We Need a Populist Movement

I find myself agreeing with this position:

The Obama ''trickle down'' is, sadly, not all that different from the Bush-Paulson strategy. Like its predecessor, it endorses the bailout of giant financial institutions as the linchpin of its economic policy. It is, simultaneously, profoundly anti-democratic and anti-capitalist.

Other aspects of the Obama policy seem likely to prop up Wall Street traders at the expense of the rest of us. The administration's big ''cap and trade'' proposals could prove more advantageous to well-heeled ''carbon traders'' than to the environment. The other big winners may be Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who-- increasingly bereft of their own ideas for making money--hope to cash in on Washington-subsidized energy schemes.

Of course, not all Democrats have sold out. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and John Tester, D-Mont., have expressed opposition to bailing out ''too big to fail'' institutions. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been fearless in unveiling the enormous Wall Street bonuses--over $32.6 billion last year-- handed out as firms suffered $81 billion in losses and almost drove the world economy to ruin.

Unfortunately, these are exceptions. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin recently admitted that the banks remain ''the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,'' adding that they ''frankly own the place.''

So far in 2009 the Democrats have netted nearly 60% of all campaign contributions that have come from the financial industry, now the largest sector in terms of donations. The biggest donations have gone to such influential Democrats as Sen. Charles Schumer and his sidekick, newly appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, from New York; Sen. Chris Dodd D-Conn., and Majority Leader Harry Reid D-Nev. Schumer, the Street's leading vassal in Congress, has emerged as the rising star in the Democratic leadership. If Majority Leader Reid loses his seat--as is now possible, according to polls in Nevada--Wall Street's main man could well end up a future Majority Leader.

Some Democrats try to have it both ways, playing populists for the peanut galleries but getting cozy with the industry when it matters. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, the House Financial Services Chairman, talks tough but has a history of friendly relations with financial powerhouses. One of Frank's own top assistants, Michael Pease, just went to work for the biggest winner since taking TARP bucks, Goldman Sachs. As left-winger blogger Glenn Greenwald put it recently: ''The only way they can make it more blatant is if they hung a huge Goldman Sachs banner on the Capitol dome and branded it onto the foreheads of leading members of Congress and executive branch officials.''

In the end the faux populist Democrats end up with policies that make Ronald Reagan's ''trickle down'' seem downright Leninist. Harry Truman once quipped that ''There should be a real liberal party in this country, and I don't mean a crackpot professional one.'' Sadly, it's increasingly the latter.

The hypocrisy should open a path for the Republicans as wide as the Grand Canyon. But the ill-named Party of Lincoln still seems to think that the path to power lies in the tired old formula of ultra-patriotism, guns, abortion and religious rectitude. Screaming ''socialism'' may awaken the spirits of some on the old right, but it's hard to make a convincing case when George Bush socialized banking and grew the deficit.

You certainly can't trust big-business conservatives to stop bonuses for the TARP babies, particularly the 25 financial firms deemed ''too big to fail'' by the likes of Ben Benanke. Give GOP big-business leaders higher stock prices, and they will follow you anywhere. Only a few--such as Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa,--have shown they are truly serious about the free market or defending the interests of the regular taxpayer.

Given this sad political picture, the best hope now is to build an alternative perspective that focuses on the basic economic issues. This would not be the media celebrated movement of moderates--Democrats-lite and Republicans-lite--who seek kumbaya through compromise. It would, instead, require a radical third tendency--neither strictly left or right--that would draw on long-term American priorities and values.

These new radicals would focus on basic issues like improving infrastructure, and primary education and bolstering the nation's productive economy. Their inspiration would come from a long tradition of federal successes--from the Homestead Act and the WPA to the Interstate Highway and the space program. They would view the financial crisis not as an imperative for protecting the well-connected but for financial reform, decentralization and innovation.

Such an approach would address what the British author Austin Williams calls our ''poverty of ambition.'' Americans historically have rejected a future constrained by entrenched hierarchies. Most, I believe, would support spending money and paying taxes, if it was spent to achieve big things that would lead to a greater, more widespread prosperity and opportunity.

Just imagine if the upward of $1 trillion spent guaranteeing Goldman Sachs and Citigroup executives giant paydays had instead gone into roads, bridges, subways, buses, port development, skills training, energy transmission lines and basic scientific research. And imagine if instead of protecting Citigroup and Bank of America, we encouraged stronger local banks and solvent financial entrepreneurs to fill the breach left behind by gross failures.

It has made all the difference in the world having a Democrat in the White House directing our foreign policy. No more crazy neo-cons starting wars on false pretenses and planning and hoping for a half dozen more. Sane policies and a touch of humility on the world stage have made the world a safer place for everyone.

But in domestic politics I think the difference is not so much. It will make a difference on health care reform because with Republicans in charge it would simply never happen. But we won't get the radical reform we need for the simple reason that Congress is in bed with the pharmaceuticals and HMO's and insurance companies and physicians and everyone else who has grown rich off of the dysfunctional system we have now.

Same with the financial industry. They own the place. A trillion dollars to bail them out and nothing changes. Big bonuses for those who are adept at moving money around - but not 'down' to the small businesses that need loans or homeowners who are going under. The rich get richer and another long jobless recovery begins where everyone who isn't rich doesn't feel very much like anything has recovered at all.

But thank God we have Wal-Mart!

I think there is something to be said for taking as much money out of the big economy as possible and supporting local businesses and farms and co-ops. And... supporting small operators in emerging economies through micro-loans and SERRV and Ten Thousand Villages.

Politically we need a real populist movement that isn't nativist and fear-based ala Lou Dobbs, but one that focuses on support for decentralized and local economies in combination with a robust federally funded government that takes care of the big items like health care and infrastructure where bigger really is better. What we don't need any more are the too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions and the politicians who answer first to them.

I am very glad that Obama is President and that Democrats are in charge of Congress. But having them in power just shines a light on how deeply tilted our political system is in favor of the very rich. We need to save them from themselves and remind them of who voted for them and why.

In the Garden Today

Butterflies and Hawks in the backyard.

Conservative Lawyer Takes on Prop 8

I see that Ted Olson, who served in Reagan's Justice Department and as Solicitor General for George W. Bush, and who argued Bush's case in Bush v. Gore, is getting set to challenge Prop 8 in federal court. He has teamed up with his nemesis in Bush v. Gore, David Boies. From the Los Angeles Times:

You and Boies -- you're a version of Hepburn and Tracy in "Adam's Rib."

That's a nice way to put it. I like that. I thought we needed someone who was a well-recognized lawyer but who would provide balance for my perspective. I wanted to convey the message that this was not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, that this is about human rights and human decency and constitutional law. David was my opponent in Bush v. Gore, but he's someone for whom I have great respect and affection. We spend some time together once in a while socially. We've done some biking in Europe together. He didn't hesitate for a second.

Does your argument have more purchase with conservatives because you're the one making it?

I'm hoping that it does. I hope some people will open their eyes to the decency of getting to the point where we allow gay and lesbian individuals to be married and have a happy life.

I expect some of your fan mail has flipped 180 degrees because of this?

I am getting comments from some segments of the society who feel that it's the wrong thing to do and I'm betraying the conservative cause and things that I've stood for in my life. Some of it is quite hostile. But that goes with the territory. On the other hand, I'm hearing from people, including plenty of Republicans, who are very, very grateful. It has been overwhelmingly gratifying to hear from very decent people who are touched by the fact that we're trying to help.

A woman came up to me in our library in our law firm and said, "You and I haven't worked together, but I'm a lesbian. My partner and I have two children." And she burst into tears. I put my arm around her and she put her arms around me. This stands for what we're trying to accomplish here. It's a principle, but it's a principle that deeply touches human beings. If we're successful, we can help the lives of literally millions of people. And what a great service that would be.

This should be interesting.

Religion at its Best

Episcopalians continue to break down barriers and ordain and promote the best regardless of sexual orientation:

Only weeks after the Episcopal Church ended a de facto moratorium on promoting gay men and lesbians into the church hierarchy, church leaders in Los Angeles nominated two openly gay priests as assistant bishops on Sunday.

The move came a day after a church search committee in Minnesota announced that it had settled on three candidates, one of them a lesbian, for bishop.

Good for them.

Religion at its Worst

Christians attacked by Muslims in Pakistan:

It was the poorest class who lived in Christian Colony, a small enclave of bare brick houses where the mob struck Saturday. Its residents work as day laborers and peddlers in the market, often earning far less than the minimum wage, $75 a month.

The Hameeds were having breakfast when the mob descended, wielding guns, hurling stones and shouting insults (“Dogs!” “American agents!”) through their window. The Hameeds did not appear to have been singled out but had the misfortune of living where the mob entered the neighborhood and happened to be home at the time.

When the grandfather, Hameed Pannun Khan, 75, a house painter, opened the door to see what was happening, he was shot in the temple and crumpled to the ground. The crowd then pushed inside, and the rest of the family — at least 10 people — fled to the back bedroom and locked themselves inside. They listened from behind the door as the mob looted the house, dragging away a refrigerator and a cupboard.

Then came the smoke, thick white plumes under the door.

“Everyone was shouting to escape,” said Umer Hameed, 18. “There was no oxygen.”

They waited as long as they could, until they thought it was safe, and then made a run for it, but not everybody made it. Three women, the two children and a man were trapped when the roof collapsed in flames.

The Legal Drinking Age

My son turns 21 this fall and recently made a comment to me about how ridiculous it was that the drinking age was 21 when in all other matters he was a legal adult at 18. Didn't I agree, he asked. I said no, I thought it was a good idea as it postponed the link between being a new driver and a new drinker. Raising the drinking age had lowered deaths by drinking and driving, I said. I knew I had read that somewhere.

Of course I didn't think the same when the legal drinking age of 19 was snatched away from me in Pennsylvania in 1979. I went from being of age to not while I was in college. How unfair was that?

In any case I see, via Andrew Sullivan, that one of the architects of the national law that raised the drinking age to 21 in 1984 now repents of his earlier work. Dr. Morris Chafet was a psychiatrist who served on the presidential committee that pushed to have the legal drinking age raised to 21:

Chafet describes his effort to raise the drinking age as the "single most regrettable decision" of his career. "To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982," Chafet notes. "But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States."

That observation, while welcome, hardly warrants a "better late than never" response. As Chafet also notes in his piece, the arbitrary age restriction is partially to blame for things like binge drinking, injury, and property destruction. Simply passing a law isn't going to stop young adults from drinking, an activity that has long been a sign of adulthood. Yet because of the fear of punishment, those young adults are much less likely to seek help when the partying gets out of hand, and the results are frequently disastrous. Furthermore, underage drinking only breeds disrespect for the law. So much for keeping people safe.

So, yes it is true that drunk driving fatalities are lower among teens, but they are also lower among all groups. What is that they say about statistics? I can't imagine any political scenario that would undo the current drinking age, but it would be ironic if just as my son turned 21 the legal age was lowered to 18.

The Almost Beer Event

From the press pool here is what the President, Vice President, Sgt. Crowley, and Professor Gates were drinking:

The beers:
POTUS: Bud Light
VPOTUS: Bucklers
Gates: Sam Adams Light
Crowley: Blue Moon

Yikes. I had a Victory HopDevil Ale in honor of the event.

Ernie Lefever RIP

From the Washington Post today:

Ernest W. Lefever, 89, who founded a conservative public policy organization in Washington and was an embattled nominee for a State Department human rights job under President Ronald Reagan, died July 29 at a Church of the Brethren nursing home in New Oxford, Pa. He had Lewy Body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.

Dr. Lefever, a Chevy Chase resident, was an international affairs specialist with the National Council of Churches, a staff consultant on foreign affairs to then-Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) and a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution before starting the Ethics and Public Policy Center in 1976. The center studies the link between Judeo-Christian morality and national and foreign policy.

In 1981, Reagan nominated Dr. Lefever for the State Department position of assistant secretary of human rights. After months of accusations over conflicts of interest involving his think tank and insurmountable controversy about his views of the human rights job, Dr. Lefever withdrew his bid after rejection by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Among those who spoke against Lefever's nomination were his brothers, Don and John. Don testified against his brother at the Foreign Relations Committee meeting. Don is deceased, but his wife Faye is a member at Open Circle.

I first learned about Ernie when I was at PSU working on a Masters in Religious Studies and was reading Reinhold Niebuhr. My adviser clued me into the work and writings of Ernie Lefever. I was very much attracted to Niebuhr's realism at the time and appreciated the fact that there were other Brethren who "got it." My appreciation for Niebuhr remains although my views have evolved back towards a modified pacifism. I didn't retain the same appreciation for Ernie and his positions.

Prayers for his family.

The Real Cost of Our Health Care Mess

Joe Klein makes a good point in response to talk about how much it is going to cost to cover everyone with health care:

Cover everyone and it costs more--but we don't know how much more, and it may cost less than we think. It will certainly cost less in the areas economists can't quantify, but which have very real economic impacts: in the level of panic and uncertainty that exists in the society, the opportunity cost in entrepreneurial energy among people who might start a new business but are locked into their jobs because they need their health benefits--and a thousand other, non-fiscal benefits.

One of my favorite Springsteen lyrics is, "We've got to start saving up for the things that money can't buy." That's the best argument for a health care system that costs less in anxiety and unfairness. In the end, a conversation about universal health care can't just be about money. It has to also be about values, about what sort of society we want to be--and need to be in an era of economic volatility and uncertainty.

It may very well cost us more money to insure everyone. Our taxes are almost certainly going to have to increase. But it is the right thing to do.

Weddings Brethren Style

This YouTube video went viral, as they say, and the couple was invited to appear on the Today Show. There was a front page write-up in the Star Tribune this morning. The officiating pastor was Jeannine Leonard, an ordained minister in the COB and a member of Open Circle, and a friend. I imagine the ordination committee will be paying her a visit soon ;).

For the Glory of God

I am sitting on my deck this morning. I have with me a book, a laptop, and a cup of coffee. It's a perfect morning.

On the corner of one of our flower beds there is a large nepeta plant, a member of the Lamiaceae or catnip family. It is in full bloom and covered with bumblebees. Periodically a hummingbird zips in and works the small individual flowers that line each stem before moving on to other plants. A couple of times this morning goldfinches have landed on stems of the plant, bending them over to the ground. I don't know if the finches are looking for insects or the seeds that are forming as the flowers are spent.

The flowering nepeta, the bumblebees, the hummingbird, and the goldfinch are all engaged in a frantic effort to use the few summer months we have in Minnesota to perpetuate their individual species. They are unaware of this, of course. They are just doing what nature has given them the tools and drive to do.

The only one aware of what they are doing is me. I have just enough interest in the way things work that I will read about the life cycle and the reproductive habits of the birds and the bees and the plants we have in our yard. For instance, unlike every other bird that makes an appearance in my backyard, the goldfinches are just now getting about the business of laying eggs. They time the arrival of their young with the arrival of their favorite sources of food, particularly thistle seeds, which show up late in summer. I have an interest in knowing these kinds of things about my backyard visitors.

But that's not the first thing that comes to mind when the goldfinch drops in on the nepeta. It's awesome; it's just simply beautiful. For a moment conscious thinking stops; some other part of my mind and body is triggered.

For a moment, and then the goldfinch leaves and I begin to think about what just happened. Where does this aesthetic sense come from? Why are we stunned by beauty, moved by music, overcome with awe when we look up at the stars at night? What purpose does it serve? Is there some evolutionary advantage to be gained by being more attuned to beauty? There certainly is no financial advantage. Wall Street executive or concert hall pianist? Making beautiful music rarely pays well.

But then the person making the music didn't choose their profession with an eye for retiring wealthy. They were likely moved to tears at some time in their childhood by a piece of music. They wanted to be able to recreate the possibility of experiencing that moment again for themselves and others. So they began to play and practice an instrument. For years and years, just for the sake of beauty. In much the same way that my wife and I have spent the better part of a decade replacing our lawn with a riot of color, just so we can see a goldfinch bend a flower stem to the ground. It makes no sense, really.

For the glory of God is a phrase that comes to mind. Why is there so much beauty? For the glory of God. Which I take it to mean that there is no utilitarian purpose to beauty. Just as there is no utilitarian purpose to the universe itself. Stars explode; planets are born; bumblebees fly against all physical odds; goldfinches take our breath away. And if we are lucky enough or smart enough to be able to lift our noses from the grindstone of the "real" world for a few moments, we might see that there is beauty everywhere we look. For no purpose. But for the glory of God.

Walter Cronkite Dead

Another icon from my childhood is gone. Because of the internet and cable TV there is no one like Walter Cronkite today. Whether I was at home or at my grandparents' homes evening meal time was organized around his evening news broadcast. His influence on the events of the day was enormous. I was too young to remember his reporting on the assassination of President Kennedy; I do remember his reporting on the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and MLK, Jr., as well as his series on Watergate and his editorial comment that the Vietnam war was unwinnable. And I remember watching Dan Rather getting slugged at the Democratic Convention in 1968 and Cronkite commenting on it. We also watched his daily coverage of the first moon landing while at school. Uncle Walter will be missed.

New Brethren Church in Twin Cities

Dunker Journal links approvingly to a new Brethren church plant in the twin cities, noting that it doesn't sound like "they will be opening the circle." The church web site is under construction and nowhere mentions that the church is affiliated with the Brethren Church, a sister denomination to the Church of the Brethren that broke away as a progressive group in 1882 only to be swept by the fundamentalist movement soon after. In any case there is nothing on the website but this list of recent sermon topics:

REVELATION

11/16/08	Introduction (1:1-3)
11/23/08	Jesus Revealed (1:4-20)
11/30/08	The Seven Churches I (2:1-29)
12/07/08	The Seven Churches II (3:1-22)
12/14/08	Setting the Stage – The Throne of God (4:1-5:14)
12/21/08	Is Jesus Really the Reason for the Season?
12/30/08	Preparing for the New Year
01/04/09	Reading the Judgment: The Seven Seals I (6:1-6:17)
01/11/09	Reading the Judgment: The Seven Seals II (7:1-8:5)
01/18/09	Announcing the Judgment: The Seven Trumpets I (8:6-9:21)
01/25/09	Announcing the Judgment: The Seven Trumpets II (10:1-11:19)
02/01/09	The Ancient Cosmic Battle (12:1-14:20)
02/08/09	Pouring out the Judgment: The Seven Bowls (15:1-16:21)
02/15/09	The Judgment of a Culture of Greed, Lust, and Power (17:1-18:24)
02/22/09	The Battle of Armageddon (19:1-20:6)
03/01/09	The Last World War: The Summing Up of All Things in Christ (20:7-22:6)
03/08/09	Revelation for the Church (22:7-21)

Definitely doesn't sound like my cup of tea, but I wish them well. Interestingly, I am just finishing up a series on the "books of the Bible I don't like and why," and Revelation is my last book.

The Limits of Liberal Tolerance

From Reason, Faith, and Revolution by Terry Eagleton:

The liberal principles of freedom and tolerance are dogmas, and are none the worse for that. It is simply a liberal paradox that there must be something close-minded about open-mindedness and something inflexible about tolerance. Liberalism cannot afford to be over-liberal when it comes to its own founding principles, which is one reason the West is caught between treating its illiberal enemies justly and crushing their testicles. As British prime minister Tony Blair remarked in a classic piece of self-deconstruction: "Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don't come here." (p. 127)

One Big Happy Ant Family

I loved this BBC story about the ant super-colonies that live on different continents and how they all get along:

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

...Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.

But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.

Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.

But further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects' global ambition.

The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.

Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony.

But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.

World domination? Global ambition? Whoever wrote this story has been watching too many old sci-fi movies. These ants and their social behaviors are pretty amazing, though.

Two in One Day

Two of the pop icons of my youth are gone. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Each was tormented by a different kind of demon as adults. May they rest in peace.

And That's the Way It Is

I grew up as a child watching the most trusted man in America deliver the evening news. Walter Cronkite obviously had his biases and faults, but he understood that it was the job of the journalist not only to report the news but to hold the people he reported on accountable to the Truth. Truth with a capital T. There was such a thing then. I still remember watching the reporting out of Vietnam and it was clear that no matter what LBJ or Nixon was saying about the war, the pictures on the screen were telling the real unpretty story. Cronkite reported the Truth about the war.

The MSM long ago lost its belief in the Truth, or at least its belief that it is part of the media's job to dig for the truth and hold officials accountable to the truth. We make fun of Fox News' 'fair and balanced' moniker but only because it is so unabashedly brazen about the fact that what matters on Fox is not the Truth but that their 'truth' outshouts everyone else's truth. It's crude post-modernism on display every night on Fox.

But everyone else does it too now. The media's job is not to report the Truth but to report what competing interests say the truth is. Let the listener try and figure out the Truth if they dare, or care.

Even NPR is apparently too cowed by its corporate sponsors. Is waterboarding torture? When the North Vietnamese were doing it to American soldiers it was torture. By every known human rights convention waterboarding is torture. When Jack Bauer does it on 24 it is torture, vitally necessary to save the free world of course, but still torture. But when the Bush administration does it suddenly it isn't torture. Now it all depends on who is doing it and why they are doing it and whether they have lofty motives. So NPR bars its reporters from using the word 'torture' when they are talking about what the Bush Administration was doing to terror suspects. That would be telling the Truth and reporters can't do that any more.

Glenn Greenwald has a lot more to say about this here.

Beauty Everywhere We Look

A few weeks ago in a Sunday message about the contingency of life and living life with gratitude I made reference to Jonathan Edwards' most famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I don't share Edward's view that we sinners are in essence being dangled by God above the fiery furnace and at any moment God could justly let us drop. I do, however, think that when we ponder the contingency of life it feels something like being thusly dangled.

In any case a post by Rod Dreher about beauty (and how the aim of artistic expression with regards to beauty as a value or goal has changed over time) got me to thinking about Edwards again.

Beauty was everywhere we look in Edwards' worldview. God was beautiful, love was beautiful, nature was beautiful, the virtuous life was beautiful. Beauty was, for Edwards, both an ontological reality and the ultimate goal of the spiritual life.

What I really liked about Edwards' take on beauty was the way the creation was a spilling-out or overflowing of God's beauty into the world so that the divine beauty was reflected everywhere. God's beauty was the animating force in the universe.

While Edwards could preach hell-fire and brimstone, fear was not what motivated him and he hoped it was not what motivated others to live virtuously. It was the beauty of God that drew us to Him (as he would have said it), a beauty that was always all around us if we have eyes to see.

This was Edwards at his most sublime.

Let the Earth Bear Witness

Via Andrew Sullivan, a music and video tribute from the Waterboys' Dublin singer, Mike Scott to those protesting for freedom in Iran.



Whatever happens from here on out in Iran, we know now that Iran is not just President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards. When we deal with Iran on the world stage, as we must, and when we think about the future of this country, we must remember these people who also want a different Iran. They have been truly inspiring.

The Party of Family Values

What do Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada and Governor Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina have in common? A lot. They are were both 2012 presidential hopefuls. They are both right-wing Christians. They are both members of the "C Street", a Christian Bible-study group on Capitol Hill. There is something else too...

They are both in big trouble with their wives.

Unalloted in Minnesota

I listened to Governor Tim Pawlenty today as he announced his specific proposals for unallotting government funded programs like aid to cities and counties and money for healthcare funding for the poor. The Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled legislature were unable to agree on a way to balance the budget for the next 2 years. The Dems proposed raising taxes and the Governor vetoed their bills. Therefore, a MN statute allows the governor to unilaterally balance the budget by de-funding programs.

The Governor said repeatedly in his talk that just as Minnesota families were tightening their budgets in the face of the recession, so the government should do the same.

This kind of thinking sounds perfectly reasonable but is totally wrong. Imagine if the federal government took that approach. Our deep recession would quickly turn into another great depression. Now is precisely the time when the government needs to step up spending to employ more people and keep the economy from going into a free-fall.

The states cannot fund their budgets with deficit spending like the federal government can, but they can raise taxes to maintain services. Minnesota DFLers (our particular version of Dems) proposed a slight tax increase on the wealthiest Minnesotans along with some small budget cuts in order to balance the budget. The governor, who is now essentially running for President, wouldn't hear of it.

Instead, funding to colleges, hospitals, cities and counties will be cut. People will lose their jobs, thus deepening the state's financial difficulties. State budget belt-tightening in a recession sounds so reasonable but is totally counter-productive.

Megachurch Members Give Less

I see an article was making the rounds Sunday about megachurches and those who attend them. A survey found that megachurch participants are younger, they give less, and they volunteer less:

Conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary and Leadership Network, the survey of nearly 25,000 people who attend 12 U.S. megachurches was conducted from January through August 2008. It is billed as the largest representative national study of that religious demographic to date.

Each week, an estimated 5 million Americans attend about 1,300 U.S. megachurches, defined in the study as Protestant churches with attendance of 2,000 or more.

To compare the megachurch data to Protestant churches of all sizes, the study relied on the U.S. Congregational Life Study of 2001.

Among the survey's highlights was that many megachurchgoers don't exhibit the behavior the churches expect of members: Nearly 45 percent of megachurch congregants never volunteer at the church, and 32 percent give little or no money to the church.

Is any of this a surprise? Many people go to megachurches so they can be a fly on the wall. They can participate as a spectator. Unless they choose to get involved in some aspect of church life, like a small group or a children's program, they will unlikely step forward to volunteer. In addition they look at the campus, the multiple staff, the professional quality music, etc. and understandably assume that money isn't an issue for the church. Their money isn't really needed. And if they are younger and have children they might not have very much to give anyway of their money or their time.

I don't even think this is a problem limited to megachurches. I don't have the statistics in front of me but Catholics, who typically attend parishes larger than their Protestant neighbors, give less. Over the years I have heard many a priest or active Catholic parishioner bemoan the small percentage of active participants in their parish.

It is just much harder to be a fly on the wall in a small church. And the uninvolved tend not to sit in the pews on Sunday mornings for very long before they become inactive and mostly non-attending members. Those who stay are committed and give more of their time and money.

Why Are Republicans Afraid of a Public Health Care Option?

It is amusing to me to see all the Republican Party fulminations about a public option that would compete with private insurance companies to provide health care to Americans. What are they afraid of? Typically Republican politicians deride the government that provides them a paycheck for, among other things, its bloated bureaucracy, its incompetence, its inability to deliver goods and services as efficiently as the private sector.

But this isn't what we are hearing from them about health care. It appears that what they are afraid of if the government provides a choice in health care coverage is that the government will provide better and more efficient care than private insurance companies can provide. They are not worried that the government will waste taxpayers money or make a mess of the health care system; they are worried that the government will out-compete the private sector.

Isn't that rich?

Bush's Deficit, Obama's Problem

A New York Times article today shows that no matter what Republicans may be claiming now, the exploding budget deficit can still be laid squarely at the feet of former President Bush:

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

Obama's stimulus package is responsible for only 7% of that swing, his spending proposals on items like healthcare and the environment another 3%. The rest of it is the result of policies hatched by Bush and an economic downturn largely caused by Bush.

Nevertheless, it is now Obama's problem and as the article points out he hasn't really started to address it yet. Nor have the Republicans whose own suggested fixes would only make the deficit worse.

Any solution is almost certainly going to include reigning-in entitlements - my entitlements, as a 50-year old baby-boomer who knows that his retirement benefits are going to need to take a hit. Thank God for my Church of the Brethren pension! That was a joke, son.

But I also hope that part of the solution to the deficit problem comes in the form of a significant gasoline tax. A big gas tax would not only help pay for the deficit but it would also make a dent in the global warming crisis. And, I can't imagine the bailouts of Chrysler and GM and their forced retooling to make smaller, more fuel-efficient cars making any sense unless gas prices are a lot higher. Who is going to buy these small cars if gas is cheap? I would imagine that $5 a gallon is going to need to be the floor to get us to the kind of psychological shift that really changes driving and buying habits. We are going to need a gas tax to get us there.

My Amazon Order Has Shipped

But I didn't order anything through Amazon. But wait, way back in September of last year I ordered The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context. That was so long ago I wonder if it can still be relevant!

In the Garden Today

Another Nepeta in the foreground with 'Moonshine' Yarrow blooming in the background.












I seem unable to enlarge this photo, but there is a Ruby-throated Hummingbird at the feeder.

The Ego and the Id

I am reading Ken Wilber's Integral Spirituality and he makes an interesting claim about Freud's famous insights regarding the workings of the ego and the id: Freud never used the terms ego and id:

Not many people know that Freud never--not once--used the terms "ego" or "id." When Freud wrote, he used the actual pronouns "the I" and "the it" (das Ich, "the I," and das Es, "the it.") Strachey (James Strachey who gave us the definitive English translations of Freud) decided to use the Latin words "ego" and "id" to make Freud sound more scientific...

Perhaps Freud's best-known summary of the goal of psychotherapy is "Where id was, there ego shall be." What Freud actually said was: "Where it was, there I shall become." (p. 123)

Which, as Wilber says, is a beautiful summary of what happens when we do shadow work. We find the alienated part of ourselves, the parts we have turned into "its" and we re-own them and make them part of our I.

I have really appreciated Wilber's larger point in this chapter that the phenomenological insights of Freud (if not necessarily his explanation of why it happens) and Jung about our shadow and how much of it develops in early childhood is one of the great modern and Western contributions to knowledge of self. We can't grow-up spiritually without learning about our own shadow and where it came from. Wilber repeatedly says that the great meditative traditions, East and West, don't have any way of helping us do this work. They can help make us aware of the presence of our emotions, like our anger, but if we don't do the therapeutic work (learning and working through our history) we are likely to just become more serenely angry.

His summary description of the way shadow works was also very good:

We began with anger as a sample shadow-impulse. The anger starts out as a 1st-person reality (my anger; I am angry, I have anger). For various reasons--fear, self-restriction, super-ego judgments, past trauma, etc.--I contract away from my anger and push it on the other side of the I-boundary, hoping thereby not to get punished for having this horrible emotion. "My anger" has now become "anger that I am looking at, or talking to, or experiencing, but it is not my anger!"(Jay: it becomes 2nd person anger) ...If I push further, that anger becomes 3rd-person: I am no longer even on speaking terms with my own anger. I might still feel this anger somehow--I know somebody is angry as hell, but since it simply cannot be me, it must be you, or him, or her, or it. Come to think of it John is always mad at me! Which is such a shame, since I myself never get angry at him, or at anybody, really." (p. 135)

Funny and too true.

In the Garden Today

This is one of about a half-dozen members of the Nepeta (catmint) family that we have in our garden. They are just coming into bloom now. Every year I have to divide this particular plant in half because it spreads so fast that it would take over the entire bed it is in within just a couple of years. It stays put, though, because when it starts to bloom the hummingbirds begin showing up in force.


Hostas are really beautiful right now. This one is "On Stage" and it is aptly named at 3 feet high and 3-4 feet across.










This is "June" with "Guacamole" on the left and an unknown - to me -member of the Hosta family on the right.






We have a crop of baby squirrels in the garden feeding at the base of the bird feeders but also working diligently to try and defeat the squirrel-proof design of the feeders. They have fresh bushy tails and are as yet unafraid of picture-taking humans like me.



Finally, when is a wild flower a weed? When it shows up unbidden in your garden. But since Mary Ann hasn't planted her annuals in the front of this bed yet, I allowed this Bladder Campion to grow. Today is its last day, though, since it is past its flowering prime and is starting to drop its seed-laden bladders to the ground.

Evolving Values Systems

Several months ago the leadership team at our church read The Emerging Church by Bruce Sanguin. Sanguin is pastor at Canadian Memorial Church in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Emerging Church (not to be confused with the emergent Christian movement), is a reflection and manual about congregational leadership development from a progressive Christian perspective. I highly recommend it, as well as another book that Sanguin draws on heavily, Evoking Change by Anna Christie. Christie is a pastor and therapist and has written a great book about how to grow our emotional health and intelligence, and about how important this is in the church. I wish I had read these books years ago.

In any case, tucked in the middle of Sangin's book is a brief discussion about Spiral Dynamics. Spiral Dynamics was pioneered by the late Dr. Clare Graves, a developmental psychologist, who mapped out a historical time-line of the evolution of worldviews and value systems. Don Beck, a student of Graves, color-coded the map and made it easier for the lay person to understand. According to Graves, for the first humans basic survival was all that mattered. For much of human history they existed at the Arhaic/Survivalist Value System (Beige). Then about 50,000 years ago clans and tribes formed and the Tribal Value System (Purple) replaced basic survival as the over-riding value. The gods existed to protect and help the clan; magic could be used to invoke the Gods. Purple was followed by Red, the Warrior Values System (10,000 yrs ago), the Blue, the Traditional Values System (5,000 yrs ago), Orange, the Modernist Value System (300 yrs ago), Green, the Postmodernist Value System (150 years ago); in the last 3 decades two further values systems have begun to emerge: Yellow, the Integral Values System, and finally Turquoise, the Mystical Values System. You can read much more about Spiral Dynamics here.

Sanguin used Spiral Dynamics to make two points. One, to buttress his case that spirituality is evolving; there is clear historical evidence that we are progressing spiritually. Two, to make the point that individuals and congregations have different colors, or worldviews and value systems. This is important to remember, he says, because although two people may be reading the same scripture text, they are reading it through the eyes of their dominant color or values system. And if they are in different colors they are understanding the text in very different ways. Further, according to Sanguin and Spiral Dynamics, there is no way in the world that a person at a lower rung or spiral can understand it at a higher level. They can evolve over time - that's the good news - but until they do they can't understand a person or congregation who is reading or operating at a higher level of the spiral.

At first blush the whole notion of Spiral Dynamics rubs me the wrong way. It sounds and feels very elitist to me. It also meshes well with a post-modern perspective on the world which also often rubs me the wrong way because it is so frequently used to deny the existence of any truth whatsoever, or to simply dismiss the need for conversation. What is the point of talking if we each have our own truth and we can't really hope to understand each other?

But I have had the experience of sitting with people who have heard my messages and then listened as they tell me what they just heard, and thought to myself, "We are not living in the same world." Sanquin and Spiral Dynamics would say that we are living out of different colors. There is a certain sense in which this does feel elitist, particularly if I presume that they are understanding at a lower level than me. And would I, I wonder, know it if I was the one who was at the lower level? I think not.

I would like to believe, as well, that we are evolving spiritually. I don't think human nature changes but I hope that human values are evolving towards a higher plane. I think the evidence supports this view; after-all there is no one in the western world today who sanctions slavery. No one can deny, I think, that we still have the capacity to do great evil, and our progress has given us the technology to inflict irreparable harm on the earth and its inhabitants, but I think our sights have been raised in terms of what it means to be human and a member of spaceship Earth.

This whole concept does raise an interesting question of whether someone like the Buddha or Jesus was able to transcend the highest values system of their day? Were they just the most enlightened individuals within their day, but still bound by the limits of their (Blue) worldview? Or were they already seeing and living at the highest (Turquoise) level. My guess is that with Spiral Dynamics the answer would be that they were bound by the worldview of their day. I would tend to agree. I just don't think it is very helpful to blame Jesus or Buddha, or Paul, for not knowing everything and getting everything right. It is enough for me to let them be truly inspired visionaries for their day and admit that they were wrong about some things, from the perspective of our more evolved worldview.

Packing Heat in Church

A Kentucky pastor is inviting his congregants to bring their guns to church on the Saturday before the Fourth of July:

"We're just going to celebrate the upcoming theme of the birth of our nation," said pastor Ken Pagano. "And we're not ashamed to say that there was a strong belief in God and firearms — without that this country wouldn't be here."

I just came across this quote in the wonderful book by Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate:

This brand of piety is horrified by the sight of the female breast, but considerably less appalled by the obscene inequalities between rich and poor. It laments the death of a fetus, but is apparently undisturbed by the burning to death of children in Iraq or Afghanistan in the name of U. S. global dominion. By and large, it worships a God fashioned blasphemously in its own image--a clean-shaven, short-haired, gun-toting, sexually obsessive God with a special regard for that ontologically privileged place of the globe just south of Canada and north of Mexico, rather than the Yahweh who is homeless, faceless, stateless, and imageless, who prods his people out of their comfortable settlement into the trackless terrors of the desert, and who brusquely informs them that their burnt offerings stink in his nostrils.

But maybe he finds the smell of gun powder pleasing.

In the Garden

Not the hymn. My garden this evening. I went out to fill the bird feeders and surprised a baby Pine Siskin. In 16 years of living here we have never had Pine Siskins at our feeders but since early spring we have had lots of them. I have counted as many as 15 in our yard. Their normal summer breeding range is northern MN up through Canada. But some of them are apparently breeding in the southern part of the state near our home.

The baby flew towards our deck and grabbed hold of one of the Clematis climbing along the deck. It hung upside down for a few moments in a comical position until it gathered itself and beat its wings enough to drop without injury to the ground. I walked down and knelt next to it; it didn't move until I reached out my hand. It flew back up under the feeder. So I went and got my camera.



















When I came back out it was still there, eating thistle seeds. Since I had the camera outside I took a few other pictures. The Siberian Iris is in full bloom.



















The Bleeding Heart was pretty much spent; it was beautiful this year.



















I walked up the hill to check out some of our newest plantings and then walked over to see the neighbor's garden. There was a rabbit inside the "rabbit-proof" fence. She effortlessly jumped the fence and ran away. I knew she was a she because I caught her digging a burrow for birthing her babies. I walked down the hill and did a circle around the house and then walked back up the hill. She had returned and was ready to sneak back in, through a small break in the fence.



















I snapped a picture and left her alone. In the garden this evening. And She walks with me and She talks with me...

Finding and Keeping Community

My newsletter article this week:

Rod Dreher is a conservative (political and religious) commentator for the Dallas Morning News and he has a blog at beliefnet. I often disagree with him but routinely find his writing to be thought-provoking.

Recently he had a post on what it means to be "local." Buying local, supporting local farms and businesses is all the rage right now. And, he says, rightly so. It makes environmental and economic sense to buy support what is local.

He notes, though, that buying local rarely gets paired with living local. He ruminates on his own move away from the local town he grew up in. He felt stifled there as a child and couldn't wait to move away. He loves living in the big city, Dallas for him, with its culture and convenience.

He knows, though, that something has been lost. That something is a sense of rootedness and community. Particularly since becoming a father he been working to create more of that "local" reality in his trans-local world. It is, he says, one of the reasons he joined a church.

I feel Rod's pain. I wouldn't want to live in the small town I grew up in. I love the city with its many opportunities and amenities. But it seems more difficult to find and create community. Although, and this is why I say it seems, I am not so sure it is all that easy in small towns anymore either. I am not so sure the sense of rootedness I sometimes feel nostalgic for is readily to be found anywhere in America today.

I think we have gone far down a cultural road of individualism and consumerism that makes finding and keeping community more difficult. I think both liberal and conservative values in their current forms contribute to this problem. Liberals celebrate individual choice and rights, which ultimately are considered to be of higher value than community. Because individual choice rules, we can choose to be part of a community or not; we can drop out, take a break, do our own thing. Because I am the final arbiter of truth, "my truth," the community doesn't have much authority. (Authority, legitimate authority, is power we grant to the community by virtue of our participation and our engagement in a community search for truth.) For community to work there has to be a middle ground between my way or the highway and the illegitimate authority of a cult-like group. You have to be able and encouraged to think for yourself; you have to want to participate. But you also have to be willing to make some commitment to the community you value and keep it. Liberal values of individualism, choice, rights, sampling the smorgasbord of life sometimes make this difficult.

Conservatives, on the other hand, consistently celebrate and support an economic system that destroys locality and community. The free market sends goods and services and people all around the world. It is virtually impossible to grow up in one place and find a job in the same place and live ones life in one community. The economy is dynamic; jobs and businesses are created and destroyed. It sounds wonderful in theory, but it kills community. In addition, the free-hand of the market rewards Wal-Marts and Targets and mega-malls and puts out of business small town and big city main streets and mom and pop shops. Even the locals who live in small towns drive to the nearest Wal-Mart to get the best deal. You can't blame them, but it just contributes to the loss of stable jobs and stable communities. I am continually amazed at the missed irony of conservatives who trumpet family values while extolling the wonders of the free market as it exists today.

When we started Open Circle some 16 years ago we wanted to create a community where people with progressive spiritual values could find a home, and find that sense of connectedness and rootedness that is not always easy to find anywhere today. I continue to be gratified by individuals and families who find a home at Open Circle and give something of themselves to make it a community. But it remains a challenge, given the cultural climate. I am not complaining, mind you; I am just calling it like I see it.

I hope to see you at our community meal this Sunday.

progress and Progress

Do you believe in progress? How about Progress? I read a post recently, and can't find it at the moment, about the difference between believing in progress and Progress. Little p progress refers to the scientific and technological advances that we have made over the centuries. We have clearly made this kind of progress. Life today is easier and by most any measure better than it was 100 years ago and much better than it was 500 years ago. It's hard not to believe in little p progress.

Big P Progress refers to human nature. Have we made Progress as moral creatures? Is human nature any different today than it was 1000 years ago? The argument made was that no, we have not made any Progress. Humans are as sinful and capable of depravity today as they have ever been. The example given was Hitler and his concentration camps, as evil a regime and as awful a treatment of fellow humans as there has ever been in history. Two thousand years after the time of Jesus and nothing has changed about human nature. No Progress.

I can almost go along with this line of thinking. Almost, but not quite. It is true that Hitler is a vivid reminder that there is still, and always, within the human heart the capacity for great evil. But it is also true that Hitler was defeated, the concentration camps closed and then re-opened as memorials to remind us that that we must never again allow this to happen. There was another more enlightened moral vision that rejected tyranny and that saw human dignity in every person, regardless of race or religion. People around the world rallied to that higher vision and fought to defeat Hitler.

It has not always been so in the western world. For much of western history kings and princes, often working in tandem with popes and religious leaders, ruled with a tyrannical iron fist. Democracy was a thing unheard of. Human life was cheap. Slavery was commonplace. Torture was practiced by church and state alike. Bigotry, racism, and sexism were endemic even among the most educated.

None of that is true today, with a few Cheney-like exceptions. We have made not only progress; we have made Progress. Our sights have been raised about what it means to be human and a member of the human race; we expect more from ourselves and others. Yes, it is still true that the capacity for great evil is there within us, and it is also true that we could lose the Progress we have made in our moral vision without constant vigilance and a continued dedication to teaching and practicing goodness and virtue, but the Progress we have made as a moral human community is real. Life is better, in little p ways and big P ways.

Gay Rights and the Faithful

Rod Dreher wants supporters of gay marriage rights to be upfront about the fact that this unfolding legal reality is going to impinge on the rights of religious people who oppose gay marriage:

It's coming. And you may be one of those people who thinks this is a good thing, a just result. If so, then defend that -- just don't pretend that there won't be big sacrifices required of the faithful. When an Orthodox Jewish university is compelled by the state to allow same-sex couples access to married student housing, that's a very big deal.

The faithful? I have same sex couple in my congregation who have been in faithful committed relations with each other for years and faithful Christians and members of a church for many years as well. Some of the faithful have been making big sacrifices for many years.

Christians and Torture

Via Rod Dreher:

Here's a shocker: a new Pew poll finds that Christians support torture more than non-believers do. What's more, Evangelicals are more pro-torture than white mainline Protestants and white non-Hispanic Catholics -- but that Catholics and Evangelicals are more pro-torture than average Americans.

And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!

What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.

Very sad indeed.

Safe, Legal, and Early

Over at Beliefnet, Steve Waldman takes note of a curious statistic in the abortion debate:

According to a 2007 survey commissioned by a progressive think tank called Third Way, 69 percent of Americans believe abortion is the "taking of a human life," but 72 percent believe it should be legal.

Let that soak in. Most people think abortion is taking a human life and yet favor the procedure being legal...

Waldman ponders what this means. He suggests that Americans are not immoral or inconsistent, but believe that there are gradations to human life. While most Americans believe that a 6 week old fetus is really a human life, they are more comfortable with the idea of aborting a 6 week old fetus that is is no bigger than a poppy seed, even though it has a beating heart, than they are aborting a 26 week old one that is almost certainly viable outside the womb.

Bill Clinton gave us "safe, legal, and rare" which captures the position of many people in the middle of the abortion debate. But Waldman wonders if we might find more common ground between pro-choice and pro-life activists and find a way to turn down the dial on the culture wars if we found a way to made our abortion laws and policies support a "safe, legal, and early" philosophy. Make abortion easy in the first trimester, more difficult in the second, and nearly impossible in the third unless the mother's life is in danger.

This kind of policy, he says, would require compromises from both sides:

My fantasy is that if the political system embraced the safe-legal-early doctrine, a few activists might even accept the legitimacy of part of their opponents' argument. Pro-choicers who accepted this framework would be implicitly conceding that, for at least part of the pregnancy, there's a "baby" in the womb--and the woman's right to terminate that life is neither absolute nor nine months in duration. With early abortions not only legal but easier, pro-choice activists could then have the confidence to accept what many of them have publicly avoided but privately wanted: reasonable, tightly written prohibitions on third trimester abortions while genuinely protecting the life of the mother.

Open minded pro-lifers would take note of these concessions from their "enemies," viewing them as a sign that these pro-choicers--far from being hideous baby killers--fully embrace a moral dimension to the abortion decision.

Meanwhile, any pro-lifers who accept this framework would be making a concession, too. They'd be saying, in effect, that if the other side can concede that something precious is alive - and becoming more alive with each day - then they could, in turn, acknowledge that reasonable people, of different faiths, can disagree about when exactly that baby becomes alive enough to have legal rights.

Open minded pro-choicers would take note of these concessions, feeling less condemned and more respected.

Would this work? I doubt that many pro-life or pro-choice activists would go along. If you are pro-life and hold religious convictions about when life begins a policy that works just to shift the amount of abortions to an earlier moment in the term doesn't change the facts on the ground. Most pro-choice activists I know adhere to a hard-line on choice issues in political battles but are willing to concede in private conversations that they are not as comfortable with late-term abortions. But their over-riding concern is to protect choice - women control their own bodies - and they fear any compromise that might begin to chisel away at what they consider to be a hard-fought-for right.

My own preference, since I am pro-choice and pro-life but believe that there are indeed gradations of human life in the womb, would be to keep the goal "safe, legal, and rare" and do the work we need to do in religious communities and in our society to support mothers and children in such a way that abortion isn't viewed as a necessary choice. At the same time I could support Waldman's idea of making birth control, Plan B, RU-486, and abortion in the first trimester as accessible and easy as possible so that more unplanned pregnancies are avoided or ended, if that choice is made, as early as possible.

Healing

This post on Beliefnet.com today couldn't have come at a better time!
I'm reposting it for anyone else who has ever been hurt...including by a former church.

Jesus Dying at the Movies

Over at GetReligion Douglas LeBlanc draws favorable attention to an essay by Joshua Land that looks beyond the culture war response to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and appreciates them both for their artistic vision and message, different as they were.

LeBlanc offers up two snippets from the article, the first about Gibson's movie:

With the notable exceptions of Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line) as Jesus and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene, the cast is composed mostly of little-known actors, but far more problematic from a commercial standpoint was Gibson’s decision to shoot the film entirely in the languages of the first century — Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic — only agreeing to English subtitles after some resistance. The overall look and tone of the film, as well as its content, are closer to those of a medieval Passion Play than to anything else in contemporary cinema. The chiaroscuro-heavy visual style is derived from Baroque painting, particularly the work of Caravaggio, whom Gibson and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel have cited as an influence.

… But whatever one thinks of The Passion of the Christ, Gibson deserves more credit than he’s gotten for refusing to compromise his singular vision, to the point of risking some $30 million of his own money. That the film wound up grossing more than 10 times that amount at the domestic box office in no way negates the fact that its maker conceded nothing to commercial considerations. Indeed, it’s safe to say that for many millions of viewers, The Passion of the Christ is the only true art film they’ll ever see.

I am not sure exactly what qualifies as a "true art film." I can appreciate, though, the comparison made between Gibson's movie and the medieval Passion Play, both of which focus heavily on the suffering of Jesus. And I can also appreciate the fact that for many Christians, the suffering and blood and death of Jesus is the whole point, or one half of the whole point along with the resurrection, of their Christian faith. But it is precisely because this is so that I don't think Gibson was risking very much by making this movie. It may very well be where his faith is centered too, and he wanted to give artistic expression to his faith. But I don't think there was ever any doubt that a movie made by Gibson about the suffering of Jesus would wind up grossing more than 10 times what Gibson put up of his own money.

The Last Temptation of Christ was most visibly controversial because of its portrayal of Jesus having impure thoughts about the women in his life. But according to Land that was not the most controversial aspect of the story. LeBlanc gives us this paragraph from Land's essay about this movie:

Far more disturbing to the discerning viewer is the film’s highly unorthodox vision of who Jesus is. Both the Kazantzakis novel and the Schrader screenplay begin by pondering the central mystery of Christianity, the Incarnation — the notion that Jesus was simultaneously fully human and fully divine. The subject has been a matter of intense theological controversy since the early days of Christianity but the Kazantzakis-Schrader version of Jesus is clearly skewed toward the human end of the spectrum. The Jesus of The Last Temptation of Christ is a Nietzschean superman who struggles to overcome fear, doubt, and self-loathing, and only gradually becomes aware of his divine nature and purpose on earth. When we first see him, he is making crosses for the Romans to use for the execution of Jewish prisoners. Prone to sudden seizures, he’s a masochist who wears a belt of nails to punish himself for his sins — much closer in spirit to Scorsese’s Jake La Motta than to anything resembling God in the flesh.

I suppose this is why I like this movie the most of all the Jesus movies I have seen. Because I think that this is the way, the only way, it works. For Jesus and for us. We become divine gradually, if we become divine at all, as we struggle to overcome our fear, doubt, and self-loathing. Jesus didn't become less human in this process, though. He became more human, more deeply human, and hence he also became more divine.

The whole Land essay is interesting and worth a read. I came away from it with a greater appreciation for Mel Gibson's movie especially. But I'll take Kazantzakis' and Scorsese's vision of Jesus over Gibson's any day. I guess that makes me a highly unorthodox Christian.

The Resurrection of Jimmy Carter

In the last few days I have seen two bloggers, conservative Rod Dreher and progressive Kevin Mattson, recall and praise Jimmy Carter's famous (or infamous) "malaise" speech and lay claim to it as a conservative, no progressive, statement of values.

You may recall that Carter delivered the speech to a national television audience on July 15, 1979. The country was in the midst of a national energy crisis. Carter had cut short a vacation after truckers and residents had rioted in Levittown, PA to protest fuel costs and rampant inflation. Carter came home and called a national summit of leaders to talk about the country's challenges. Ten days later he delivered the speech. In it he said:

I know, of course, being president, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

He suggested that there were two possible paths ahead:

...One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

He then proposed a series of steps to be taken to address the energy crisis. These steps included finding and using more domestic sources of energy. including both drilling and the expansion of solar power, and he called for major conservation efforts. He challenged every person to make personal sacrifices to use less energy and he called on the Legislature to bring him legislation mandating various forms of conservation.

So was it a conservative speech or a progressive speech?

Here is conservative Dreher at Beliefnet:

This was not the speech of some America-hating leftist. Carter did not try to tear down the country, he simply wanted it to come together and direct itself toward a goal other than unlimited growth or unending progress. As Andrew Bacevich points out in The New American Militarism, the president recognized the high cost of empire:

In July of 1979, Carter already anticipated that a continuing and unchecked thirst for imported oil was sure to distort U.S. strategic priorities with unforeseen but adverse consequences. He feared the impact of that distortion on American democracy still reeling from the effects of the 1960s. So he summoned his fellow citizens to change course, to choose self-sufficiency and self-reliance and therefore true independence but at a cost of collective sacrifice and lowered expectations.

Self-sufficiency, discipline, sacrifice, conservation, independence, the striving for meaning and purpose beyond material wealth. All of these characteristics were once associated with conservatism, and they were all part of a speech given by a man who was naval officer, farmer and large landowner, small businessman, Sunday school teacher, and Southerner. Does this not sound the background of a conservative?

Here is progressive Mattson at The American Prospect:

You might have heard that the speech was a disaster. That it was all about Jimmy Carter, the "loser" president, shirking his responsibilities. Sean Wilentz writes in The Age of Reagan, "Carter appeared to be abdicating his role as leader and blaming the people themselves for their own afflictions." This interpretation is repeated countless times in history textbooks.

But in fact, the speech worked. It prompted an overwhelmingly favorable response. Carter received a whopping 11 percent rise in his poll numbers. The mail that poured into the White House testified that many citizens felt moved by the speech. One man wrote to Carter, "You are the first politician that [sic] has said the words that I have been thinking for years. Last month I purchased a moped to drive to work with. I plan to use it as much as possible, and by doing so I have cut my gas consumption by 75%."

In the end, Jimmy Carter did blow the situation, but it wasn't because of the speech itself. Rather, he blew the opportunity that the speech opened up for him. Just two days after July 15, Carter fired his Cabinet, signifying a governmental meltdown. The president's poll numbers sank again as confusion and disarray took over. Carter could give a great speech, but there were two things he couldn't manage: to govern well enough to make his language buoy him or to find a way to yoke the energy crisis with concrete civic re-engagement initiatives. Though Americans were inspired by the speech, many were still stumped as to what was expected of them. As Time magazine described it: "The President basked in the applause for a day and then set in motion his astounding purge, undoing much of the good he had done himself."

Short-term losses, though, sometimes hide long-term opportunities. Today that language of civic sacrifice resonates even more powerfully, after eight years of conservative rule grounded in talk about the virtues of free markets and self-interest. Carter's vision of humbled leadership and engaged citizenship also contrasts nicely with the hubris of George W. Bush. A vision of government and citizens working together to overcome a crisis might offer progressives a way to set realistic expectations about what government can and cannot do. It would seem that our current president has started to learn that lesson.

What strikes me after reading Carter's speech again and then the comments of Dreher and Mattson is how in modern understanding both terms conservative and liberal has become unmoored from their meaningful roots.

What does it mean to be a conservative today? For the last eight years it has meant letting the financial markets run free so the rich can get richer and it has meant using America's military power to extend its empire under the guise of defending freedom and promoting democracy in the world. What is conservative about any of that? "Free markets" is a core conservative value, but where in the free market orgy that we have recently experienced were the values of thrift, self-discipline, conservation, sacrifice, honor? These were once known as conservative values too. And where in the Iraq misadventure was any sense of the limits of power, any acknowledgment that fallen human nature cannot just be remade with guns and money? Nothing so demonstrated George Bush's unhingement from anything conservative when he championed a free election in Palestine and then was surprised that the democratically elected government turned out to be Hamas. Democracy doesn't just happen with an election. Any conservative knows this. Culture and tradition can't just be changed overnight.

To their credit progressives have historically been consistent champions of personal freedom. Civil Rights for minorities, equal rights for women, gay rights, workers rights, etc. At its best the progressive vision has worked to remove barriers to equal access and level the playing field so that everyone has an opportunity. But an opportunity to do what? To shop? To have bigger homes and cars and TVs? Too often the progressive message has lacked a connection with a larger vision that we are trying to build something worthwhile here. We are removing shackles and barriers so we can build heaven on earth, so we can create more healthy communities, a more livable planet, a more just social order. But when individual freedom is detached from social vision, we are free to check out and watch TV. Community service and civic engagement are core progressive values. It takes a village to raise a child, but the villagers have to come out of their homes.

It isn't surprising to me that a conservative and a progressive would both claim Jimmy Carter as one of their own. He was both conservative and progressive. He embodied the conservative values Rod Dreher named: "self-sufficiency, discipline, sacrifice, conservation, independence, the striving for meaning and purpose beyond material wealth." But he also believed in the progressive vision that we could put those conservative values to work to bring meaningful and lasting change to our society. He supported the onward march of personal freedom and continued to work tirelessly long after he left the White House to give others the chance to have a piece of the economic and political pie. But the key here is that although he was free himself he continued to work on behalf of the others. Personal freedom connected to social vision.

In any case I am glad to see Jimmy Carter getting another hearing. His 1976 presidential campaign was the first one I worked on and it pained me to watch him be tarred and feathered as his presidency wore on. I have long since come to see that he was not a great President; he was not just a victim of circumstances beyond his control like the hostage crisis that finally undid him. He had a good vision of where the country needed to go, but he lacked the skills to move that vision forward. He ran a brilliant campaign in 1975 but he did not run a brilliant White House. The "malaise" speech, though, was brilliant; it was the follow-up that wasn't.

Too Busy to Pray?

Information Age Prayer can help:

Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.

We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying. Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen.

For $3.95 a month they have you covered. Unless you aren't Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or Unaffiliated. If you click on the "Other Religions" tab you get:

We apologize but other religions are not yet supported.

It occurs to me that this might be how God is able to keep track of the billions of prayers coming his/her way.

Moms a Bulldog and an Archangel

Quinn Bradley is the son of Newsweek writer Sally Quinn and former Washington Post publisher Benjamin Bradlee. Quinn lives with a congenital birth defect, Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome. In the current edition of Newsweek he talks about his illness and writes this about his mom:

… pretty soon after I was born, my doctor detected a heart murmur, and when I was about three months old, I had to have open-heart surgery. I think this was a pretty crappy time for my parents. They thought I might die, and I could have died. My mom says the night before my heart operation was one of the worst nights of her life. She wasn’t allowed to nurse me. She could barely even hold me. When they took me into the operating room the next day, she basically fainted.

… She’s a very powerful woman. She’s like a bulldog, or a lioness. You don’t want to mess with her. She has controlled a lot of my life. Sometimes I’m angry about that, because I feel I’m in the passenger seat of the car and I have to ride wherever the driver wants me to go. Sometimes I feel as if I have no freedom.

But there is a flip side to everything. And there is truth in everything that we say. I couldn’t have lived without my mom. She’s saved my ass a million times. She has been like an archangel to me. She had the wings that I didn’t. And she’s basically carried me everywhere I’ve been.

Just a nice, uplifting piece. Via GetReligion