Money, trust

From last year’s enewsletter around this time

Money.

The automakers are looking for a bailout.

More than half a million people have gone on unemployment.

Endowments – liquidated.

Office parties: canceled.

It’s so sad.

So now what do we do? Can’t afford clothes from Barney’s. Can’t jet off to Paris on that little extra bonus we had. And it would have been nice to see a couple of the office workers dance on the new guy’s desk after a few highballs.

Instead, we might just go home turn on the TV and watch Survivor reruns or that old Caddyshack DVD.

The instinct for people when they are afraid about the future is to hoard. To get overly frugal. To protect the little we have. it’s understandable. Sometimes we just have to curl back into the fetal position and wait for the sun to rise again.

But in the parable of the talents, remember what happened to the servant who decided to put one talent in the ground rather than invest.

He was cast out!

Metaphorically. And then he probably got even more depressed.

Although perhaps investing wouldn’t be the wisest idea right now.

But it’s noted, in a commercial society, that when there is a loss of trust, the proper role of the government is to do the opposite. To encourage people to trust more. By infusing trust into the economy, and people, banks and businesses will respond by trusting more.

Yes, if you haven’t guessed, I am a Keynesian at heart.

Money symbolizes trust. It is an implicit agreement, the foundation of a commercial society. And right now, we’re living in a time when trust has been broken at a level that is hard for even sophisticated bankers to understand.

For good reason: the trust was so subtle, the web of commerce so interlinked and nearly invisible, people didn’t see how crucial trust was for a working economy. What was visible? Getting rich.

Let me say that being rich is not the problem. Wealth is, by and large, a good thing. The scripture indicates that we want wealth, honorably created, through industry rather than through corruption. We prefer economies that are like fishing: through hard work and tenacity; rather than gold-digging – a matter of luck.

But we’ve been living through a time where there was enough dishonesty, ignorance and envy that people made decisions that would later affect our economy. And the system of incentives as such that most people were cheerfully self-deluded by the economy’s seeming resilience.

They were making decisions because everyone else was doing the same thing.

Yet, while there will be misery, fear and frustration as there are more layoffs and less money to go around, we have not yet lost the real source of wealth: our communities.

Yesterday, the Yankees paid more than $160 million for a pitcher. I’ve never heard of him, but I’m guessing he knows how to throw a fastball. Gold plated fastballs, with diamond studded seams.

Of course, by purchasing such players, priests like myself only go to Yankee games when someone else is paying. For everything, including the cotton candy and a bottle of Heineken.

I can barely afford to buy tap water at the new stadium.

We could alternately also decide to form a softball team at St. Barts. The cost? $1000 to join a league. And we get to play. That’s cheap.

Who will be happier? In one, we get to watch. In the other, we get to play. And invite our friends to watch for free. We can bring our own keg to the park if we want. One’s expensive. the other is fun.

The other evening we threw a party where people donated gifts. Many of them were gifts of love. Gary Rogers donated car detailing. I donated salsa lessons and an Indian meal for 4. Sandra offered a fancy 3* dinner for six. Meg offered her amazing brownies and cookies. And people paid money for them. They exchanged goods. Because we’ve got wealth here.

Bill McKibben writes that the real economy that sustains us happens when we are engaged in the workings of our communities. It’s what we have to look forward to.

What is the cost? There is one major cost. And we barely see it.

It’s convenience. It’s work to cook, to teach, and to clean. It’s work to share and be available to each other. It’s work to be a part of a community. It’s inconvenient.

Perhaps, as the economy deteriorates, we’ll realize that the conveniences we have are killing our humanity.

I don’t want the economy to crash. I hope it doesn’t get any worse.

But if it means we have to begin looking to one another for encouragement, help and love, then what we have lost will be much smaller than what we have gained.

Here at St. Barts, we will continue to throw parties.

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Unwelcome St. Nick

“Who’s this guy in these funny robes? We don’t want him anywhere near these kids. I understand – some people don’t want priests anywhere near their kids.

Via.

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On Rick Warren and Uganda

Filed under Late than Never. Warren condemns the Ugandan Law.

There is a good reason people are confused: Warren is speaking to two audiences. First, his own. The homophobes. If he gets too liberal he loses credibility.

Second, non-homophobes who don’t trust him. He wants them to know he’s not an idiot.

Warren is a little different than other evangelicals: gay people are a second or third order issue. For most of the Christian right, homosexual fervor is a way of raising money. For him, his view of homosexuality is a code for “I still have moral authority.”

His own feelings are probably a bit conflicted. He’s committed to the traditional idea of marriage, yes, but he’s honestly not interested in killing gays. He has enough of a conscience to be offended by a law that executes gay people. If he were to change his mind, he’d probably lose 90% of his people. I’d be happy if he just gets them to be distracted by other issues where we can agree on, like climate change or female genital mutilation.

Could he be the person who opens up some space for safety among gays in Uganda? Warren is like a rock star there. His books are second only to the bible. He could pull it off. And I’d be happy if your average Ugandan gay could just not be killed. They listen to him because he’s an effective moral authority for them. Still, it comes at the expense of his desire to have authority here in the US as well.

Maddow, however, does expose Warren’s attempts to have it both ways. Still, the media might not let him. Remember – most of the media doesn’t understand religion as language: they see it as a series of intellectual propositions that have to calculate.

Father Jake discusses: The Ugandan Trade: Death Penalty for Conversion Clause

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The Manhattan Declaration

An obscurantist piece of theological and historical illiteracy, featuring a who’s who of the old time religion, including the man who wants to be the mostests, Fr. Duncan.

God Bless Them. May they be called to repentance.

Hugo says it’s cheap.

The Rev. Dr. Christian Troll is thinking strategically. Fr. Tobias would rather be in the Bronx.

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God Always Agrees With Us

Jesus would do what I do.

You, I’m not so sure. He might not do what you do. But I still like you.

Hat Tip Entangled States.

More Here.

Personally, I think that when Jesus was asking “who do You say that I am,” he was focusing on the “What do YOU think” not the “I am” part.

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Overturning the Tables

Overturning the tables in the temple was probably the main reason Jesus got nailed to a cross.

The story seems to indicate a severe separation of commerce and church. Money in church? No way! Take it out!

However, I don’t think that the problem of money is the primary message. More crucial was the nature of trust. In overturning the tables, Jesus challenged how and who we are expected to trust.

Nate Silver, the writer in one of my favorite blogs, reports in the General Social Survey that people are losing their faith in everything. Only 20% of people have trust in organized religion – down 10% from 30% in 2000. Just a little more trust than in banks.

That’s not very reassuring if you’re in the organized religion business. And we only forgive sins, not debts.

I don’t think the lack of trust is an entirely a bad thing. Given the number of clergy scandals, even in White Plains, suspicion makes sense. But trust is how we are still called to live.

Jesus was redefining who we are to have trust in.

Overturning the temples was a pretty important symbolic act. At core, following Joseph Schumpeter, Jesus’ act represented creative destruction. Jesus predicted the temple will be destroyed and replaced by a body.

It may undermine the idea that holiness is bought; but Jesus also seems to undermine the ritual itself. When he overturns the tables, it may be that Jesus locates true transformation not first in the temple, or through commerce, but in his body. Transformation is embodied, and participating in the life of God means beginning with your own. It may require creative destruction.

Sometimes an alcoholic realizes they cannot stop drinking after an event of creative destruction. Then they are called to continue rupturing their entire context to keep sober. They stop going to bars; they end their destructive contexts. They begin a long process of recalibrating their habits and renewing themselves. This is hard work. But they can then begin to trust themselves around drink after a time of training themselves differently.

Perhaps this is what we are living through now – this time of creative destruction. out of the broken shards of the old church, a new one will be born. Even in our own parish, people who have left congregations that they could not trust, are rebuilding a new community. And perhaps this church will represent, with God’s grace, the hope of a new generation.

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The Margins

Many of us live close to the margins. And not just the poor.

There are all kinds of margins. Money is an easy one to identify. It is easy feel that we need more. We spend easily, money dripping through our fingers like water. And many don’t even notice it. But we know if we don’t have financial room, and it is tight and constraining.

Some are more so than others: they are only one hospital bill or one child away from poverty: one accident away from financial disaster, or jobless. Those are difficult margins – we don’t have any room or space.

Another margin is time. Westchester is busy. It’s easy to get caught up in the number of tasks we just have to do. We run from picking up the kids to karate to shopping. And as we get more harried, we seek convenience, and then we seem to have less time.

So how do we find just a little bit of space? To have a little cash – just enough not to worry; to have enough time to let the mind be fallow and restful? To allow for some focusing? Well, there is changing the entire system. But aside from that?

It might mean taking a quick break; going on a much needed retreat; insisting on a 1/2 hour walk without an ipod. It might mean taking a morning to try something creative. But resist scheduling; give yourself time to cook, to read, to do what gives you joy. It is in those spaces we become human.

It might mean examining more clearly how we spend our lives. Note the use of the word “spend” as if our lives are themselves commodities, that our time is equal to money. Money can be, however, simply a measurement rather than an indicator of moral worth. I have found that when I journal and monitor my spending and eating and my time, I can make choices that are more joyful. I realize how much I have already.

It takes building a resistance to conveniences, to rushing, to spending, to restoring a sense of what is lovely and beautiful. It often requires saying “enough” or “no” to another task.

It is alright not to rush, to have space. And the antidote is a healthy amount of gratitude. That’s the reason we give to each other, we give to our communities, we give to ourselves. Through giving, we find we have more space to move, a greater ability to discern what matters, sloughing off the clutter that drives us crazy. Through collaborating and sharing ourselves, we’ll find it inconvenient, but more rewarding, and a lot less costly.

For if we’re always trying to have more, aren’t we distracted from what we have which has previously given us sustenance and joy?

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Learning to Communicate

Once, when I was living in Korea, I was greeting a well known CEO of a large corporation. I had only been speaking basic Korean for about a month and said “thank you,” bowing in the manner I had been taught.

The man looked at me for a moment and smiled. A fellow priest patted me on the back and laughed. As we departed, he said, “let’s practice ‘thank you.'” We practiced a couple times. I had replaced the “m” with an “n” by accident.

I had really said, “you’re stupid.”

Cats and dogs communicate, but they have very different gestures. When cats have their tail down, they are hunting; Dogs are happy. When Dogs are on their back, they submit; when cats do, they’re attacking. When a cat is saying “kill the furry rodent” a dog is sensing “aww, the cat likes me!” The war between cats and dogs is primarily a problem of misinterpretation.

One time I thought I preached an inclusive, gentle welcoming sermon that was happy and generous. Later, I was told it was patronizing – I had chastised the congregation.

It was like being in Korea again.

Sometimes we don’t say what we mean to say. Sometimes we do, but we need to say it differently. Sometimes we don’t hear what other people are saying; and sometimes we hear the wrong thing. Sometimes our actions and words say different things.

But if we were always worried about misinterpretation, we probably couldn’t say much at all. Charity – aka love – is, perhaps, the root of all translation.

How do we manage everyday misinterpretation and misunderstanding?

1) Trust in each other’s best motives.

2) Welcome feedback. With trust, we can improve and raise our attention with one another.

3) Remain connected. This is how the church works: how we help each other. The promise of the gospel: our relationships matter, and with tenacity and love, we save one another. Being connected does not mean being fused, or thinking identically. All it means is continuing a conversation.

4) Speak with integrity. This does not mean we have to speak perfectly. State what you mean as best you can. And if there is misinterpretation, allow for charity.

5) Sometimes working together is the way of building a new language. It is only through continuing to participate together that we actively build a new community.

None of this is easy: I submit, the culture makes it hard. But with a bit of grace, and will, the work of translation isn’t so bad. Perhaps then: comprehension. And more than that: liberation.

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A couple thoughts on General Convention

Over the summer, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church met in Anaheim, California. There was plenty of good work getting done. The church considered a variety of issues, from benefits for lay employees, support of the Cuban Church, and the other foundational work that allows us to support each other.

One issue excited the media: the affirmation that sexual orientation should not be a bar for the episcopacy. In 2006, General Convention resolved that the church would have a moratoria on consecrating gay bishops for the sake of the communion. It wasn’t suitable for many who opposed, who were looking for a rejection of Bishop Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in Catholic Christendom.

The resolution merely affirms this: The Episcopal Church finds no theological reason to discriminate. One’s sexuality will not be the primary criteria for a Church’s appointment.

Although this may disturb many people, it is a consequence of the democratic nature of the institution and the fragmentation of denominational life that has been happening since the early 70’s.

Because General Convention, our ruling body, is a democratic institution, the church will always accommodate changing cultural views – and the Episcopal church is an accurate bellweather for the views of the culture at large.

The shift toward an agnostic perspective toward sexuality is exacerbated by the cultural shift of the church from a “voice” institution to an “exit” institution. “Voice” institutions are like families: you might not like it, but you don’t leave the family. “Exit” institutions are like franchises or stores.

We are in an era where churches compete, like other businesses, for attention. Conservatives may leave for friendlier franchises while social liberals dominate the Episcopal church. This is the consequence of the church succumbing to the ethos of a commercial society. Do I think this is bad? Not necessarily, but I’m sentimental.

When we divide we are truly succumbing to a cultural shift that affirms our own particular ideological preference is more important than the relationships we have. That said, I do think that “capitalism” – even as churches compete – is more responsible for peace than war. And I’m willing to argue about it (and be proven wrong as well).

However, I worry as we move away from the conservative – and honorable – traditions that affirm loyalty, tenacity and engagement; that familial relationships and traditions are of equal importance to individual preference.

What does this mean for the church? My predictions:

1) The episcopal church will still continue to select primarily married male bishops.
2) Dioceses throughout the world will be split. Bishops in Africa who need our help will be in conflict with other bishops who find the Episcopal view taboo. This split will be difficult in some places, but allow for greater pockets of safety for individuals of different sexualities in less tolerant countries.
3) The Episcopal Church will become a niche church for those who are socially libertarian and theologically modern.
4) The Church of England will be forced to confront its own hypocrisy in its clerical orders as the Archbishop tries to figure out what to do next.
5) The Episcopal Church will continue to build relationships with dioceses throughout the world based on feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the prisoner.
6) Most Episcopal Churches will continue to decline because they do not offer compelling alternative views to the culture at large.

I do not think the church will grow because of our church’s clarity. It may grow. But people rarely join churches because of an idea. My friends who are cheering the Episcopal church’s liberality aren’t the sort who will find themselves darkening our doors. However, church communities that offer authentic hope, help and hospitality grow, no matter what their beliefs are.

At St. Barts I have been deliberate on ensuring that our own church does is not divided by social, political or economic issues. What unites us our mutual trust and gratitude in being able to experience God’s grand creation.

When the Lord said, “love one another” he didn’t continue with the word, “but…” or “if….” It seems like a simple command, doesn’t it? But how difficult it is when what we believe matters more.

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David and Bathsheba

Over the last several weeks we’ve been discussing the David story in Samuel. A king, a bit impetuous, handsome, a celebrity. There’s illicit sex, pointless violence, hard-fought redemption. It is a story that still resonates.

In the Hebrew bible, the heroes make mistakes; they break the rules; they ignore tradition; even the anointed are punished and the righteous are wrong.

David’s seduction of Bathsheba and murder of her husband, if anything, demonstrates that being divinely approved does not insulate one from doing wrong. David, so inebriated by his own power, succumbing to his immediate whims, is blind to the violence and misery he causes. Instead of examining himself, he believes that only other men are capable of evil. After being a soldier for so long, it was always the other country.

Nathan – his prophet – tells him a parable, effectively holding up a mirror, shocking him out of his narcissism; warning him of the consequences. David is shocked by what he sees.

The theologian James Alison notes that religion can build a fortress from which we judge others and protect ourselves; or it can be a source of inward reflection and self-understanding. It can teach us to judge others; or it can be a way of changing our own behavior. David was king, chosen by the Israelite God who broke the code of law, believing he had every right to.

But then he is challenged by the prophet, who embodies the conscience. “You are the man!”

A journalist once reflected that the most pious individuals are most at risk to cut moral corners. The morally rigorous justify their severity towards others, but keeping their own shortcomings in private. Those who believe that they speak the Word of God are often those who have the most to hide.

And yet, if we are willing to reflect inward, to see in ourselves our bare humanity, we will find an opening for the transcendent to break in, offer enough clarity to understand who we are, and grant us enough resilience to handle the vicissitudes of our life with confidence. It is thus only with humility and great trepidation may we judge the moral consciences of others, and make the mistake that we are different than our fellow human beings.

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