About the Massachusetts Election

1.  Scott Brown has a compelling narrative.  He is presidential material – he’s telegenic, smart, socially moderate, financially conservative.  He’s strong on defense, and unlike many Republicans, he’s actually served.   In some ways, he is like Obama – very himself, confident and clear.  Furthermore, unlike many conservatives,  doesn’t have the personal animosity towards Obama being fostered by plenty in the wingnut branch of the party.  That suits him.

2.  This MAY presage bad news for the Democrats.  Yes, perhaps they were not responsible for the economic fiasco.  But they were not able to provide a narrative about how we got here, in part because they, also, were complicit.  They were still at the bank’s bidding.   When the union party sells out the unions, a union man might just decide to vote Republican.

3.  Obama has generally been reticent about playing the economic populist.  He’s not an economic populist.  He’s a centrist, a libertarian of the behavioralist school.  In spite of the ridiculous assertions that he’s a closet Marxist, he actually believes that banks have a proper function in the economy.   This means the Republicans, being the alternative party, are getting to play that role.

4.  People don’t get Keynes.   The stimulus may have prevented jobs from being lost, but people don’t quite understand that.   They buy the easy (and possibly false) idea, that the deficit means something.   People are aware that they are not getting much for their taxes.   They don’t seem to understand that our taxes are helping our military, the Iraqis, the Afghanis, the Israelis, and the Pakistanis.   Good causes, to be sure, but its expensive to help millions of people in the rest of the world, and our own military and not get a much else in return, especially when we can’t seem to police our own borders as well as we should (unionized, skilled TSA workers might help).

5.  Scott Brown is more liberal than some southern Democrats.  He’s unformed by focus groups, and may actually be an independent.

6.  The national health care plan is basically Massachusetts but for the entire country.

7.  Perhaps Obama will be forced to form a bipartisan committee with Republicans and challenge them when they oppose a minimum plan.

8. Obama should challenge those companies, including pharmaceutical companies, who oppose legitimate free-market principles.  A national health exchange and allowing imports from Canada are popular, and legit to libertarians.

9.  Obama mainly wants people to be kept on task.  the task is to reform the system.  He can still be an effective leader, but you start with the possible to get to the impossible.

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A year after the inauguration

From 2009

Like the two million people who went to the inauguration, I’m captivated by the change in administration.

Although my personal politics are *ahem* non-partisan, or “Red Tory,” I think that Obama has demonstrated – even apart from his political slant – sophisticated and agile leadership. The most important evidence is his ability to stay connected to people who think differently. He is motivated by curiosity and a sense that everyone has a view worth sharing.

I share some interests with our President. I moved to Chicago in 1992 for because Chicago was where community organizing was part of the Divinity School curriculum. The city’s physical landscape was organized around neighborhoods. In 1982 it elected Harold Washington, who some think was one of the truly great politicians of all time – a man who combined realism with idealism in a way that transformed Chicago. At the time, I was fascinated by the city more than New York.

The university itself was also the center of rigorous conservative thought. It avoided an instinctive leftish position but was rigorous and fair, generally unimpressed by identity politics. Obama’s teaching at Chicago was a time when he would have been connected to both social action, politics, and conservative thought that would help ground his ability to look at the world in complicated ways. I think this is a worthy gift – being able to see the world through many different lenses.

He inherits a challenge. Yet, our role is not to assent without understanding, to idealize without reflecting, or to worship. We must still organize ourselves as witnesses to love in the world, speak truth to power, and hold up a mirror to our leaders, holding them accountable for their actions. We can do so by remaining magnanimous and remembering the cardinal rule of organizing: there are no permanent enemies. Which is another way of saying, “love your neighbor.”

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Martin Luther King Day Prayer

The Benediction given at the Martin Luther King White Plains Unity Dinner, January 17th.

Holy G-d, source of life, lover of souls,

You led your people out of bondage into freedom.

You have shown us the road to righteousness.

We give thanks for this wonderful morning

Of song and story

To remember the movement

That inspired and challenged this country

to liberate the marginalized among us,

and to also remember Martin, your beloved, who challenged this nation to live the promise of human dignity.

Although we know we must continue on that journey,

We lift up to you the sacrifices we have made

Through your love.

We know that this joury for justice will not be easy.

It will not make us popular; it may not bring us bounty,

But it may bring us to a better land.

Bless us for we know this

Now send us now into the world in peace.

To go and serve as you have commanded.

Strengthen the hands and hearts of those who help others in the midst of adversity;

Grant us all firm resolve to stand with our neighbors who are in need,

And support of them in this their time of trouble;

May we speak the truth, though it may be uncomfortable;

May we challenge the powers, though it come at great expense;

But may we do so with love an humility,

Keeping our eyes on the prize.

And the blessing of God almighty, by whom, in whom and through whom we have our power, but upon us, and remain with us forever more. Amen

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A Reflection on the Earthquake

Written in 2004 after the Tsunami by David Bentley Hart.

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As a Christian, I cannot imagine any answer to the question of evil likely to satisfy an unbeliever; I can note, though, that–for all its urgency–Voltaire’s version of the question is not in any proper sense “theological.” The God of Voltaire’s poem is a particular kind of “deist” God, who has shaped and ordered the world just as it now is, in accord with his exact intentions, and who presides over all its eventualities austerely attentive to a precise equilibrium between felicity and morality. Not that reckless Christians have not occasionally spoken in such terms; but this is not the Christian God.

The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all. Perhaps no doctrine is more insufferably fabulous to non-Christians than the claim that we exist in the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe, that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is the shadow of true time, and that the universe languishes in bondage to “powers” and “principalities”–spiritual and terrestrial–alien to God. In the Gospel of John, especially, the incarnate God enters a world at once his own and yet hostile to him–“He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not”–and his appearance within “this cosmos” is both an act of judgment and a rescue of the beauties of creation from the torments of fallen nature.

Whatever one makes of this story, it is no bland cosmic optimism. Yes, at the heart of the gospel is an ineradicable triumphalism, a conviction that the victory over evil and death has been won; but it is also a victory yet to come. As Paul says, all creation groans in anguished anticipation of the day when God’s glory will transfigure all things. For now, we live amid a strife of darkness and light.

When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering–when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children’s–no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God’s inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God’s good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms–knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against “fate,” and that must do so until the end of days.

Craig Uffman also quotes Hart.

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What is Church For? On Being Boring

How are we supposed to experience church? What does it mean to encounter the “holy”?

For some, church is supposed to be a time of reflection. While words and music float through your mind, you consider your failures, your losses, your hopes; the laundry and what’s for dinner; your old friend you haven’t called back.

For others its a time to let go of all the things you did wrong that week. Or to feel more self-righteous.

For others, Church is where I, the priest, tell you what to do. Like, if I were to say, “Please bring the rector a steak and a 2005 Bordeaux, now! It’s good for God, and good for me.” Or, more traditionally, “stop having a good time” or “don’t put a whoopee cushion on the rector’s seat, Jack.”

When I was vicar of the Anglican Cathedral in Seoul, I asked the American Ambassador, James Laney, who was also a pastor, if he would preach before he left town. “I appreciate the offer, but when I come to church, its a time for me to just sit and do nothing. I am always preparing during the week, and I’m always pleased just to listen.” For him, Church is a place to do nothing, to sit still. We’re always doing something, and church is a place to do the opposite.

Unless we’ve made you an usher, a Lay Eucharistic Minister or a member of the altar guild. Or put you on the vestry.

For some, church should be boring. James Alison, the theologian, says “When people tell me that they find Mass boring, I want to say to them: it’s supposed to be boring, or at least seriously underwhelming. It’s a long term education in becoming un-excited, since only that will enable us to dwell in a quiet bliss which doesn’t abstract from our present or our surroundings or our neighbour, but which increases our attention, our presence and our appreciation for what is around us. The build up to a sacrifice is exciting, the dwelling in gratitude that the sacrifice has already happened, and that we’ve been forgiven for and through it is, in terms of excitement, a long drawn-out let-down.” Excitement means we’re ready to go burn something down or creat a lynch mob. The mass is about becoming unexcited.

Sometimes, we experience the holy as a kind of enchantment. That’s how kids experience Disney, or I experienced Michele Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. To some extent, the mass is like that: a time to become a child, or to be crooned to by God’s holy, loving, intimate voice.

The eucharist might be also disenchanting, revealing the world for what it is, our own hands of love exactly what God has given us to get through this world. There are illusions all around us: the immediate promises of wealth and power, opposed to the simple symbol of people sharing bread and wine, now connected as one body.

But in either case, the holy is a time where we are awakened. Suddenly we see the world a little differently, in a new cast, in a different hue. All God has done is change the lighting. We saw dimly, but now what is real is apparent, heightened and lovely.

The holy is not about getting the world right; it is not about perfecting our souls, as if we could do that. It is not about doing what the priest says, no matter how I would enjoy that power. It is, perhaps, a state where we see the world differently, suddenly enchanted when we are despairing, or disenchanted when we had been fooled.

And then we are invited into the understanding that we are a bit more powerful than we thought we were, and not simply taken along for the ride.

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Making Tiger Woods a Christian

I’m a bit late about this:  Brit Hume has suggested that Tiger become a Christian.

I’m not exactly sure if it would help, but I suppose Tiger Woods would now be able to confess his sins before having other affairs.   Perhaps Jesus might suggest a chastity belt?

John Stewart’s take.

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Rules for Eating

Matt Baldwin, a close buddy of mine, has had a truly transformative year.   In one of his more recent blog posts, he recognized his own need to set up dietary rules that were specific to him.  What is useful is how he goes through a process of reflection, adjustment and recalibration.  In a way, it’s a practice that contemplative and spiritual.  This year, I’m going to do the same.  The fundamental insight I’ve gained from him is that it is about movement and improvement.

I have some good habits already:  I’m not much of a sugar junkie.  I gave up sodas, candy bars and ice cream years ago, as well as most white food.   I’m good about cooking and avoiding processed food, although I do sneak a Zone Bar occasionally.    I have three major issues:  I’m a heavy drinker; I eat starchy foods, especially rice and potatoes; and I eat very fast.  Add a habit of wings twice a week, chicken vindaloo with two cups of rice, and you’ve got a Padre Mambo with a spare tire as a partner.

I’ve read numerous books on dieting, understanding that this is really about a lifestyle change and not merely about making temporary changes.  Most fundamentally, there must always be a practice of discipline.  I doubt it is possible to stay healthy in this culture without being attentive and diligent.  There are, simply put, too many factors, interests and institutions who have an interest in people eating fatty, salty and sweet foods.

So I’ve read the literature.  I’ve especially been influenced by Mehmet Oz, Joel Furhman, David Kessler, John Gabriel, Susan Roberts, Brian Wansink and Various paleo authors.    Here is my list that will guide me, I hope, until Easter, when I will recalibrate and see what’s successful and what’s not.

I’ve formerly been successful at losing weight.  Two times had to do with women.  One didn’t drink; we ran a few times a week together.  During this time I would have either eggs or oatmeal in the morning; a salad with tuna for my afternoon snack; and a Cambridge shake for dinner.   It was a South Beach Diet variation, low carbs.  I stopped drinking beer.  In August of 2003 I weighed 145.   We never dated, alas.  The work was for naught.

I met someone else, during which I gained 42 pounds, reaching a morning weight of 187 in October, 2006.  My roommate at the time only ate white food, and would buy large packages of potato chips and french onion dip, both of which were comfort foods for me.  We’d make popcorn and pour 1/2 cup of butter on it.  We ate lots of pasta.  We would treat ourselves to ice cream.  Then my girlfriend and I broke up, and I changed – or restored – my eating habits.

I followed one primary rule, which helped me lose 25 lobs.  I learned to feel when I was becoming full.  I tried to eat slowly, and would only eat half what I ate.  I would eat nuts before I went out, and was attentive about drinking water.  When I had wings, I shared them.  I also stopped drinking beer and eating rice, but these were secondary.   I kept a very basic food diary.

My goal is to get to my ideal weight, which may be anywhere from 130 to 150 lbs.  I have a thin frame. I’d like to reduce my waistline to 36, which would be close to losing about 40 lbs for me – which would bring me to 142, from 182.  It’s possible.

I’m also participating in Crossfit Stamford, which is an inspiration for me.  I’ve spent this week mainly in prayer and consideration, recovery from writing for my thesis, and mental preparation for this change, and am ready to hit Crossfit on a every day basis,  starting on the 11th.

So here are my new rules.

  • One pint of beer on Sundays and Thursdays.   The rest of the week no more than 2 glasses of wine an evening.  Mondays and Saturdays dry.
  • Share all calorie dense food (say, wings).
  • Pay attention and eat slowly, at a table.
  • Eat on smaller plates.
  • Half of all plates should be vegetables.
  • Drink Water.
  • Eat at least one salad a day.
  • Say wonderful things about myself and how in control I am.
  • No less than seven hours of good sleep every night.

I will be adjusting these, testing them occasionally.  I think they are a good beginning.  I don’t exclude anything, but that may come when I start the Paleo challenge on January 23rd.  Several of my friends are teasing me about this, but we’ll see.

Lent also begins on February 17th, so as Paleo ends I’ll also be completely giving up alcohol and refined sugars (including grains) until Easter.    It will be a big shift for me, in part because I’m a heavy drinker, and have used it as a reward for a long day.   Your encouragement will be essential as I begin this journey to greater health and power.

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Mary Daly, RIP

Mary Daly is dead.

I first read her in 1989.  She was fun and exhilarating, even though I rejected her absolutist understanding of gender.   Her fundamental sense of joy and her description for a transgressive, destabilizing laughter continues to appeal to me.  And I think she was right that God is more like a verb.

Daly was mistaken about the relationship between technology and feminism: technology has done much to liberate women, allowing them to be economically independent from men.   Her understanding of ancient religion was fanciful, if provocative.   Mythology was a way of concealing violence as much as it was a form of ancient wisdom.  I also think that “patriarchy” is too vague, at some point, to be helpful.

When I was in high school, I was intrigued by her non-response to Audrey Lorde.  I admit, at the time it was proof she was a selective thinker.  But in retrospect, her non-response was done out of respect for her sister, an awareness that the public sphere was not the location for such a fight.

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On the Manifestation

The Epiphany is also called the “manifestation.” the light, represented by Jesus, was shown to the world: the wise men, or the kings. The light, who is represented by Christ, was thus disseminated.

Some may think we are to be like the kings. We bring gifts, show this little baby some magnanimity, and praise the light. It’s like walking down a lane without any flashlight, until you get to the beacon that got you safely there. Maybe you stick around for a while happy that the light exists. You look up at it, like a moth of sorts, just hanging out, perhaps opening your back pack and eating one of the sandwiches you’ve stored for the journey.

But then you’ve got to keep on going. The light still shows you the way, but that’s not what you’re there for.

I think that for many faithful people, the most important part is the light itself. When people assert their religious faith most fervently, they are busy praising the flashlight, the beacon, or whatever tool it is that makes them see. “I believe in Jesus Christ” is like holding up the flashlight and saying, “hey! I’ve got it!”

But that’s only going half way. What good is a flashlight if you aren’t looking around? Maybe asserting one’s faith isn’t as important as just knowing what you see – or how you see.

The story we tell is a way of seeing. One way of seeing: I believe that when we are most vulnerable, is when we might have the greatest opportunity. When we are magnanimous, we will have the greatest reward. In the midst of scarcity, is an opportunity to return to the sources of true abundance.

There are many ways of looking at the world. It’s full of rivalry, envy, fear and loneliness. There is no hope worth having in the world, and we are all doomed to die alone.

But there is another way of seeing. The manifestation that affirms that whatever life we have is worth living, that even in our bare-knuckled, hardscrabble moments of alienation and misery, down the road just a little bit farther, is Easter.

We may not see it now, but at least we’ve got a flashlight. Our job is to keep moving.

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The Health Care Bill

A few things:

First it’s not a perfect bill.  Everyone knows that.  But politics is the art of the possible, and for the first time government is trying to do what one task it should do:  coordinate.  It’s more like a bill a liberal Republican in the 1970’s would have passed than a Democrat, who throughout the century have worked for a federal plan.

Second, this bill will help more poor people, and more African-Americans in concrete ways.  The long term effects will be enormous, and will go a long way to mitigate health care challenges between the races.

Third, this bill will put more pressure on insurance companies, big pharma, hospitals and doctors to work together.

Fourth, by 2016, it will reduce the likelihood of families being bankrupted by poor health.

Last, this bill demonstrates Obama’s strong, sensible leadership.  If he had pushed harder, he would have not gotten any further.  He allowed the bill to come from the legislature, not from on high.   He’s done what no president has done before.   It is clearly political leadership – not prophetic leadership.  It is practical leadership, not idealistic leadership.

The difference, perhaps, between Obama and the previous president is that Obama was conservative enough to let institutions do their work.  He was a strong enough leader to make them do it.

It’s a conservative bill.  It’s not a perfect bill.  But it will help millions of people and reduce long term costs.

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