Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

This was Maggie:

This was before she got sick.

This was the way she was for over nine years: healthy, happy, faithful.

She was our first "child," she helped us raise our human children.

She was gentle and good,

She allowed crawling infants and unsteady toddlers to poke and pull at her.

She loved to lay her head on my lap and have me scratch behind her ears.

She loved to go for walks, and rides in the car.

She loved to eat a little more than was good for her, just like her owner.

She got diabetes, just like her owner.

But we couldn't get it under control,

She was sick and weak and I couldn't watch her suffer anymore.

So I said goodbye, as hard as it was,

Because I want to remember her like this:

Election

I went to vote this morning.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No one challenged my right to be there (they didn't even ask for my ID, even though I had it ready).
All the ladies working at the polls were nice and friendly, even though one thought my name was Haskill and was having trouble finding it in the book, it was easily corrected and I still didn't have to show my ID.
Now, I know, a lot of the friendly, laid back atmosphere at the polls in my little town is due to the fact that, basically, I live in Mayberry, where everyone knows everyone else and things like elections are relaxed little affairs where they give out candy if you actually show up.
However, it doesn't stop me from considering how blessed I am, that I can go cast my ballot for the lesser of two evils and not fear recrimination.  Especially in a year like this one, where I suspect I am voting for a different candidate than many of my neighbors. I never felt intimidated, or confused.  I was not even accosted by an exit pollster.
I did my duty in a matter of about five minutes, including the time that it took to walk over to the firehall.  Now I can sit back and wait and watch to see who wins, and actually, miracle of miracles, I know that no matter who wins, life will go on.  The government will continue to be an inefficient, maddening and dysfunctional monstrosity, but it will be our inefficient, maddening and dysfunctional monstrosity.  I know that neither Mitt nor Barack are secretly longing to be Mussolini or Stalin.  I know that my freedoms, even those I don't particularly care about, like whether or not I can own an AK-47, will be protected.  I know that Penn DOT will still put up plenty of those orange cones in the summer time to repair the thousands of miles of road that I regularly travel.  I know that the IRS will faithfully take my money, put it together with everybody else's money, then turn it over to people that will waste much of it, but ultimately take care of some things that we as a society need done.
I know that I will not be happy with everything the government does.
I know that I will be happy that they do most of the things that they do.
I know that I do not agree with every plank of either party's platform.
I know that I do not agree with every thing my own wife and children think either.
I know that if I want to live in a free and democratic society, I'm going to have to put up with some things I don't like, in order to get the things I really need.
I knew all this stuff when I went to vote.
And I still voted...
Because I'm a grown up...
Because I'm American...
Because I can.

The Choice Before Us

It's one of the choices that help define us in a media obsessed culture:
Beatles or Stones?
Coffee or tea?
Boxers or briefs?
Coke or Pepsi?

But this one perhaps will tell more about your personality than some of the other dichotomous preferences. And this one definitely has bearing on how you might vote in any given election.  In fact, I'm surprised that pollsters haven't taken to asking this simple question when they call you up at dinner time to bug you.
The question is:

Kirk or Picard?

If you don't know what I'm talking about then one of two things is probably true about you:
1. you've been in cryogenic suspension since about 1960, in which case welcome back to the world, I'm afraid things are worse than you thought they would be, but hey congratulations on the whole thawing out thing.
Or
2. You just don't watch too much TV, in which case congratulations, you're probably smarter than I am and you don't need to keep reading.

Still reading anyway?

Okay, James Tiberius Kirk was the Captain of the Starship Enterprise in the campy but brilliant television show Star Trek.  The original show was a little ahead of its time and was cancelled after a fairly brief run.  However, over the decades the show just wouldn't go away.  Despite being cancelled Star Trek got more and more popular, spawning several movies, large amounts of merchandising and fanatical conventions of fans who dress up like Klingons and Vulcans and generally revel in their collective Geekhood.
Kirk was a space cowboy, played with incomparable bravado by William Shatner.  Kirk was the guy you wanted if you had to fight a giant lizard in some sort of gladiatorial bloodsport.  Kirk was always up to making romance with sultry alien females who find stocky Kirk Douglas types irresistible.  Kirk blasted his way through the galaxy on a mission that vaguely qualified as scientific exploration, but was mostly just a series of predicaments that had to be conquered by sheer gall and intuition, rather than by the cold logic of science (represented famously by Leonard Nimoy's character: Mr. Spock).
But the real genius of Star Trek were those moments where the questions of human nature and our relative place in the universe came into focus, where the blessings and curses of technology were examined.  They were rare, but they were there.
Fast forward 25 years to the late 1980s, Star Trek is reborn as a television series, but this time the feel is a little different: Star Trek, The Next Generation is embodied by a different sort of Captain: Jean Luc Picard, played by a classically trained, dignified and very bald, Patrick Stewart.  Picard lacked Kirk's swashbuckling presence as well as his unruly pompadour.  Picard very rarely had a love interest and never got in a fist fight with a giant lizard.  Picard was a diplomat, a lover of music and art, a cultured intellectual, in short, the polar opposite of James T. Kirk.
The creators of Next Generation knew that certain parts of the Star Trek formula were worth keeping, but Kirk got a demotion to first officer in the character or William Riker, Spock became the Android Mr. Data and Mr. Scott the bombastic engineer became the well mannered (and blind) LaForge.  They gave us a Klingon serving in Starfleet, the long-time enemy of the Federation, now at peace.  We got better special effects and better thought out plots, but the biggest difference was in the Captain himself.  Picard faced a challenge that could not be overcome by might or phasers in the very first episode.  He was hijacked by a near omnipotent being known as Q, who would become Picard's nemesis and grudging admirer
Q's indictment of humanity couldn't have illustrated the difference between Picard and Kirk more clearly.  Q expected humans to go in with guns blazing and never see the predicament that was staring them in the face.  Kirk would have certainly failed the test, but Picard, with observation, diplomacy and an open mind was able to solve the riddle of Farpoint station and save the day, and all humanity from Q's judgment.
So what does all of this have to do with say, foreign policy, the subject of last evening's debate between Obama and Romney?
A whole awful lot actually.  See, up until now there has been a lot of harping on the Economy, but the funny thing is that the President, as head of the Executive branch of government, has fairly minor ability to shape our economic policy.  Unless someone is going to go full on FDR and haul out a new New Deal, the President can, at most, massage the legislature into trying to go along with his vision and plans.  He's not powerless to influence the economy, but he's not really in charge.
What he is in charge of though, is the State Department and the Military.  He can basically start a war (although he can't call it that without an act of Congress).  What the President is the face of our nation when it comes to foreign policy.  That's why last night's debate, which focused on foreign policy, was so eminently important.  This is actually the area where the President is going to have some real clout!
Which is why it was disturbing to hear both candidates do their best James T. Kirk impersonations and keep Picard locked in the closet.  Neither Romney or Obama is ever going to be able to out-Kirk George W. Bush, but what I really want to see from the leader of my country is a little more Jean Luc Picard.
This is where I may give away a bit of Obama bias, because I think he has leaned that way.  He has not led us into any new intractable conflicts in the Middle East, and he has actually extricated us from one of them.  He has refused rash and categorical action in Libya and Syria, and he actually had the restraint to watch and learn as the Arab Spring unfolded.
The Kirks of the world are chomping at the bit for some giant lizard fighting, saying that O is exuding weakness and we need to crack down, but actually I tend to believe that the world respects us a lot more now than they did four years ago.  Maybe they don't fear us as much as when Bush and Cheney were doing their Vader-Tarkin act (sorry I had to give Star Wars a shout out), but there is evidence that the people in the streets of Egypt, Libya and even Iran are not buying the portrayal of the West as the Great Satan, quite as fully as they used to.
Picard often proved that restraint in the use of force was of greater value than raw power.  I would hope that our next president, whether it is Obama or Romney, will follow the path of the diplomat rather than the way of the fist.

Autumnal Reverie

What is it about fall that starts you thinking about the passage of time.  I know that there is a good reason why Frost's poem about two roads diverging in a yellow wood has been so violently overused.  I suspect that there is something about harvest time and the impending freeze of winter that resonates deep in the collective unconscious of people who descend from races that made their home outside the tropics.  There is something about watching the world literally go to sleep all around you that makes you aware of your own mortality.  There is something primal about the urgency of the harvest that still moves us, even in a world where we can buy bananas any day of the of week.
Technology has insulated us from many of the rigors of winter.  We are not facing four months of living off of beets, potatoes and salt pork, but the changing leaves still make me feel like I need to enjoy every last bit of sun and warmth.  This time of year, I want to get outside every chance I get.  I want to take long hikes in the woods as they prepare for their long sleep.  I can imagine, at any moment, that the white blanket of snow will begin to descend and I can wish that it would hold off just a little longer.
We rake the leaves into a pile and the kids play in them.
We get out jackets, gloves and hats.
We surround ourselves with pumpkins, field corn and all the signs of the harvest.
We do these things as a last statement of life that will hold us through the freeze.
We do these things to hold on to consciousness through the winter coma.

In My Opinion...

It would seem a great many people are afflicted with the fear.
Fear of what?
Fear of them.
Who are they?
They are people who disagree with us.
Who are we?
That, finally is a good question.

I was about to embark on another snarky political column inspired by the rancorous debate of last evening, but as I sat down to write I was afflicted with sympathy for the many Americans who are going to approach the polls next month with fear and trembling.
First, let me say this: breathe.  No matter who gets elected, God will still be in control, and America will still be the best nation on earth for its citizens.  The highly contentious atmosphere of the election will subside and we will settle in to see if the opinions and promises that have been foisted off as facts and doctrines actually bear fruit.  I suspect that a year from now, we will probably (once again) come face to face with the grim reality that politicians cannot be trusted.  As long as politics embodies a power struggle more than it embodies truly serving the people, we are doomed to repeat that dire discovery.
Nations always rage and people always plot in vain.
Second, let me say this: Sennacherib.  Aside from being fun to say, Sennacherib was an Assyrian King who terrified ancient Israel during the reign of Hezekiah.  He made Bashir Assad look like Mr. Rogers.  Assyrians in general were known for their brutality and sudden violent conquests.  Yet Assyria never conquered Judah, God just made them go away.  Empires, no matter how grand and glorious, always decline and fall.  It happened to Assyria, it happened to Rome, it happened to Britain, and it will happen to us, the question is: how do we deal with it.  Do we simply dissolve our civilization and fade into the sands of history like the Hittites or do we remain with dignity and resolve like the Brits.  We share more raw material with the Brits than we do with the Assyrians, maybe there's an outside chance that, as our hegemony fades, we might become something even better than a colonialist police force.
Third, and last of all let me say this: fear is the mind killer.  I have heard too many reasonable people begin propounding the most enfeebled conspiracy theories with regard to the machinations of the political machine. I have no great love for the propaganda and the vitriol, but please the type of manipulation that has been suspected under every bush is not a reality.  It is not a reality because, even if there is a will, there is no way to accomplish such chicanery.  If Obama could "cook the books" on the unemployment figures or magically make gas prices drop, don't you think he would have tried that a little sooner?  There are plenty of lies to go around on both sides of the fence, but the perception of the truth is generally more flavored by the opinions that people share or do not share with the candidates.  It became rather apparent to me that Romney truly thinks he can fix things, which may be true or it may not, but it's not technically a lie, because he thinks it will actually happen.  Obama has been disillusioned of the notion that grand bargains can be reached in the current political climate, but he thinks that maybe, in his next four years, without the specter of trying to get re-elected, he might actually get some important things turned around, it's not a lie, it's a belief, an opinion.
Remember that Presidents and congresspeople are human beings, there are things that they can fix and things they cannot fix.  We could do with less vitriol and rancor and more reasoned discourse.  It would be nice if we could advance to a point where fact checkers are not necessary, where honesty and integrity were more important than winning, but that's probably just a pipe dream.
Large Sigh.

Sometimes Nothing Is a Real Cool Hand

Last week, I was shocked and saddened by the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl from Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out in favor of education for girls in Pakistan.  She had become something of a celebrity in the cause of Muslim girls struggling to be treated as equals, at least when it came to education.  The Taliban labeled her as a disruptive peddler of western ideology, who was obviously trying to destroy the morals of the entire Islamic world.  Did I mention she was fourteen?  Did I mention that a Taliban gunman stopped a bus full of school children and shot Malala in the face?
I'm no expert in Islam, but I'm thinking that, if Allah bears any resemblance to the God that I know through Jesus of Nazareth, someone is really on the wrong track.  In my earlier blog entry I wondered how there was not outrage among Muslims everywhere.  Well, it turns out, there is, it turns out that people everywhere are rallying around Malala and turning against the hatred and fear of the Taliban and others like them.  You may offer thanks to God, using whatever name you prefer.
Once, when I was going through a trying time, my Dad said something regarding the spiritual conflict between good and evil that usually proves true: "the Devil always overplays his hand."  Evil sometimes seems to be holding the best cards, but if you play it right there will always be a mistake, it will always reach too far.     Evil is perhaps most dangerous when it masquerades as something other than what it is.  When the Taliban can pretend they are freedom fighters battling the great Satan, they have the support of many people and perhaps some sympathy from those who have suffered under the boot of a colonial power.  But when they start shooting 14 year old schoolgirls in the face... their friends and cheerleaders get awful scarce.
I don't fully understand Islam, and I can't really wrap my mind around what it's like in Pakistan or Afghanistan at the moment, but what I do know is Christianity, America and Cool Hand Luke.  The title of the movie comes from a scene where Luke bluffs the other inmates in the camp at poker.  He stares down his opponents with a hand that is absolutely worthless.  He wins, not because he has the best hand, but because he has more guts and more patience than his opponent.  The courage of the man with the stronger hand fails and Luke says: "Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand."
Jesus, very dramatically, told his disciples that they ought not to resist the evildoer and that when someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other.  Christians have applied that standard with varying degrees of faith, and with varying degrees of success.  Mennonites and Quakers (among others) have adopted the strict code of pacifism, which most of Christendom has often found cause to abandon.  Sometimes that abandonment seemed necessary or even unavoidable, but it has always required a rather sophisticated theological jog around the block.
However, I think it would serve us well to remember that Jesus understood the real world circumstances that faced his followers quite well.  Usually, when people have taken up arms, even in the cause of justice, peace and freedom, even when it was to protect the innocent, a lot of evil has ensued.  Violence is a card that the Devil always has in his hand and we usually find ourselves trying to stare down his pocket aces with a King-8 off suit.
I'll take, as an example, the KKK, which is the American equivalent of the Taliban.  An organization founded on hatred and fear, which liberally uses the name of God to justify their atrocities.  At one point in our history (and it wasn't really that long ago) the Klan had influence and power, they could inflict terror with near impunity.  Then it all went too far, racist terrorists started blowing up churches and killing little black girls.  They weren't just lynching big strong black men who most white Americans were secretly afraid of anyway.  Now there were little girls in their white Sunday dresses on the news as the latest victims of racism and hatred.  Fairly suddenly racism and hatred didn't sell so well.  The Devil had overplayed his hand.
Now the KKK is silly in the eyes of most people.  We let them have their parades, because we support free speech, but those hoods no longer strike fear in the hearts of too many people.  Now they're just an ugly reminder of a dark time.
I hope, for the sake of girls like Malala Yousafzai, that this is the start of something similar in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It would prove Jesus absolutely right, because the ultimate demise of the Taliban would not be the United States Military and all their guns and bombs, it would be a defenseless fourteen year old girl who just wanted to go to school.  She had nothing, she is one of the most vulnerable people in the world, and now she's got the world on her side: sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.

Adaptive Challenges and other Scary Monsters

I was watching the debate between Biden and Ryan and keeping tabs on the Steelers game at the same time.  Besides being a demonstration of my mad-crazy remote skills, it was actually rather more instructive than anything talked about by either of the candidates.  Let's start with what I noticed about the debate, granted it's not an earth shattering revelation, but it came through loud and clear as I watched the debate.  It is a reality that challenges the very mythology of American democracy and Western supremacy: they don't know what to do.
They want you to believe they know, they may even have deluded themselves into thinking they know, but they don't.  I don't either, nor does anyone else, and if they say they do they are either selling you something or they are perhaps just maniacal enough to believe their own delusions.
It all started to seem very familiar.  I had heard this sort of futile wishful thinking somewhere else... but where?
Oh right, at church, and in Presbytery committee meetings!  See I'm a pastor, and as such I am a leader of a group of people who hold certain core convictions, but who also have very different ways of living out those core convictions: a lot like America as a nation.  What I heard last night was a larger scale version of the same angst that has riddled the church for about 40 years.
The reality for the church and for our nation, is that the world has changed.  The world has changed fast and it has changed completely.  A global economy that was not even remotely possible in 1950 has emerged and, thanks to technology, has accelerated to a speed that seemed like science fiction, even in 1980.  Empires have collapsed and America, the youngest of the bunch, is the last samurai.
The church has come to realize that this reality is not going away, and we have at least started to grapple with what that means.  Fortunately we have 2000 years of history and intellectual tradition to tell us that we can survive such things.  Our nation, however, in fact nations in general, have no such track record.
The characteristic traits of the global culture are complex, the stakes are high, and the conflicts are often intractable.  Which is why it is so disturbing to me that politicians so blithely offer up their dogmatic positions, claiming that all will be well if we listen to them.  Just once, I want to hear someone admit that the challenges that face us are not surmountable by political sleight of hand.  Just once, I want to hear someone admit that, if we are going to grow into facing the adaptive challenges of the world, we are going to have to adapt.  Just once, I would like to hear someone honestly tell the American people that adaptation might hurt.  I would vote for him or her.
Football, and sports in general, have rules that are well known and enforced.  The rules change a little at a time to tweak the safety or the fairness of the contest.  If, at halftime, the referees of the Steelers - Titans game had suddenly re-written the rule book and not told any of the coaches or players then you would have seen what adaptive challenge was all about.  You would know what our politicians truly face.  Trying to devise a good strategy would be impossible playing by the old rules.  The reason why we love sports and hate politics is because sports are technical challenges: plan better, practice harder, execute more perfectly and you will win.  The world is a lot more complicated than that, and all I want is for someone, somewhere to at least understand that the rules have changed.