The Deathbed Confession

Confessions, if one is a reformed Christian, are the place where a church stands and makes a statement about a crisis facing the church.  Who are we, and how do we retain our integrity as God's people given a moral challenge that faces us right now?  What is it that subverts our discipleship?  What must we declare together, if we are to follow Jesus as authentically as we can?

It is, in that, a declaration intended to be both unifying and integrative.  

Like the Barmen Declaration, which challenged the usurpation of the church by the Nazi regime, or the Belhar Confession, which renounces the spiritual blight of racist segregationism from the depths of South African apartheid, most confessions rise from a condition of conflict, and give the faithful a clear vision of where the Beloved Community must stand.

They are a fierce call to integrity in life together.  It's why Presbyterians remember confessions, and why the Book of Confessions is part of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Constitution.

Our era poses plenty of challenges for the church, and so...Presbyterians being who we are...we've convened a committee to come up with a statement that speaks powerfully to where God is calling us right now.  They've done the work, and now we've been asked, by that committee, to give that confession a read.  

Then, we have been asked to sit with it a while.  Where it troubles us, reflect meaningfully on why, and then consider it some more.  When we've done that, respond.

The confession they've drafted for our consideration does not yet have a name, other than "Proposed New Confession." This doesn't quite have the ring of "Second Helvetic" or "Westminster," although it's probably already catchier than "Brief Statement."  Were I a marketer, I'd really want us to have a stronger brand identity at launch.

So how does it read?  What does it say?  What are we called to affirm, and what crisis calls us to a moment of choosing and shared witness?

The language is reflective of the academic-progressive character of the PC(USA), and marks our denomination's continued emphasis on inclusion and welcome.  It has four sections.  The first, entitled Image of the Triune God, lays out our understanding of the nature of...surprise surprise...the Triune God.  It does so in language that moves even further down the inclusive language path than the Brief Statement of Faith.  In tone and semiotic choices, it's fuzzier and more prone to poesy than other confessions, but nonetheless retains a vital and necessary core witness to the nature of our Creator. 

I particularly appreciated its Augustinian expression of the Trinity as Love, which shows some solid theological chops cast with concision and poetry.  It's in essence the same understanding of an interrelationship of love that C.S. Lewis expresses in Mere Christianity, even if it's wearing some soft flannel pajamas.  

One could quibble, I suppose, with some of the language.  Like, say, the use of the word "affection" as a wiffle-ball euphemism for "sexual orientation."  Them's ain't the same things, y'all, not by a long shot.  στοργή is not Ἔρως is not ἀγάπη, right?  

Generally speaking, it's perfectly fine.

The second section, Turning Away From God's Image, establishes the nature of the crisis.  

In four powerful paragraphs, it lays the essence of the challenge of our age.  The first three name that challenge: that humankind has once again lost itself in the thrall of wealth and power.  This love of Mammon and the sword has corrupted the witness of faith, and as a prophetic critique, it's dead on.  It stings like Amos and Micah, and delivers the sort of uppercut to heresy that would do Saint Nicolas proud.

In the final paragraphs, there's a clear naming of our deepest moral and spiritual challenge: the mutual careening towards the sabotage of our entire ecosystem.  Taken together, those paragraphs are succinct, cogent, and complete.  

But in the midst of that fierce declaration, the confession takes a detour.  There's an abrupt tonal shift, the punch is pulled, and instead we get the rote neo-Cistercian self-flagellation of the Presbyterian People's Front.  

Meaning, all of a sudden we've donned our best intersectional sackcloth, mourning our Complicity in such pressing contemporary crises as...checks notes..."manifest destiny."  What follows, if one knows generic progressive discourse, is the usual performative litany of historical wrongs.  We're colonialist, and racist, and sexist, ableist and queer-o-phobic, all of us damnable sinners, pie Crenshaw domine, dona eis requiem, whack. 

I find this both baffling and frustrating, for a variety of reasons, three of which I'll pitch out here.   

First, all of these lamentations seem to operate under the assumption that the PC(USA) is made up entirely of cisgender White men who can trace their lineage back to the Mayflower.

"We have," the Proposed New Confession intones, again and again, but that "We" is not a "We" that the church as a whole can confess together.  Sure, our demographic skew is heavily towards being the Presbyterian Home of Honkeytown, but...and I don't know if you've noticed this...that's not who all of us are now.

Can a Korean American choir director or a Ghanaian elder claim to have reviled their immigrant neighbors?  Can a historically Black church say that it has covered itself in racism's robes?  Can the women who make up a supermajority of our membership lament their complicitness in their own self-denigration?  Can the Queer folk who have fought for decades for inclusion declare themselves morally responsible for the harm inflicted upon them?  None of them can, not meaningfully.

All of these Christians are (and here I'll turn on all caps) PART OF THE (PC)USA.  They are not they.  They are us.  They are we. Yet those members of our shared fellowship are all positioned as the objects of the confession, not the ones proclaiming it.  It's an exclusionary, neosegregationist liturgy, which is jarring given the confession's stated purpose. 

Second, it just doesn't resemble the PC(USA) I've known for the entirety of my 57 years as a cradle Presbyterian.  Every Presbyterian congregation I have worshiped in, been a member of, or pastored?  None of them have lived out their lives together in a way that would justify these laments.  In the more recent cases, be it the civil rights movement, the ordination of women, the inclusion of Queer folk, or the embrace of those who live with disability?  In every one of those instances, we've fought our way through to an authentic witness, and at nontrivial cost in relationship and membership.  Saying, for example, "You took a consistent stand for women's voices, but, you know you could have done more, and you're part of The Patriarchy, so you are automatically complicit?"

I don't buy it.  I've looked at it, sat with it, thought about it, and...no.  One cannot repent for a sin they have not committed.  We have plenty of concrete and material sins to attend to, and repentance...understood from the whole witness of Scripture...just does not work that way.  Here, I'm very much aware that I'm not compliant with the demands of our particular denominational Newspeak. I still view persons as the fundamental unit of moral analysis, for example. I'm guilty of so many doubleplus ecclesiastical thoughtcrimes.  Mea culpa.

And finally, it feels, and here forgive me...Old.  Not just Old, but Old Old, in a very particular gerontological way.

The laments themselves are cast in semi-chronological order, a retelling-in-negation of the history of the Presbyterian church in this country.  They are decades out of date and centuries passed, sepia and crumbling.  None of them, not one, meaningfully reflects the PC(USA) now, or the specific crisis we inhabit.

It's almost like we don't know where we are anymore, like we can't remember what we did yesterday, or the names of the people around us.  But oh, do we remember the past, past struggles, past traumas, and past conflicts.  We remember when we mattered, back when we once shaped the direction of a nation, when our voice made a difference.  Remember at the General Assembly of 1818, when we let expediency and groupthink water down our witness, where we made a bold statement and then equivocated?  Remember when we marched at Selma?  No-one else remembers that, not anymore, but we're lost in the thrall of wouldacouldashoulda.  It's a little solipsistic, a little maudlin, and more than a little morbid.

This section reads, to be blunt, like the deathbed confession of White Liberal Christianity.  

"The Deathbed Confession?"

Do we want that to be what this is?  An end of life groan of regret at mistakes made and things left undone, croaked from dry and dying White throats as the denomination falls into the Consuming Fire?   Maybe we do.  Maybe that is what we want.  I know that's what some of y'all want.  

The time for that church is over, some folks say.  It should just cash out. Think of the things we could do with that money!  Choose any charity!  Give to the poor!  

But again,"The Deathbed Confession" has kind of a ring to it, if we're talking brand identity.

As a foundation on which to build, though, and a naming of the spiritual battle facing the church, this section might not be the best step forward.  

Because we're not dead yet.

To those who've labored long and hard over this work, in the unlikely event you find yourself reading these reflections: I recognize that some of these responses might feel uncomfortable.  But, you know, just sit with them for a little while.  And anyway, it's just one portion of one section, and y'all did ask for responses.  I mean, you did.

There's so much more to the Confession than this, though, and I'll get to that in another post.

When Salt is Salty

 

"The news of the new life is this: bringing joy precludes murder; love hates no one; truth brooks no compromise with deceit; the heart can remain pure only by making no concessions. For the Father of Jesus, who gives all, enters no mutual settlement with mammon, least of all in a heart that belongs to him.

In short, if we truly have joy in life, and love for all people, we will not tolerate any compromise with death, any concession to loveless indifference or murderous injustice and brutality, because the way of love reaches out to all people, touches all things, and transforms every situation. This is the essence of the new life, the message of the kingdom, the meaning of Jesus’ teachings. Here is his heart."  

-Eberhard Arnold, Salt and Light

 

Wrath, Justice, and Maduro

Nicolas Maduro isn't a particularly decent human being.  He's a despot and an authoritarian, without question, for whom elections and press freedoms have little meaning.  He's ignored or misrepresented voting results, insisting on power despite the will of the people.  Venezuela has not thrived under his rule.

And now the United States has him, and we're intent on trying him for his crimes.  Specifically, the crime of narcoterrorism, for which the Trump administration has secured an indictment.  Meaning, distributing cocaine, conspiring to distribute cocaine, and violating gun laws by owning automatic weapons.  The indictment, in full, can be found at this link.

We are told, by our current attorney general, that Maduro is to face the wrath of American justice.

What, precisely, does the "wrath of American justice" mean?

It means a fair trial, the right to a legal defense, and the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven.  The sword is applied only after the balances are weighed, blindly and without prejudice.  Or it should.

Reading through the 25 page indictment, which I encourage you to do, it's not a slam dunk case.  

Remember when this whole thing was all about boats filled with deadly fentanyl?  The ones we were sinking, daily, because fentanyl and opiates are a plague in America?  Nowhere in the indictment is fentanyl even mentioned.  Instead, every last one of the charges are about cocaine and firearm possession.

The indictment is a laundry list of claims, most of which involve the actions of alleged co-conspirators and not Maduro himself.  While Maduro is a leftist brute, Venezuela is not a significant producer of cocaine.  That would be, instead, Columbia, Bolivia, and Peru.  It does pass through Venezuela, and is distributed there, but that's true of Mexico, too...and also true of the United States.  That part of the indictment, for all of its legalese and hyperbole, seems a significant overreach.

And the firearm charges seem to neglect a significant jurisdictional detail. Where were those firearms used and possessed?  In Venezuela.  Do the firearms regulations of the United States apply in Venezuela? 

Is there a significant doubt about Maduro's despotic rule?  There is not.  But he isn't being charged for being a tyrant.  

Might there be a significant doubt about these charges?  There might.  Presuming, of course, that American justice still exists.

Which, if it is simply an implement to facilitate our brute force seizure of the world's largest oil reserves, it does not.

On the Moral Purpose of Guillotines

The mechanism for human beheading that got its name from Joseph Ignace Guillotin is quite good at doing the job for which it was designed.  

Dr. Guillotin was an Enlightenment reformer, a progressive, eager to eliminate the brutality of public executions.  Hangings and other unpleasantnesses inflicted on the condemned among the lower classes were ugly, but so too were the choppy choppy sword and axe executions inflicted on the rich.  It being the enlightened, modern era, Guillotin argued that the purpose of executions was not egregious suffering, but swiftly dispatching a soul to their maker. Oddly enough, he personally opposed the death penalty, and the naming of this machine after him is one of the peculiarities of history.  

It is, as mechanisms go, quite simple.

A grooved wooden frame, into which a weighted blade is set at a height.  Below, a pillory, into which the person about to meet the Deity of their Choice is secured.  Activate the mechanism, and ssssshunk.  Off goes the head.  Instakill.  Neat, precise, swift.

Guillotines were pressed into service most famously during the French Revolution, when they were used to remove the heads of the aristocracy from their bodies.  Kings and queens, lords and ladies, lined up and slaughtered, their heads piling up, as mobs of Jacobins and peasants cheered.  Jacobins were, of course, the primordial leftists who gave the Left its name, as they sat on the left side of the French National Assembly at the dawn of that popular uprising.

That, I think, is the image that for some reason strikes a chord with left-leaning folk, every time some new capitalist depredation is noted.  "Time for the guillotines!  Nothing a guillotine wouldn't solve!"  Memes get memed.  This is meant only kind of in jest, the sort of joking-not-joking that defines so much of our life on social media.

The problem is, of course, that the guillotine isn't progressive.  It's simply a machine designed to allow the powerful to swiftly kill the powerless.  

The French Revolution quickly descended into the Reign of Terror, and started taking the heads of any who stood against the most radical of the Jacobins.  Calls for moderation were met with more beheadings, including those of the Jacobins themselves.  Does the name Danton ring a bell?  No?  It should.  Here.  Watch this entire classic movie.  In the end, even Robespierre, the architect of the Reign of Terror, ended up decapitated. 

And also...y'all were paying attention in history class, right?  What the guillotine accomplished politically was a transition from an autocrat to an autocrat, from Louis XVI to Napoleon, from a king to an emperor.  

It's not an instrument of positive change.  If anything, the guillotine is the symbol of self-annihilating progressive overreach.

But perhaps you're still grumbling and doubling down about guillotines as a tool of the People's Revolution.  

Here.  Let me raise the blade.  Let me set the mechanism.  Let me separate you from your childish notions of redemptive violence.

Who else, in history, used guillotines on the regular?  

One guess.  You know it.

Nazis. 

By the 1930s, that system of execution had been improved by German engineering.  Same mechanism, but made of metal, with a much heavier weight bearing down on the much sharper blade.  Neat.  Compact. Efficient.  You could fit them indoors, in an execution chamber, for ease of processing and quietly eliminating those who opposed the Reich's fascism.

The Nazis executed over sixteen thousand "enemies of the state" with their guillotines.  

The communist charged with setting the Reichstag fire.  The Dutch Christian students who circulated anti-Nazi pamphlets as the White Rose.  Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian Catholic farmer who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler.  

It's a tool used by Power to kill the powerless.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Morally speaking, there's a word for that.

Care to guess?

A Vote to Save Trump's Soul

Unlike most of the earnestly progressive siblings in my denomination, I have a rather vigorous sense of Hell.  I've expounded on that elsewhere, so I won't get into that here, other than to say that I make no distinctions between God's love, God's wrath, and God's justice.  The cup we pour out is the cup we receive, after all, and against that measure, the current Republican candidate is in a world of trouble.

Donald J. Trump has already made American Christian discourse harsher, crueler, and more selfish, stripping grace, kindness, and wisdom from countless churches.   The crass brassy transaction of his relationship with evangelicalism has driven millions from the faith, as empty platitudes, flagrant lies, and the naked hunger for power have supplanted the Gospel.  

He has undercut the most fundamental blessing of our republic, subverting the Founder's intent for a nation in which leaders are freely elected, and where where power changes hands peaceably.

His anti-Christian nationalism has slandered millions of Latino migrants, 80% of whom are hermanos y hermanas en Christo.  He would turn America into a walled Jericho, into an inhospitable Sodom.  His misbegotten Abraham Accords "fixed" the Middle East by conveniently pretending the Israel/Palestine issue didn't exist, setting the stage for the unprecedented chaos and bloodshed of this last year.  Well, to be fair, it's precedented by millennia of strife in that benighted region, but you know what I mean.

But my deepest concern, honestly, are the tens or hundreds of millions who will suffer if he is elected again.  These are the souls that will starve, suffer, or be forced from their homes and lands because of his refusal to acknowledge our rapidly changing climate.  His flagrant quid pro quo with the oil and gas industries, coupled with his bizarre demonization of everything that would both allow us to adapt and become more energy self-reliant?  They've become pseudo-religious dogma on the far-right now, a bitter, unbiblical, and demonic creed-of-greed that will contribute to actually unprecedented human suffering.

Donald is aware of exactly none of this.  It doesn't even register.

He's a worldly man, after all, utterly unspiritual, as one would be as a Child of Mammon.  A little boy raised in a temple of gold will grow into a big man who couldn't care less about heavenly or eternal things.  And sure, yes, there's grace for all, but grace has to be freely received.  It is for all who repent.  He's great at doubling down, and has no use for repentance.  Repentance implies you were wrong, after all, and he is never ever wrong.

Yet despite all of this, Donald J. Trump is a child of God.  He knows not what he's doing.  I do not desire to maximize his suffering.  I do not wish him harm.  Though he is my enemy, I love him, because I do what Jesus tells me to do.

If he wins the upcoming election, he will receive the worldly power he desires.  But he will also reap the fruits of his actions once given power, and that...insofar as I can honestly see it...imperils his immortal soul.  It's the dark bargain of all who lead, of all who take on the mantle of worldly power, but for Donald, it's a particularly dangerous thing.  

Given power, Trump will pour out a cup of bitterness for himself, a cup as deep as the oceans, as deep as the night sky.

Don't vote against him because you hate him.  

Vote against him because you love him.  Because if he wins?  And God is just?

Lord have mercy on his soul.

Being a Friend and Being an Ally

In the struggle for justice in our culture, one of the terms that gets bandied about a bunch lately is "ally."  If you support the rights of LGBT folks (which I unreservedly do) you need to be an "ally."   If you support the rights of women, you need to be an "ally."  In the leftist circles where I lurk, it's as prevalent a term as "comrade" once was amongst the fellow-travelers of the communist era.   Is true, tovarisch!

But it sounds oddly in my anarcho-libertarian Jesus-following soul, which quails against it.

Perhaps that's because ally, unlike comrade, does not just assume a common goal or purpose.

The term "ally" assumes a common struggle against a common enemy.  It is, as a term, largely representative of the power dynamics between nation-states.  Allies go to war together.  Allies share common economic goals. That form of relationship is about power and power dynamics, writ into a set of established and negotiated expectations.  Allies have rules and contracts and treaties that establish their alliances, which serve the shared interests of both.

Again, the word has to do with the dynamics of power and self-interest, not organic affinity and appreciation.

Thinking in terms of the United States?  Saudi Arabia is an ally.  So is the current government in Egypt.

Canada, on the other hand, is a friend.  The kind of friend who breaks into your national song when the singer's mike fails at a hockey game.  The kind of friend with whom you don't really worry about boundaries, because you trust each other so much those boundaries really don't matter.  You can be completely yourself and unafraid with a friend.  This is not true with an ally.

Among the wisest of the secular ancients, that's why friendship was considered among the highest of the virtues.  Philia, that natural and volitional affinity, was a relationship of complete, freely given trust between one person and another.  Being an ally is a more sterile, formalistic, and mechanical form of relation, one in which lists of rules and trigger-avoidance-protocols define a carefully negotiated exchange.

And for those who follow the Nazarene as their Teacher in all things, the term "ally" sounds with a peculiar dissonance against the radical command to both love and friendship.   "A greater love has no-one than this," says Jesus, as he swore his life to his friends.  Not his "allies."  The Greek word for "ally" does not appear in any of the teachings of Jesus, nor does it occur in any of the Epistles.

It's also challenging, honestly, to integrate the conflict-assumption of the "ally" concept into the radical agape ethic taught by the Nazarene.  Sure, one can have enemies, those ruled by brokenness and the injustices created by our hunger for power.

But the idea that your calling in existence is to go to war with those who your allies war with?  It stands in tension with the ground of the most fundamental ethic of Christian faith.  It is difficult to be authentically Christian and part of that form of binary relation.  Attacking and tearing down are not the methodology of the Way.

Yeah, I know, there's that one overturned table episode that's everyone's favorite conflict-prooftext, but last time I checked, an overturned table is not the defining symbol of the Christian ethic.    Neither can we create easily demonizable caricatures of those who inflict injustice, even as we oppose injustices.  That reflects neither the complex agape ethos of Jesus nor the justice-orthopraxis of soul-force satyagraha.

It is why, if they approach their commitment to discipleship seriously, Christians make somewhat awkward allies in a conflict.  They cannot be trusted in a fight, because their commitment to grace and mercy is too radical.

The Dark Fire of Reciprocity

As happens so often when I encounter an act of monstrousness, my thoughts turn savage.

The images of that Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage?  They were the heart of human brutality and evil.  Here, an act of torturous hate, a mother's son helpless and forced to die in carefully calculated and choreographed agony.

I see it, and...as with the horrors committed by Boko Haram...I feel, briefly, the touch of the fire of that hatred.  The rage of it.  I see an atrocity, and my heart leaps to atrocity.

Burn them.  Burn them all.  Expunge them from existence.  Wipe the planet clean.  I stop short at reviewing the square kilometers of ISIS controlled territory and calculating the megatonnage required.

I step back, and remember who I am.  I give thanks that I am human, and insignificant, and not empowered to act on rash impulse.

Nothing diminishes the evil of this act.  Nothing.

Oh, sure, it's been done before.  Medieval re-enactors may not feature this element of that culture quite so prominently, but Western culture was just as heinous five hundred years ago.  More so, if we study the history of our killing.  That means nothing.  It was a horror then.  It is a horror now.

I anticipated...exactly...the response of ISIS.  I could feel that rationale, the logic behind it.  The burning death of this man, they are arguing, is no different than the burning deaths of our own people when the bombs fall from the planes.  Mumathala, they call it.  "Reciprocity."  We are doing to him what he has done to us.

And which will be and is being done to them in return.

And returned again, payments back and forth, an economy of fire and blood.

I will do to you what I believe you have done to me.

It is not justice, not the justice of God, not the justice that heals and restores.

It is nothing more than the dark fire of our mortal sin, burning, ever burning.

The Fire Next Time

I and a small group of intrepid members of my congregation have been heaving our way through the book of Revelation for the last half-dozen weeks, and it ain't easy going.  The convoluted mind of John of Patmos and the circuitous, repetitive pattern of his visions are notoriously unforgiving.

Even if you understand the symbolism and the Matrix-stutter narrative arc of that wild and hallucinatory book, it's still a hard one to crank through.  John's faith is bright and feverish, often seeming devoid of both logic and compassion.  Love your enemies?  Hah.  Love watching them burn, more like.  There's not a whole bunch of agape going down in Revelation.  But hey, what would you expect from visions brought by an angel who identifies himself as the Morning Star?

Well played, my wealthy, tasteful friend.  Well played.

Silliness aside, one of the charges leveled against the apocalyptic mindset is the degree to which it can disengage us from the here and now.   Why care about the mess we're making of our little planet, if that mess is all part of the end of things?  Why worry about the wars and injustices that we human beings inflict on each other, if they're just leading up to the final destruction of something that deserves to be wiped out?

"It's all going to be destroyed anyway," the refrain goes.  "Why should I care about saving it?"

For folks who'd really rather see things turn for the better, that attitude of willful resignation is seriously problematic, because it contributes to things getting worse.

Here's the rub, though.  Even if you think John of Patmos wouldn't have known the Jesus of the Gospels if you'd whacked him upside the head with them, he was right in this one thing:

The earth is going to be completely destroyed.  Wiped clean, and cast into a lake of fire.

Of this, there is little doubt.  I'm sure of it, in fact, so sure that I'm right now going to pitch out a timeframe for that destruction, with at least as much confidence as Harold Camping.

If we're lucky, we've got just about two point eight billion years.

Well, less than that, actually.  But it all wraps up then, as our sun exhausts itself and swells outward into its red-giant phase, devouring the inner planets in a wash of fading fusion fire.  Life will become impossible.  The earth--everything that it is, everything that it will be--is unquestionably doomed.

So why should we care?  I mean, really, why should we?  What's our motivation? We know with certainty that even if we make every conceivable effort and turn our little garden world into a perfect utopia, it's going to be obliterated.

The motivation comes from our integrity in the present, and our stewardship over the time we have been given.  It's the same motivation that drives us to care for our bodies, even though we know we're going to eventually die.  It's the same motivation that moves us to love our children, even though we know the same thing will ultimately happen to them.

In this time, with this awareness we've been given, our task is to live out the justice and compassion of God's Reign.  Period.  And sure, it's all going to end.  That might be two point eight billion years away.  Or tomorrow, when an errant round fired by a K'tall singularity cannon during the battle for the p Eridani system comes tearing in at point seven five of lightspeed.

No matter what, our task is to be good and just stewards, living lives that reflect the integrity of our purpose.

The Limits of Co-Creation

I read through the article with interest, as I do with all articles about religious events.

It was a description of a journalist's attendance at a huge Oprah conference, part of a traveling inspirathon called the "The Life You Want Weekend."  It was a huge shiny neo-spiritual gathering, as tens of thousands of eager devotees poured into a stadium to hear Ms. O and her retinue dispense vital life-learning lessons.

The cost: between $200 and $500 a pop, in exchange for which the attendees got workbooks and weird glowing bracelets, not to mention exposure to levels of ambient atmospheric estrogen so high they temporarily eliminate the need for oral contraception.

I harbor no animus towards Oprah.  She's intelligent, driven, and capable, and the amazing success she's experienced over the years seems well-earned.  Her profoundly American message of positivity and self-empowerment may be big, self-promoting, and high-gloss-shiny, but it isn't evil, and she comes across as a sharper progressive fusion of Zig Ziglar and Joel Osteen.  She's willing to engage with spirituality, in a way that is both affirming and open.

Sure, it's tempting to snark and roll eyes, but the people she engages sometimes come frighteningly close to describing my own view of existence.  Yeah, Deepak is up there doing his Chopra thing, but the connection goes deepah.

I mean, sweet Mary and Joseph, Rob Bell?  Rob Bell's tagging along for the Oprah dog-and-pony show?  I like Rob Bell!  His approach to faith is so close to mine as to being almost indistinguishable.  I've recommended Rob Bell's books to people!  I still do.

Does that mean...am I...somehow...in Oprah-orbit?   How did that happen?

As I read through the article describing the high-gloss perfection of the event, something stuck with me.  It was a phrase, one of the inspirational statements uttered during the event.

"You co-create your life with the energy of your intention."

The language of co-creation is stock-in-trade for many progressive spiritual folk.  It speaks to our freedom, our ability to influence the direction of our lives, our fundamental empowerment as sentient beings to shape the world around us.

It meshes with my own view of the nature of both being and the Creator, and I'll confess to having used variants of that concept myself on occasion.  It's a good truth, a truth that reflects humanity at our best.

But I also know that while it is a truth, it is a contingent truth.  Meaning, it can be true, but it is not necessarily true.  If you're able to drop a couple of hundred bucks on an Oprahfest, then, yes, it probably reflects your encounter with reality.  It is also true for me.

If you are like a significant majority of humankind, though, it does not describe your reality.  The capacity to co-create is tied in to the blessings of liberty, and most of us are not free to act as we would choose.  If you are driven by hunger, struggling to simply survive, all of the "energy of your intention" is turned towards that end.

The Life You Want is to live, and not die of hunger or thirst this weekend.

If you are living under an oppressive regime, be it Putin's neoTzarist Russia, the bizarre Communo-capitalist fusion of the Chinese Central Committee, or the raw brutality of ISIS, you are not free to co-create.  You obey, and you keep your head down, or the energy of your intention will be met with the far greater energy of those whose intention is driven by their hunger for power over you.

And if, like so many Americans, you are scrambling to pay the bills, working three crap jobs with no security, with a barely working twelve year old car and a fridge that just died, your ability to be creative with your life is next to zero.

Hope is important, yes.  Being positive and seeing the potential in your life is important.  But for so many, the probability of living a life in which real freedom exists is so low as to be meaningless.

It is easy, in the shiny and carefully crafted narrative of co-creative self-empowerment, to forget this.

Perfect Justice

Where is that place of justice, exactly, between you and I?

How does one find that perfect balance?

I found myself wondering that, for some reason, as I walked and thought about love and justice this morning.

The pursuit of justice is, after all, the pursuit of rights and equity.  It comes when each has their rightful share, when none is denied what is theirs.  It's a balance.

So in my mind's eye, I saw a table.

On that table, a bar of candy.   Dark chocolate, preferably, maybe with a little bit of salt and caramel.  Mmmmm.  Chocolate.

Across the table from me sits Lady Justice.

"Hey Justice," I say.  "I let's split that candy bar," and she's into the idea.  She's fond of dark chocolate, after all.   I pick up the bar, and then set it down again.  I say: "We must each receive the same amount.  It must be just and fair, exactly right."

She sits forward, takes up her sword, and gets ready to split it.

"Wait," I say.  "I'm serious.  Make it exactly perfect."  Being Justice, she knows exactly what that means.

Perfectly fair can't be measured down to the gram, or milligram, or picogram.  I'm not even talking about a one yoctogram difference, which is ten to the negative twenty fourth of a gram, the approximate mass of a single hydrogen atom.

This is delicious chocolate, after all.

To be perfectly fair, there can be no variance in the size of the pieces, no difference, none at all.  If one portion has even the mass equivalent of the energy of one single photon at the height of the electromagnetic spectrum more than the other, then it is not perfect.

She looks at me funny, and then...lifting up her blindfold...stares with fierce intensity at the bar of chocolate.  She stares deeply, her piercing focus growing more and more intense.

Finally, she looks up, a look of frustration in her eyes.

"But...each of the halves are giving off varying amounts of moisture, and are permeable to the environment.  At every moment, they're sloughing off atoms and subatomic particles, varying in functionally unmeasurable, infinitesimal and chaotic ways.  I can't possibly split it perfectly.  It's not possible."

I give her a grin, pick up the bar, and break it in half, roughly down the middle.  I hand her the slightly larger piece.

"Sure it is, dear heart," I say.

Love is more perfect than justice, after all.

Governor Brewer, Justice, and Coercion

Back when my kids were tiny little spuds, getting them to clean their rooms on a Saturday could take For. Ever.  Little creatures that they were, they'd drift about, picking up one thing and putting it away.  And then, ooh!  Look!  Lego!  And they'd start playing with the thing they were cleaning, right up until the point when Daddy would return to goad them back into semi-purposeful motion.

This pattern would repeat, over and over again.  Even though they had skin in the game, in the form of their allowance, it could take hours.  Hours.  It was crazy-making.

And so I instituted a new Daddy Room Cleaning Policy.  It was called Twenty Minute Panic, and represented a modification of the Terms and Conditions of their allowance.  In order to get allowance for the week, they had to clean their rooms in twenty minutes.  In a panic.  Failure to comply meant no allowance.  Period.  A timer would be set, and I would stay on them the entire time, shouting out times, pointing out uncleaned objects, shouting out more times, preferably in a dramatic voice.  Every once in a while, I'd throw in a line from the end of Alien.  "Auto-destruct sequence initiated.  Your allowance will detonate in Tee-Minus ten minutes. The option to override is no longer valid."

Parenting really can be entertaining, if you let yourself get creative with it.

Tiny people would scamper about, frantically doing what they needed to have been doing in the first place.  After the rooms got cleaned, I'd strut about like Mussolini, carefully inspecting and critiquing. It was a show, of course, to reinforce next week's Twenty Minute Panic.

Sure, it got things done.  The trains ran on time.  And it was a little fun.  But it also wasn't really cause for celebration.

What's cause for celebration is when they clean their rooms without you making them do it.   And with two teen boys, I don't know that I'm there yet.

I think, in part, that's why I'm not quite overjoyed at yesterday's decision in Arizona.  Oh, sure, it's great that this utterly pointless and destructive law was stillborn.

But the "why" of the decision strikes me.

Analyzing the rhetorical structure of Governor Brewer's carefully written full statement, and tracking the evolution of the arguments over the last few days, what was evident was that this was not a decision made willingly.  It was an economically coerced decision.

In setting the stage for her veto of the bill, she took five paragraphs to tiptoe up to the issue.  And tiptoeing rhetorically makes sense here, just as it does whenever you're negotiating a minefield.  She...or her speechwriter... only got around to establishing the rationale for her decision in the sixth paragraph.  "My priority is the business agenda," she says, clearly.

It was at that moment, if you knew the context of the influences and pressures on her, that you knew the veto was coming.

Because bias against same-sex relationships is increasingly anathema in the broader business community.   The loudest voices in Governor Brewer's ears, the ones she was hearing?  They were not the voices of advocates for the LGBT community.  Those voices came from large corporations and from within the Arizona business community, who were realizing that if...for example...the NFL were to pull the SuperBowl from Arizona...they'd lose a whole bunch of money.  If major corporations refused to locate in Arizona because of the potential embarrassment and/or legal exposure that might come if one of your employees used this law to justify bigoted actions, that wouldn't help either.

So the decision was clear, as was her basis for making it.

What is less clear, for me, is how much a coerced decision like this one is cause for celebration.  It is, unquestionably, better than the alternative.  Without a doubt.  But when someone does the right thing for the wrong reason, it's a relief, but it is not time to break out the champagne.

Grudgingly acquiescing to the rights of a long-oppressed minority out of economic self-interest is not a deep victory for equality.  Just a shallow one.

Because coerced justice is not yet true justice.  It does not represent...not yet...the heart-change that is the ground of real transformation.

And that, or so an old friend tells me, is what really matters.

Monkey Santa Wants Revenge

Last night was my older son's choir concert, and it was woven into the great swirl of seasonal scurrying that makes up this time of year.  The younger spud needed to be at a rehearsal in Vienna at 6, and the choir concert was at 7:30 in Annandale, which meant I was slogging through the worst traffic in America for a good solid hour and a half at the height of rush-hour.  One appreciates the Prius for the traffic-appliance it is at such times.

I made it to the big guy's concert on time, and settled in near the back so's I could book out at 8:30 sharp to go back to Vienna for a 9:00 PM pickup.  The school choirs filed in, and like their high school, they were a wide and hopeful slice of contemporary America.  It was a veritable United Nations, with equal portions of kids of European heritage, Latinos and Asians and Africans.  They were a mix of all faiths, Christian and Muslim and Jewish and whatever they wanted to be.

The singing started, and unlike concerts in elementary school, this wasn't an endurance contest.  They were great.  These kids cared about what they were doing, and were having fun doing it, and it showed.

Well, it did for most folks there.  In the very back of the auditorium was a row of individuals--"students" seems like the wrong word here--who were not there for any discernible reason.  They hooted and catcalled at the girls choir when they came up.  They talked without stopping, through the quiet reflective pieces, in between the songs.

When asked to be quiet, they responded with aggression, to the point where they had to be asked to leave in ways that made it clear the adults involved were quite willing to press the matter.

The rest of the concert was lovely, although I had to book out right before the last song to race back to Vienna to get my youngling.

When I touched base with my wife to debrief, I heard that things had not ended well.  Evidently the group that was asked to leave had not left through the main entrance, but had all filed down the hall towards the choir room before slipping out a back door.

The choirs returned to the choir room to find it ransacked, every bag gone through, dozens of items stolen.  Cops were called.  Police reports were filed.

Happy Holidays.

It was interesting meditating on my reaction.  My primate-self responds in a fairly consistent way to such things, mostly pitching out suggestions that involve Louisville Sluggers and unusual criminal sanctions from late medieval Germany.

My liberal and libertarian selves argued briefly about personal responsibility and the impact of socioeconomic status on social behavior, but considering that most of the choir members victimized were of the same ethnocultural and socioeconomic background, ultimately left and right started listening to my monkey brain as it talked about the how-to's of drawing and quartering.  Who do we know that can lend us us some horses?  Hmmm.

But then, for me, there is always the voice of Jesus.  Pesky, pesky Jesus, who always forces me to consider those places where the bright binary equation of retribution never has a positive result.  Meaning, reality.

Reality, where the role of the one true law is to protect those who are victimized, but also to avoid harming an aggressor--physically or spiritually--to leave open the possibility that they can change.

Because closing out the possibility for change shuts out the whole purpose of Advent, now, doesn't it?

Castro and Justice

The apparent suicide of Ariel Castro late last night brought an end to a particularly blighted and malignant life.   For over a decade, Castro tortured and sexually assaulted three young women he'd abducted and imprisoned in his Cleveland home.  As crimes go, it was notably monstrous in duration, which is why he ended up being convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus a thousand years or so.

But now he's dead, most likely by his own hand.  Facing a seemingly endless captivity, he apparently could not cope with the very thing he had inflicted on his victims.  None will mourn his passing.

In his death, though, one wonders where justice might lie.  Justice...that restoration of balance and rightness...is a difficult thing in such a case, even with his sentence.  Here he inflicted sustained physical and psychological harm on three other human beings, who will carry echoes of that dark time for their whole lives long.  

And it wasn't just those women who were harmed.  Their families and friends mourned them as lost, in some instances dying certain that they had been murdered.  There is also a child, a daughter born to one of the women.  One wonders, as she grows, how she will come to terms with having Castro as her father.

Now he is no longer with us.   Is justice served by his short imprisonment?  Was justice served by his self-destruction?

It's hard to see how it is.  Imprisoning sociopaths does serve the purpose of eliminating their capacity to harm others.  That is a worthwhile goal.

But it does not itself restore, or reestablish a balance.  Finding a way to that balance is something that our systems of coercive power and retribution have found next to impossible.  Those crude systems, based and rooted in violence, have always fumbled helplessly towards justice.  They are as clumsy as a claw hammer in the hands of an amateur dentist.

And so we wonder, if we are prone to such things, where justice lies in such an instance.

For those who believe that this is all that there is, justice is an challenging concept to begin with.  His death is good riddance, sure, but the idea that there is any balance to be found is an absurdity.  In destroying himself, Castro has simply ceased to be, of his own volition.  Nothing further.

For those who embrace the idea of eternal damnation, Castro has simply expedited his entry into Hell.  Burn forever, you bastard, they'll say.   God condemns folks like Castro to an eternity of torture, punishment without end, or so that view tends to go.  And with monsters like him, it is a tempting perspective.

The challenge with that worldview, of course, is that it doesn't stop with monsters.  

A painfully large fraction of my co-religionists would affirm the same punishment for Castro had he been a gentle, kind-hearted Buddhist who staffed the hotline at a Cleveland rape crisis center.  Sin is sin, they say, no matter how self-evidently preposterous such a statement might be.  We all deserve damnation, they say, oblivious to how cruel and horrid it makes the Good News seem.

With the mystics of my faith, I tend towards another view.

Death is not negation or annihilation.  Neither does it lead to a crudely binary system of punishment and reward.  It is an opening up.  What we receive, when our mortal coil is ended, is nothing more and nothing less than the fullness of who we have been.  That means we know our whole story, the entirety of it, as our Maker knows it.  Everything we have done, everything we have chosen, that's our place in being.   If we have turned our whole selves to the love of others, that becomes the foundation of our eternity, the harvest of our actions.

If we have lived as Castro chose to live, then our encounter with our Maker is both the same and terribly, terribly different.

For the measure we give is the measure we get back, as a dear friend once said.

And in that, there is justice.

The Squirrelly Case of Bradley Manning

Just when the world doesn't seem like it can possibly get any stranger, the Bradley Manning trial came to a close this last week.

A few weeks ago, I heard that the core of his defense...by a military lawyer...was gender dysphoria.  I thought, huh?  The whole Wikileaks thing is about gender dysphoria?  Manning wanted to be a Womanning, that messed him up, and so as a wreck of a human being, torn and shattered by this fundamental existential crisis, he made some terrible decisions.

True though that may be, this reads strangely.

I know as a good liberal I should now be deeply concerned about how this surfaces issues of justice and solidarity for my LGBTQ sisters and brothers and..um...brother-sisters.  That's where all the broader media chatter is now.   Coverage in the leftist Huffington Post today, for instance, focuses on how "Chelsea" Manning's case highlights problems facing transgender Americans in the military.

Over on the right, FoxNews is today covering the outcome of the case in their health section.  Yes, the health section.  How does gender reassignment work, plumbing wise?  They report, as we decide.

But this "coverage" echoes oddly across my consciousness, because it feels like a convenient distraction, a dangled bit of shiny scandalous chatter-fodder.  "Squirrel!" cries the media, and we go chasing off after it, all else forgotten.

Manning's sexuality has become the conversation.  What is not discussed, not a tiny bit, not a jot, not a tittle, is the substance of what he did, the reason he's doing prison time.  The charges against him, to be blunt, didn't have a damn thing to do with gender dysphoria.

They were about releasing documents that showed the depth of the human toll of our actions in Iraq.  That included the overall projected death toll, covering up the killing of civilians and surrendering combatants, massacres by American forces, and our acquiescence to the systematic torture and summary executions conducted by our Iraqi "allies."

Those leaks showed a pattern of behavior and action unbefitting the integrity of a republic.  We are imprisoning him to punish him for making that information available.

But that is forgotten.  Instead, the Manning conviction "narrative" becomes about sexuality.  Until we forget about that entirely too, which will be soon.  I give it two or three more days.

There was a time, back in the Soviet Era, when the official media of that benighted state would mask the truth by fabricating salacious and slanderous narratives about dissidents.  In the swirling madness of the 24 hour news and social media chatter cycle, that no longer becomes necessary to mask injustices.

Just find the sex angle, and let the "free" media go at it.

Squirrel.

Connections, Probability, and God's Judgment

Yesterday, as I threw a leg over my bike to ride through warmish mid-December weather, I reached down to plug my heated gear into the side of my bike.  Snap, it went, as the SAE to BMW dongle failed.  The connection was broken.

There would be no connection between my heated insert and the bike's electrical system.  There would be no toasty warm glow about my torso, making it one of those rare days I was a little bit thankful for global warming.

And why?  Why did this happen?  Well, many reasons.  The part wasn't particularly well machined, and this is the second time one has failed.  The plug is right by my left leg, meaning I bump it on occasion, which torques the internals.   And I use it a whole bunch, not being one of those leather-bound "bikers" who only take their garage candy out twice a year.  Wear and tear is a factor.

Taken in combination, those factors establish a probability of failure.  When precisely they'll combine to cause that failure, however, is simply dependent on too many things to cleanly predict.

But the part did not fail because I had two craft beers the night before, or because I'm reading a book on quantum physics, or because I prayed the Lord's Prayer twice this morning instead of my usual once.   It did not fail because I'm raising my kids Jewish, or because I chose to go for a long walk yesterday.  Oh, sure, maybe in some sense they did have an impact, in that those things contributed to that moment...but they were not significant in establishing the likelihood of that event.  The flapping of a wing of a butterfly two meters away doesn't significantly increase the probability of you being blown off your feet.

I have some sense of the connections that created that disconnection, and why things failed.

As inevitably happens after horrible events, those among us who are Jesus folk and who have a sense of connection to our Creator are struggling for a sense of why things went wrong in Sandy Hook.  How can God permit a room full of innocent children to be slaughtered?  How can it be?  How can God do that to those parents, and to the first responders...moms and dads themselves...who must gather up those broken little bodies?

It's not an easy question, and the answers are not straightforward, lying deep in the shadowy admixture of our mortality and the way we free beings betray the freedom God has given us.

There is a strong tendency among some souls to see in the impossible horror of such tragedies evidence of God's displeasure with us.  If all was well, and the heart of our nation was righteous, or so the argument goes, then this horror would not have been inflicted on us.  But because it is not, the Lord has smoted us with a big smitey smiting.

And so, inescapably, we have the linking of the murders of those innocent children and teachers and the mother of that troubled young man to something wrong in the national character.  There is a connection there.  God is punishing us, or so some feel compelled to say.

But what is the nature of God's judgment?  What do we know about it, those of us who haven't entirely abandoned the concept?  Here, I think it's vital not just to deconstruct and critique and attack.  That's easy, but it's also lazy.   Yeah, it might feel pretty dang awesome to our angry monkey-selves.  But on some fundamental spiritual level, attacking and tearing apart seems less like a gift of the Spirit, and more like a gift from the Accuser.

Instead, it seems we should provide a clearer picture of the truth we know about our Maker.   What do we affirm?  To what can we say "yes?"

What we know, those of us who follow Jesus and attend to his teachings, is that suffering and death are not a sign of sin in the one who is suffering.   Suffering is not to be automatically equated with God's judgment.  The cross disabuses us of that, as do the deaths of those Christian witnesses who, guided by the Spirit, refused to take up the sword even in the face of violence.  They proclaimed peace and forgiveness, even as the world broke them.

We also know from the witness of scripture that the wicked do prosper, and that the oppressor does live in comfort.  That ain't right with God, but there are times when it does happen.  Rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike, as they say.

But what we also know is that where we violate the law of love, there are consequences, just as there are consequences if we think we're immune to the law of gravity.  That law of liberty is etched into the nature of all creation, as fundamental to sentient beings as the laws of physics are to inanimate objects.  It is the metric against which we are judged, both individually and collectively.

That judgement bears consequences.  Systems based on violence and injustice always fail.  Systems where power is concentrated in the hands of a few, be the power of the sword or socioeconomic power, those systems are radically out of balance.  They will tear themselves apart, and fall.  Scripture's pretty clear on that, as clear as it is on the ramification of our individual sin.

And what we also know is that just as love is its own reward, so too sin's reward rises from the nature of the sin itself.  The cup we pour is the cup we drink, as both the Beatles and a dear friend of mine once said.  Though the precise nature of God's justice is beyond us, it is ultimately not something that exists in the realm of magical thinking.  The events that create the probability of tragedy and horror, complex as they are, are not radically abstracted from their fruit.

Meaning, rather simply, that when a nation arms itself to the teeth, creates a climate of social isolation and fear, and stigmatizes the broken of mind, that is the cup we have poured for ourself.  It is the furrow we have dug into the surface of being.  When the storm comes, and the torrent flows down the path we've made for it, we shouldn't act surprised.

We may not know the fullness of the "why" of anything.  Creation is simply too complex.  But we can know enough to act, through the blessings of reason and the whisperings of the Spirit in our hearts.  And we can certainly know enough to act in ways that meaningfully reduce the likelihood of future horror.

Whether we make the way straight for God or prepare a path for sorrow is entirely our own responsibility.

The Payroll Tax Holiday

I am, once again, completely unable to process the goings on in my own home town.   Here in Washington, there's sustained conversation about how to continue what has been called the "payroll tax holiday."   Americans, after all, don't like taxes.  Taxes are bad.  And we like holidays!  Holidays are good!  And if it's a tax holiday...well, golly!  We can take that money, which should be ours anyway, and use it to buy stuff to create jobs and get our economy moving and yadda yadda yadda.     No tax?  A holiday?  Buy stuff?  What's not to like?

Hmmm.  Let's see.

What is the "payroll tax?"  If it's a tax, it must be bad, right?   Well, let's break it down.

The payroll tax is better known as the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA.  It exists for a particular purpose.  Well, several, actually. Let's break 'em down, why don't we?

The first purpose is Social Security.   Yeah, I know, Social Security is doomed, or so we've been carefully taught.  But what Social Security actually does is pretty straightforward.    It supports those who are elderly, or unable to work, and in need of basic income to insure their survival.

I encounter those folks a couple of times a month, as I go to a nearby Baptist church, and then drive from home to home in my community delivering food for Meals on Wheels.  These are not the millionaires and scammers that Fox News will drop meaningless and unrepresentative anecdotes about.  They are people who need that check to survive.  It is light and heat for them.  It keeps them in their homes.

Social Security also supports families who have lost a wage earner.  When your husband or wife dies, leaving you without income?   It insures that your kids will have food, and you'll have a roof over your head.   It won't bring your loved one back, but it will make sure that widows and orphans are not forgotten and destitute.   If you're injured, and unable to work?   It does the same thing.  I've had friends who have lost spouses, and who've relied on Social Security to make ends meet for their kids.   It's a real thing.

The second purpose?  Medicaid.  Yeah, I know, Medicaid is terrible and we all hate it because the care is lousy and there's all this waste/fraud/abuse that, again, the media of the right wing is happy to share with us.  But when those who have nothing fall ill, it helps keep them from being frozen corpses by the roadside.   It helps get them care.   That is what it does.  As a pastor, I've seen it at work.  Could it be better?  It could be a whole lot better.  But it's something.

So here we are.  It's Advent.   It's the season before Christmas.  What are both political parties and the president talking about?

They aren't talking about insuring that those who are vulnerable are cared for and protected, the hallmark of justice in a nation since nations were first invented.

Instead, they're engaged in a political dance to see who can take the most money from our Treasury.  Specifically, they want to take it from the part set aside for widows, orphans, cripples, the elderly, and the desperately poor, so that Americans can go shopping.

Happy Holiday.

Occupy Targeting

Stay on target.   Stay on target.

With a tiny bit of free time on my hands this last week, and my flighty muse temporarily disinterested in the book I'm chugging away on, I found myself doing a little bit of research.

With the days growing short and the winter coming on, the Occupy Movement here in DC is going to be facing a conundrum of sorts.  The long history of sustained camping-demonstrations here in the Nation's Capital combined with a moderate-to-progressive local ethos may not yield the sort of forcible removals we've been seeing in city after city this last week, but one never knows.  It didn't stop the aggressive action to clear out Zuccotti Park last night in New York, at the heart of where the Occupy movement began.  There, the response of the Movement was mostly what it needed to be.  Just clear out.  Just pick up peaceably, smile at the nice officers and tell them you love them, move, and then settle back in the next morning, like the murmuration you are.

Still, time is short.  The Death Star is clearing Yavin.  It is important to stay on target.

The larger challenge will come, in DC at least, in reinforcing identity and in spreading popular support for the movement among Americans generally.   To do this, I would ask that Occupy K St and Occupy DC consider direct action that reflects the actuality on the ground.   Having gotten the satire out of my system on that subject, here's a simple proposal for consideration by the General Assemblies in question:

As the political system is not, not yet, the focus of Occupy, focus on the ground you inhabit.  Call out those places of power that are not accountable.  What troubles most Americans is the control over our political system by powerful, entrenched, and moneyed interests.  The One Percent, as they say.  These are the lobbyists, the potent influence-shops that employ our politicians and politicos after they've left office.   This is where corporate money buys the direction of our culture, and where the good of the country is taken out of the hands of voters and citizens.   This is the heart of injustice.  The political leaders from either of the two parties we're permitted to choose from do not speak against these places, and they will not.  Not ever.  It's where their campaign staffers go to work, and where they themselves hope to pad the nest for their retirements.

Resisting those places would have purchase, deep purchase.   If America hears you are doing this, Honeychild, ninety-nine percent of them will wave their hands in the air and say AMEN.  Even the Tea Party will acknowledge the excellence of your kung fu.

Here in the District of Columbia, there are plenty of office-fronts where a few hundred souls with signs making noise could light up, in a prophetic way, those places of unaccountable power.  These are not places known to most citizens, but as I'm a DC townie who likes to do research, I know 'em.   The next time you're considering a nonviolent Guy Fawkes-masked march or an impromptu resistance dance party, consider these as destinations:

The Podesta Group.   Akin Gump.   Patton Boggs.   I have selected these three against two primary criteria:  1) they need to be in easy walking distance of your encampments, and 2) they need to perfectly represent the essential power you oppose.

Let me light 'em up a little for ya.

The Podesta Group is a good place to start.  They're at 1001 G Street, NW, Suite 900.   They are, according to opensecrets, the number three lobbying shop in DC this year, pulling in over twenty million dollars from their clients in 2011 alone.  And oh, what lovely clients they have.  They've pushed the interests of BP, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Bank of America, and various Big Pharma corporations, and that's just this year.

If you're having a Pavlovian response to Podesta, well, that's because it is just so very tasty.

Akin Gump is a DC powerhouse, and has been for decades.  I used to work in the same building they inhabit, at 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, NW.  I watched former lawmakers and power-players go in and out, in and out.  The guy who advised Clinton to hush up the Lewinsky thing?  He worked there.    They represent, among many others, Chinese interests, Big Oil, Boeing, and casinos.  It's a short walk, right next to Dupont Circle, and if you want to stop in for a beer at the Front Page afterwards, it's right there.  They're number two on the list of 2011 lobbying firms, at twenty-five million in receipts in 2011.

Finally, there's Patton Boggs, the big boy on the block.   They're looking at nearly thirty million in client money for 2011.  Their huge client list includes various large big Pharma players and Walmart.  They are also in the notable employ of several big-ticket investment and financial interests, who are their largest dollar amount clients.

Meaning, my friends, that they work for Wall Street.  This is where the power of Wall Street reaches into the halls of governance, kids.  This is where the social connections of power are leveraged, bought, traded, and sold.    This is why you're here, and it's only a 25 minute walk from McPherson Square, at 2550 M Street, NW.

So I will leave this in your hands, to do with what you will.  Be peaceful.  Be loud.  Be gracious.  Be bold.

What They're Looking For

"It is not a person's fault because they succeeded. It is a person's fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and what is it that they're looking for."   


GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain, Wall Street Journal,  10/05/11 


He is right.


It is our fault.


We have failed.


We have failed to grasp that human beings do not exist in isolation.  While we are created with the blessing of liberty, we are not created alone.  With the freedom given to us by our Creator, we can choose to move graciously in relation to one another, moving mindfully and righteously and kindly.   That is the purpose for which we exist.


But we are free.  Freedom is a part of our nature.  From that freedom, we can also choose to tear at each other, seeking power and material wealth at the expense of the other.  In this generation, we have chosen the latter.


Our choice to walk the path of self-seeking power and the concentration of wealth is not a new choice.  It is an ancient one, a mistake we have repeated over and over and over again throughout our blighted history as a species.   Within the sacred narratives of the tradition from which I spring, that casting-out-of-balance has happened again and again.  


We who keep and teach that story remember it.


Two and a half milennia ago, it happened just as it happens now.  Seeking power over other nations, the people cried out for a king.  The prophet warned them:  the king will amass wealth, taking more and more for himself, until everything you have belongs to him.  All will fall out of balance.  And yet the people ignored the voice of the one who spoke for our Maker.   


And things fell apart.  Wealth yearns for wealth, as power yearns for power.  The son of the first King began it, gathering in the gold and the fruit of the land, and placing the great golden bulls on the altar of the shining temple he built.  The son of the son of the first King, the taste of gold in his mouth, doubled and redoubled his demands upon the people, wealth seeking wealth, power seeking power.  And the kingdom fell apart.  


When finally a wiser king sat on the throne, the Sacred Law was rediscovered.  Written into the Sacred Law given to the people was the demand:  keep things in balance.  Never let the wealth of the people become fixed forever in the hands of the powerful.  The purpose of this law was simple.  When things fall out of balance, if you do not make an effort to set things back in balance, covenant fails.  Community collapses.  The people will no longer be at one, standing equal before their God as is their Creator's desire, but will be slave and master.


Following the death of the wise king, things collapsed again and again, as the centers of power drew in and sought more power and wealth.   Prophets spoke against it, reminding those in power of the purpose of the Creator.  Sometimes they were heard.  More often, the siren song of wealth rang too strong in the ears of the wealthy.


And so the story has gone, telling itself over and over again.


What are the people looking for?  Many things.  So many things.  But many things are broken.


Mostly, they are crying out that things are out of balance.  There are words for what they want, words I know well.  Justice is one such word.  Though most of the protesters would not name it as such, from the old, old story comes the word Jubilee, the year of setting things right.


When things fall out of balance, that becomes the yearning of the people.


It's a yearning and a message I know well.  I teach it every Sunday.


Pity so few of our leaders seem to have been exposed to it.

Mobs, the Media Marketplace, and Justice

America knows Casey is gulity of muder.

I am blissfully ignorant of so much in our popular culture.  Not that I don't attend to it, mind you.  I keep my ear to the ground to listen for the hoofbeats of the rumbling herd.   It makes for better preaching, and better bloggery.  But personally?  I try to remain as emotionally distant as possible from the endless stream of macro-high-school-psychodrama that passes for public discourse in our celebrity culture.

You know of what I speak.  When a tabloid refers to someone by their first name, like they're the popular girl in high school or the girl with the bad reputation, people who you know about but you don't really know?    When we hear the sly whispers about Kim or Rachel or Angie, it's feeding that eternally adolescent self, that self that wants to remain forever fifteen and part of the scuttlebutt.

It generally doesn't bother me, until it starts mattering.  And where it starts mattering is when it starts nosing it's way into the real.   Most recently, I am troubled that my 10 year old knows who Caylee Anthony is.

The recent coverage of the trial of Casey Anthony crossed a line, one that has been crossed and recrossed many times in American history.  That line is the conflation of justice with infotainment, as market-driven media finds the most salacious and outrageous story possible, then drives that narrative to make it a central thread in our collective adolescent chatter.  We like the hum and puzzle and outrage of a good courtroom drama.  So what if it's real?

But our system of justice is not CSI.  It is not Judge Judy.  It's a real thing, one that rests in the hands of 12 jurors and our adversarial system.  When a trial becomes a public event, as this trial has become a public event, we have to ask why.  There are several legitimate reasons.

First, a trial can involve a public figure, someone with prior standing in our culture.  A politician who is corrupt.  A businessperson who is corrupt.  Lindsay Lohan, or potentially, Lindsay Lohan again.  Then, we already have some interest.

Second, a trial can involve a question of constitutional law that will ultimately impact the broader thrust of American jurisprudence.  Like, say, whether a corporation is a "person," or whether the government's right to eminent domain allows it to seize property for the sole purpose of maximizing tax revenues, or whether that white dress is appropriate courtroom wear.   ExxonMobil is just such a hussy.

Third, a trial can involve an act that had significant national ramifications, like the Oklahoma City bombing.

But this trial?  It meets none of those metrics.

Though tragic in the way that any death is tragic, it was a crime of no particular significance.  As has been pointed out elsewhere, had Caylee been African American, we'd not have heard a peep about it.  It's just entertainment, filling the same role in this era of the 24 hour news cycle that soap operas filled in the 1950s.

Worse yet, it unsubtly undercuts our system of jurisprudence.  When a tele-prosecutor aggressively argues a case against an accused in front of the court of public opinion, the actual trial...you know, with the real judge, real prosecutor, and more importantly, real defense and real jury...is delegitimized.  The measure of reasonable doubt, in which the burden of proof rests strongly on the prosecution, is not something that tee-vee muckrakers feel obliged to attend to.  It doesn't get ratings.  Extreme outrage gets ratings.  And ratings mean revenue.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter once said that for the sake of its integrity, our system of justice must be neither a political institution "...nor part of the entertainment industry."

It's clear, in this new media era, that we're wandering further across that line.