Nuance

I'm a big fan of nuance.  It is often absolutely necessary, in understanding complicated situations, to get a grip on the many and varied facets of the problem.  It is super valuable to be able to see things from other perspectives and realize that a balanced approach is almost always best.  So few things in this world are truly black and white.  With all that we know and how we experience the world, with access to such amazing and wonderful diversity, we really should be able to put dualism to bed once and for all.
But there is a problematic nuance to the whole mess.  There are many complex issues that can be nuanced to death, which in turn pushes us back into dualism and dogmatism, because it's just frustrating to deal with people who can use a nuance to justify anything, examples:
1. Prisons are overcrowded and almost 50% of the people in them are there for some sort of drug related offense, BUT we can't de-criminalize or legalize because drugs are bad, BUT so is the fact that we have more people in prison (per capita) than any other nation in the world including China, BUT we're actually digging our own grave and not making the problem any better, and probably wasting human potential on a massive scale, BUT there's too much money to be made, and too much fear out there to do anything really meaningful to change.
2. There are children (CHILDREN) seeking asylum in this country because of poverty and the same basic, misguided "War on Drugs."  And we're treating it like a run of the mill immigration problem, BUT we're a nation of immigrants (unless your name is Standing Bear, and then I'm totally sorry about the whole genocide and taking all your stuff), and we hold humanitarian ideals pretty close to our heart (or we seem to, when it involves bombing someone on the other side of the world in the name of freedom, hold on, different nuance), you know "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," BUT apparently not if the tired, poor huddled masses are from south of the border.  European tired, poor, huddled masses only please.
3. Israel and Palestine don't get along, they haven't for a really long time.  Again, we have a  hand in starting and perpetuating this whole mess, BUT we're really not allowed to really do any hard thinking about what the right thing to do is, because ISRAEL, BIBLE, GOD's CHOSEN PEOPLE, ISRAEL IS GOING TO MAKE JESUS COME BACK QUICKER!  Oh holy snot.  There are children (CHILDREN) in Gaza who are getting bombed because Hamas cares more about kicking Israel in the shins than actually trying to improve the lot of "their" people.  And Israel, for their part, doesn't really see this as an apocalyptic scenario or a divine mandate, BUT they're pretty sick and tired of all their neighbors trying to kill them.  The last time they forbore and and persevered they had to go through Auschwitz and Birkenau (Yes, I know those were Europeans, but they're the ones running Israel at the moment).
4. Finally, my favorite example of nuance run amok: "I'm not (racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic, pick your favorite), BUT those people..."  When you use nuance to defend an indefensible position, you are doing it wrong, you are searching for a way to believe what you want, and still convince yourself that you're open-minded and intelligent.
It should be an exploration in search of better understanding, not a justification of why you shouldn't actually evaluate your own position.  Saying "It's complicated," is a total cop-out, and I have done it many times. I would like to think of my dodging as a sort of survival mechanism, because I didn't want to get into a protracted debated with someone who was not willing to evaluate their own dogma, but probably more often  it was just because I am lazy and would rather not really evaluate my own dogma at that particular moment.
5. We all see that the way that many cultures treat women is pretty shabby, we look at women denied education, killed because they were raped and generally treated as property rather than human beings, and we say, "I'm so glad we're not like those people."  Yet, in our wonderful, enlightened nation, there is income inequality, domestic abuse is rampant, college campuses and the military are rife with sexual assault and harassment, and the powers that be in those settings have been horribly complicit in keeping it all on the down low, because why should one mistake ruin someone's life or career.
Congratulations, you have just vomited all over the exploration of nuance, the practice of rational thought, and perhaps even our very humanity.
But, you know, "It's complicated."

Nine

Don't be afraid to show your scars.
Whether they are inside or out.
Scars are earned.
They come from relentlessly picking at the chicken pox.
Or being relentlessly picked on for something else.
Bullets or bullies can cause them.
They come from giving birth to new someone.
They come from saying goodbye to someone you love.
Scars can fade with time,
But they never really go away.
If they are really worth it, you don't want them to.
They might remind you of a mistake, and what you learned.
They might remind you of a wound, and how you survived.
They might be all you have left of something you have lost.
Everyone has scars,
But some keep them hidden.
They don't want you to know what hurt them.
Because they think being hurt is sign of:
Weakness,
Disease,
Stupidity,
Imperfection.
But it's not.
It's a sign of being human.
Jesus has scars,
They are proof of who he is.
Yours are proof of who you are.
They're not going to go away.
Even in the resurrection.
Get used to them,
Love them.
Show them proudly.
They are your scars.

The Gathering Storm

Humans find it easier to gather their energy around death, pain and problems than around joy.

I know I do.

-Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond

July 22 has a sort of ominous feel for me.  If I try really hard I can kind of remember what it felt like to live life without a big hole in the middle of it.  On this day particularly, I remember that losing a brother once seemed like a ridiculous idea.  Even with addiction and struggles, I always kind of bought the idea that it would all work out in the end.  I allowed myself to trust that there would be a new dawn and turning around.  And as of July 22, 2005, I still had that illusion.

So here's something peculiar that I have found about the last nine years: the tragedy, the loss and the grief that beset my family on July 23rd have been an immense source of creative energy.  Things that I have written, sermons I have preached, things that I have done in life, have been imbued with a certain power and significance because of what was about to happen nine years ago today.

The most joyful moments in life do not seem to have that kind of energy.  Joy is fleeting, it can come with immense power and set your life on fire, it can have the rush of excitement like a thunderstorm or a tornado, but it is usually gone as quickly as it arrived.

Grief is more like that perpetual spring rain that seems like it has been going for days and also seems like it just will not end.  But grief is a teacher, where joy is a playmate.  Both the work of learning and the joy of play can be generative, but learning has that air of seriousness and power that play, by it's very nature, is lacking.

The funny thing about it all is that, over the years, I think I have come to feel joy more easily and more deeply than I did before, and I'm fairly certain that grief has caused that sensitivity.

Don't get me wrong, it can be cussedly uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable, in fact, that I find myself wanting avoid certain things.  The beach, for instance.  The beach is a place that I will always profoundly connect with my brother. It's not that I don't like the beach, I do, I always have, but I am also profoundly emotional at the beach.  I can be moved to tears, or frustrated to anger, or just slammed into a state that I'm not entirely able to name without being paradoxical.  The paradoxical label would be, I suppose, joyous sorrow.

It's not entirely unpleasant, if you are on a beach at sunrise, or in winter, and you are alone with your thoughts.  It is practically intolerable on a crowded beach full of blissfully thoughtless rest and relaxation.  Because one thing I can no longer be on a beach is blissfully thoughtless the way I could nine years ago.

I suppose, this is all part of living with the "presence of an absence."

There is a scene in the movie The Crow, where Eric Draven uses the pain and anguish that has basically allowed him to return from the dead, as an actual weapon.  He transfers it all in a moment into his nemesis, "I have something to give you, I don't want it anymore." And the bad guy is destroyed by the power of that pain and suffering.

I was given something nine years ago, something I didn't really want, but it is something that has been profoundly useful.  This is perhaps the most difficult thing to admit: I do not wish it wasn't mine, and I would not give it back.  Sure, I would like to have my brother around, I can imagine so many ways that his absence has changed my life for the worse, but I know that what I have gained through losing is ultimately a better appreciation of life and how precious it is.

I am now a more compassionate person, a more thoughtful person, a more self-aware person than I was then.  And while I wish these results had come via a different route, I am thankful for the road I have traveled.

Pressing the Fight

Never think that war, no matter how necessary,

nor how justified, is not a crime.

-Ernest Hemmingway

Waging war in the age of video footage and the interweb has got to be a major headache.  I mean, back in the good old days you could just slaughter people with impunity and no one would ever find out.  Now you invade one little contested territory like Gaza, and you have to start dealing with all those questions about whether your right to self defense should really include all those dead children being pulled out of the rubble.

But come on, 3000 or so years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, Tiglath Pileser used to ride into your towns and build pyramids of severed heads, Amnesty International didn't say squat.

At the risk of sounding too Forrest Gump, when I was a kid, my parents taught me that if I allowed bullies to provoke me into violence, even if I won the fight, I actually lost.  It took me a while to get a grip on that reality, but eventually I saw how it made sense.  Violence never really solves anything.  I know that, but if someone punches me in the face, I'm still probably going to hit them back.

War is serious business, and Hamas is bad people, as are ISIS and Al Quaeda, and the Taliban, and SPECTRE (Sorry, I have to laugh a little or else I'm going to have a rage fit).  But what we have done, Israel, the US, and even our old nemesis Russia, is let these little groups of terrorist/bullies draw us into a fight that we cannot win.  There's this scene in the movie The Princess Bride, where the hero has to fight a giant man named Fezzig (played by Andre the Giant).  The hero is decidedly not a giant and stands absolutely no chance of besting the Fezzig's strength, so he uses his speed and tenacity to get behind the giant and latch on around his neck, cutting off his breath.

Fezzig makes the comment that he's not used to fighting just one person, he's used to fighting gangs of people, he's used to people using different tactics.  The rather absurd and almost insane method of grab, cling and choke, doesn't seem like it poses a threat, until he starts to lose consciousness.  Typical of Goliath, to not be threatened by a boy with no armor and some stones.

The Palestinians are no match for the Israeli Army, but then again, the Afghans were not for the Russians either, nor were the Viet Cong for the US.

The more we master violence, the less effective it becomes.  We use technological violence to inflict massive damage, damage that, by all estimations, ought to "shock and awe" our enemies into submission, except it doesn't.  They dig their dead children out of the rubble and hate us even more, with greater reason, and more determination, we become less human in their eyes than we were before, more deserving of terror and tragedy.

It is the very definition of a vicious cycle.  It is a crime against the light of our Creator.

And it will continue, as long as there are axes to grind and swords to sharpen, as long as someone makes money off of making and selling RPGs and body armor, as long as giants can be goaded into fights they cannot win, as long as we keep burying children under the rubble of our fear and hatred.

At the risk of sounding naive, I would like to ask if we might not try something Jesus suggested: forgiveness.  Maybe the only way to truly break the cycle of violence is to stop being violent.  I know what you're thinking: we just can't afford to play that game, it's too dangerous, it would leave us defenseless, it would make us look weak, etc.  But how do you know it wouldn't work.  Honestly, it actually has never been honestly given a try, other than by very small groups that admittedly rely on the violence of others in society to keep them safe.

What if we beat our swords in to plowshares once and for all?

What if we actually grow up and stop playing war?

Wouldn't it bet worth it to stop seeing people (even people who don't look like us) pull their dead children out of the rubble?

Stuff

This is what you might call a confluence.
I am about to turn 40.  I've got way too much stuff, in my life, around my middle, and perhaps even in my brain.  Things are beginning to feel crowded, and a little bit stretched like that button on the front of my shirt.
Michele and I just decided last night to pay off the remainder of the loan for our camper, so that we can try to get rid of it.  The camper, which seemed like such a good idea, has become perhaps the single biggest mistake of my adult life.  I know what you're saying: "Gee Mark, world's smallest violin playing just for you.  Some people's mistakes get them jail time, or bankruptcy, or trapped in abusive relationships."
I know it's small potatoes, but the reason I have been so afflicted by the whole camper fiasco, is that it represents not just a bad decision, it represents a spiritual failure.  It is proof, which I have to look at parked in my driveway every day, of the fact that I thought things could make me happy.  It leaks out into other areas of life: it is a debt that we really didn't need to take on, it is a source of friction between Michele and me, it is the primary reason why I have to keep a large SUV (that I like okay, except when I have to visit the gas station).
It reminds me that I am irresponsible and consumerist, and most of all it reminds me that true pleasure is usually found in simplifying things rather than getting bigger and better.  But it's a lot like learning to control my diet, which means it's an ongoing struggle, which I often lose.
Even as we made the decision to start to try and erase our folly, I started thinking about what other stuff I could accumulate in it's place.  What kind of new car could I get?  Maybe we could just get a really nice tent and still go camping!  We could use the money we've been sinking into the camper to rent a house in the Outer Banks for a week!  We could go to Europe!  You know, five guitars really isn't enough... a Stratocaster might really be just the thing...
I'm freaking hopeless.
I'm starting to get why people would just say, "To Hell with all this!" and join a monastery.
All the while, God shows me that the things I really enjoy the most, barely cost anything.  Playing the guitars I already own, taking walks (which means getting some nice shoes from time to time!  See? hopeless), sitting on the back porch of my house (okay that's not free, but you have to live somewhere), are all things that make me a lot happier than pretty much anything money can buy.
So why is materialism still such a draw?
In the old days, idols were mostly about stuff too: good harvests = material wealth, lot's of kids = cheap labor and someone to inherit all your stuff.  People worshiped idols because they promised material benefits.  Despite what certain shiny TV preachers might tell you, God really isn't big on whether or not you drive a Mercedes.  In fact, if you believe Jesus, which I do, being rich might actually be a major impediment to entering the Kingdom.  It's not because God hates rich people, it's because God has no room for their stuff.
Stuff = idols, and that is no overstatement.
Vows of poverty are not punishments, they are emancipation.
As Emerson said in his Ode to W.H. Auden, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."
I would like to say that, as I creep into maturity, I'm finally ready to shed the life of serving stuff, but it only seems to be getting worse.
As Michele and I were looking at paying off our camper loan, we had our bank account balances up on the screen.  Jack looked over at it and was in awe.  For a moment I saw those numbers through his eyes and thought, "yep, here we are, multi-thousandaires."  Then Michele pointed out to him how much our mortgage was every month and some of the gleam went out of his eyes, and I felt myself clench up a little bit.
As Madonna said, "We are living in a material world."
Lord, have mercy.

The Space in Us... the Final Frontier

There is a place in the heart that will never be filled

A space

And even during the best moments and the greatest times

We will know it

We will know it more than ever

There is is a place in the heart that will never be filled

And we will wait

And wait

In that space.

-Charles Bukowski, No Help for That

I read an article this morning about scientific investigation into why humans believe things.  It was long, and full of neat little facts about how we know things and why we process the world the way that we do.  According to the article, people are sort of wired to believe in things like life after death and a higher power.  Which is why there are so few true Athiests; most self-proclaimed atheists are simply people who do not care much for religion or the various versions of god that religions present.  The article quotes an actual avowed atheist who wrote: "Atheism may be psychologically impossible because of the way humans think."

This sort of thing takes me back to Emmanuel Kant, (but hey don't all roads lead there eventually?) and his discussion of noumenal versus phenomenal.  Bear with me please, I know for most people who even know who Kant is, the very name begins to cause one's eyes to glaze over, but this is a very old dialogue and it has has developed some very profound wrinkles.

It started with Plato and his idea that there was an archetypal and ideal version of everything we see, but that we only ever see the sort of projection of that ideal, at least during our mortal existence.  This Platonic scheme infiltrates and even saturates the world that early Christianity found itself inhabiting and so has become a sort of framework for our understanding of God and Heaven and life itself.  It's one of those tacit assumptions that Atheists and people of faith alike share on some very deep level.  Such a deep level, in fact, that it often goes un-examined and is therefore taken as a self-evident truth.

Kant called the ideal realm the noumena, and posited that all things exist in this realm of ding-en-sich or "things as such."  However, the world that we can perceive through the senses is the world of phenomenal things, things that can be seen, touched, tasted, heard and otherwise experienced through the senses.

Science is an obligate discipline of the phenomenal realm.  To science, if it cannot be observed and measured in some way, shape or form, it does not exist, and thus the entire reality of the noumenal existence of things is off limits to scientific exploration, except perhaps in the cases of peculiar lacunae (blank spaces between what we know).

Science generally leaves the consideration of these spaces to poets, philosophers and theologians.  The only data that can be collected regarding this sort of thing is an actual survey of what human beings believe.  This is rather interesting because, for most of our history, what we believe has been perhaps the most unscientific conglomeration that you could possibly imagine.  It is really only since the enlightenment (when modern scientific method and even thought were essentially born) that we were even aware that what we know in a noumenal sense ought to be actually verifiable in the world of phenomenological evidence.

But evidence will never fill up all the spaces.   As my buddy Bukowski says: "There is a place in the heart that will never be filled."  Poets get it, that's why we need to keep them around.

The Chickens Come Home to Roost

"The chickens come home to roost."

-Malcolm X, when asked about the death of John F. Kennedy

There is nothing that gets me right in the feels quite as badly as suffering children.  Whether it is those children in Newtown, those girls in Nigeria, all of those kids in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq who are torn apart by war, or now the children of Central America who are showing up on our doorstep, not as immigrants looking for a better life, but as refugees fleeing the horror of their home countries.

I have been to Guatemala, I have seen orphaned children, I have had them climb all over me, and had them laugh at how badly I understand Spanish.  When I think of all those children who are now fleeing, unaccompanied, in a desperate quest for security, to our country, I can't help but see all those little smiling faces, and feel all those little brown hands that so desperately wanted someone to hold them.

All of "my" orphans are probably pretty much grown up by now, but that really doesn't change things much.  Especially when I consider that the proximate cause of this whole mess is something that I have come to understand as an extremely flawed ideology: the "war" on drugs.  We started using militaristic language in our response to the problems of drug abuse when I was a kid, but the root of the problem goes way back.  The laws of this country concerning controlled substance date back to an era where the phenomenon of addiction was poorly understood and the actual impact of "recreational drug use" had only begun to step out of the shadows of opium dens.  Other laws were made during the upheavals of the 1960's, when the establishment was terrified of all these libertarian young folk and their sex, drugs and rock and roll (it's actually kind of amazing that Rock music is still legal).

You can make pretty good arguments that most of our drug laws make very little actual sense.  They make little sense because they were written in fear and with lack of understanding and with almost no consideration to the underlying causes of the phenomenon of drug use.

I will not tell you that drugs are good.  I've seen too much of the havoc that they play.  I have lost a brother to drug addiction and overdose, I have lost all of my illusions about "harmless" drugs.  But I will tell you some things about the "war on drugs:

1. It has not stopped drug use in this country, or even significantly slowed it down.

2. It has cost us a lot of money (about $51 billion dollars a year)

3. It has created a massive injustice in the correctional system (of 196,574 people in the Federal correctional system, almost 50% are drug related (96, 426 people)).  The percentage of those who are African American is disturbingly skewed, but that takes us onto shaky statistical ground, so let's just say that more black folk get locked up for drug related stuff than white folk and leave it at that.

4. Despite all these incarcerations, drug related crime has not really waned in the slightest, nor has addiction.  In point of fact, incarceration of people for drug infractions tends to marginalize them even further, rather than contributing to their rehabilitation.  Going to prison, as many have observed, usually just makes you into a better criminal.

5. Poor people are inordinately the victims of the system, while wealthier people can afford to hire lawyers and go to rehab, poor kids go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

6. Our enforcement activity has created dangerous situations in our neighbors to the south.  Mexico and almost all of Central America are adversely effected by the edicts and activities of our government.  In Honduras at the moment, the drug cartels have completely overrun the actual police and government, and thus we have doomed an already poor and suffering nation to live under the threat of the most savage sorts of violence from men who have become accustomed to disregarding the rule of law.

I remember, when I was in Guatemala, seeing a group of four police officers in the road outside the orphanage.  I was impressed by their gear, they wore tactical uniforms and carried sub-machine guns.  But something was different about these men.  It occurred to me the other day as I watched a sheriff's deputy come into the Chik Fil-A where we were eating.  He was confident, and sure of himself, as most people carrying guns tend to be.  All he had was his side arm, but it was clearly visible and he, as most police officers do, radiated an aura of authority.  Sometimes police can actually get carried away with that "aura."

But not the Guatemalan police.  For all their intimidating gear and their impressive firepower, they were furtive, always watching the distance, always with their guns slung in front, ready for... something.  Even as these four men stood in the road talking to each other and even laughing at some joke or other, their eyes were always moving.

Law enforcement is a rather different animal in Central America, but we like to think that we have it all figured out.

We do not.

We do not have it figured out any better than we have the core issues that lead us to have such massive demand for illicit substances.  We are better at dealing with the consequences, but we have made almost no progress into learning why some people are willing to risk so much in order to get high.

And now we have thousands of children fleeing the violence of narco gangs in Central America, and we're saying that they're not our problem, but they are our problem, they are very much our problem.  They are quite literally the embodiment of our failure to properly deal with our own excess.  They are the indictment of our addictions and our penchant for solving problems with violence.

We have made the stew, and now some of us are wincing at how bitter it tastes.

We have locked up so many people for simple possession.

We have put a bunch of poor, marginalized people in a position where the rule of law is the enemy, and the narcos are heroic banditos who offer a very real way out of soul crushing poverty.

We have put weak and tottering governments in jeopardy by asking them to run the front line conflicts in our war on drugs.  And we're surprised and upset when they lose?

Meanwhile in Colorado, and Washington state, they have made marijuana legal, and the world has not ended.  Those states have not been overrun by strung out hopheads infected with reefer madness.  Girls are not being raped in the street and children are not being killed with impunity.  But they are in Honduras, not because drugs are legal, but because they're illegal.

Legalization has some problems and there will be consequences, drugs do ruin lives.  But it's hard to imagine that legal drugs would ruin more lives, in more catastrophic fashion, than the war on them has over the past thirty years.

Heck, in this country we've found out that we like Oxycontin (legal), better than Heroin (illegal) anyway.