Rusty Cage

You wired me awake and hit me with a hand of broken nails,

You tied my lead and pulled my chain

to watch my blood begin to boil.

But I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my,

I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run.

-Soundgarden, Rusty Cage

One of my summer jobs in college was working on a production line in a soda bottling plant.  It was mostly the generic brands of soda and so the packing equipment was, shall we say, not top of the line.  Most of the machines and the factory itself were a bit antiquated and there were nearly as many mechanics as there were machine operators.  For over a month, I worked on the night shift, which was where I met John, John was a stout, bald black man, probably in his 50's, and he had worked in the factory, or in some kind of factory for a long time.  He and his partner Al, a deep voiced white guy with really old weathered tattoos all over his forearms were like some sort of sitcom duo, a loud black guy who wasn't shy with his opinions and a slow laconic white guy from the old school working class.  They worked right on the other side of a doorway from me, and I could hang out in the archway and watch my machine while I listened to John rant and rave his way through an evening and with Al occasionally firing back or telling him to simply shut up. It passed the time.

John was a lover of chaos, whenever something would go wrong, like the power going out, or the time a forklift driver took out a thirty foot stack of soda can pallets, or the time a pressure tank went haywire, John would laugh, really really loud, like you could hear him over the din of the factory, and even more so in the silence and darkness of a power outage. The chaos of unforeseen trouble, or antagonism of his own making was what kept him sane, through the long hours of watching machines do their thing, and through a lifetime of the sort of job that reminded me viscerally why I needed to stay in college.

His blase attitude about things was pretty contagious to a college kid who was pre-disposed to like thunderstorms and mosh pits.  Then I was at home with chaos, because I had very little responsibility and very little to lose. Now I am not in that sort of place, I have a job, a house, two kids in school and quite a bit that I would like to protect.  Now chaos doesn't seem like fun to me.

But I was trying to tap into that last week as I dealt with the reality that Donald J Trump is going to be the next President. The exit polls told us that the desire for change was the primary motivation behind the rust belt and the working class going for Trump.  It is honestly not possible to frame Hillary as anything other than the paradigm of a Washington Political Insider.  She is about as hawkish as you can get, I had no doubt that she was probably going to get us into some kind of new war or re-ignite an old one.  She is beholden to big money and old school politics.  She essentially would be very much at home if her name was followed by an R instead of a D.

I was trying to comfort myself by telling myself that at least Trump might shake things up a bit, and I thoroughly believe that things could use some shaking.  Then of course the racist stuff started to happen, and that worries me, and that makes me angry for sure, but who knows, maybe that will calm down soon, maybe they will even listen to Trump as he so eloquently told them on 60 Minutes: "just stop it."  Don't make me come back there.

Then Trump selected his first two peeps, and my heart sank lower.  Reince Priebus, as White House Chief of Staff, okay, how is that a bold, outside the box pick?  How is that going to drain the swamp? Priebus has spent the better part of his career waist deep in the political muck. Look up "Status Quo" in the dictionary and there is Priebus' picture next to it.  You might argue that Trump picked someone from the inside to guide him as he sought to deconstruct the system, but this doesn't look like that.  Priebus' prior claim to fame was as the chair of the RNC that essentially lost control of the primary process and trotted out 16 stooges, of whom Trump ended up being Moe.

The next was Stephen Bannon, of the Alt Right and previously of Breitbart.  Bannon has been appointed as some sort of adviser to Trump.  Bannon has a track record to being accused of racist and anti-semitic propaganda (nothing concrete to be fair, but in the current atmosphere any inkling is probably too much).  Trump needs to be distancing himself from the racist, sexist and xenophobic tone of his election campaign if he stands any chance of being an effective leader in nation where he lost the popular vote.

Either candidate was going to have some work to do to gain some sort of unity and consensus in this country after what went down in the election.  Inviting a character like Bannon to be the devil on your shoulder doesn't exactly alleviate the fear of all those who are terrified of living in Trump's America.

At any rate it does not appear, at least in the early going, that Trump really intends on doing any of this world shaking that he promised during his campaign. His advisers and nominations look to be coming from the most usual of suspects. I suspect that his ascension is going to be marked by some of the same futility that has marked Obama's administration, and that is really going to twist some jockey shorts.  I wonder how all those people who threw their votes to Trump because they felt ignored and unheard by the establishment are going to feel when he ignores them for the next four years.

Backwash

Dear Lord, I thought it was bad before the election; poor naive little me, thinking that, one way or another some of the rancor would die once we dropped the cell door on the head of this election (if you don't get the Return of the Jedi reference, the big monster under Jabba the Hutt's throne room is called a Rancor, Luke kills it by dropping a big spiked door on its head, I'm scraping for levity here).
I honestly don't know where to begin, there's just so much angst out there. So I'm just going to put a few things down here that I think are important facts and considerations for us to sit with at this moment in time:

1. We don't really know if everything is going to be fine, so stop insisting that it is.  I talked yesterday about how God can make dry bones live, but it would be naive to imagine that bones in that vision got there by happy circumstances.  I have hope that a lot of things might make this whole thing not quite the disaster I fear it could be.  I'm reciting the Bene-Gessaret creed over and over in my head: "I must not fear, fear is the mind killer, fear is the little death that leads to total annihilation.  I will face my fear, I will allow to pass over me and through me and when it has gone, only I will remain."  I have hope that perhaps Trump is not the mad demagogue he appeared to be in the election.  I don't put it past him to put on an act to appeal to our discontent and dissatisfaction in order to win what may have been simply the biggest game he ever played.  If that is not the case, I have hope that our system of checks and balances will do some good, and the frustrating political machinery will grind him the same as it did Obama.  It is, however, not fair for me, a white, educated, middle class male, a member of the clergy, a person in a more secure position than most, to say to black, brown, LGBTQ, undocumented, female, unemployed, poor, uninsured, chronically ill, disabled people that they shouldn't be afraid of what might happen to them in Trump's America.  Honestly, I will probably be fine in Trump's America, but that doesn't mean that more vulnerable people will be, and that reality troubles me.  That is where I am looking for things to do and actions to take to ensure that these groups are not left worse off than they have been in the not so glorious past.
2. Our system is not perfect, but it is pretty good, and it worked the way it is supposed to work.  Twice in my lifetime, the popular vote has gone for a Democrat while the electoral college went for the Republican.  I have known this is how it worked since I was 12 years old. I'm honestly okay with it. It is a safeguard designed and instituted because our founding fathers were essentially elitists who did not trust the largely illiterate and under-educated masses to be able to sift out complicated political issues.  It generally works in favor of the Democratic Party, which dominates the geographically smaller but demographically greater regions along the coasts, except in 2000 and this year, when it didn't because Trump managed to peel away the rust belt that largely went for Obama in 2008 and 2012.  Sour grapes is not the way to go right now, and a strict popular system still does have very real hazards.
3. I do have questions about the people who voted for Trump, but it is not fair for me to call them racist, or sexist, or homophobic.  From what I can tell in the most honest and fair analysis, they are just frustrated and feeling rather neglected by the "establishment." Hey, yeah, me too, that was why I was so freaking high on Bernie Sanders dust, and why I was so "meh" about Hillary.  I have questions about how they are willing to look past his rather outlandish and uncouth behavior, and why they honestly think that he is telling them the truth about his intentions or his abilities, but I absolutely get why they didn't want four more years of the Clinton machine. I'm not entirely sure a Trump bull in the DC china shop is entirely a bad scenario.  I have doubts that he will be that agent for change, or if he even honestly wants to be.  I just don't sense the same genuine honesty from Trump that his supporters seem to, but I can't say beyond reasonable doubt that they're wrong.
4. Speaking of discontent, if you're really dissatisfied with the way the government works, it might behoove you to get involved more than once every four years.  Realize that who you elect as your local sheriff probably has more to do with your quality of life than who occupies the White House.  Want to balance the budget and get things moving in congress?  Want to fix the messed up tax system or the Affordable Care Act (and I don't mean repeal, that will hurt too many people, but it absolutely needs some fixing)?  You know who needs to do that?  It's not the Chief Executive, it should be the Congress, all those Representatives and Senators that you may not even be able to name, they are the ones who are supposed to design and pass legislation (that's why they call them legislators), and you get to vote for them too.  In fact, you get to vote for some of them even in non President-electing years, which most of you don't even bother to do.  I get it, watching C-SPAN is not for everyone, and even reading those nitty-gritty political articles can get a little snooze inducing, but hanging the entire function of our democracy on the President is just a little misinformed... okay it's downright stupid.
5. Last one for today: I'm worried about the venom that is getting spit all over the place by both sides right now. I'm not going to ooze out, "why can't we all just get along," (see item #1) But I believe we can survive, and maybe even thrive with President Trump (Lord that still gives me bad shivers) if we hold together on the ideals of our democratic republic.  I believe that we can live up to a higher standard than we ever have managed before if we engage the real problems we face instead of just trumping (no pun intended) up arguments against those with whom we disagree. It ain't gonna be easy, but it is possible, right America?

Well, Can They?

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord 
and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  
He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, 
and they were very dry.  

He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?"  

I answered, "O Lord God, you know."

-Ezekiel 37: 1-3

The other night we decided to try and figure out our kids Myers-Briggs personality types.  As it turns out Jack is very much like me, an INTJ (though I am pretty neutral between judging and perceiving so sometimes I come out as an INTP, I probably was a super J though when I was just about to turn 13).  I read my son the characteristics of an INTJ, and something kept making him laugh: the fact that we hate to be wrong.  We would rather be right than nice, we would rather hold to the truth than protect people's feelings.  This has been real growing edge for me as I try to be a pastor, because in so much of what I do handling feelings and treating people with decency is a prerequisite for representing the truth of God's love for humankind.

I woke up this morning having to deal with the reality that I have been really wrong.  I assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win this election, because Trump was just too bizarre for the American people.  I was incorrect in that assumption, now we all have to live with it.  I now actually find myself hoping (and praying even) that I am wrong about him.  I hope that he is not the proto-fascist that I have seen in his strong-man campaigning.  I hope he is not the bigot that the KKK apparently thinks he is, or the sexist that his "locker room talk" would make him out to be.

Four years from now, I would very much like to look back on the sour stomach and gloomy feelings of this rainy Wednesday and find that my anxiety about President Trump was unfounded.  I don't much care about the mechanisms of that relief, if it is four years of foundering and chaos, where he Forrest Gumps his way through, so be it.  If he actually does manage to "make America great," (I refuse to say again), all the better.

I have the feeling that I will be spending quite a bit of time in Ezekiel and the prophets in the near future.  I need to be reminded that God is with us, even in exile, no matter who the king is.  That's what I told my children this morning as we waited for the bus, I told them that the Bible is full of stories where God works despite of, and in direct opposition to the principalities and powers.  I have known this for quite some time, but I was holding on to a perhaps vain hope that maybe I would not live to see such days.

But here we are, and from my perspective the bones look very dry, but I must trust and know that they can live. I must also be aware of the reality that, if they do, it will probably be in surprising and unexpected ways. I have to put my selfish desire for vindication away.  I do not want the Trump presidency to be a disaster, even though it would prove that I was right.

So, now that the deed is done, and the vote is cast, I will pray for the shalom of the nation in which we live.  If Daniel can live under Nebuchadnezzar, if Elijah can survive Ahab and Jezebel, if Ezekiel can see the Lord of Hosts beside the rivers of Babylon, I can find God at work here in this time, in this place.

A Prayer for an Anxious Day

Wrong was easy, gravity helped it,

Right is difficult and long.

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

For every matter has its time and way, although the troubles of mortals lie heavy upon them.

Indeed, they do not know what is to be, for who can tell them how it will be?

No one has the power to restrain the wind, or power over the day of death; 

There is no discharge from the battle, nor does wickedness deliver those who practice it.

All this I observed, applying my mind to all that is done under the sun,

While one person exercises authority over another to the other's hurt.

-Ecclesiastes 8: 6-9

Holy God, calm our souls that rage within us.

As we turn the wheels of democracy, this new and audacious idea.

Make us thankful for the place in which we stand,

For all the masses of humanity for whom self-determination is a dream they can scarcely imagine.

For those for whom, by accident of birth, it remains beyond hope.

We pray this day for those who are moved to this sacred duty by anger.

We pray for those who approach the voting booth with disdain, fear, or a sense of hopelessness.

We pray for those who have forsaken their voice in apathy.

We pray for those who have not counted the cost or moved beyond the dog whistle summons.

We pray for those who think this day is going to solve the difficult problems we face.

Encourage those who have been moved to action.

Let this day be the beginning of their involvement,

Not the End.

Remind us that you have chosen to side with the least and the last

That your kingdom is not of this world.

Cause us to remember the old stories of your justice

Which overwhelmed kings and gods alike.

We pray for the welfare of the cities, states and our nation,

We pray for leaders who will act wisely,

With a heart for all of those under their authority.

We pray for a return to cooperation instead of bitter division;

We pray for a open conversation instead of shouting and acrimony;

We pray for mercy to once again be a virtue,

We pray that justice would reign in our land,

We pray that we would live up to our own high ideals,

We pray that your hand would guide us and keep us,

Calm us and let us move forward in hope and faith.

In the name of Jesus Christ, in whom we live, and breathe and have our being, Amen.

Just a Few More Steps

I am so ready for tomorrow. I'm ready for this debacle to be over.  No matter who wins or what happens, this election has left us all with less dignity.  There is widespread evidence of voter suppression in the South, there are zany ploys to try and get the Amish to vote in the North.  The Klu Klux Klan is somehow in the news on a daily basis. I'm just done.
The Amish thing is peculiar to me, because I have lived in proximity to the Amish for a good part of my life.  I grew up in Chester County Pennsylvania, near Lancaster, where the movie Witness, starring Harrison Ford was set. Then I lived for ten years in Indiana County Pennsylvania in the middle of a pretty sizable Amish Community.  We had buggies go by our house on a daily basis.  Even down here in Southern Maryland, I can pop down the street to the Charlotte Hall library and go to the Amish produce stands through the summer months.
I am by no means an expert on all things Amish, but through simple contact and observation I have learned a few things about them.  First off is that they are probably what you would consider conservative in a lot of ways, however there are some key points of variation.  The most obvious would be pacifism, and this they take pretty seriously.  They do not serve in the military or believe in the practice of "an eye for an eye." They take Jesus whole "turn the other cheek," teaching as absolutely binding.
Because our government, Democrat or Republican led, is pretty much constantly engaged in waging wars and inflaming violence around the world, the Amish more or less wash their hands of the whole scenario.  Voting is not forbidden, but it is highly discouraged, on the grounds that no earthly government is actually going to truly represent or even be amenable to the values of the Kingdom of Heaven (a lesson that is being hard learned by many other Christians).
Another point of variation, which you might glaze over because it seems so quaint among the Amish, is that they are essentially communist, in what I consider to be the absolute best way.  They share the burdens of the community, they rely on one another to overcome difficulties.  They are also pretty shrewd businessmen, and their work ethic is more or less above and beyond wonderful. As much as the free market capitalist idolatry of the modern GOP would like to claim the Amish as paragons of virtues for the fact that they shun government assistance, even Social Security.  That adoption does not hold water if you consider the complexity of what it means to live the Amish way.
In as much as they resonate with the traditional "family values" that the GOP has tried to claim, it's hard to believe that they would see those values reflected in Donald J. Trump, even if they don't have Twitter accounts or television.
The one fact that might actually motivate the Plain Folk to actually vote for Trump is one that is not terribly flattering or idealistic: Hillary is a woman.  Amish society is highly patriarchal, even if it is egalitarian in many respects, women have defined roles, and leadership of the community is not one of them. Honestly I wonder if this isn't the only reason she isn't cruising to an absolute crushing victory among the general population, but that's the cynic in me oozing out again. I'm trying to keep him on a leash for about 48 more hours.
All the same, if you're excited about volunteering to drive the Amish to vote tomorrow, prepare to be underwhelmed.  They will usually gladly take a ride to Wal-Mart though, I mean if  you really want to help.

A Season of Faith's Perfection

The Chicago Cubs won the World Series.  I'm not a Cubs fan, or even a particularly enthusiastic baseball person.  I mostly just tune in for parts of the World Series and often fall asleep during what games I decide to watch.  I like to go out to the ball park for games if someone throws free tickets at me. I get slightly more amped when the Phillies decide to show up about every twenty years or so, but I'll tell you what watching into the wee hours of the morning to see the Cubbies finally close out their first championship since 1908 (yes you heard that right, 1908) felt awfully profound.
The Chicago Cubs have been the "lovable losers" since before my grandfather was born.  The last time this happened nobody knew what a World War was, the Nuclear Age was science fiction, heck electricity was still new to a lot of towns and horses were still the main mode of transportation. 108 years of futility and mediocrity came to an end last night, the Goat, the Black Cat and the Bartman incident, all history.
Then there's this:

If that doesn't give you the feels, check your pulse.
The thing that sports do for us these days is bring us together.  Whether you're a fan of the team or not there's something about watching a group of humans rise together against the very hand of fate itself that lifts us all.  It was a little sad that they did it at the expense of the Cleveland Indians, another forlorn franchise that finally got to the big show.  It would be possible to actually write a very similar article had the Tribe prevailed, but Cleveland has Lebron and the Cavaliers to soften that blow this year.
The Cubs did this the hard way.  They came into the playoffs as the consensus "best team in baseball."  An unusual place for them and it showed.  They fell to a 3-1 series deficit to the Tribe, including two losses at Wrigley, they went back to Cleveland with doom hanging over their head, but they didn't die.  They pushed it to a game 7, because of course they did.  They took a 6-2 lead into the 8th inning and, as soon as their second starting pitcher put a man on, they brought in their fire-throwing closer, Aroldis Chapman.
Chapman has been close to un-hittable this season with the Yankees and the Cubs, he throws 105mph plus, he is a prototype closer.  But he has been working a lot more innings and throwing a lot more pitches than a closer probably should.  He was gassed. He gave up the lead in the 8th and somehow, someway held on to the tie score in the bottom of the 9th.  It was a gutsy performance, but one he probably should have never been called on to make.  Joe Maddon was desperate though, his staff was worn out, his hitters were being anything but reliable, and he was so close to breaking "the Curse," that he could taste it.
I felt as bad for Chapman as I could possibly muster for a dude who started the season suspended for domestic violence issues, and I was suitably impressed with how he stuck it out and pulled through.
The game went to extra innings, and had a rain delay between the 9th and 10th, because of course it did.  Fate was obviously messing with Chicago Cubs and their fans.
You could see it on their faces.  Old men whose father's had never seen a Cubs title were wondering if this year was going to be another bitter pill to swallow, if it was going to be 109 years, another close but no cigar.  They had no right to believe, but they still did.
Lo and behold, the 10th saw the Cubs pull back ahead, two runs even. They needed them both as it turns out, but they managed to hold on to an 8-7 victory, and grown men everywhere wept tears of joy. I didn't shed tears, but I was duly impressed at seeing a sight that has not been seen on earth for a very long time: The World Champion Chicago Cubs.

All Saints

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, 

and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us...

-Hebrews 12: 1

I have known a lot of Saints.

None of them have had churches named after them or gotten special days.  Some of them were cranky and drank too much.  Some of them had not been in a church for a long time. Others were drug addicts and mentally ill. If you looked at them with human eyes you never would have known.

Saints can be sneaky.

Luckily it's not up to us to figure out who they are.  So we just focus on the relatively few who have shown us their true faces, and been recognized. Some of them have cool stories too, many of them did really amazing things. But there is a challenge set before us by Jesus, and that is to recognize the Saints that don't look like Saints, the ones he calls "the least of these, my brothers," and "these little ones."

The "cloud of witnesses," isn't just that dear old lady that taught you in Sunday School, it also includes the coworker who bugs you on a daily basis.  It isn't just the kind and Godly man who sits faithfully in the church pew every week, it is also the crazy lady in the supermarket holding up the line with a wad of crinkled coupons.

Some Saints are here to show you what you could be.

Other Saints are here to teach you how to love, and make you practice.

All the famous Saints know a secret: they're not that good, really.

Each one of them knows how much they were forgiven, they may have even kept a careful record of all their sins.  They sometimes did what they did out of guilt, weighed down by the mistakes they made and all the people they hurt.  Like Augustine, who thought so much and so well about God that most of us don't even realize that everything we think we know about God probably came from something he said or wrote.  But Augustine had a mistress, and he never did right by her, he's still a Saint, with all the honors.

Should we silence his voice because we know what he did?

God does no such thing.

What about Abraham, the Father of us all by blood or faith?  

He sent one of his servants and the child they had together off into the wilderness to die.

How about David, the Great King and the singer of Psalms? 

He was an adulterer and a murderous one at that.

You know the stories of these people we call Saints.

Peter denied Jesus.

Paul breathed threats and murder against the church.

They were redeemed, forgiven, and loved.

The stories ought to tell us that God loves a fixer upper.

The stories ought to tell us that no-one is beyond that sort of grace.

We ought to see that we are the Saints, all of us.

This day, and every day.

Not because we're good, but because God is Love.

-All Saints Day - 2016