Reconstructing Christianity

2012-02-10T14:29:00.001-08:00

“May I have a name, please?” the kind young woman asked as she finished relaying my tall latte order to her co-worker.

In the nanosecond or two that bridged the gap between her question and my response, a strange and potent power seemed to make its presence known deep within the gaps of my psyche. Here was my chance, I surmised, to change my identity. I could, with the ease of unchallenged conversation, simply become someone other than myself.

For instance, I might stare deeply into her rather unresponsive hazel eyes and say, “They call me Steel” and see if such nomenclature might buckle her probably aching knees. Or, if I was feeling a need to convince myself and any overhearing others that I possess intellectual powers now abundantly lacking, I might respond to her innocent request by squinting more than a little, push the bridge of my glasses higher up on my formidable nose and say, “Albert” or, “Leonardo”, if I’m feeling that bold.

My mother once mentioned that I bore a striking resemblance to Paul Newman or maybe it was Danny DeVito. No matter. Now was my chance to try on either for size. Actually, I have for many years now spent too much time wondering what it would be like to have a book on the bestseller list. I could say “John” (as in Grisham) or “Chicken” (as in Soup).

Isn’t this fun? OK maybe fun isn’t exactly the right word but surely you can see the myriad of possibilities that present themselves. You call the restaurant to make your reservation but instead of something as prosaic as Jones or Smith or Mayfield, we get to say, “Ferrari” or “Gates” or maybe “Eli Manning” if you’re feeling really cheeky. I’ll bet the table waiting for you won’t be by the bathroom door.

I probably shouldn’t admit this but, just between you and me, I sometimes am not completely honest when someone asks what it is I did before I retired. Like changing my name, I have been tempted not to fully reveal my former professional status to strangers. Over the years I have found such a pronouncement can, and very quickly, end conversation and put dampers on any fun. Once on a chairlift, I was, most hospitably, offered a toke on my seat-partner’s marijuana joint. My smiling declination did not prevent him from sharing two-thirds of his life story by the time we were half way up the lift. As we hit the mid-point, he inquired as to my profession. Honestly I told him and, honestly, he never said another word.

Another time, on a two and a half hour flight to California, the fellow sitting next to me offered me something very different than my acquaintance on the lift. This guy gave me nothing more than a big smile. But then he opened up a Bible and began to feverishly take notes, underlining whole chapters. He would frequently turn toward me in a not too subtle invitation to conversation. I buried myself in my book and pretended not to notice his very public piety. Had he asked I would, without question, have told him anything but the truth. I’m nauseous enough when I fly.

“Pierre”, I could say with one raised eyebrow, hinting of exotic locales. “Igor” I could grunt and experience, if only momentarily, what it might be like to be an intimidator rather than always the intimidatee.

My dad had the wonderful name “Max”, although I never appreciated it when I was a kid. I wanted an old man with a moniker like “Joe” or “Bud”. “Max” always seemed more mousy than macho. People named their dogs “Max” not their people. Only now that he’s gone I miss hearing his name. So here was my chance to honor his memory. Should I take it?

I once knew a man named “Caroll”. Johnny Cash knew a boy named “Sue”. I have a male friend named, “Joy”. Would it be too shocking to tell her my name was “Charlotte”? Would the laugh be worth the embarrassment of innocently shouting out “Margaret”?

The possibilities are many, the risks reasonably few. Here was my chance, at least for the moment, to alter my past, leave my mistakes behind and start completely anew.

I bit my lower lip and took a deep breath.

“Rich”, I said.

2012-01-24T17:03:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered who all those people are who are listed in the credits at the end of a movie? Do you have any idea of what a Key Grip does or how a woman can be a Best Boy? How in the world can there be so many people involved in the making of one little film?

Before I ever earned the “Rev.” before my name, I spent a good many years working in television and motion pictures. Indeed, there are a few movies where I am listed as one of those interminable names at the end. I have been not only a Key Grip and a Best Boy but a Gaffer, a Boomer, a Loader, a Puller, an A.D., an Assistant to the A.D., a 2^nd Unit Director and, believe it or not, a stunt car driver. Although the memory dims, I think I can still remember just what each job entailed although I am a little fuzzy over what my responsibilities were back when I was paid to be a Clapper. I know it didn’t have anything to do with applauding.

Such reminiscing calls me to reflect on the myriad of folk who have had a hand in my own making. Leading roles would go, of course, to my parents but the list of credits would be long and probably, much like the movies, of not great interest to anyone but those whose names are listed.

Nevertheless, it seems a worthy exercise to ponder just precisely who would be on the rolling credit when my life finally goes to black.

I would have to include my first grade teacher, Miss Schwartz, who planted the seed of reading pleasure deep within my soul. In that same category, although I cannot remember any names, I would honor the librarians at the Westchester Public Library in Los Angeles who allowed me to spend hours taking up valuable space just paging through old Life magazines and re-reading Beverly Cleary books.

I don’t know what I would call them: Molders and Shapers? This would be a long list that would contain all those dear people who sacrificed time and energy to get me where I’ve gotten. I doubt many of them ever imagined I’d end up working in the religion biz but, in some strange and mysterious way, because of them I did. I’m thinking now of Mr. Lopez from High School English Class who wouldn’t allow me to just get by. Curiously, I would also give credit to the college counselor who in my freshman year told me to save my parents’ money and drop out now. Her lack of conviction in my abilities, I am convinced, made me all the more able.

Teachers seem to make up a lot of my credit list. Part of that is because I have spent so much time in and around schools but it also reminds me of what a sacred profession teaching is. The power these men and women have in the lives of all of us should give us pause. It should also compel us to make sure they are the very best our society can offer. It is an interesting commentary on all of us that we pay teachers so little and expect from them so much.

Antithetically, I would list Reginald DuPree as “Reality Doser”. DuPree was my first employer out of college. When he hired me to work in his Import/Export business he took note of a proud fact I had listed on my resume. “Oh, I see you’re a college graduate.” he said to me. When I smugly smiled he went on to say, “I’ll give you an extra $25 a month for that.”

As the credits continue to roll, I would have to add a long list of names under the title “Inspirers”. Included would be the famous and the almost forgotten, all those who, by their lives, encouraged me onward and outward. Some of the great writers would be on this list but so would some of the not so great. I am humbled to remember how certain folk have reached out to me in the course of their lives and changed the course of my own.

I remember casually mentioning to a friend a long time ago that my wife and I were pregnant. “Oh brother is your life going to change!” is what he said and what he said was absolutely true. Under “Life Changers” I’d list three. Under “Life Sustainer” I’d list just one: my wife, my lover, my dearest friend.

The list is long and growing longer so I’ll have to leave some space for other names between now and the inevitable The End.

2012-01-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

The recent release of the new movie production of John LeCarre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which involves the search for a mole within the British Secret Service, reminds me of another search closer to home that scandalized America and shook the FBI to its core.

His name is Robert Philip Hanssen and he was a 25-year career FBI agent who was arrested in 2001 for spying for the Soviets. His friends and neighbors, his co-workers and superiors, all expressed shock and disbelief. Apparently, Hanssen exhibited the most conservative and traditional of values as he went about his nefarious business. No one suspected that he was a willing participant in a terrible treachery.

All kinds of theories have been proposed as to how the man managed to pull off what the Justice Department called “possibly the worst case of intelligence disaster in US history”. Some suggest that he was simply in it for the thrill. Others say it was the money. I’ve read one analysis that plays with the idea that Hanssen was schizophrenic and literally led two parallel lives that never seemed to cross.

Interestingly to those of us who ponder issues of morality, there are some experts who believe that Hanssen may have managed to compartmentalize his life so much that he was totally unaware of the damage he was doing to others.

While serving in the FBI, Robert Phillip Hanssen was an active follower of Opus Dei, the ultra-conservative Roman Catholic organization that seeks a kind of Christianity more akin to the Middle-Ages than the 21^st Century. Opus Dei is rabidly anti-modern, anti-ecumenical and, most certainly anti-communist. Given this fervent religious conviction, it is almost unbelievable to think that Hanssen was involved in such a reactionary movement while, at the same time, selling secrets to the Russians.

Almost.

But haven’t we all met people who have, on a much smaller scale, acted in similar ways as did Mr. Hansen? Good, decent folk who have managed through intellectual self-manipulation to compartmentalize certain aspects of their lives so that they do not affect other aspects.

For instance, sensitive as I am to the foibles of ministers and priests, I have, on occasion, been both amused and a little shocked to find radar detectors on the dashboards of some of my peers. I wonder how they have managed to work out the seeming incongruity of a man or woman employed in an occupation based completely on honesty and trust with such a dishonest activity. They have managed, of course, because they see no connection between radar guns and religious activity.

Kids are good at pointing out this same incongruity. Sometimes they do it with their behavior rather than their voices. After all, if one’s normally honest and truthful parent brags of beating the government out of taxes that are rightfully owed, why should we blame a teenager for breaking the law in his or her own way? All they are doing is compartmentalizing their lives in the same way most of us adults do.

One of my heroes is the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin who spoke often of the need to have a “seamless garment” of philosophical consistency. If we claim to be pro-life in regard to the not yet born, we must also be pro-life in regard to capital punishment or reckless defense spending or the battle against AIDS or a host of other examples where being pro-life means more than picketing Planned Parenthood Clinics. Compartmentalizing allows us to ignore the inconsistencies that fill our lives.

For those of us who have worked in social services, an all too common example of compartmentalizing can be found in cases of abuse. Often the abuser leads an exemplary life in all areas but one, a very terrible one. Long ago I learned not to be surprised to discover that some of the most seemingly upright of folk are engaged in the most despicable of activities. Even more shocking, perhaps, is how often these perpetrators fail to see the incongruity in their lives. A lifetime of inconsistency can build a strong foundation for a future of contemptible incongruity.

There is an old saying in my circles about making sure you take the log out of your own eye before you point to the speck in another’s. Perhaps before condemning Mr. Hanssen and others like him, we search for similar inconsistencies in our own lives.

2012-01-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

Periodically, I find it both helpful and necessary to leave my routine and spend time reflecting on who I’ve become and what I want still to do. Such ruminating used to find a welcome home at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. There the dozen or so monks welcome those folk who, like me, need time apart.

It really is a lovely place. Like an island to a shipwrecked sailor, the monastery rests in the center of a vast valley. Each time I drove onto the property, a palpable sense of peace surrounded me. I cherish the memory of those holy times.

I would often bring more books than I should and make more plans than I ought. But then there were those times when I focused less on projects and more on place. Sitting with the brothers in their simple sanctuary, breathing deep and slow, I remembered again what really matters.

Contemplating those sacred times apart, my thoughts turn to the writing of Thomas Merton. Merton was a Trappist monk who captivated much of the world with his honest writings of the spiritual journey. A sentence or two from his work can be all the fodder one needs to feed the soul. I’ll never forget the time I was pulled up short with this profound thought: “The intention to please God, pleases God.” It may not seem like much to some but for those of us who live with questions and doubt, such a promise is deeply comforting.

And thinking of honest writers, one of my favorites is Anne Lamott whose take on things spiritual is quirky to say the least. Here’s one that I’ve been carrying around in my notebook waiting to share it with you: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.” That particular perspective is revealed, over and over again, in a couple of my favorite books by Anne: “Traveling Mercies” and “Bird by Bird”. Great reading for your next retreat.

Another resource for reflection comes not from a Christian monk but a Buddhist, Jack Kornfield. He reminds me again of the discipline involved in the spiritual quest with a clever quip: “There is no McMeditation.”

James Finley, whose book, “The Contemplative Heart,” is an excellent guide to take on your retreat. Finley used to have a poster in his office that read…“Things to do today: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.”

Going on retreat, whether to a beautiful monastery or to the privacy of, as Virginia Woolf put it, “a room of one’s own,” allows us to see the world around us in ways that can be transforming. Nikos Kazantzakis captured a sense of that conversion experience when he wrote… I said to the almond tree, “Sister, speak to me of God.” And the almond tree blossomed.

Toward the end of his life, Merton became keenly interested in Buddhism. In fact, he was in Bangkok dialoging with monks from all different religions the very day he was accidentally killed. Here is a comment of his that transcends religious differences and gets to the heart of any healthy spirituality: “What we have to be is what we are.”

If all this seems just too serious, allow me to offer one final quote from Merton’s profound pen: “What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as play is perhaps what God takes most seriously.”

It would be so helpful if just once when the preacher asks us all to bow our heads and assume the position of prayer; she’d give us a sly, little grin and say instead, “Let us play!”

2010-03-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

Mr. Arthur Mijares of Oakley, California, claims that God spoke to him recently and demanded he lead a campaign to change the name of his county's lone mountain from Mt. Diablo to Mt. Reagan.
"Diablo", as many of you already know, is Spanish for "devil" while "Reagan" is, as some of you passionately believe, English for much the same thing. So it comes as little surprise that Mijares' divinely mandated application for a name change has sparked some controversy among his neighbors in his San Francisco East Bay community. According to an article this week in The Los Angeles Times, more than 80,000 people have registered their opposition to the re-naming. Still Mr. Mijares persists claiming that the mountain's name is "derogatory, pejorative, offensive, obscene, blasphemous and profane."
Mr. Mijares describes himself as "an ordinary man that worships God," who received his instructions from the aforementioned divinity during his prayer time. Much like Moses, Mijares was initially reluctant, "Lord they're going to think I'm a loon." But religious man that he is, Mijares moved forward, filing the proper papers with the proper authorities. And that's when all hell broke loose.
Having lived for four years in the shadow of beautiful Mt. Diablo, I read with interest of Mr. Mijares' quixotic quest. Indeed, residing now in a county whose forebears' depleted imaginations have many of us living underneath mountains with the lackluster names of "Peak 7, 8, 9" and, not too surprisingly, "Peak 10," I was curious as to the implications of this attempt to alter the title of one of California's cherished landmarks for the sake of one man's claimed religious obligation.
Precedent would seem to favor God and Mr. Mijares. All of California's major cities are named in honor of either a saint, a sacrament or even an entire heavenly host of angels. Nevertheless, relying on that decidedly Christian tradition could be dangerous as Californians in the interceding years since their cities were named have become, how shall I say it, less traditionally religious. Way, way, way less.
The danger to God-hearing Christians is that these modern heretics might decide to file counter-appeals in an attempt to rid their state of the vestiges of the Spanish Catholicism that permeates California's history. If God makes a move on the devil at Mt. Diablo, there may be petitions from the dark side to change San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego into Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo and maybe even Fargo.
And please do not think that we in Colorado are safe from such mischievous maneuvering. When you have an entire mountain range named for the blood of Christ, we all should be taking notice of what is going on in Contra Costa County. For instance, just imagine what would happen if Colorado's Jews decided to mount a campaign to change the peaks of our Sangre de Cristos to something like The Mazel Tov Mountains. Oy veh!
Of course it isn't just the Jews that Christians should be worried about. Buddhists could demand Nederland be renamed Namaste and the Hindus could petition to make Aspen into Ashram...and it won't stop there! Every agnostic and atheist among us might start clamoring to take the tabernacle out of Tabernash and the trinity out of Trinidad!
Deciding on a completely secular designation, however, is not without its own problems. As evidence, one need only be reminded of such charming Colorado towns with dreadful names like Basalt, Silt and Rifle or, dare I mention, Leadville.
Here in Summit County we've managed through our naming to irritate the million or so folk from San Francisco who still growl at any tourist who deigns to designate their city as merely Frisco. And our own county seat of Breckenridge came to its name, as most locals know, only by altering the name of another. But Silverthorne has a real mountain ring to it and Dillon, Blue River and Copper Mountain are satisfyingly inoffensive...although anyone who has travelled south of the border may find the name, Montezuma, revengefully reminiscent.
In any case, word has arrived that the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors have voted unanimously to oppose the renaming. All of which means, of course, that the devil got his due.

2010-02-18T16:37:00.001-08:00

For a while there I was thinking that there wasn’t much of value coming from the far-right fringe of American politics. I mean listening to Texas school board members yammer on about the six days of creation or Sarah Palin on presidential death squads doesn’t exactly invite serious intellectual dialogue. Tea-partiers who pronounce America’s impending socialist-driven demise or social-security pensioners complaining about welfare abuse find most folk fairly immune to their anguished agitations.
But lately a new movement is taking shape that is finding fans on both sides of our immobilized political process. They’re being called “Tenthers” for their eagerness to invoke the 10th Amendment to the Constitution any time an edict out of Washington displeases them. These are folk who claim states’ rights still trump the federal government, who believe Mississippi matters more than these United States. Sound familiar? Thought we’d gone through this some 150 years ago? Well, here we go again…and some of us from the other side are thinking it’s not as wacko as some of you may at first think.
Secession has its good points. When someone like the secessionist-threatening Texas Governor Rick Perry urges his fellow fanatics with statements like…” (We are) willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.” It only gets liberals to thinking that maybe a Texas-less U.S. wouldn’t be all that bad.
With Texas off on its own, America would cut its capital punishment quotient by at least half and maybe even regain a little credibility among the world’s more civilized countries. And that is only the beginning of the benefits that could accrue if those who claim to want a very different nation than the one we’ve got, actually go. Think of it…Glenn Beck could begin his long anticipated career as the intellectual bellwether for a new confederation of un-united states! Rush Limbaugh could take charge in Florida and leave the rest of us to go on our merry, neo-Marxist way!
Oh the joy. Imagine a Senate without men like Richard Shelby who threw a procedural tantrum when he didn’t get enough pork sent his southern way. Shelby, you may remember, ingratiated himself to a certain segment of wingnutdom by demanding to see President Obama’s birth certificate during the last election. And, of course, the House of Representatives would reap immeasurable benefit by watching the backsides of malcontents like Congresswoman Michele Bachman who recently announced that it was time “to wean everyone off Social Security and Medicare.” Michele might have to move from Stillwater to San Antonio to live on the far-right side of a new Mason-Dixon Line but I’m sure many in Minnesota would appreciate it.
Now I know there are descendents from the last round of secessionists who would just as soon remain attached to the rest of us, but it is tantalizing to think of other ways in which a new confederacy could be of considerable benefit. As I understand it, a new secession of certain states would lower the U.S. crime rate significantly and raise our educational level dramatically. Our national health care costs would diminish along with our national debt since the annual per capita tax revenue from the original seceding states still doesn’t match the annual per capita governmental expenditures. I’ve been told divorce rates would fall, life-expectancy would rise and literacy rates improve for the rest of us if our secessionist friends would just take leave of us the way they have taken leave of their own senses.
“America: Love it or leave it!” was what we once heard from those who claimed to be this nation’s only true patriots. Some of us are thinking…maybe it’s time they follow their own advice?

2010-02-04T10:59:00.001-08:00

Rich Mayfield
For: 2-6-10
For most of my younger years the only authority I questioned was my mother who responded to my queries by chasing me around the house with a wooden spoon. I accepted the universal assertions that Ike was a hero, Khrushchev was the anti-Christ and Jesus was Norwegian. The first premise was affirmed by my fourth-grade teacher Mr. Albright, the second by our wild-eyed neighbor Frieda Hellman and the last by the plethora of paintings that hung in our little Lutheran church.
There He was, sculpted by his fine Scandinavian features…the long thin nose, the square jaw, the beautifully flowing hair with just the faintest of blond highlights. Anyone with an objective eye could see the heritage…especially if your name was Sven or Olav. That Bethlehem was over two thousand miles to the south did not seem to hinder the Aryan assumption that permeated our parish. It wasn’t until I had done some traveling that I realized Jesus probably looked more like Yasser Arafat than Charlton Heston.
That the image of Jesus has been altered by his adoring followers is evident right from the very beginning. Even the gospel writers didn’t completely agree on what he said or how he said it. (Passages happily provided.) By the time of Constantine in the early 4th century, Jesus’ cross had been flipped into a sword by which the converted Christian emperor could slay all those who opposed his new found faith.
More recently, Jesus’ fans have turned his teachings into polemics for free-market capitalism, Marxist-styled socialism and world-rebuking asceticism. Even Hitler had a task-force created to prove that Jesus didn’t have any Jewish blood.
In the 1970’s Jesus turned into a free-spirited superstar with a hit Broadway musical. In the more progressive churches, the Norwegian Jesus was replaced by one more closely resembling yippie Abbie Hoffman, contemptuously laughing at our uptight social mores and incessant material acquisitions. By the turn of this century, Jesus was primarily used to bolster big-time athletics with players bowing their heads before blasting out of the locker room hell-bent on being #1. TV evangelists by the score promise that Jesus wants us to be rich, beautiful and as buff as Brad and Angelina.
So I suppose I shouldn’t have been all that surprised when I read this week of the new alignment some of Jesus’ disciples have made with Mixed Martial Arts. If you’re not familiar with this apparently pleasant pastime for thousands of primarily young men, it involves getting into a ring, or sometimes a cage, and trying to beat the crap out of your opponent. This newly sanctified sport involves kickboxing, wrestling, fisticuffs and just about any other form of violent conflict this side of a .357 magnum. As I understand it, there are a growing number of churches that are sponsoring these testosterone-driven dramas as a means of garnering favor for Christianity among the violence-prone set. Interestingly, Ryan Dobson, son of Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family fame, is one of those spearheading (no pun intended) this evangelical campaign. According to Dobson the younger: “We’ve raised a generation of little boys.” Which I can only assume means Christianity is in need of big boys who like to fight each other. As a former pastor and sometimes Christian, I can report that Christianity already has enough of those guys.
I suppose there may be some believers who fall back on the old evangelical premise: “Whatever works” in their fervor to convert the fallen but I also suspect there are more than a few followers of Jesus who are scratching their heads over the logic employed. After all, what would Jesus say? (That’s easy)
“Uff da!”

2010-01-28T13:29:00.001-08:00

Somewhere I read that the actual amount of football being played in a 3½ hour NFL telecast is something like 11 minutes. Take away the huddles, timeouts, commercial breaks and the incredible amount of time spent reviewing previous plays and what you come up with is a little over ten minutes of actual football.
I thought of that interesting statistic while watching President Obama’s State of the Union address on Thursday night. It took over an hour to deliver but remove the inordinate amount of time it took the Democrats to rise up out of their seats in one more standing ovation and I’ll bet the speech could have fit into a Super Bowl halftime.
I exaggerate. I also admit to a certain admiration for the aerobic attributes of the many aged Democrats who stood up and sat down with such fervor and frequency one would have thought our president was leading an exercise class for senior citizens at the local rec-center.
Not so the Republicans. Glumly they sat as if daring Obama to just try and make them smile. Just try. Watching them reminded me of a time many years ago when I was the visiting preacher at a very traditional church in Pennsylvania. Because I think a little levity can go a long way in promoting the gospel, I offered up some of my best one-liners to the folk sitting in the pews, gags guaranteed to garner guffaws from the faithful. But there was nothing. The congregation just looked back at me utterly expressionless. It was sickeningly apparent to me that I was facing grim, grimacing practitioners of a kind of old-fashioned Protestantism that didn’t take kindly to levity. Nevertheless, I persevered, the only smile to greet me or my message coming from my wife sitting faithfully in the front pew. It came as something of a surprise then as I was shaking hands with these sober Lutherans filing past me on their way to whatever humorless pursuits filled their Sunday afternoons that one gentleman took my hand, looked me in the eye and with the slightest hint of a wink said, “Good job, pastor. You almost made me laugh!”
Almost. I don’t think our president even got that close with the Republicans. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, sat like a statue, unmoving, which, I thought, was an accurate representation of his party. Although there are many of us independents disenchanted with the laughable leadership of the Democratic Party at the moment, the Republicans have yet to offer anything close to a viable alternative. Indeed, they have offered no alternatives at all. “No” seems to be the entire platform of the current G.O.P. Given the current political climate in our country, it may be enough to garner some more seats in Congress but once the Republicans arrive will they have any idea what to do?
At least no one from the right made any cat-calls or rude accusations, not that I could hear, anyway. I suspect they were told to be on their best behavior. Making certain a continuing paralysis grips the democratic process and no meaningful legislation is ever passed for the next three years must be considered best behavior, as well.
Is it any wonder the public grows more and more cynical? Watching the smug smiles of those daring the president to try and pass any legislation, does give one pause. I appreciated the president turning to that somber collection of conservatives and inviting them into the policy making process. “If the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics but it’s not leadership.”
Surely somewhere out among those solemn senators there exists one or two politicians who actually believe that being in Congress carries a certain responsibility beyond lining one’s own or one’s constituency’s pockets. Surely there are one or two Republicans who can remember a time not all that long ago when being the loyal opposition meant working out compromises and forging coalitions. Surely there is someone amongst that severe gathering who has the faith in what our founding fathers created to re-start the process by reaching out a hand, looking the president in the eye and admitting with a wink, “You almost made me laugh!”

2010-01-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

There’s been a dearth of good news lately and not just for the Democrats. The front page of most newspapers is a daily reminder of the vagaries of life on our planet and the subsequent sorrows, aggravation and anger that result. It is no wonder that Hollywood reports attendance at the movies is up again this year. Apparently and understandably, people prefer to peruse the entertainment pages for respite from the dreariness of the first few sections of the paper.
It was with that very sense of escapism that I came across an interesting site on the net hosted by Nic Baisley (www.filmsnobbery.com) that listed his 50 most important religious films of all time. Since I have an abiding interest in both religion and film and with only cheerless columns of commentary set out before me, it was easy to wile away an afternoon studying his choices and wondering about my own.
Topping his list was Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”. This one’s been around for over 50 years and anyone over that age has probably seen it more than once. I remember the first time it was thrust upon me. I was an impressionable teenager when our church youth group attended a wide-screen showing of the epic starring Charlton Heston as Mr. Moses. There were some great special effects to be sure but I left haunted by the premise that the God who we sang hymns to each Sunday was the same one who not only tormented thousands of innocent Egyptians with frogs, flies and a really nasty outbreak of acne but rather cavalierly concluded that the death of every first-born was a reasonable punishment for impiety. My theological concerns diminished on the ride home as we all recounted how cool it was to watch Pharaoh’s foot soldiers deep sixed in the Red Sea. Still, I remember offering up a little prayer of gratitude to God just in case He decided to pop off another generation of first-borns. “Thank you God for older brothers,” is what I said.
Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” came in at #6 which may seem high to some but those of us who have spent a good portion of our lives studying the life of Jesus understand how this one of Brian’s deserves the spot. One of the best critiques of the problems inherent in biblical oral tradition can be found in the scene where Jesus is giving the Sermon on the Mount and those on the edge of the crowd are struggling to hear the rabbi from Nazareth: “What’s he saying?,” someone asks. “It sounds like ‘Blessed are the cheese-makers,” someone else replies. And the word spreads. Soon a whole industry in cheese-making sweeps through the Middle East bringing great wealth to some, vast pride for others and all of it based on a misinterpretation of some very holy words. Anyone who has watched some of the televangelists tearfully declare that the end of the world is nigh or that the God who has a very biblical bias for the poor wants you to be rich understand why this apparent film farce is anything but.
I looked in vain for “Life is Beautiful”, Roberto Benigni’s great paean to hope portrayed amidst the misery of fascist anti-Semitism. Nor did I find my favorite religious film of all time: “Babette’s Feast” on the list. This 1987 Danish movie depicts the deep joy found in sharing one’s life with others and thus captures the essence of all healthy religion.
“The Greatest Story Ever Told” just barely gets in at #47. In the summer of 1965, I stood through this film nearly 100 times while working as an usher at a theatre on the corner of Sunset and Vine. I believe it was the most expensive film to date and I know it employed just about every out of work celebrity in Hollywood at the time. Would you believe Sal Mineo and Robert Blake as disciples? Or Jamie Farr as another of the twelve? Jamie, some of you elders will remember, went on to great fame playing the cross-dressing Klinger on TV’s long-running “M.A.S.H.” And speaking of oldies but goodies…what about Pat Boone as the angel at the tomb? I kid you not.
Although the actor portraying Jesus, the Swede, Max von Sydow, couldn’t speak a word of English back then, he did manage to clearly say, “Blessed are the peace-makers.” But Jose Ferrer, who played King Herod and presumably spoke English very well, makes a muddle of a line that comes out: “What do you know about a nam maimed Jesus?” Next time you’re feeling particularly pious, give this one a screening and see if it doesn’t sound that way to you. It really is a great story but after all those viewings, I’m not so sure this is the way it should be told.
NOTE: Last week I wrote of Adam Beitscher’s powerful plea for help for Haiti but I neglected to mention it was co-written by his fiancé, Alison Quinn. Thanks to both of you!

2010-01-14T12:59:00.001-08:00

Sitting, staring, wondering what could possibly be said about the tragedy in Haiti when I received the following from Summit High School graduate, Adam Beitscher. Adam graduated from SHS in 2001 and is now in medical school in Washington D.C. When he is not studying, he volunteers in third world countries. Last time we talked, he was planning on being a medical missionary. His words are compassionate and his idea creative enough to deserve a wider audience…
“Though some of the statements with the news of Haiti have been infuriating, this was written not to be about politics or religion, but rather progress and, hopefully, moving forward from the hell that has enveloped Haiti; because whether or not idiotic claims by zealots (read: Pat Robertson) are analyzed, it has no effect on the millions suffering and dying there.
Maybe we pull for the underdog – and if we’re honest with things, the Haitian poor would be underdogs in a competition against other underdogs of the world – but for some unexplainable reason this disaster strikes a very profound chord with us. Maybe it is because we had an opportunity to walk with the people there, witness their reality. All we know is that something about the country is intoxicating. In some strange way we feel connected with the Haitian people and desire to work with them for a justice that has been so wrongly denied them for so long. Reading a history of the people and their country, like Paul Farmer’s The Uses of Haiti, elucidates how this half of such a small island could be a tiny example of what some extraordinarily unjust practices of globalization and neo-colonialism have accomplished. Though this is not about the past, with some understanding of Haiti’s past maybe it will help what happens from this tragic moment on in the country’s history. Maybe nothing symbolizes that greater than the image of the Presidential palace, an homage to himself by François Duvalier – one of the most violent and evil dictators ever – toppled in on itself.
We have all seen the photographs. We can hear the cries for help from dust covered, bloody faces. We feel life’s fragility when we see bodies of the deceased piled into the streets. This stirs within us something which makes us forget ourselves, our problems, and focuses our sights and emotions on our common humanity. Our human response is often to help in any way possible. The difficult question is always “how?!” And if we do not know of a concrete way to give, we miss the chance. The emotions, pictures, and feelings subside, and people move on with their day to day.
So, at this present moment, with Haiti on the tips of tongues all across the globe, we will see a wonderful human response of agape in Haiti. In fact I’m sure that it has already begun. So this is merely a plea to further that response. Huge governmental aid packages are underway, yet we all know that this is not necessarily the most efficient way to get the money and supplies where it needs to go. I am suggesting a very simple commitment from people that would drastically alter the lives of millions whose world was just destroyed. My suggestion is that for one hour, yes, just one hour in the next month, every person donates that hour’s salary to Haiti (.625% of your monthly salary). So let’s set an arbitrary time: From 1-2 pm on Friday, January 22nd, 2010. At 2:01 pm if everybody donated that past hour’s time, how much could we raise? No matter where you are from, we could all join in solidarity with Haiti for at the least one hour, working together for relief. Tout kapab se Aiysyen pou youn heure!
“So where do I donate?” The Red Cross is always a good option. We prefer donating to organizations that have a constant presence in an area and a relationship to the people. Because of those relationships, we believe, there is more of an investment and more accountability of the organization.
Partners In Health (PIH) is our favorite option. PIH has been working in Haiti for over 20 years with the Haitian poor, delivering health care to those in need. PIH http://pih.org/home.html is one of the most well run organizations I have ever learned about and one of the highest rated non-profits according to http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4884. If you find yourself wanting to help, please support their efforts. I am sure that if any group can start to build Haiti, they can. https://donate.pih.org/page/contribute/donate
We have just finished donating to PIH and if we can find money in our budgets as graduate students, we hope that you can find one hour’s salary, or whatever amount you can in your budget, and help restore sanity to a devastated country.”

2010-01-07T12:58:00.001-08:00

I’m not sure when the maxim came into being but being warned to “Be careful what you wish for…” probably was in circulation back in 1170 when King Henry II pondered aloud over his problem with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” is what the king was purported to have said loud enough to ignite the imaginations of four knights who promptly fulfilled the ruler’s wish by murdering Becket as he knelt in prayer.
Last week’s anniversary of that centuries-old scandal came too late to serve as a reminder to three American Evangelical Christian missionaries who gave a series of talks in Kampala, Uganda last March that focused on the threat traditional family values faced from homosexuals and the so-called homosexual agenda. Scott Lively, author of “Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child” joined with Exodus International’s Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge to warn the Ugandans of the horrors that awaited those who ignored their collective counsel on the dangers of homosexuality in general and homosexuals in particular. (Exodus International is an organization committed to urging homosexuals to forego their lifestyles. Caleb Brundidge is a self-proclaimed “former gay-man”.)
In any case, the three crusaders may have got more than they wished for when, shortly after the men worked the faithful into a frenzy, the government of Uganda began considering legislation to make homosexuality a capital offense. The resultant threats from America and others of reduced aid to the impoverished African country forced the Ugandan government to back off from threatening to execute homosexuals and now promise only to imprison them for life.
Such systematized homophobia may be abhorrent to most of us but it is the logical extension of the kind of rhetoric employed by many of those involved in anti-homosexual activities. From snide remarks to sermonic rants, the words of condemnation can quickly morph into a rationale for insidious action. Although the three evangelists now appear to be both apologetic and appalled by what came of their preaching, they also seem to have underestimated the power of persuasion, particularly when it has the backing of God. Mr. Lively wrote in his blog last March:
“The Ugandan people are strongly pro-family, and there is a large Christian population which is much more activist minded than that of most western countries. However, the international gay movement has devoted a lot of resources to transforming the moral culture from a marriage-based one to one that embraces sexual anarchy. Just as in the U.S. many years ago they are leading with pornography to weaken the moral fiber of the people, and propagandizing the children behind the parent’s backs. On the TV show we exposed a book distributed to schools by UNICEF that normalizes homosexuality to teenagers. (We expect a massive protest by parents, who are mostly not aware that such materials even exist in their country, let alone in their children’s classrooms.)”
When the “massive protest” turned to demands to execute all homosexuals the Christians claim to be shocked. “I feel duped,” is how Mr. Schmierer put it. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.” Nice, but damned according to the doctrine and if damned then, logic would have it, deserving of eternal punishment and if deserving of punishment in the next life, why not in this life as well? How about a nice Ugandan “massive protest” to show them we mean business? Oops. Sorry.
The language of exclusion and damnation can be powerful motivators among those who find hating their enemies much easier than loving them. The recent murder of the medical director of a Wichita women’s health clinic, Dr. George Tiller, by an anti-abortionist who still claims to have only done the work of God, is additional evidence that those who do the motivating must bear some responsibility for the resultant mayhem.
King Henry got his wish 840 years ago but the outcry over the archbishop’s murder quickly turned the people against him. In 1174, King Henry repented of his responsibility for Becket’s death and donned sack-cloth and ashes, walking through the streets of Canterbury while eighty monks ceremoniously whipped him with branches.
I can only wish that bit of ancient history serves as a modern warning to Messrs. Lively, Schmierer and Brundidge.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-12-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

“You never ask questions when God’s on your side.”

Since Bob Dylan wrote those lyrics back in the early ‘60s he’s gone through a few transformations, religious and otherwise, but his words still resonate and seem even more appropriate today.

There was a gathering this past Wednesday in Pretoria, South Africa to celebrate the Day of the Vow by thousands of descendents of the racist Afrikaners. It was on December 16, 1838 that a group of white settlers from Europe promised God to remember the day forever if God would only allow a little slaughter of the natives to take place. And so it happened! Over 3000 black warriors were killed as they attacked the settlers. Only 3 Afrikaners were injured in the battle. And, as promised, the annual commemoration takes place complete with the recitation of the ancient vow. The news report I read in the New York Times included this comment: “We believe it was God’s will to have Christians lead the way in this land,” said Lukas de Kock, one of the leaders of Wednesday’s worship. “On that day, the Day of the Vow, God made a clear statement that this was his will for South Africa.”
It must be very comforting to the folk who still think apartheid was a good policy to know that God is as angry at Nelson Mandela as they are.

In like manner, our allies in Israel who continue to maintain the belief that God ordained their occupation of that sliver of land in the Middle East adamantly, even violently at times, defend their belief in God’s unquestionable mandate for their people.

And when one more Muslim suicide bomber detonates his body while crying out: "Allahu akhbar" (God is great), those who survive are reminded, once again, that some of the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who believe God is on their side.

Oral Roberts died this past week at the grand age of 91. Oral was a most successful purveyor of this same theological principle. Indeed, Roberts was so convinced that he and God were in such close communication that he once told his millions of followers that God would smite him dead if they didn’t come up with a substantial amount of cash by next Tuesday. The fact that they did what they were told and God subsequently didn’t do what he threatened only underscored everyone’s conviction that Oral and the Alpha-Omega were the best of buddies.

There have been many news reports that the U.S. Air Force academy in recent years suggested a similar alliance between the almighty and America. Some cadets even complained that they had been subjected to systematic campaigns to try and convince them that Christianity is a prerequisite for patriotism. A U.S. Air Force investigation in 2005 revealed that many of allegations were justified including a disturbing verification that the commandant made no apologies for his Christ and Country alignment, even introducing a “Jesus…Rocks” call and response chant to all the cadets. Those of you who follow football may remember the AFA’s coach calling his players the “Jesus’ Team”.

It makes sense, I suppose, to make sure the most powerful part of your arsenal is God, but it does seem more than a little self-serving to assume that the Great God Almighty always liked you best. Such thinking wouldn’t be of much comfort to the millions of innocent men and women, boys and girls, who have been obliterated by armies marching in the name of God.

With Christmas right around the corner, it may behoove those of us who claim to be Christians to stop and ponder another verse from Dylan’s perceptive musical poem:
“In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss.
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.”

The Practicing Progressive

2009-12-10T10:32:00.000-08:00

It used to be one of my favorite anecdotes. It concerned a confrontation many years back between Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, and The Reverend William Coffin, then chaplain at Yale University. They were arguing over the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The discussion was growing more and more heated until finally the Secretary said, “OK Bill, you tell me how to bring this war to an end!” Whereupon the noted cleric announced, “My job is to proclaim that ‘justice must roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ Your job, Mr. Kissinger, is to work out the details of the irrigation system.”

I always liked how the role of the political critic or in this case, the religious prophet, left the resolution of the particular problem to others and was free to go on his merry way pointing out other issues with equal contempt for the difficult details of resolution. I still think there is a role for the critic/prophet in today’s world but I am less inclined to allow them the luxury Pastor Coffin claimed. Although I continue to want to be made aware of the many injustices that plague our planet, I am giving less credence to those who only complain and much more to those willing to find solutions.

I suspect most Americans are growing tired of the endless stonewalling of legislation by the nay-sayers in Congress. Countless childish strategies are being employed by those who didn’t get their way in the last election to make sure that no progress is made in solving our national problems by those who did. One can’t help but wonder if such partisanship is really the way our democracy is intended to work…with one side seeking constructive remedies and the other side precluding any progress. A nation that ranks 37th in the world in health care should, it would seem, be eagerly involved in rectifying the situation. Instead we have such dispiriting tactics as this one reported by Alan Grayson (D-FL) who describes how Congressmen/women vote with electronic voting cards. In recent weeks, many from the minority party have claimed to “lose” their cards and so slow the voting process down to a crawl. Grayson says, “They’d all walk to the front of the House and, laughingly and jokingly, put their arms around each other’s shoulder like it was some kind of clownish fun. And they did this over and over to make sure every vote took half an hour. That’s how low things have gotten. I could give you countless examples just like that. They’re simply obstructionists and there’s nothing you can do about it.’’

Remembering how Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) bragged, "If we’re able to stop Obama on this (Health Care) it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." We cannot be blamed for thinking that the once noble concept of “loyal opposition” has devolved into schoolyard bullying. I am not so naïve to think that such despicable behavior hasn’t been perpetrated by politicians from both parties but in this time of national crisis we all should demand something better.

And speaking of crises, President Obama announced that we will be increasing our Afghanistan troop involvement by 30,000 shortly. (Troop involvement, by the way and just in case anyone is confused, means actual men and actual women in uniform…sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, many just boys and girls.) As many have already commented, the president had to make a difficult choice from a list of bad alternatives. The careful and prolonged process he used to reach his decision, although it frustrated many, was a welcome relief from the impulsive and irresponsible actions of his past predecessor. Nevertheless, the president’s decision is a disappointment especially for those of us old enough to clearly remember the political rationale employed that eventually brought us to our knees in Vietnam. Although no one can predict the outcome, many fear that this response only delays the inevitable political chaos that will come to Afghanistan when American troops finally pull out. I certainly hope President Obama continues to listen to constructive and helpful criticism as he carries out his plan.

Like Bill Coffin, I do believe it is government’s job to “work out the details of the irrigation system” but unlike Bill, I’m not so sure just quoting a religious prophet is all that we critics need do.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-12-03T11:43:00.000-08:00

Bah! Humbug!

One does run the risk of being called “Scrooge” for offering a critique of the sacred cows of our culture during this season of the year but, for reasons that may be apparent to some, this year especially, I happily pursue the gamble.

Our nation’s growing numbers of atheists are making their presence known this Christmas with campaigns in various cities promoting a different approach to this time of year. Displayed on buses and billboards in Washington D.C., for instance, is the following: “No god?...No problem! Be good for goodness sake.”
Such secular sentiment is sure to raise the ire of many religionists who understandably, if mistakenly, assume that Christmas should be reserved for Christians. But it appears those who don’t share the same doctrinal understandings, or any doctrine for that matter, want a share of the holiday spirit.

According to Roy Speckhardt, the executive director of the American Humanist Association (quoted in the New York Times 12-1-09): “We don’t intend to rain on anyone’s parade, but secular people celebrate the holidays, too, and we’re just trying to reach out to our people. To the degree that we are reaching out to the godly, it’s just to say that you can be good without god. So their atheist neighbor down the street shouldn’t be vilified as though he is immoral.”

The idea that someone can be good without God seems especially galling to some folk who have managed to manipulate their particular divine into declaring that there is only one way of being in God’s good graces and they just happen to have a monopoly on it. But to those who believe the heavenly life is experienced more by doing good deeds rather than just believing good thoughts, the atheists have a point. Santa was right. Being good is its own reward.

Recent studies are indicating that the altruistic impulse is not just morally compelling but physically healing as well. In one, it was found that elderly people who volunteered four hours each week were 44% less likely to die during the study period. (Buck Institute for Age Research). In another, reported in Psychology Today, surveys of over 3000 women who volunteered regularly revealed these women experienced a sense of well-being similar to vigorous exercise or meditation.

The opportunity this year to get up close and personal with Ebenezer Scrooge at the Lake Dillon Theatre has offered me insight into the transformation of this woefully unhappy man. Scrooge’s conversion is instigated not by religious doctrine, as noble as it may or may not be, but through a confrontation with his own humanity. His recognition of a wasted life is not a capitulation to a particular creed but the recognition of a universal truth. Our lives grow in value as we value the lives of others.

Back when I spent my days counseling Christians, I would occasionally be taken aback by someone expressing their chagrin over a God who welcomed everyone into the heavenly family. “What’s the point in being a Christian then?” some would ask indignantly and thus reveal their failure to understand the spiritual truth that doing good is its own reward. Any system, religious or not, that promotes the value of altruism understands the true meaning of Christmas…which is why I find the current campaign by our atheist friends and neighbors to be a most appropriate approbation of our culturally conflicted Christmas season.

“God (or not) bless us, everyone!”

The Practicing Progressive

2009-11-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

I am well aware that the Christmas season officially began yesterday with midnight madness sales kicking off a hoped for spending spree that will reignite our communal, if latent, consuming impulse and thus save our world from economic collapse. Go for it. I am definitely opposed to economic collapses.
But as we are all going about saving the world, I thought it might be of some interest to explore some of the theological underpinnings of our upcoming holiday. While I recognize that not all participants in the Christmas season would care to align themselves with Christianity right now, and judging from the headlines out of Ireland, one can certainly understand why, I offer the following bits of Biblical trivia along with one rather shocking hypothesis to invite you into a deeper appreciation for this once religious festival.
The Bible, like all sacred texts, was written to describe a particular understanding of reality. In my case, as a Christian, it begins with the understanding of an ancient religious tradition known today as Judaism. The Hebrew Scripture or what is often referred to as the Old Testament is the cumulative work of a particular religion’s attempt to understand who they are and what life is all about. Christianity emerged out of Judaism with a reinterpretation of some of the Hebrew Scripture to proclaim a new understanding of how God is at work in the world through Jesus. This reinterpretation is found in the second part of the Bible that Christians call the New Testament.
Now there are a number of issues that need to be dealt with before one can even begin to get a grasp of how the Bible, both Hebrew and Christian, should be understood. The first is language. I know this may come as a surprise to some, but the Bible wasn’t written in English, King James’ or otherwise. The Hebrew scripture was written in Hebrew but was translated into the Greek several hundred years before Jesus. So the early Christians used a Greek translation of the original texts to interpret this new understanding of the ancient Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek but we have to remember that Jesus’ language was Aramaic and although he may have been able to read and write in Greek and/or Hebrew he spoke in a different language than how it was eventually written down. Do you begin to see the problem here? Anyone who has traveled to a foreign country knows some of the difficulties around translating what you want to say to someone who doesn’t understand a word of what you’re saying!
Again, Jesus spoke in Aramaic not Greek. We are told that Jesus once said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Of course, camels don’t go through needles…not even teeny-weeny camels. But in Aramaic the word for camel and the word for rope are almost identical. So did Jesus say it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle or a rope to go through the eye of a needle? One is impossible the other may have a little wiggle room. The problem of translating Hebrew into Greek becomes even more apparent in the famous passage from Isaiah of the Hebrew Scripture that Matthew used in writing about the birth of Jesus in the Christian Scripture. Matthew used the Greek translation of the original Hebrew when he quoted Isaiah 7:14 to describe the miraculous conception of Jesus…”A virgin will conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” Only in the original Hebrew the word is “almah” which is never understood in Hebrew as virgin but rather a young woman. Somewhat shockingly perhaps, a whole doctrine was developed around this mistranslation. My point is not to argue against the perpetual virginity of Mary or the biological eccentricities surrounding Jesus’ birth but rather to point out the incredible difficulties inherent in translations.
Then we have to confront the context of these writings. When were they written? Who wrote them and why? Much of the Hebrew Scripture emerged out of a tumultuous time of tribal warfare. Armies fought horrific battles each claiming, as we do today, that God or the gods are on one particular side. We have the writings of one of these groups. It is understandable that God is on the side of these particular authors, just as Allah is on the side of Islam. It all depends on your particular perspective. So ponder, if you’d like, the context of the birth stories of Jesus.
Palestine in the time of Jesus was an occupied country, much as it is today. Only back then the occupiers were Romans. If you know anything about history, you know that occupying forces do some pretty terrible things. They take over homes. They blow up schools. They enslave or kill men. And they often rape the women. This has been shown quite terribly in our own lifetime. We remember with horror the stories out of Bosnia and Serbia. The Vietnam War left hundreds maybe thousands of mixed-race children in its wake. It is a horrible but very real casualty of occupation.
Consider this possibility: the scandal of Mary’s pregnancy that Joseph so nobly responds to is not the result of a beatific blessing surrounded by cherubim and seraphim but a brutal rape by a Roman soldier.
The word is “mamzer”. It is a Hebrew word that means “of questionable birth” or “illegitimate child”. Some Bible scholars are suggesting that this is an accurate description of Jesus. They posit this thesis on some very intriguing evidence. A mamzer, you see, would be rejected in his own community, as Jesus most certainly was. A mamzer would be excluded from fully participating in the religious and cultural rituals of his tribe. A mamzer would be an outsider, a reject.
Over and over again in the Christian Scripture, Jesus can be seen reaching out to the outcast, welcoming those who were never welcomed, eating with the unclean, advocating that no one is excluded from the love of God. This is not the teachings of someone who led a privileged and economically enriched life but rather the teachings of an outsider, one who has been rejected by his religion, his culture, his community… a bastard, a mamzer.
So with that, I bid you go and shop. Our world certainly needs saving.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-11-20T14:54:00.001-08:00

I still can’t decide if Lloyd Blankfein, multi-multi-millionaire and CEO of Goldman Sachs, was just being amazingly arrogant or distressingly stupid when he claimed last week to be “doing God’s work” as his company continued its reportedly ruthless reign at the top of America’s troubled financial institutions. I suppose his thinking is somewhere along the line of former General Motors’ CEO, Charlie Wilson, who, back in 1953, said, “…what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." As long, that is, as huge corporations continue to make huge profits, allowing whatever change is left over after paying even huger salaries to the staff to trickle down to the rest of America that manages to eek out an existence with a $50,303 per household median income. Mr. Blankfein’s eeking involves a $30 million apartment in Manhattan and an equally elaborate weekend place in the Hamptons but, after all, he claims to be doing God’s work and the disciples must be paid.
As my wife will quickly tell you, my expertise in money matters is limited to pushing the correct pin code into an ATM so I will refrain from further financial criticism. However, I think I can fairly claim a certain expertise in the theological field and so I am not hesitant to examine Mr. Blankfein’s statement in terms of its religious validity. After four years of post-graduate study and thirty years on the front lines of congregational life, I feel it only fair to wonder aloud as to the God to whom Mr. Blankfein is employed. From my study of both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the God of Judeo-Christianity seems emphatically concerned with the welfare of society’s lower strata. Indeed, if there is a prejudice on the part of the divine, one would have to concede it is against the rich. Despite what some “prosperity preachers” claim, the God of the Bible is overwhelmingly opposed to wealth in the hands and pockets of the few. Of course, Mr. Blankfein may be worshiping some other God than the one described in Judeo-Christian tradition which is his right but someone should remind him that the holy practice of zakat, the fair distribution of wealth, is a fundamental principle of Islam, as well. And anyone even slightly familiar with Buddhism knows that the acquisition of great wealth can be a great impediment to true happiness.
This week we found out that the Center for Disease Control sent out significant quantities of H1N1 vaccine to Goldman Sachs to distribute among the executives and some of the employees. As everyone knows, this vaccine is in limited supply and has been designated primarily for the very vulnerable: young children, pregnant women and those with severe respiratory problems. One can only assume that Mr. Blankfein’s God is disturbingly devoid of any hint of compassion toward these threatened populations. That or there are truckloads of toddlers at Goldman Sachs pulling in some very big bucks.
After so many years in the religion business, I’ve grown more than a little weary of claims made on behalf of the Lord. Wearing a collar makes you an easy target for those wishing to share the most bizarre examples of God’s beneficence. Everything from winning ballgames to bullying children have been set before me as proof of divine delineating but nothing is more repugnant in my mind than the quite common assumption that one’s wealth is proof of one’s piety.
I have been fortunate in my life to know some very wealthy people whose understanding of their social responsibilities have made them sensitive to the plight of people whose situations are dramatically different than their own. They have used their wealth in a myriad of ways…from funding self-sustaining micro-businesses to building hospitals, from training budding Third-world entrepreneurs to running orphanages in Asia…and, as best as I can recall, not a one of them ever bragged that they were “doing God’s work.”

The Practicing Progressive

2009-11-12T12:14:00.001-08:00

I have heard there are some people in America who actually take Sarah Palin seriously so I suppose I should report that all indications are that President Obama has not established a “Death Panel” expressly to decide if Ms. Palin’s granny is to live or die. However, grandma may not be entirely out of the woods.

Not too long ago, I found myself surrounded by fellow senior citizens adamantly declaring that they would never want to move in with their children no matter how dire their financial circumstances had become. Considering the state of most of our 401ks, I understood why many around me nodded their heads in worrisome agreement. Nevertheless, I found such passionate opposition to expanding family parameters more than a little curious. After all, we are only a generation or two removed from when grandma or grandpa was expected to be a part of the household. Indeed, my 90 year old mother was raised by her own grandmother who had been brought to America by Mom’s father, my grandpa, after his mother was widowed. From the time I was very young I heard stories of how “Grossmuter” cooked, cleaned and cuddled but never spoke a word of English in my mother’s childhood home.

Certainly such a scenario was not unique among my mother’s generation. A cursory look through any dusty family album will show how integrated grandparents were in the lives of their children and grandchildren. Shipping granny and grandpa off to institutional care is, in the scheme of things, a very recent development.

And what about this fervent desire among my peers to never depend upon their children for anything more than Thanksgiving dinner or a couple of hours sitting round the Christmas tree?

As a grandparent myself, I suppose my concern sounds a little self-serving and probably sends a collective shiver down the spines of my three kids but it does seem more than a little odd that such a dramatic change in family dynamics has taken place in such an extraordinarily short time.

Perhaps it is the inculcating of that uniquely American myth of rugged individualism that has finally managed to work its way into our senile psyches, convincing us we can and must go it alone right down to the end. Recent advertisements on TV and magazines reinforce this mindset. “Will you run out of money before you run out of breath?” goes the underlying message and we oldies are left convinced that nothing could be worse.

It may be that a similar sense of shame is being used to fuel the fanatical opposition to any national health care plan. The very thought of relying on the generosity of others or, perhaps even worse, sharing such largesse with others, fuels this absurd animosity toward a reasonable health care policy that is merely in keeping with every other developed nation in the world.

As long as I am psychoanalyzing, could the absurd amounts of money spent on the last few weeks of an elderly man or woman’s life be the direct result of the guilt felt by descendents who have neglected the one who is dying when he or she was much more fully alive?

In Asia, things are done a little differently. In fact, caring for one’s parents is still the paramount feature of Chinese culture. Rooted in Confucianism’s veneration of the elderly, nothing is more important to a son or daughter than the well-being of their parents. The expectation that a parent would be ashamed to live with his or her offspring is beyond that culture’s comprehension. In China, at least, we oldies are seen as a blessing rather than a burden. (All of which makes me extremely grateful I have a Chinese-American son-in-law.)

“It takes a village to raise a child” is how that famous African saying goes but one can’t help but worry how that child will fare if Gramps is spending his days on an Arizona golf course and Nana is nowhere to be found.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-11-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

Thank God the World Series is over! This overhyped culmination of the baseball season not only marks the end of 2,450 games played since the beginning of April but also the termination of a plethora of theologies displayed by baseball-playing disciples that often leave fans scratching their heads and searching their souls in existential quandaries.
For instance, it is not uncommon for the under-informed to wonder why the ballplayer who just managed to beat out a lazy groundball to the shortstop now stands tall upon the first base bag and with the relaxed confidence of one friend greeting another, points with both hands skyward in a gesture that clearly indicates a certain form of intimate discourse. The logical assumption, of course, is that the player is indicating his gratitude to God for allowing said player the pleasure of increasing his batting average, humiliating the opposing pitcher and, somewhat incidentally, helping his team.
The first overtly theological concern one may have in observing such obeisance is the player’s obvious supposition that the Almighty resides somewhere above the stadium walls. It is difficult not to wonder if this particular hitter spent too much time in the batter’s cage and too little in science class. Standing erect as he is pointing to the distant cosmos confident that he has located the domicile of the divine, leads one to think it is not unfair to ask if this well-muscled and very well paid athlete has ever heard of Copernicus or Galileo, Einstein or Carl Sagan.
But even more disturbing to some of us is the underlying assumption that the creator of our universe wherein 16,000 children die of hunger related causes each day and where 1 billion residents of our planet live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $1 a day, would take time out to catch a doubleheader between the Phillies and the Mets.
Such theological hypothesizing, even while chomping on a hot dog and sipping a cold one, can, one needs to be forewarned, lead to even bigger questions of pious pondering…The batter who, before stepping into the batter’s box, pauses to wheel his right hand around his head and chest in a gesture that, discerned only with slow-motion replay, is revealed to be the ancient Christian spiritual practice of making the sign of the cross certainly creates a conundrum for those familiar with the story this particular pious practice points to. To the objective observer, the unjust but perfectly legal execution by crucifixion of an innocent young rabbi some 2000 years ago would seem to have little in common with a right fielder’s desire to delight his fans by blasting a baseball out of the park. One cannot help but find more than a little theological turmoil trying to bridge the gap between these two events. How is it possible, we ask, that this symbol of the fundamental underpinning of one of the world’s largest religions has been relegated to what can best be described as a lucky charm?
Then there is the spitting. This is less theologically confusing than the other religious practices inherent to baseball. The constant expectorating by both players and coaches is clearly indicative of their spiritual need for absolution. And what with multi-million dollar salaries, steroid enhancements and the hanky-panky of road trips, it’s no wonder these sinning sportsmen are hanging loogies all through the line-up.
Less understandable is the growing tendency to merge church and state within the confines of what for many of us is the secularly sacred baseball diamond. I write now of the near common direction on the part of those in charge to have someone sing “God Bless America” sometime during the 7th inning stretch. Not only is this a hackneyed hymn of dubious musical charm and smarmier sentiment, it reinforces the confusion that contributes to the theological puzzlement on the part of players and fans alike. Must the many players from Venezuela, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, et al., pretend allegiance to such a parochially prejudiced plea? Shouldn’t we allow those who hope God’s benevolence goes beyond one nation’s boundaries get the opportunity to introduce another, more inclusive, theological perspective? Ironically, the Most Valuable Player of this year’s Series was Hideki Matsui, a native of Japan where the predominant religion is non-theistic Buddhism. Matsui went 8 for 13 with 3 home runs and 8 RBIs…and without any God blessing him. Ponder upon that theological predicament if you dare.
And speaking of predicaments, the Chicago Cubs managed to not make it to the World Series for the 64th straight year. We Cub fans haven’t given up on the lovable losers from Wrigley. But we are asking for your prayers.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-10-29T10:26:00.001-07:00

The growing numbers of folk who now check the “None of the above” box when it comes to religion may wish to skip the following column and move directly to the car ads but for those others who find the dramatic deconstruction of many things religious and the subsequent reshaping of the very future of all of humankind of more than passing interest, read on.

This past week Pope Benedict XVI, known to his friends as Joe Ratzinger and to his enemies as “The Enforcer”, surprised most of the Christian world by extending an invitation to the historically heretical but currently conflicted conservative members of the world-wide Anglican Communion to jump their teetering ship and make sail on the Vatican’s ecclesiastical vessel.

Like many denominations, the Anglicans (Episcopalians here in the U.S.) are immersed in a struggle for their religious identity that pits those who wish for a religion that integrates the scientific, cultural and philosophical progress of the past 600 years or so with those who prefer Pope Benedict’s predilection for the Dark Ages. Hence the invitation.

Benedict, who was the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as The Inquisition, before he was picked by his peers for the top spot, has long expressed his dissatisfaction for the way the world has gone. His continued support of the failed policy of sexual abstinence in the fight against AIDS and over-population combined with his shocking reversal of the excommunication of an unrepentant Holocaust-denying bishop are only two examples of the Pope’s failure to understand how life has changed since the Roman Emperor Constantine swung his sword and switched our predecessors from pagans into pious Christians.

So his invitation to the disaffected Anglicans appears to be nothing more than a political attempt to shore up the medieval mindset that pervades this disappointed part of Christianity. It is not entirely unlike the current fundamentalists’ power grab among the Moslems or Jews or Hindus to name a few obvious examples. Religious right-wingers watch with horror as the modern world takes more and more of their adherents away. Their common strategy seems to be entrenchment, drawing that proverbial line in the sand that declares whether one is on the side of God or the sinful world. And once the divine blessing is established, it becomes increasingly easy to resort to the most un-Christian or un-Islamic or un-Jewish of actions.

At this point it would be easy and tempting to throw up one’s hands and declare all religion anathema as comedian Bill Maher and scientist Richard Dawkins have so publically done. Their declarations of the irrelevancy and even villainy of religion fails to understand the monumental shift that is occurring among religions today. What we are witnessing everywhere from the intransience of the Vatican to the violence of the Taliban are the last throes of the dying. Religion that shapes itself on a pre-scientific, anti-modern worldview, no matter how powerful it may appear right now to be, is condemned to the dustbin of history along with flat-earthers, creationists and the Mayan calendar.

Conversely, and despite the depositions of Maher, Dawkins, et.al, a new kind of religion is being born and taking form in a myriad of differing shapes. It is religion unafraid of the progress that has transpired across the spectrum of science, a religion that isn’t informed by an omnipotent being or infallible book but by the actions of communities of compassionate people who are experiencing the transcendent power of peace-making and justice-seeking. This is religion that finds its identity not in doctrinal declarations that distance itself from others but the realization that our planet grows ever smaller and ever desperate for a unifying theology that recognizes the failures of separatist superiorities and the ultimate value of acknowledging that there are many, equally valid and honorable, paths to the truth.

As idealistic and unrealistic as this may appear, the fact is it is occurring over and over again all over the world in mostly un-dramatic and under-reported ways but occurring it is and it is slowly but inevitably eroding the fortress walls of the medieval-thinking men now in power.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-10-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

I suppose one could excuse the boorish behavior of South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson as simply the inopportune outburst of a passionate politician. Of course, such understanding would have to diminish Wilson’s membership in the “Sons of Confederate Veterans” an organization, one could fairly assume, that still bemoans General Lee handing over his sword at Appomattox.
And maybe when Senator Jim DeMint, also from South Carolina, declared that defeating any health care reform would be President Obama’s…”Waterloo. It will break him.”, it was nothing more than political strategizing and not the personal vendetta it appeared to be. But then again one would have to exclude his enthusiastic remarks on “Good Morning America” complimenting the plethora of poster-bearing and confederate flag-waving folk that attended the September 12 protest march in Washington D.C. Many of the posters at the gathering depicted President Obama as a communist, a fascist and, perhaps worst of all for the gathered, an African-American.
I’ll grant it is possible that these two men’s comments are not infused with bigoted undertones but simply the innocent commentary of dedicated conservative thinkers…although it does tend to stretch one’s credulity to think that the state that elected the segregationist Strom Thurmond to the Senate right up to when he was 100 years old, would be humbly offering America two racially objective congressional representatives.
But when two Republican county chairmen…again from South Carolina…publish an opinion column this past week in the Orangeburg Times-Democrat that includes a vile anti-Semitic smear, it is enormously difficult to ignore the racist mindset that seems to permeate Republican politics in that state. The fact that the two chairmen immediately and effusively offered apologies for their gaffe only underscores their inability to understand the realities of 21st century America. It is clear to me that these men never thought their use of a pernicious stereotype would offend any of their readers. These men were only expressing what is taken for conventional wisdom in too much of America. What’s more, I’ll wager there isn’t a person reading these words who can’t remember a recent time when a similar xenophobic sentiment was shared in their presence.
To think that over 200 years of racial, religious and sexual injustice can disappear from America’s collective psyche without a significant backlash is to evidence a naiveté that even we liberals are incapable of achieving. The “race card” continues to be played over and over again in contexts that stretch from country clubs to Congress, from neighborhood red lines to national party lines. Each time an 18 wheeler rushes by with a Confederate flag on its grill, each time you hear how someone “jewed” another down, each time you read of one more gay man beaten nearly to death, you can bet that the race card or the religion card or the sexual card is being played one more time in America.
This week, The Boston Globe reported that the Secret Service was under a significant strain with the “unprecedented increase” in threats to our president. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of hate groups and paramilitary organizations throughout America, has this to say on the recent enormous growth in these groups: “A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man.”
When you hear TV and radio commentators claim that our president has a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." (Glenn Beck) or describe him as “the little black man-child” (Rush Limbaugh) or when politicians allow their bigotry to trump protocol and their prejudice to pervert the democratic process, it is difficult not to think that what is being played is some very dirty poker.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-10-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

The great hue and cry from America’s right over the designation of President Obama as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner had me returning to another time when shock and indignation marked the standard conservative response. It was 1964 and, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, it was the last time the prize was awarded to an African-American, Dr. Martin Luther King.

It was my first year of college and I was caught up in the political fervor that was spreading like wildfire across campuses throughout America. Late night discussions in smoke-filled dorm rooms had us neophytes philosophizing on America’s extensive list of problems and our easy enough solutions. So when Dr. King was announced as that year’s Peace Prize winner many of us saw it as a powerful confirmation of our convictions. King was a symbol of what could be achieved when the deepest of hopes combined with the bravest of actions.

Of course such naiveté was soon tempered by the failure of too many on the left to commit to non-violent civil disobedience for a just cause and too many on the right to acknowledge the legitimacy of equal rights for all. Still, many of us were stunned by the vitriol spewed against the Nobel Committee’s selection and the Civil Rights Movement in general. The reaction from southern politicians, both Democrat and Republican, was expected but even conservatives in the north let loose their invectives…On his opposition to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater piously declared, “You can’t legislate morality” and William Buckley’s National Review magazine had this to say about Dr. King:

"For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the “cake of custom” that holds us together. With their doctrine of “civil disobedience,” they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes — particularly the adolescents and the children — that it is perfectly alright to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk. They have on occasion after occasion, in almost every part of the country, called out their mobs on the streets, promoted “school strikes,” sit-ins, lie-ins, in explicit violation of the law and in explicit defiance of the public authority. They have taught anarchy and chaos by word and deed — and, no doubt, with the best of intentions — and they have found apt pupils everywhere, with intentions not of the best. Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind." (Sept. 7th, 1965)

Part of that whirlwind, so dreaded by Mr. Buckley and others, has brought millions of African-Americans into the mainstream of American life and now even into the White House.

The conservative reaction to President Obama’s award has ranged from careful criticisms of his alleged lack of political progress to the insipid and often hate-filled rants of radio and TV commentators. In the end, many of these outspoken critics will find themselves, as did their ideological predecessors, on the wrong side of both history and morality.

Long before his death and in the midst of many disappointments and failures, Dr. King had entered into that Parthenon of men and women who represent more than what they have accomplished in their own lives. He became an iconic force that empowered the imaginations of millions to soar beyond their own limited visions and experiences. For 250 years, America has been shaped and guided by these mythic figures who are more than the sum of their historical accomplishments. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, to be sure, but also Rosa Parks and Susan B. Anthony, Ronald Reagan and Robert F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers and Matthew Shepherd.

Although the Nobel Committee claims the prize was offered for actions already taken, I suspect President Obama may have cringed just a bit when he learned of his newly bestowed honor and, perhaps upon reflection, come to the realization that this prize is a powerful declaration of where millions and millions of people around the world have placed their hopes and dreams for a better, more peace-filled, life for themselves and the generations to come.

“I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.” (Nobel Acceptance Speech. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., December 10, 1964.)

The Practicing Progressive

2009-10-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

There is a crisis in America.

And although my more rational readers may think this national calamity may have something to do with the giant gridlock that has stalled the implementation of any reasonable health care policy, they would be wrong. Others among the saner set might assume that our continuing military involvement in Afghanistan is cause for enormous concern with a growing consensus among our citizenry that there must be some other means for resolution there than participating in a tribal war that has been killing participants for decades. They, too, would be wrong.

For the crisis of which I write is of far greater concern to a certain segment of Americans for whom minor issues like health care and warfare pale in comparison to the frightening fact that America is running out of ammunition for our handguns! According to the Associated Press, “American bullet makers are working around the clock, seven days a week, and still cannot keep up with the nation’s demand for ammunition.”

It seems that ever since an African-American was elected president, the plethora of paranoiacs who make America statistically the top nation in the world for gun ownership have been gobbling up ammunition at a phenomenal and, for some of us, frightening rate. According to the National Rifle Association, Americans normally purchase a measly 7 billion rounds of ammunition each year. This year that has jumped to 9 billion. Even with the worst of shooters, if our gun-toting folk manage to fire off every bullet and cartridge over the next twelve months, I worry there won’t be a deer, elk, moose, bear or human being left standing.

Setting aside the often specious Second Amendment arguments that are dragged out time and time again whenever anyone dares to wonder aloud why we Americans feel compelled to mimic Wyatt Earp on the streets of Tombstone, one can’t help but see an ominous connection between our current president’s color and the current dearth of ammo. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, by most accounts, a reasonable and tolerant man, sounded the alarm this week in a column where he mused… “The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.” I worry that one of the ingredients of that cocktail is the appalling lack of reasonable gun control in America.

When men dressed in camouflage can stand at the entrances to meetings where the president is to appear and legally brandish their own weapons of specific destruction, how can reasonable folk not see a serious threat to both the life of our president and the future of our country? Friedman equates this time in America to the atmosphere in Israel just before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

Ex-president Jimmy Carter was pilloried recently by politicians and others for suggesting that the frenzied opposition to President Obama’s new policies was driven in part by racist motives. Carter, a Georgian native and personal witness to the inherent evil of a racist society, bravely confessed what, I think, many of us encounter in casual conversations nearly every day. Racism is alive and well in a very sick way in America.

Is the increase in both gun ownership and political lunacy necessarily connected? Perhaps not but in a country where hate-filled, racially charged, rhetoric resounds everywhere from the airwaves to the internet to the very halls of Congress, it would seem prudent to at least consider finding rational ways for keeping the loonies away from the Uzis.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-09-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

I do believe Dan Brown is on to something.

The best-selling author of “Angels and Demons”, “The Da Vinci Code” and the just released, (Already over 2 million copies sold!!!), “The Lost Symbol” has found great success in revealing fictional conspiracies involving non-fictional organizations. “Angels and Demons” went after the secret, allegedly, Catholic society, The Illuminati and “Da Vinci” went after the secret, assuredly, Catholic society, Opus Dei, while “Lost” takes on the decidedly non-Catholic, Freemasons. And while I haven’t read this latest adventure starring the Harvard symbologist, Dr. Robert Langdon, the reviews I’ve read indicate it is as fast paced and filled with heart-stopping, page-turning excitement as his other two.

Since my own royalties are measured in mills rather than millions, I have taken note of this industrious author’s clever and very marketable ability to root out the surreptitious activities of one revered organization after another. Why, I wondered, if it worked so well for this former teacher turned world-renowned novelist, wouldn’t it work for a former pastor turned occasionally irritating local columnist?!!!

My hard-to-put-down, incredibly-conspiratorial, shockingly revelatory, story begins with a little item from the Los Angeles Times a few days back that reported on the mutterings of a certain California Assemblyman named Mike Duvall who was caught bragging to a fellow Assemblyman about his more than friendly relationship with a female lobbyist: "So I am getting into spanking her," Duvall told his colleague, during a break at a hearing in Sacramento. Unfortunately for Assemblyman Duvall, a stalwart advocate of family values, a microphone picked up the entire unsavory conversation. "Yeah, I like it. . . . She goes, 'I know you like spanking me.' I said, 'Yeah, that's 'cause you're such a bad girl.' "

Duvall resigned from office a few days later. One more politician caught not exactly with his pants down but close enough so he would have some serious explaining to do when he got home. And it is his home that provides the first real clue in my already riveting tale!!! You see, Duvall is from that bastion of traditional family-values, Orange County!!! Here is the astounding thing: Orange County is only a 5 hour drive to that bastion of anything but traditional family values, Las Vegas!!! Las Vegas is the home of another family-values politician, Senator John Ensign who, a few months back, admitted to his own fling with the wife of his, once but not anymore, good friend!!!

Now if you drive due north from Las Vegas, and you don’t mind a thousand miles or so of unrelenting barrenness, you will eventually arrive in Boise, Idaho!!! Boise is the home of former family-values senator, Larry Craig, who, you may remember, was just another unknown politician preaching piousness until he got caught, you guessed it, in that proverbial pants-down position, trying to make more than a little contact with an undercover Minneapolis policeman.
This is where it gets really amazing!!! If you go east from Boise and then a little south but not too far, you will come to South Carolina, home of a family-values governor who isn’t living with his family any longer after his wife and the rest of the state found out about the state of their marriage.

I didn’t know this until I looked at my map but if you go straight north from Governor Sanford’s former home in Raleigh and don’t mind driving some two-lane roads, you will wind up in the keystone state of Pennsylvania!!! Pennsylvania is the home to former Congressman Don Sherwood, a politician strikingly similar to the aforementioned others in his commitment to family values. Now there are some who still deny that his involvement in an extra-marital affair was the cause of his electoral defeat in 2006 but I think the pieces to this shockingly suspenseful puzzle are really falling into place!!!

Do you get it yet? OK. Here’s my final clue that will unlock for you this incredibly astonishing secret. Pennsylvania butts (!!!) up to New York where one-time Governor Elliot Spitzer, (a Democrat!!!), did you-know-what with a you-know-who. Now, New York isn’t all that far from North Carolina, if you don’t count New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, where John Edwards, (another Democrat!!!), behaved most unhusbandly to his wife Elizabeth. On the way, you may have passed through Washington D.C. where a former president (Yes! Yes! A Democrat!!!) claimed he didn’t do anything with a woman named Monica!!!

So there you have it!!! Connect the dots and you’ll get a kind of really neat geometric design but what’s more you’ll discover that each and every one of these politicians is… (Quick! Turn the page!!!)

… a member of the human race!!!

The Practicing Progressive

2009-09-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have sinned.

And just like Adam in that ancient garden, I blame it on Eve.

Hamartia is the Greek word used to denote sin. Literally, it means “missing the mark” and, boy, I sure did with some of the folk who read last week’s column. Judging from the lengthy letters my (endlessly patient) editor received in recent days, my small attempt at sarcasm was a big flop for some. But rather than defend my original intention, I will, as mentioned above, blame my wife instead.

She is, after all, the final arbiter in all things dispensed from the Dell on our shared desk top. Before any column, sermon, speech or letter to the editor is sent into cyberspace, my dear spouse carefully peruses the document for both grammatical errors, of which there can be many, and tenor and tone, where her prudence and compassion often trump my zeal and zealotry.

Unfortunately, this multi-talented woman was gallivanting up Mt. Lincoln on a beautiful fall-like day and failed to remember her poor spouse’s deadline. I’m forwarding all my hate mail to her this week.

As any wizened husband will admit, wives often provide the proper balance to the ship of marital state. A quick perusal of presidential spousal history has us, for instance, nodding in gratitude for Abigail Adams, our second First Lady who famously tempered her mercurial husband’s hot temper and probably did more to save our tenuous national union than 99% of the politicians then in office. And it was Dolly Madison, remember, who refused to leave The White House when our nation’s capital was under attack until she had rescued Gilbert Stuart’s priceless portrait of George Washington. No one mentions where her husband James was during all of this but, as a husband myself, I can probably hazard a good guess. And by all accounts, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson was, for all intent and purpose, the president of the United States when her husband’s stroke left him both incapacitated and incoherent during his last year in office. And, of course, we can all thank Laura Bush for offering a balance of grace, dignity and thoughtfulness in The White House when some of us worried that it was all out of whack.

It does seem that political wives in particular have distinguished themselves even at the most undistinguished moments. Think of Hillary Clinton’s poise in the midst of Bill’s fumbling fabrications. Kudos as well should go out to Elizabeth Edwards’ similar style while learning with the rest of us of the nasty doings of John. Of course, wifely wisdom isn’t limited to one side of the political aisle. Democrats, Republicans and Independents were united, I do believe, in finding something to applaud in Jenny Sanford giving the boot to her South Carolina Governor husband John for hiding out in Argentina with someone other than his wife.

And speaking of South Carolina’s wifely wisdom, one can hardly forget the immediate response of Roxanne Wilson, wife of Representative Joe Wilson, the now infamous congressman who called President Obama a liar in front of his fellow legislators and 32 million Americans. Roxanne phoned her husband after the speech and asked: "Joe, who's the nut who hollered out, ‘You lie’?” Mrs. Wilson meet Joe Wilson (R-SC-NUT).

With all this talk of wifely wisdom, one can’t help remembering the somewhat shocking quote from Christian recording artist Amy Grant who said, “If a politician isn’t doing it to his wife, then he’s doing it to his country.”

Now I know that won’t get past my dearly beloved but (tee-hee) she’s out right now climbing another mountain. So if you’re offended…blame my wife. I know I will.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-09-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am going to try not to get hysterical here…but when I see what this Communistic, socialistic, tree-hugging, Hitler-following president is trying to foist on innocent God-fearing, freedom-loving, patriotic Americans, I can’t help but want to shout out from the floor of Congress, “You are a liar!” What better way to express the outrage we loyalists are feeling as we watch our nation plummet into the pit of a socialistic prison? God bless America that we have such brave men as Representative Joe (“The Shouter”) Smith of South Carolina who, in the fine tradition so admirably employed by Messieurs Limbaugh and Beck and other true patriots, was not to be constrained by two hundred and thirty years of noble tradition and boldly heckled that white-hating racist we have for a president.

But I mustn’t let my emotions get the better of me. Still, when I think of what those traitors are trying to do to our beloved health care system, I could just sob…and design clever placards of B. Hussein Obama with a little moustache…and shout down any attempt at reasonable discourse…and laugh when gangs of fatigue wearing freedom fighters show up with chips on their shoulders and guns on their hips. It just takes you back to those wonderful years when uppity boys knew their place and the closest any of them would have gotten to the White House was mowing the west lawn.

I best take a deep breath here and compose myself but it is so hard when you reflect on all the hard work that has gone into creating a system where real Americans can climb boldly to the top of the ladder of success without the infringement of socialistic infidels demanding we actually give a rat’s-a** about those below. If they only wait a little longer they’ll get trickled down upon, you bet.

I can feel my blood pressure rising even now as I think of all the hard work our former president put into expanding our national debt with his semi-impressive but wholly inspirational invasion of Iraq while at the same time allowing Wall Street to go on a financial frenzy unfettered by governmental goons. Is it any wonder our brave Republican men and women in congress are so outraged? What of Bush’s legacy? It’s hidden, of course, somewhere amidst the trillions being spent to counteract all the hard work that great American accomplished in his eight short years in office.
Then there is the sad fate of our “Birther” brothers and sisters who sought to save our constitutional republic by unequivocally providing proof that you-know-who isn’t even a real American-born citizen. I know I can speak for millions of patriotic partisans when I say that the Republic of Kenya’s birth certificate proving his birth in Mombasa and thus utter unfitness for his present office was absolutely authentic. I know, I know, but a little thing like the fact that Mombasa wasn’t a part of the Republic of Kenya when the absolutely authentic birth certificate was filed shouldn’t dissuade us from the truth! The man is an imposter!

Easy, boy. Another deep breath. But when I think of what that man did to the millions of innocent school children this past Tuesday, I could just explode. Imagine someone like the great George H.W. Bush perpetrating such a propagandist attack over the TV! Worse, just picture G. W. B. or dear Laura trying to do the same thing! Oh, the horror! The horror! Is it any wonder hundreds of the faithful refused to allow their children to hear a U.S. president’s message? Who can blame them when there are so many other more reliable resources available? Just knowing our children can be inspired by the likes of such stalwarts of American values as Rush and Glenn and Jon and Kate makes Obama’s pitiful attempt at propaganda so ridiculous, don’t you think?

I want my America back! An America before there were death panels sending Sarah Palin’s grandmother to the great beyond! An America when people knew their place and everyone stayed right where they belonged! An America where regular folks like me and you didn’t worry about the government intruding on our lives! An America where health care was a privilege and not a right! An America where the poor weren’t so pushy and most politicians were Presbyterians! An America that demanded self-reliance and rewarded our independent, pull- yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps spirit! Oh those were the days! And we’re going to take them back, I’m telling you! Now! Now! Now!

Or just as soon as I pick up this month’s Social Security check.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-09-03T11:40:00.001-07:00

The blogosphere has been all abuzz this past week over prominent conservative columnist George Will’s apparent defection to the dark side in calling for the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Most of Will’s chicken-hawk cohorts on the right are aghast at his chicken-hearted lean to the left. Putting aside their fanatical commitment to beat Barack Obama back into pre-Civil War submission, the crazies on the conservative fringe (and closer), find themselves aligned with the president on this particular issue which must have the parties on all sides questioning their sanity.

Personally, I find our military presence in Afghanistan confusing at best and filled with the kind of ambiguities that disallow the self-assured moral convictions that usually make producing a weekly op-ed column a piece of cake. Instead of certainty, and despite the President’s current policy, I confess to holding the same doubts many Americans share about the wisdom of continuing to sacrifice lives, both civilian and military, to a cause that appears to be less and less winnable.

Some of the same concerns that many of us shared over the war in Vietnam hold sway over our involvement in Afghanistan. Accounts differ as to civilian casualties during the Vietnam War, ranging from the hundreds of thousands to millions of lives lost, but our own cost in military lives is carved in marble on The Mall in Washington D.C.: 58,209.
As of today, over 700 US troops have died in Afghanistan since our 2001 invasion but that sad statistic grows daily and many of us remember how our limited involvement in Vietnam soon grew to awesome proportions.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a colonel in the Air Force reserves, declared after a brief tour of duty this week in Kabul, that Afghanistan “…is not Vietnam.” His intention, clearly, was to assuage the worries of more and more Americans. And in one very important sense he is absolutely right. Vietnam was different because Vietnam was not a religious war. We were not fighting wild-eyed religious fanatics in Southeast Asia but we most certainly are in Central Asia. The presumed Buddhism of the North Vietnamese doesn’t appear to have been instrumental in waging war against their fellow Buddhists in the South but Afghanistan is another story, a decidedly different story.

The Taliban is bent not just in controlling the government in Kabul but in perpetuating the eradication of all infidels both within its borders and without. The kind of fundamentalist and fanatical brand of Islam represented by the Taliban and others is not amenable to peaceful co-existence with either non-Muslims or modernity and that salient fact makes this war very different indeed.

Dying for one’s country is seen by most of the civilized world as both profoundly tragic and inspirationally noble. Surely such sacrifice emboldened the soldiers in Vietnam on both sides. But when one sees such a death as the passage to being in the presence of God with all the concurrent sensual pleasures grimly forfeited while on earth, we are faced with a very, very different enemy.
Religious fanatics of any stripe present a particular strategic conundrum. From the earliest of times, soldiers convinced of heavenly rewards for earthly errands make for formidable and sometimes unfathomable opponents. From the thousands of Crusaders promised eternal salvation by the Pope to the 19 heaven-bound Al-Qaeda terrorists of September 11, the religious rationale for waging war offers no room for negotiation. One does not, after all, compromise on the commands of God.

Unlike the neo-atheists of late who see the eradication of religion as the only reasonable option, many of us find ourselves in the morally confusing situation of knowing first-hand the value of healthy religion to a society. We have seen and even participated in the enormous social benefits that can come when people are inspired by a divinely ordained mandate, from local soup kitchens to global activism against AIDS. But when that mandate morphs into murderous marching orders, we are left wondering whether the spiritual assets outweigh the earthly liabilities.

The victors in Vietnam have spent the last few decades rebuilding and reconciling their country. Industry has established itself, tourism is growing and peace prevails over a country once rent asunder. If and when the bloodshed in Afghanistan comes to an end, whether it happens sooner or later, will the same hope-filled result occur?

When religious fanatics are part of the equation the answer is almost certainly no.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-08-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the frontlines of the family values war and discovered peace has broken out.

A wedding of heterosexuals this past weekend in Iowa brought me to the state that as of April 27, 2009 made marriage between homosexuals legal. From the conversations I had with folk from this bastion of bacon and corn, no one seemed particularly put-out by the recent legislation. Indeed, I sensed a certain civic pride in the expansion of civil rights among residents of the Hawkeye state.

This is in clear contrast, of course, with what has been going on in states that we have long considered anything but conservative. Take California, for instance. There a constitutional amendment squeaked by last November that took a different course. It was called “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act” which is pretty self-explanatory. And although there was deep disappointment from 48% of Californians, the majority of Californians decided that despite some pretty convincing evidence to the contrary the only good marriage is between one man and one woman.

Here in Colorado, back in 2006, we managed to do California one better, or worse, with 55% of us deeming holy matrimony in similarly confining restraints.

I know this will come as a shock to some but apparently marriage, both hetero and homo, seem to be doing fairly well in America’s heartland. Granted my observation time was brief but I didn’t encounter a single example of family values crumbling before my eyes. No healthy heterosexuals being lured into nefarious homosexual liaisons, no gay desperados roping innocents into their carnal corrals, no sheep giving me a seductive smile, none of it. Just average American marriages with, I suspect, the average amount of pluses and minuses most all of us have had to face.

It is difficult to understand the hysteria surrounding this issue in some quarters especially when one considers the track record of many of those seeking sanctions. The famous Barna Survey of a few years back showed evangelical Christians having a much higher divorce rate than the general populations and almost double that of agnostics and atheists. One would think such sobering statistics would give these guardians of family values pause but when you think of the behavior of some of their leaders, well… In recent months we’ve had more than a few stalwart defenders of traditional marriage behaving in some traditionally adulterous ways.

The first gay marriage I officiated took place on the shores of Lake Dillon with two beautiful brides making their way down the tree lined aisle to our makeshift altar on the shore. Just as now in Colorado, back then there was no legal marriage for lovers like those two blushing beauties but we didn’t let that stop us. For years I heard from the couple on their anniversary but that stopped a while ago. Who knows? Maybe they didn’t make it or maybe they just moved away but none of that should matter anyway.

I learned long ago that I could never guess the success or failure of the couples who came to me to be married. Some of the ones I thought didn’t have a chance have already celebrated their silver anniversaries and some I thought were sure-fire certainties have long ago gone their separate ways. It certainly wasn’t for me to decide who should benefit from the marital laws of Colorado and who should not. If they were willing to spend time in pre-marital counseling and put up with a cranky Lutheran cleric that was good enough for me.

In any case, the good people of Iowa…well, the good people of Iowa’s Civil Rights Commission if the truth be told… have deemed it appropriate and good that anyone wishing to pay for a marriage license can take their chances with both the best and the worst of matrimony, holy or otherwise and the next Californian or Coloradan who speaks of those magnanimous Midwesterners in a less than magnanimous way might give thought to the hearts beating so generously in America’s heartland.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-08-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

I think I understand that getting your space and showing your face are now important tools of the internet age but I’m still incomplete with the need to tweet.

What, I wonder, is the lure of communicating in a 140 character limited medium when sending an e-mail or even talking on the phone seems to provide a more satisfying and, one would think, more effective alternative? Recently, I read of tweets (an endearing name, I’ll admit) now being used to review movies, books and restaurants. One can’t help identifying with an author, director or restaurateur concerned that several years spent in developing a book, movie or menu could be enthusiastically praised or dismissively dumped in a sentence or two. It is hard to imagine how a tweeter could presume to mine the depths of a director like Coppola or even an author like Grisham, for goodness sake, without expanding his or her underpowered vehicle of verbosity by a few thousand words or more.

Nevertheless, I do believe I have found a most suitable arena for the enthusiastic tweeter: Health Care Forums. Judging from what I’ve read and seen regarding the conduct of some of the attendees at these demonstrations of democracy at work, I should think restricting the participants to pounding their PDAs might introduce a certain civility to the proceedings.

Off on a bit of a tangent here but what do you make of the outbursts of way over the top outrage that is on display at these meetings? Surely it can’t be just because a few million poor folk might get a little piece of the American dream? Something else seems to be going on here and I suspect it has less to do with the red menace of health care reform and more to do with a black man living in a white house. I can’t help but muse on such a possibility when I witness old white men going ballistic and babbling on about America becoming a Soviet satellite. My guess is these guys’ gripes are really the grief-induced result of discovering that America has dramatically changed in the course of their lifetimes. Just think what we old fogies have had to face over the past 60 years or so: feminism, multi-culturalism, Regis Philbin…

And then there are the guns. Some of these fellows are actually packing heat to these already incendiary governmental gatherings. I know its legal now to carry your six-shooter into the church or synagogue of your choice but surely taking a Smith and Wesson into the foment being stirred up in these forums seems imprudent at best, downright dangerous at worst and maybe even a little silly when you think about it.

But back to the tweets that seem to be taking up a goodly share of what once passed for conversation. I suppose it is only the natural out-growth of a couple of generations worth of “Whatevers” and “Wuzups”. When human discourse devolves into something akin to the communication between cavemen, surely tweeting is the natural result.

Speaking of primitive activities (and heading off on another tangent), one of the most primal is when we decide to abandon all discourse entirely in favor of weapons of mass and minor destruction. Violence has always been the refuge of those who choose to put an end to conversations, cordial or otherwise. Last week, the lone survivor of the horrors of World War I, Harry Patch, died at the age of 111. He had become better known in his final years as an outspoken critic of war and a strong advocate for the commonality of humankind. His tales of life in the trenches captivated his English audience and his funeral at Wells Cathedral was attended by several thousand while millions watched on TV. Although he was entitled to a military funeral with all the attendant honors, Patch requested that no guns be allowed at the service, ceremonial or otherwise. I know that such a demand from a military hero must come as sobering surprise to the hordes of holstered fanatics here in America but it was Mr. Patch’s expressed belief, after witnessing the carnage of combat, that “war isn’t worth one life.”

Come to think of it, such a sentiment would fit nicely into your next tweet.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-08-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

“We are the Comets!
Mighty, mighty Comets!
Everywhere we go,
People want to know who we are,
So we tell them…”

At my age, invitations to high school reunions always contain the implied threat that this may be the last one you’ll be around for. Nevertheless, I haven’t attended one yet and hadn’t considered doing so anytime in the near future. This morning, reading the paper, I came across a little news item that further convinced me to decline the next time another invitation arrives in the mail.

On page 106 of my 1964 Westchester High School annual there is a tiny picture of a tiny girl named Lynette Fromm, or “Squeaky” to her friends. The fact that most of her friends were members of the infamous Manson Family, some of whom were convicted of the brutal murders of actress Sharon Tate, Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, made her friendship more than a little questionable.

Fromme, you may remember, was convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975 and is currently serving a 25 year to life sentence in a Texas prison. Currently, however, only until this next weekend when she is scheduled to be released after being incarcerated for the past 34 years. Reading the report in the New York Times concerning her release, I couldn’t help but wonder if our next high school reunion might be somewhat better attended than in the past.

Still, I’m not that tempted although admittedly I might be more enticed by the appearance of Sherry Alberoni, listed on page 22 along with a litany of accomplishments under her very pretty picture (Senator; Commercants; Thespians; GAA; Girls League Rep.). Sherry was an official Mouseketeer with Walt Disney Productions who drove a pink Corvette and never in the three years we were in high school together ever even acknowledged my existence.

I certainly would be inclined to attend the next reunion if three of my classmates and their band promised to play. Howard Kaplan, (page 30: Valedictorian; UCLA Charter Day Rep.;A Cappella Choir: Section Leader; CSF; Squires; Senator; Boy’s League Rep.; Bank of America Trophy Award in Fine Arts), Al Nichol, (page 33: Varsity Cross Country and Track; Basketball; LMC; Senator), and Mark Volman, (I can’t find him listed. He must have ditched that day.) formed the hit band, The Turtles, shortly after graduation and, presumably, made more money than the rest of their classmates combined including Alan Eisenstadt (page 28) whose impressive list of high school accomplishments was only missing Savior of the Free World to be complete.

While perusing the annual, I couldn’t help but notice that there are none of those punch-in-the-arm clever annotations filling up my autograph page. Indeed, there are no autographs at all. Perhaps this is another reason why I am less than enthusiastic about returning to those (painfully anonymous) days of yesteryear.

My wife recently attended her 45th high school reunion and by all accounts had a great time. In fact, she may have had too good of time. She’s already planning on attending the 50th and has volunteered to serve on the refreshment committee with a guy named Bob.

I was looking through her album from John Marshall High School in Rochester, Minnesota and it is filled with clever remarks and cutesy observations from a thousand of her closest friends. I couldn’t help but notice how messy it made her margins.

Once a Comet always a Comet, I suppose but when you reach my age the thought of renewing old acquaintances and lying about past accomplishments is really just too daunting to contemplate. So maybe I’ll just wait until the 60th anniversary. Who knows? I may still be around…which would allow me to list at least one accomplishment under my picture (page 32).

The Practicing Progressive

2009-07-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

America! Land of the free and home of the weird.

The latest incarnation of our national obsession with all things strange comes to us via “The Birthers” a bizarre ensemble of true believers bent on convincing the rest of us that President Obama wasn’t actually born in America and therefore is constitutionally forbidden to live in the White House. I suppose we should be grateful that these conspiracy theorists are agreed that the president was actually born and not delivered by aliens from outer space.

Egged on by such paragons of objectivity as CNN commentator Lou Dobbs and Liz Cheney, former Vice-President Dick’s doubting daughter, this most recent batch of patriotic rebels are making their convictions known by zealously penning letters to their local editors, disrupting nationally televised press conferences and flooding the pages of the world wide web with their fervent certainties.

Despite indisputable evidence, these birthers will, I suspect, go to their graves firm in their conviction that we foolish fellow citizens failed to grasp the vast conspiracy perpetrated upon us by sinister and probably socialist forces. There they will join the dozens of others who so valiantly tried to sway the rest of us into joining in the certainty that Neil Armstrong never set foot on the moon, JFK was shot by the CIA and those planes never actually plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Many years ago, one of my buddy’s mom, in fit of patriotic fervor, took some of us kids from the neighborhood to a packed Los Angeles Sports Arena on a school night, no less. But instead of watching the Lakers go at the Celtics as we had hoped, we sat in soporific stupors as one speaker after another went after Communists, Atheists and even an occasional God-forsaken Democrat. It was called The Moral Rearmament Movement and it, too, was bent on warning an ignorant citizenry of the dangers that lurked all around us. As the evening wore on and just about the time I started questioning the patriotism of some of the kids in my 6th grade class, a famous singer strode to the platform and tearfully promised all of us that he would take a gun and kill his three daughters before he would allow them to fall into the clutches of the dirty commies who were hiding behind every movie set in Hollywood. I never heard his songs again without worrying what those three girls must have thought when word got back to them of their father’s vow.

But such is the way of the true believer. Nothing will stand in the way of their sense of righteousness, especially not the facts. There is, in Petersburg, Kentucky, a museum dedicated to the proposition that the universe was created in 6 days. It is an overwhelming success with creationists flocking through the doors to affirm their conviction that 99.99% of the world’s scientists are dead wrong with their godless evolutionary ideas.

Locally, several dentists have had to take time out from their dutiful drilling to describe, once again, that fluoride is not a plot by our government to take control of our obviously diminishing brains but a scientifically proven method for protecting us from cavities.

Recently, I was talking with a friend who is planning on hosting a big party at a Breckenridge restaurant on December 22, 2012. That is the day after the world, according to an ancient Mayan calendar, is supposed to come to an end. I’m already planning to attend…but only if the black helicopters don’t swoop down into Silverthorne and capture me first.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-07-23T12:26:00.001-07:00

Thirty-five years ago this summer I quit smoking and I can still remember the agony of withdrawal to this very day. I went to bed for three days. My hair hurt. My head ached. My hands trembled but somehow I managed to go from 30 ciggies a day to none in the course of those 72 hours and I’ve stayed on the wagon ever since. But it certainly wasn’t easy. I still have a great deal of empathy for folk who are struggling with the N drug. I know for a personal fact how difficult it is to give it up.

I took my leap after watching a PBS program on the dangers of smoking that included graphic images of lungs and hearts that had once been inside smokers’ bodies. The evidence was painfully irrefutable and I was compelled by that evidence to give it up.

This week I became aware of some other startling and disturbing evidence that demands a similar response. Hundreds of pages of documentation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicate that driving a vehicle while talking on a cell-phone is as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. Research in 2002 reveals that nearly a thousand fatalities that year and 240,000 accidents were the direct result of driving while engaged in a cell-phone conversation.

What may be equally disturbing is that this information was withheld from the public by direct orders from the U.S. Department of Transportation for fear that it would affect billions of dollars in future financing. The similarities between this cover-up and the aggressive tactics of the tobacco industry to deny the dangers of smoking are strikingly parallel and point, once again, to the role money and profit play in our political processes.

One can fairly assume that the multi-billion dollar cell-phone industry would be highly anxious to avoid any link between the use of their products and carnage on the highways. Just as the tobacco industry poured millions of dollars into attempting to block any governmental restrictions upon their deadly products, one can easily imagine the cell-phone industry attempting to wield a similar campaign behind the closed doors of the Department of Transportation and the Congress.

In any case, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the evidence is now public and politicians will find it increasingly difficult to avoid their sworn duty to protect the citizenry from the danger of distracted drivers. The Department of Transportation’s own data now indicates that at any given time 12% of all drivers are engaged in cell-phone conversations.

I doubt there isn’t a person reading this who can’t immediately recall a time when someone either caused or nearly caused an accident while being distracted by a phone conversation. This newly released evidence only confirms what most of us have witnessed innumerable times. The question now is whether the government will take action against this dangerous behavior.

If you’re anywhere near as old as me, you will probably remember the advertisements in magazines like Life and Time that depicted doctors lighting up their favorite cigarettes. The now astounding claims were for everything from calming the nerves to soothing the throat. Everyone smoked. How could it be bad for you?

When the evidence finally was made clear and the government forced the tobacco industry to print those sobering words on the side of every pack and in the corner of every advertisement, millions of addicts broke free from their dangerous habit.

Will this new evidence create a similar effect? Will a sensible citizenry combine with responsible political leaders to ban this obviously dangerous practice?

I quit smoking before the current plethora of prohibitions on smoking was put into effect. Scientific evidence convinced me of the dangers of my habit before the government began enacting laws. Will I be able to do the same again?

My hair is already beginning to hurt.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-07-16T12:28:00.001-07:00

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas’ strong words were rendered mute by the revered conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, Joan, last week when the couple flew to Switzerland to take advantage of that country’s liberal laws on assisted suicide. With the help of the organization Dignitas, Mr. and Mrs. Downes drank a small vial of poison and ended their lives as they had spent the last 54 years, together.

Euthanasia is a Greek word meaning, “good or happy death” but I am sure there are many who see the Downes’ joint demise as anything but. In spite of Mrs. Downes’ terminal cancer diagnosis, many critics will decry her suicide as morally repugnant, justifiably illegal and, for the religious, a mortal sin. Her husband’s voluntary act of joining her in death will cause even more consternation. Although Sir Edward’s health was failing…he had become nearly blind and deaf…he might easily have lived for a number of additional years. But the thought of living without his beloved spouse was apparently unacceptable and so they flew to Zurich to die.

The arguments against such an unalterable action have been made in a myriad of ways over the years.

The primary question in most of these battles revolves around the issue of responsibility. Who is ultimately responsible for your life? Some would suggest that the answer is obvious and that it falls to each individual to make his or her own decisions regarding the care of their own lives. Such a rationale makes The Downes’ decision an honorable one. No one has the right, many would argue, to tell someone either how or how long one must live.

But, of course, things can get very complicated when others become involved. We are bound by laws and shaped by standards that do indeed inform our decisions as to both how and how long we are to live. Most folk in the medical profession feel duty bound to do all they can to prolong life. Many among the clergy see any attempt to accelerate the dying process as a blatant interference with the intentions of God. Some others see even the decision to ease a person into death through the use of pain-killing drugs as a slippery slope to a more liberal acceptance of euthanasia practices. It is a highly charged and extraordinarily complicated issue to be sure.

For The Downes, the decision was made easier because of the support of their children. A son, Caractacus Downes, issued this statement after the death of his parents: “After 54 happy years together, they decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems. They wanted to be next to each other when they died. They held hands across the beds. It is a very civilized way to be able to end your life.”

My past experience of being with a good many folk as they lay dying has certainly shaped my opinions about my own final days. The needless suffering I have witnessed, the extraordinary prolongation of a few last hours and the feverish attempts to defeat the inevitable, have convinced me of the value of a “good or happy death”.

The growing popularity and utilization of the hospice movement has allowed many to spend their last days in peace, knowing that the unavoidable will at least be attended to with compassion and comfort.

Although most of us tend to forego thoughts of our own dying and death, it can be an enormous gift to family and friends to take the time now to carefully describe in a Living Will, or other similar form, the kind of care you wish and the procedures you will permit in your final days. Living-will forms are available on-line and from many religious organizations. Their legality continues to be argued but the clarity of your desires will always be appreciated by those who someday must make decisions on your behalf.

Judging from comments reported in various news media, the Downes’ family and friends appear not to be overly surprised by the couples’ decision to die together. It appears to be in keeping with their frequently expressed philosophy of life which, as can be seen in this dramatic example, can also shape one’s death.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-07-10T12:04:00.001-07:00

Oh no, not again!

It appears one more conservative icon has fallen off the politically appropriate pedestal. Only this time the fall wasn’t caused by an Argentine mistress, a co-worker’s wife, a too narrow bathroom stall or even a ditzy farewell address. No, this symbol of sanctified esteem fell from old-school prominence primarily because he began espousing New Deal-like principles and down-right leftist leanings.

Such treasonous behavior to the traditionalist cause can be found throughout the fallen hero’s 28,000 word document released just this past Tuesday under the decidedly un-American sounding title of “Caritas In Veritate”. Surely the fervently faithful followers of laissez faire capitalism must cringe when they read of their former champion’s call for a “redistribution of wealth” and an international governing body that would oversee and regulate world economies.

That rumble you hear is Milton Friedman rolling over in his grave.

Ronald Reagan may be doing the same if word gets to him of what our writer thinks of the old “trickle-down” system of social welfare: “business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference.”

And listen to this...” The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centered.” Was that Ayn Rand who just started spinning?

Wait! There’s more. “The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side.” If that isn’t leftist lingo I don’t know what is.

Here’s just one more example of why our conservative friends and enemies are wringing their hands and shaking their heads...” there is urgent need of a true world political authority.” A New World Order! What more evidence does one need to see how a hero of the right has become so wrong?

By now, of course, you have discerned that the source of disappointment among conservatism’s disciples is Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical that certainly challenges much of conventional conservative thinking. It must be more than a little disconcerting for folk who have been under the impression that the Catholic Church in America was essentially the Republican Party at prayer to discover that the Pope isn’t in their political pulpit.
Those who thought they had America’s Catholics locked into the conservative cause are starting to question their presumptions. When a Jesuit priest, Father Thomas Reese, writing in the Washington Post states that “…he (Benedict) is to the left of almost every politician in America.” … you have to think that conservatives have to re-think. The current school of thought that has Evangelicals and Catholics united under the Republican banner is beginning to realize it is time to go back to class.

Of course, liberals have done their share of fulfilling the old saw that says when one presumes to assume they make only an ass out of u and me. Any student of recent history is well aware that the old rules no longer apply. Labor has left the liberal fold, an African-American heads the Republican Party and the Democratic South long ago went south.

Still, this week’s declaration by Pope Benedict may have some sitting on the left side of the aisle in Congress searching for a seat at this Sunday’s Mass.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-07-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

July 4, 2009

Today is our most important national holiday and that means everyone should get the day off, including newspaper columnists. So here’s one, slightly updated, from the archives…

“May I have a name, please?” the kind young woman asked as she finished relaying my tall latte order to her co-worker.

In the nanosecond or two that bridged the gap between her question and my response, a strange and potent power seemed to make its presence known deep within the gaps of my psyche. Here was my chance, I surmised, to change my identity. I could, with the ease of unchallenged conversation, simply become someone other than myself.

For instance, I might stare deeply into her rather unresponsive hazel eyes and say, “They call me Steel” and see if such nomenclature might buckle her probably aching knees. Or, if I was feeling a need to convince myself and any overhearing others that I possess intellectual powers now abundantly lacking, I might respond to her innocent request by squinting more than a little, push the bridge of my glasses higher up on my formidable nose and say, “Albert” or, “Leonardo”, if I’m feeling that bold.

My mother once mentioned that I bore a striking resemblance to Paul Newman or maybe it was Danny DeVito. No matter. Now was my chance to try on either for size. Actually, I have for many years now spent too much time wondering what it would be like to have a book on the bestseller list. “John” (as in Grisham), I could say or “Chicken” (as in Soup).

Isn’t this fun? OK maybe fun isn’t exactly the right word but surely you can see the myriad of possibilities that present themselves. You call the restaurant to make your reservation but instead of something as prosaic as Jones or Smith or Mayfield, we get to say, “Ferrari” or “Buffett” or maybe “J. Biden” if you’re feeling really cheeky. I’ll bet the table waiting for you won’t be by the bathroom door.

I probably shouldn’t admit this but, just between you and me, I sometimes am not completely honest when someone asks what it is I used to do. Like changing my name, I have been tempted not to fully reveal my former professional status to strangers. Over the years I have found such a pronouncement can, and very quickly, end conversation and put dampers on any fun. Once on a chairlift, I was, most hospitably, offered a share in my seat-partner’s marijuana joint. My smiling declination did not prevent him from sharing two-thirds of his life story by the time we were half way up the lift. As we hit the mid-point, he inquired as to my former profession. Honestly I told him and, honestly, he never said another word.

Another time, on a two and a half hour flight to California, the fellow sitting next to me offered me something very different than my acquaintance on the lift. This guy gave me nothing more than a big smile. But then he opened up a Bible and began to feverishly take notes, underlining whole chapters. He would frequently turn toward me in a not too subtle invitation to conversation. I buried myself in my book and pretended not to notice his very public piety. Had he asked I would, without question, have told him anything but the truth. I’m nauseous enough when I fly.

“Pierre”, I could say with one raised eyebrow, hinting of exotic locales. “Igor” I could grunt and experience, if only momentarily, what it might be like to be an intimidator rather than always the intimidatee.

My dad had the wonderful name “Max”, although I never appreciated it when I was a kid. I wanted an old man with a moniker like “Joe” or “Bud”. “Max” always seemed more mousy than macho. People named their dogs “Max” not their people. Only now that he’s gone I miss hearing his name. So here was my chance to honor his memory. Should I take it?

I once knew a man named “Caroll”. Johnny Cash knew a boy named “Sue”. I have a male friend named, “Joy”. Would it be too shocking to tell her my name was “Charlotte”? Would the laugh be worth the embarrassment of innocently shouting out “Margaret”?

The possibilities are many, the risks reasonably few. I bit my lower lip and took a deep breath. “Rich”, I said.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-06-25T12:02:00.001-07:00

Good morning class! Welcome to Abnormal Psychology 301. This semester we will be studying that fascinating distortion of the human psyche known as Psychological Projection. Our textbook will be the daily paper or your favorite political blog. This course strives to achieve a balanced approach to this aberration but, truth to tell, recent events have made it particularly difficult to find better subjects than those offered by certain sanctimonious politicians.

To wit: Our first case study comes from South Carolina and the strange story of the two-faced Governor. Mark Sanford has been described as a fervent fiscal and social conservative who stands for strong family values except, it appears, in the case of his own family. Governor Mark, as most of you know, went missing last weekend and after a flurry of lies and distortions ended up confessing his affair with an Argentinean lass by the name of Maria. Please write an essay of 500 words on the cognitive dissonance between Mr. Sanford’s public abhorrence over President Clinton’s philandering and his own.

Case Study #2 may be found only a few newspaper issues previous to the Sanford affair. Another Republican presidential hopeful, Senator John Ensign of Nevada also admitted his inability to keep his pants zipped. Ensign did his fooling around with the wife of one of his own staffers which makes him not only an adulterer but a pretty lousy boss. Another 500 words on this classic case study, focusing on the senator’s foolish assumption that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Hypocrisy comes in a myriad of ways, of course, and one of the more interesting was brought to us by the former Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho who got caught with his pants down in a well-known gay hangout at the Minneapolis Airport. Before this embarrassment, Mr. Craig was one of the senate’s most vocal critics of homosexual rights and, once again, a passionate advocate of traditional family values. Your essay on this case should center on the question of self-hatred as a catalyst to political advancement.

Our class will find that self-righteousness is not limited to Republican causes. A Google search away will have you reading of (former) New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s campaign against prostitution that was brought to a screeching halt when the guv was found to be in bed with the enemy…frequently and with a few admittedly bizarre flourishes. Here your paper could investigate how psychological projection only seems to be a Republican personality trait.

Some of you may remember John Edwards. Too bad. That sanctimonious scoundrel cheated on his wife while she was undergoing chemotherapy. Your assignment will be to compare and contrast his immorality with that of Newt Gingrich who did much the same thing a few years back but hopes we’ve all forgotten it.

For extra credit, you may explore this same psychological dysfunction among the clergy, a profession that seems to attract similar personality types. Researching the strange case of Pastor Ted Haggard, for example, whose private dalliances with both drugs and boy-dates stood in sharp contrast to his pious public persona, is worth ten extra points. A field trip to Colorado Springs will bring another ten points, while to Rome or Dublin, five hundred.

Your final paper will be a careful examination of the enormously harmful effects foisted upon innocent people by these projecting perpetrators. Think especially of the millions of GLBT folk who have suffered at the hands of men who purport to be pillars of piety when they are anything but. You might wish to include reference to the irony inherent in defenders of traditional marriage denying that right to others while despoiling it amongst themselves. Your concluding paragraph should address the hypocrisy and futility of legislating morality…especially with hypocritical and immoral legislators.

Class dismissed.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-06-11T11:39:00.001-07:00

I don’t envy Michael Dell…well, maybe just a little but the multi-billionaire CEO and founder of Dell Computers has a very sticky situation on his hands and how he manages to extricate himself may mean millions of dollars either lost or gained for his struggling company.

One of Dell’s largest markets for its personal computers is China. Last year, over 40 million computers were sold to China by Dell and a few other U.S. computer companies. But this past week, the Chinese government issued an edict that demanded all new computers sold in China must be programmed with a government controlled censoring software called Green Dam. This decree is to take effect July 1.

In other words, Dell and his peers have until the end of this month to either stand up to the grossly undemocratic Communist Chinese diktat or to a potentially hostile conglomeration of capitalistic stock holders who may not be too happy with losing some very lucrative dividends in this recessionary year.

It’s a tough choice and one that has to take into account a myriad of issues including this troubling dilemma of profit versus principle. Right now Dell and the others seem to be pleading the pragmatic rather than the ethical problems inherent in the Chinese pronouncement. It is reasonable to assume that a newly added software program may wreck havoc with previously programmed software ultimately resulting in the potential for shutting down millions of new computers. Now you wouldn’t want that, would you Chairman Hu Jintao?

But the ethical side of the problem may be even more troubling. Should an American company that has enjoyed the freedoms and privileges of a democratic government support through its commerce a most undemocratic practice?

Politics, we are told, is the art of compromise so one assumes some very deft politicking is going on right now. It will be interesting to see just how this plays out, whether any party will emerge with both their dignity and principles in tact.

Political compromise has seemingly fallen out of favor in recent years. Claiming unalterable allegiance to a particular position, our politicians no longer seem to regard compromise as an essential ingredient of a healthy democratic system. Some of us can remember reading the stories of Democrats and Republicans spending their days involved in vigorous debate only to adjourn to the nearest pub to reaffirm their underlying friendships and mutual commitment to the democratic process. Now it appears the closest these two sides get is shouting at each other from across the aisle.

Compromise, of course, is the cornerstone in any healthy relationship. Any married couple can affirm that axiom. You’re not going to celebrate your 50th wedding anniversary without making more than a few compromises along the way.
Most workplaces, I suspect, would also affirm the importance of compromise. Getting along with co-workers seems an essential part of not just a pleasant work environment but a productive one as well.

Still, compromise comes hard for some folk. President Obama has taken more than a little flak for suggesting that dialogue with our allies and even our enemies may be a successful alternative to our past bullying. Charges of appeasement and even cowardice come easy from those who claim to be standing firmly affixed to their unalterable principles. Such claimants often make better radio commentators (or newspaper columnists) than pragmatic politicians, of course.

The plethora of violent acts in recent days is a grim reminder of what can happen when there is no allowance for compromise. Certainly there are times when the opportunities for compromise are limited or even exhausted but those times should arrive slowly and with intense scrutiny. Cavalierly declaring that compromise is never an option is the jargon of ideologues whose usefulness in a world filled with warring nations and fanatic individuals is nil or worse.

As I say, I don’t envy Mr. Dell and his decision-making but I do await it with great interest. Will it provide a helpful guide to future negotiations with China or a sobering confrontation with the limits of compromise…or, just maybe, both?

The Practicing Progressive

2009-06-04T11:36:00.000-07:00

“Sticks and stones will break my bones but words can never harm me!”

Such sentiment may be a consolation to little children being bullied on the playground but by the time they become adults they will learn that it is patently untrue.

Words have great potential to do enormous harm as the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita physician and part-time Dillon resident, can so tragically attest. Tiller’s murderer, who chose to assassinate his victim on a Sunday morning in the foyer of Tiller’s Lutheran church, was apparently an avid reader of some of the most vitriolic and inflammatory anti-abortion blogs on the web including David Leach’s “Prayer and Action Newsletter”. One can fairly assume that the hate-filled rhetoric that spews out of these blogs made an impression on the assumedly unstable murderer. It is worth noting that Mr. Leach responded to the murder of Dr. Tiller with this revealing quote: “To call this a crime is too simplistic. There is Christian scripture that would support this."

There are many others among the anti-abortion advocates who must bear responsibility for this infamous act. The language they employ, the ire they induce and, perhaps most especially, the divine mandate they claim, have contributed to the hate-filled, indeed murderous, atmosphere that permeates this controversial issue. Reading the recent remarks of some very popular conservative commentators one can’t help but question whether they are at least indirectly responsible for egging on the perpetrators of such heinous crimes.

One of Evangelical Christianity’s most revered theologians, the late Francis Schaffer, in one of his best-selling books compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler’s Germany and strongly suggested that it was morally justified to use the same methods against doctors who perform abortions as one would have used against Hitler. In other words, murder.

Words matter. When former President Bush employed the term “crusade” to describe the war on terror in his famous post 9/11 speech, he immediately engendered the disdain of millions of Muslims who have been schooled in the bloody battles Christianity once waged against Islam. The Muslim world was put on notice, they certainly believed, that the impending war was to be a war of religions rather than political ideologies. Such careless rhetoric, even if innocently stated, can have terrible consequences. A quiet conversation with almost any Middle-Eastern citizen will reveal just how powerful and hurtful that one word from President Bush was felt by many, if not most, Muslims.

In Christian churches all over the world, words read on Sunday morning invite hate and vengeance against non-Christians. In a myriad of scriptural passages, the Christian Bible berates Jews, even famously suggesting in one verse from Matthew that the murder of Jesus should forever be a curse upon all of Judaism. The fact that most Christians don’t overtly respond to such hateful language doesn’t excuse it from being used in Christian worship.

The recent condemnations of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is another blatant example of the damage that can be done by the careless employment of language. To hear her referred to as a racist by commentators who most often represent that segment of society that once stood idly by when African-Americans were attacked by dogs and beaten by police, reveals how irresponsible our utilization of language has become. Could such current name-calling incite an unbalanced true-believer into murderous action? It already has, many times.

“Sticks and stones…” Most children, of course, already know the lie inherent in that playground retort. Words do matter. All of us who are parents can certainly remember those profoundly sad days when our children returned home emotionally crushed by the hateful words of others. Brushing aside their pain with a bathos-filled bromide is to infer what we all know is simply false. Last Sunday’s murder was a tragic confirmation of this sad truth.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-05-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

Rich Mayfield
For: 5-23-09

A distraught husband comes to the office of a certain minister complaining that he is plagued by guilt. “Please,” the man implores the pastor, “I need to stop feeling so guilty.” The minister inquires as to the source of the man’s guilt and learns that his visitor has been cheating on his wife for over three months. “I just don’t want to feel so bad,” the errant husband whines. Whereupon the cleric, employing a well-seasoned pastoral insight combined with a less than kindly tone, says, “You should feel guilty. I’m glad you feel guilty. I hope you feel guilty until you stop what you’re doing, confess your infidelity to your wife and ask for her forgiveness.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian martyr executed by the Nazis days before the liberation of Europe, once wrote that the power of forgiveness to mend relationships was cheapened when forgiveness was proffered without a call for repentance.

I was reminded of Bonhoeffer’s keen insight this past week when I read a summary of the Irish government’s report on the appalling abuses perpetrated by priests and nuns upon young Irish children during most of the 20th century. The 2600 page report, over nine years in the making, describes horrific crimes against the children remanded to the custody of church institutions from the 1930s to the 1990s. There were immediate apologies from church leaders upon release of the massive document but many of those abused during their childhood are claiming the report doesn’t go far enough in naming names of the perpetrators and uncovering the systematic institutional practice of turning a back on its victims rather than offering the other cheek.

What is troubling to many is the lack of personal responsibility. When everyone is guilty, no one really is and the church has apparently managed to avoid having to actually list the names of the evil-doers. It is, of course, much easier to offer instead a neatly pre-arranged acknowledgement of corporate mistakes and move on to more pressing orders of business. Letting sleeping dogs/abusers lie seems to be the approach the Irish Catholic Church has chosen. After all, most of the criminals are dead so what good would it do to embarrass their families and, God forbid, tarnish the priests’ pious reputations?

Such thinking seems also to be practiced by the Obama Administration in their reluctance to ferret out those in the previous administration’s employ who allegedly ignored constitutional restraints and engaged in or approved of illegal and certainly immoral acts of torture. Our president’s seemingly noble desire to “look forward rather than back” is being applauded by many. After all, this nation has a myriad of monumental problems to contend with right now. But the danger of ignoring governmental wrongs from the past might easily result in perpetuating similar crimes in the future. Even a president with the best of intentions may be running the risk of not just jeopardizing our nation’s moral standing with the rest of the world but our own foundational principles as well. If such egregious behavior suspected of the very highest offices in our country’s government is allowed to be swept under the rug for the sake of a temporary political accord, a terrible precedent for future lawlessness is realized.

When South Africa finally emerged from the nightmare of apartheid and began the long process of reconstituting its government, Noble prize-winner Bishop Desmond Tutu advocated for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would bring to light the terrible ramifications of a nation divided by institutional racism. Over the many months that the Commission held its meetings, where victims of racial abuse were able to confront their abusers and vividly describe the terrible wrongs done to them, South Africans of all races began to realize the importance of throwing light on the past in order to form a more perfect union in the future.

It is not some kind of code of vengeance that demands the assumption of responsibility by those who have perpetrated wrongs but rather a deep concern that, as the philosopher George Santayana so famously wrote, “Those who choose to ignore the past are condemned to repeat it.”

May wayward husbands, discomforted bishops and idealistic presidents all take note.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-04-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

Tweet.

Recent days have brought a surprising increase in invitations of friendship from people who, I had always assumed, already were my friends. In addition, I have of late received similar requests from folk I barely know or, in a few instances, do not wish to know. By now any of you still bearing breath understand that I am writing of the cultural phenomenon that has captured the hearts and minds of 98% of the known world which, judging from the influx in offers of cyberspacial friendship, probably includes every person you have ever encountered in the course of this lifetime and the next

Previously, I had assumed that a “Facebook” was a compilation of villainous mug shots like those Dragnet’s Jack Webb displayed to innocent victims of a 10-32 or an 8-17 while telling them in his famously mundane monotone to “Just take your time, Ma’m, and see if any of these look social deviants look like the punk who stole your purse.”

Now, of course, I know that “Facebook” and its evil twin, “My Space”, are simply the latest means of communicating among those of us who wish to continue in some kind of relationship with the rest of humanity.

Those of us of wending our way through our 60s and, hopefully, beyond are constantly confronting similar existential dilemmas. In our quest to remain current with developments of the modern age, we are frequently faced with decisions of relevance. Our choices reveal our willingness to continue the quest. Many of us aging boomers can remember some of our more common communal whines: “What do I need an e-mail address for?” and “I’ll be damned if I’m going to get a cell phone!”, being two of the most frequently proclaimed. One can understand, I hope, the need for sympathy as we elders discover that we can no longer play our 8-tracks in the car or find a phone booth anywhere but displayed in dioramas in the Museum of Science and Industry.

I remember the first time I encountered someone using an earpiece for their cell phone. Along with 200 or so fellow weary travelers, I was waiting to board a flight bound, I believe, for Chicago when suddenly one gentleman in line turned to the wall and began loudly excoriating an invisible companion. Waving his arms and raising his voice even louder, the man in question was clearly evidencing the classic symptoms of schizophrenia. Why the others in line didn’t appear to be concerned over his bizarre behavior was confusing to me but I chalked it up to their psychotherapeutic innocence. I, on the other hand, was very reluctant to board the flight with this maniac. But just as quickly as it began, the madman stopped his antics and stepped back in line. When I recounted this frightening episode to my family upon my return home, they stared back at me in stunned wonderment over my utter ignorance.

The most frightening development of late for me is the introduction of e-book dispensers, those pocket-sized pieces of plastic and silicone that can take a beautifully bound 1200 page volume offering tactile, visual and even olfactory sensory pleasures and reduce it all to the size of a cell phone screen. I suspect such an evolution is inevitable, although it is hard for me to imagine inviting someone into my library where the walls are lined not with shelves stuffed to overflowing with lovely literary tomes but a solitary little gizmo that contains every book ever published. I just don’t think I want to be alive when that happens. Of course, I could change my mind if it becomes popular very soon.

And that, as I say, is the problem. It really is exhausting trying to keep up in a world that seems to reinvent itself every other Tuesday. I mean some of us are still grieving over the loss of WordPerfect for goodness sake!

Still, few of us are willing to align ourselves with Ned Ludd and his band of anti-progressive reactionaries. We’re just asking for a little consideration is all. A gentle warning before the next seismic cultural shift would be greatly appreciated. Maybe you could tweet us. Although I can’t for the life of me understand what good a bird call is going to do.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-04-23T13:31:00.001-07:00

Rich Mayfield
For: 4-25-09

"Was it worth it?" asked John Yoo, formerly of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and author of memos justifying torture of terrorist suspects, "We haven't had an attack in more than seven years." (Speech at Chapman University, April 21, 2009)

I am sure you would want to join me in taking this opportunity to thank Mr. Yoo and his fellow former Justice Department attorneys for keeping America safe these past seven plus years. Their complete disregard for international treaties prohibiting the use of torture combined with a truly stunning contempt for the moral principles this nation was founded upon have obviously protected us from complete and total annihilation from terrorists abroad, aliens above and maybe one or two American citizens whose political views just seemed a little too peculiar. That they also turned our system of justice into a model for dictators around the world should also be noted. I am certain President Mugabe, President (for life) Kim Il-sung as well as a few hundred Somali pirates are deeply grateful.

The rationale at work here is tantamount to the one used by my teacher in parochial school who used to begin our school day by having us all bow our heads and beg God not to allow the godless and immoral Communists to drop a nuclear bomb on innocent children like us. You never heard such pious pleading as that which came from 27 frightened third-graders of room 3-A! And just in case our devotion failed to convince our deity, we frequently practiced scrambling underneath our desks and turning our eyes away from the window where the blinding light from the atomic blast would render us all blind on top of being dead as doorposts. Now I probably shouldn’t claim complete responsibility for preventing a nuclear holocaust during the 1958-59 school year but…

I suppose this might also be the time to offer our thanksgiving to Fox News for rallying dozens of outraged fellow citizens who gathered recently to sip tea and share their shock over the state of governmental spending. Concern for the dire future financial state of their children’s children appeared to be the general theme as their communal wail over billions to be spent building up our neglected national infrastructure served to inform us all of their noble and patriotic intentions. It would probably be impolite to ask where their grave concern for wasted tax dollars was when President Bush took a $240 billion surplus at the beginning of his administration and quickly turned it into a $400 billion deficit that just kept getting bigger. The fact that government spending increased by 55% during G.W.’s tenure tends to get ignored by those so genuinely concerned about the “socialist” tendencies of our new administration. By the way, we should all take note that it was five years ago this week that our former president swaggered across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to boast that our mission to Iraq had been accomplished. What it accomplished was and still is open to debate but the deficit it helped create can’t be ignored by the critics of our current administration.

Mr. Yoo’s bold claim calls to mind other rationales that deserve the light of day. Those of us who still remember the faulty reasoning for the foolishness known as the Vietnam War can’t help but recall the words of the American major who claimed, “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”

And then there is the late Jerry Falwell’s paean to the Prince of Peace following the attacks of 9/11, "You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I'm for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord."

Who can forget Marion Barry, the former mayor of our nation’s capital, boasting, "Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

I’ll close with one final tribute to Mr. Yoo’s odd way of thinking. It comes from the master himself and may help explain the strange doings from inside the Justice Department. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." (President George W. Bush, Aug. 5, 2004.)

The Practicing Progressive

2009-04-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

Rich Mayfield
For: April 18, 2009

I mean, really, what’s the use?

I suppose I should begin this column by announcing that it will be my annual plea for a reasonable gun control policy in these United States. This way all those who find such appeals infuriating and downright un-American can immediately fire up their e-mails and begin their all too familiar screeds on my indefatigable ignorance as regards the Constitution, the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights and the absolutely, undeniable, irrefutable, intentions of the founding fathers.

Each year, in a combination that bears traits of both Sisyphus and Don Quixote, I wonder aloud why we as a nation cling so tenaciously to the triggers of AK-47s and Saturday-night specials if all we really want to do is tromp out into the forest for a few days of male-bonding and Bambi-blasting. Why is it, I ask again, that even the merest hint of establishing some kind of reasonable control over the proliferation of weapons that have absolutely nothing to do with sport and precious little with self-protection will result in a barrage of letters questioning my sanity, proclaiming my senility and denying my patriotism. And although some of these epistles are written in the electronic version of crayon, others are very carefully crafted. Indeed, it appears there must certainly be a systematic effort on the part of a very well-financed and very influential lobbying organization whose initials I won’t mention except to say they begin with N and end with A and the rifle in the middle gave up hunting long ago, to root out any columnist in America for excoriation be they big-name and extremely popular writers from the New York Times or small-town opinionators like you know who.

So again I ask…What’s the use? We seem to be so entrenched in our positions that any kind of compromise creating a policy on gun ownership that mimics other modern nations is simply out of the question. When NRA members like Democratic Representative Dan Boren of Oklahoma say “I can tell you, that assault-weapons ban is just an excuse to take away a sportsman’s shotguns,” you know any change in our national policy is light years away.

What’s the use? On this past Good Friday in Pittsburgh, a white supremacist, armed with legally acquired assault weaponry, gunned down three policemen, a slaughter that merited a night or two of news coverage and nothing more. That may be because only the day before another mad man murdered 13 people in upstate New York while on the day of the Pittsburgh massacre, a fellow arms man shot his five children to death. This was followed only days later by the handgun murder of four other innocents in Alabama. The city of Oakland, California is still reeling from last month’s gun battle that left four police officers lying dead in the street. Tens of thousands of Americans, innocent and not, have been cut down by illegal weaponry in the last decade and still the resistance to the merest of reasonable restrictions remains resolute.

What’s the use? When you read that 90% of the guns confiscated from the warring Mexican drug cartels can be traced back to gun shops in America, what else can you say? Or when you discover that dealers selling multiple AK-47s to a purchaser, guns solely devised for the killing of as many people as possible, are not required to report such sales to any branch of government, who can’t help but despair over what clearly seems to be a system gone mad?

Nearly all of this craziness can be attributed to the unremitting work of the NRA, an organization that was initially designed as a support for the hunting community but has now fallen under the control of zealots who are immune to any plea for dialogue. Even as our nation stumbles toward the chaos of Old West street justice, the fanatics in the NRA wield their considerable electoral power demanding and receiving acquiescence from too many of our national leaders fearful of losing the perks of power.

During his campaign, President Obama promised to get tough on the absurd proliferation of assault weapons. So far he has not and the tide of gun terror continues to rise. Given the enormous problems facing our nation, it is understandable that only so much can be done at once but some of us are asking whether fixing the economy, solving the Palestinian problem or gaining peace in Iraq will ultimately matter if America continues to be held hostage by Second Amendment extremists whose fanaticism is causing many of us to wonder…What’s the use?

The Practicing Progressive

2009-04-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

Easter weekend seems an appropriate time to remind believers and non-believers alike that Jesus was never a Christian. Indeed, if the earliest of Christian writings are to be believed, Jesus wasn’t much interested in establishing a new religion. He was just a good Jewish boy who took his faith seriously enough to think others might too.

At the heart of his religious practice was an old proverb that has come to be known as The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This maxim is not unique to Judaism although it is certainly central to it. The Talmud says: "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.

Not so surprisingly, you can find similar admonitions in other religious traditions. Thanks to several great sites on the internet, I found some 21 different religious ways of saying the same thing. My favorites include Confucius’ clever counsel: "Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence." And here is one from the sacred writings of Islam: "None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." Although I couldn’t really tell you what shapes the beliefs of Zoroastrianism, I can tell you that in the 29th verse of the 13th chapter of their Shayast-na-Shayast you can find this: "Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others."

Plato, Socrates, Seneca and others found their own way of saying much the same thing. Even L. Ron Hubbard marks the 20th moral precept of his recent religion, Scientology, with these words: "20: Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you."

So it does seem more than a little strange that most of the adherents of these and the other 16 religions with their own versions of The Golden Rule have spent most of their religious histories doing precisely the opposite. I suppose you could try and justify some of the outrageous acts of Christendom, for instance, by suggesting that burnings at the stake and the quartering of heretics by four horses headed in four different directions isn’t as bad as it sounds but I can’t imagine anyone wanting either practice practiced on themselves.

Anyone who has traveled to Palestine in recent years can report first hand on the apparent absence of Golden Rule practitioners in that too often unholy land. And hardly a day goes by when the Taliban isn’t reported for treating innocent women in a manner that belies the teachings of Islam. The Hindu practice known as sati which involves tossing a living widow on the crematory fires of her dead husband is patently contradictory to these words from the sacred Mahabharata: “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.”

And on and on and on. One can understand why the current crop of proponents of atheism like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchins are so popular. The history of religion makes for sobering and decidedly depressing reading. Nevertheless, the failures of the disciples don’t negate the value of the principle.

One of my all-time favorite writers is the Christian, Anne Lamott, who, while trying to explain her own religious failings, wrote: “My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, "I'm not really a Jew -- I'm Jew-ish." They think I am Christian-ish. But I'm not. I'm just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant… I am a believer, a convert. I'm probably about three months away from slapping an aluminum Jesus-fish on the back of my car, although I first want to see if the application or stickum in any way interferes with my lease agreement.”

Maybe that’s the best way of coming to grips with the failure of most of us, religious or not, to follow The Golden Rule. We really, really, really, want to abide by this universal code of justice but first we want to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the rest of our life.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-04-02T12:52:00.001-07:00

It was a minor milestone to be sure but the announcement from my car’s odometer that it was beginning its 100,000th mile was enough for me to pull over and ponder over the many miles I’ve traveled in recent years. Just a few minutes spent on the side of the road but enough to take me away from my current concerns and worries and into that repository of memory that makes for gratitude.

Little reminders like this can bring forth a healthier perspective perhaps than the one we’re currently holding. With a constant barrage of bad news, these aides memoire serve as important guideposts for our journeys; gently or not, steering us past the depressing precipices that threaten to send us crashing into this current media-hyped chasm of despair.

A profound milestone occurs for my family this week as our second child celebrates her 30th birthday. Such an occasion spurs more than celebration. Those of us who have doubled that date and more will certainly muse over the speed by which we have all arrived at this landmark. Although younger folk certainly grow tired of we AARPers constantly wondering aloud where the time has gone, we still do wonder. It is as if our lives were movies meant to be screened over 60, 70, 80 or more years but have now been edited down to an hour and a half. We didn’t even get a chance to finish our popcorn.

Christianity proceeds this coming week into it most sacred time of the year. With the celebration of Holy Week, Christians around the world will encounter the milestones that mark the last days of Jesus’ life and in some mysterious way, revealed only to believers, they will receive divine guidance for their spiritual travels.

This week the world’s Jews will experience the milestone known as Passover, creating sacred time in their homes and synagogues by reenacting another, ancient, sacred time.

One of the benefits of religion is the ritual reminders that make up religious practice. Being prompted by priest, imam or rabbi to reflect on the deeper things of life seems a goal worth pursuing. Most practitioners find such an activity brings a richness to what often seems mundane.

In my own religious tradition, we have the milestones of Saints’ Days and Commemorations to affect an often all too brief interruption into our busy lives. This coming week several notables are brought to our attention including Michelangelo on April 6, whose monumental work continues to inspire spiritual sojourners 500 years after his death. The commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on April 9 is a stark reminder of the cost of standing by one’s convictions. Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, was executed by the Nazis for treason only days before Germany was defeated.

One needn’t be religious to see the value of milestones, of course. Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac” broadcast each weekday on NPR uses its airtime to call to consciousness certain writers, artists and others who have impacted, sometimes in very small ways, the course of human history. A poem read, an archaic fact shared, an obituary intoned, can all be milestones for not just remembering other lives but rearranging our own.

Each morning we awake can be a milestone. Welcoming the day in gratitude for the past and hope for the future is a particularly effective means of commemoration. Finding a few minutes at the beginning of each day to sit in silent reflection, celebrating the sheer beauty of being alive…savoring our breathing, thanking our heart, wiggling our toes…can make us mindful of what is and grateful for what has been.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-03-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Where is the outrage?

On Monday, the front page was filled with expressions of anger and indignation at the bonuses allotted to AIG. Newspapers around the world reported on citizenry up in arms over the millions of dollars being allocated to executives who, in the opinion of many experts and not-so-experts alike, were more deserving of eternal damnation rather than year-end bonuses.

On Monday, generally lost amidst ads for the latest fashions or zero interest car loans, was the announcement that humanitarian aid organizations were being systematically expelled from Darfur by Sudan’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir in reaction to the International Criminal Court’s decision to indict him for crimes against humanity, genocide and murder. Estimates are that a minimum of 300,000 people have died in Darfur as a result of the policies handed down by the Sudanese ruler. Over a million people now depend on the aid groups in Darfur for the barest of life’s necessities. It is abundantly clear to those familiar with the tragedy continuing to unfold in Darfur that this expulsion is simply another means of human extermination, slower than government-backed raiders wiping out villages but just as effective.

On Tuesday, fearless and brave legislators spent their tax-payer supported day passing a patently unconstitutional bill designed to tax 90% of bonuses earned by executives working in industries that received federal bail-out funds. Congressmen and women of every stripe strode boldly to the microphones and declared their determined defense of all that is right and noble. Representative after representative made sure their mugs made it to the front page of their local newspapers proclaiming their virtue and extolling their moral courage.

On Tuesday, somewhere after the weather but before the comics, two paragraphs were spent describing how the Dali Lama was disinvited to a South African peace conference. The host country felt the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhists, a committed pacifist, would distract from the theme of the meeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners and others, namely peacemaking.

On Wednesday, in response to the great hue and cry from America’s masses and breathlessly reported (and encouraged?) by its media, the front page reported that President Obama ordered the Treasury Department to pursue “every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.”

On Wednesday, a summary of Pope Benedict’s address to an African continent ravaged by AIDS could be found on page 6. The pope declared that the use of condoms actually promoted the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. His conviction in this matter reveals an apparent ignorance of the plight of healthy African wives married to HIV-infected husbands among other papal idiocies. Rebecca Hodes, of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, an anti-AIDS organization, responded to the pope’s remarks by accurately declaring, “…his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans.”

On Thursday we could read through the glass on the newsstand that Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, demanded CEO’s of beleaguered and bailed-out businesses must show remorse ala Japanese corporate leaders, some of whom have recently committed suicide in response to their apparent failure to please the public.

On Thursday you had to rifle past the ads to read of Israeli soldiers complaining that government sanctioned rabbis were urging the combatants to see the conflict over Palestine as the God-blessed over the God-damned…and you can guess whose side God was on according to these clerics.

On Friday, banner headlines and a big photo announced AIG’s chief executive’s appearance on Capitol Hill where he was subject to a series of tongue lashings by politicians whose own fiduciary shenanigans and numerous infidelities have brought no little shame to their once hallowed chambers. AIG CEO Edward Liddy read examples of death threats to his employees and their families.

On Friday, page 16, the following paragraph appeared: “The Department of Defense has identified 4,252 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American…ANSONG, Theophilus K. 34, Petty Officer First Class, Navy; Bristow, Va.; amphibious transport dock San Antonio.”

Where is the outrage?

The Practicing Progressive

2009-03-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

Rich Mayfield
For: 3-21-09

Bob Jones has only a few months to live. Just moments after learning of his grim prognosis, Bob begins to reevaluate the priorities that have shaped his life. His self-examination serves as the storyline for the 1993 triumphant albeit tear-jerking film, “My Life” starring Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman. I watched this excellent movie shortly after reading the latest results of a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the account I read in the Los Angeles Times, researchers “found that terminally ill cancer patients were nearly three times more likely to go on breathing machines or receive other invasive treatments if religion was an important part of their decision-making process.” Statistically, these treatments did not improve the quantity and certainly not the quality of a person’s life.

After his initial desperate attempts to secure a different outcome, Bob comes to terms with his inevitable death and decides to make a home movie for his son to remember him by. This movie within a movie provides some exceptionally helpful insights into the process of value-rearrangement that accompanies our confrontation with our mortality. It is not surprising that a bigger home, a newer car, a more prestigious job diminish in importance in such circumstances. Instead, more mundane matters move to the forefront…time with loved ones, acts of reconciliation and forgiveness, a sunrise.

In my three decades as a minister, I witnessed this reevaluation process many times. Having the great privilege of attending to the dying offers an unforgettable opportunity for values edification. Watching “My Life” was a poignant reminder to remember what I had the honor to once learn.

All of which is why I found the AMA’s report so curious. One would think that religious folk whose faith has allegedly guided them through their lives would be less inclined to panic at the end. Nevertheless, the study indicates just the opposite. I suppose we could draw two quite different opinions. In the first, we might assume that this vigorous attempt to prolong one’s days represents a deep reverence for life and, therefore, an equally deep resistance to giving it up. The other, more cynical, opinion might be centered on the proposition that the religionist’s faith isn’t as strong as publicly proclaimed and when push comes to shove, one’s true beliefs come forth with the subsequent reluctance to meet one’s maker.

In my own experience, I found that, generally, one died the way one lived. If someone spent their life nurturing relationships and welcoming new experiences, death was met with little fear and often a profound sense of satisfaction. Coming up to the threshold of death with many issues unresolved, on the other hand, was often a difficult and frightening encounter. This profound fear may account for the fact that 1/3 of the Medicare budget goes to the last year of life and 80% of that is for the last month. Judging from this new AMA study, religionists do not go gently into the night.

Another recently released study indicated that Americans were less inclined to affiliating themselves with religious institutions. Fully 15% of Americans now claim they have no religious affiliation, up from 8% in 1990. One hypothesis that might be drawn here could be centered on a growing awareness that specific religious doctrines provide less guidance for a well-rounded life…and death…than a simple adherence to more universal principles. In an increasingly connected world, assuming one’s religion is supreme holds less sway it would seem than the golden rule of doing unto others as one would want done unto them.

The fictional Bob Jones reveals the non-fictional truth that our lives take on deep, satisfying meaning when we spend them pursuing matters that really, well, matter.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-03-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

It was research has led me to the westernmost brewpub in America to compare Waimea Brewery’s Pale Ale to Sweet George’s Brown (a comparison that has Dillon Dam Brewery coming way out on top!) but it is philosophy that has me sitting on the lanai of this old Kauai plantation trying, once again, to unlock the mysteries of my life and times.

The last two winters have had me spending some time on this beautiful Hawaiian island that, paradoxically, is host to the rainiest mountain top on the planet as well as some of earth’s sunniest beaches.

Kauai’s semi-official motto provides fodder for my first philosophical foray: “One Island. Many Peoples. All Kauaians.” It is an inviting thought that provides some balance to the onslaught of tribalism that pervades so much of our world. Although my research is cursory at best, it does seem that this particular place in the middle of the Pacific has a high cultural tolerance level. In my own experience, only Nepal matches the kind of companionable welcome offered to the island’s visitors and residents alike. Pondering the religious, racial and political divides in much of the world only underscores the optimistic idealism that just may be taking hold here. Tempting as it is to avoid news from the rest of the world, a brief glance at favorite websites each morning only confirms one’s convictions that Kauai’s strategy may be the only viable one left.

America’s current foray into divisiveness that has puffed-up political commentator’s rooting for presidential failure and at-a-loss politicians pretending they know better has some of us yearning for the kind of unity modeled in this corner of the 50th state. Nursing a much too hop-infused beer, I stare out at the wind-whipped ocean and remember an afternoon in Greeley when Garrison Keillor brought his Prairie Home Companion to Colorado. With 10,000 or so folk seated in the arena waiting for this all-time favorite radio show to commence, Garrison stepped out into the crowd and began to lead us in a communal hymn or two. I doubt anyone present will ever forget how singing Colorado’s own “America the Beautiful” bound us all together, temporarily and tentatively to be sure, but bound nonetheless as caretakers of a national ideal that is tolerant of anything but intolerance. Farmers singing of spacious skies next to free-thinkers harmonizing on amber waves of grain created something sacred that had most of us, if just for a holy moment, yearning again for a more perfect union.

I suppose I could be accused of hiding from tough times in these now annual trips but, in fact, I’m finding travel to this romanticizing island a needed antidote for creeping cynicism. To discover that there still are places on this planet that strive for concord rather than conflict is to reaffirm conviction in the American ideal that all too easily and much too recently seems to get lost.

I came across a quote of historian Howard Zinn pinned to a public bulletin board in Kauai’s Old Koloa Town. Rain wrinkled, faded in parts and, I suspect, imperfectly transferred to this reporter’s notebook, it nevertheless illuminates something of what has me sitting here, beer in hand and mind in gear. Sometimes, most of the time if the truth be told, others can better express what we ourselves are yearning for: “…to be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage and kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory…”

The Practicing Progressive

2009-02-05T12:50:00.001-08:00

I blame Erich Segal.

For those of you of a different, less decaying, generation, Segal was a professor at Yale back in 1970 when he published a blockbuster of a novel, “Love Story,” that began with a blatant lie that pretty much sealed the miserable fate of baby boomers forever.

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry” was the opening line that wrecked such moral devastation. Can you believe several million of us, then in our twenties now in our sixties, actually bought into such claptrap? Sad to say it’s true and the proof can be verified in a myriad of ways, from record-breaking divorce rates to a host of addictive activities we’ve foisted on future generations. Most spectacularly, I suppose, were the anti-apologetics of our last two baby-boomer presidents. Mr. Clinton squeaked out his sad-eyed sorry only after doing everything he could to validate Segal’s lie, including lying. As for G.W., he’s still convinced Segal was right. Destroying a nation’s reputation, wasting billions of dollars and thousands of lives on an ill-conceived act of imperialism, ignoring natural disasters while creating a few of his own, were never enough, it seemed, for the former president to acknowledge even the slightest sign of regret.

So it is more than a little refreshing this week to find our current Chief Exec offering “Mea Culpas” on all the major networks and C-Span to boot. Obama’s very public apologies came as something of a pleasant surprise to those of us worried that Washington was back to business as usual despite the change of administrations.
It would be nice if our president reversed the baby-booming reluctance to say “I’m sorry” that has bound us boomers to lives of equal parts self-centeredness and self-delusion.

I can’t say I’m all that hopeful about our prospects for change following several sorry examples of apology-demanding behavior in recent days. Take, for instance, the doctors involved with the birth of octuplets to a single-mom in Southern California last week. One can’t help but wonder if the fertility specialists implanting embryos in the woman’s well-used uterus were even aware she’d already delivered six children in the past seven years, was without a job or a domestic partner, lives in a small three bedroom home with her parents who last year declared bankruptcy themselves. Hmm. The news and photos I’ve seen of the smiling Kaiser docs seems to indicate they hadn’t even a hint of hesitancy about the whole thing. Does the pursuit of science mean never having to say you’re sorry, too?

“Sorry!” certainly wasn’t on the lips of the girl’s basketball coach at The Covenant School in Dallas, Texas, after the Christian-based institution ran up a score of 100-0 over a team from The Dallas Academy which provides education for learning-disabled children. “Although a wide-margin victory is never evidence of compassion, my girls played with honor and integrity and showed respect to Dallas Academy," claimed Coach Micah Grimes who, it should be noted, is now ex-Coach Micah after his school had no hesitation in offering an apology to the girls from Dallas Academy, forfeiting the game to their opponents and firing their unapologetic coach. I’ll bet this coach has little trouble finding another team to lead into basketball battles. After all, we all know that winning means never having to say you’re sorry.

The pope came perilously close to apologizing for his appalling actions of a week ago when he welcomed a quartet of anti-Semites back from damnation. This week, the public relations challenged pontiff made it clear that a few things would have to change before the four former bishops could get their miters back…but still no official “Oops!” from the heir of St. Peter. I guess being infallible means never having to say you’re sorry, either.

I, for one, appreciate the precedent our president has set. It’s good to know we’ve got a leader who can admit mistakes and mend his ways. Of course, too many more mistakes that need to be admitted just might have us longing for the bad old days when saying your sorry was for suckers who hadn’t yet read Erich Segal.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-01-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia tells me that the biblical phrase “Not of this world” could refer to four possibilities including a Christian based apparel company, an album by the Christian band Petra, an Italian film and a song performed by the heavy metal band Danzig. What it doesn’t say is that the term could also describe the actions of two wildly disparate Christians this past week.

How else to understand the comments coming from former Evangelical pastor, Ted Haggard and current Catholic pope, Benedict XVI than to say that neither of the men are acting like they are part of this world.

In the first case, Haggard, the former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and just as former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, spoke on the occasion of a HBO movie premiering this week about the beleaguered minister who was ousted from both positions when he was outed for being in other positions with a male prostitute. The movie purports to reveal Haggard’s continuing dilemma as he attempts to reconcile his Evangelical Christianity with his homosexual urges. Viewers of the film will recognize that his attempts are doomed to failure. The homophobia inherent in his divine theology crash head-on with the equally inherent desires in his very human nature. Curiously, Haggard has been on a whirlwind publicity campaign for the film. Appearing on various talk-shows in recent days, the disgraced pastor seemed oblivious to what appears obvious to most of the rest of the world. So ebullient has the ex-pastor appeared during this media blitz that his former church was forced into announcing a pay-off they were making to another of the pastor’s sexual partners who threatened to go public believing the new movie was too dismissive of his former lover’s extra-marital activities.

The fact that Haggard for years led the charge against equal civil rights for gay and lesbian folk should have been a tip off to the rest of us. Elmer Gantry always saved his most vitriolic sermons to rail against the very behaviors he most enjoyed. The disconnect between what we say and what we do is the very definition of hypocrisy.

Disconnect also describes Pope Benedict’s decision this week to un-excommunicate four bishops from a breakaway religious cult that produces liturgies and literature that are rife with anti-Semitic prejudice. Indeed, one of the bishops rescued from eternal damnation is an Englishman by the name of Richard Williamson who as recently as last week told a Swedish interviewer that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis and that there was no evidence of millions of other Jews being murdered in gas chambers.

The outcry from not just the Jewish community but religious folk around the world was immediate and inflamed. Jewish leaders sputtered in fury as they described the Pope’s decision as “deplorable” and wondered aloud how any dialogue with the Vatican could continue. By week’s end, the Pope had taken a step backward trying to distance himself from the still reprieved Williamson’s hate-filled rhetoric but the Pope’s failure to understand the obvious response to his actions seems spectacularly naïve at best and dangerously close to being downright sinister.

Christianity has carried on its campaign against the Jews for over two thousand years. At times it has exploded in hideous pogroms bent on extinguishing an entire population. Most other times it has simply included in its teachings the dark descriptions of Jews found in Christian scripture. But any kind of tolerance of such insidious assumptions seems certainly antithetical to the teachings of the one from whom this flawed religion takes its name. The Pope’s decision to turn a blind eye to these past injustices by forgiving a bigot who still refuses to recant reveals a different but equally bizarre disconnect with the world as that of Mr. Haggard’s.

It is interesting to note that Wikipedia’s entry does not point to the rabbi from Nazareth as the original source of the phrase “Not of this world.” But after what two of his disciples have said and done this past week, I suspect Jesus is probably hiding.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-01-22T13:06:00.001-08:00

It was right out of a movie script…there I was, passionate disparager of President Bush, spending the final full day of his dismal administration enthusiastically praising the president and wildly cheering as he walked by me, time and time again. Let me explain…

It was right out of a movie script because it was right out of a movie script. “My Name Is Kahn” is a Dharma Productions extravaganza starring Bollywood mega-star Sharukh Kahn whose celebrity status outside the U.S. was confirmed by the hundreds of Indian teenagers standing behind the barricades hoping to catch a glimpse of one of their country’s most beloved actors. I had a much better view than the screaming teens because, once again, during my winter sojourn in Southern California, I am wiling away my retirement days working as an extra in whatever movie or TV show happens to need a slightly balding, semi-alert, ex-preacher to fill in the background. This time it was “Kahn” shooting in LA and New York with a mainly all-Indian crew and cast and which, as best I can figure out, is telling the tale of an Indian traveler to America who gets accused of being a terrorist at a rally for President Bush. I know. I know. G.W.B. is old news but I hadn’t the heart to tell either the director or the star and, besides, movie jobs don’t come easy nowadays.

So, as I said, there I was cheering a remarkable presidential look-alike who, I assumed, was probably one of the few Americans mourning the outgoing administration seeing as he didn’t look in the least bit like Barack Obama. Over and over again, from slightly different angles and under varying conditions of light, the motorcade pulled up before me and the two hundred or so other extras lucky enough to be employed. Each time the faux-Bush popped out of the limousine, we went bananas…waving our little flags and cheering our president on. Acting can be very, very challenging.

As an actor who seeks to find the motivation for any character that he plays, I knew I needed to dig deeper into my casted role of an appreciative American. During each camera set-up, I frantically tried to focus on some presidential precedent that would allow me to more fully understand my responsibility to represent a truly grateful citizen. I have had other difficult tests of my dramatic abilities (most recently in the exhaustingly complex role of Mayor of Munchkinland) but nothing has challenged my thespian talents more than this particular theatrical trial.

I reminded myself that I am now a professional background actor and expected to draw on my own experiences to bring to the screen whatever emotions the director demanded. If this guy wanted gratitude, I was going to give him gratitude in spades. Integrity be damned. This was for my art!

At my age, memory begins to play games with reality and so I knew I would be able to come up with reasons to be thankful for the tenure of our outgoing president. There was that, of course…the outgoing part. And I always appreciated the fact that he had a dog frolicking about on the south lawn of the White House. His choice in a wife seemed spectacularly fortuitous. Surely all of America is grateful for that little bit of good fortune. Laura Bush’s obvious grace and good manners went far in balancing her hubby’s bloopers and blunders. One wonders how many other wars we might have to be waging was it not for the charms and, I suspect, wise counsel of Mrs. Bush.

Although it pretty much exhausted my inner resources, such grateful recollecting provided enough motivation for me to continue to fulfill my dramatic responsibilities. Each take took me closer and closer to the brink but still I was able to muster the means to appear to be deeply thankful. I waved. I cheered. I tried not to throw up. And I triumphed. When the Assistant Director in Charge of Extras so endearingly shouted through his bullhorn for us to “Get out of here and don’t leave any of your crap behind!” I heard in his brief dismissal a deep and profound gratitude for my professionalism.

It also sounded like a good theme for an inaugural address.

The Practicing Progressive

2009-01-15T14:13:00.001-08:00

I don’t suppose it was just because a certain Saturday columnist for the Summit Daily News expressed objection to the selection of Pastor Rick Warren as prayer-in-chief at this week’s presidential inauguration that gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was invited to offer up a public prayer of his own at the inaugural kick-off festivities for the new president.

Clearly our new president seeks to make good on his pledge to bring America back from the brink of paralyzing partisan politics by seeking to include representatives from a wide range of political and religious perspectives. Of course, the problem comes in discerning where to draw the line on such inclusive hospitality.

For instance, I suspect there may be more than a few of the faithful who wish their own worldview would be equally represented before the millions who will be watching this coming Tuesday morning. With Rick Warren’s very public prejudices on display, one could fairly assume that those holding other bigoted biases will feel slighted by President Obama’s failure to include them as well.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a Scientologist or two have had their feelings hurt by the inevitable exclusiveness that comes from trying to balance the theological teeter-totter as our new president is obviously trying to do. And what about our Hindu brothers and sisters who surely must feel slighted when they hear the ever-recurring references to the one God of monotheism in the midst of their polytheistic practices? Then there are the Lutherans who would be miffed to the max by their exclusion but wouldn’t dream of complaining. My heart even goes out to my Calvinist friends who surely would like to get their two-cents in regarding predestination before the president starts thinking he attained this lofty stature on his own. And is it not fair to assume there are rabbinic members of the pro-Israel lobby who would like the opportunity to make sure we all understand how God is blessing the current bombing barrage in Gaza just as a humble imam in Hamas might make his case for Allah’s benediction upon using schools, hospitals and mosques as rocket-launching sites? Personally, I wouldn’t mind having a Quaker lead us all in a lengthy peaceful silence but quiet reflection doesn’t seem too popular either in churches or out.

Hospitality has its drawbacks, it would seem. By the time a truly representative inaugural prayer could be pronounced, all of us would have long ago reached for the remote. As our new president is surely discovering, pleasing the people who claim to be pleasing God can be a very unpleasant proposition. You usually end up angering all and being damned by most. That is why almost every prayer before politicians ends up as nothing more than a few pious platitudes half-baked into a semi-humble pie.

Many years ago, I was talked into giving one such prayer before our Colorado House of Representatives. As I waited to be introduced, the woman in charge of public piety for that day reminded me that all prayers before the House were non-denominational and, even more importantly, short. She checked back with me several times before my scheduled debut and each time she would say something like, “Are you ready to give your SHORT prayer?” and “It’s almost time for the SHORT prayer.” Even I got her point and pared my message to the Almighty down to nothing more than the briefest of greetings, the swiftest of thanks and a good-bye that was perilously close to being downright curt. As I left the chamber, somewhat stunned by my ability to be so sanctimoniously succinct, I caught a glimpse of my female chaperone. She was giving me the “OK” sign with her thumb and forefinger. I shuddered to think what she would have done if I had run a little long.

In the intervening years, I have come to believe that the founding fathers were especially wise in their collective determination to keep politics and religion apart. I have a sneaky hunch, given the brouhaha brewing over inaugural prayers and their pray-ers, our new president might soon feel the same.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-12-04T12:02:00.001-08:00

The Rev. George M. Docherty died this past Thanksgiving Day at the very impressive age of 97. Unless you’re even older than I am, you probably don’t remember the good reverend or the sermon he preached to his congregation at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. on February 7th, 1954. In his homily, Pastor Docherty, a native of Scotland, mused on the lack of any reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance. He admitted that he hadn’t even known of the pledge’s existence until his 7 year old son recited it for him. Docherty was stunned when he first heard it. “I came from Scotland, where we said ‘God save our gracious queen,’ ‘God save our gracious king.’ Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn’t in it at all,” he recalled in an interview in 2004.

The minister’s topic that particular Sunday was hardly coincidental. He knew that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was to attend services that day. One can only assume that Docherty was a powerful preacher as the very next day a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives to add the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. President Eisenhower signed it into law that same year.

Despite the assumption of many that the pledge dates back to the founding fathers,
the original Pledge of Allegiance was the work of another cleric, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and socialist who penned the pledge in 1892 for a children’s magazine celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America.

The addition of the divine blessing to our nation disturbed a great many citizens who felt the phrase violated the intentions of the First Amendment. Equally disturbing for many others was the assumption that the phrase posits: There is one God and, presumably, America abides under this one God’s benevolence.

Such an assumption is highly problematic to anyone with even a passing understanding of the development of religions. Even putting aside the monotheistic implication, an implication that precludes patriotic polytheists like American Hindus and others, the idea that U.S. policies and actions somehow reflect divine intent is troubling to the extreme. Our recent military forays and the continuing discrimination in domestic matters provides vivid evidence for many of us that this is a God we would choose not to be under at all.

A growing number of American citizens are feeling less and less aligned with traditional religious expressions. The problems inherent in assuming an omnipresent, omnipotent and benevolent deity manifest themselves in a myriad of ways from personal tragedies to very public horrors. Many spiritually sensitive people find the traditional image of an anthropomorphic heavenly being severely limiting and have turned to other theological models. To assume that the people of this one nation have one understanding of God is naïve at best and contrary to all evidence. As a parish pastor for thirty years, I can assure you that even in one small mountain congregation the range of understanding of God and godly actions is vast.
In the same week of The Reverend Docherty’s demise, a group of atheists filed suit against the State of Kentucky’s Department of Homeland Security for formally announcing that the security of that state "cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God.” Indeed, the official state position that offers offence to the atheists also includes a verse from the Bible: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." (Psalm 127) The atheists are not only concerned with what they consider the abuse of the First Amendment but also the very possible presumption that those assigned to protect Kentuckians’ safekeeping might shirk their duties off on a God who, the atheists point out, hasn’t been particularly consistent of late in the security department.
There are many who continue to believe that America’s Constitution assumes but one theological perspective. But of course there is no mention of God anywhere in that treasured document. The writers were abundantly clear in their intention to forbid any attempt on the part of this new government to intrude on the religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs, of its citizenry.
So, rest in peace, dear reverend, even though you disturbed the peace of many.

2008-11-27T14:45:00.001-08:00

It was my naïveté, I suppose, that had me somewhat shocked when one of my counselees told me of her company’s policy regarding employment termination. It seems this particular institution had no use for a two-week resignation notice. The moment you reported to your supervisor you were resigning, you had exactly fifteen minutes to clear out your desk, turn in your keys and be escorted out the door by a security officer.

The company’s rationale was centered on the principle that once you had committed to employment elsewhere both your usefulness and productivity dramatically decreased, hence the speedy and undistinguished departure.

The lack of goodbyes and best wishes seemed a harsh penalty to me for an assumedly faithful employee with years of valued service but lately I’ve begun to see the wisdom in such matters.

Now saddled as we are with a lame duck administration headed by what history will surely judge as the lamest of ducks, it seems not just foolhardy but downright dangerous to be forced to endure more than two months of interregnum between the changing of the guard. Why, many of us are wondering, must we wallow in this governmental barrenness of inactivity when America, indeed all the world, is eager to move on?

Clearly, President-elect Obama is doing his best to get the governmental gears in motion in order to be at full-speed by January 20th but it just seems silly he has to wait so long for the presidential red light to turn green. To employ a very undemocratic but quite realistic image, we commoners are crying out: “The king is dead! Long live the king!” Let’s get on with it.

Amazingly, some elections still haven’t been resolved. There are two senate races yet to be determined along with threats to overturn the results of any number of propositions that did pass and shouldn’t or didn’t and should.

It all depends on your perspective, of course. While social conservatives are no doubt cheering their anti-gay victories in several states, others who are appalled by what they see as unjust and immoral legislation are gathering forces to overturn the majority’s mandate. All of this raises some interesting issues.

For instance, in Arkansas a strong majority there decided that gay couples and other non-traditional co-habitants could not be foster care-givers or adopt children. This in a state where only 25% of the children needing foster care have homes available to them. Fortunately, this foolishness may soon be rectified in the courts. Just this past week a Florida court decided that a similar law on the books in that state was unconstitutional.

In California, the now infamous Proposition 8 continues to rile the sizable minority who think it untenable for the state to deny marriage to gay couples. The fall-out over this election has been dramatic with several prominent folk losing their jobs over their support. The Mormon Church particularly is taking a big hit with demonstrations at various temples and calls for boycotts against Mormon-run enterprises.

Here the question revolves around the sometimes tenuous and often unclear relationship in America between church and state. Opponents of Proposition 8 are incensed that a religious organization would so heavily finance a political movement seeking to perpetuate their own religious views. Why, they wonder, must a worldview, clearly shaped by theology, be thrust upon all citizenry? Let Mormons forbid their own members from entering into gay marriage just as they have similar injunctions against the leadership roles of women and, until quite recently, of African-Americans. But why must they force their religious biases on others? One suspects and certainly hopes this matter will eventually be settled in a courtroom and not in a church.

Among the correspondence I’ve received over the last couple of weeks came comments from one gentleman who stated: “To try to undo the votes of us who feel as I do is not right.” Many of us would be in sympathy with such a seemingly democratic sentiment. Unless that sentiment meant you were denied your own constitutional rights. Not too many years ago, a majority of voters were incensed when civil rights legislation began to be instituted by the government in direct contradiction to their majority view. Nevertheless the government deemed it unconstitutional to treat African-Americans and others as less than full citizens.

Decrying activist-judges who go against the will of the majority has been popular among those who claim “To try to undo the votes of us who feel as I do is not right.” But when majority opinion precludes a minority’s civil rights, it is the Constitution which takes precedence. Thank (your divinity of choice) for that.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-11-13T10:10:00.001-08:00

How do you win an election and still feel like you have lost?

There are lots of ways, of course. We’ve had one experience of it over the last eight years as a man who promised his party he’d be both compassionate and conservative ignored the needs of the poor and dispossessed all the while increasing governmental involvement in our lives and running up a multi-trillion dollar national debt.

This time, even while we celebrated the election of Senator Obama, our elation was tempered by the realization that America’s gay and lesbian citizens are, once again, subjected to state-sanctioned prejudice and discrimination.

Of the four anti-gay state ballot initiatives that passed, California’s absurd addition to its constitution appears the most vile and vindictive. Overturning the California State Supreme Court’s ruling giving gay and lesbian couples the same marital rights as other citizens was a singularly sinister act financed primarily by a few religious organizations including evangelical Christians, Roman Catholics (particularly via The Knights of Columbus) and the Mormons.

The Mormon Church, with a rather unique understanding of marriage all its own, poured millions of dollars into the California initiative outraging the millions of Californians who believe that “freedom and justice for all” means exactly that.

With a marital survival rate of around 50% among evangelical Christians, (no different than the national average for heterosexuals), one can’t help but wonder why folks who claim to focus on their families feel entitled to force their own unsuccessful version of marriage on the rest of us.

Even more discouraging was the apparent support for the measure among African-American Christians. The Black Church’s literal understanding of the Bible, shared with most white evangelicals, compelled them, I suppose, into disregarding loving relationships that fail to fit into their limited worldview. Since the statistics in the African-American communities regarding out-of-wedlock births and absent fathers is so glaringly inconsonant with the “traditional” understanding of marriage, the only conclusion I can reach is one found in repugnant religious demagoguery. Religious leaders demanded obedience and, this time, they got it.

Thinking of religious leaders’ shameful demands…the Catholic bishops, shepherd staffs at the ready, met this week in Baltimore to try and figure out how better to control their sheep. With the overwhelming defeat of Amendment 48 here in Colorado and similar proposals elsewhere, the bishops found themselves licking their wounds as they came to grips with their diminishing power among their people. In the waning days of the presidential campaign, several bishops, appalled by the possibility of a pro-choice president, came perilously close to publicly endorsing the Republican candidate. Other bishops were nearly apoplectic over Vice-President-elect Joe Biden’s and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s shared conviction that one can be a practicing Catholic without practicing all of the mandates of Catholicism. Statistics show that most Catholics will side with Pope Benedict when it comes down to the creeds but they’re hanging with Joe and Nancy when it comes to their lives.

Perhaps this concerted religious effort to deny the civil rights of a certain segment of the population was more of a last gasp of decreasing demagogic power than a fresh breath for Christian conservatives. Over and over again, history has shown that these hold-outs in the battles for social progress ultimately lose the war. The abolition of slavery, suffrage for women, voting rights for all Americans and so much more continue to show the inevitability of the defeat of personal bigotry and institutional bias. It is easy for some of us to remember the dramatic spike of violent acts perpetrated against brave African-Americans in those final years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Fire hoses, snapping dogs, shouted insults, beatings and worse made the headlines as the racists tried to stem the tide of progress with their desperate acts that we now see were really bigotry’s own death rattles.

May it soon be so in California, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and anywhere else intolerance has temporarily triumphed.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-10-23T11:52:00.001-07:00

Forgive me.

After thirty some years in the religion biz, it is terribly difficult to turn off the theo-meter when observing current events. After all, here we are in one of the most crucial contests of the modern era, rife with partisan passions and contentious candidates and all the while rich with theological import and religious revelation. It is impossible for we who have been raised up in all things religious not to provide some kind of commentary on these momentous days that have millions of Americans spending their nights glued to the television screens obsessed with who will emerge victorious.

I write, of course, of the World Series. What other national event could evoke such spiritual self-examination as these seven-at-most games in October?

We should begin with the team names, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies. Tampa Bay used to be called the Devil Rays but after much polling of the Florida populace, it was determined that such nomenclature offended the anti-Satan crowd. This focus group, comprised primarily, one can assume, of spiritually sensitive types, was particularly put-off by a baseball team that seemed to celebrate its association with that most unsavory of deities. Perhaps they were envious of other baseball teams who had already claimed God-affiliation with such namesakes as the Padres or the even more heavenly inclined Angels. Religious tradition and biblical scholarship would indicate such pandering to the Supreme Being as having little effect on the outcome of a mere baseball game but the remarkable ascent of the newly christened Rays from cellar to championship in one short season does give one pause to ponder the theological ramifications.

Philadelphia’s team moniker has an even more illustrious religious legacy with its etymological roots in the Greek word philia which is best translated as “friendship”. It is, one must admit, a particularly odd description for a team famous for mixing it up with their fists over the slightest provocation. A high and tight philia-pitched fastball does seem like something of an oxymoron.

It may be additionally helpful to examine the omnipresent ritual baseball practice of expectoration. This strange and somewhat repellant rite has intrigued scholars ever since Abner Doubleday reportedly first hocked a loogie out in left field. Only a few minutes spent watching scenes from this year’s World Series will well acquaint the viewer with this bizarre act that has nearly every participant incessantly spewing streams of spit. Every television close-up, it seems, includes one more true believer discharging the contents of his mouth in what can only be described as a disgusting display of cultic devotion. After years of observation and, somewhat daringly, occasional participation, I have come to a theological dead-end in my hope of determining both the origin and the reason for this odd ritual. I can only presume it has something to do with a latent need to excoriate guilt-inducing memories of adolescent deviance by ridding one’s corporeal entity of the sputum of a sinful past…but that is only an educated guess based primarily on instruction I received in Mrs. Larstad’s Third Grade Sunday School class.

Like many of its religious counterparts, baseball can be an exceedingly boring proposition to the uninitiated. Mystery surrounds both experiences. Priestly gestures and charismatic exaltations are no more confusing to the religious neophyte than the strange sign signaling of a third-base coach. My wife never fails to crack-up when they show a close-up of some sixty year old guy pointing first to his nose then pulling his ear, touching his belt, patting his hair and putting a finger into his left eye in ritual gestures that are as mystifying as a meeting of Free Masons to the Presbyterians. Indeed, one can’t help but deliberate for a moment on the odd baseball practice of having the manager and coaches dress in similar garb as the players. One suspects it may have an egalitarian function with anti-clerical overtones but it does look funny to see some guy with a beer gut the size of Indiana traipsing out to the mound in the uniform of a Little Leaguer. This may be ritually unique to baseball. I can’t ever remember a football coach wearing shoulder pads on the sideline or a basketball coach in baggy shorts. But we are a nation that prides itself on religious diversity so we must honor practices that many of us might find slightly odd or outright loony.

Finally, we need to contemplate the theological consequences inherent in a player’s gesture of gratitude usually displayed by pointing skyward with one or both hands while crossing home plate. Setting aside the obvious cosmological confusion that has God residing somewhere west of Pluto, the insinuation that a divine hand came into play is deeply problematic. What with monumental new problems popping up everywhere from Baghdad to Darfur to Kabul and beyond, it seems more than a little egocentric to assume the outcome of a child’s game would be of even passing interest to The Creator. (Of course, this theological tenet might be severely tested had the Dodgers not eliminated the Cubs from the spiritual equation.) Such a primitive theology does put me in mind of the preacher at Focus on the Family who had his conservative Christian flock praying for “rain of biblical proportions” during Senator Obama’s outdoor acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The fact that the skies remained clear that night, compounded with the Hurricane Gustav-induced delay of the Republican Convention a week later, does leave one wondering if God may play favorites.

But that’s a column for another day…maybe when something important is happening in politics.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-10-02T12:15:00.001-07:00

Holy Moses!

If you want a theological analysis of the current financial crisis you’ll have to go back to the beginning…and I mean the very beginning with Mr. Adam and his lovely wife Eve.

Whether you understand the goings on in the Garden of Eden as historical fact or ancient mythology really doesn’t matter because either way the message is the same: When it comes right down to it, we humans are a pretty selfish lot.

Even the unreligious probably know the story…There they are, the very first man and his very first mate with everything they could ever need to live happily ever after. They begin their pleasurable if daunting task of procreating the rest of the planet when they decide that having their every need satisfied isn’t enough. So they pick that famous fruit and the rest is…well, if not history then a pretty good way of explaining why we humans always seem to want more than we already have.

Some folk call it Original Sin. Others temper the religious language by pointing toward what they perceive as our inherent imperfection. Books from John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” have pursued this troubling theme and, over and over again, found the truth in its problematic proposal: When left to our own devices, we inevitably get downright devious.

So it does seem rather curious that the caretakers of our nation’s economic policies, particularly those who often claim their allegiance to a conservative form of Christianity, were so clueless about their abrogating responsibility. As the restraints and restrictions on financial institutions fell by the wayside in recent years, as CEOs and Hedge Fund Managers pocketed astronomical personal assets, as the head of the SEC buried his own head in the sand and the members of Congress continued to turn their well-fattened cheeks, it’s no wonder, most theologians would say, we’ve wound up in the mess we are in. Instead of just swearing an oath on the Bible, maybe our publicly pious religious representatives should begin to read it.

One of the conclusions it would seem easy to draw from the morass on both Wall and Main streets is that an unfettered free-market economy may work in theory but when put into practice we all wind up somewhere east of Eden. The ancients obviously knew it. We moderns are quickly coming to realize it as well.

One of the purposes of government is to protect society at large from the shenanigans of the few. Enacting reasonable restrictions that seek to prevent the calamity of self-indulgence now taking place in our country and around the world is a responsibility that has been, if you’ll pardon me, sinfully ignored by our leadership.

The lessons of history have been obviously lost on those authorities who bear the responsibility of oversight. The evidence passed down over the eons has been passed over by leaders who should have known better. Great civilizations have often fallen not from conquerors outside the gates but corruption inside its walls.

So what now? Again we can turn to the wisdom of the past for guidance into the future. One ancient and sacred book admits that “God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and unjust.” In other words, “Life ain’t fair.” and that truism is made even more painful as we watch so many of the perpetrators of this latest financial fiasco go unpunished. Perhaps this passage that points to the innate injustices of our common existence will temper our outrage but I hope not. I would rather it fuel our commitment to recognize reality, and begin to shape a society where such infuriating indulgences are seen for what they are, and regulations are put into place to protect us from the ever recurring truth first “discovered” in the Garden of Eden.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-09-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

The young man had come to see me for a variety of issues but the conversation had swung to his confusion and dismay over his standing in our community. After several years of advocating for the disenfranchised of our small Iowa city, years spent working for fair and adequate housing for the poor, equal educational treatment for minorities and more, he had come under attack from several powerful and politically well-connected residents. He was disconcerted by the nature of the attacks, which weren’t directed so much at the causes he was fighting for but rather against him personally. There was a sadness about him as he faced this political reality for the first time. “It’s the meanness I can’t understand,” he told me, tears filling his eyes. I moved to the mountains shortly after this disturbing conversation and I lost touch with the young man. I wonder from time to time what became of him, if he continued in his low-paying, often ill-regarded, line of work as a community organizer.

For me, the low point of a rapidly deteriorating presidential campaign came when that assumedly paragon of Republican values, Rudy Giuliani, in his long-winded and self-congratulating speech at the G.O.P.’s National Convention, gave us a smarmy, deprecating, smile immediately after mentioning Barack Obama’s years as a community organizer. The crowd apparently ate it up as they cheered in orgiastic pleasure over Rudy’s disparaging of what is, for many of us, an immensely admirable and noble profession. It was difficult to understand the vehemence exhibited by seemingly everyone in the arena that night as they joined in the ridicule. One could only suppose that folks satisfied with the status quo, folks who have continued to flourish financially even as their nation’s economy slipped further and further into the abyss, folks who find the present course of our international policies well-conceived and successfully enacted, would happily participate in that chorus of derision. Even as their presidential candidate seeks to identify and understand the problems of a constituency struggling to catch a break, the laughing hordes of Republicans spoke volumes of indifference and downright contempt toward that very same constituency.

In thirty plus years as a pastor I found the work of many community organizers to be the most effective vehicles for real social change. While living in these mountains, I have marveled at the effectiveness of community organizers to establish a food bank that served the needs of hundreds if not thousands of seasonal employees struggling to make do while our tourists make whoopee. I have watched with pride as members of my congregation along with many others organized their community into providing homes throughout these mountains through Habitat for Humanity and other exceedingly worthwhile endeavors. Community organizers have created a Community Care Clinic staffed by doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to try and meet the needs of the many who are so ill-served by this nation’s pitiful Health Care system. Community organizers, some paid, others not, have managed to motivate our population in a plethora of positive ways from supporting our schools to recycling our wastes. Why, I wondered last week while watching Rudy’s speech, would such efforts be so ridiculed by so many?

I suppose unprincipled politicians will continue to promise what they know they can’t deliver while community organizers will just as surely continue to do the real work of delivering on the promises inherent in America’s foundational principles. It is the nature of politics that those in power seek to preserve their position. Who can blame them? But when that preservation comes at the expense of thousands and thousands of hard-working, often under-paid and disrespected, true agents of change, the powerful should be more than blamed, they should be ashamed.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-08-21T13:04:00.001-07:00

Much of the buzz around Saddleback Church’s conversation with the two presidential candidates last Saturday night is centered on the apparent consensus that the clear winner was neither Barack Obama nor John McCain but the moderator, Pastor Rick Warren. Warren has been the recipient of many tributes these days for his adept handling of what could have been a highly charged situation. Instead, according to most observers, the candidates were offered ample time to offer potentially sensitive and subtle responses to often complex queries. Warren won further accolades for his eschewing the oft-used shock techniques employed by too many TV journalists today. His reasoned and thoughtful approach to this upcoming and vital national decision was a model that many, evidently, wish to emulate.

Rick Warren is the enormously popular Evangelical Christian author of The Purpose Driven Life and other self-help books. He is also, as noted, the pastor of the mega-sized Saddleback Community Church in Orange County, California. Recently he has been garnering further attention for his unorthodox advocacy of Evangelical Christian concerns beyond the traditional anti-abortion and anti-gay obsessions of most of conservative Christianity. Warren has been increasingly committed to addressing the vastly complex problems of the AIDS epidemic, world hunger and the crushing poverty endured by millions here in America and around the world. If he isn’t careful he just may have some of us believing that the religious right isn’t always wrong.

Still, Evangelical Christianity has a long way to go to make up for some of the insidious behavior of its more public adherents. This past year’s revelations of some Evangelical Christians’ un-Christ-like deportment within the Justice Department has left many of us wondering what Christ they are following. When our former Attorney General’s top aide, Monica Goodling, a graduate of TV Evangelist Pat Robertson’s law school (!) decided to vet civil-service applicants by way of a conservative Christian agenda and then compound the deception by lying to Congress about her unlawful activities, Evangelical Christianity sustains one more piece of incriminating evidence that those on the Christian right seem to care little about the ethical teachings of Jesus.

And we all remember our current president’s designation of that same Jesus as his favorite philosopher during his first presidential campaign. One suspects Jesus must have moved far down the list as GWB employed the tools of deception, dishonesty and double-dealing during his tenure as commander in chief.

The bullying tactics of Evangelical Christians at such supposedly secular institutions as the United States Air Force Academy are well-documented and deeply disturbing. When a cadet’s chances of advancement are dependent on a particular religious practice, all citizens should be concerned about the very real threat to cherished constitutional freedoms.

Even granting that some of these folk are well-intentioned in their proselytizing, such activities can seriously threaten the inviolate separation of church and state. Out of Beijing this week comes the story of Kisik Lee, the U.S. Olympic archery coach whose evangelicalism has got the U.S. Olympic Committee more than a little concerned. Lee, a South Korean native, expects his team to be more than just proficient archers; he aims his arrows at their souls as well. As an Evangelical Christian, Lee leads many of his charges in Bible study and prayers as part of the team’s training. All well and good as long as he can remain objective about the talent of those not choosing to study and pray with him. The evidence of Evangelicals in power would indicate that such is often not the case.

Many of us who claim an affinity to the teachings of Jesus are hoping that Pastor Warren continues to manifest his unusual approach to his Evangelical faith. His willingness to challenge conventional insular Christian thinking with a theology based on compassion and service rather than intimidation and deceit is encouraging to be sure but we all know what happened to someone else who tried that same approach two thousand years ago.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-08-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

Over three decades spent in the ritual business gives me a certain perspective on the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. The spectacular show revealed much of what is good about ritual and some of what is very, very bad.

I expect others about my age (rapidly moving toward ancient) were put in mind of another massive display of synchronized true believers while watching the proceedings a week ago Friday. Film clips of Hitler’s pompous pageantry at Nuremberg kept passing through my head as I watched a sometimes eerily similar show from China. From 1933-1938, the Nazis would put on a parade of monumental proportions both to jack up the German locals and intimidate the rest of us with their jack-booted troops. Watching the Chinese soldiers goose-stepping as they raised both their own flag and the Olympic flag didn’t do much to dispel my sense of ominous similarities.

Of course there was much to raise our collective altruistic spirit as well. Who can object when children representing the plethora of ethnicities indigenous to China strolled into the arena dressed in their own tribal garb? And when little 9 year old Lin Miaoke confidently stood all alone and sang “Ode to the Motherland,” whose heart-strings weren’t plucked even a little? The fact that little Lin wasn’t really singing at all but only doing a nice job of faking it while another, better tuned, tyke actually sang the number can be dismissed, I suppose, to the vagaries of show business but I think it’s a little more ruthless than that. Apparently, Lin wasn’t even aware that her microphone had been turned off during her mute performance. It seems she was sacrificed before the gods of “national interest” according to Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the opening ceremonies. Mr. Qigang rationalized the deception: “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression.” This is the very, very bad part.

When ritual is employed to deceive rather than inspire it crosses a fine line that I find particularly troubling even if I can’t actually decide where it is drawn. But when, for instance, I see religious leaders parade into their sanctuaries dressed-up as royal figures complete with regal robes and bejeweled crowns, I sense a crossing. I certainly understand the social value of honoring our dignitaries but one can’t help but wonder if the message offered is considerably more sinister than that. Kings and queens demand unquestioning allegiance. The dubious and the doubting are seen as traitors in such a milieu.

Our secular rituals can be equally disingenuous. The upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver has gone to extensive lengths to make sure the rituals that take place inside the Pepsi Center and at Invesco Field produce a picture of harmony and concord. To that end, the local authorities are making sure all disharmonious dissenters are kept far away from the proceedings. The little boy who announced that the king had no clothes wouldn’t stand a chance with the Democrats.

Bad ritual can also take place with the best of intentions but the worst of executions. With apologies to Henny Youngman, “Take our national anthem…please!” Surely our over-used “Star-Spangled Banner” is one of the more unsingable patriotic pieces of music around. With all the beautiful tributes to our national heritage and culture available why do we continue to use this disagreeable description of a rather minor battle outside of Baltimore? With a little deft editing, “America the Beautiful”, for instance, would be a giant musical leap forward and a reminder of how good ritual can offer inspiration instead of indifference, beauty rather than boredom.

No question in my mind that when those 2000+ drummers began pounding on their illuminated barrels last Friday night, most of us responded with both awe and amazement. The dramatic display of synchronicity kept over a billion people riveted to their TV screens which, not coincidentally, provided a nice diversion for the Chinese authorities to pick up any trouble-making dissidents on the streets who might disrupt the ritual taking place inside.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-07-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Poor Richard’s reminder that “A penny saved is a penny earned.” must have millions of mortgage-stretched borrowers nodding their heads in sad agreement these days. And whoever decided “Honesty is the best policy,” somehow never considered political campaigns. Speaking of campaigning, the ancient Chinese curse, “May your every wish come true” seems particularly sinister in this heightened time of political promise-making.

Recent events have put me in mind of another worthy aphorism, this one from that paragon of philosophical wisdom, Groucho Marx, who paradoxically announced, “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member.” I suspect that is small comfort to golfer Randy Brown who was just expelled from the Phoenix Country Club for “multiple violations of club etiquette.” The multiples mainly included his commenting to the press that his club’s policy of excluding women from its well-appointed restaurant was a vestige from the dark ages. And with that rather reasonable and woefully obvious declaration, Mr. Brown got the boot.

Like most of you, I can’t imagine who would even want to eat with such dubious duffers as these but when you read that the golfing women are relegated to a tacky little room with nothing but a hot plate to heat up their hot dogs, it turns this act of cheesy chauvinism into an unconscionable, if not unconstitutional, display of despicable discrimination. Even as law suits are filed and investigations pursued, I suppose most of the boys will go on about their post-duffing business at the plushy bar and grill but I can’t help but hope that others will join Mr. Brown in joining Mr. Marx.

As far as I know the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, isn’t on the rolls of the Phoenix Country Club but he certainly is a part of another good old boy club called The Anglican Communion. Last week, Williams collected his Anglican bishop brothers, along with a few consecrated sisters, at the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference. This gathering of Anglican leaders is intended to be held in a spirit of unity and mutual admiration. But, as another proverb sadly foretells, the best of intentions got off to a hellacious start when nearly a third of the invited church leaders decided to decline the Archbishop’s request. Their declination was based on the most religious of reasons, of course, with the pious priests deciding that any conference of clerics that included either women or gays could not be willed by God. So in good Christian fashion and with enormous historical precedent, the not to be sullied saints announced the formation of a new faction dedicated to keeping the faith pure. Employing the rather unwieldy acronym GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) the new crusade marched forth. Their first action was to make sure everyone understood that they were only acting with the best of biblical intentions. The fact that these intentions were intended to exclude from leadership 50% of the world’s population who happen to be women and the 10%, women or men, who happen to be homosexual, was, of course, understood as simply following God’s good order. That God’s good order also has included acts of genocide (Joshua 11) and bizarre science (Again with Joshua…this time Chapter 10) seems not to have troubled this devoted assembly of true believers.

Woody Allen’s oft-invoked insight, “If Jesus returned today he wouldn’t stop throwing up” seems particularly appropriate when pondering the sanctimonious pronouncements of religious bigots. Whether its forcing women to shroud themselves from head to foot or secretly erecting a stained-glass ceiling, be it brazen acts of clerical bullying or self-righteous religious schisms, discrimination in the name of any God should be seen for what it is…decidedly un-godly.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-07-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

It was time for my semi-annual lunch with my friend who is poles apart from me politically but whose wartime service as a Marine in Vietnam gives him far more conservative credence than the chicken-hawks who parlayed their incompetence into the quagmire of Iraq and continue to squander any vestige of our nation’s goodwill.

Every six months or so, we get together with our wives for a catch-up on children and grandchildren, personal ailment inventories and other various and sundry semi-retirement matters. It doesn’t take long, once the ladies start passing their photos back and forth, for the two of us to go back and forth on other matters.

“I’m turning into one of those cranky old curmudgeons,” my long-time friend began,

“I’m becoming the cynic I never wanted to be.” I could tell he had been listening to Rush Limbaugh again so I reminded him that the first item on the anti-curmudgeon inventory was to turn talk-radio off. It’s nothing but a training ground for conspiracy theorists and right-wing-nuts who too often confuse partisanship with patriotism and believe the Bill of Rights was penned only for people like them.

Nevertheless, as I soon realized, it was easy to be sympathetic to his concern as there is much fodder for cynicism about these days. This week, for instance, we could read of the Chinese government’s successful scheme to pay off grieving parents in order that they may stop complaining about the catastrophic collapse of hundreds of school buildings in the recent and ruinous earthquake in Sichuan Province. As the Beijing Olympics draws ever closer, the Beijing government is understandably concerned about any negative publicity and is rallying its considerable force to silence criticism from that front or any other. One certainly assumes the Olympic Organizing Committee is equally eager for a tranquil two weeks of athletic competition that avoids political controversy. But at what price? Surely paying off the parents of dead six and seven year olds seems mighty high indeed.

The president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, following his indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes of genocide, made a whirlwind tour of the ravaged Darfur region promising the beleaguered residents all kinds of wonderful rewards for keeping their mouths shut. After allowing government supported militias to rape, pillage and burn with impunity, al-Bashir apparently is ready to let bygones be bygones. Russia and China certainly share the same sentiment and suggest that any criminal action against Sudan’s exalted ruler would only obstruct the fragile and ongoing peace process. The two super powers, both of whom have a vested interest in Sudan’s status quo, don’t seem particularly concerned about obstructing justice, however.

In the same category of ends coldly justifying means, Senator Joe Lieberman, ex-Democrat and current best friend of John McCain, continues to cozy up to TV Evangelist John Hagee whose recent remarks concerning Roman Catholics and Homosexuals had McCain vociferously vetoing Hagee’s endorsement of him. Independent Joe, however, continues to be buddy-buddy with this big time bigot primarily because they both share a common commitment to shoring up security in Israel at any cost. Politics, we all know, makes for strange bedfellows but surely Lieberman is aware that the Evangelical Christian Hagee believes in a strong Israel only because of his bizarre conviction that Jesus needs such a political stronghold in order to come back to earth and either convert the Jews to Christianity or condemn them for all eternity. Such contemptuous cooperation offers ever more evidence for my friend’s cynical slide.

Of course, there is more. Even as the Bush Administration stumbles through its final few months, a number of highly revealing and deeply disturbing accounts of White House operations from White House insiders have hit the bookstores and fed the blogs. Neither of us old friends are particularly naïve but we both marveled over the political malfeasance of this administration. The deceptive rationales, the woeful ignorance and the downright lies of Bush and Co. have come perilously close to turning the virtue of public service into a bastion of private corruption…ever more reasons to join my friend on the path to curmudgeonism.

As lunch continued, and as I was drawn dangerously close to cynical cronyism by these acts of evidence and more, the topic, thankfully, turned to lighter matters. Movies we’ve seen, books we are reading. My friend is a history buff whose course to curmudgeon land is occasionally interrupted, he admitted, by the inspired and inspiring folk who’ve gone before. We reminded one another of other times in our collective history when the citizenry were equally disheartened. By dessert, we buoyed each other up with familiar stories of founding fathers and others who rose above the temptation of their times for sliding into cynicism and instead forged a nation and shaped a world that allowed two old friends, curmudgeons or not, the freedom to enjoy a feisty semi-annual lunch.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-07-10T12:19:00.001-07:00

July 10, 2008

Just when you think the religious can’t get more ridiculous you come up against a news report like this week’s on the Church of England’s turmoil over ordaining female priests as female bishops. While the rest of the world has been vigorously engaged in breaking down the walls of sexism and reaping the generous rewards of women rising through the ranks to successfully lead some of the world’s largest institutions, these English Christians get themselves into a paternalistic tizzy. Surely even bishops can find a better use of their time.

So you decide all religions should be tossed out with the bath water but then you listen to a segment on the radio this same week where two homeless men tell of life on the streets. “We would starve,” they say, “if it weren’t for the churches.” And you realize that charity trumps stupidity every time and religion should survive for at least another day.

Just when you think the financial news can’t get any bleaker, the market takes another triple digit dive dragging your net worth along with it. News like this makes it all the harder to understand how a few hundred dollars from the government is going to spur the economy back to life.

So you decide we’re only weeks away from 1929 and its time to find a tall building to jump off of but then you discover that even the news can be fun to watch when it’s broadcast over a brand new big screen TV purchased with an economic stimulus check from a business that needs business to keep its employees working so they can purchase TVs and more from this and other businesses. And you realize that Congress may not be filled with crazies after all.

Just when you think our president can’t push the needle any higher on the incredulity meter, you read of how on June 25, President Bush met with Philippines President Arroyo in the Oval Office and told her (and the rest of us): “First, I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation that -- in which there's a lot of Philippine-Americans. They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the -- of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House.” Kitchen work is a noble profession so why did his comment come off as so unsavory? Maybe because it joins a list of equally ill-thought pronouncements like:

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." And, "You work three jobs? ... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." (to a divorced mother of three!.)

So you decide our nation really is deserving of the ridicule and scorn being heaped upon it over the last 7 ½ years but then you have a conversation with your vacationing son-in-law who is currently serving as a liaison to Darfur from the U. S. Embassy in Khartoum and you are reminded of our president’s continuing commitment to Africa, channeling significant amounts of aid to battle some of the endemic issues that have plagued the continent for so long. The U.S. continues to be the leading international donor to the Darfur region with $750 million this year alone. And you realize that even presidential bumblers don’t blunder all the time.

And just when you think the environment is racing to you know where in the proverbial hand basket filled with everything from killer smog in Beijing to dead trees in the Rockies, you find out the Bureau of Land Management puts a two-year moratorium on solar power construction on public lands.

So you decide the inmates really are in charge of the asylum but then you take a hike around hidden mountain lake, strolling by fields of columbine more vast than you can ever remember and a waterfall that cascades from far above…and you realize that there is still bountiful beauty in creation and new life rising out of the forest floor. And then you get home to find out the moratorium has been lifted. Joy!

And hope…coming from some new perspectives.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-07-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

July 7, 2008

Readers of this column are well aware of my fascination for rear-ends…on cars, of course. I am endlessly entertained by what folk deign to place upon the back bumpers of their automobiles. Everything from one’s political preferences to a favorite clothing line is un-embarrassingly announced while idling at an intersection or racing by on the interstate.

Although I’ve yet to declare my allegiances so publicly, I certainly honor those who do and have absolutely no quarrel with placing one’s electoral choice or religious predilection out there for all to see. I do get uneasy, however, when the state offers to help pay for it.

In this case, the state is South Carolina whose legislative leadership has proposed an automobile license plate decorated with a cross and a stained-glass window that declares “I Believe” directly above the obviously Christian symbols. It can be had for any South Carolinian who is willing to both fork over the dough and denigrate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Despite what some may assume, being a resident of a Bible-belt state doesn’t excuse you from the foundational principles of these United States. The Bill of Rights puts careful concern into that famous wall of separation that not only prohibits a state-sanctioned religion but allows Americans a religious freedom many of the world’s citizens are denied.

The argument proffered by those believing South Carolinians seeks to deflect the constitutional concerns by claiming that the state already provides advertising space for a plethora of other prejudices. A quick look at the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles web page may surprise you with its variety of possibilities for going public. Like NASCAR or nurses? The SCDMV can provide you with a plate that will announce your allegiance. The same service is offered to Shriners, the Special Olympics and square dancers, as well. And all of it is well and, maybe even, good but not when it comes to advocating a particular religious preference. Such public proselytizing is not only best left to private concerns but constitutionally forbidden by our government for our government…even if that government is filled from top to bottom with Bible-banging believers.

Just past July 4^th is a good time to celebrate the wisdom of our founding fathers whose clear intentions were to prevent the religious restrictions perpetrated by past overseers and establish a nation where every citizen would be free to believe or not. The very suggestion that a state provide special benefits to believers should be anathema to all Americans.

Perhaps even more persuasive than our Constitution would be the reminder that proclaiming one’s religious preference from the back of a Buick may offer frequent opportunities for a kind of reverse evangelism. After all, getting cut off by a speedster sporting a Christian cross could cause a potential convert to reconsider the possibility. I often tell of the time a clergy friend of mine lost his cool while driving through town and in a fit of pique pointed his middle finger at an offending driver. It was only when the woman in the next car’s chin dropped down to her dash that my friend remembered he was still wearing his clerical collar.

So if not for our cherished nation’s integrity then for our own slightly tarnished dignities, surely we can all agree that it is best to keep religious sentiment out of our statehouses and onto our sleeves, even when it means the fish floating on your Ford runs the risk of ruining your religious reputation.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-07-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

A CASE FOR CHRISTIAN ATHEISM

July 6, 2008

Unitarian Fellowship, Frisco, Colorado

I want you to know right off how difficult it was to come up with a sermon subject for this evening. As some of my former parishioners would tell you, much of my homiletic career was centered on sermons that were often provocative, sometimes scandalous and on occasion downright heretical. But it is reasonably easy to shock Lutherans. We are, by nature, a rather shockable people. We like our religion neat and orderly. We believe that any hymn written after the 16^th century should be introduced very slowly and with great caution into the worship service. Lutherans, as any listener to Garrison Keillor can tell you, are not inclined to the inflammatory when it comes to theological proclamations. When Martin Luther stood up to the Pope back in 1517 he pretty much shot the Lutheran wad for the rest of us. There really hasn’t been much in the way of Protestant protesting among us ever since. So you can see how easy it was to spend thirty years or so using my sermons to raise some Scandinavian eyebrows and drop more than a few German chins.

With Unitarians, however, the task is far more daunting. I mean, how does a preacher used to causing an uproar among the unchanging believers call forth similar outrage among folk we Lutherans believe are ever-changing unbelievers? What can I possibly say in my sermon that could cause Unitarians to imitate their distant Lutheran cousins by simultaneously clenching their teeth and puckering their butts?

Being a member of a religious tradition that tends to congregate in the chilling confines of the upper Midwest and finds mixing with middle of the road Methodists a significant challenge, I entered into this arrangement with, as I say, more than a little trepidation. It was St. Paul who reminded Christians in general and Lutherans quite specifically that we are all called to be fools for Christ. So foolishly, I set forth on my sermon preparation.

I began by carefully studying the Unitarian Universalist principles which, for a Lutheran used to seeing the 10 Commandments grimly engraved on many a sanctuary wall, turned out to be more on the order of 7 rather pleasant suggestions: We covenant to affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person.

• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth;

• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process;

• The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;

• Respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

Come on. You gotta give me something! There’s nothing about sin here! Nothing about judging the quick and the dead. There’s no hell. No fire. No damnation. And you call yourself a religion?!

So with some reluctance, I came to the conclusion that nothing I could say today would shock you much, nothing I could posit would bring about the kind of apoplectic congregational angst that is so encouraging to a preacher like me, nothing I could do to engender those pleasant days of yesteryear when cries of heresy rang out among the faithful and calls for the removal of my collar if not my head convinced me I was on the right theological track. Gee, I really miss that.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to pretend that all these smiling, all accepting, genuinely inclusive, stalwartly liberal, endlessly optimistic Unitarian faces are really only hiding dark Scandinavian souls who struggle daily with great existential battles between good and evil and worry unendingly about whether one can accept each and every tenet of the Nicene Creed. In other words, I’m going to preach a good old fashioned, stomach churning, migraine inducing, why can’t he be more like our last pastor who we really liked, Lutheran sermon. I’m entitling it: A Case For Christian Atheism.

As most of you know, little of traditional Christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus. One of the reasons for this, of course, is that we have precious little of Jesus’ authentic teachings and even what we do have has been roundly ignored for much of Christianity’s first 2000 years. Christianity, as most people understand it, is formed not around the teachings of Jesus but rather the teachings about Jesus. These teachings about Jesus began long before Matthew, Mark, Luke or John put quill to papyrus and even before Paul, the earliest and most prolific of New Testament writers began sending out his theologically driven epistles. It began with stories, stories told not via instant messaging or over the internet but one person, one story at a time and as the story went from one person to the next it was changed, altered, embellished perhaps, maybe even mingled with other familiar stories going around the neighborhood. One of the great theological insights regarding this phenomenon comes from those masters of religious inquiry, Monty Python. In their brilliant movie “The Life of Brian” the Jesus figure is lecturing to the crowd what appears to be the sermon on the mount. In any case, someone on the periphery thinks he hears one thing when we all know he should have heard another. “What’s he saying?’ “Shhh. Blessed are the cheesemakers?” “Blessed are the cheesemakers!” and on it is passed in a brilliant example of the imperfections of oral tradition.

Funny as it is, this is a reasonably accurate description of the problem that has faced Christians for two thousand years. What exactly did Jesus say? Some of you, I am sure, have heard of The Jesus Seminar, an often ridiculed but extremely dedicated group of scholars who have sought to determine the authentic words of Jesus found in the Bible. What they came up with was precious little that could be assuredly ascribed to Jesus but it was, to my mind, a brilliant critique and enormously helpful guide to those of us fascinated with the idea that we might actually peel away two millennia of often convoluted doctrine and catch a glimpse, perhaps only a very small glimpse, of the actual teachings of Jesus.

Such an enterprise, precarious as it may be, has been enormously inspirational to me and thousands of others who have found in the life and teachings of Jesus a model and guide for living what many of us call the abundant life.

This life of abundance has as its foundation the unconventional wisdom of Jesus who proclaimed a philosophy that is antithetical to most of the world’s. I mean, after all, “Blessed are the poor”? Blessed are the meek”? “Blessed are the peacemakers”? And yet what many have discovered is if you take this unconventional way of thinking and apply it to your life and the lives of those around you, something wonderful emerges. Jesus called it The Kingdom of Heaven. Some may call it enlightenment or self-awareness. Many of us call it The Abundant Life.

Now what is so curious about this metaphysical phenomenon is that it is fully accessible without an attending theology. That is, one can employ these assumedly authentic teachings of Jesus into one’s life, experience The Abundant Life or The Kingdom of Heaven, without actually believing in God. Indeed, given the often bizarre beliefs that have been formulated in the name of Christianity, it just may be easier to be a devoted disciple of Jesus if you don’t believe in God.

Isn’t that curious? Now I don’t for one moment think that Jesus didn’t believe in God. In his time and situation, it made all the sense in the world to accept the existence of a theistic being who ruled the universe with both a compassionate heart and an iron fist and who, not so incidentally, had a special place in the cosmic scheme of things for Jesus’ own people, the Jews. Everyone back then had a god or, more often, a plethora of gods to turn to when things got a little rough down below. But, of course, then came Copernicus and then came Galileo and then came Newton, and Darwin and Freud and Einstein and quantum physics and string theory and Sputnik and on and on and on. The world underwent enormous changes, some advantageous some not, but evolve we did, all, it seems but our religions. To this very day, many religions cling desperately to language, metaphors and symbols that speak to a different age, a different time, a different way of understanding reality. Yes, of course, Jesus believed in God but whether he did or not does not undermine the enormous wisdom found in his teachings. Again, I say, it just may be easier, given the current state of conventional religious teachings, to be a devoted disciple of Jesus without believing in God.

This case for a kind of Christian atheism gains strength when we consider the manner in which we develop our images of God. When my friend and mentor Bishop Jack Spong was at Lord of the Mountains a few years back he offered this little bit of theological insight from the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes who said, “If horses had gods, all gods would look like horses.” So the Lutheran God looks a little like a combination between Ingmar Bergman and Garrison Keillor…dark and gloomy most of the time but once a week you can count on a few good laughs. The Jewish God is pretty concerned with geography and the Muslim God likewise but with a decidedly different destination. The Presbyterian god likes most things in good order and the Catholic god speaks in a deep and very male voice. The Unitarian god seems to love everyone without exception while the American god spends a good deal of time blessing, well, America. All kinds of horses with all kinds of horse-like gods.

Christian Atheism recognizes this reality of a self-designed and self-designated divinity and suggests that it might be best to leave that often confusing component completely out of our spiritual lives. Christian atheism finds in the life and teachings of Jesus more than enough provision for a rich and meaningful life, an abundant life centered in a pre-Easter Jesus, the Jesus of history, a Jesus without the doctrine, without the distortion of creeds and archaic confessions of faith. Creeds and confessions that were created out of the best intentions but nevertheless no longer needed in a post-modern world that has long since left literalistic interpretations and archaic myth-making far behind. Christian atheism announces, haltingly, hesitatingly to be sure, but sincerely and honestly that the time has come to simply leave God in all her manifestations behind and center our faith in the figure of Jesus, admittedly little known but known enough to pin our hopes and dedicate our lives to following in his footsteps.

It is both curious and illuminating to note, by the way, that in three of the four gospels, Jesus puts very little emphasis on belief systems. He spends a rather insignificant amount of time urging his listeners to accept particular theological concepts or doctrinal descriptions. What he does spend the majority of his time doing is living out a life of compassion, of justice, of radical hospitality…and what he says, time after time, is NOT believe in me but, rather, follow me. Follow me! Don’t worry about whether you believe in this or don’t believe in that. Don’t worry whether you were born a cursed Samaritan or a denigrated woman. Don’t worry if you are despised by your neighbors or decorated by the state. Just follow me. And in so doing you will discover what I have discovered. You will enter into the kingdom of heaven that is all around you. You will experience the abundant life.

Amazingly, this emphasis on doing rather than believing has been dismissed by Christian hierarchy as nothing less than heresy. For most of the past two thousand years, Christians have been told that the only thing that really mattered was that you believe particular doctrines, accepted certain theological descriptions, that you be born-again or dipped three times in water. But the emerging evidence of Biblical scholarship suggests that is precisely not what Jesus was teaching. Follow me, Jesus says over and over again in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Believe in me…is left, almost solely, to the Jesus found in the gospel of John, the latest and most doctrinal of the four gospels and, not so incidentally, the gospel most favored by conservative Christians.

Speaking of conservative Christians…in recent years, an emerging movement seems to be taking root in evangelical Christianity. A growing number of the faithful, particularly among the young and educated, are beginning to put an emphasis on some decidedly non-traditional conservative concerns…like the environment, like a fair and equitable health care system, like a government that seeks for peace rather than war. Now this is a very exciting development because, I believe, whether these non-traditional evangelicals realize it or not, such thinking will move them ever closer to Christian Atheism. By that I mean the more closely you follow Jesus the less you will need doctrines about God and the less you need doctrines about God the less you need God. Rick Warren, the enormously successful evangelical pastor who built up a church of tens of thousands and has sold millions upon millions of books centered on purpose driven lives is beginning to understand this principal whether he knows it or not. In the past few years, Warren has turned his incredible talents to serving those in need. He has rallied thousands, maybe millions, of evangelical Christians to turn away from their navels and look out to a world suffering from hunger, poverty, war, AIDS and so much more. In a matter of days, he raised millions of dollars and thousands of volunteers for Rwandan relief. When asked about this change, he confessed that he now realized that he had spent far too much time building up his church and far too little caring for the world. At a Baptist convention three years ago, Warren announced the need for a second reformation that would be about “deeds not creeds.” Talk about a slippery slope. Welcome Pastor Warren to the New Reformation. Welcome Pastor Warren to a conversation that some of us have been having for a very long time. Welcome Pastor Warren to the possibility of Christian Atheism.

On one of my sabbaticals, I spent the summer serving an Anglican parish in London and studying the history and theology of the Anglican tradition. Now The Church of England is a very curious institution indeed. It can be the most rigidly traditionalist force in all of English society and, at the same time, produce some of the most radical theological thinkers of this or any other day. One such radical is an Anglican priest and Cambridge don by the name of Donald Cupitt. Cupitt is a kind of living archetype of the paradox that lives within the Church of England for The Reverend Mr. Cupitt, an Anglican priest may I remind you, is also a practicing atheist. He is a priest, I dare say, of the New Reformation, of a movement that is drawn deeply and profoundly into the teachings of Jesus but has little interest in or commitment to the traditional teachings about Jesus. Cupitt has written extensively on his unique spiritual journey. In the preface of, what I believe to be, his most helpful book: “Taking Leave of God”, Cupitt explains his choice of title by quoting the great medieval Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, writing on spiritual maturity: Man’s last and highest parting occurs when, for God’s sake, man takes leave of God.” It is that parting movement that seems, at least to me, the logical and inevitable destination of all those who choose, like Dr. Cupitt and a growing number of others, to be committed to following the teachings of Jesus rather than believing the teachings about Jesus. This is both the start and the very heart of Christian Atheism.

Now I certainly understand there is nothing new in this proposal. It has been proffered for more than two thousand years and condemned as heretical for the same amount of time. But every so often, it seems to me, it is good to bring this little heresy back out into the open where others can see it, maybe try it on for awhile and see how it feels and, perhaps, to discover as I have, that within the teachings of Jesus there is a depth and richness to life that supersedes detailed doctrinal descriptions about Jesus. It is a life of meaning and purpose, of hope and value, of compassion and justice. It is a life, built on a heresy to be sure but a heresy that seems to me, at least, a pretty good fit.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-06-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

6-26-08

I didn’t know I could believe that!

Such sentiments were often shared with me during my twenty-five year tenure as a parish pastor. Sometimes they came with a burst of enthusiasm in the midst of a Bible study or following a sermon, other times it was whispered in the privacy of my office, but always it was with a sense of incredulity from one more befuddled believer. Hadn’t they always been taught their religious tradition was certainly the best, if not the only, way to God? Hadn’t they always been taught that to diverge from the official teachings of the faith was to jeopardize the very eternal destination of their soul? Their amazement often centered on why such new and liberating religious insights had been, apparently, kept from them.

Sometimes this new wisdom came as we examined the similarities in ancient religious practices that revealed the universal nature of the religious quest. Or perhaps the discovery of the bevy of Biblical authors raised questions as to whether our own holy book was as divinely authoritative as we had once thought. But, over and over again, these faithful folk, reared in the church and educated in the faith, wondered if such new and exciting insights were officially permissible.

Now a systematic study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life makes clear, whether it is permissible or not, these often eagerly formed religious opinions are held by a growing number of believers. According to Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum, the study reveals a significant trend: "Even though the country is highly religious, in terms of the importance of religion in their lives, the regularity of church attendance, etc., most Americans are, in fact, not dogmatic about their faith. They're very open. In terms of various paths to heaven, and even in terms of interpreting the teachings of their own faith, the majority tell us that there's not just one right way to do that.''

Information like this can make many a religious authority more than a little nervous. After all, most religions have a vested interest in making sure their adherents aren’t thinking about jumping the ecclesiastical ship. Considering that a previous Pew study revealed that more than 25% of respondents had left the religion of their childhood for another religion or no religion at all, it is no wonder this new study is being met with a decided lack of enthusiasm by some. The largest Protestant denomination in America, the Southern Baptists, still claims "there is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord." and Roman Catholicism continues to assert its primacy both within and without Christianity. But judging from this latest survey, there appears to be a growing gap between what is pronounced from the pulpit and what’s believed in the pews.

The survey provided additional evidence that religion, particularly conservative, evangelical Christianity, is…dare it be said?...evolving. There is a growing movement within this branch of the Christian tree that has younger adherents less concerned with the traditional emphasis on personal piety or social restrictions. These often well-educated and upwardly mobile evangelicals find caring for the environment and seeking adequate health-care for all just as spiritually important as following the Ten Commandments.

In a dramatic display of this changing direction, one of the most influential evangelicals, Rick Warren of “Purpose Driven Life” fame, has been rallying like-minded believers to engage in some very non-traditional evangelical enterprises. His program to alleviate hunger, teach literacy and slow the spread of AIDS in Rwanda has raised more than a few eyebrows in evangelical circles. According to Francis Fitzgerald in this week’s New Yorker magazine, “At an international Baptist convention…(Warren) called for “a second Reformation,” one that would be about “deeds not creeds.”

When evangelical Christians make actions more important than beliefs, you can bet there is something new in the works (pun very much intended). This may be disconcerting talk for denominational leaders but it is surely a hopeful sign for the two-thirds of us who, according to the study, believe that “Many religions can lead to eternal life” and “There is more than one way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”

The Pew Forum study reveals what many of us have known for a very long time. There is considerably more tolerance of religious diversity among the faithful than from the leaders of their faiths.

That you can believe.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-06-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

June 5, 2008

Barack and Michelle are church shopping.

The straw that sent them looking came via Father Michael Phleger’s recent pyrotechnic preaching display at Trinity United Church of Christ, the Obama’s now former church home. Phleger, a Roman Catholic priest and social activist, parodied Hillary Clinton during his homily causing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to tender his resignation in the congregation that has been his church home for twenty years.

I don’t suspect either of the Obamas will have a lot of time in the coming few months to visit many congregations in their search for a new permanent place of worship, so I thought it might be helpful if I offered a few suggestions and help pare down the plethora of congregational options that stretch out before them. Having spent a good part of my life in congregations both large and small, both as leader and leadered, I have a pretty good idea of what to look for and what to assiduously avoid.

First, I sure hope the potentially presidential couple hasn’t become too wary of aligning themselves with another provocative preacher. No question that their former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, occasionally stretched both credulity and credibility with his preaching but Wright’s passion for social justice and his commitment to his community were bound to make many folk mighty uncomfortable. It would be a great mistake, though, for the Obamas to limit their search for a congregational home to one whose pastor is unwilling to provoke the powers that be. In nearly all the religious traditions I’m familiar with, the religious leaders were expected to speak out against perceived injustices against the poor and oppressed. It is certainly not uncommon for the biblical prophets to rail against the secular authorities for their lack of compassion and justice. Wright’s damning of America, shocking as it was to many, was completely in character with his religion’s ancient traditions. It was only when religion began to assume power within secular society that preachers began to temper their provocative pronouncements. The reason Billy Graham kept getting re-invited to the White House had more to do with his silence over racial injustice and immoral wars and less to do with his oratorical skills or Baptist theology.

Second, although every church sign in America proclaims: “All are welcome!” precious few folk really are. I hope the Obamas look for a church that celebrates diversity rather than fears it. In the Christian tradition, Jesus is honored for associating with his society’s outcasts and rejects, so it is more than a little ironic that most of his current collaborators do precisely the opposite. Nearly every major religious organization puts restrictions on who is really welcome and who is really not. The scandal of many churches refusing to honor homosexual and lesbian relationships flies in the face of the life and teachings of Jesus. That women are still relegated to second-class status within Christianity defies both 21^st century realities and the 1^st century intentions of a rabbi from Nazareth.

Third, there is an old saying around churches that should serve as a guide for the Obamas’ search: “Our mission is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” A congregation on the south side of Chicago or the Katrina-ravaged bottomland of New Orleans may very appropriately spend much of its time offering solace and sanctuary to its members but a congregation within walking distance of the White House had better be spending its time stirring up a pot or two. I sure hope the Obamas have the courage to attend a church that isn’t afraid to make its members squirm on an occasional Sunday.

(There is a great story about an encounter between the late pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, Bill Coffin, and then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. They happened to be attending the same soiree and Coffin cornered Kissinger to tell him in no uncertain terms his displeasure with the war in Vietnam and demanding that the Nixon administration bring the troops home. Finally, Kissinger had had enough and interrupted the preacher by retorting, “OK. How would you get the boys out of Vietnam?” Whereupon Coffin replied by quoting the prophet Amos, “"Mr. Kissinger, my job is to proclaim that 'justice must roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' Your job is to work out the details of the irrigation system!")

Finally, I would hope the Obamas would remember what it was that attracted them to Trinity United Church of Christ in the first place. From all accounts, that congregation has been instrumental in assisting thousands of people in the Chicago area and beyond in nurturing their spirituality while compelling their humanitarian actions, two elements that would serve any president well…and all the rest of us, for that matter.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-05-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

5-31-08

Our understanding of God is always from the ground up.

Another way of putting it is that our descriptions of God can only be just that, our descriptions, not God’s. There is a bumper sticker going around that declares: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” The problem with such a pious-sounding declaration is, of course, that God didn’t say anything. We said it for God. Unless you believe, as some folk certainly do, that the Bible dropped down from some celestial kingdom and fell into our laps perfectly translated into the King James English, one must consider the possibility that the book so much of the world reveres is the product of people not too different than you…good folk and not so good folk who sought to describe their understanding of the divine with images and metaphors that made sense in their world.

A friend of mine once said, “If horses had gods, all gods would look like horses.” Our gods are shaped by our worldviews. For instance, if our worldview is that men rule the roost then God will, more than likely, be a man. So what happens when our worldview changes as it most certainly has in the two thousand years since the Bible was completed?

This is where many religions find themselves these days. We can see evidence of this in a myriad of ways. Fundamentalist Muslims who see the modern world as evil, who demand ancient dress codes or entice youngsters to suicidal missions with the promise of eternal rewards are convinced that this is the only way of being a Muslim. Or Christians who make similar demands with ludicrous claims on science and sinister designs on the political process. Conversely, there is a growing movement within Judaism that has many faithful Jews wishing to separate their religion from unquestioned support of Israel. Decades of military conflict and mayhem have convinced them that any claim that God has promised a particular piece of real estate to one particular people is false.

One of the great problems with the presumption that God wrote or dictated a particular body of writings is that there is very little room for open discussion. Such an understanding makes any contextual criticism very difficult indeed. This is, of course, how fundamentalists of any persuasion, understand their holy book: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

While traveling in Morocco a few years back, we took a cab from the harbor in Tangiers to the railway station. Along the way, our daughter, who, praise be to Allah, speaks Arabic fluently, was engaged in an animated discussion with the cab driver. They were, in Moroccan tradition, loudly proclaiming whatever it was they were discussing. We sat in the back seat without a clue as to what was going on. Finally, the driver threw up his hands (a particularly dangerous thing to do in Moroccan traffic) and then patted our daughter on the shoulder and murmured something, offering her a big smile. When we arrived at the train station, we asked her what had transpired. She told us that the driver wanted to know how she could speak Arabic and what she was doing in Morocco. He also wanted to know if she was Muslim. When informed that she was definitely not, the driver pontificated for awhile longer on the benefits of his faith and then, as we saw, patted her on the shoulder and said, “All in good time, my child, all in good time.”

I assume he was being genuinely kind. I assume he really does believe that ultimately all people will come under the Islamic tent, not with fear and trembling but genuinely acknowledging the wisdom of this particular revelation.

On the other hand, I worry that he, like so many Christians I know over here, can’t accept that there are multiple pathways of truth. Why must I become a Muslim or why must he become a Christian? Surely there are other ways of experiencing divine presence than one particular religion.

Until we recognize the inherent destructiveness in our old models of belief that declare our way as supreme and our God as the best, we will continue to engage in the kind of violent foolishness that has brought the world to its currently precarious place.

The way to prevent such instability, it seems to me, is to constantly remind ourselves that the finger we use to point to God is not God, that the lens we look through on our search for the divine, is not the divine. We are working from the ground up using the tools at our disposal to try and express the wonder and mystery of the universe just as our ancestors have done from the beginning of time. “If horses had gods, all gods would look like horses.” The volatile state of much of our world is a vivid reminder of the danger of forgetting this important truth.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-05-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

May 22, 2008

It was really scary reading about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s religious beliefs. Ahmadinejad, the current and most discomforting president of Iran, centers his Islamic faith on a Shiite conviction of the imminent return of Imam Mahdi who has been dead for over 1000 years now but is currently in constant contact with Mr. Ahmadinejad. Indeed, Iran’s president declared this past month that the long dead imam is directly involved in the day to day workings of the current Iranian administration. Such claims have caused more than a little consternation among Western observers of Iran who have long worried about the emotional stability of Ahmadinejad but it also is of great concern to the Shiite clergy in Iran who believe they hold a monopoly on any theological decision-making and don’t take friendly to anyone, including even the president, usurping their authority. Some of the clergy’s concern has to do with the perilous state of economic affairs in Iran. Given double digit inflation, high unemployment and a general dissatisfaction among the Iranian people, the Shiite clerics find the president’s attempts to link his current political policies with the long deceased but soon to arrive Mahdi a no-win situation.

Ahmadinejad’s beliefs seem pretty weird to me but waiting for the return of a long dead religious figure certainly isn’t limited to Shiite Islam. There is a very popular movement within Christianity that espouses close to the same image. Some 60 million copies sold of a book series entitled “Left Behind” are frighteningly indicative of similar theological shenanigans only the thesis here is that it will be Jesus who will be coming back to clean up the streets of Dodge. And what a clean up it will be! With all manner of tribulations and trials to come, culminating in the extinction of all those who don’t believe exactly the way the authors of “Left Behind” believe.

Religious weirdness isn’t limited to these bizarre examples, of course. Any time people start making claims that have to do with God doing their bidding, I start shifting in my seat. George Bush’s conviction that God was a primary backer of his illegal incursion into Iraq places our president smack dab in line with a long list of theological crazies. Some of you will remember right after the capture of Saddam Hussein, our president used the occasion as an illustration of what can happen when you go against God…and, not coincidentally, Bush’s idea of God: "I believe, firmly believe -- and you've heard me say this a lot, and I say it a lot because I truly believe it -- that freedom is the Almighty God's gift to every person, every man and woman who lives in this world. That's what I believe. And the arrest of Saddam Hussein changed the equation in Iraq. Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq."

One can’t help but wonder if the fact that the war has gone so miserably wrong makes claiming God’s unambiguous blessing a little, shall we say, presumptuous?

Of course, George W. isn’t the only president who has had flights of theological fancy. According to his own Chief of Staff, Don Regan, the late Ronald Reagan, the darling of collective conservative memory, relied heavily on his wife’s astrologer before making decisions about the future of the entire world. Regan reported that Mrs. Reagan generated great chaos in the White House disrupting the president’s schedule over and over again because it wasn’t aligned with the stars.

Religious weirdness isn’t limited to Republicans of course…although they do seem to get more than a fair share. The recent blessing of John McCain by Pastor John Hagee is a case in point. Hagee, an influential and very successful evangelical, has made it quite clear God intends for Christians to assist the re-population of Palestine by Jews. His theory is justified by a particularly distorted reading of the Bible, a reading, one would hope, not shared by Mr. McCain. And we need hardly remember the late Jerry Falwell and the still with us Pat Robertson, Republicans to the core, who blamed homosexuals and other pagans for a God-delivered 9-11.

I do confess to being more than a little queasy back in the ‘70s when a certain peanut farmer from Georgia claimed to hear the voice of God while walking in the woods out back of his house. I worried as I wondered what would happen if less sympathetic folk had similar sorts of conversations with the almighty. In the intervening years, I found out.

The Practicing Progressive

2008-05-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

Old prejudices die hard and they seem to die even harder for old liberals like me.

Back in my young days, the most obvious sign of a life given over to rowdy rebellion was a blue tattoo usually inked on a bicep just above the rolled up sleeve of a carefully tattered t-shirt. The decoration itself was most often pretty standard with either a heart serving as a palette for the name of a latest affection or an eagle with wings majestically unfurled. In any case, such permanent ornamentation was seen by me and the majority of my social world as indicative of life lived on the margins.

Yes, yes, I know. Some time ago, I was sitting on a park bench, a not uncommon form of recreation for we retired, and happened to notice a young man, in his early thirties, I suspect, thoroughly enjoying the antics of two young tykes who, I further suspected, were his own children. They were having a grand time racing around the sandbox, sliding down the triple bumped slide and being pushed, with great hilarity, back and forth on the swings. It was a picture of paternalistic pleasure to me and, I certainly believe, for the very happy father. The fact that both of dad’s arms, from wrist right up to collar bone were decorated in long brilliantly colored tattoos had me remembering my past biases and reflecting on current perspectives.

This week I read with growing irritation about life for young Saudi Arabian women. Raised in a social system that allows for little private freedom and absolutely no public presence, these women seemed to me to be suffering a life of virtual enslavement. It was particularly hard to find much to admire in the way they were treated and yet they seemed to not only be reconciled to the inevitability of their lives of practical imprisonment but actually welcoming it. In a country where women are not only forbidden to drive but prevented from even showing their face to anyone outside the immediate family, such rationalization is understandable but also profoundly sad.

Trying to gain new perspectives of understanding can be difficult when confronted with cultural differences that go so dramatically against our own deeply held values. In some parts of the world, the continuing practice of female circumcision, a painfully disfiguring and debilitating religious-cultural practice, is justified with arguments based on inherent cultural differences that cannot be comprehended by folk outside that particular culture. Even those of us who pride ourselves on being non-judgmental and ever-accepting find such a rationale difficult to acknowledge as valid. My own struggle to find the best standard for discerning legitimate, if sometimes disturbing, cultural differences boils down, with certain limitations, to the matter of choice. If the person involved had the freedom to choose a particular practice, then I am obliged to try to both understand and accept the practice. If the person is compelled by cultural or other mandatory mores to participate, I am freed to critique, even condemn, the practice.

But even this standard is filled with exceptions. Not too long ago, my wife and I were invited to the home of a middle-aged Nepali couple just outside of Katmandu. The husband and wife were both well-educated and fluent in English which made for a most stimulating dinner conversation. Sometime during the meal, our conversation got around to the subject of courtship and marriage. In Nepal, most, if not all, marriages are arranged by the bride and groom’s families. Often a soon-to-be-married couple has barely met before they officially bind themselves to one another as husband and wife. Brazen American that I am, I asked our hosts if that was the case for them. They glanced at each other, softly smiled, and agreed that it was. Running the risk of becoming the proverbial ugly American, I probed further, asking how they managed marriage without the required, at least in my own culture, affection for each other. They laughed again and went on to describe a long, sometimes awkward, period of relational development that eventually matured into a deep respect and, indeed, love for one another. There was little, if any, choice in the initial arrangement and yet this couple certainly appeared to be as well-adjusted and happily married as any you could find in America and probably better than most.

So the search continues, at least for me, for some kind of standard of discernment as to what should be honored and what should be condemned. Confronted with myriad examples of physical and emotional abuse, of appalling mutilation or painful sexual practices, an attitude of laissez-faire is simply not an option.