Original Sin and the Apple

Sometimes I wonder if it’s human nature to feel like Eve.

If I’m told, “you really shouldn’t have another bite,” I want to eat it. It gets worse if it’s from a thin person, because I resent their slenderness. If it’s from a big person I ignore it because, what do they know?

Unsolicited advice?  Why not respond, “thank you, but I intend on doing the exact opposite.” It’s instinctive. Instead, the person who encourages us to rebel, to take matters into our own hands, that’s the person really on our side.

Admittedly, when I get the advice, the warning, the friendly feedback, I take a breath and remind myself the person has my best interests at heart. I consider if there is any truth in what they say. I play with the alternative – what if I took the advice? What if I ignore it? Continue reading “Original Sin and the Apple” →

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On exile and dancing

I have heard some funny responses to giving up things for lent. The cold. Bad Weather. Republicans. Church.

What I do know is that I hate daylight savings time. It just means I lose an hour of sleep and get cranky.

Today the scriptures say: You have turned my wailing into dancing. (Ps 30:12) and I sent them into exile among the nations, and then gathered them into their own land. I will leave none of them behind.

It makes me think of that quote: you can’t go home again. Decades ago, Tom Wolfe wrote: “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

In other words, once you’ve gone beyond the comfort of the familiar, to return seems confining. Pandora’s box has been opened. The old ways just don’t work. The technology is obsolete. It is the insufferable who insist on vinyl.

We are exiled the past; and they were often not as pleasant as we might remember them. We can’t assume our lives will be safe and satisfying. But we carry home with us. My theology professor once offered the image of people singing hymns around a piano as true communion, being with God. It’s a pleasant sentiment, rarely experienced. I wonder if that’s what we try to emulate when experience mass culture: something shared. We get exiled and scattered, but the work of the church is to gather people again, even when there is suffering all around us.

In such a case I wonder if where two or three gather to sing and dance, God is with them. Let us not worry about what they are listening to, but hope that we can dance with them as well.

 

 

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A Lenten Discipline

I’ve decided to blog daily during Lent. I’m often erratic when writing.

I’ll use the daily office as inspiration. That’s an Anglican thing.

Sometimes I’ll be inspired by other words.

One of my struggles is about voice. Do I write like an academic, working through abstract concepts and relating them to the gospel?

Or do I tell stories?

Do I analyze the work of the priesthood? I could share stories of my failures. Priests usually tell of their successes.  I find those boring.

Tell me what doesn’t work.

I have a friend who is a very successful pastor. He creates programs, and announces them, and people go. Granted, he has a staff and resources. I envy him.

Evening prayer inspires me to think about being rescued. What does it mean to be resuced from being a target? Anyone who is in a position of authority, formal or informal, will find themselves the object of scrutiny.

Sometimes this is just: authorities can be corrupt. They may be wrong.

Other times it is an excuse.

For now, my goal is simply to write. Daily. In writing, let me find my redemption.

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On Distributing Ashes at the Train Station

Today I offered “ashes to go” at the White Plains train station.  It’s apparently controversial, but I’m letting others do the heavy theological lifting. I wanted to experience it before I reflected.

It was cold. Below freezing. We still haven’t gotten out of the polar vortex, which I think has decided that it’s very comfortable in its new digs and has decided it will never leave.  Besides, spring has gone fishing. Ice fishing.

At first, I stood outside the train station in my cassock and surplice for a bit, but once I found myself unable to move my hands, I entered the lobby across from the newspaper kiosk.  It was also cold. The doors kept opening as commuters rushed in.  To keep my hands warm, I’d rub them against each other as I held my little glass bowl full of burned palms. I would have rubbed them between my surplice and cossack, but I worried it would look vaguely illegal. So I kept my hands visible.

I stood still, as I didn’t want to be pushy, merely present.  Available to the seeker, but conveniently ignored by the apathetic, distracted, and irreligious. I didn’t want to raise anyone’s anxieties or hurt anyone’s feelings by being so enthusiastically a priest.

People said, “I heard about this.” Apparently the radio and papers found this fascinating. Press might be good. Look at those quirky Episcopalians, standing in the cold, offering dirt and telling people they’re all going to die.

“I didn’t know this was happening,” said another. This?

“Can you do this?” Am I allowed? Well, I won’t tell anyone if you won’t, I didn’t say. I have a license. Continue reading “On Distributing Ashes at the Train Station” →

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On Deescalating (A Sermon on Matthew 5: 21-37)

A few weeks ago I saw a photo of three Orthodox Monks standing in between protestors and the police in one of the central squares in Ukraine. They merely held a cross and prayed.

Although there are times when a priest must take a side, in that moment they illustrated Christ by being in the way, interrupting the escalating dynamic, offering space for each side to stop the violence. It may be that one side is more righteous than the other, but the solutions are available without further loss of life.

Last week we heard Jesus make some rigorous demands upon the faithful: don’t get angry; don’t be lustful; don’t divorce. Reconcile. It’s easy to get caught up in the prurience of the passage (Matthew 5:21-37) and lose sight of the fundamental challenge. Jesus is not becoming a puritan, suppressing our sexuality.

He’s saying: don’t escalate.

Deescalate. It’s easy to get wound up, to become overwhelmed, to create more problems, to enter into a frenzy. So if you are getting into one, stop. Do what you need to to get your mind back on track, centered, calm.  Don’t become your own obstacle.

The intuition: be careful – we don’t know who else we will harm.

Yes, sometimes in our current context it chafes to be told to rein in one’s emotions. And perhaps there are times when that control is avoidance, merely delaying the inevitable emotional outburst. Instead, Jesus pulls us out of the frenzy. It’s a mistake to hear this only as Jesus wagging his finger. He is equally encouraging us to let ourselves be soothed.

Last week, a man named Michael Dunn was on trial for shooting Jordan Davis, a black teenager, at a convenience store for listening to hip-hop music loudly. It may be another example of racism; or why Stand Your Ground (or “Shoot First”) Laws are immoral; or why we need further gun control. At the very least, however, we had one man who could not negotiate with his own anger, and his racism and weapons exacerbated the event, the murder of a young man.

When Jesus says, even anger leads to judgement, it is precisely this sort of case he illuminates. The man could have responded with humor or simply left the scene quickly. Instead, he chose to escalate.

Deescalating is a mechanism of reconciliation; it is a crucial precursor to the challenge of forgiveness. Deescalation changes the dynamic between individuals and groups, allowing for the possibility that our responsibility, our impact upon each other, for each other, is shared. We all go to heaven, or send each other to hell.

Deescalating may be difficult. Yet discerning and identifying the complexity of our shared life is one of the purposes of prayer and faithful action, and we affirm that the benefits of stepping back, from letting honor be God’s and not our own, we diminish the possibility of creating hells for ourselves, or for others.  All over, from cyberspace, to Stand Your Ground, to political protests evince the dangers of rapid escalation, and how it creates an obstacle for healthy relationships.

When we are in the midst of conflict, when we must negotiate the valleys of community life, let our words be simple and plain. May we work first to support one another, perpetually offering space for reconciliation.

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Jesus and the Billionaires

Are billionaires being persecuted? Certainly they feel under attack.

I understand the sentiment. They are easy targets. There are a few of them. They have a lot of power, and have access to the political elites. They may not know a lot about politics or economics, but they can make money, which always calls people’s attention. Personally, I don’t think there’s much evidence that billionaires are more thoughtful, intelligent or tasteful than anyone else; they are simply better opportunists.

Still, certainly billionaires are not necessarily the fundamental source of the problem our world faces. On this they might be right. They don’t cause all of us to pollute the air; nor do they all deny evolution and climate change. Some are libertarians when it comes to sexuality; or support projects they think effectively reduce suffering in the world.

So blaming them as a class is not exactly just. Continue reading “Jesus and the Billionaires” →

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Notes on MLK Jr

Martin Luther King would be 85 this year.
 
I wonder what he would notice about race in today’s world.  Certainly our president; perhaps that there are more public displays of diversity.  Casual racism, at least, is gauche and impolite.   There’s little disapproval for having friends of different ethnicities.  Certainly there’s a generational shift, and as those who grew up comfortable in a more racially divided environment die, I trust younger generations will find racism to be confused, unnecessary, wrong. 
 
I imagine he would still notice that the country still struggles with many disparities between whites and blacks.   Our country remains, for the most part, segregated.  Black men get incarcerated for non-violent crimes at a disproportional rate.  Many African-Americans struggle to build the generational capital that others take for granted.  And 2008 had a huge impact on black wealth throughout the country.  I suspect he would be outraged at the way some states are restricting voting rights.  Although there has been some improvement in the material conditions of many people, but others are still poor and the way out of poverty seems obscure. 
 
Race has had a very specific impact in the US.  It is certainly not the only country that has difficulties with rival ethnic groups (remember the Danes and the Saxons?  Just don’t get me started on the Picts).   But our political choices and conversations have usually begun and ended on our inability to come to terms with the consequences of our specific racial divide.  Defining who we are as a country is necessarily woven in with the narrative of racial injustice and the institutions that have protected white control of the political and economic process.   And we forget how recently most blacks lived in a country where they were repeatedly terrorized.
 
So what is to be done?  In the church, we have a role to build networks, tell stories and listen.  We remember that we were once enslaved by racism, but that there is a better world.  We will still build golden calves long the way:  we will wonder if the previous world was worth leaving.  But we have faith that building communities based on love and freedom is worth the struggle.   It means that sometimes the privileged learn to share; and the oppressed risk to speak; that our stories and desires are probably more tightly linked than we understand.  But it’s tough, for often the smallest differences that cause the greatest anxieties. 
 
How would we eliminate racism and injustice?  It’s hard to change hearts, but we could diminish the impact of racism in our country that are not based on race.  Such policies are expensive and currently politically unviable: full employment at a living wage, universally affordable health care, and excellent education would benefit everyone, and could certainly be paid for if we simply substituted our three wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and drugs with such investments.  This would not end the discomfort between the different, but it might mitigate the consequences when the rules are rigged.
 
So we celebrate Martin Luther King Day.  Let us remember this prophet, who died unpopular, who challenged us to stand and sing until our land rings with liberty, so that we may discover the promise of our God and of our native land. 

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Chris Christie and the Decline of Political Virtue

There are rules in the political world.  Rules of honor and shame.  Rules of respect.

We respect the office that people hold.  Even if they are not our candidate, we may address them with their title, and allow them to do the specific role they were elected to do.

Tradition, custom, and law, guides us.

They can help us be gracious victors and magnanimous losers.  After an election, the loser offers their respect and sometimes support.  The victor acknowledges the campaign was hard fought, and both make a nod to the theater of politics.  They even call each other on the phone.  It’s politics, not war.

We should be disturbed when these customs, these rituals, aren’t acknowledged.  When Ken Cucinelli refused to call McCauliffe after the Virginia Governor’s race because it demonstrated an inability to depersonalize the political, to still see a human being outside one’s political party.

Christie didn’t want to just win, but to get total victory for election to New Jersey.  Not merely 51% but as much as possible.  I’m not convinced that’s the presenting legal issue, but it reveals a bit about our current political culture.   Nobody wants to lose, for the stakes are too high.  And nobody wants a weak victory, because that means negotiation with the opponent down the road.  These battles are great for the media, because we find these stories compelling.

When total victory becomes our desire, the rules of respect get broken.   Our public life suffers.  It is for this reason Chris Christie represents both an entertaining, but fundamentally destructive, symbol of our political life.

Let me admit I had a fondness for exactly what I find dangerous about his style of politics.   Since I deeply want a credible Republican party that believes in math and evolution, I was giving him a fairly long leash.  But overall, his open contempt for the traditions that make governing possible may render his own office to be ineffective.  Who would trust him now?

When he refused, for the first time in the governor’s history, not to approve the tenure of Judge Warren, he disrespected the traditions and roles that had preceded him, taking an expansive view of his own authority.  The Democrats, furious, asserted their own authority.  And thus, we identify another place where a breakdown of tradition resulted in a fairly needless political controversy.

Certainly no political institution or party is immune from responding hysterically to microscopic issues, from seeking public vindication to increase one’s political capital.  In part it’s because it’s remarkably difficult to address the challenges that are facing our common life effectively.  Outrage is remarkably easy for everyone.

But as the right loses their belief in custom and authority, they lose what makes make politics, and compromise, possible: a halt in the dynamic of outrage.  Burke’s understanding of conservatism and its attenuating habits was that it protects us from violence; the respect of traditions was a respect of people.  But Christie, I believe, benefitted from a media culture that found contempt appealing, and a conservative class that has a revolutionary base.

Admittedly, what I liked about Christie is what I liked about LBJ – a sense of his own power.  But unlike the 1960’s, private vindictiveness became public, and as our ideological points become polarized, compromise becomes a political liability.  I wouldn’t single out Christi here.

I enjoyed Christ’s forwardness. Perhaps, however, it was a veil to misdirect the public and a way to undermine his opponents.  He eagerly fed an avaricious public’s desire for simple good vs evil narratives: making his opponents seem uncooperative, simple and weak.  This has revealed how his own effectiveness depended upon identifying and punishing enemies.  To some extent, It’s the political game; but we need these counter traditions of respect, reverence and restraint to balance our impulse to outrage and to actually make legislation.

Chris Christie represents an overall decline of our political culture.  Yes, by nature, politics is messy, clean, and vindictive.  But this is why there are rules of respect given each person’s office and where effective politicians are forgiving and rarely hold a grudge.  Christie used his office, and his presence, to hold others with contempt.  We shouldn’t be surprised that his circle of advisers understood this as a legitimate way to govern.

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The War on Poverty

It’s the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty.  Some would argue that we lost. There are still poor people.

Jesus did say they’d always be there.  But when I hear someone say, “well, the war on poverty was a failure,” I hear, “who gives a crap, anyway?”  But the faithful should remember:  we’re not off the hook (Matthew 25:31-46).

That there remain poor people does not indicate the war failed.  The small transfers in wealth did make a difference between misery and … less misery.  Surely the transfers did not cause people learn job skills or become financiers – but they do alleviate pain.

The programs implemented cannot replace some cultural and economic shifts that happened in the 1970’s.  Blacks who were gaining a foot hold in the middle class, did not acquire the wealth that whites did.  Their housing prices lagged even though they sought better opportunities.   Furthermore, good middle class manufacturing jobs were declining.  While we were alleviating poverty, we were still producing more poor people.

We forget that poverty has allies.  Poverty means a cheap labor market.  Some institutions benefit from the poors’ desperation.  It’s easy to exploit them and then blame them for their problems: just make sure, for example, all the markets around them are a little more expensive; charge them exorbitant fees for overdrawing.  Whereas the prosperous have room to make the occasional financial mistake, and can spend frivolously, the poor are penalized if they do not count every penny.   A beer, a gift, a small tax – each of these make a difference.

It’s difficult to admit there will always be some people who are dependent.  So we find remarkably ineffective, and expensive, ways to care for them, like prisons.  Although “Stop being poor” is our demand our lack of imagination ends up having us shut them in a jail cell where we foot the bill.  Why couldn’t we have built a school or paid them to beautify our cities?

Our own moralism, where we demand people “get a job,” is a useless way of solving the problem.  Such moralists don’t really know where the jobs are, nor would they hire the poors anyway.  Economists are quite aware of the problem:  there’s a gap between skills needed and the labor market.  We can’t snap are fingers and make hungry kids who can barely read into software engineers: even our great entrepreneurs usually had food on their table and some degree of stability.   So when I hear someone say “get a job” I also hear “you’re worthless, so why don’t you jut make your way to some labor camp and die.”  For the faithful, however, we say work is meaningful, but that does  still not determine God’s love for anyone or their intrinsic dignity.  God still loves the drunk. 

Last, the various programs were always meant to be a cheap alternative to a better solution: full employment.  A national program that actually financed the war on poverty as if it were an actual war might have been much more effective.  If we had spent the six trillion dollars we spent in Afghanistan and Iraq and instead provided the 12 million unemployed jobs at a middle class (about $75,000) wage for six years we would have strengthened the middle class.  The economic multiplier would have been enormous – because the unemployed tend to spend, the growth in GDP would multiplied at least ten times – and with such an expansion, we would have been able to balance the budget.  Ideally this would be part of rebuilding our massive infrastructure – construction remains one of the few industries that cannot be shipped overseas.  But we don’t have the political will, and it is far more expensive.  It’s easier to spend on war, and on a credit card.

Is there a dependent class?  Perhaps.  But I doubt we’re quite serious about getting people out of that “cycle.”  The poor are not organized – and many tend to vote against any sort of collective interest.  Occasionally you’ll find some poor person saying that they feel guilty for living on medicaid and food stamps. blaming some other person they know for being dependent.  They are ashamed of being poor, and many of them don’t like hand outs.  They’ll let themselves be punished because they’ve internalized the idea that they deserve their fate.  But the conservative class thinks they can just go out and start a business when they have no cash, no investors, and few skills.

We still have poverty, and we did fight a war.  But we thought we could fight it on the cheap.

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Jesus, Survivor

From a Sermon, Christmas II, Matthew 2:12-19

Jesus was a survivor.

The wise men had reached Herod.   They are about to tell him that Jesus has been born, the Messiah, and this makes Herod, and all Jerusalem – hipster central, where all the good restaurants and cool kids reside – nervous.  For Jesus is a country kid who might challenge the king.    Herod asks the magi to find the child and tell him.

But after the magi visit, Joseph and Mary are warned.   And when the magi skip town, he is enraged.  And in the verses the lectionary skips over, Herod, infuriated, slaughters the children in and around Bethlehem.

It evokes another story: the child Moses escaping the law of the Pharaohs.    But also the other stories of destruction and survival.  Jesus would have remembered that story of survival.  He would have remembered the prophet Jeremiah.  And he would have remembered the scattering of the people of Israel after the Babylonian captivity.  Continue reading “Jesus, Survivor” →

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