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.
Heresy hunting has nothing to do with truth or with goodness. It raw paranoid power, nothing more. Heresy hunters are bullies. They will take your lunch money everyday if you let them.
[I]t is hardest to give grace to grace killers. You know what I mean? And I say that because when I read blog posts similar to the one referenced, I know that I struggle with anger, and indignation with this sense of “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!” I struggle to remind myself of this, that I should give grace to the people who fail to use it. To be gentle in one’s criticism.
Now that the military says gays can be soldiers, I wonder when Presbyterians will allow them to be preachers of peace?
Ah, science. How many latter-day wrecks of the Edmund Fitzgerald are we going to need before we start paying attention again to what it has to tell us?
Then we shall be set free from the bondage of the letter, and be able to open our souls to the coming of the everlasting Spirit, which moves where it will, creating light and life in the midst of darkness and the shadow of death.
"Why is it that when we talk about blue-collar workers, 'competitive' means wage cuts, and when we talk about CEOs, 'competitive' means higher salaries?"
Tenn. editor visits Ground Zero, shares the experience with his readers and takes a stand
...
"This country was settled by people seeking religious tolerance, a pillar that was built deep into the American infrastructure. Surely we cannot move that pillar, and threaten the foundation, because of 19 people."
The first words spoken in the Hebrew Bible are, "Let there be light."
Let there be light today as we once again gather in community.
Let us feel the light of each others' lives.
Let us feel the light of the New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and the end of Ramadan.
Let us remember those we lost on September 11th.
Let this light remind us to bring our light into the world-our search for truth, appreciation of diversity and full inclusion.
Let it remind us to witness against those who would burn sacred texts, commit acts of terrorism, or deny that every one of us has inherent dignity and self worth.
Let this chalice represent what brings us back to our beloved community-the gifts of friendship, of wisdom, of insights, of encouragement, or support. Let this light remind us of our history, our knowing, our shared silence and our shared laughter, our shared tears, and our shared hopes for our futures.
May our lights be rekindled - as individuals, as friends, as family, as a church community.
Let there always be light.
"...the classical definition of a fanatic is someone who:
1) runs around in circles while
2) gesticulating wildly and
4) shouting nonsense and then
4) falls down and hurts himself."
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.-- and the other a much more nuanced assessment of the Tea Party movement than I have seen elsewhere:
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.)
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.
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.
In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?
To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic.
"What's there to imagine, Mr. Wise? Simply consider how low the threshold was for ACORN to have been vilified and ruined, and how quickly action was taken.
(And *then* add in the results of the separate investigations that have been conducted.) "
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