Searching for My Voice

More than a year ago I began a series of posts on politics. After the 2010 elections, I got stalled.

The reasons were many: family responsibilities, my struggle to manage a growing an overwhelming workload, but also an emotional paralysis that arose from the events that unfolded in my home state and in the nation over the last year.

I knew what I wanted to say, sort of, but I couldn't find the words or make the time to lay it all out.

Today I read this article in Yes! magazine. It comes as close as anything I have found to articulating where I have been moving, spiritually and politically, in recent years:

I participated because I have witnessed overwhelming evidence that the economic and political systems of my country stand against those people who the God I worship stands for. My conception of God, inadequate as it may be, is better described as the Love that generates creativity and community than as a super-man judging us from some heavenly skybox. Such a Love contrasts with everything that reserves power, dignity, wealth, or the status of full humanity for some while denying these things to others. My commitment to Love requires me to challenge the increasing consolidation of all these good things in the hands of a few, and to collaborate for the creation of something that Love would recognize as kin.

Read the whole thing here.

ETA: I'm not commenting here so much on the specifics of the Seattle event that the YES contributor referred to. Christine, in the comments, makes some good points about that. I'm speaking rather of the overarching spiritual and political point of view from which the writer comes, and to which he speaks.

Now, where this leads me day to day remains, for now, unclear.

I don't think it leads me out of either of my spiritual homes. It does sharpen my longing to live in both of them, together, more fully.

I don't know what it might imply for my professional life of 30-plus years or for the direction it might take going forward. That's a particular challenge because, given my very real life circumstances and responsibilities, I don't see the sort of freedom that might allow me to simply abandon my livelihood as it is now.

I almost didn't bother to write this post. As I said, I've been trying to put into words, for a very long time now, a collection of experiences, feelings, beliefs, yearnings, resolutions that are still too inarticulate for me to be able to put down on paper or keyboard. I'm not there yet, so what's the point in writing anything?

But I guess I have to start somewhere. So let it be here.

Oh yes, and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and a Happy 2012 to all.

A Song for Today

I've been ruminating about what, if anything, to write about today, and about this day 10 years ago. I have many thoughts, but they're not especially coherent right now. And I've been, and continue to be, preoccupied with work demands that have sucked out all of my time.

But taking a break just now, I saw this over at Will's blog.

It's a simple summation of the feelings I hold most tenderly as I think back on that day.

An anniversary to remember

From "The Writer's Almanac" for today:

It was on this day in 1940 that Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land" — now one of America's most famous folk songs.

The melody is to an old Baptist hymn. Guthrie wrote the song in response to the grandiose "God Bless America" song, written by Irving Berlin and sung by Kate Smith. Guthrie didn't think that the anthem represented his own or many other Americans' experience with America. So he wrote a folk song as a response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," a song that was often accompanied by an orchestra. At first, Guthrie titled his own song "God Blessed America" — past tense. Later, he changed the title to "This Land is Your Land," which is the first line of the song.

Or, for a little more upbeat version:



It's been another unplanned hiatus here at the blog. I think it's going to end soon.

'Waiting for Superman'

I haven't yet seen "Waiting for Superman," the new documentary about education reform, but what I've heard so far about it makes me skeptical.

Full disclosure: I do editorial work for a group of education scholars who bring both rigorous scholarship and progressive values to the subject of school reform. I happen to believe that their scholarship is far more soundly based than the work of most of the loudest voices in the school reform debates, but my relationship with them arguably makes me biased. For that reason, I don't often directly engage education myself, here or in my day-to-day writing.

But I was heartened to see this rebuttal to the memes that appear to be embedded in the "Superman" movie.

I do not think that public schools are free of problems. But I detest the way the discussion over making them better has become so bound up with failed, market-based ideologies while ignoring the complexity of the problem and the multiple contexts of class, poverty, cultural divides and political dysfunction in which those schools operate.

"Disestablish Your Congregation"

Dan Harper on Liberal Religion as Countercultural. And I will assert it is as relevant to progressive Christians as it is to Unitarian Universalists.

(And thanks to Will for pointing me to it.)

"Doing God's Work"

Two decades ago I covered labor for a major metropolitan newspaper, and in that capacity attended the United Auto Workers 1989 convention in Anaheim, California. At a previous UAW event I had already met the union's chief PR guy, and I met with him again this time. I was quite surprised to learn that he was soon to leave the union to attend divinity school.

Today Peter Laarman is executive director of a progressive Christian social justice group in Southern California and ordained in the United Church of Christ.

A friend of mine posted a link to this essay by Laarman at Religion Dispatches, a progressive religion news and commentary web site. The whole thing is very worth reading, but two passages stood out for me especially: One a critique of the media,

This was evidence, as if more were needed, of the way members of the upper echelons in government, law, and finance defer to each other. These elegantly-attired “achievatrons” (in Lewis Lapham’s coinage) merely enact a kind of kabuki when they pretend to have a spat.

It would be good if just once in a while, the corporate media would take note of this kabuki dimension. But the media’s major talking heads have their own theatrics to attend to. Witness the chatter on CNBC, Bloomberg, and CNN over whether putting some transparency into derivatives markets, limiting highly-leveraged bets, etc., would “stifle innovation.”

To my knowledge, no one holding forth on this question ever bothered to interrogate that word innovation even a tiny little bit. Last week CNN’s unsavory Ali Velshi brandished the word as a shibboleth and accused morning anchor Tony Harris of threatening to bring down the “dynamic” U.S. economy because sweet Tony dared to say that he longed for the old-fashioned kind of stock trading—the kind where your broker actually finds you a solid investment in a real enterprise. (Dynamic: there’s more throwaway jargon begging for interrogation.)

-- and the other a much more nuanced assessment of the Tea Party movement than I have seen elsewhere:

That the Tea Party crowd are actually slightly more affluent than average actually points to the precise nature of this revulsion: these people feel, with some degree of justification, that they worked hard for everything they have. And they have a sneaking suspicion—warranted, as it turns out—that today’s nattily-dressed Wall Streeters and high-level politicians have been able to ride a fast track to privilege and serious money based on insider connections, access to certain schools, etc. They have a sneaking suspicion—also warranted—that these new-class elites take advantage of special tax breaks and other sweet deals even as they continue to make the rules for everyone else and even as they decide what interest rates we drones will have to pay and what level of taxation we will have to bear.

Do not expect Main Street’s visceral rage over such presumptions of privilege—and over the special moral exemptions the excessively over-privileged carve out for themselves—to subside anytime soon. And because that rage is mixed up with so much racism and anti-Semitism and identity anxiety, it could not be more dangerous.

I don't think this necessarily contradicts the points made in a post I put up a few days ago. I do think both offer important insights.

Caesar's week, God's world

A commenter posted this at the Hot Stove Report (the running update on newly named candidates for UU ministry) on Facebook. It is attributed to the late Roger A. Cowan:

And so we come on our donkeys,
Some from Detroit and some from Tokyo and even a few from Seoul.
With horns blaring and brakes screeching,
We enter the city, the holy of holies.
We know what Caesar wants:
Testing ranges and new arenas while the homeless haunt church basements
and the poor shuffle in the streets.
But we march to a different drummer.
Not many rich, not many mighty.
A vagabond crew in a strange land,
Whose ways are not our ways
Nor thoughts our thoughts.
But let us be of good cheer.
Let the word go out.
The donkey is mightier than the missile.
And flowers have been known to split a rock.
This week moves inexorably toward Friday.
It is Caesar’s week.
But it is God’s world.
And so we take heart and rejoice. Amen.

May it be so.
Blessed be.
Amen.
Ho.

The Kingdom of God

Today's post comes courtesy of John Vest, associate pastor for youth ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago.

Fourth was DairyStateMom's previous church, before she moved north of the border to become DairyStateMom; she still gets the church's daily devotions on e-mail. Mr. Vest's devotion for today, January 5th, is a timely reminder that Christianity is not the exclusive province of the fundamentalists whose particular take on the religion dominates both the media and the head-space of Christianity's harshest critics.

I reprint it here with Mr. Vest's kind permission. As he told me, "It certainly looks like we share some common callings." Indeed, it does.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Scripture Reading: Revelation 21:1-4
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away." (NRSV)

Reflection
The kind of Christianity I grew up in was all about what happens when you die. The goal of life was to make it into heaven instead of hell, and the way to do that was to profess faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior--which really meant to accept a narrowly defined list of doctrines as the absolute truth. Apart from this kind of "faith" and this kind of orthodoxy, neither truth nor eternal life were possible.

After many years of wrestling with this kind of Christianity, and with the help of many faithful companions and spiritual leaders, I arrived at the conclusion that this is not what authentic Christianity is about at all. Instead, Christianity is about the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about is right here and right now. Life isn't about preparing for the afterlife. The gospel isn't good news deferred; it is good news for today. It is the hope and promise and inspiration for nothing less than the transformation of the world.

That is what John of Patmos envisioned when he wrote about a new heaven and a new earth. It isn't about us going to heaven; it's about heaven coming to us. As Jesus put it, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

This is some good news that the world needs to hear from the church. Let's not be timid about sharing it.

Prayer

God, help me to be an active agent of your transforming love. Inspire me with a vision of your kingdom, and give me the courage to be a part of it now. Amen.

Written by John W. Vest,
Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

More like this, please

In the New York Times of November 23: Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship

What distinguishes the “amigos,” who live in Seattle but make presentations around the country, is a unique approach to what they call “the spirituality of interfaith relations.” At the church in Nashville, the three clergymen, dressed in dark blazers, stood up one by one and declared what they most valued as the core teachings of their tradition The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.”

The room then grew quiet as each stood and recited what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith. The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

h/t to DairyStateMom for the link.

And Happy Thanksgiving to all

Prayer Cards online

Broad Street Ministry is a Presbyterian-connected, progressively oriented, alternative church community in Philadelphia. I recently learned of it tangential to an article I'm working on.

At the community's weekly bible study, participants can submit prayer cards that are read as part of the service. Then they are posted online with identifying information redacted so that the world can participate in praying with the supplicants. To read it is a moving experience, cracking open the heart to see inside the lives and faiths of a diverse group of people.

On hate crimes, comic strips, and offending the reader

For most of my life, I probably was a reflexive supporter of the notion of prosecuting certain acts as "hate crimes" and of extending the umbrella of hate crime legislation to protect more and more marginalized groups.

Over the years, I've come to conclude that the attempt to define and prosecute hate crimes is misguided. I says this somewhat reluctantly, because I do believe the desire to recognize and prosecute hate crimes comes from a basically honorable motivation.

The blogger Andrew Sullivan first got me thinking about this differently (the link is to a representative comment by him on the subject), and just recently Paul Oakley's take on the issue was for me compelling enough to clarify my own thinking once and for all.

Now comes word that, in response to pickets, the paper Newsday is apologizing for, and wishing it hadn't published, a cartoon mocking the notion of hate crimes.

The timing, I'll admit, was unfortunate. Just a week before the cartoon ran was the one-year anniversary of the death of an Ecuadorean immigrant at the hands of teenagers who stabbed him to death. And the paper's coverage of immigration issues became a lightning rod for protesters. I'm unable to judge the paper on that specific subject, but I do know that Newsday has a long and basically good reputation for serious community and investigative journalism, although its ownership has changed recently.

But the fact is, the cartoon in question (an episode of Mallard Fillmore) makes a point, although perhaps not as deftly as one would want. And I say this as a non-fan of Mallard Fillmore who was quite happy when one of our local papers dropped the strip a few years ago.

The strip (description courtesy of Richard Prince, quoting a Newsday report on the controversy)

depicted a larger dinosaur chasing a small one. The bigger one says, 'I'm not chasing you because you're a pachycephalosaurus. . . . I'm chasing you because you're delicious.' The smaller dinosaur responds, 'Oh, thank goodness. I was worried that this might be a hate crime.'

Dead is dead. Beaten is beaten. Maimed is maimed. Raped is raped. Doesn't it make sense to punish people based on the consequences of their actions, rather than the thoughts in their heads? If a mugger kills me for my wallet, or kills my friend because he's gay, does the reason for the killing really warrant a different kind of sentence?

Now I'm not against labeling an act, where appropriate, as a hate crime--but I see that basically as a sociological exercise. I just have trouble seeing how that's relevant from the strict standpoint of criminal justice.

One other thing disturbs me about the Newsday episode.

"We expect the cartoons we publish, many of which are nationally syndicated, to amuse, stir and entertain, but never to offend," a spokewoman for the newspaper said in a statement.

Hmmm... Regardless of my own opinion on hate crimes -- is never to offend really the standard that the paper expects to reach? That seems to set the bar so high that all that would pass is pablum.

Sad about Maine

We had had a glimmer of hope that the people of Maine might, indeed, become the first state to ratify marriage equality at the ballot box. It was not to be.

I do have faith, though, that somewhere, sooner or later, it will happen.

Where we live, our fellow residents fairly soundly passed a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage three years ago.

Since then, though, we've been seeing billboards like these pop up around the area.

They touch me every time I see them.

And I think that's what it's going to take: More and more people finding out that people who live near them and interact in their lives just happen to be gay. Over time, I hope they'll come to see that the rights and privileges all of us get who are fortunate enough to be able to marry the partner of our dreams belong to those whose partners, and dreams, are different from their own.

Go read this

Will Shetterly on the dangers of self defense.