of theology geeks, the above is a fairly well known statement (I suppose I should note it is a facetious statement that presents an exaggerated negative image of what he actually believes to be true) by Reinhold Niebuhr's little brother, himself a very influential theologian, perhaps without the broader cultural recognition that Reinhold achieved through his "Serenity Prayer."  I know what you're saying: "Broader recognition? What are you talking about?  Who the heck are these Niebuhrs?"

Well, since you asked, they are the great white buffaloes of American Theology.  They are both extraordinary thinkers, whose thought is often quoted by theological types like me, and described with obtuse terms like "post-liberal" and "neo-orthdox."  Those two terms are defined by the fact that they come after a great battle of ideas, in which there was much passionate argument and much general consternation.  The Niebuhrs did their work in the wake of a theological and ecclesiastical war.

The war in question was the "fundamentalist-modernist controversy," within my very own Presbyterian tradition which has been powerfully reflected in the culture ever since.  Then though "fundamentalist" meant something rather different than what we picture, and "modernist" actually had some sort of clear meaning.

To sum up a rather long story, the "fundamentals" were:

• The nature of Scripture as inspired by God and "inerrant."
• The Virgin Birth of Jesus.
• The idea that Christ's death was an atonement for sin.
• The Resurrection of the Body
• The historical reality of the Miracles attributed to Jesus.

Modernists essentially challenged those fundamentals in the following ways:

• Scripture is inspired by God, but written by human hands and therefore in need of interpretation by human readers, therefore it cannot be said to be "inerrant," because the communication chain involves human writers, readers and interpreters.
• The Virgin birth of Christ, the historicity of miracles and the resurrection of the body all sort of fit into a single argument: simply that they are mythological additions and not absolutely necessary to Christian faith, and as they were often the object of ridicule from the secular and scientific community, should be de-emphasized, if not totally disregarded as core doctrines of the church.
• Atonement was seen as a sort of draconian leftover from Roman Catholicism, without going into all the various theories of atonement, modernists tended towards an understanding of God's mercy as being greater than God's need to punish iniquity.  (This, in my opinion, was the greatest blind spot of modernism, because it tends to minimize the impact that sin has on our ability to relate to a Holy God, which I think Niebuhr pointed out rather well).

It cannot, and really should not be said that either side really "won," this debate, they simply separated and went their own way.  Even though this argument stared in the good old Presbyterian Church, it has spread like a fire into other denominations and is even raging in the Roman Catholic world.  The words have changed, because Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Islamic extremists have forever tainted the name of fundamentalism.  It is a word, I do not think we can get back, nor should we try.  And honestly, Modernist and even Liberal don't really have the same precision as perhaps they once did.

Here is something that has not really changed though: Sin.  Yes, sin, I am moved by my compassion for humanity to adopt many opinions that might rightly be called liberal or progressive, but let me tell you one way that I am still absolutely orthodox: I believe that sin is huge problem for all people.  The nature of sin prevents me from thoroughly embracing a progressive attitude that we will somehow grow or evolve out of our current troubles.  The nature of sin prevents me from holding to my former conservatism that truly felt we should just maintain the status quo until we were sure of the way forward.

Much of the theology one sees out and about these days fails to account for this little three letter word that everyone recognizes, but none of us fully understand or give its full account.  Sin is what turns our discussions of the truly crucial problems of our age into nasty sectarian sniping.  Sin is what prevents progressives from taking stock of the ways that human nature is going to derail their plans to do good.  Sin is what causes conservatives to fear the change that so dearly needs to happen.  Sin is what keeps us naming each other enemy, and refusing to hear and acknowledge what is good about the ideas and people that challenge our assumptions.  Sin is a perpetual motion machine which generates its own energy and power and can sustain its own cycle for as long as there are people afflicted by it, which will be always, until Jesus comes back.

Constantly harping on sin is a big drag to be sure, but if we ignore it and pretend it's not a big deal, we will continue to see what history has born out thus far: no end to suffering, no end to violence, no peace among humankind, no exit from the endless oppressive cycles of what could very honestly be called Hell.

There is only one answer to sin, Jesus Christ and him crucified, and even if you don't like the word atonement or any of the various "theories" of atonement, the fact remains that Jesus is the only way to deal with sin.  Rules make it stronger.  Quests for purity feed the fires of Hell as readily as the light of Heaven.  By the way, I didn't make this up, here is the Apostle Paul in Romans 3: 20 quoting Psalm 143:2: For "no human being will be justified in (God's) sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. If you're not familiar, he goes on a bit about that.

The point is that the Grace of God is the only answer to sin, righteousness ain't gonna cut it, good works ain't gonna cut it, right belief ain't gonna cut it (yeah that's right, your purity of doctrine isn't getting you off the hook either, that's just more works righteousness, except the works happen between your ears).

So what do we do then?  We proclaim Jesus as Lord, and we seek to live that way, we trust in the mercy of God when we mess up, but never fail to repent. Our identity as the Body of Christ does not presuppose a "solution" to human sin, but rather an answer to the fact that it is persistent and inescapable.  We are the body of Christ, not because we're perfect and holy, we are perfect and holy because we are the body of Christ.  Here's a more in depth quote from H. Richard Niebuhr:

The way to the organic, active peace of brotherhood leads through the hearts of peacemakers who will knit together, with patience and self sacrifice, the shorn and tangled fibers of human aspirations faith and hopes, who will transcend the fear and dangers of an adventure of trust. The road to unity is the road of repentance.

That is all for now.

Human? Nature

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.

-The Apocalypse of John 22: 1

Sometimes a whole bunch of things just come together in my brain.  Having lived in Pittsburgh for a bit, I have adopted a geographical word for this: confluence.  That's what they call the place where two, or in the case of the burgh, three rivers come together.  So here's my Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio for this week: Refugees, people experiencing homelessness, and the church, specifically the church I serve as pastor, but I think you will see a broader application.
First, without belaboring points I have made earlier, let me just say that I have been profoundly disappointed with some of the responses to the refugee crisis, even before the Paris attacks ratcheted the rhetoric up to eleven.  The fear and intolerance that I have seen displayed by many, including the governor of my own state has quite frankly dented my faith in humanity, and reminded me, rather vividly of the depth of human sin.
Second, this was our week to host the local Safe Nights program, which provides temporary shelter for people in Charles County who are experiencing homelessness.  Our church's lower level is packed with cots and the meager personal effects of between 30 and 40 men, women and children who are experiencing homelessness.  We feed them, we give them a place to sleep and our local community action group, Lifestyles of Southern Maryland (shameless plug, they're freaking awesome), does as much as possible to help them get their lives together during the day.  I would like to tell you that all of the people we serve are paragons of virtue who have just fallen on hard times, but that is not the truth.  The group as a whole is a full mixture of people of all different sorts, they can be surly and petulant with each other, they can be ungrateful and rude, but it is our duty to serve them and give them shelter nonetheless.  We have to stop this pervasive and perverse notion that those in need of help must somehow live up to certain standards in order to be treated decently.  That is not grace.  Whether you're talking about refugees or the homeless, or the person in traffic or at the grocery store, being grace filled is not something you should ever try to turn on and off according to the situation.
And so I walk up to a powder keg holding an open flame, and I attempt to investigate something that has and does trouble me about the church: do we allow ourselves to experience grace?  In our meetings and our plans, in our gatherings and in our attitudes towards one another?  In our relationship to individuals, congregations and other institutional groups, do we understand that we are what we are thanks to the grace of God and not because of how good we are?
Those who truly experience the grace of God in their lives are then called, and even compelled to let that grace flow out of them.  I believe that God is love, and that love is expressed towards humanity in the form of grace incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  I used Reinhold Niebuhr's famous Serenity prayer in our Session meeting last night, you know the one: "God, give me the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."  People who are familiar with some form of that prayer may not remember that it goes on from there, to say the following line: "Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it."
That hit me between the eyes.  I thought about how Jesus interfaced with the world, and it occurs to me that Niebuhr hit the nail on the head, Jesus took the world as it was, and people as they were.  He certainly recognized the failings and the sin, and sometimes it made him angry or even caused him to weep, but in the midst of all that there was a radical kind of acceptance, which we commonly call grace.
A lot of younglings these days use the phrase, "don't judge me," frequently.  I noticed this coming from my daughter and from some of our youth here at church, and I asked them about it. I asked them why they said it so often, even if there was no real sign that anyone was judging them.  One girl said, "I feel judged a lot."
"Why?" I asked, "I didn't say anything or do anything to indicate that I was judging you."
"I just feel it," she said, "because I do weird things, because I am weird."
Don't get me wrong, I understand there is plenty of judgment to go around that comes from external sources, but what I was encountering here was almost entirely internal judgment.
I said, in a moment of Pastoral inspiration, "you know, it occurs to me that the only way someone should be able to judge you, is if they really love you, otherwise they'll do it wrong."  Honestly, I don't really know where that came from, but the more I think about it the more it sort of runs away with me.  Jesus can be the judge of creation because he loves it.  He was able to set things right in the world and call sinners to repent, because he loved them, because he accepted their weirdness and did not judge without understanding that perhaps their sins were afflictions, and not flaws.  He did not come to "condemn the world, but came that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17)
We need to learn to accept that grace and that justification.  If we can't accept it for ourselves, we will never, ever be able to give it to others.
If we fail to receive and give grace to others we will fail, not just as Christians, but as humans.

Complicated We Stand

The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded

than the shouting of a ruler among fools.

-Ecclesiastes 9:17

Last night I was listening to BBC radio on the way home from a Presbytery meeting and I heard an extended interview with former NATO chief Admiral James Stavridis.  As I usually am, I was impressed with the rather calm, clear eyed perspective of a person who has dealt with war and terrorism and violence on rather more concrete terms than those of us who think they understand war on the basis of playing Call of Duty.  He was talking about ISIS/ISIL/Da'esh (Here's the deal with the different names) and how they are rather different from Al Quaida or Hamas, and about how our strategies for dealing with them need to reflect the different nature of what they are.

As you might expect from a former NATO chief, he is an advocate of cooperation between nation states in dealing with Da'esh.  He notes that, in fact, there is a rather unprecedented level of agreement between the United States, Europe and even Iran about the fact that these villains need to be taken down.  In the half an hour or so that I was listening, he described an almost impossible scenario where the United States, the European Union, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and various other Middle Eastern nations would all cooperate to bring down this band of lunatics.

As I am also, the interviewer was somewhat incredulous that this sort of cooperation might take place.  But Stavridis insisted that all those groups have a fairly well established self interest in seeing Da'esh ended and stability restored to Syria and Iraq. Once the common enemy is gone, however, things get decidedly less crystalline.  The US teaming up with Russia seems like a movie sequel to the cold war, where former enemies get together to fight a common foe, but there is still the rather sticky matter of the Ukraine, which is not just going to go away.  If we buddy up the Russians, are we tacitly abandoning Ukraine to Uncle Vlad's neighborhood?  And of course there's the Sunni/Shia enmity, how do we convince Sunni Muslims around the world that inviting Shiite Iran into our little brute squad to take out an essentially Sunni group like Da'esh isn't going to result in a tilt of the old persecution see-saw.  I mean, most Sunni are pretty strongly disavowing any notion that Da'esh is their people, but they still don't particularly care for the Shia, that goes back a really long way.  You've got religious considerations, geopolitical considerations, cultural considerations and in light of all that Stavridis made what is perhaps the understatement of the year: "The world is a complicated place."

He talked about the short game: destroy Da'esh, all of them, the black flag, machine gun toting dudes in the desert, the presence online, the loose networks throughout the middle east and Europe by which they continue to "expand their influence" even as their actual territory remains "contained" as President Obama keeps saying.

Then he mentioned the long game, which involves a rather more difficult task of doing all of this in a way that does not resemble playing Whack-a-Mole (you know that boardwalk game where you try to hit all the plastic moles that pop out of different holes with a big padded mallet).  Our history with fighting terror groups is that, as soon as we get one, more pop up, and the success of our own violence tends to lead to the very conditions that make for fertile recruiting grounds among those who are tired of poverty and war.

I have my suspicions that even the short game won't exactly be a walk in the park, but I have to admit the picture he painted was appealing.  As for the long game, I was just sort of glad to hear an actual authority type person admit that it was really the big problem.  I also appreciated the fact that he didn't just say, "it's complicated," and walk away in frustration, he actually had ideas about what to do, other than ignore it and hope it will away.  He didn't make it sound simple or easy, but there seemed to be a way around the terror and a way, no matter how uphill it may be, to find our way through this seemingly intractable mess.

The barriers to cooperation were perhaps the most disappointing aspect of all of this: how hard it is for us to just get our heads together to combat something as obviously evil as Da'esh.  The constant rhetoric of fear and bigotry that is just flying in all directions right now.  It sort of reminds me of that ominous line in The Lord of the Rings: "on that day the strength of men failed."  Honestly, I'm ready to grab for whatever hope I can.  These days I guess quiet words of the wise can be hard to come by, here are some:

These times we know much evil, little good

to steady us in faith

and comfort us when our losses press

hard on us, and we choose,

in panic or despair or both,

to keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace

broken, and so we must

love where we cannot trust,

trust where we cannot know,

and must await the wayward coming grace

that joins the living and dead,

taking us where we would not go -

into the boundless dark.

when what was made has been unmade

The Maker comes to His work.

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

Porte Ouvert

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, 

shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah 

on the day of judgment than for that town.

-Matthew 10: 14-15

In Paris, people are welcoming strangers into their homes.  In the midst of the fear and violence they are opening doors to people who are stuck and away from their safety and security.  In Paris, where the police are mobilizing with frightening military efficiency and where the dead from last week are not yet buried, ordinary people are deciding not to be terrorized.

In the United States, a nation built by immigrants, which has as one of her enduring symbols a gift from France standing in New York Harbor, Lady Liberty, with her torch raised and her inscription: "Send me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."  Governors quibble about receiving refugees, people indulge dark, fearful, isolationist thoughts.

I cannot recall a time when I have been more ashamed of our nation.  I may have disagreed with policies, I may not really like the vast and unquestionable military industrial complex, but always I have felt that when the rubber hit the road America would do the right thing.  There have been moments where it took us a minute: Hurricane Katrina, and there are areas where we undoubtedly have lots of work left to do: civil rights, but I would like to believe that we as a nation have the courage of our convictions.

There is no country on earth that owes as much to the diversity and richness of immigrants.  There is no other country in the history of humanity that can offer such a hope that, somehow, someway, we can transcend our differences and live together in peace.  Right now, we are failing to be our best, and we are failing for the worst reasons: fear, greed and selfishness.

Even if you are a secular humanist with no interest in biblical standards, you should notice that these rampant expressions of fear and hatred are contrary to the better angels of our nature.  You should be aware that the terrorists are winning, because we are afraid.  In our fear we are becoming violent and hateful, and that is precisely what they believed we were all along.

If you are a person who cares about the Bible, Jew, Christian, Muslim or even one of those Spiritual But Not Religious types, you should note that Cain wandered the earth and was a refugee, and God forbid anyone from harming him (even though he had murdered his brother).  Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, not because they were sexually depraved, but because they failed to offer proper hospitality to strangers. Abram (Abraham) left his home country and wandered to the place The LORD showed him.  His son Ishmael was disinherited and God cared for him.  His grandson Jacob had to flee from his brother Esau and take refuge in the house of his uncle Laban.  The twelve tribes of Israel went to Egypt as refugees and were rescued from a famine.  The refugees, being different and homeless eventually became oppressed and were rescued by another fugitive, a murderer named Moses.  They wandered as refugees for forty years, and remember that wandering even now on Passover and Sukkoth.  Jesus was a refugee before he was even old enough to talk, and he remained a man who had no place to lay his head, even as he began to preach about the Kingdom of Heaven, and he emphasized to his disciples the necessity of giving and receiving hospitality.

I'm not even going to bother assembling a collection of texts that prove this point, because proof texting is obnoxious, but also because it's utterly unnecessary in this particular case, this is such a powerful theme in the whole narrative that if you miss it you're just being as dense as a neutron star.

Don't tell me about your faith and then say we can't or we shouldn't welcome these people fleeing from hell itself.  Don't make excuses about how they might be dangerous, because I'll admit, they might be, most of them aren't, but a few of them will be.

The Church I Pastor is called Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church, the story of the Good Samaritan challenges us to re-define our definition of neighbor.  Jesus uses a Samaritan for a purposeful effect, to summon the idea of someone who is different from the man in the ditch, someone who most of the audience would find objectionable.  The Samaritan is the one who risks his life for the wounded man, who invests his time and treasure in the man whom he does not know.

Let's face it America, we're not on the front lines of this one, there is an ocean between us and the refugees fleeing Syria.  Only a small fraction of them will ever get here, but if Paris can open their doors, given what has just happened there, it is a dirty, rotten shame if we can't at least do the same.

I want to have faith, that if this decision was put in the hands of the American people instead of in the hands of politicians we would be better, we would be more loving and welcoming, we would live up to our own values and get serious about our unique place in history as a demonstration that we can be more together than we are apart, you know E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one.  Seriously people, this idea is all over the place, open the ever loving door.

Comment Cava?

Mes Chers Amis en France,
Don't worry, I'm not going to afflict you any more with my poor French.  But I would like to drop you a line this Monday morning to tell you that you have been much in my thoughts over the weekend.  I know we've had some differences of opinion vis-a-vis the whole international affairs scene. I really do regret the whole "freedom fries" debacle, I know you don't even want us to call pomme-frittes "french fries" anyway, we 'Mericans can be pretty hot headed sometimes.  The thing was we felt like you didn't have our back about the whole Iraq thing, and we were still reeling from our own day of national hate and fear, a lot like the one you're having now.
If nothing else, you need to know that we are with you, even if our politicians can't always get out of their own way, we totally feel your pain, and right now, people are putting the Tricolor on their facebook profiles all over the place, I did.  It may seem like a small thing, but you have to understand that for Americans, even with all our power, most of us feel utterly helpless when it comes to this terrorism thing, which is why I think we're having such a hard time getting a grip.
So here's a bit of an apology, it turns out that you were maybe kind of right about the whole attempt to re-colonize the middle east, shaky stuff that.  We were too angry to listen to reason at that moment, and now, here we are a decade later still trying to deal with terrorist organizations that have sprung up in the power vacuums that we created.  ISIS and the war in Syria are now lobbing hundreds of thousands of refugees towards Europe, and in that mix are some dangerous elements.  To tell you the truth though, in the long run this whole mess is a lot more dangerous than a few wolves hiding among the fleeing sheep.  This whole scenario, and how we deal with it, is going to shape the world for a long time.
People with nothing to lose and nothing to protect are pretty dangerous.  The people who, right now, are suffering the degradation and horror of being a refugee are going to be either welcomed and cared for in their time of need by the "West," or they are going to be turned away and further brutalized and marginalized.  If we take the latter course, out of fear, we will prove the terrorists right: western society is decadent and perverse and does not accept or care for the rest of the world.  If we vilify our Muslim neighbors and blame them for the actions of a very small group of people, we prove ourselves to be as blind to the diversity of global Islam, in terms of race, and particular forms of practice.
I know, coming from an American, this sounds awfully hypocritical, but this is really one of those learn from the mistakes of other people moments.  What the terrorists want is a violent response. They want rage, they want us to try and take revenge, they want bombs to fall, because that's what they have been telling people we would do all along.  Their motivation is not swift decisive victory in battle, their goal is a doomsday scenario where all the people of Islam rise up and destroy the infidel.  They don't care that the Qu'ran doesn't support the idea, they don't care how many of them have to die in the cause.  We have made so many mistakes in confronting this evil.
The genius, if you can call it that, of terrorism is that they don't want to win battles.  As the label terrorist implies, they want to create terror.  They want to make people afraid, they want to cause suffering, they want to provoke violence, because that is their stock and trade.  Terrorism is a tool of extremely small groups of people who are trying to battle something that is much bigger than them.  Remember when you all helped a bunch of American Colonists take on the mighty British Empire?  We used some of the same ideas.  In that case though, we were dealing with an enemy we understood very well.  We just had to make enough of a stink for the whole colonial enterprise to become unprofitable, we just had the British Parliament and old King George to run off, and you had our back. Comparatively, we had a lot more leverage than your average Mujahadeen, and our goal was much more attainable than the downfall of the entire western world.
The thing is though, at the start of that conflict, it was pretty split down the middle in terms of colonists who supported the crown and didn't really mind paying taxes in order to be part of the grand and glorious British Empire, and those who wanted independence.  The Rebels needed the Brits to flash their teeth before independence became a thing that a majority could agree on.  They did, and the war for independence was begun.
The plan of the Jihadists is plain and simple: provoke the west into acting like the imperialist bullies they have been saying we are.  Sow enough terror among the populations of nations like France and the US so that we "have to" respond with military intervention.  Then go run and hide. Leave the disposable foot soldiers out there to die in the bombings and  head back to comfortable compounds in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.  Wait for the war to create martyrs, and a whole new generation of desperate men with nothing to lose.  Rinse, lather, repeat.
So what do we do?
The only hope is to react in a way that is going to take a lot of self control.  We need to convince humanity that these clowns are a boil on the posterior of our species, a condition which is more properly handled with a sterile needle than with a bloody sword.  This means Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Atheists, this means people of all nations who are truly invested in the commonwealth of humanity are going to need to cooperate, and say, "enough."  Understand that this is going to be a slow process and we may need to absorb a punch or two along the way.  We've taken a few, we know it can be done.  But beware the warmongers!  There are many in our own houses who are invested financially and by temper in the waging of war.  Their voices grow loud in the wake of tragedy, and they recruit the victims and their loved ones all too easily.  They are the all too willing dance partners of the terrorists, and they want us not to notice that without them the techniques of the terrorists would be useless.
I admire your words: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.  The first two are important in our words as well, "Liberty and Justice for all."  But the last one, brotherhood or solidarity, well I suppose that's what I'm saying we need more than anything right now.
It is my hope that someday soon all the world will realize how important our mutual connection really is.  That is the only thing that can end the terror.
Amities,
Marc

Lose Yourself

So the soap opera is told and unfolds, I suppose it's old partna'

But the beat goes on, da da dum de da da.

Eminem, Lose Yourself

One of the interesting things about social media is that you learn how diverse your field of acquaintances actually is.  Quite frankly, this can be a bit annoying and sometimes even disturbing, and in those moments you are tempted to use that "block" or maybe even (gasp) "unfriend" someone.  As a general rule, I do not block or unfriend people for disagreeing with my particular ideological bent, which would be hypocrisy of unfortunate scale.  I reserve my ultimate social media sanction for people who become abusive, thankfully I have never experienced anything beyond a nasty email.

Of late, among my diverse political and religious acquaintances I have read the following dichotomous opinions, some of which I characterize for simplicity's sake:

1. The Media versus The Republican Candidates.  I admit, that "debate" on CNBC last week was pretty badly done.  And I admit that I am regularly disappointed with how our news media handles things, but pointing out fabrications and other misleading statements or even unmasking outright misrepresentation of the facts, does not constitute a media bias.  That stuff is actually the media functioning the way it is supposed to.  If you doubt that the squawking from Trump, Carson et al is misplaced, you need to notice that they are now doing it to Fox News.  Let me just say that when Fox News calls BS on a Republican that must be some particularly vile prevarication.
2. The University of Missouri versus itself.  So Mizzou is close to Ferguson, and Mizzou has had some problems of late with the old racism thing.  The administration of the University did not do much about the problems with the racism thing, a student went on hunger strike at the beginning of November, the Football team joined in the growing protest, the faculty were about to, and the President of the University resigned in the midst of the turmoil, and will be followed by the Chancellor.  The longer story of Mizzou sheds some light on how "The System" responds to valid protest: not very well.  It also makes a point about how athletes, coaches and other players can shine a spotlight on an issue because of the money and visibility surrounding the games we play.  More on how a hunger strike by a college student doesn't draw the amount of attention that missing a football game does some other time.  The thing that really set me off with regard to this was an article that I knew I shouldn't have read in the first place, from a VERY conservative person, from a VERY conservative publication which was trying to make the point that the black (and whites who are supporting them) students at Mizzou were essentially wrong for protesting and costing the poor President and Chancellor their jobs.  It actually referred to the students as "fascist," which, I'm guessing is an attempt to portray them as spoiled or entitled little dictators who want to run off their "opposition."  Except for the fact that fascism implies, in any reasonable sense, the rule of a totalitarian state or dictator (Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Castro in Cuba).  Calling a kid on a hunger strike, the faculty walking out, or the football team not playing a fascist activity is getting the power dynamic of fascism exactly backwards, in other words that's just not how it works, but someone wanted to feel justified in their bias so very strongly that just spit out something they considered to be a vile insult.

All of this brought to mind Mr. Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, and the story he told in the movie 8 Mile about his beginnings as a white rapper in the impoverished edges of Detroit.  The movie centers around his attempts to break into the world of Hip Hop/Rap music.  The movie demonstrates that, indeed, white people do experience prejudice in some circumstances, but let's be clear, his whiteness has made Eminem actually more relevant as an artist than not.  Because he crosses the boundary and actually uses his "weakness" as a strength.  Which is actually the central premise of the song Lose Yourself, which was the theme and center of the movie narrative.

A poor white kid is trying to work his way to a record contract through participating in "Rap Battles," which, I know sounds a little contrived, but just imagine slam poetry set to music, or just imagine a political campaign set to music and compressed into 90 seconds.  The goal of a battle is to slam your opponent, to make him look bad, to generate more applause for you than for him. Eminem, as a skinny, poor white kid from a trailer park at 8 mile is at a decided disadvantage, because everything in his life is an absolute mess.  He freezes up when he gets on stage to play the insult game, because he knows he's got so many holes in his own life.

So what he does is admit that he's got all of these flaws, he does not focus on tearing down his opponent, he simply writes a song that builds up everyone who hears it.  And the radio friendly edit was, for quite a while, a rallying song for sports teams and car companies alike.

The moral of the story, I suppose you might call it a moral, is that the way to transcend toxic, insult obsessed, negativity, is to focus on building out of the wreckage, rather than on constructing an ivory tower.

Right now our country is full of people jousting at windmills and ignoring the real giants.  Some of us (probably fewer than you actually think) get our panties in a bunch about some plain red coffee cups and a "war on Christmas," and then a whole bunch of other people (probably more than you realize) get our panties in a reflexive bunch about how silly it is to get your panties in a bunch about a freaking coffee cup.  We are so worried about our right to claim victimhood that people will buy into the notion that a university president was victimized by the student body because he didn't respond well to the fact that the students were being victimized by racist incidents on his watch.

We are trying to out victim each other.  Sure I might have lied, but it's very rude of you to point that out.  Sure my policies and ideas have big enough holes to fly a 747 through and more contradictions than the Bible, but that doesn't give you the right to call me a wingnut.

The problem with this approach is that we have real problems: racism, injustice, inequality, violence, just flat out brokenness, and we're never going to be able to hit those targets until we stop focusing simply on kneecapping our opponents, and clinging to our status as a victim.  You have to move past that, lose yourself, gain something greater. I actually think Jesus and Eminem agree on that one, go figure.

The Doctor Is In

I was wondering when this would happen.  I wasn't really getting antsy yet, because I have a history with the Doctor.  I can appreciate the old show: the terrible, laughable "special effects" and the impossibly campy dialogue.  I have learned to deal with regeneration, which means watching a character you have come to love change into a different character, which is supposed to be the same character but not.  I have to say, when Ten changed into Eleven, I wasn't sure I would get over it, but Matt Smith won my heart with his speeches, like the Rings of Akhaten, and with that damn Van Gogh episode that freaking makes me cry.
I know better than to jump to conclusions, but to tell you the truth Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor was leaving me a little flat sometimes.  I mean I know he's a good actor, and there was that thing about the "attack eyebrows," in his first real episode. But I think, sort of like Clara, I didn't really trust him.  To tell you the truth, I found myself wishing that they had cast Michelle Gomez as the first female Doctor, instead of as his nemesis, the Master (now Missy, short for Mistress).  But really, I think that's just because really good villains are always more fun than heroes, especially grumpy, old, Scottish heroes.
I think the writers of the show have been messing with our emotions, because they can.  I think they're doing something rather skillful, and maybe a little bit beyond what you would expect from a show that centers around a time travelling police box and it's mad scientist pilot.  They're letting the character of the doctor grow and adapt, and actually really be regenerated.  They have learned, I think that you can't really go around just repeating the same character with different actors (think Becky from Roseanne, that was just weird).
We have seen the Doctor evolve from 9 through 12. And we have even seen the John Hurt "War Doctor" who doesn't get counted in the official roster, but it is this character that is really at the center of the changes, it is the experience of the Time War, which we mostly only hear about in the canon of the show, that changes the Doctor.  It changes Ten from a warrior into someone who can love, it changes Eleven from a madman with a box always on the run into a man who settles in to fight his long last battle in the defense of Trenzalore, and it points us towards Twelve, a more mature, less whimsical, but also at times conflicted Doctor, who "saves people" and worlds even, from themselves if need be.
It's a complicated story to tell to be sure.  We have been doing a lot of the leg work with Capaldi over the past season and a half, and I know it was wearing a lot of fans out a little.  I was starting to hear complaints from the fandom about this "new" Doctor.
Until Saturday, when Twelve arrived as Time Lord in Full. I won't go into too much detail about the plot, because spoilers, and probably because if you're not a Whovian, you just won't understand too much to explain, but let's just say there's going to be a war started with two characters pushing buttons on boxes at opposite ends of a table.  The Doctor is trying to talk them out of it.  He starts with the futility of violence and the necessity of forgiveness and the way that violent cycles never end, and if you're at all a fan, you start to get that tingly feeling, like you know he's about to break out of the funk you have both been in for a while.  The argument is crowned with this:

This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought right there in front of you. Because it's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know who's children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning -- sit down and talk! Listen to me, listen. I just -- I just want you to think. Do you know what thinking is? It's just a fancy word for changing your mind.

I could give you more, but I don't want to spend the whole morning typing out dialogue, and actually I hope you'll invest an hour into watching The Zygon Inversion, because this speech is something we need to hear.  In a story, truth is speaking to us, truth about war and the stupidity thereof.  This is one of those moments when truth is not contained by mere reality.  The futility of violence an power is on full display, on a timey-wimey TV show.
Would it win you to Doctor Who if you don't like Sci-Fi? Probably not.
Would it convince a War Monger to change their ways? Probably not.
But all the same I believe that we need to tell stories like this, even if they take a little longer to unfurl and may try the patience of the fans.  When you get to a moment like this, it is so worth it.

The Wages of Sin

I'm getting a little burnt out on politics, which I suppose is a problem when we've only just begun the madness of the 2016 election.  I suppose what I'm about to talk about could be seen as political, but it really shouldn't be.  In fact, the politicization of this issue has made it seem contentious and intractable, when in fact it should be common sense.  What I'm talking about here is wages, what we get paid for the work that we do.
It is an economic reality that money, ever since we came off the gold standard, is a commodity whose value is highly relative.  For instance, every old guy you talk to will tell you how when he was a teenager his first job paid him like $0.25 an hour or some other small number that sounds absurd to us who are used to thinking in terms of a quarter as a nearly disposable slab of metal that won't even buy a candy bar.  However, think about the fact that in the 1950s you could purchase a brand new Chevrolet or Ford sedan for less than $2000, and the average yearly income was somewhere between $3000 and $4000.  People who bought homes in the 1960's in suburban areas near large cities in the east could expect to pay around $30,000, no I didn't leave off a zero.  By 1970, average wages, and I emphasize average, had nearly doubled, and of course the cost of things tended to go with them.  However, as this research indicates real wages, that is wages adjusted for inflation, have been shamefully stagnant.
I'm above my pay grade with the math of what has happened in the past forty years, but let's just say there have been changes in the culture that have made what we experience as the cost of living even more difficult to manage on "average wages."  There are things we "need" to pay for that a 1950's family was blissfully unaware of, for instance: cable, internet, cell phone and for most of us a second family car, not to mention the skyrocketing cost of insurance and healthcare that would probably make 1950's financial planners soil themselves.  And before you say that cell phones and internet access are luxuries, please attempt to do without them for a month and then tell me about how "frivolous" those expenses are.
I want to get past the economic stuff though and talk about the philosophical and spiritual consequences that the current situation has to our culture.  I read a bit, and in my reading I notice something about characters in books from the past.  Apparently it used to be sort of a given that you could "make a living," if you just buckled down and worked hard. I'm not just talking about feeding, clothing and housing yourself and/or your family.  A living could be made as a grocery clerk, a farmer, a tradesman, a mechanic or a janitor. You could always "climb the ladder" into management and executive positions, you could put in overtime and show ingenuity and initiative to "get ahead," but there was a certain baseline standard of living that was expected.  Blue collar jobs were not despised and the wages paid for said jobs were not an introit to the welfare line.
Women were not generally expected to work outside the home (yes, I know not all of them liked that idea, we can deal with gender equality some other time), and a single full time paycheck was enough for a couple or a small family to "get by."  Success meant doing better than just getting by, but failure usually meant just falling back to the basics, not catastrophic.
I will use my own personal case as an example.  We moved into the Washington D.C. metro area and we bought a house.  My salary at the church is sufficient to cover the basic expenses of life for a family of four, but it would be a pinch, not because I'm paid poorly, but because the cost of living in this area is high.  My current salary in rural Pennsylvania, our previous location, would be a monkey with an entirely different suit. What is wrong with this picture?  Well not that much at the moment, Michele works, and we "get by" but let's say something happened to one of us, and one income went away.  Let's say that one of us wanted to make some sort of change, get more education or try a different career path, sorry charlie, that's going to create too much insecurity.  We become addicted and enslaved to the status quo.
The consequence of this is a feeling like you're walking across a room with no floor, as long as you step on the rafters and keep your balance everything is fine, but you are terribly risk averse.  You do not tend to innovate or take chances on doing something remarkable.
It's fine once you get into a comfortable place like we are, but it is not, I think, ideal for the young, or for the people who might really drive us forward in the future.  The American Dream of growing and prospering more and more has vanished under our noses.  External costs and mistakes of the past are coming back to haunt us, and I think that has a chilling effect on the whole culture.
This is why I think the serious work of establishing a real living wage standard across this nation is vital, and should be a priority of Republican and Democrat alike.  Those who can and do work at full capacity should not have to worry about being able to make rent or put food on the table.  A government that does not provide for that reality is failing in the modern world.  I guess I agree with Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) and Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) in their visions for a society that provides a safety net, and maybe even better, a nice solid floor to stand on.

A Horror Story

It was dark, I was warm in my bed when my Father shook me awake and told me to get dressed quickly.
"Where are we going Abba?" I asked.
"Just do as you're told," he said with a voice that I was not used to hearing, and which scared me into silence.  "Put some extra clothes in this, and hurry up, dress warm, it is cold." He threw a duffle bag on the floor and I began to pack quickly.
We didn't have a lot of things in our little apartment, but I had some toys, books and a warm place to sleep.  I could hear Father speaking to my sister and Mother with that same stern voice, there was no laughter in it, my Father used to laugh often, but lately not so much.  I saw my Mother in their room as I passed, she had a duffle bag too, and she was crying.  She looked away from me quickly, but I could see the fear and the tears on her face.  As I came into the front room of the apartment, I could hear men yelling in the street and strange cracking sounds in the distance.  I did not know what gunfire sounded like... yet.
The next few hours seem like a blur of a bad dream, all jumbled together.  We walked and ran, each of us carrying our duffle bags, trying to stay far away from the cracking sounds and the occasional explosions.  We had to turn and change course many times in order to get through the town without running into the fighting.  By the time we made it out of the town, I didn't even know which way home was, and somehow I knew that home was not going to be there for us anymore.
We walked for the rest of the night, many others were with us on the road, some of whom I knew, many were strangers.  My little sister cried a lot, but I did not, I am eleven and I am learning to be a man.  I kept looking at my Father, I wanted nothing more than to see him smile and tell me that things would be okay, but he didn't, I know now that he couldn't.
In the gray light of dawn we found some men with clipboards and a truck, and I heard them tell my Father that the truck would take us to the refugee camp.  I did not know what a refugee was, I certainly did not know it was me.
By the time we saw the camp, we were further from my home than I had ever been in my life.  There were so many white tents, and it looked like a safe place.  We were eventually directed to one of those tents by another man with a clipboard.  The tent had nothing but some cots and blankets and a metal cabinet with a lock.  We were going to learn that things needed to be locked up all the time.  We were going to learn that there was never enough of anything in the camp, not enough food, not enough toilets, not enough shower or water or soap.  My Mother and Father had whispered arguments every day and my sister and I pretended not to hear them.
Father was trying to get in touch with his brother in Turkey, if he could just get in touch with Salaam, they could go and live safely until this trouble passed.  My Mother half sobbed, "this trouble is never going to end."
That thought terrified me.  I went out and found a place to hide behind our tent, and I let myself cry.
That is when my Father found me.  At first I was ashamed because I was crying, but I could tell he was not ashamed of me or for me.  I saw the light in his eyes again, it was not laughter, but it was something other than darkness.  He sat down in the dirt next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.  He didn't say anything, he just sat there with me until the crying was done.  We went back inside.
Eventually we made it out of the camp and got to where my Uncle lived.  We were lucky.  My Uncle Salaam can help us and make sure we were allowed to stay as long as we need.  I don't know what happened to all those people who left with us, my schoolmates, or the people in the camp.  I don't know if I will ever see my town again, but I know I have heard my Father laugh again, and that is all I need for now.

Turning, and Turning, The Widening Gyre

Let's talk ideas and ideals.  As a self proclaimed moderate (all moderates are pretty much self proclaimed) I find myself sympathizing more these days with liberal positions on many issues (I know, not a surprise if you read this blog with any regularity).  I think this is a product of the fact that I have decided, for reasons of faith, that justice and caring for the least of these must be a work of humanity at all levels, not just in individual relationships.  At some point I stopped believing that charity was enough, and came to believe with a deep conviction that unless we work to reform the corrupt, unequal and violent systems of the world, we are just putting a band-aid on the broken neck of our society.
Once I had been convicted that the status quo was not okay, holding conservative positions became difficult to say the least.  I no longer believe that politicians and corporations are the best people to make ethical decisions that can and will effect the commonwealth of humanity.  Money is a problem, lust for power is a problem, the desire and will of the haves to protect what their position and status leads to the oppression of the have-nots. And there is little you can do to talk someone into giving away power and security once they have it.
And so you get what we had here last week: defenders of the status quo calling for change, but only proposing new wrinkles in the same greedhead free market mularky that has been plaguing us since Ronnie Ray-gun was soothing us with his dulcet Hollywood voice and presidential demeanor, which is to say pretty much my whole life.  Democrats are as guilty of it as Republicans, Bill Clinton famously said, "It's the economy stupid."
Blame the "mainstream" media, both sides do.  But understand that the media is just a consumer-governed commodity these days.  Fox News can peddle their Righty-tighty political punditry and MSNBC can peddle their lefty-loosey version, and they can shout angrily at each other and engage in gotcha moment after gotcha moment, and most of us have to resort to watching Jon Stewart laugh them off stage.
But alas Mr. Stewart has ridden off into the sunset (actually just to New Jersey) to run a farm for abused animals (seriously, that's what he's doing now, look it up).  A couple of years ago, Stewart, in a moment of brutal honesty, talked about how when The Daily Show started, they would take things politicians said out of context and make funny or crude jokes about it, but at some point they realized (and I think were genuinely surprised by the fact) that they didn't even have to do that, they could just basically repeat what was actually said and roll their eyes and it was funny.
What happened?  How is it that the court jester became the Walter Cronkite of the twenty-first century?  HBO ran a series called The Newsroom, in which Jeff Daniels plays Will McAvoy, cable news anchor and troubled soul, who keeps trying to do news the "right" way.  The McAvoy character seems like a contradiction in today's media climate.  Daniels does a fine job in portraying the rather dicey situation modern journalists inhabit.  Your personal preferences and foibles are always under scrutiny, misinformation abounds and speed is everything, but more troubling than any of that is the simple fact that the straight news just doesn't pull the ratings.  The fictional ACN news department is basically only viable because someone influential has the clout to keep it off the chopping block despite all the red ink it bled all over the corporate balance sheets.
Want to know why those CNBC moderators were as worthless as ice skates on a pig, understand what they're paid to do: grab ratings by appealing to the lowest common denominator.  It's not new, the Weekly World News and the National Enquirer have been at it for decades.  The best journalists know to stay far away from the idiot box, and I personally thank the good Lord above that the internet allows me to read news again.  I can got directly to AP or Reuters, I can read commentary from the NY Times or the Washington Post with the click of a mouse, most critically of all, I can fact check... everything.  Which can be a lot of work, but unfortunately you can't really trust that people are just going to tell the truth
The center has not held, because the center relies on sober analysis and dispassionate weighing of merits.  Eisenhower Republicans and Kennedy Democrats are things of the past, and Walter Cronkite wouldn't even last a season on cable news.  The funny thing is, if you talk to real people, the center is alive and well.  There are enough people out there who can honestly think through a complicated idea like the healthcare, gun control, or racism and realize that we need to do some things different.  Most of us realize that poverty and crime and the whole justice system are problems that need fixing, we may disagree on the methods and strategies for fixing them, but we need to work together regardless of those differences.
You wouldn't even think that's a possibility from watching what passes for the national news these days, and cable news?  Let's just say, nope.  Let's get our news elsewhere, what do you say?  I've been doing it for a while, and if anything I feel better informed.  I can really tell I've kicked the TV news habit when I watch things like the debates and see their shenanigans, that's why I shout at my TV.  Try it, no Fox News, no MSNBC, if you have to watch some news go to PBS for Lehrer. There's plenty of sources.  I hear you can even get old-timey things called newspapers and, you know, read.
See if that doesn't change the way you think and feel about things.
Stop letting the alarmists and the fearmongers try to sell you their wares, you will have enough going in your head in a while.