I Just Like It: Walk Humbly Together

 

Like many millions of you, I could not bring myself to watch trump's second inauguration, with its political overreach and underhandedness. But like also many millions of you, I have watched the now-famous inaugural prayer service from the following morning by The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington, DC, at the Washington National Cathedral. You should also watch it. It is inspiring. 

Her sermon, preached to the nation, gave voice to the hopes and fears so many of us face as we enter a second phase of rule by That Felon Guy, and her final words, delivered directly to him, resound with compassion. 

In a tone both measured yet commanding, she reminds us not only of the ideals of the American Experiment but of the best of our ideals that lead to unity, dignity, honesty, and humility. She asks for mercy. 

(I've heard some of my queer friends and others complain about her last word choice, that they would not ask for mercy from trump and it's a fair point; my own tradition might have used "compassion" rather than "mercy," but in her Episcopal tradition mercy is an important idea, reverberating as it does down the ages and translations, and I honor that). 

She is not strident, she is not placating, she does not harass, she does not deliver a Jeremiad denouncing the king before her. But she is a teacher and a shepherd, guiding the thoughts and behaviors of the faithful who would follow her. 

We would all do well to live by her words to trump. 

See How We Are

SEE HOW WE ARE

A Sermon Delivered to Pathways Unitarian 

Universalist Church in Hurst, TX, June 4, 2023

Some of you can do this and some of you will have to imagine it, but I want to take you back a moment to 1987, when the band X released its penultimate album See How We Are. We’re in the final dying throes of what Mark Green would call Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error, whose cultivated meanness of spirit and deeds we thought we’d never experience again.

          Into this miasma waded songwriters John Doe and ex-wife Exene Cervenka, whose punk group X had achieved some success with their 83 release, Los Angeles, eventually one of Rolling Stones’ Top 100 albums, The title song swiftly became an anthem for the disaffected punk of the times. What was punk? If you watched American TV at that time, programs like Phil Donahue and Quincy and even CPO Sharkey convinced you punk music was music about nihilism and what you hate. On CHiPs its lead punk was portrayed by Donny Most, an actor better known for Ralph Malph on Happy Days. It may have been an accurate portrayal of Donny Most but not of punk.

Punk, rather than being rooted in hate, is rooted in love. You don’t bother singing about what you don’t like. Just for fun I typed “punk rock wedding songs” and received at least one list with nearly 100 options. Admittedly, many of them were about wedding-type love rather than agape. But while Chuck D famously called hip hop and rap “the CNN of the ghetto” and rock historian Greil Marcus wrote “the goal of every rock n roll band is to make everyone listen;” I would argue the goal of every punk song is to make everyone aware what needs to change. Natalie, a young woman in Manchester, England, has said, “’punk’ isn’t just a mohawk and leather jacket, it's about being true to yourself and not being afraid of who you are, being brave and bold and strong.” You can’t change what you don’t love.

        *I cut this section in the sermon for time but it does explain why I call this what I do.  [By the way, what I’ve identified as Punk Spirituality I’ve named that because when I was beginning to articulate my beliefs I was listening to a lot of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, numbered by Marcus among the “cult prophets” of the late 60s and early 70s like Captain Beefheart, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and the New York Dolls and made up early punk playlists. At a different time and in a different mind I would identify my spirituality, as Donald Miller does, with jazz, or like Moya Harris with the hip hop of Lauryn Hill. And while both of them root their revelations in Christianity, my life has had greater spiritual experiences with non-Christians, so my spirirtuality is, I think, faster and noisier.] 

What needed to change in 1987? According to John Doe and Exene Cervenka, crowded jails, women “knowing their place”, dividing ourselves physically and emotionally, the capitalist emphasis on commodification of wants while ignoring kids going without basic needs. An emphasis too on “what can I get out of you, what can you do for me while I give nothing in return?” What little you have is what someone else wants so we’ll push you another rung down, addict you, poison you, literally displace you if necessary to take it. In the ensuing 35 years, how much has changed? A major element of punk is Do-it-yourself, exemplified by the probably apocryphal comment by Brian Eno that the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records but everyone who bought one started their own band. You’re responsible to change what you don’t like, even in music. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, If you can’t find the life you want to live, make it yourself.

There is something in us that wants to be better than we were. A part of our makeup that tries to improve, even if briefly, that gets us up in the morning and puts us to sleep at night. Leaving us unfulfilled if, throughout the day, we haven’t moved otherwise. I’m not talking about ambition. I mean an urge to do, even if it’s “just” thinking or eating, so that we ruminate, if nothing else.

Maybe that’s what theists mean when they say we’re made in the image of God. Taking them at their word, God made everything in God’s image. It might be for this reason they also say, and I agree, that you can’t meet anyone or anything God doesn’t love. Yes, even mosquitoes. Yes, even Donald Trump.

We laugh but let me give you a literary example. Unitarian Universalist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, in his play Happy Birthday, Wanda June, includes a character who was a Nazi in life. He describes heaven to us. No one in heaven is singled out for punishment or exhortation. Everyone, even Jesus, even Hitler, spends eternity basking in the sun. Hitler, he tells us, is just another guy playing shuffleboard.

I’m going to leave you with another video. I’m not going to read the lyrics to you, because the lyrics, by Iggy Pop and David Bowie, won’t make much sense to you unless you’re familiar with William Burroughs’ novel The Ticket that Exploded. The song, “Lust for Life”, was released in 1979, somewhat at the height of US punk music but this video is from a concert this past April. Despite its esoteric lyrics, the song quickly became an anthem of punk for its energy. “Got a lust for life”. To add a little extra oomph, the guitarist and percussionist on his recording, who later went on with David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels to form the group Tin Machine, were Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of Soupy Sales. Iggy has famously performed shirtless since at least 1980. You might be familiar with the song if you saw the movie Trainspotting, based on the Irvine Welsch novel about Glasgow heroin addicts. If you saw the trailer for that film you’d have seen a couple dozen men and boys “dressed” like Iggy, all of them flaunting their huge bellies or their chicken wings or their sunken chests. 

In the absence of the lyrics what do I want you to notice? This is a cut-down version of an 8 minute video [the video played during service was necessarily short] and what I want you to pay attention to at first is Iggy. Notice that he’s limping and not trying to hide that he’s tired. The man is 74 years old. His belly is sagging, he’s developing moobs, and his scraggly beard is gray. He rests against a stool before he starts singing. But he has no trouble demanding of his audience that they come up there and dance with him. And they do.

And look at those kids! Fewer than a third of the people who jump up there with him were even alive when the song was released, and certainly not the age to have attended one of his shows. The vast majority of his companion dancers are celebrating and singing along to music released 45 years ago. At best, it’s their parents or their grandparent’s music.

This is what it means to be at one with God or the universe or reality. To  see ourselves as we really are, warts, moobs, and all, the way the universe or God sees us and nonetheless to celebrate our own and God’s lust for life. You’ve heard the phrase “dance like nobody can see you”. My friend’s daughter improved on it: “Dance like everyone wants to see you dance.”

I'd like to think if I was tested I would pass

This has been a busy, busy month and it's been a while since I've had the time and opportunity to post this second recent message from a service at the facility. This was recorded for the first Sunday in March.  

 Luke 4:1-13

4:1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 4:2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 4:3 The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread. 4:4 Jesus answered him, It is written, One does not live by bread alone. 4:5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 4:6 And the devil said to him, To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 4:7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours. 4:8 Jesus answered him, It is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. 4:9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 4:10 for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you, 4:11 and On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 4:12 Jesus answered him, It is said, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. 4:13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

 Mara Upasatha Sutra

The holy one directed his steps to that blessed Bodhi-tree beneath whose shade he was to accomplish his search. As he walked, the earth shook and a brilliant light transfigured the world. When he sat down the heavens resounded with joy and all living beings were filled with good cheer. Mara alone, lord of the five desires, bringer of death and enemy of truth, was grieved and rejoiced not. With his three daughters, Tanha, Raga and Arati, the tempters, and with his host of evil demons, he went to the place where the great Samana sat. But Shakyamuni heeded him not. Mara uttered fear-inspiring threats and raised a whirlwind so that the skies were darkened and the ocean roared and trembled. But the Blessed One under the Bodhi-tree remained calm and feared not. The Enlightened One knew that no harm could befall him. The three daughters of Mara tempted the Bodhisattva, but he paid no attention to them, and when Mara saw that he could kindle no desire in the heart of the victorious Samana, he ordered all the evil spirits at his command to attack him and overawe the great Muni. But the Blessed One watched them as one would watch the harmless games of children. All the fierce hatred of the evil spirits was of no avail. The flames of hell became wholesome breezes of perfume, and the angry thunderbolts were changed into lotus-blossoms. 

 

 I’m not telling you anything new by saying words have meaning. But when we apply it to scriptures like the Bible or the Koran or Buddhist Sutras, we often use words that have come down to us from centuries of use as meaning something they no longer mean. For instance, in this scripture we hear an important word, “devil,” that conjures up an image our parents might have given it that doesn’t quite match the original word. We think of a guy in red with a pointed tail and horns and a pitchfork. 

But that’s not what’s meant by the Greek word, “diabolos.” While it does translate as devil, diabolos meant a different creature like an accuser or a trickster, one who tests the truth of a statement. Think of the devil here as The Tester, one who is fulfilling an important job, like Coyote in Native American stories or Loki in Norse myth. Think of diabolos, not as someone against Jesus or you, but someone whose job is to make sure you’re up to whatever task is ahead of you. 

Diabolos’ job is not to make Jesus transform stone to bread but to see if he’s learned to control his wants. Similarly, when Jesus is told “You can rule everywhere and everyone and all you have to do is worship me,” he controls his greed. The Tester tells him he could rival God and his response is “Only God is God.” Finally, The Tester gives Jesus an ultimate test: “Jump off this temple roof, let yourself be saved by angels. God  has a lot riding on you, God won’t let you die.” But Jesus says, “Don’t test God. Just accept.” We don’t climb to the roof of a building and jump. We know better than that. 

 When we talk about temptation, we’re talking about an urge to do something we wouldn’t normally do. The word itself comes to us from Old French out of the Latin word temptare "to feel, try out, attempt to influence."  We’re tempted sometimes to do something that helps someone. Holding open a door suddenly for someone we see behind us struggling with a box, or picking up the tab for someone we’ve joined for a drink. 

While we obviously don’t have exactly the same temptations as in Luke’s story, to say we have temptations in today’s world is an understatement. In place of commanding stones into bread, we’re tempted to claim of one thing that it’s another. Like if we’ve insulted someone and they catch us in it we’re tempted to say, “No, it’s a joke. I didn’t mean it.” Instead of worshipping Diabolos to rule the kingdoms of the world, we’re tempted to do something we don’t like or that hurts someone to make more money. Or in place of throwing ourselves from a high spot to see if God will send angels to protect us, we might be tempted to put ourselves in danger by refusing to be vaccinated or taking precautions, certain our faith will protect us.

Dickey Barrett, the singer and lyricist of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the band playing the song I played you earlier, has a wonderful line: “I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested. I like to think if I was I would pass. Look at the tested and think, There but for the grace go I. I might be a coward, I’m afraid of what I might find out.” We test ourselves constantly and sometimes, yes, we prove to be cowards. That’s all right. If you’re tempted to take a bite out of a stone or to jump off the roof, you should be a coward. You’ll only hurt yourself that way. 

Better to test yourself in small ways. This woman’s voice bothers me. Can I be kind to her anyway? My roommate is driving me crazy; can I voluntarily go somewhere I don’t have to see or hear him? I spill juice, I forget my hat sometimes, I misplace my favorite book. Can I be patient with myself about the thousands of mistakes I make daily? It’s in passing the little tests we set for ourselves that we become better people. This is what God intends for us, to become better who we are. 

 [Lord’s Prayer]

 Benediction by Wayne Arneson

“Take courage friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth: you are not alone.”

A new hymn

Yesterday I attended services at the congregation I frequent (I also do several services a year for them), and we had a couple discuss the "Life of a Peacemaker." It was an interesting message, although frankly not as deep or informational as I could have wished. Still, I can't fault it for what I expected it to be. 

But what I want to talk about is a song. The service's second hymn was John Lennon's "Imagine." The lyrics were printed out and passed around with our hymnals. I've discussed in the past my firm belief that, as churches and services grow and change, one of the likeliest changes will be the co-opting of seminal, probably secular songs into our hymnals to take the place of songs that either don't connect with our theology (we already see this with the dropping from many denominations of such aggressive, warlike songs as "Onward, Christian Soldiers") or that have greater resonance with our congregations (in my own UU faith, we see this in the inclusion of the song popularized by Cat Stevens, "Morning Has Broken"). I suspect "Imagine" could be the bridge between every faith by its inclusion as a hymn.

If this is the case, it'll be helped along by its simple tune and rhyme scheme, its ubiquity in mass culture, and the simple fact that, as I looked around, I noticed that nearly everyone my age was singing from beginning to end without looking at the lyrics. We have already taken it in as our own.

A reason we ended up with Trump?

I've lately been reading a book about adolescence, A Tribe Apart by Patricia Hersch, which is, I'll be the first to admit, rather dated in its information, having been published in 1998. But precisely because of that I'm left to wonder if the following information, presented about the early teens of the mid-90s, who are parents now, is a good descriptor for what has led to Trump's election.

In 1992, a USA Weekend survey of over 236,000 young people revealed that 25 to 40 percent of teens see nothing wrong with cheating on exams, stealing from employers, or keeping money that isn't theirs. A 1989 Girl Scouts survey of 5,000 kids found 65 percent would cheat on an important test. A survey by the Josephine Institute of Ethics in 1992 similarly revealed that 75 percent of high school students admit to cheating...The biggest reason, according to 65 percent of the students, was that it was more important to get good grades than to be honest..."People are under lots of pressure. The attitude is that everybody does it, people don't look upon cheating as bad, none of your friends look at you as bad because you cheated." Everybody knows it is the wrong thing to do, "but I am not convinced that it is unfair when you are in a class you are never going to need again in your whole life but...the difference between a C and an A will make a difference in what college you get into.

Paradoxically, there is an ethic of cheating. This is how most students explain it...: It is easy and it is not always straight-out cheating. It is the little sneaky stuff like asking somebody from the period before what is on the test, or being absent so you know what is on it the next day. "Real cheating is having the answers in front of you while you are taking the test, looking at someone's paper."

The truth, and everybody knows it, is that to get into college an A or B is always better than something lower, and students' lives are so full of pressure and activity, especially for the smartest and most ambitious, that something has to give. "Even though we are told it will hurt us in the long run, that is a bunch of baloney...Maybe you are hurting other people and that may be unfair, but you are not hurting yourself. Why not take the easy way out if you can go home and be with friends for three hours or work in a subject that really matters to you...[?]" The bottom line is that "grades are more important because they get you someplace--getting good grades, not being ethical." 

This may be the crux of the matter. In the Girl Scouts of America survey, it was found that by a huge margin the youth problems of the headlines--peer pressure, drugs, alcohol, sex, gangs--were not the "crisis issues" for kids. Their concerns were "the social expectations of the adult world which all have to do with pressure..." In times when society lacks clear ethical guidelines, when parents neither spend the time to educate about time-honored values...and personal responsibility nor necessarily model consistent value`s in their own lives, kids are responding to the one message they hear loud and strong from the adult world: Succeed. Do well. Do whatever you need to do... 

Kids have grown up with a regular diet of people like Leona Helmsley, who ripped off the government; Mayor Marion Barry, who was reelected after being in prison for cocaine possession; Michael Milken and his junk bonds; Ivan Boesky and insider trading; Pete Rose and gambling. The list seems endless: Watergate, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, Lorena and John Bobbitt, Whitewater. Stories of killings for sneakers, parents who abandon their children, drive-by shootings. The students see inconsistent punishments or no consequences at all... 

Somehow people keep on expecting kids to have a certain belief system or a commitment to certain kinds of values that are not evidenced with any regularity in their environment. Values do not spring fully formed out of nowhere. And cheating, among all the things people are doing that are not right, turns out to be fairly benign.

 Get ahead any way you need to. Cheating isn't the worst thing you can do, and you have to do it because everyone else is and it's the only reasonable response to everything they expect of you. If you aren't caught, you won't be punished, and if you are caught, well, people will understand. There's a sliding scale of unethical behavior and you can always justify it by contrasting it with what someone else does or could do. Act like we tell you, not how we act. Most importantly, other people do a whole lot worse, and they're the real reason things are bad.

Is there a better description for what history will come to call Trumpism?

Guides on the journey

There isn't a reason my opinion would be sought out on this issue. But in the midst of the garbage fire that is the Trump administration, it's important to keep your eye on the smaller things happening that effect us on a different level.

To wit: the resignation of my denomination's president. This isn't like Pope Benedict XVI resigning, or even the resignation of Rowan Williams. I even find that many UUs are unaware of it. But within the hothouse world of Unitarian Universalist politics, while it's not a hot-button topic, it is cause for concern and speculation.

To understand it totally, you'd need to go back to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade; but you can get enough background by remembering the problems of the late 1960s. It was a different America, both for better and worse, and one of the ways it was better was the spirit of "can-do" optimism on the part of society at large, and one of the ways it was worse was the ability for much of the makeup of that society to ignore the concerns of its minority citizens. Here is a good timeline that explains much of how the situation came about. For a fuller examination, I recommend the books of Mark Morrison-Reed, particularly Black Pioneers in a White Denomination.

It was at least in part because of their behind-the-scenes treatment by the nascent Unitarian Universalist Association that many black members left, and it's perhaps a legacy of that period that UUism has fewer members of color than it ought. There is much in UUism that attracts black and brown freethinkers, but as Dr King said, Sunday morning remains the more segregated day of the week. Those who do belong watch carefully the way the organization refers to and treats them, with justification.

The presidency of the UUA has a fixed term and current officeholder Peter Morales' term ends in three months. The vote for a new president will happen at the annual General Conference. All three candidates are women, and are fine candidates. But all three are white women. And here is where it gets sticky.

When the retiring leader of the Southern region of the UUA, who is white, was replaced by another white man (and this is not a denigration of his abilities or his hiring), it was seen by members attending the Finding Our Way Home retreat, a group of clergy and religious professionals of color, that "the UUA had hired another white person over an unidentified woman of color who was a qualified finalist for the Southern Region job." That candidate, Christina Rivera, identified herself at the retreat as a finalist who was passed over because she wasn't "a good fit."

I have issues with Rivera's blog post. If I were to edit it, I would condense it and eliminate many of the remarks that suggest personal complaint, focusing on the need for diverse voices in leadership. But her primary point is important: "The Exec and First Management levels are the directors of departments and staff. They have the power, influence and autonomy to direct policy, resources and hiring. And autonomy is a huge measure of power within our dominant culture; who gets to decide the what, when, who and how of the UUA. And just seven are people of color. It is an insult to the over 100 UU Religious Professionals of Color gathered at the recent Finding Our Way Home conference to suggest that this is anything other than racial discrimination at the UUA." (Her emphasis.)

The charge that UUA leadership reflects elements of white male supremacy are merited. So, unfortunately, does nearly every other denomination. It's a holdover from the past, not only of the US, but of Europe. Typically, the landed gentry knew best, and in most European nations, the landed were white and male. There are deeply-ingrained assumptions and beliefs that society and individuals hold. There's nothing wrong or demeaning about accepting one's contemporary advantages and their having risen from historical ones. It is, literally, the least one can do. 

At the retreat, President Morales was asked what his opinion was and, unfortunately, he answered like a CEO rather than a religious leader. (I cannot locate a quote of his response, only paraphrases.) It was essentially that, "If we had more qualified candidates of color applying for those positions, there would be more people of color in them." Even Morales characterizes his response as glib, of having reacted when he should have listened. 

Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism, whose co-founder and executive director is a friend of mine, is correct in asserting that this is a "crisis" in our faith and correct too in noting that "Those seen as 'fully qualified' are usually white, usually ordained ministers, often cisgender, often male and able-bodied, often heterosexual, and otherwise fit into common notions of what leadership looks and sounds like." This is one of the elements of white supremacy, that the norm is white (and usually male) and that anyone else qualifies as exotic or foreign. It's a mark of the ubiquity of this belief that many of us don't even recognize when we do it on a personal or an institutional scale. It's a mark too of its insidiousness that Morales, the first Hispanic president of the UUA, repeated one of its tenets. 

However, while everyone agrees he shouldn't have said it, no one called for Peter Morales' resignation. Friends among the UUA communications organization report, while there were a few calls from individuals, there was no coordinated effort, no one in the organization had suggested it, and no one thought it would solve the issue. It was completely out of the blue.

Morales is, of course, capable of making his own decisions and he wrote in his resignation letter, "I have clearly lost the trust of many people and my comments have become a focal point in the ongoing discussion. It is clear to me that I am not the right person to lead our Association..." But I am not convinced of the rightness of any of those statements. Many of us rolled our eyes at his comment and it may have been newsworthy for a day or two, but it and he have not been the focal point at all. That has remained the ongoing assumption among religious organizations that the de facto leader of any institution is a white male.

There are important issues our denomination has to grapple with; along with the above, there is the recent arrest of UU minister Ron Robinson on charges of child pornography, how we react to the maelstrom of Trump administration fiats, and the simple continuation of our faith in a world where the word has become synonymous with either cruelty or irrelevance. This is not a time for leaders to take themselves out of the game because they've made stupid comments. It's time to admit our mistakes and provide ourselves, if not as models, then as guides. 

258 candles-days 36-31

In the same way religious liberals decry that all faiths have their share of fundamentalist thinking and actions, so we must celebrate that all faiths also have a deeply progressive strain that often runs counter to that. These Pakistani clerics deserve to be recognized as pioneers.

258 candles-day 73

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: A fine, close-to-home example of who we are, interfaithfully.

258 candles-day 56

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: I'm more sympathetic, I think, than many other people when it comes to Jehovah's Witnesses--I abide their visits because I understand their focus is not on conversion but on witnessing--and while I share with Prince the childhood Seventh Day Adventist church, I can't say I understand his decision to join the JWs. However, this is a good exploration of their beliefs in the light of the death of their most-famous member, and an attempt to explain exactly that attraction for him.

258 candles-day 17

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: Krishna devotees looking to help religious retirees.

when we are most ourselves

My interest and faith in punk and punks is a theme on this blog, as is my attempts to articulate a definition of a punk spirituality. This musician/teacher, Miguel Chen of Teenage Bottlerockets, has gone me one better by creating this short documentary about the interconnectivity of punk and yoga. And while yoga is not my practice, I recognize, in the same way Christianity is for others, it is a potent path. To say I'm in awe of this motherfucker is to downplay the jealousy I feel.

my truth

I've begun a new position as the spiritual coordinator (read: chaplain) at a pair of boys' and girls' residential treatment facilities and next Sunday I hope to initiate my first chapel service for them. I don't know if I'll be able to read the following message, but after several weeks of trainings, meetings, observations, and time spent with the kids, I've been moved to write this as the overriding message I want my ministry to reflect.

            Ten years ago I was teaching college English at prisons in Minnesota. I really like doing that. It was important work. During break one night an inmate came up and told me he wanted me to know what he’d done to be sentenced.

            Now, I don’t know if it’s as important a thing here as it is in prison, but you don’t ask someone what he or she has done in prison. It’s a private, personal secret in a very public place, People jealously guard it and sometimes it’s literally dangerous for other people to know how you broke the law.

            So when this guy said he wanted to tell me what he’d done I said, “I’d rather you didn’t.” He asked, “why not?” and I said, “right now I’m your teacher and you’re my student and I like you. But if I find out what you did I might not like you so much anymore.”

            But he took the chance and told me. And although it was something nasty, I still like him for who he was. It doesn’t always work out like that but sometimes, when you’re lucky, it does.

            I know why you’ve come to chapel, what it is you want. In addition to a break in your day, you want the answers. You want someone to tell you what they are, about god and the afterlife and heaven and hell. Most of all, you want someone to tell you it’s all worth it.

            I’m here to tell you the not-so-good news but it’s the truth. I don’t know if it’s worth it. I don’t think anyone knows. Some people come to what they think are the answers for everyone but at best they’re just the answers for them.

            That’s not to say you won’t find answers. For some of you, you might find answers in the Bible or the Koran or the Buddhist Sutras. And those are legitimate answers but they’ll be your answers and nobody else’s and you’ll only find them after you’ve looked a long time and really hard at them.

            You want to know what the secret is and that all the crap you’ve gone through, all the worst stuff you’ve done and had done to you, is worth it. That at the end of the day the good outweighs the bad and you are happy and satisfied and the world is smiles and rainbows. That might be the case. It’s not the case for me or most of the people I know. The world is sometimes a beautiful place and sometimes it’s hellish. Most of the time it’s a balance between the two. I hate to be the one to tell you it never really does get better or easier. Not in the way you want it to: you find the pill or the therapy or make the breakthrough that makes that possible. I used to look for those and it might work for a little while. But eventually you see through that and realize it wasn’t the real answer you wanted.

Life is hard. Maybe it’s meant to be. Maybe it’s better that it’s harder for some of us than for others. I can’t promise you it won’t get harder. You’ll make breakthroughs and you’ll backslide, sometimes worse than before. That’s how life is. Someone once said the only constant is change. A Greek philosopher named Heraclitus famously said you can’t step in the same river twice. The truth is that that’s the truth. You might feel crappy as all hell today and tonight feel like yours is the best life in the world. And tomorrow you might feel exactly the opposite. I can’t promise that won’t happen all your life.

            But I can promise you one thing. This is unchanging, no matter how much you search, no matter how bad it gets, no matter how many dead ends you end up following, no matter how many times you scream and fight and curse god and those around you. There will always be someone who will help you. Call it god, call it reality, call it staff, call it the divine in other people, but there will always be people who are willing to be with you. To explain things, to tell you what you might find ahead, to comfort you and remind you that, while the bad things you’ve gone through may or may not be worth it, you are worth it. This is my truth, my good news. No matter how you feel, no matter what anyone says or how the world treats you, you are worth it.

I've been everywhere, man

I've been putting together a new packet application for residencies for clinical pastoral experiences and rewriting some of the essays I'd done a year ago. This is actually a revision of both that one and one I'd written originally for my admission into seminary six years ago. I'm pleased with it.

I’m like the trucker in Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere,” only on a theological rather than a geographic level.  My parents were Seventh-Day Adventist—after my mother died my dad returned to his native Methodism—and I was raised that way.  They attended one of the German denominations, which is a pretty strict sect, although they weren’t as observant as they might have been—we ignored the ban on meat, for instance, and I don’t remember ever praying over a meal except when someone from the church was there.  My sister was baptized among them but I never was.

            When I was allowed to make my own choices regarding churches I opted not to attend one.  I’d read about Thomas Jefferson being an agnostic, and since that seemed to mean he didn’t attend church, that’s what I was.  Adventist churches can be a dismal affair, or at least they were in rural New York in the 1960s.  Agnosticism was attractive:  like most young adults, I was uncertain of a lot of things, and it seemed only right to question a divine presence along with everything else.

            My first wife was Lutheran.  We attended church a few times a year with her family.  When Barbara and I split I underwent a profound questioning of the meaning of my life, what I was intended for, how I was intended to live, and where I stood in relation to everyone else.  After a brief flirtation with nihilism and atheism, denying there was a purpose to any of it, I fell into radicality.  I’d been studying Jesuit education for a class, and the intense devotion to god suddenly made sense to me and seemed right.  The ritual and drama of the mass was comforting, as was the prescription that god had to accept me in return for confessing my sins.  Like Frost said of home, heaven was where, when you went there, they had to take you in. 

            Catholicism didn’t stick beyond two intense years.  Too many questions, too many strictures, too much solidity and order.  I’d had enough of order, I wanted chaos.  But in New York, where I was, even if you weren’t Jewish you were a Jew, and I became attracted to the controlled chaos of Jewish women. I was really attracted to the symbolism and mystery of Judaism.  I lived eventually with two Jews at different times, one Reformed and the other Orthodox and a sabra, and kept a kosher house with each.  That was an interesting experience, looking to the domestic to for the order daily worldly experience denied. 

            Eventually the desire for uncertainty moved me out of an apartment and into the streets.  I spent several months in New York City, alternating between people’s couches, some people’s beds, and the safe and relatively warm crawlspace beneath a fenced-in trailer on the Grand Central Overpass.  I visited the Hare Krishna kitchens downtown often and the Sri Chinmoy kitchens in Brooklyn, and listened to both while they filled my ears with chanting and my belly with rice.  I eventually wound up at the Krishna commune near the Newburgh airport for a month, sorting out what remained of my life and trying, unsuccessfully, to get sober.  My parents bought me a station wagon and I disappeared for three years into the US, visiting communes and churches, reservations and tiny communities.  I loved those years:  they were full of exploration, especially spiritual exploration.  I attended Rainbow Gatherings and Powwows, Festivals of Light, ashrams and intentional communities.  My consciousness expanded, as did my intake of drugs, which I saw as gatekeepers to the Absolute. Or something like that. 

            I read up on Buddhism all the time.  I tried peyote with a small Native Church congregation.  I dropped acid as often as possible, consulted Mescalito, took vision quests and Long Walks.  When I was camped for a month atop Wildcat Mountain in the Catskills I had a vision that involved Brother Blue, a storyteller I’d studied with.  I kept a milk crate in the back of the car full of books by Alan Watts, Stephen Diamond, Ram Dass, Carlos Castenada, Sun Bear, D.T. Suzuki, Krishnamurti, Robert Thurman, Robert Pirsig.  My copy of Gary Snyder’s The Old Ways is so well-thumbed I have to hold it together with a rubber band. 

            I never made my intended goal of Arcosanti in Cordes Lakes, Arizona.  Eventually, however, I found my way to sesshin at Dhammapada in Montreal where the abbot, a tiny wizened Japanese man, explained my deficiencies to me in terms even I could understand.  When I left there I was humbled, but no closer to finding some cogent spiritual sense.  I hung out with Santerians I knew back home, kept my head shaved, went to work in a health food store in Woodstock where I met up with cross-country skiing devotees of Ramtha and the community-sharing confrontational lovers of a man named Gavin who called himself Bayard Hora, and converted my upstairs two-room apartment into an electricity-less shrine to discipline.  I ran the four miles each day into work and back in the snow and cold, and eventually found my way back on the road, where I discovered I really belonged. 

            When my mother insisted I either join the Army or attend graduate school, I knew she was onto something. In Mankato, Minnesota I met my second, or as she puts it, my last wife.  Jayne was Methodist at that time, soon to return to Lutheranism and finally to settle among the UCC, and after we married and moved back to New York, she started carting me along to different churches, insisting that I ought to be grateful for the life I’d been given, even if it wasn’t everything I wanted.  I made contact with two delightful Dutch Reformed ministers who made me realize it was possible to be both clergy and relevant, and read Daniel Berrigan. 

            In 1996, returned to the Midwest, and getting a handle on both my drinking and my hitherto undiagnosed depression—I am a poster boy for the wonders of Prozac—I found the White Bear UU Church online.  I’d attended a few UU services back east in my wandering years and hadn’t been terribly impressed.  But something about the photos on the White Bear website suggested I should give this a try.  My first sermon by Christa Wolf, the interim minister, used the terms “Jungian” and “eschatological,” and hearing those I knew I was home.

            Years later I joined a different congregation in Menomonie, Wisconsin, smaller, in greater need of help, and trained as a Commissioned Lay Leader.  I became more and more involved in the ministerial aspect of the CLL position and had an affinity for it. Like Cash’s trucker intimates, Unitarian Universalism may not be where I stay.  I might continue to move on and find my journey takes me elsewhere.  The congregation I served housed Christian UUs, UU atheists, and UU devotees to Kryon, a channeled being. I came to love the difficulty of making current events relevant and comprehendible to their different sensibilities and found a calling among them. I’ve since left that congregation to serve another in the Twin Cities where the makeup is composed of secular and Christian humanists.

 

resistible revolution?

This book has been a challenge to read. Not because I disagree with its theology, although sometimes I do, or because it is written amateurishly, although sometimes it is, or because sometimes I want to hurl it against the wall, although sometimes I would. It's a challenge for all those reasons, plus Shane Claiborne's occasional lapses into the unbelievable--a page after he tells us he was a student at Wheaton while "they still had that pesky no-dancing rule" he describes himself as having "multicolored hair and...ripped jeans and a Rage Against the Machine shirt sporting a black American flag with the words 'Evil Empire'"--after which he manages to pull out something as honest as this:

We hang out with kids and help them with homework in our living room, and jump in open fire hydrants on hot summer days. We share food with folks who need it...Folks drop in all day to say hi, have a safe place to cry, or get some water or a blanket. Sometimes we turn people away, or play Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who answers the door on tired days. We run a community store out of our house. We call it the Gathering, and neighbors can come in and fill a grocery bag with clothes for a dollar or find a couch, a bed, or a refrigerator. Sometimes people donate beautiful things for us to share with our neighbors; other times they donate their used toothbrushes.

We reclaim abandoned lots and make gardens amid the concrete wreckage around us. We plant flowers inside old TV screens and computer monitors on our roof. We see our friends waste away from drug addiction, and on a good day, someone is set free. We see police scare people, and on a good day, we find an officer who will play wiffleball with his billy club...[We] mourn the two people who died in this property...We try to make ugly things beautiful and to make murals. Instead of violence, we learn imagination and sharing. We share life with our neighbors and try to take care of each other. We hang out in the streets. We get fined for distributing food. We go to jail for sleeping under the stars. [My emphases]

This is part of Claiborne's recitation of "an average day" at Simple Way, the community house he's a part of in Philadelphia. The book is full of passages like this. He describes miracles to which he's been witness and then he recounts spending the summer in Calcutta working in Khalighat. He recounts one night when he and some friends sent a demon in the form of a little old grandmotherly type skittering from them in shrieking horror by humming "an old worship tune." Then he describes the patient, gentle, "careful" way he dresses a leper's wounds in Khalighat, and is rewarded with  "Namaste." Of course he has to add that he whispers back, "Jesus."

Perhaps you see why this book troubles me. It's the mix of the true--the tired days when they turn people away, the friends dying, the used toothbrushes--with the stuff in there because the book is published by Zondervan--the miracles, the shrieking demons, whispering Jesus' name. I am having a great deal of difficulty from page to page determining whether to toss the book far away from me or to keep reading.

What is probably most troubling to me is that I suspect this is Claiborne being true to himself, this mix of the worst stereotypes and heartfelt experience. It is a self-image mirrored by both the photos inside the back covers where he is presented as a willowy, do-ragged, barefoot, geeky white boy and on the Simple Way's website where the simple community is composed of Boards of Directors and Chairs and Controllers and Claiborne even has an assistant. It leads me to uncharitably point out that Jesus didn't have an Executive Director. But to be fair Jesus wasn't operating a 501(c)3 either.

st. juggalo

I don't like the music of Insane Clown Posse but I'm not the audience for it either.  I do, however, like the fact that the Gathering of the Juggalos exists, and further that Juggalos and Juggalettes exist.  As with most distaff communities, it is meant to provide a family into which nearly anyone can fit. 

I don't know if I would attend a Juggalo Gathering myself, although judging from photo essays (most of them provided by Nate "Igor" Smith of the Village Voice) they are not unlike most Rainbow Gatherings, except with Faygo and more cigarettes.  There have been really well-done essays about the Juggalos as well as some trashy, sensationalistic ones.  There is even a backlash against writing so much about them (can a TLC reality series be far behind?). I haven't seen it written about but I've noticed in various photo essays the increase in the number of people of color, both Juggalos and Juggalettes, in attendance.  That pleases me.

But what I am most pleased by is the sense that anyone, of any body type and any ability, can be accepted as a Juggalo (so long as that person is not Tia Tequila, apparently, although to be fair I suspect her shit-tossing critics were responding to their being used for her publicity rather than their tribe's).  This is the impetus behind religions of the Book, that one can be a member of the hospitable desert tribe if one abides by certain rituals and accepts certain beliefs, no matter how one is born or the condition one finds himself in. Where you go I will go, and your people will be my people. There is no Jew or Greek, no male or female. When you pledge allegience to another person you pledge allegience to God.  Will we see in some far-off future a Juggalo-influenced adjunct to Abrahamic religious?  Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope came out a few years ago as Christians, so why not? Why not a Saint Juggalo, a Mother Juggalette? 

the cry goes up, "how can we survive?"

Progressives...see feeding the body as an act of hospitality.  We give aid because we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, because each person is made in the image of God and is a person of dignity, because we are trying to be servents of God.  We maintain that proselytizing the needy in conjunction with helping them can lead to the cruel manipulation of vulnerable populations.  We would never ask anyone to listen to a sermon or recite a prayer before they could get a shower and a hot meal.

The understandable outcome is that the poor we help rarely become the poor alongside whom we worship.  We are used to working with the poverty "out there," but sometimes our only real contact is the benevolence check that we write.  By the time a person walks into the door of a mainline church, he usually has his financial portfolio in pretty good order.

Another awkward truth is that some members of mainline churches can show subtle but harsh intolerance toward middle and lower classes.  I joined the Presbyterian Church in my early twenties while I was employed in a retail position, and...I'm surprised that I stayed...I'm [surprised] the front entry on that presitigious downtown church [didn't] become a revolving door, spitting me out as fast as I'd come in...

I have learned, after some embarrassing experiences, to be careful taking minister colleagues to a restaurant where I am friends with one of the wait staff, because I'm afraid I'll leave in shame at how the employee was treated.  Somehow the mainline church's healthy passion for education can become a boorish disdain for those who never attended college, or for those who have a PhD and yet find themselves waiting tables.

These notions drown out Jesus, standing on the Mount, telling us that the poor are blessed.  Instead, we have the idea that anyone who does not make it into the upper-middle-class is undisciplined, vaguely immoral, and needs to put in some more hours to make ends meet.  We see poverty as an issue of personal responsibility, not a systemic problem, and if a person is struggling, then it is she who must be bad or lazy, not the social system.  There must be an easy solution to the problem, we think.  If only she'd cut back on the lattes or quit spending so much with her credit cards.  She needs to look at her budget and stop thinking about that iPod.  She just needs to work a little harder--like the rest of us.

--from Tribal Church:  Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt (my emphasis)

Now that I have completed my seminary education I'm rereading this book in light of what my future might involve.  When I read it the first time, about four years ago, it was with the expectation that I was heading for parish work.  But now I am looking at chaplaincy as my practice and ministry and thinking about some of the ideas from that perspective.  (Oddly, and this is not to take a dig at Howard Merritt, but the book has taken on a different life in my memory, full of more examples and greater emphasis on change there than it has on the page.  I suspect it's my filling in gaps with what I have learned and thought since.)

I take issue with a couple things in this passage--that "never" in the first paragraph is belied by the history of the Social Gospel which did exactly that (and lives on in the Salvation Army, hardly a bastion of liberalism any more); I think she presumes too much about the order most Protestants (or anyone else) find their portfolios in today; and I would hope she'd leave any restaurant or establishment, indeed any church office, feeling shame at the way some ministers treat people, not only those where she knows the offended person--but in the main she is correct.  One of the great shames of today's churches are their insularity, a situation that makes no distinction for denomination or belief.  People of faith already tend toward a propensity for navel-gazing and add to that the problems we experience in the larger community and economy, and the cry goes up, "how can we survive?" 

Not "how can the single mother working at the convenience store survive."  Not "how can the immigrant father who came to collect a week's worth of food at the food shelf this afternoon survive."  Not "how can the Libyan family that miraculously lived through the waterlogged journey in a leaky boat to the Italian coast, only to be packed off to Germany where they now expect repatriation back to their dangerous homeland, suvive." 

This emphasis on ourselves is understandable but doesn't speak well of our compassion or our understanding of our place in the world.  To experience those it may be necessary that our congregations and churches and faiths don't survive.  If the Christian message is that death is necessary to a greater rebirth, then perhaps Christian churches, and by analogy all progressive congregations, need to die.

a congregation of one

"Every man will have a creed of his own," wrote [Needham, Massachusetts] pastor Stephen Palmer..."I have mine, but have no right to impose it upon others, nor have others any right to impose theirs upon me...He who thinks he has no more light to receive, has seen but little; and he who is not open to conviction is in bondage to himself."

--from Universalists and Unitarians in America:  A People's History by John Buehrens

This idea, if not this quote, opened up an intense discussion in a small group forum during our UU polity class last week.  We had assembled to discuss whether our principles and purposes are a contemporary help or a hindrance.  Early on the question "why don't we have a creed?" came up and from there the better question, "are we afraid of a creed?", was spoken.

The answer to the first question is suggested in Palmer's quote:  Unitarian Universalists as a group don't have a creed because we aren't free to impose our own convictions on others and they aren't free to impose theirs on us.  The distinction between agreeing with a conviction and insisting on it being the way people ought to behave is a fine one that seems lost on so many who would insist on the US being a Christian nation.  I agree with a number of Christian convictions--treating others as we'd like to be treated and obeying god (as I conceive god to be) are only two examples--but I don't identify as a Christian because I don't accept a supernatural force outside existence.  (Besides which, there is the issue of "which" Christianity some people are arguing for.  In terms of sheer numbers, Protestants are the predominant Christians.  But "Protestants" are a huge umbrella term, incorporating everyone from the Latter Day Saints to the United Church of Christ.  If we are talking just a single denomination, the US is far and away a Roman Catholic nation.)

The answer to the second question, according to many UUs, is "no."  But I think it's "yes," although maybe "afraid" isn't quite the right word.  We have these terrifically anodyne Principles which are and read like they are written by committee and fulfill a lot of functions.  They give us something to point to when asked "what do you believe" and something to rally around when we sense our rights as citizens of faith are threatened.  But to paraphrase Walter Royal Jones' famous question, No one asks to have the Purposes and Principles read to him on his deathbed.  They're a package of words most of us can agree to, but a Mission Statement will itself never be included as a prophetic source.

He "who is not open to conviction is in bondage to himself," Palmer writes, and insofar as his earlier point, that individuals need a personal creed, he is right.  The problem lies in that my personal creed may countermand yours and neither one of us really wants that.  None of us would, or should, want to belong to a congregation consisting of one--one person, one thought, one mission--and despite claims that are made in its favor, and the beauty sometimes of its language, that is precisely what a creed does:  Reduce a congregation to one.  Yes, we are "afraid" of a creed--if by fear we mean a wariness brought on by history and experience--but it may be good to be so afraid.

terror is terror, no matter why it's done

There have been a lot of reports in the news and online about the bombings in Boston, and now that the second suspect has been captured alive, many of those reports have taken on an air of triumphalism, as if his capture ends the whole situation.  Life, of course, is not a Gangbusters episode, and if the history of public attacks teaches us anything it is that the death or capture of an individual doesn't mean everything is all right.

But I've wondered too at the relative paucity of news accounts invoking the same terror about the explosion in West, Texas.  There've been a lot of news stories, of course, and many of them are heartbreaking.  But what I wonder about is the lack of stories posing the explosion as more than accidental.

I don't mean to suggest anyone planted an explosive or started the fire that caused the explosion.  What I mean is that the accident was foreseeable and avoidable.

Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but there is information, sometimes hidden in news stories about the loss of life, (page 2, 6th paragraph) that indicate that the fertilizer industry is badly overseen in the years since deregulation.  The last time OSHA inspected this particular plant was 1985, and while it was more recently inspected in 2011 by PHMSA, this is not the same.  West Fertilizer Company, whose plant's explosion has caused at least a dozen deaths and maybe up to five or six times that number by the time everyone has been accounted for, and decimated the majority of the town, answered "no" to the EPA's question whether its plant was at risk of fire or explosion,

This is not the first time this has happened and it's not likely to be the last.  We are quick to call the intentional bombing in Boston a terrorist act--and while the bombers may have acted as part of a group or as individuals the effect on the population certainly was terror--but we need a label too for intentional lying about risk and danger on the part of industry executives and lawyers who are safe in the notion that their rewards will outweigh the cost of regulation and compliance.  Terror is terror whether it's done for ideals or profit.  You may have noticed no West Fertilizer top executives lived in West, Texas.

We need to continue praying for the people devastated in Boston and in Texas.  But it is not out of place that at least one of those prayers should be that executives and lawyers rank the safety of employees and their community above the cost of doing business.