On the Brink...

Perhaps it's the tryptophan, perhaps it's just the pure saturation of "think pieces" concerning the Mike Brown/ Darren Wilson grand jury/ latest round of Ferguson protests, but I'm having a moment of sleepy hopefulness.  I know, it seems weird because: injustice, riots, broken system, dead kids, crooked prosecutors, hapless (and very white) police officer, and a whole slew of absolutely abhorrent hate-itude from both sides on the social media, but I feel like there's a moment coming here, a moment that was probably too narrowly avoided in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict.
Call it a reckoning.
Call it the chickens coming home to roost as Malcolm X did.
But notice, please, that this is much more of a Malcolm X sort of moment than it is a Martin Luther King moment.  As much as I hope the cooler heads prevail here, as much as I hope that non-violence wins the day, I also hope the protests and the outrage over the events of the past six months don't just fade into the background.
This racial injustice issue needs to stay on our front burners.  We need to talk about this, we need to stop building walls of ignorance that allow us to write off what is happening in Ferguson and around the country as lawlessness.  Sure there are looters and people who may just be out to break some things and watch the world burn, but we need to keep perspective.  We need to recognize that these are protests at the core.
This is chemotherapy for the cancerous injustice that has once again reared it's head in our nation.  There are some pretty stiff side effects, but that doesn't mean we need to stop the treatment.  It is pretty clear to me right now that we have finally begun to notice how sick we really are.  We are looking at this whole mess and finding that the tumor is not contained as neatly as we would like.  We are seeing a couple of African American teens in a poor section of town, en route from basically robbing a convenience store, being confronted by a police officer, not because of their recent miscreant behavior, but because of basically jaywalking.  The officer is rude and forceful, the boys are belligerent and possibly violent, but the officer has a gun, and when you bring fists to a gun fight, you have made a tactical error.  Violence gets out of control quickly, and a young man is dead.  The system then springs into action, not to bring justice, but to basically exonerate the guilty, to make excuses, to explain away the dead black man in the street.
No matter whether you believe Wilson or whether you believe any of the other possible scenarios, this is a story we have seen far too often before.  The truth is never told, justice is reckoned by a system that can only be seen as unjust from the perspective of the victims.
And most of us don't know what to think.  White, wealthy America retreats into an introspective fog of privilege and "listening."  We're confused, we want someone to tell us what to do and what to think, but we're not going to challenge our police or our prosecutors, because mostly they protect us, they protect our interests, they make sure that Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin are not lurking around our neighborhoods or jaywalking down our streets or hustling our convenience stores.  We're not sure that all this anger is called for, because it's not the blood of our children on that street.
So we try to make some sort of balanced and thoughtful response, we assure the people who are suffering that we're on their side, but we probably won't do anything about it.
We probably wont use our voices and our votes to really try to fix the system, partly because we maybe don't think there's any difference between one politician, sheriff, DA or prosecutor and another.  But also because we want those people to ensure our safety, and to most of us young black men look dangerous.
You can probably tell I'm a little angry about this, but believe me I understand why it feels like it does on a pretty visceral level.  I have stood face to face with a black man, a kid I grew up with, and who had taken a very different path.  A man who had a gun when all I had was words.  A man who probably wouldn't have minded using the gun on someone.  Fortunately that day, he didn't really want to use the gun on me.  I wasn't the target, I was the mediator, but I couldn't say anything clever or thoughtful enough to convince him that violence wasn't the way.  Everything in his world told him that it was, that it was the only way to get respect.  In the end, I suspect the only thing that really kept something pretty horrible from happening that day was some long ago playground bond that a middle class white kid and a poor black kid once had.
It was what I would call a pretty intense situation, but what saved it was not anything clever I said, it was that I was able to invoke a relationship of some sort, I knew where he was coming from, I knew his brothers, I knew (sort of) where he was at the moment.  Do we train our police to understand the people they are called to protect and serve?  Or do we train them to out-violence criminals?
In the Zimmerman/Martin tragedy, I felt that the ultimate result was far from unavoidable.  As it turns out Zimmerman has proven to be a highly disturbed individual who never should have been out riding around as a vigilante.  In this case though, we are dealing with a police officer who had all sorts of training; training with a gun, training in "command presence," training in how to react to a threat.   I guess what I wonder is whether we require our police officers to get trained in empathy.  Do we train them in restraint?  Do we indoctrinate them with the spiderman doctrine: "with great power comes great responsibility?"  Do we train them at all to try and understand human nature?  Do we prepare them to enforce the law with something more powerful than a sidearm?  Do we teach them to wield their own humanity?  Or do we just hope that they'll figure that out for themselves?
In the wake of all this, there have been many anecdotal "good cop" stories, and I'm glad.  I know there are good cops out there, I know there are cops who find lost children and puppies.  I know there are cops out there who show great compassion to people having the worst day of their lives.  We need to help those cops do their thing.
We need to attack a culture that promotes "big man with a gun" syndrome.  We need to attack a culture that treats certain people as an inherent threat, and shoots first and asks questions later.  We need to increase accountability for street cops and the lawyers and judges up the ladder as well.
Want respect?  Be respectable.  Want honor?  Be honorable.
It's not actually as hard as you might think.

Do You Hear the People Sing?

I woke up this morning with this in my head.  As Michele's radio alarm came on with news about the protests across the country in the wake of the grand jury's non-indictment of Darren Wilson for the killing of Mike Brown.  I am of the opinion that protests need to happen, even though the legal waters may be muddy in this particular case, the protests need to happen because of the totality of the brokenness in the system.  But I also hear the words of Martin Luther King about the absolute necessity of non-violence, and I know that he's right in a way that I will probably never be able to grasp as a member of the privileged class, for whom violence is usually the preserver of safety, security and the status quo.
But back to Les Miserables for a moment.  Does that scene inspire the fear and hatred of white Americans?  No, we feel a stirring of the heart and the blood at such a scene of the people rising up in democratic revolution, because they're white, and because it happened a long time ago, and because history has vindicated their cause.  But we are quick to criticize those who are rising up in our cities, because they are black and because we are afraid, but lets be honest, if this escalates badly it's going to be another barricade situation and it's going to end with a lot of bloodshed, but not the blood of the people in power.  The politicians and the keepers of the system will be safely in their towers, wondering as Marie Antoinette once did, why the people aren't content to continue to suffer these injustices.
Violence will be met with greater violence.  The Doors once sang with a misguided optimism, "They got the guns but we got the numbers," but that sentiment is foolish.  Their guns (and tanks and bombs and planes) all too easily negate almost any numbers.
Non-violence is the only way, but it is a long, difficult way indeed.  It takes creativity to figure out how to create a disruption that cannot be ignored by the powers that be without doing something destructive.  It takes courage to face down armored police and snarling dogs and tear gas grenades without resorting to the same violence.  It takes an almost naive hopefulness to believe that the people who are comfortably at home and away from the struggle will actually understand and care enough about your plight to do anything other than fear you.  Most of all it takes an enormous amount of spiritual work to channel your anger, even outrage, in a direction that does not lead to violence and hatred.
That's the job. It takes more than a song.  It takes more than being willing to die in the fires of revolution, it takes being willing to live into the path of evolution, being part of the solution rather than just a more urgent problem to be solved.

Progress?

I've got a couple of different things jangling around my head this morning.  The first is the movie about flying that we went to see with the kids in the Science Center at the new High School here in Charles County.  The Science Center has one of those big spherical, planetarium style domes where they can show specially designed movies that make you feel all swoopy.  Last night's movie was about the human dream of flying and the long process by which we have come to make jets and space stations a reality.  The movie is designed around the ooh and aah factor of making you feel like you're flying, but it contains a history of human flight, it goes from DaVinci's flying machines to hot air balloons to the Wright brothers in 1903, and then things get pretty dark, WWI and the age of fighter planes and bombers.  The dream of flight becomes a nightmare of violence.  Included was a Pink Floyd-esque moment where squadrons of B-17 flying fortresses lumber across a red sky and drop bombs by the thousands and then morph into sinister computer animated ravens.  It was kind of emotionally intense, and it reminded me that, rather more often than not, our greatest achievements have a sinister underside.
After all, the first thing we did with the ability to split the atom was to blow up two Japanese cities.
It's a little tough to say whether or not we've learned our lesson.
But there is a lesson to be learned, and I think we're capable, as a species, of learning lessons.  We learned from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that nuclear warfare is a horror that none of us really want to unleash on the world.  That knowledge has been held in a precarious balance ever since, but we managed to tiptoe along the edge of the void of self destruction without falling in.  The lesson was apparently dramatic and tragic enough to keep us from ever pushing that fabled button.
But it wasn't enough to push us away from war and violence altogether.  I wonder if any event ever will be.
The second set of thoughts for the morning is about Ferguson, Missouri, and the decision by a grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown, for any crime.  My gut reaction to the decision was for injustice alarms to start going off at full blare.  It seems like another terrible link in our long and disgraceful past of racial discrimination.  A police officer shoots an unarmed black teenager and gets off scott free.  But there are some peculiar things about how this played out: first of all, this is a grand jury, not a trial jury, all they had to do was decide whether or not to prosecute.  Usually this takes place in fairly cursory fashion.  The grand jury listens to a recommendation from a prosecutor and weighs the evidence that tells them primarily that a crime was committed, not whether the accused is guilty or innocent.  This grand jury did not get a recommendation from the prosecutor, one way or the other, in other words the system did not tell them what they were expected to do or to say.  They did get something like 70 hours of testimony and evidence presentation, which I'm guessing is more than most grand juries usually get.  To top it off, I'm sure they knew the world was watching them, and that they had better get this right.
What they said was that Darren Wilson was operating within the parameters of his training and his experience when he shot Mike Brown, which is, I suppose, the only thing you can really expect from a police officer.
Mike Brown's father has issued a statement asking for people to refrain from looting and violence.  His hope is that his son's death will not be in vain and that the dialogue about racial justice and police conduct can continue.  Which will almost certainly not happen if the fears of the American people are played out in riots and violence.
Many people are lamenting that Darren Wilson is "getting away" with killing Mike Brown in cold blood, but I think that there is a deeper truth to be dealt with here, a truth that is perhaps better served if we don't allow Darren Wilson to become our lone scapegoat in this situation.
My thinking goes like this:

1. The grand jury indicts Wilson, an emotionally charged trial further inflames the feelings and, no matter what the result, large numbers of people feel violated.
2. As we saw with the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, no one really listens to people who disagree, they just shout at each other over a wall of ignorance.
3. If Wilson was convicted, he becomes the villain.  He becomes the bad cop, who overstepped his authority, he becomes the evil exception rather than an all too representative sample of a broken system in which young black men are guilty until proven innocent.
4. If Wilson is exonerated, then we have let the system totally off the hook and the same people are still feeling like they have been let down... again.

Is this perhaps the best way that we can learn from our mistakes?  Darren Wilson has been judged by a grand jury to have acted in way that is within the parameters of his training and experience, and he shot an unarmed teenager.  If you say, "stuff happens," and move on, you're not learning, but what about if you say, "perhaps the parameters of training and experience need to change."  What if you continue to analyze and work to change the relationship that police (and the larger society) have with young black men.  What if you drop the assumption that Darren Wilson was a stone-cold racist who was just itching to kill a black kid, and work with the reality that this sort of thing is all too characteristic of the daily experience of both police officers and black men.
Obviously, I'm talking to the middle ground here, but I think the middle ground is what needs to rise up in this case and in most cases.  Our system is broken, being young, black and poor is a crime in and of itself, and our criminal justice statistics show it.  Police do treat people differently on the basis of their skin color, and it's not always because they're racist, it's because of the parameters of their training and experience.  If we say that this was an isolated incident involving one bad cop, we are exonerating the system.
If on the other hand, we accept the grand jury's judgment that Darren Wilson is, if not a good cop, a pretty standard and decidedly not bad cop, who something that has been determined to be within reason by a panel of people who heard the evidence, and we also accept that Mike Brown did not deserve to get shot dead in the street, then we have to look at the system, we have to learn a lesson.  We can't ignore it any longer.
Is this dramatic and tragic enough for us to start to have the conversation, and maybe even fix what is broken?
I certainly hope so.  I don't want Mike Brown to have died in vain either.

Howdy Pilgrim

Earlier this year, my Dad and I applied for a grant for about $11K to finance our little walk across Spain in 2015.  As per our particular gifts, we came up with a scheme that framed the adventure as a study of sorts, an analysis of pastoral ministry under the model of being a pilgrim.  It was a good idea, but not $11K good, apparently.  We didn't get the grant.
The funny thing is, I'm totally okay with that, in fact, I might even be a little relieved.  I thought about the idea of trying to hold that idea through rain and cold and sun and sore feet, and I had this sinking feeling that it was going to be more trouble than it was worth.  Sure, you say, but $11K is surely worth a good bit of trouble.  Well, I suppose it is, but I felt like it would also be a bit dishonest, it would be starting the pilgrimage from a typical place of privilege.  We would be the trust fund pilgrims, traipsing along on someone else's dime.  Worse, we would be "researchers," examining the phenomenon of a spiritual discipline, rather than practicing it ourselves.
This leads me to one of the fundamental truths I have found in my own relationship with God: God does not give you what you want (sorry Osteenites, it's just not true), but God is absolutely trustworthy in giving you what you need.  Keep in mind that sometimes you might need a bit of struggle in order to learn something, also keep in mind that death is a rather real option, and not at all as catastrophic as we sometimes think.  I'm not trying to give you the warm fuzzies about a loving grandpa-like God who every once in a while hits you up with some stern advice.  I'm talking about the ground of being, the essential force of creation, the One who knows things about us and about our universe that we couldn't imagine in our most fevered hallucination.
Pilgrimage, inasmuch as I understand the practice, is about putting yourself on a literal path, where you will be forced to accept the give and take of weather and the limitations of your own mind and body.  In my short experience of the actual practice, there is a lot of judgment and expectation to get rid of in the early going.  There is a lot of getting to know your body, and your mind, there is a lot of rather constant prayer, and there is a lot of learning to trust in the special dynamics of the Way.  You learn that people who share a goal, even when they don't share a language, are rather more accepting and acceptable.  There is a very real sense in which the road provides what you need, when you need it.  We spend so much time insulating ourselves with conveniences and insurance policies that we often miss the simple joy of being vulnerable.
I know, that sounds weird, and maybe a little dangerous, but remember this: when you love, you make yourself vulnerable.  Trusting another person is positively fraught with danger.  Trusting God is as well, and not everyone can bring themselves to do it.
Coveting that $11K was a way that my Dad and I were trying, already, to insulate ourselves from the road.  We were trying to do this thing on our terms, so that we could "sell" it to ourselves and our wives.
Maybe that wasn't the right way to go.  Maybe we need to trust the road, and trust God, a little bit more completely.

The Widening Gyre

I have questions.  I have questions for Americans.  I have special questions for American Christians.  I have extra special questions for American Christians of the Republican variety, particularly if you're one of those who is now thoroughly incensed with the President's executive order regarding our immigration policy.
First the question for Americans:  Were your ancestors here prior to 1492 CE?  Because if the answer is no, I'm guessing you probably have some idea as to when and wherefrom your family emigrated.  Your people may have been here for generations, but to the Sioux and the Iroquois and the Apache, you're still an immigrant, and believe me, to call your history with the Natives criminal is somewhat of an understatement.  Your ancestors very likely came here to escape poverty or persecution or plagues or famine, or something like that.  They came here to make a better life for themselves, and this nation of ours was founded by immigrants and refugees and people who were willing to build something in a "new" world, or at least a world that was "new" to them.
These immigrants eventually found themselves in a place where they could bring forth a great nation, with the idea in mind that this nation would be different from the ones they left.  They had the idea that it would be a place where a person could get a fair shake, no matter where they were born, or what they believed, eventually we even got around to making it okay to have different colored skin... imagine that.
It was not a coincidence that these men who had this nation idea were Christian (or at least deists who probably thought in vaguely Christian patterns).  The idea that a nation might be anything like this union they were always seeking to make more perfect, comes explicitly from a judeo-christian angle.  The idea that a nation could run without a king, goes back to Israel, the idea that a nation could transcend tribalism was rooted in the Christian practice of inclusion of Gentiles and an adoption of outsiders and strangers into the creed.  It took the Hebrew codes about how to treat strangers and outsiders a step further and actually called them brothers.
Which brings me to the question I have for American Christians: are you reading the same book as I am?  I'm not asking that in a spirit of bible-thumping, I'm aware that different interpretative methods exist, but the welcoming of the other, and honoring the inherent dignity of your fellow humans is not a small deal, it's not an obscure or debatable moral imperative, it's sort of a central idea to the whole story.  It's not so much one of the rules as it is the reason for all the rules: love God and love your neighbor, and for the love of pete stop trying to weasel out of recognizing that freaking everyone is your neighbor.  So when I hear American Christians talking about deporting families (which seems to be a big part of what Obama wants to stop), I wonder if they're maybe not getting the point of the Good Samaritan Parable.  The Samaritan, the illegal, unacceptable, the outsider of outsiders, is the neighbor, in other words: you don't get to pick and choose.  Manuel, who picks crops for sub-minimum wage, and who snuck into this country in the back of hay truck, smuggled by coyotes, is your neighbor, and you should care about justice for him, and you should pick him up out of the ditch.  Maria, who cleans motel rooms all day and then goes to work washing dishes at Denny's in the evening in order to feed her children, and who lives in fear of being deported, is your neighbor, she is not a criminal, she is not illegal.  She is a child of God who is worthy of your mercy.
I have questions for you if you are angry at our President, who is paying attention to these things, and who has tried to work within our broken and failing political process to fix these things.  People have questioned his character and his integrity, but he's acting like a pretty Christian dude at this moment.  He's not trying to dodge the dignity and the suffering of his neighbors by pretending they're not his problem.  I wish, and I think he wishes, he didn't have to do it in such one sided fashion, because I think all of us could have done better at loving our neighbors.
You may say it's more complicated than I'm making it, but that's what Pharisees always say.  What happened this week was only a small step in the direction of justice, it was just one brick taken out of the wall, it certainly does not give away the keys to the kingdom, it just picks a few people out of the ditch.
As Aaron Rodgers said to the Green Bay fans earlier this year: R-E-L-A-X.
I would add another word to that list: L-O-V-E.

Keystone Uh-Oh, Here We Go Again

The debate over the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, has been a persistent news story, albeit mostly tucked away from the headlines, for several years now.  The pipeline is an abstract idea to most.  It either represents economic progress or environmental catastrophe to people who have an opinion.  The sorts of arguments that are being made are largely hypothetical on both sides.  Advocates claim it is crucial for economic growth and energy independence, and that it would be safe as houses, and would employ construction and maintenance people across an enormous geographical area.  Opponents say that none of that is true and seem to have valid evidence to support their critique.  It has become yet another wedge issue between Republicans and Democrats, further adding to the obfuscation and abstraction of the issue at hand.
There are people, however, for whom the possible pipeline is no abstraction, these people are the ones who are going to have the thing cutting across their farms and their land, they are the ones who risk having their water poisoned by a leak (which is not the slim possibility that some make it out to be).  They might make a little money, but they risk their land and, for the most part their livelihood for the sake of some right of way fees.  Most them are not fans.
Particularly not enthusiastic are the Native American People whose reservations, which are technically sovereign nations, are being eyed up as prime real estate for the big tube.  The Rosebud Sioux staged a protest in DC on Tuesday as Congress was voting on approving the construction of the pipeline.  The vote failed for now, but it has already passed through the Republican controlled House of Representatives, and the suspicion is that it's not going to just go away when the Republican majority is seated in the Senate next year.
And thus the long and dubious history of our nation with regard to the Native American population adds another sorry chapter.  The Rosebud Sioux Nation called the approval of the measure in the House, "an act of war."  While that may sound like super-heated rhetoric to most of us on the outside looking in, let's please remember the history.  The United States only technically ended it's official policy of genocide against the Native populace in the Nixon administration.  We have basically given them the reservations they now govern and inhabit as a pitiful remittance for the fact that we took everything else away from them during our westward expansion.
You don't have to be a bleeding heart liberal to acknowledge that we have treated the Native populace of this continent with nothing short of absolute brutality and contempt.  No matter how many times you watch Dances with Wolves, you're probably not going to be able to truly appreciate how precious the little bit of their birthright we have actually left to them.
Even if I thought that the Keystone Pipeline was going to be an economic boom, as promised, and that it was going to be truly environmentally friendly, as promised, I would say it was still a bad idea if we have to step all over the sovereign rights of Native American people.  That would be much, much worse than an unfortunately named NFL franchise.
We have broken treaties too often, we have trampled their rights too often in the name of progress, we have not lived up to our own secular national ideals, let alone any sort of Christian values.
It's time for this sort of thing to stop.
I know they're small, I know they're a minority, but a history of suffering has to count for something.  The mistakes of the past are only justifiable if we learn from them.
Let's finally be better than that America.

Hallelujah

There's a blaze of light in every word,

It doesn't matter which you heard,

the holy, or the broken, Hallelujah.

-Leonard Cohen

Sometimes liking a song becomes a relationship.  For me, my love for Leonard Cohen started pretty young, much younger than most, thanks to having a Father who was into strange music.  In fact, I owe most of my acquired musical tastes to my Dad: Dylan, Cohen, Zappa, even Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (if you know that last one, you too are into weird music).  I picked up Tom Waits in college and that pretty much rounds out my collection of artists who are sort of like scotch, coffee, dark beer or really strong horseradish, in other words you might not like them at first, but if you give them time you might just become obsessive about them.

I was already familiar with Cohen's song Hallelujah, before Shrek came out, and admit to a practically giddy response when Loudon Wainright's rendition of the song started during the decisive scene of a movie about an animated ogre.  It was one of those, "yes, now the regular world is more awesome!" sorts of moments.  Like when I discovered that Tom Waits wrote Downtown Train instead of Rod Stewart, the universe made more sense.

Hallelujah is an absolutely amazing song.  It can be sung as a fairly standard, but touching love song, as it is most commonly performed by sources as diverse as K.D. Lang, Jeff Buckley, Loudon Wainright and freaking Justin Timberlake.  In fact, it has gotten to the point where I say, "Momma, there that song again," whenever someone breaks it out for some benefit concert or an American Idol performance.  In these cases, it is mostly distilled down to three or maybe four verses.  The first two are always the same, it begins "I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord..."  And then proceeds to conflate the story of David and Bathsheba with the narrative of Sampson and Delilah, Cohen is Jewish so I'll grant him the liberty to do such things with the Hebrew texts.  The third verse sometimes, depending on the version, sometimes delves into the theology of the original song, which as recorded and published is six verses long, though I read somewhere that Cohen has written as many as 80 verses to the song, and performs various renditions here and there.  Given his skill as a songwriter, I don't doubt it.

However, truncating the song after the third verse can leave you with the notion that it's just a song about how difficult human love can be sometimes, which is true and powerful and beautiful all at the same time, don't get me wrong, but allow me to bless you non-Cohen-aphiles with the lyrics to the last three verses of the song:

There was a time when you let me know,

What's really going on below,

but now you never show that to me do you?

But remember when I moved in you?

And the holy dove was moving too?

And every breath we drew was hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above, 

but all I've really learned from love

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.

There's a blaze of light in every word,

it doesn't matter which you heard

the holy or the broken hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much

I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

Even though it all went wrong,

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Now, I get why these verses have not made it into the more popular renditions of the song, first of all six verses tend to leave a lot less time for riffing on the chorus, which can be done with large gospel choirs or gravelly folk voices alike, but also because they ask really difficult questions and make it rather clear that this song is not a song to a difficult lover, but a prayer to God.

Blurring the lines between the spiritual journey and a difficult love affair is pretty deep water indeed.  That's why Cohen is a great songwriter, because he swims there.  He swims there like the prophets and the psalmists, he swims there like Jesus in Gethsemane, he swims in the water that is terrifying and unknowable.  He swims in pain and heartache and in absolute faith.

He swims where much more polite and safe religious music never does.  It's not praise per se, but it expresses a deep love for God.  It's not clean and safe, it's holy.

There are a few songs that I cannot get away from, and this is one of them. (If you're curious, That Feel, by Tom Waits and Keith Richards is another, and Hard Rain, by Bob Dylan is another, as is Hurt by NIN or Johnny Cash, as is The Needle and the Damage Done, by Neil Young).  But I think it is telling that the popular version of the song has de-thorned the rose.  Because that's what we do in order to make things popular, we radio-edit them, take out any bad words or challenging thoughts, sometimes it's borderline ridiculous.

So have we done that with church?

Have we sanitized the Gospel for mass appeal?

Have we hidden the wrestling and the lament in order to appear to have answers?

Have we mopped up the blood on the floor so that it doesn't offend?

Maybe, in our desire to be popular, we have lost something.

Hallelujah.

Sick Day

Jack got hit on Saturday, Michele went down Sunday, we managed to skip over Monday (apparently the balance of the universe was satisfied with pouring rain and generally Mondayishness).  Today,  woke up feeling fine, took Cate to a doctor appointment, everything was going well, until I dropped her off at school.  Somewhere between her school and the church, I started to feel a little off, and as much as I tried to deny it, I could tell the fast-moving ick had come for me.
As is usually the case, this sort of thing happened on a day when I had big plans, but providentially, nothing that wouldn't survive and go forward without me.  I came home and went to bed, sleep is apparently the thing this particular brand of sick requires, it let's you rest, in fact, it seems to demand that you do so.  That puts it in the category of a "nice" sickness.
When I woke up, I ate some toast and felt a little better, so I watched a movie: The Dallas Buyers Club, which I knew was about a disease that is not nice at all, HIV.  The movie tells the story of a self-absorbed, bigoted redneck who contracts AIDS in the mid 1980s, when it was still thought of as a disease that only hit homosexual men.  The story follows his quest to stay alive and also consequently become a better person.  He has to fight himself, he has to fight the medical/pharmaceutical industry, he has to fight the regulatory powers of the government.
To tell you the truth, the whole thing leaves you feeling a bit disgusted with the way we were, and also reminds you of the flaws in the way we still are.  The world of medical research continues to be the source of some of our greatest miracles and some of our greatest dysfunction.  When you hear about the processes that have to take place before we can do something so crucial as say, create an Ebola vaccine, you start to get a decidedly sinking feeling as the death toll rises.
Despite what movies sometimes indicate, science usually rides to the rescue very slowly.  There are things that slow progress at every turn, not the least of which is the economic reality of the pharma business.  Drugs that  are lucrative will get out there a lot faster than drugs that are going to basically have to be given away because, let's face it, the people dying of Ebola in West Africa aren't exactly the Botox set.
If you need a drug to help you look younger or give you an erection or help you pee less often, or poop more often, we're all good, but if you're dying of AIDS or Ebola, well we need to make sure anything you take is FDA approved, and getting FDA approval can take years, because, you know, we need to make sure we're safe... from lawsuits.
It's actually kind of sickening, and not in the way that can be solved by taking a nap, which I did again after watching DBC.  I know that the story was told with a bit of a lean towards the quixotic hero, I know the FDA is a necessary thing, but as I study the gospels week in and week out, I see pharisaic insistence on the rules over the needs and suffering of God's children as a devil that still haunts our shrubbery.
This fits sort of hand in hand with my snag from yesterday; do you think we can ever get over ourselves and really do the things we are so obviously capable of doing?  Do you think we can ever move past the need for massive bureaucracies and the slavery of economic "realism?"  Can we get over it?  Maybe after a good nap.

Snagged

Sometimes when you're fishing you get snagged on something under the water, and you usually try to free your hook and often end up breaking your line.  One time when I was fly fishing, I had my line sort of trailing behind me down stream, contemplating the next cast up into a rather promising looking pocket of water at the base of a large boulder.  When I started to gather my line in to start casting, I was hooked on something.  As I began to curse and do my usual "letsgetunsnagged" routine (that's trademarked by the way), I realized that the thing I was snagged on was an actual fish, which turned out to be one of the nicer trout I caught that day (actually it was the only trout, but it sounds better if  you think I caught fish not by accident too).
I got snagged yesterday during my sermon, in a similar way, by something I thought was kind of off the course and maybe could even derail the whole mess.  I said I would talk about it some other time, and I think I certainly will, but I want to hash it out here before I forget.  It may even be the actual trout I was fishing trying to catch in the first place.  The parable was about the talents and what the slaves did with the talents.  I was talking about economics and how our idea of economics was different from the ideas that first century Jews would have had.  As I was winding my way along, the thought-snag occurred to me: what if, at some point in the future, we actually get to the point where we realize, with some urgency, that we all need to get along a lot better than we do.  What if we realize that a world where everyone has enough and greed does not rule our economy, is actually a beautiful idea that is worth working for every bit as much as personal acquisition.
I know the idea could be described utopian, naive, marxist, and all sorts of other pejorative words, and I know that sin is a thing, but what if we ever get to the point where we, on a primal level, realize that our connections are stronger than our differences?  What if indeed.
I'm snagged on that idea.  I'm snagged on the idea because my daughter, with intuitive grace, asked the question that sort of unlocked the sermon for me at least: "why don't people realize that they can't be happy unless they give to others?"
Why do we buy the disgusting myth thing must always remain broken?
Why do we accept the logic of the various and sundry proponents of the status quo, who say, "That will never change"?
On our visit to Mount Vernon, I was thinking a lot about antebellum slavery.  From the moment we pulled up, I couldn't help thinking about how the remarkable and heroic George Washington was a slave owner, and about how all the remarkable features of the Mount Vernon estate were founded on the backs of slaves.  Down in the corner of the property, below the Washington family crypt is the slaves graveyard and monument.  Hundreds of nameless people buried in unmarked graves, and very lately memorialized.  I thought about the fact that G-Wash had emancipated the slaves at Mount Vernon upon his death, but also about how he held on to a practice that he must have somehow recognized as un-just, as long as it benefited him in some way.
I thought about the myth of just and benevolent slave owners.  I though about the fact that many of the slaves probably actually did live with more dignity and probably in more comfort at places like Mount Vernon than some of the freedmen experienced in the cities of the north.  I thought about, for a moment, the fact that the system seemed utterly ironclad to the likes of Washington and Jefferson, but would be gone, declared illegal and immoral, in less than 100 years.
I wondered if my own feeling of helplessness at an income inequality, systemic injustice, persistent poverty, and a culture so acquisitive and consumptive that it cannot possibly be called moral.  I wonder if some day those things that crush us, will seem as far away, and unfortunate as slavery (at least in its antebellum form) seems to us these days.
Moreover, I wonder, and I hope that God is working us towards that point.  That hope is the snag that I think is turning out to be what I was fishing for all along.
Something inside me tells me that, from a human perspective, it's impossible, but then again, where do I of all people, get off looking at things from a purely human perspective?  I guess I need to keep a better look out for what God is doing.

The Least I Can Do

This is the week where our Church hosts the local homeless shelter program called Safe-nights.  Our local community action group spends the cold months of the year moving a group of 30 or so homeless folk around to different churches and community centers in the county.  They have cots and blankets and the host churches provide dinner and breakfast.  It's a really huge effort, which over the course of a winter can host upwards of four hundred people.  Four hundred homeless people, some of whom are children, just in this county.
If I think about it too long, it just makes me steaming mad.  When I look at these little faces that come with their bowls for some ice cream after dinner, I think two things:

1. I am so glad to be able to give them something.
2. I wish I knew some way to fix this.

I saw a little internet video done by comedian Russell Brand (who is showing up as the voice of conscience and reason rather more often than would expect from a man who makes his living telling dirty jokes).  He gave a rather alarming comparison: we could end homelessness in this country with the money that we, as a nation, spend on Christmas decorations.  I inherently distrust these sorts of comparisons, because I wonder how exactly this sort of thing is extrapolated on both ends (how much do we actually spend and how much would it actually cost to end homelessness, and is it a purely financial phenomenon).  But I do have to think that there are ways we could do better than we are for less than the cost of one of our more trivial expenditures.
I mean, if we're really going to celebrate Jesus birth, especially with the story that most of us have adopted about the circumstances of his birth, we ought to be working a little harder to make sure there is room in the inn.
This homelessness thing is a societal problem, it is a result of our capitalist economic system, which is good in many ways, except when it must deal with matters where profit is difficult or impossible.  Our church must invest a moderate amount of time, energy and money into participating in this network, but it's the least we can do, if we wish to care for the least of these.
Even these little ones though are not the least, because they can pass muster with the system, they can play by the rules long enough to get a warm place to sleep and a few good meals. There are some who are too mentally ill, or too addicted to drugs, or just too anti-social to be able to host in this program.
Some of the people that are with us now seem like they may be a little on the edge of acceptability, and one wonders if they would or could ever learn to "play the game" well enough to make it out of homelessness forever.  I suspect that some people might always choose to live on the margins of society.
It is a fairly common move to start to consider the most extreme cases rather than the ones closest to the path.  Indeed, in those sorts of shocking cases, it's tempting to feel like you're just enabling some really destructive life choices.
You can't let that stop you, do what you can.
As I wrote about last week, with the example of the people arrested for feeding the homeless, sometimes we don't actually see how selfish we're being.
Tonight is my third night of sleeping on a cot in my office, for the sake of this little project.
Every time I'm tempted to feel like a martyr because I'm not home in my own bed, I come back to this realization: I am so blessed.
When I look at my kids, taking their beds and their food for granted, I'm not mad at them, I 'm so glad that I can give them what they need.
At the same time I want us all to look for ways to fix the system, it's the least we can do.

Thank You

Today is the day that we celebrate the service of those who have been a part of our nation's armed services: Veteran's Day.  There is an awful lot of baggage that comes with our country's military activity over the past 50 years or so, but I have been and I remain thankful for the individuals who serve and for the system that trains and equips them.  Our armed forces are truly remarkable on many levels, and regularly engage in work that is absolutely beneficial and often humanitarian in some of the most difficult places in the world.
As someone who has very little martial inclination, I especially appreciate the fact that there are men and women, fellow Americans, who are willing and able to do the sorts of things that are necessary for peace and security in an unstable world.  Because I don't really want to handle that stuff on my own.
I hold in my heart a persistent tension: as much as I despise war, I truly appreciate soldiers.
In fact, my opinions on war are largely informed by my relationship with people who have been soldiers.  I have had the privilege of knowing a good number of soldiers, sailors and Marines: my grandfather, my uncle, several dozen church members over the years.  On the occasions when I have spoken to them about war and fighting and such their perspectives have struck me as being remarkably circumspect.  Much more so than the macho posturing that one often encounters among militaristic sycophants.
None of them seem to hold their valor with any amount of pride, and most of them would rather tell you about their scars than their medals.  It has been extremely interesting to me that, in real life, men who have been to war are often more compassionate than those who it seems dream about it.  It is my experience of the actual veterans that I have known, rather than some idealized version, which informs my thinking on this list of things we owe our soldiers:

1. Mission: they should be given a purpose, and that purpose should be as crystal clear as possible.  We should never have to describe the places we send our soldiers as a quagmire.  I can guarantee you, in those times when our Armed forces found themselves in such a mess, it was not their own ineptitude that created it.
2. Honor: We should give them a change to be honorable, and we should honor their service, even and especially when we disagree with the job they have been given by our leaders, who we have elected.
3. Gratitude: And I'm not just talking about saying thanks on Veteran's Day, I'm talking about doing the things that need done to help them live the life that they fought for.   Whether it's physical and medical care or psychological healing, we need to make sure we're caring for ALL the wounds they might carry as s result of what we have asked of them.
4. Peace: Every soldier I have known dreamed of being home when they were away.  None of the ones who saw war up close and personal thought it was something to celebrate.  The best way we can thank our soldiers is to create a world where fighting is not necessary.
5. Grace: Realize that they are not superheroes, they are simply men and women who have a particular job, and that job benefits us all.  Understand that, even though they may be willing to lose their lives for our sake, we should do everything possible to make sure that they can enjoy a long and plentiful helping of the very things they fought for.

Those are the things I pledge to give our soldiers in any way that is within my power, I will do it with my votes and my prayers, with my words and my actions,  I will try to remember to say thank you whenever I can, until we study war no more.

The Mind Killer

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

-Frank Herbert, Dune

The Litany Against Fear of the Bene Gesserit

I have to admit, for a made up religion in a science fiction novel, that's pretty good stuff.  Almost, I dare say, worth committing to memory.  You will notice below on what I like to call the Wheel O' Feelings, that fear or feeling scared is a primary emotion, from which spring all sorts of other emotions.

*this is the most common version of the Wheel of Feelings..

All fairly negative emotions.  In fact, out of the three negative core feelings: mad, sad and scared, fear is the least constructive.  We all know that anger can be an engine and a source of strength, and anyone who has ever read poetry or listened to music knows that sadness has it's own creative juice, but fear... not so much.  If fear doesn't get transmuted into something else (hopefully a positive emotion, but failing that at least into constructive anger or reflective sadness) it just leads us into the muck.

And thus everyone, from guidance counselors to Jedi Masters will tell you that avoidance is probably not the best way to deal with your fear.  What Herbert uses as the core of his Bene Gesserit Litany against fear is the idea that your fear is a useful indicator of sorts, something like the tracer dye that they use to diagnose certain types of cancer, it marks the places where you are weak, and shows you where you need to grow or heal.

Fear can often limit our ability to experience the positive things of the world, and thus fear is often the greatest culprit that keeps us from living as our true selves.  Fear of what other people will think, fear of rejection, fear of failure, and ultimately fear of death, are some pretty universal human emotions, and generally speaking, do they lead anywhere?

Only if you manage to move past them.

It troubles me that so many people seem to be religious because they're afraid of something.  In a lot of cases, people seem to be afraid of God.  To which some will say, "well, that's because, 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  But actually, blind fear and the willful ignorance it engenders, do not lead to any such thing.  Only fear in the sense of reverence or perhaps some good old fashioned awe and wonder will really lead to more wisdom.

We cannot actually help being afraid.  People who have done immense acts of courage will tell you, if they're being honest, that they were terrified the whole time.  That's actually why they're brave, not because they didn't feel the fear, but because they pushed through it, or rather, to use Herbert's words they let it pass through them.

When you analyze your fear in retrospect, you can often see how truly brave you were, and that's where learning and truth can come in.

The Christian journey of faith is, in large part, a journey of letting the fear of God become something different than just feeling scared of God.  Let it become Awe, let it become reverence, but never forget that God loves you.

Outrage Du Jour

Have you heard about Fort Lauderdale arresting a couple of pastors and an absolutely adorable 90 year old man for feeding homeless people?
Of course you have, because the interweb locks on anything that outrageous like a patriot missile.  And I have to admit, it gives me a good case of the same kind of sinking feeling that Ian Mckellan's narrative in The Lord of the Rings does, you know, when he says "the strength of men failed."  Because it's a cultural failure of empathy, this sort of thing, and it's not just happening in dead-red places like Florida either.  How can we call ourselves decent people, let alone Christians, if we make rules that say you can't share food with people who are hungry?  How can we arrest pastors and little old men who just want to do something nice for people who are down and out?  What are we becoming?
These are all good and valid questions, but as Bob Dylan says, "Take the rag away from your face, now ain't the time for your tears."
See, somewhere in the kerfuffulous outrage of all this, someone missed a detail.  Fort Lauderdale, as is the case with many medium to large cities, actually has a fairly well developed social services system to deal with the needs of the homeless.  They work towards feeding, clothing and sheltering the homeless.  As with most government bureaucracies, they probably don't do it perfectly, and there are probably folk that fall through the cracks.  They may not have enough resources and their provisions may be uninspiring (I have personally seen homeless people throw away sandwiches given out by the shelters, because, in their own words, "I can find better food in a dumpster.")  But they are there, and they are doing something that most private do-gooders are not, namely trying to get people to not be homeless in the first place.
Now, this doesn't soothe the outrage away entirely.  Fort Lauderdale is still a corporate jerk wad for arresting little old men who feed people in the park, but as with most situations where red flags are being waved to arouse all sorts of righteous indignation, things are more complicated.
Here's a thumbnail sketch of the reasons why some cities are choosing to make feeding the homeless illegal:
First of all, it's not illegal per se, it just must be regulated.  Fort Lauderdale, being in Florida is a good test case of this need, because like most of Florida, it has the climate of an armpit, meaning warm and humid almost all of the time, and safely serving food in said armpit-like conditions can be tricky.  If you buy a taco from a lunch truck, hopefully you will see a department of health license somewhere within said vehicle, if  you don't, get your taco someplace else.
Second, and this is perhaps less morally tasty, feeding people good food, for which they are not required to do anything, does nothing to remedy the condition of homelessness.  Although it does keep them from starving to death, so from a personal compassion point of view it's good, but from a societal perspective, especially in places like Florida (see flip side of armpit coin) where you're not going to freeze to death on an average February day, if you can get fed and don't mind the minor inconvenience of living the outdoor lifestyle, why would you bother with a job or being a responsible member of society?  I know, it's a bit thin, but it does bear a little truth.
I wondered this morning, as I was stewing about this whole mess, whether this was a problem for Jesus.  Did he ever heal a leper and then have that person decide that begging for alms was just easier than participating in actual life, and so pretend to still have leprosy?  And what about the demoniacs?  Because if you're going to deal with the mental illness aspect of homelessness you should look at those.  Does the Gerasene Demoniac, who was living among the tombs, once he is cured and in his right mind, go get a job?  How well was his community going to accept him, even if he "seems fine now?"  His wild years are always going to be a stigma.
Unfortunately, with the exception of Mary Magdalene, we don't have any long term accountability studies of people that Jesus healed, we don't know if he really did them any favors by his wanton acts of charity.  I'm only being a little sarcastic here, because the grain of truth in what is otherwise a morally reprehensible act of un-charity, is a perpetual burr under the saddle of anyone who really wants to help impoverished people.
Where is the line between helping and enabling?
Because that's an important line, and not one that most kind-hearted folk want to think much about.
I get phone calls all the time from people who want the church to help them with this or that.  They all have hard luck stories, and they all seem to only need a little boost.  These people have learned that most churches have benevolence funds that can dish out $100 or so with little or no accountability required.  The local community action group can do the same thing, but there are going to be hoops and requirements, and they really just need a little help, not to be "in the system."
I try not to harden my heart, but I don't have that much to give out on a yearly basis, and there at least a few times a year where someone we actually know and have a relationship with, needs those funds in a real, unrepeatable sort of way.
I like to consider myself a compassionate person, but I have, mostly through random chance, like the experience with the homeless men despising their "shelter sandwiches," and also in those Philly days, offering to buy several pan-handlers an actual meal rather than give them cash (and then being refused), learned that hunger is much more of a problem for people behind closed doors than it is for the ones who have taken to the streets.
Food pantries and soup kitchens serve people who are not always homeless, but may be hungry.  Food stamp programs likewise, but you have to sign up, you have to do some legwork, you have to take responsibility.
And that's where the grain of truth really rubs a little, because there is help for people who are willing to go and get it, and so it may be the case that these lone rangers who are trying to follow Christ's mandate to feed the hungry are just enabling people to stay in the margins rather than re-entering the mainstream.
I still don't think there should be a law against it.

Post-mortem

Well, many people woke up this morning to some surprises for sure.  Republicans have taken over in some places where you thought they would never get a hold, like here in Maryland, where a Republican basically ousted the Lieutenant Governor who was now running for Governor.  In a state that's as blue as this one, that's basically like beating an incumbent.  You kind of expected Kentucky to stick with the Turtle Man, and Arkansas going Republican is no big surprise, but Illinois and some other Democratic strongholds also flipped.
Now the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the Democrats look dazed and confused.  Even some of the Republican analysts seem a little befuddled about exactly how this happened,  I think I have a grip on the dynamic at work here, and I don't think it's good, but not because I tend to lean to the left.  I think it's bad news for all of us, including the new wave of GOP folk who just took power.
What is happening is that people are sick and tired of the status quo, and this is a trend that goes beyond the current election cycle.  Republicans figured out that the best way to win back the power is to point out how ineffective and dysfunctional the government actually is, while trying to spin thing in such a way that people didn't notice that they had a big hand in making it that way.
Obama has won his two terms by promising change during the electioneering and playing it pretty safe during the actual Presidency part of his life.  The pretty much sure fire way to win an election in an era where there's so much that's obviously broken is to say that you can fix it.  People want to hear it, and they'll give you the benefit of the doubt, until you prove that you're just the same as all the rest.
Only if things are good, i.e. Clinton's second term, can you run on the, "hey let's just keep rolling" platform.  Things are not good, the economy is sputtering, even if the catastrophe has passed, wages are low, taxes and cost of living are high, we are always on the brink of some war or other catastrophe, and most of us just want things to change.
The Maryland Gubernatorial race was a perfect example.  Anthony Brown was the Lieutenant Governor of two term Governor Martin O'Malley.  O'Malley has the record of a "typical" Democrat, tax and spend, fix things by throwing other people's money at the problem.  People were pretty fed up with O'Malley, during my time in Maryland, I have heard very few people, even dyed in the wool Dems, say anything good about him.  Brown did not really distinguish himself from O'Malley, and the Republican challenger, Larry Hogan, seized on that fact.  Hogan labeled Brown's candidacy "a third term for O'Malley."  Hogan carefully avoided talk of social issues, and according to one commentator, didn't so much run against Brown as he did against O'Malley.  It worked.
This should not be a shock to anyone, people can be very easily pulled into reactionary thinking, especially when things get tough.
The Republican party, though this may be wishful thinking on my part, has peeled away from the Tea Party mentality and leaned back towards the center.  They have gauged the winds and found out that people maybe aren't as afraid of gay marriage as they used to be.  They may have even learned that people, even Republicans, actually like having health insurance.  This allowed them to present themselves as a new creation, with new being the operative part of that phrase.
The reality of the political situation in this country is that both parties have sort of stopped generating any new ideas.  They have divided ideologically and pragmatically into separate camps and have essentially painted themselves into political corners.  The thing is their corners are not really that different from one another, and the sense among average people, myself included, is that it really matters very little which group runs the show.
That is probably true, I don't think the Republicans are going to fix what's broken, all their motivation to change evaporated the second those ballots were cast.  Ask the Democrats, inertia doesn't get you anywhere nearly as far as it used to.
The dominant political motif of this era is frustration.  You hear it from Republicans and Democrats alike.  Some have said that this might be a formula for revolution, if we weren't so engaged with our bread and circuses.  Sometimes I wonder though if the charade of politics isn't just another diversion.  Sometimes I wonder if our allegiance to a political ideology and/or the party that represents it, is even as deep as our rooting for our favorite football team.
Even if I'm puzzled, I'm not particularly shocked or concerned about yesterday's results, we just changed the color of our tie, the suit still fits as badly as it did on Monday.

Exposure

We did it, we voted.  I say we because I took the kids with me.  They did their usual kid thing, sort of squirming and twitching through the whole process, which was predictably and blessedly simple.  Caitlyn got a sticker that said, "I voted," just because it's a sticker.  As we were waiting for a booth to open up, one of the volunteers at the polling place was talking to us about her experience as a girl, going with her grandmother to vote, and really not wanting to stand up and wait, because her back hurt, and her grandmother's lack of sympathy.  However, even though she was remembering something that actually caused her pain, her face was happy and she remembered feeling a part of he process.
Here she was, years later, involved in the process of democracy, entirely as a volunteer, I suspect in large part because some adult in her life taught her and showed her that it was important.
I don't really have any guilt about dragging my kids to things, like church events, polling places and such, because it exposes them to what it means to be a part of society.  This morning wasn't a Mr. Rogers moment, where I taught them all about various political offices or even about politics in general, it was just a moment where they saw me doing something that I told them was important (see yesterday's blog).
The perpetual angst of the church about how to attract and engage a younger generation is, I suspect, a much bigger problem than anyone really wants to admit.  We lament the self-involvement of 20 somethings, the over-programmed life of 30 somethings, and we kind of cross our fingers and hope 40 somethings will wander back into the church.  I used to think that was going to be the case, but I don't see it happening.
But if people have never been exposed to the journey of faith, particularly as it is structured in the communities of the church, why and how would they ever decide to come?
It's one thing if they were dragged there as children, it's one thing if their parents modeled, perhaps imperfectly, that it was an important and vital facet of life, but what if their parents constantly griped about the service being too long or how Mrs. Jones was such a busybody, or the fact they don't like this or that about the church.  Why would anyone want to be a part of that?
I'm not trying to indoctrinate my children into any particular political mindset.  What I'm trying to do is show them that voting is important, and good, and that it's not all about the end result, it is very often about participating fully in the process.  I'm trying to do the same thing about church, I may be a bit more pushy about God and Jesus, but I'm trying to make their experience of church an important part of their lives.
It's not so important that they "get" something out of the experience, it is more important that they breathe the air and experience the community, in all it's weird glory.
I can certainly talk them through the questions and the theology as they grow up, in the same way as I can share with them the nuances of politics, but for now, I want to give them the exposure to a world where decisions are made, and values are expressed and where they can get a sense of what is important.
Many assumptions the church makes about what draws people are very much the same as the political system.  Why certainly people must want a relationship with God/voice in government.  Why surely, if we make it easy for them, if we make it painless and streamlined and maybe even give them cookies, they will show up.  Maybe if we gripe about how apathetic everybody seems to be, it will change their mind and get them through the door.
Voter turnout and church attendance data seem to indicate that these assumptions are incorrect.
It' s going to take more than stickers to turn things around.

Duty

Tomorrow is Election Day and the kids have off from school for some reason or other.  This morning, as we waited for the bus, I told them they were going to have to come with me to vote and then to the office for the day.  Jackson asked me, "Why do you have to vote?"  with the emphasis on HAVE, the same we he says, "do I HAVE to eat my brussel sprouts?"
I told him it is my duty as a citizen.
Caitlyn giggled because I said "duty," which her nine year old, potty-obsessed brain interpreted as a reference to poop.
The conversation was largely derailed, but I made sure to make the point that voting is a privilege and a responsibility.  Which is something I say to my kids, even when I don't actually feel it in my heart.
In my heart, I think the game is rigged.  In my heart, I think the best we can do is pick the least repugnant of two or three corrupt glad-handers who are mostly some version of Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard.  Often, I have a little bit of trouble distinguishing my duty to vote from the kind of doodee Caitlyn was giggling about.  But that is not an excuse to cop out and just not go.
Our voter turn outs in this country are absolutely terrible, around 50 percent in a good year, with a presidential election.  On "off" years, it's much worse, largely because people understand our political system so poorly that they don't know that there are so many more important things to worry about than who occupies the Oval Office.
Do we pay attention to the people, who have lived under a totalitarian regime, who get to vote for the first time?
Do we watch them risk their lives and their security to do it?
Do we think it's because their candidates are better? (mostly they're not, and often they're much worse).
As low as my opinion of most of our political types actually is, I cannot justify apathy.  It's not fair to all the people who live under the boots of oppression.  This may seem purely humanist, and maybe it is, but I think I owe it to the human race to vote and engage to some extent in this experiment called democracy.
In my smaller sphere of work within the church, I have used this example with regard to people who disengage from the life of the church because they're angry or because they disagree with some policy or other.  If you don't stay, if you don't engage, if you don't participate, how is anything ever going to improve.  Sure, things aren't perfect, but if you don't do your part in the community, you cannot and should not complain.
Unfortunately, this is the approach many people take to church and to politics, they would rather stay disengaged, for fear that the system will let them down.
Which is, of course, a self fulfilling prophecy.
One of the reasons our system is as broken as it is right now is the fact that people vote out of fear of what might occur if someone of the opposite ideology gets elected.  They don't vote on individual merits, but on party platforms, they don't vote on actual integrity, but on slick politicking.
Another reason our system is broken right now, and this is the bigger reason, is that people don't participate, and I'm not just talking about voting, I'm talking about actually becoming an informed voter.  Which is difficult in some ways, but in other ways it's as easy as at least reading a somewhat neutral comparison of the candidates positions and promises (not that they'll have much to do with the reality of their behavior in office).
If you don't know what somebody says they'll do, you can't very well hold them accountable to do it, can you?  If you don't understand what's even possible within the sphere of influence you're giving someone, how are you ever going to have realistic expectations?
You can't trust advertising, and sometimes it's hard to separate the journalists from the advertisers to be sure, and that's work as well, but it's work you need to do, because you're a grown up, and because you're a citizen.
I don't imagine that the election tomorrow is going to change anything, but I'm going to vote, then, at least, I'll have a right to complain about the gubmint.