'Beware the terrible simplifiers'

From the United Church News
Written by Bill Moyers May 4, 2008

Editor's note: Bill Moyers, veteran journalist and UCC member, delivered the following essay during the May 2 installment of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Moyers provided the text of his remarks to United Church News with permission to reprint. Watch the video.

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam: "Who's telling the truth over there?"
"Everyone," he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience."

That's how people see Jeremiah Wright.

In my conversation with him and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. More than 2000 people have written me about him, and their opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American-hating radical," one of my viewers wrote. Another called him a "nut case."

Many more were sympathetic to him. Many asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to the shocking anger they saw at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist.

Many black preachers I've known-scholarly, smart, and gentle in person-uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course, I've known many white preachers like that, too. But where I grew up in the south, before the Civil Rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else. A safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed.

I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched. Or if my great-great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a constitution that proclaimed: "We, the people." Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Conner, and Jesse Helms.

Even so, the anger of black preachers I've known and heard and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic. That's not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances since my interview. What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle - forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy.

Hardly anyone took the "chickens come home to roost" remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright's absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. public health service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test.

Does this excuse Wright's anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You'll have to decide for yourself, but at least it helps me to understand the why of them.

In this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media - the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help - people who, for their own reasons, set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court Justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass. Jon Stewart recently played tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the Oval Office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy and wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it?

Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently.

He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We're often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this - this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner played out right in front of our eyes.

Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said, "beware the terrible simplifiers."

Bill Moyers is managing editor of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.

Dangerous liasons

While the media has been scopelocked on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain and his acceptance of Pastor John Hagee's endorsement has slipped largely under the radar. This video is the first part of five on a broadcast of Bill Moyers' "Journal" on PBS. If you thought Jeremiah Wright was crazy, Pastor John Hagee is downright scary. A video of Bill Moyers' interview with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright appears below.

Dangerous liasons, Part 2

This video is part one of four. I encourage you to view all of the clips in order to balance what you may have heard about Rev. Wright.

Conclusions

In yesterday's Engines of Our Ingenuity, Prof. John Lienhard discussed how building arguments on foregone conclusions is like building a house upon sand. And perhaps I'm about to engage in a similar pitfall but nonetheless his commentary captured my imagination.

He averred that a scientist must fight for the hypothesis as much as against it. A good scientist forms a theory and then works to disprove it. A poor scientist searches only for evidence to support the theory. My mind started reeling with thoughts about faith and the search for God and meaning.

In places of worship we spend a great deal of time forming arguments on a foregone conclusion, namely, that God exists. But if we are to evolve as a species, we need to spend as much energy and time disproving it and doing so intellligently, unlike Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and the rest. If we are to be adults in this universe, we must learn to hold the tension of God and not God within us. That's what Thomas the Doubter is for, what Good Friday is for, and those times when we feel utterly abandoned. Time to stand on our own two feet, reach out to those around us, and walk. And think and feel and sort out our purpose, with fear and trembling all the same.

The commentary ended with this quote from Henry Adams: "Only on the edge of the grave, can man conclude anything." Only then will we know if all our groping and straining after God was worth it, was real. So let's make it as worth it, as real as possible, by reading and questioning and talking with others and helping those who need us and, as Parker Palmer once said, loving everyone in every possible way. We don't need a conclusion to do that, only that at least heaven doesn't have to wait until 'the edge of the grave'.

Unfinished

Back in November this past year I took a poetry workshop in NYC with Ellen Bass and Marie Howe, two outstanding poets. They gave us a writing exercise in which we had to describe a defining moment in an unfinished relationship, including setting, any dialogue, taking the reader as slowly as possible so as to make them a part of it. Truly, any relationship is unfinished. This one is about my father.

I wrote this poem a few days ago, as today it will be 23 years since he died. It is part of a series I'm endeavoring to write about the unfinished relationships in my life, both past and present.


Cigarettes

We had settled into
our nightime TV ritual
Magnum P.I. and Nero Wolfe
our favorites.
I was on the couch,
you in your well-worn recliner,
feet up to help keep
fluid out since
the pneumonia.
During a commercial
you casually asked me
if I would get you
a pack of cigarettes
out of the kitchen.

I huffed, gave you
one of my looks,
well-honed in sixteen years,
the one I reserve for when
I don’t know what to say.
When I came back
into the room
I hurled the heart-attack-in-a-pack
at you and thudded back
onto the couch, arms
crossed, leg over knee.
Now I know what to say.

Next time you want
a pack of cigarettes
get them yourself.

You looked at me,
at your wife as though
I had unearthed
a hidden truth,
taken off whatever lenses
through which you didn’t see me.

You once took my
little girl rage against
your palms, raised open
like a sparring coach,
small fists slamming
implacable flesh,
the sting of your wedding ring.

If I thought it would save
what life was left
I would have thrown
dozens of them at you,
my love sealed up
in plastic-wrapped paper,
smokes that would
never hasten your grave,
inscribed with that warning
not nearly fierce enough
but just as helpless.

For thou art with me

Today I sang at the memorial service for the mother of a good friend of mine. Another good friend, a deacon in the church, read the scripture for the service. Well, he read one of them. The first scripture, the 23rd psalm, he recited in the King James Version. Instead of looking down at the words and raising his eyes to us every now and then, he looked out over the congregation, steadily gazing at each of our faces, dwelling ever so slightly on the weepy eyes of the grieving family, giving weight and cadence to each precious verse.

It was no longer a reading from scripture; it became a testimony, a witness of faith. It was as if he were drawing not only from his memory but from his own experiences of being led by the Good Shepherd, of facing his own valley of the shadow of death, of being seated at a table with his enemies, of mercy overflowing from his cupped hands. It may sound trite, but there was such beauty in what he did that I had tears in my eyes.

The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Amen.

No papal pastoral visit for Boston

From The Boston Globe:

A hearty welcome, a contrite tone

and

For local victims, too little, too late

If this had happened in the United Church of Christ, there is no way the adjudicatory clergy staff could get away with not making a pastoral visit to the victims and their families. The very stones would cry out if the faith community would remain silent...NOT.

Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the apostolic nuncio hosting the Pope in D.C., was asked why Benedict XVI did not schedule a visit to Boston, the eye of the sexual abuse storm. In his reply he said that it was not that the Pope wished to avoid highlighting the sex abuse scandal but that he did not have time to visit many cities, such as San Francisco. Sheesh!

Evolution

Since my part-time gig in Darien ended the beginning of this past December, I've been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and moping. After working part-time and being away from my home church for six months, the longest stint I have done since staying home with my girls, re-entry has been more difficult than usual. Adding to the angst is my changing theology and beliefs. The ground is shifting, and sometimes I don't know where to put my feet. It would be great if I could call this a dance, but the music is changing as well, with long moments of deafening silence. So it feels more like a stumble in a dark room.

Yes, it's the midlife crisis thing, that indefinable term of birth pangs where you're not sure what you're going to get when the whole thing is over. You just hope you don't turn out to be an asshole like some other folks you've seen go through this. Cynthia, you could never be an asshole. Perhaps not but there are days I sure do feel like one.

Anyway, I've been trying to read some helpful books; NOT self-help but spiritually nourishing and challenging. Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits (which I alternately loved and wanted to chuck) and Ruth Rimm's The Lost Spiritual World, which I haven't finished yet. I've come to some kind of understanding of what I now believe about our human existence, which accounts for some of the tectonic shifts in my mood.

We cannot prove the existence of God, nor should we. Looking for proof is like chasing after wind, as silly as science looking for a unifying equation that will explain everything. Yet we as a human race seem to be under the delusion that it makes all the difference in the world which God we follow. We are one planet amongst billions of others that probably have civilizations that struggled with this very question eons ago. To me it seems that we need God for two questions which as of now have no discernable answer, in the macro and in the micro of living:

Macro: How did this whole existence begin? How is it all going to end?

Micro: How did we as individuals come into existence? What happens to us when we die?

And a third that encompasses it all: How are we to live?

When I was in seminary I took a class in object psychology, the premise of which, I think, was this: when we are children, we treat everything around us, including people, as objects, as things we can manipulate to get what we want. Our development into mature people depends on how we are able to internalize those objects, i.e., we learn to mother ourselves, father ourselves, befriend ourselves; we become able to take care of ourselves and help others, no longer needing to manipulate the world around us because we have become a part of it.

I have come to see our development, our evolution as human beings in a similar way. We objectify God because we are still learning how to live in the world. Basically, we as a human species are somewhere in our adolescence. We still need our Parent to tell and show us how to live, how to be moral, ethical, loving, compassionate people, because in our development, we are very much self-centered, like a teenager. We're trying to break away from our Parent, as evidenced by all the atheists getting their 15 minutes, but yet we don't know it all. We're still very scared and angry that one day we'll have to be grown-ups and be responsible and give up many of our toys and amusements.

But one day we will learn how to internalize what it is we need from God; we will have God's law of love written upon our hearts, we will have that same mind as Christ, we will be Spirit-led rather than led by our egos. That is the day that the kingdom comes on earth. And as His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said, we don't need to believe in God in order to be compassionate and loving. We need simply to do these things every day.

But it's not that simple. We need reminders to practice our compassion and our loving. And that is why I need church, why everyone needs a community of some sort to be accountable to for their actions. We do not work out our salvation in a vacuum nor solely on our own. We're always bumping up against someone and their notion of what constitutes a human experience. If anything, we need at least to be forgiving. And I don't know how anyone comes by that naturally.

When I'm not working, I'm in a tailspin as to what my purpose is for the living of my days. The irony is that it really never changes: I'm called to be a minister of God's grace, period. Just because I'm not up in front of the church preaching and teaching and leading worship doesn't mean I can't do that. But that's only my old ego getting in the way, doing its best to stay alive, even if it makes me look an asshole in the process.

So I'm going to keep reading and thinking, less moping and hopefully more writing here. As I've said before, I do this for my own benefit and enjoyment, so you may have to wait patiently for my thoughts and feelings to coalesce into something coherent. In the meantime, we might as well laugh.

Advantages of class membership

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.


Bold the true statements.


1. Father went to college.

2. Father finished college.

3. Mother went to college.

4. Mother finished college.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.

9. Were read children's books by a parent.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.

16. Went to a private high school.

17. Went to summer camp.

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.

25. You had your own room as a child.

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.

31. Went on a cruise with your family.

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

Even though we didn't have much, what we had was good, even better than what is on this list. Every vacation was a camping vacation, first in a tent, then a pop-up camper. We camped up and down the eastern seaboard, all the way from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, to Mississippi where my mother's parents lived, and took two trips into Canada: Quebec and New Brunswick, then Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island.

The private lessons were for swimming and the clarinet. My mother did not learn how to swim until she was grown, so she made sure my brother and I had lessons during the school year at an indoor pool. Clarinet lessons were for my mediocre talent but they were also a time to bond with my father after he had moved out of the house before my parents' divorce.

I put myself through college and seminary, with the help of financial aid, VA benefits and loans, because my parents did not have the money to help me. I bought my own clunker of a car before my senior year in college with money saved from summer jobs.

The books in our house belonged mostly to my parents, as they were educated packrats, but at birthdays and Christmas, children's books were among the gifts. The original art was a few paintings purchased second-hand and in the Philippines when my father was in the Air Force and one of the crucifixion done by my father. My mother earned a degree in fine arts, like all young ladies seeking a husband in her day, but it also ensured that we were taken to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and to the Isabella Gardner Museum. We also went to Sturbridge Village, the New England Aquarium, the Franklin Zoo and the Museum of Science--infrequent and rare, these were special outings.

After my parents were divorced, money was very tight. My mother worked two jobs at one point, as an insurance agent by day and a waitress at the Barnside Tavern restaurant by night. That stopped when she got mono and couldn't work for about two weeks. I knew we didn't have much but I didn't know until I was an adult that we almost lost our house, that one year we wouldn't have had a Christmas if not for a generous, loving person from our church. My mother made sure we children did not know how much the heating bills were, even though they probably caused her much anxiety.

When I flew on a commercial plane, it was to see my father who had moved to North Carolina. Most of the time, though, I took the bus. I also was able to go on an eighth grade field trip to Washington, D.C. and Williamsburg, because my mother scraped together the money and thought it was important that I go. The same was true for a European choir and band concert tour when I was seventeen but this time, she made sure my father contributed as well.

Though my first home was around or less than 1000 square feet, though my father was an alcoholic during my elementary school years, though we could not always afford to go clothes shopping, I am thankful I grew up the way I did. I have an appreciation for simple things, for nature, for books and for art and music. It enables me to want to help others, for I did not get to where I am without a lot of help from caring, compassionate people.

What opportunities did you have growing up?

Thanks to Sharecropper for this meme.

Like vultures to a dead wild thing

from Fox (read Faux) News:

Radical Baptist church to picket Heath Ledger's memorial

These people have no shame. Why should I be surprised?

Oh, I don't know...maybe because they're completely tasteless and without feeling?! Who does that sound like...Satan, maybe?!

Straight up, no ice

The Recipe For Cynthia

3 parts Playfulness 2 parts Sexiness 1 part Wit Splash of Allure Shake vigorously. One serving only. This drink is strong!

What's the Recipe for Your Personality?

Thanks to Sharecropper for this one!

'Face' the nation

Part of being a presidential candidate is figuring out who will play your role in the movie about your life as president. Here are my choices for a few of the candidates.

Barack Obama will be played by...

...Halle Berry. If Cate Blanchett can play Bob Dylan, then why not?

At first I thought of Meryl Streep for Hillary Clinton.

But then I remembered this picture of Dr. Janice Lester from the classic "Star Trek" series...hmmm. And when you consider the plotline from this episode, how Dr. Lester made a power grab for the Enterprise by sabotaging her former lover, Capt. Kirk, it's practically typecasting.

To play the 'new and improved' Mike Huckabee...

...Kevin Spacey. Eerie, isn't it?

And for Mitt Romney..

...Stephen Colbert, which would do wonders for his campaign.

As for W...

...I still think Dana Carvey's 'Church Lady' is by far the actor with the proper emotional range for the role, don't you think?

Who are your nominees for John McCain, John Edwards, etc.? Of course, Fred Thompson could always play himself, which he does quite frequently.

Praise persists

This holiday greeting card was designed by the brother of a colleague of mine. I haven't seen a video e-greeting I liked more.
To learn more, click here.

PSA - Asperger's Syndrome

Your Aspie score: 41 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 173 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical

I don't know much, if anything, about Asperger's Syndrome, except that there are probably many people who suffer with it, yet do not know what is at the root of their suffering. I viewed this quiz and a few discussions on other blogs. I thought I would provide this as a public service announcement for those who may have some inkling about themselves or someone they know.

This quiz is not a diagnostic tool but a well-intentioned compass that may provide some direction.

The Heart of God

An Epiphany story...

(While reading a book of stories by Leo Tolstoy, this story came to me in a dream and inspired me to write it.)

“Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” --Exodus 20:12.

She had come home to die. Not very original, she thought, but it was all she had left. No explanations that would satisfy. No hope that would sustain. I just want to pass from this world in the same house I was born in, she prayed silently, and to be buried next to my mother. No recriminations against her father, no desire for reconciliation. She wanted only to collapse upon the old man’s doorstep, never to open her eyes again.

The night was bitter. Frozen ground, frozen stars, frozen urine on her thighs and icicles on her cheeks. The wind whipped viciously about her, threatening more than once to knock her over and leave her there. How many more steps, she wondered. What did it matter? She couldn’t feel her feet anyway. Then a familiar crooked tree, the smell of a wood fire, a small plain in the midst of jagged hills--home. Even on a moonless night, she knew she was home.

Five years ago she had come home under very different circumstances. She was pregnant and not married, but the father of the child wanted to marry her and make a home near his own mother and father. So the young couple came to her parents’ village to ask the old man if they might borrow a small sum of money to purchase some land and build a home so that they might start a farm. The old man could not believe that having openly sinned in such a shocking manner that they would be so arrogant as to ask for such a thing. He turned them out of the house, ordering that they never return. He then took all the money he had, put it into a metal box, and buried it in the earthen floor of his home. From then on he lived off whatever food he could find on his own property, selling whatever he could to pay for his existence.

His own father had left him his fields and home. But the old man’s fields had lain fallow since his father’s death. Or rather, since he buried the last part of his legacy: a large rock, nearly as tall as the old man, with the words “The Heart of God” chiseled on it. He had no idea what to do with the rock. It stood at the corner of one his father’s most productive fields. He thought, maybe if I plant it in the ground, I will be blessed with even more. Truthfully, he was embarrassed by such a public, yet cryptic display of his father’s faith. So, with the help of some field hands, he dug a deep hole at the corner of the field and with a large, solid staff for a lever, he put the enormous rock in the ground. Interestingly, the side of the rock with the words faced the opening of the hole. The old man kept reading them as he covered up the rock with dirt. He thought about it afterward for a while, but then soon forgot the words and what his father might have intended for him. The field soon went fallow and barren after that and so did the old man’s heart.

But when he saw his daughter unconscious and near death on his doorstep, his cold heart softened and he carried her inside, placing her near the oven on a pallet covered with blankets. He could see that she was half-starved and dehydrated. He vowed he would devote his days to her care and restoration, spending all the money he had, if necessary. He knelt before her and wept as he prayed to God and made his confession, offering his own life for hers as penitence. Then he unearthed the tin of money and took it with him in his search for someone who could help him cure his daughter.

In three months’ time, his daughter was well again. When she had arrived, she had been unable to keep any food inside her. She had been unwell since the birth of her child. She did not rest long enough and soon suffered from an infection. She never fully recovered from it, yet she still looked for work to help support her new family. She left her husband and son with his parents while she wandered from town to town, looking for work that anyone might give her. One look at her drawn face and sunken eyes and they turned her away, not wanting to hire a weak, broken woman. She was ashamed to return home empty-handed, ashamed of the condition of her life, so she begged what she could and lived on the grace of God. But her body continued to weaken to the degree that her body rejected whatever food she put into it. So, she thought, death would bring her rest. And coming near to death, she did find the peace she thought had eluded her.

Her father sent for her husband and son, and they rejoiced to see her healthy and well again. The old man welcomed them as he wished he had welcomed the young couple five years ago. The baby was now a child, who cried with joy in his mother’s arms and loved to know his grandfather. The daughter’s husband offered to help the old man with the fields, to see if they could get something to grow in them.

The next day they went to the corner of the field, where the old man had buried the large rock. With the help of some neighbors they were able to remove the dirt until they could read the words, “The Heart of God”. But the rock was so large they could not get it out of the ground. Many days went by while the old man, his son-in-law and the neighbors chiseled away at the rock, bringing it out of the hole piece by piece. During an unseasonably hot day, many large segments of the rock were removed. Then a surprise: water started bubbling up from the riven rock. As more fragments were removed they could see that there was a natural spring. Quickly they worked to dig out the rest of the rock. The water was clear and cold. The neighbors went to their homes to get containers, convinced the water was a miracle.

The old man was grateful for a rest. He had been sweating profusely, and his heart seemed to beat outside of his chest with a ferocious spasm. His son-in-law helped him to a shade tree while his grandson brought him some water from the spring. The old man drank from the cup, the water spilling down the sides of his mouth, a sigh spilling out from his soul as if it had been buried with the rock. Then his eyes looked toward the leaves as they cut ribbons of sunlight that wove their magic in the curly hair of his grandson. The old man said, “My eyes are opened. I see God!” and then passed his last breath.

They buried the old man next to his wife, and for the headstone they carved out a small slab of the rock. It was the rock that had caused the field to go barren, for it had blocked the underground water supply that had nurtured the field when there had been drought. Now the field was again fecund, and from it came the tallest wheat anyone had ever seen. The neighboring fields also did well, for the daughter and the son-in-law shared the water as a source of irrigation. The chiseled rocks were used to build a cistern around the spring. The daughter, her husband, and their son lived long and well on the farm, and it passed through many generations. They called the place Serdze Boga, the heart of God, for their eyes had been opened and they had seen God.

"And on earth, peace..."

(from Suzanne)

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Luke 6: 27-28

As Love Would Have It

A modern-day Christmas story...

It was raining that night when she got the call from the hospital. She had fallen asleep on the couch listening to the radio. She didn’t know what time it was; she didn’t care. She just did as she was told—come and identify the body. Her son’s body.

As she rode on the subway she remembered the night he was born. It was a long difficult birth, and she had been alone through most of it. An old woman from next door had heard her cry out and came over and stayed until he was washed and clothed and asleep on her breast. He was beautiful, as all babies are. His eyes were warm and brown. He had her smile and his father’s high forehead. And he was big—over nine pounds. His body was perfect then. Now it was dead and cold, its beauty warped by some violent act. She stared out the black window looking for his face, trying to remember its features. Instead she saw her own reflection but the smile was not there, would not come again for a long time, and so she could not see him even in her own face.

It was hard raising the boy on her own. He had colic the first three months, soothed only by the rocking motions of her body as she carried him in a sling made of tattered red cloth. In the wee hours of the morning she would nurse him in the sling as she glided about the small living room that was also their bedroom.

Then there was the problem of money. She wrote stories for small magazines but they didn’t always pay enough. Her parents had disowned her when they found out she was pregnant. The father had run off before she had even missed her period. As Love would have it, she had started attending a storefront church nearby when her son had started to kick. The people opened their arms like a warm quilt and welcomed her in. They dropped by with food and clothing, things they had trouble getting themselves. She cleaned apartments and babysat children. She did whatever she could to keep the life within her.

And by some miracle her son grew healthy and strong. He wrestled his way out of the colic into a colorful streak of a toddler. Oh what a lovely boy, they all said at church. He would get restless through the service but someone would always seek him out and pull him onto their lap or give him crayons and paper. Now the smile rested weakly on her face but faded as she came back to the clacking of the train and the jostling motion that rocked her toward sleep but jarred her all the same.

She remembered another time she felt her heart rising in her throat, when she lost him in a department store. At Christmas they would always go to one of the big stores and look at all the displays. The boy loved to go from one beautiful display to another, looking for that one that meant Christmas to him. When he was little, the boy would sit on Santa’s lap, asking what Santa wanted for Christmas, for the boy knew not to hope for much. The year he was 12 he wandered off, not telling his mother first. She searched frantically for him, for her baby son almost a man, enlisting a police officer, the floor manager, and a sympathetic sales clerk.

She found him out in front of the store with a Salvation Army volunteer. The volunteer was enjoying a hot cup of coffee while her son was ringing the bell, smiling from ear to ear as people put money in the red bucket. It was hard to be mad at him then but she put on her mom face and said as sternly as she could, “Don’t you ever run off like that again!” His reply stunned her: “Oh, Momma, it’s gonna get a lot harder to love me.” She thought he was talking about being a teenager and all that comes with those tumultuous years. She had no idea. As she stepped off the train and walked toward the hospital, his words stabbed at her chest.

The past ten years or so he had been homeless. Every now and then he’d show up at her apartment for a meal or to wash his clothes. But he would never take any money from her. He said he was checking up on her to see how she was doing. Truly it was a gift to her so she could see him and make sure he was okay. Now she wished she had locked him in the apartment, made him stay with her, taken care of him, done anything to keep him alive as she had done when he was little.

She passed through the automatic doors of the emergency room and the antiseptic smell washed over her, as if to make her into someone else. She took the elevator to the basement and followed the signs to the morgue. A young woman greeted her and gestured for her to come to the table. The lab nurse pulled back the sheet and revealed her son lying on cold metal. Yes, it had gotten a lot harder to love him, but she still felt the same way she did as when she first saw his face. She kissed his brow, brushed back the hair from his face, and caressed his cheek.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“The police report says he came upon a couple of punks arguing over a woman’s purse they had just taken,” the lab nurse replied. “Your son tried to break up the fight, but then one of them pulled a knife and stabbed him and the other thief.”

“Is he also…?” she choked.

“No, he’s gonna be okay,” she answered. She paused. “I’m sorry about your son. Would you like to be alone with him for a few minutes?”

“Yes, thank you,” his mother whispered.

She held his face in her hands as she wept over him, her tears falling on his cheeks, his lips, his eyes. She wiped them with her sleeve, cleaning the blood and dirt off his face. As she gently pulled his head to her breast, a mighty roar welled up within her and gushed out of her like liquid fire. The lab nurse did not come rushing back. She was not the first mother to lose her son nor the last. She carefully laid down his head on the table and took one last look before she pulled the sheet over his head.

As she stepped out into the cold and damp, she saw that it was almost dawn. The rain had stopped and the sun was just beginning to rise over the receding clouds. She looked up at the street lamps, saw the banners, colored lights, wreaths, and realized what day it was.

Christmas.

There was only one place to go. She got on the subway and headed back to her neighborhood, to the storefront church where there would be a free dinner and children and old friends. There she would see her son, running through peoples’ legs, reading comics with friends, serving a hot meal, warming frozen hands over the steam of good food, singing, praying, smiling, alive again in those who loved him. She ran to meet him, the life quickening inside her.

May the Christ be revealed in you this holiday season.
Peace be with you in the New Year.

(c) Cynthia E. Robinson

The Peace of Someone Else Be With You

The Kotel - Western Wall- Old City of Jerusalem

Psalm 122; Matthew 24: 36-44

First Congregational Church of ******, CT

December 2, 2007

Note: This was my last Sunday at a church I had worked at for six months as Interim Minister for Pastoral Care.

My friend and colleague, Suzanne, is spending a year in Jerusalem—a sort of self-imposed sabbatical and study year. In her blog she writes about her observations and experiences. In her strolls through her neighborhood, during the day or at night, she has witnessed a man on the third floor of an apartment building on his balcony, sitting at a small table with a book, presumably the Torah, facing the Old City of Jerusalem.

Church of the Holy Sepulcher

She goes on to say that the apartment building adjacent to hers “is adding an outside elevator and refurbishing the front entrance with walkways and a patio out of golden Jerusalem stone. The men who are constructing the elevator start very early in the morning; often it’s a noisy wake up call. In the same vicinity of the worksite there can be found foam rubber pads that are used to stop and pray throughout the day as Muslims are called to do. The noise stops when the men pray.

Dome of the Rock

“A Christian congregation, who worships in the bottom of a building on Yaffo Road, also has offices on the 14th floor of that same building. Right next to the offices is a chapel with windows that overlook Jerusalem. They have a prayer watch wherein an individual or group takes a one hour watch and prays. There are twenty-four watches, seven days a week. Each one of the watches is filled.

“Jews come to the Kotel, the wailing wall, to offer prayers of the heart and written prayers in the holiest of holy places. Muslims prostrate themselves in prayer in unlikely places: outside of their cabs, in a small corner of a plaza. Nuns pray the rosary inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” Suzanne writes that she is “confident that at any time of the day or night in Jerusalem, prayers of the people are being offered to the Holy One, God, the Beloved.”

And some, if not all, of those prayers I am sure are for peace: peace for their beloved city, Jerusalem, spiritual home to Jews, Christians and Muslims, ancestral home to Israelis and Palestinians. Its name contains the Hebrew root for ‘shalom’: Jerushalem. It means ‘possession of peace’ or ‘foundation of peace’.

This morning’s Psalm adjures those making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to pray for the peace of this holy city, which implies that it is far from peaceful. Not much has changed, has it? One scholar has calculated that from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the capture of Jerusalem by the Roman general Pompey in 63 CE, over 200 military campaigns were fought in and around Palestine, against or in the vicinity of Jerusalem. It has been, and continues to be, one of the most contested and conflicted cities in the world.

Yet for the Psalmist, Jerusalem is the beginning and the end, the desire and the fulfillment, the inspiration and the destination: it is the home of God and of God’s realm. It is the place of God’s judgment, justice and peace. Because of the way the city was designed and constructed, Jerusalem has the power to bring people together. To enter Jerusalem is to enter a new world, where humankind lives for God’s sake and for the sake of others, where past, present and future exist at once. Woven into the fabric of this ancient city, within its hotly contested present, are the threads of the New Jerusalem, the holy city of God, the righteous kingdom where justice and peace reign forever and ever.

The Puritans of the 17th century looked upon the New World as their New Jerusalem. New England was to be their ‘city on the hill’, the chosen land for the new Zion. A great and holy commonwealth would be founded. They saw themselves and their faith as a shining example. Whenever a people are persecuted, it is invariably assumed that the end of time is near. With tribulation comes redemption. The Puritans believed that the second coming of Jesus the Christ would occur in their lifetime.

Cotton Mather, the preacher of First Church of Boston from 1684 to 1723 tried to predict the ‘end times’ by interpreting current events through the Book of Revelation and the prophets. In fact, he attempted to calculate a precise date. First, he declared that Christ would come in the year 1697. When that date passed, he was sure that it would be 1736, but then recalculated to the year 1716.

Many in Boston were expectant and anxious that year, trusting in their beloved pastor and teacher, a man of more letters and learning than the common person. 1716 passed uneventfully. So, it was to be 1717. Still nothing.

Finally, in 1727, just before the death of the Rev. Mather, Boston suffered an earthquake. Mather declared that ‘this is it’.

Even Jesus says that he does not know. ‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father’. Will knowing make us any more ready to meet our maker? What is it that will make us ready, that will keep us awake?

The apocalyptic furor of the 17th century acquired an attitude of religiosity and moral fiber during the Great Awakening of the 18th century. Revivals sprang up throughout the colonies, attempting to recover the energy of the authentic religious experience. There was a sense of living in declining times, of not living up to the founding fathers and mothers who left family and home to find God in the wilderness.

Jonathan Edwards was one of the early New England ministers who was able to bring to his listeners a sense of their own sin, of being dead to Christ. In 1741 at Enfield, CT he preached his famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, declaring the just wrath of God yet also God’s desire to bring humankind into the kingdom. Though Edwards and his contemporaries were rather fire-and-brimstone, they also saw the possibility of conversion, new birth and new life. They also reawakened the sense that the citizens of this New World would have a vital role in God’s last days, that we were still a privileged nation, God’s New Jerusalem.

As colonies became states, as states became a nation that declared its independence; as territories were acquired, frontiers explored, industry expanded, the mid-19th century brought us to division and civil war over the issue of slavery and the rights of states to determine themselves. In Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address he endeavored to placate the southern states, saying that he would not interfere with the institution of slavery in those states where it existed. He guaranteed the right of each state to govern itself and its domestic institutions exclusively. In effect, he attempted to keep the peace rather than make peace. And there was no making peace with slavery; despite his promises, war broke out a month after Lincoln was inaugurated.

The Civil War brought America up short. It shattered our idealized view of ourselves, as being a favored nation in the eyes of God, as having a redemptive role in history. This was not a war of revolution against tyranny. Though slaves were freed, it was through the bloodshed of brothers, citizens of one nation. New Jerusalem indeed. It seems that wherever Jerusalem is declared, even the Church itself, there are those who will fight over who will determine its future and who will make peace difficult to achieve.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln got it right. This time he preached how to make peace rather than just keeping it. He reminded his listeners that they read the same Bible, that they prayed to the same God. Those present were rapt in profound silence, their faces and eyes damp with tears, responding at times with applause and cheers.

A journalist present, Noah Brooks, witnessed that “chiefly memorable in the mind of those who saw that second inauguration must still remain the tall, pathetic, melancholy figure of the man who, then inducted into office in the midst of the glad acclaim of thousands of people, and illumined by the deceptive brilliance of a March sunburst, was already standing in the shadow of death”. In six weeks Lincoln would be assassinated at the Ford Theatre. Lincoln closed his address with these stirring words:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations.

America as the New Jerusalem carries through today, as part of our civil religion, sometimes with the explicit apocalyptic language that passes for political rhetoric these days. It is true: the end may come at any time, for any of us and for all of us. We lull ourselves to sleep with our comforts. We seek refuge from our fears by reacting with our propensity toward conflict, individualism, and competition. How are these manifested in our daily lives, in our own little Jerusalems?

If we had known that war only leads to death, destruction, and disease among nations and that the death of an enemy is no different than the death of a loved one in the eyes of God, would we have stayed awake and kept watch with our adversaries, seeking what would make peace for them, caring for their widows and orphans?

If we had known that a child would grow into an adult in the wink of an eye, a spouse would change and grow over the years, a parent would get older and not as able, would we have stayed awake and kept watch with them until we found a way to keep our temper, give thanks for their love, accept them as they are, seeking their peace rather than competing with our own?

If we had known that we were only given so many years on this earth to give, to love, to see, to smell, to touch, to hear, to taste, to know, would we have stayed awake and kept watch, seeking the peace of each moment, ready for God to break in at any time? We would have known our life here is far too precious for conflict and competition.

To be ready, to be awake, is to seek the peace of the other, with acts of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness—to inculcate an inclination toward community and cooperation.


Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends
I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good. Psalm 122: 6-9

With the first advent of Christ the age of the last days began. It is long past time to get ready. It is time to be ready. We who confess that Christ has come into the world, continues to come into the world, that this Christ is Jesus, born of Mary, the Savior who is Christ the Lord—by this we declare that we have received revelation from God to know how to live and how to love in God’s light until the close of human history.

And we do this by seeking the good, the peace of someone else: the peace of a family member or neighbor or co-worker; the peace of sister or brother in Christ or the community of faith as a whole; the peace of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis, Arabs, and Palestinians; the peace of the earth, its water, its air, its trees, its soil, and its creatures; the peace of those with AIDS and HIV; the peace of the hungry, the poor, the outcast, the stranger, the migrant worker, the illegal immigrant, the battle-worn soldier, the widow and the orphan.

Christ was born. Christ lived and loved among us. Christ died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. The peace of someone else, which is the peace of Christ, be with you. Let us pray:

O God, who has come into the world and continues to come into this wild, wide-open world, surprise us once more. May this congregation be taken: taken with your Christ and your way of peace; taken with their pastors, with one another and with the poor, the lonely, the lowliest among them; taken with the Holy Spirit and her prophetic voice, her prodding, noodging ways, her sweet comfort. Continue to bless their days with the peace that seeks the good of the other. All these things I pray in the name of the One who was born to save, Amen.

Sources: Abraham Lincoln Online

American Apocalypticism on Frontline

Shades of the great Satchmo

My favorite part is the small hand reaching for the adult one.

Enjoy.

You dropped this

I love this commercial! I am always picking up litter and trash and I drive a Honda Civic hybrid. Habits do make a difference. What are some good habits you've developed lately?

Get a jump on the junk

from the NY Times as seen in The Grist:

Unclog your mailbox

Soon 'twill be the season for the annual mailbox clog, when retailers begin their more-than-earnest marketing push for holiday shopping. Lately I've been calling individual companies requesting that I be removed from their mailing list, getting into each phone queue with varying degrees of hassle. Now there is a service called Catalog Choice that will do it for you. It's simple: register with your name, address, and e-mail, then start typing in the names of catalogs you want to get rid of in your mailbox. Catalog Choice takes care of the rest.

Catalogs promote greed and the desire for more in such a quiet way. Looking is harmless, we say. But even Jesus realized this was dangerous when he said we should cut out our eyes if they cause us to sin. Most of us can do with so much less of what we already have. Keep your eyes; get rid of the catalogs; save the trees.

19 billion catalogs are mailed each year, made out of 53 million trees. That's 358 catalogs for one tree. Personally, I'd rather have the tree.

Losing Control, Having Faith

The Prophet Habbakuk

Ps. 37: 1-9; Habbakuk 1: 1-4, 2: 1-4; 2 Tim. 1: 1-14
First Congregational Church of ******
October 7, 2007 (World Communion Sunday)

Pastor and author Max Lucado tells the story of a parakeet named Chippie. Chippie was like any other parakeet: she sang, she preened her beautiful green and yellow feathers, and she brought much joy to her owner. One day all that changed, when Chippie’s owner decided to clean out her cage ....

With a vacuum cleaner.

She was almost finished when the phone rang, so she turned around to answer it. With a thwup, Chippie was gone. Frantically she ripped open the vacuum bag. There was Chippie, stunned, her bright feathers coated with thick dust, but still alive. She carried the poor bird to the bathroom and gently rinsed her off under the faucet. Poor Chippie was wet and shivering, so, trying to be merciful, her owner took hold of the hair dryer and blew Chippie away with a gust of hot air. A few days later, a friend asked her how the little parakeet was recovering. “Well”, she replied, “Chippie doesn’t sing much anymore.” (1)

Have you ever felt like Chippie? Have you ever felt like life sucked you in, left you washed up and blown away? I know I have. We can’t always see what’s up ahead of us. And no matter how hard we try to eat right, live right, do the right thing, say the right thing, be the right person, our lives can change in a heartbeat. It only takes one phone call from the police about one of our children or our spouse, one messenger delivering the divorce papers, one pink slip from work, one meeting with our boss or supervisor, one bad test result or mammogram or biopsy, one misplaced footstep or turn of the steering wheel, to leave us feeling like poor little Chippie. Some of us have survived one Chippie episode only long enough to be hit by another.

We like to kid ourselves that we are in control of our destiny, yet we know in one moment it can all change. I myself am a self-avowed control freak. I take great comfort from this morning’s psalm from the lectionary: Psalm 37, the psalm for control freaks. I call it this because not only does it tell the reader to wait, to not fret, to refrain from anger, to trust in the Lord, but it does so over and over again. We who need to have the world, or even the church, ordered according to our own specifications cannot be told just once to trust in the Lord. We need to be told again and again for we have repeated difficulty keeping our meddlesome ways out of the way of the Lord.

But not only do we suffer from the unfairness of our own lives but also from the injustice we witness in the lives of others and in the world around us. We see friends divorce and the effect it has on the children. Many of us live in the ‘sandwich generation’: caring for our children as well as our aging parents. Military families dread the telegram, the knock on the door, the phone call from a commanding officer. Some of us are living long enough to lose our siblings, spouse and friends, one by one, to old age, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and stroke, some not receiving the medical care they need. This past week we were reminded of the violent reality of domestic abuse by the display of 104 purple ribbons around town, representing the 104 domestic abuse calls made to the local police in the last year.


Buddhist monks and nuns protesting in Burma.

And in this Internet age, with high speed communication, we hear of the catastrophic effects of global warming, infectious disease, famine, war in Iraq, violence in Burma, Afghanistan, and many other places, and genocide. In the media-forgotten province of Darfur, 300-500,000 black African Muslims have been killed by the Sudanese army and police. Another 2-3 million have been displaced within the region.

Surrounded by all this bad news, by the seemingly inevitability of injustice and evil, like Chippie, it can be difficult to sing, to be joyful. Our faith wavers. In one of the lectionary readings not read today (because of its violent content), Psalm 137, the Israelites in their Babylonian exile are goaded by their captors to sing the Lord’s song. But how can they sing, they lament, in a foreign land? At the close of the Psalm they rage against God, wishing the same violent end upon the children of their enemies that they witnessed against their own children: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (v. 9). Believing themselves to be abandoned by God and isolated from his mercy and justice, the Israelites, these oppressed victims, become the new oppressor, meting out their own brand of justice.

It is easier for us as human beings to take matters into our own hands, to act on our fear and anger, rather than to wait for what God will do, to wait for what God would have us do. Like Habbakuk, we cry out to God but God seems silent. We look around us, we witness the terrible violence of this world, the evil that human beings can do, and it is tempting to despair, to allow our unbelief to overwhelm the faith that we have been given. Archibald MacLeish, in his adaptation of the book of Job, wrote “If God is God, He is not good. If God is good, He is not God.” How can God be God while so much evil exists in the world? If God is good and loving and just, then this God is not in control.

Scholars and theologians have long debated this issue of theodicy, of the existence of evil in a universe created by a loving God, and it is still unresolved. Many atheists have used this problem as proof that God does not exist. Over the past few years I have been in and out of this place of unbelieving, struggling with these hard questions, not wanting to be faithful simply out of duty but with my mind and heart deeply engaged. But I was also becoming increasingly grouchy and irritable. How can I sing, how can I be joyful in this foreign land of violence, evil, and injustice?

The answer to this question came in the form of a poem:

‘God’s eye is
on the sparrow’
Yet
the sparrow
falls
This is how I
experience God

The Word made flesh
Wordless
Silent
Mute
This is how I
experience God

Do not
hope for more
for God will
break your heart
This is how I
experience God

And yet
my husband made
me laugh tonight
from the belly
to my eyes
brimming with black
rivers down my face
My side torn in two
where the despairing
wound had been
And this is how I
experience God

In a recent interview, Garrison Keillor said that “gloom and self-absorption are for teenagers. Once you pass a certain point—and I passed it a long time ago—you’re supposed to be cheerful.” Asked if he was a cheerful person, he replied, “Yes, I am, but I have to work at it. I come from dark people, people who were always expecting disaster.” (2)

The question is, to what do we want to give our hearts and minds, for that is what faith is all about. Ironically, what we don’t hear from atheists is a word of hope or joy. (If you do hear a good word from an atheist, let me know, because I would sincerly like to hear it.) In the second letter to Timothy we read of encouragement, to remember the faith given by those who have gone before us, to not be ashamed of believing and the suffering that comes with it, but to persevere in the faith.

Jesus promised to save us from sin, but as blogger Stan Wilson writes, where did we ever get the idea that Jesus would save us from suffering? (3) We know that bad things happen to good people, yet we do not have to let our joy be taken from us. We possess a larger vision of the way things ought to be. I quote from the church’s website: “The avowed purpose of the First Congregational Church of ******, UCC, is to worship God, to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to celebrate the Sacraments; to realize Christian fellowship and unity within the church and Church Universal; to render loving service to all; and to strive for righteousness, justice and peace.”

In the face of all the bad news of human living, you, First Congregational Church of ******, UCC, have good news, a treasure to share: a loving community that strives not for itself or for its own profit but for the kingdom of God, that kingdom of righteousness, justice and peace. You belong to a living tradition, alive for 272 years and still going, not by your own merits, but by the Holy Spirit working through you. You follow one who abolished death and brought life and light to those in darkness. The faith that has been passed down to you is not merely personal but intensely communal, intended to build up the faithful and transform your life together. This church does not live out its faith in isolation but as one of many UCC churches in this area and as part of the witness of nearly 6,000 congregations in the whole United Church of Christ


Vietnam protesters

On this World Communion Sunday, when not only the United Church of Christ, but millions of other Christians around the world gather about the table of Christ, I invite this congregation to rekindle its faith in the living God. I urge you to sing of God’s love and justice in an unjust world. I exhort you to be, in the words of Wendell Berry, “joyful though you have considered all the facts”.(4) To be joyful, even cheerful, in the face of evil is a true act of rebellion, of civil disobedience. Christ is calling us to reflect in our lives and in the life of this congregation the compassion, justice, and faithfulness that our world so desperately needs, especially when it is difficult and inconvenient to do so.

Amen.

______________________________________________

Notes

1. Story about Chippie taken from Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991), 11.
2. Interview with Garrison Keillor was aired on public radio show Here and Now, October 3, 2007.
3. Stan Wilson, Theolog: Blog of The Christian Century, October 1, 2007.
4. Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”, The Country of Marriage (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1973).

The Mom's Overture by Anita Renfroe

As she says, "Fasten your seatbelts!" All the stuff most moms say in a 24 hr. period, crammed into just under 3 minutes, with some help from William Tell.

Wearing out our welcome

from The Christian Century:

Tax dollars at work

"According to Chalmers Johnson in his book Nemesis, officially the U.S. has 737 military bases located in 132 of the 190 countries belonging to the United Nations. But the official count fails to mention bases in Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq and several other Middle Eastern countries. ...Johnson concludes that the total number of overseas bases is over 1,000 and that even the Pentagon doesn't know how many there are for certain."

COMMENT: No wonder our status as a nation is at an all-time low. If citizens of this country do not believe that we are truly an empire, they are deluding themselves. But no big surprise--look at our leader.