It's Getting Harder and Harder to Hate Walmart

So says Michelle Harvey, who is in charge of working with Walmart on agriculture programs at the local Environmental Defense Fund office. This article in the new edition of The Atlantic tells the story of Wal-Mart's big move into supporting local farmers to bring fresh and local produce to its stores:

I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.

The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.

As the article points out it remains to be seen what affect this will have on local economies and other grocers but if there is any business with the heft and the skill to make bringing local farm produce to grocer work on a massive scale it is Walmart. And if they do it will be good for the farmers and for our health and wallets. It is getting harder and harder to hate Walmart.

Egg in Plastic

I read the blog of Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein for his political commentary, but a couple of days ago he posted this video of how to poach an egg in plastic wrap. I tried it this morning. I learned that it is important to drop the egg into the middle of the pan of water without letting the plastic touch the side of the pan because when I wasn't careful about this the plastic melted against the pan and the egg slipped out into the water. It is amazing to me that the plastic doesn't melt in the boiling water. I will try it again tomorrow morning.

Snow Days

Heavy snow in the east makes the evening news, but here in the north snow is a minor nuisance for driving when it is falling and otherwise a part of everyday life. I love the snow. I can't imagine living in warm climates where there is none. This is my idea of a white sandy beach:















I was out snow-shoeing at Ritter Farm yesterday. The temperature was 15 degrees. The sun was out. There is nothing quite like the feel of cold weather. You know you are alive when you feel the cold air on your face and in your lungs as you inhale. And you also know that without proper clothing and protection you could pretty quickly not be alive. My hands were numbed in just the few minutes it took me to get my snow shoes on. It didn't take long walking to warm them up and by the end of my walk I was wet with sweat and carrying my gloves.

Our snow of a couple days ago had freshened everything up. I should have had my camera along the day before when there were no other tracks and when the groomed trail had just been refreshed.















I spooked a deer out of its bed but couldn't get the camera on it before it was out of sight. I apparently missed an angel touch down as well.

What Does CBS Stand For?

Let's hear it for the raging grannies:



HT: TPM

Caucus Lite

Two years ago I was a precinct organizer at my local caucuses and there was no parking available at the high school and it was standing room only in the classroom where members of my precinct gathered. Last night in the same classroom I was joined by 6 others from my precinct. I guess it can't be Easter Sunday every week.

It's Not All About Us

One of the bloggers I read is Drew Tatusko. Yesterday he had a post on the subject of original sin, raising the question of how Christian theology frames the doctrine of original sin when we no longer believe as the ancients did that sin was in some way biologically passed from generation to generation.

I am not much interested in arguing about original sin. What caught my attention was this part of Drew's post:

Time to get rid of total depravity and listen to the restoration movement and the teaching of John Cassian which offer a more elegantly simple and rational explanation for why we are so mean to each other sometimes and why animals have to survive by eating other animals and having lots of sex. Simply put, only God is perfect and so, the world and all that is in it was never perfect.

I am not familiar with the teaching of John Cassian. But I am interested in thinking about the question why if God is perfect the world is not perfect? Why if God is perfect, did this imperfect world happen? Why did God let it happen? I asked this question in comments on Drew's blog:

What I am missing here - and I am probably just dense - is how we get from a perfect God to an imperfect world? Not just fallen humanity, but earthquakes in Haiti. Did God just light the spark to start it all and then sit back and watch for humanity to get here billions of years later? Letting us evolve with the freedom to not be who we were created to be is somewhat troubling but workable. We at least have some choice in the matter. But what for God is the joy, point, purpose of being perfect and allowing or creating a universe to go on for billions of years that is so unpredictable and that involves so much suffering for all God's creatures.

Or is the perfect God just a metaphorical opposite of all the world is not?

There was no response to this question; the comments focused on the question of original sin, which was after all what Drew had posted about. The issue of original sin is important in Christian history and theology. Sometimes when I read these discussions, though, I think back to having toddlers in the house and those moments when they act and think as if they are the center of the universe even though they have only been on the planet for two years.

The earth is 4.5 billion years old. The first reptiles appeared 300 million years ago; mammals 75 million years ago; apes 35 million years ago and apelike humans 10 million years ago; homo sapiens a mere 200,000 years ago. Sometime in what seems like our distant past modern humans became aware of our mortality, our propensity to do harm to ourselves and others, and the idea that there might be a God up there who made us. And we began to wonder why God made us this way and whether we did something wrong somewhere along the way to screw things up.

But long before we were here - and I mean long in the sense that if you are thinking of the passing of a 24 hour day and at one minute before midnight we showed up thinking of ourselves as if the world revolves around us - there were plants and animals and there has been one very long history of life and death and suffering in our world. That predates us and our johny-come-lately worries by millions of years. Why? If God is perfect and God created it all, why?

By focusing on the question of original sin and what part we might play in our own suffering, I think we too easily let God off the hook. God gave us a choice and we made a mess of things, and so in some cosmic scheme of justice it makes sense that we are getting what we deserve. Or so the thinking goes. Even this idea is problematic but at least we can understand the kind of thinking that suggests that our suffering is somehow the result of our own bad choices. It is not God's fault; it is ours. God doesn't want to punish us, but has to be fair. It is for our own good, but God really loves us. That is why he sent us Jesus. And so it goes on and on and it is all about us.

What about the suffering of animals? What about that lamb that experiences a moment of fear and then intense pain when the lion bites into its neck? Did the lamb do something to deserve this fate? Why must it suffer? Where is God in this suffering?

To me this is a much more profound line of questioning to pose to and about God than why we humans are so nasty to each other. Why would a perfect God create a world where for millions of years on end all God's creatures endure pain and suffering? What is the joy in that? Is it really all for the glory of God?

In any case, it's not all about us.

Final Season of Lost Promises To Make Lost Fans More Annoying Than Ever

Final Season Of 'Lost' Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever

Beer and Healthcare Reform

I like beer; I support health care reform; this commercial combines them and nicely captures my sentiments:



Hat tip Andrew Sullivan

A Pact with the Devil

Pat Robertson has taken a widely deserved verbal pounding for his comments that the residents live in perpetual misery because they made a pact with the devil in order to gain their freedom from the French.

I actually think there is a grain of truth in Robertson's statement. I would suggest that there was in fact a "pact with the devil" made that sealed Haiti's future in perpetual suffering. That pact wasn't made by the residents of Haiti, though, but by the French and the British and the United States in a devil's deal that brought black slaves and their "free" labor from Africa to Haiti and the rest of the America's in exchange for white people's wealth.

The residents of Haiti who kicked out the French in 1804 were slaves. The native Americans on the island that now is divided into the Dominican Republic and Haiti had long ago been killed off by colonists or the diseases brought to the island by the colonists. The French gained control of the western half of the island from Spain in 1697 and named it Saint-Dominique. The French immediately began importing African slaves to the island to work the sugar fields. By the 1740's Saint-Dominique and Jamaica were the world's top suppliers of sugar. Saint-Dominique was making France very rich.

On the back of slaves. By 1789 twenty nine thousand African slaves were arriving each year in Saint-Dominique. One in three would be dead within three years. So the slaves kept pouring in. Slaves outnumbered natives and Europeans 8 to 1. In 1791 they revolted.:"The signal to begin the revolt was given by Dutty Boukman, a high priest of vodou and leader of the Maroon slaves, during a religious ceremony at Bois Caïman on the night of August 14." Robertson's pact with the devil.

It took more than a decade of rebellion and the continuing weakening of France on the world stage, but in 1804 the independent country of Haiti was born. The French, though, exacted a terrible price for giving up this prized sugar fix. They posted warships off the island and isolated Haiti for 21 years. They were aided by the Americans and British who were aghast at the dangerous idea of a successful revolt of slaves. Finally in 1825 the government of Haiti agreed to take out a loan with a French bank to compensate France for the loss of its sugar and its slaves. The amount of the loan was enormous and crippling. It was twice what the United States government had just paid France for the Louisiana Purchase. Paying off that debt impoverished Haiti for more than 100 years; in some years Haiti was paying 80% of its annual revenues to service its debt. It wasn't paid in full until 1947.

That was just the beginning of Haiti's debt woes which continue up to this day. And it only tells part of the story of Haiti's misery that also includes repeated invasion and occupation by the US, corrupt and cruel dictatorships, and natural disasters.

The people of Haiti are a resilient people. And they remain proud of their legacy of being the only country in history born of a successful slave revolt. With aid pouring in from around the world there is hope this time that the country can get a clean start, with new infrastructure, new jobs, and, for once, no debt. The nations of the western world owe it to Haiti to forgive it its debt and help it rebuild.

Let's not forget who it really was that made a pact with the devil that put Haiti on the path to perpetual misery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/186/34476.html

Free Market Disaster Relief

Our congregation is responding to the disaster in Haiti by turning our Souper Bowl day into a day of making health kits for Church World Service. The Church of the Brethren is one of the founding denominations of CWS and like many congregations in many denominations we channel much of our disaster relief response through CWS.

Meanwhile many individuals are donating through the Red Cross text-messaging appeal. Mennonite Central Committee is on the ground in Haiti, as is Food for the Hungry. Global Aid Network and Samaritan's Purse are there for those who wish to channel their giving through more evangelical outlets. And I am sure this is just the tip of the ice berg of agencies working in Haiti.

What I wonder is how it all works logistically? Do these agencies coordinate with each other? Do they work in their respective niches? Do they compete? Would there be a better way of doing it? Maybe there is so much need that it doesn't matter; anywhere you put up a tent with food or medicine you will be overwhelmed. But with all the email appeals I am getting from various organizations and all the media appeals it makes me wonder how it all works on the ground.

Meanwhile there is a certain irony that none of it works very well until this other organization arrives on the scene to coordinate logistics.

After Massachusetts

Ezra Klein speaks my sentiments:

For now, it's worth observing that a Democratic Party that would abandon their central initiative this quickly isn't a Democratic Party that deserves to hold power. If they don't believe in the importance of their policies, why should anyone who's skeptical change their mind? If they're not interested in actually passing their agenda, why should voters who agree with Democrats on the issues work to elect them? A commitment provisional on Ted Kennedy not dying and Martha Coakley not running a terrible campaign is not much of a commitment at all.

A whole year has been spent (lost?) getting us closer than we have ever been on health care overhaul. The House needs to pass the Senate bill as it is and then make changes through the reconciliation process. If they let a special election kill their signature issue when they are this close to getting it done, they don't deserve to be running the country.

Where is God in Haiti?

In religious communities disasters on the magnitude of Haiti inevitably bring up questions about God and suffering. Why does God allow suffering to happen? What kind of God would allow suffering like this to happen? Some people look at the stories of miraculous rescues coming out of Haiti and see the hand of God; others look at the enormous magnitude of the suffering and question if there even is a God. The great disparity of responses was illustrated by two neighbors in Haiti as reported in a USA article:

"It's a miracle," said Anne-Marie Morel, raising her arms to the sky after a neighbor was found alive in the rubble of a home. If one person could be resuscitated from the utter destruction of this street, there remained hope that many other could still be found alive, she said.

"Nonsense, there is no God and no miracle," shouted back Remi Polevard, another neighbor, who said his five children were somewhere under the nearby debris.

"How could he do this to us?" Polevard yelled.

I think spontaneous expressions of gratitude for miraculous rescues and cures is perfectly understandable. It is problematic, though, to raise this kind of emotional response to the level of universal principle. Does God really spare one person's family member and take another? What kind of God would that be?

In the face of great tragedy we each have to find our own answers to these deep questions that haunt our thinking about God and our faith. For me, it was precisely my inability to find a satisfactory answer to the God and suffering question that led me to believe that there is no all-powerful God with his or her hands on the levers of our lives. What kind of all-powerful God would allow suffering like this to happen - not the kind of suffering we bring on ourselves by our own poor choices but the kind of suffering that falls on innocent people? And if there was such an all-powerful God who is allowing, or causing, this kind of misery on the planet, this God would not be worthy of our worship. Or so I believe.

What I see when undeserved suffering washes over people is the absence of God. There is no one out there or up there. We are alone in the universe.

Or not quite. We have each other. We suffer together and we flourish together. And it seems that when we throw our hearts and minds into tending to the suffering and nurturing ourselves to health and wellness we experience the joys and sorrows of life together and this makes us feel the presence of hope and love and… God.

I do not think there is any satisfactory philosophical answer to the question of why more than 200,000 have died in Haiti and where in the name of God is God. The only satisfactory answer is found in doing something about the suffering, becoming the hands and heart of God.

Take that America's Team

This Steeler's fan is happy for the hometown Vikings.

Lost Supper

Over at GetReligion Terry Mattingly isn't too happy with the folks at Entertainment Weekly for their take on this last season promotional picture for Lost. Here is the quote from Entertainment Weekly:

FUN FACT! The Last Supper — Jesus’ final meal with his disciples before his crucifixion — is commemorated by Christians through the sacrament of Communion, the eating of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection. Some Christians believe that when you eat the bread and drink the wine, the stuff actually converts into the body and blood of Jesus during digestion, although their appearances remain the same. (Which explains the weird carpentry aftertaste.) This miraculous conversion is known by a fancy term: Transubstantiation, ”the conversion of one substance into another.” Example sentence: ”If Jack’s ”Jughead” plans works, he and the castaways will be transubstantiated into a new reality.”

Here is Terry Mattingly's response:

After reading this, please express your opinion on the following: The entertainment-magazine journalists who wrote and edited this tidbit were:

(a) Ignorant.

(b) Unprofessional.

(c) Silly and childish.

(d) Intentionally setting out to blaspheme a doctrine of ancient Christianity and, thus, to insult millions of believers.

(e) Counting on the fact that Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox believers and Anglo-Catholics would not blow up their building.

(f) All of the above.

Thank you for your time. Many GetReligion readers will now want to go outside and scream.

Are there really Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglo-Catholics who would blow up a building because someone is making fun of their religious beliefs?

My guess is that the writers at Entertainment Weekly are irreligious and ignorant about not only the content of specific beliefs but about the dead(ly?) seriousness with which some believers take their religion here in America. They probably grew up watching Monti Python's Life of Brian and thought it was funny. And thought it was OK to poke fun at religion in our part of the world.

I think it really isn't OK for writers, even of fluffy entertainment magazines, to be ignorant about the subjects they write about. If they are going to write about transubstantiation they should at least make an effort to know what it means.

But I don't have any problem poking fun at anyone's religion or politics, mine included. If we can't take a little ribbing about our beliefs, which don't make always seem logical or make sense, then we have a pretty shallow kind of faith.

And we shouldn't be outraged or offended or surprised by mockery and humor about religion in this post-Christian age. It's actually good for us. Why do we believe what we believe? How can we explain it to people who don't understand? It helps us think more deeply about what our faith. No more mindless repeating of creeds or doctrines without knowing what they mean and without being able to explain them to someone who has no idea what you are talking about.

And if they don't want to understand, well we can rest in the comfort that they are going to burn in hell. Just kidding; I don't believe in any hell that is not of our own making here on earth.

Lighten up people! Or Get Lost!

Satan Offended by Pat Robertson

The best letter to the editor in the Star Tribune in response to Pat Robertson's inanity:

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll. You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan

Lily Coyle is identified as the letter writer.

Pot Calling Kettle

Dunker Journal links approvingly to these comments by Peter J. Leithart in Touchstone Magazine:

Gender-neutral names for God look so innocuous. What could be wrong with baptizing in the name of “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier”?

As Paul would say, much in every way. To name the First Person as “Creator” is to name him in relation to the world, and so too with “Redeemer” and “Sanctifier” for the Second and Third Person. But God isn’t defined by the creation. He’s defined by himself, which is why the First Person must be named in relation to One who is also God.

Gender-neutral names deny the freedom of God; they attack the God-ness of God, and as such, they are idolatrous.

Huh?

The Birth of a New Religion

David Pogue writes a widely read technology column for the New York Times. Recently he reviewed Google's new smart phone, the Nexus One. His review was mostly positive but he did offer a few criticisms. His column today is about the feedback he got from readers about his review:

Reader feedback about my review of Google's new cellphone yesterday was unusually voluminous and, in some sectors, vitriolic. Where I had written, "The Nexus One is an excellent app phone, fast and powerful but marred by some glitches," some readers seemed to read, "You are a pathetic loser, your religion is bogus and your mother wears Army boots."

He notes that he hasn't seen this kind of response to a technology column since the Apple/Microsoft wars. But now:

But guess what, gang? There's a new religion in these holy wars. And it's Google...And yet here is this new army of Google defenders, raising their spears and chanting as though you've insulted….Apple.

New religion. Holy Wars with an army raising their spears and chanting. Interesting use of religious association.

The Anchors of our Faith

James McGrath links to an interesting post by Ricky Carvel where Mr. Carvel talks about his struggle to reconcile his faith in God with his growing skepticism about whether the Bible actually "describes" that God. This prompts Jim to reflect on his own "life-transforming" experience of God that was more important in his faith formation than his belief in the Bible. This experiential "anchor" freed him to do critical study of the Bible and that critical study did not lead to the loss of faith. He wonders if those who resist critical study of the Bible do so because the Bible as the revelation of God is their anchor, more so than experience. Interesting question.

I never believed in the Bible as "the Word" of God. I was a sceptic about miracle stories and resurrections from the dead from childhood on. I also never had any kind of "saving relationship with Jesus Christ." In fact the two worst experiences of Christianity that I ever had growing up were going to a Billy Graham movie with a youth group and participating (by virtue of being in church on those Sundays) in a Lay Witness Renewal where the goal was to bring us to a saving relationship with Jesus and where I felt totally manipulated.

What "saved" me in church was the community made up of caring Sunday School teachers and youth group leaders and just lots of good people. With a very few exceptions I enjoyed church and was encouraged by pastors and other leaders who took an interest in me to raise the questions I was raising, and who embodied the way of Jesus in the way they lived their lives.

My "God" experiences growing up were mystical experiences in nature, in reading and thinking, and in relationships that I didn't think of as God experiences because I wasn't given the language to connect my experiences with God. They certainly were nothing like the God I heard talked about in church or read about in the Bible. It wasn't until I began reading about mystics and I learned that there was such a thing as an apophatic tradition within Christianity that I realized that my own spiritual experiences had a place in the big tent of historic Christianity. That helped keep my in the fold, so to speak, and eventually gave me a passion for reaching out to others who might have the same kind of non-traditional experiences.

What also helped was doing critical study of the Bible which had the seemingly curious effect of strengthening my faith. I learned that there wasn't just one understanding of God or one picture of Jesus in the Bible. The Bible itself was full of diversity and not only diversity but disagreement about Jesus and God and Truth. Furthermore the various authors weren't just channeling God or singing in harmony but were vigorously arguing a position with their contemporaries, and correcting the positions of those who came before. Learning a little church history and discovering the non-canonical gospels only confirmed this truth for me. There was never a golden age of unified belief and there has never been one correct picture of God, Jesus, or the Truth. Learning to read the Bible as an ongoing conversation or argument helped me re-engage the Bible as a beginning place for reflection about my faith.

Anyway, for me it wasn't believing in the Bible or having a life-transforming Jesus experience (language not used by Jim) that kept me within the fold of Christianity. It was community - not perfect community, but real community made up of imperfect but good-hearted people, which in its own way was a life-transforming anchor.

Lost Generation

A friend sent along this palindrome. It was created by a 20 year old for a contest by AARP titled "u @ 50". This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. It is very good.

New Year's Eve

When our children were little we would spend New Year's Eve with friends whose children were the same age as ours. When we arrived at their house the clocks would all be set ahead 2 hours. At ten o'clock we would ring in the 'new year' with our children, put them to bed, and then go on with our celebration.

Our kids eventually caught on and celebrated with us in real time. Now they are grown and off doing their own celebrations. I have to confess, though, that I wouldn't mind a bit if I arrived at friends' house tonight and the clocks were all set ahead two hours. For tradition, of course.

"Pink Slime"

That's what is in a McDonald's or Burger King hamburger, and maybe your grocery store ground beef too. Actually, it is beef renderings treated with ammonia to kill the pathogens. The treated meat is then mixed with ground beef. The process was devised by a company Beef Products as a way to treat and use less desirable parts of the animal and thus bring down the price of ground beef. The company also claimed that when the ammonia-treated meat was mixed with the rest of the ground beef pathogens in the untreated meat would also be killed.

The FDA allowed the company to not label ammonia as an ingredient in the meat, but numerous large-scale buyers of the beef like schools and prisons have complained about the ammonia smell in the meat. A former USDA microbiologist called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

The company 's processed meat had a USDA exemption from regular testing of its meat but that exemption has now been lifted as random testing by other agencies has found pathogens in Beef Products meat, and it has come to light that in response to complaints about the ammonia smell the company has lowered the level of ammonia used. This takes care of the smell problem but potentially raises the level of pathogens left in the meat.

For consumers of ground beef this whole process is just now coming to light. Who knew our "100 per cent" ground beef contained "pink slime?"

The Passing of a Mentor

When I arrived in Youngstown, OH, young and fresh out of seminary I had no clue about what it meant to be a pastor. I was incredibly fortunate to find there a former pastor of the church who served as a mentor and who became a great friend. Dick Speicher had been pastor at Woodworth Church of the Brethren in Youngstown during the 1960's. He was one of "liberal" pastors of his day who introduced the Revised Standard Version of the Bible to the congregation. He lost families at the church because of that and some people were still talking about it when I was there.

He had gone on from serving as pastor there to serve as a campus pastor at Youngstown State University and then as Executive Director of the Mahoning Valley Association of Churches. Dick died a week ago today. His memorial service is tomorrow in Youngstown.

When I arrived at Woodworth Dick was very careful to stay out of my way as a former pastor who didn't want to step on my shoes or violate ethical guidelines in respect to being involved with former churches. But he took me out for coffee regularly and was a great listener. He hauled me around to every ecumenical event in the Youngstown area. And eventually with my encouragement and after more than 15 years of staying away, he began attending Woodworth again and became involved in doing nursing home and senior visitation. He was also - and I didn't learn this until near the end of my eight years there - a quiet advocate on my behalf in many ways.

Every pastor needs a Dick Speicher in their congregation. One day I hope to be able to return the favor when (if?) I retire. My thoughts and prayers are with the family.

There are Martyrs and then...

there are martyrs.

The cable news and even the once respectable network news has been going on non-stop about the failed attempt of Abdul Mutallab to blow up a plane in the hopes, I imagine, of being greeted in heaven by 27 virgins.

Meanwhile the Times of London has nominated for person of the year a real martyr, Neda Soltan:

Neda Soltan was not political. She did not vote in the Iranian presidential election on June 12. The young student was appalled, however, by the way that the regime shamelessly rigged the result and reinstalled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ignoring the pleas of her family, she went with her music teacher eight days later to join a huge opposition demonstration in Tehran.

“Even if a bullet goes through my heart it’s not important,” she told Caspian Makan, her fiancé. “What we’re fighting for is more important. When it comes to taking our stolen rights back we should not hesitate. Everyone is responsible. Each person leaves a footprint in this world.”

Ms Soltan, 26, had no idea just how big a footprint she would leave. Hours after leaving home, she was indeed shot, by a government militiaman, as she and other demonstrators chanted: “Death to the dictator.”

Arash Hejazi, a doctor standing near by, remembers her looking down in surprise as blood gushed from her chest. She collapsed. More blood spewed from her mouth. As she lay dying on the pavement, her life ebbing out of her, “I felt she was trying to ask a question. Why?” said Dr Hejazi, who tried to save her life. Why had an election that generated so much excitement ended with a government that claims to champion the highest moral values, the finest Islamic principles, butchering its own youth?

A 40-second telephone clip of Ms Soltan’s final moments flashed around the world. Overnight she became a global symbol of the regime’s brutality, and of the remarkable courage of Iran’s opposition in a region where other populations are all too easily suppressed by despotic governments.

Freedom is on the march right now in Iran. Young people are in the streets facing down a brutal, despotic government. The government is Muslim. And so are the protesters who want to be Muslim and free. If they succeed it will be because of the bravery of people like Neda Soltan.

BTW, it strikes me that Neda Soltan was "not political" in the same way that Jesus was not political. Being not political like Jesus and Neda can get you killed.

Mental Health Break Winner

The Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan) is conducting its annual election for the best and worst sayings and videos of the year. For the Mental Health Break category, the voting is for second place because this video of a young girl getting a surprise visit at school from her father "would have blown away the competition." Yes it would have.



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Pantheism

Ross Douthat comments today on the pantheistic message of Avatar and of Hollywood movies in general. I haven't seen Avatar so I can't comment on it's message. I tend to see the veneration of nature as displayed in Disney movies from the days of Bambi right up to the more recent Lion King and Pocohantas as useful popular corrections to the usual commercial propaganda that progress and technology and capitalism will save us. I am not sure they really make a dent against this omnipresent propaganda, but I appreciate the efforts to plant the seed of a different kind of message in young minds.

But I want to take a little issue with this comment by Douthat:

At the same time, pantheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps “bring God closer to human experience,” while “depriving him of recognizable personal traits.” For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.

I don't think this is quite right. Pantheism isn't really for anyone who "pines for transcendence." Pantheism collapses the transcendent into everything around us. For the pantheist God is in everything and there is nothing more, nothing transcendent.

For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, there is panentheism, which holds that the everything is holy but the holy is not defined by everything. There is something more - transcendence - even if that something more is not a personal God of the Bible who exists "wholly outside our world but intervenes with some regularity.

It's a small but important distinction.

Apparently there are those who are attracted to Orthodox traditions because of its panentheism. For those of us who don't find the bells and whistles of Orthodoxy meaningful, there is another panentheistic alternative. It is called liberal Christianity.

"He Cannot Turn Himself into a Heterosexual"

Via Andrew Sullivan:

"With Gareth coming out publicly and our divorce being finalized in the New Year, I feel a chapter is closing and, although I feel sad and wish it could be different, it's for the best. This is who Gareth is and it is something which cannot be changed, but it has been so hard coming to terms with that... He will always love me, but he cannot turn himself into a heterosexual. If he could, I would still be married to him. We will always be the best of friends and I couldn't feel prouder of him than I do now," - Jenna Thomas, former wife of Gareth Thomas, the Welsh rugby player who came out last week.

In 2005, Thomas captained Wales to their first Grand Slam victory since 1978 and was capped 100 times for his nation - more than any other Welshman in a country where rugby is a civil religion.

60 Votes

Last night, or early this morning, the Senate passed its first procedural hurdle on the health care bill when 60 Senators voted to cut-off what will be the first of several filibuster attempts by Republicans.

Much will be made of the bipartisan failure of this effort. Not a single Republican supported it. But I don't look at it that way. The way I see it the current Democratic Party is incredibly diverse, with conservative Democrats who in other times would be moderate Republicans working on the same team as more traditional liberals. The far-from perfect bill that is soon to be passed by the Senate is the result of much deal-making and compromise, the kind that would typically be done between parties but is now being done intra-party. It is much like what happens in one-party towns like Chicago or my old Youngstown, OH. When one party dominates the only game in town is within the party in power and you get the kind of diversity you would typically see among various political parties within that one party.

That's pretty much the reality of the US Congress right now. You have one very diverse party in power and one tiny fringe party that has no interest and really no compelling reason to play ball. It's pretty telling when Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, who was part of the gang of six Republican and Democratic Senators who negotiated all summer and produced a bi-partisan blue-print that was initially ignored by the Senate, but now gets a final bill that looks pretty much like what she helped produce, won't vote for the final bill because it is being "rushed." She was never going to vote for any bill. Her participation in the gang 0f six process was designed to slow down and helpfully kill health care reform.

Getting 60 Senate votes - even if 58 of them are from the same party and 2 are Independents - on any contentious issue is pretty remarkable. It's not the bill I hoped for, and of course there is more work to be done in reconciliation, but by any reasonable standard that looks fairly at the current political distribution of power in Washington it is a "bi-partisan" political victory.

Songwriter Feinstein says Christmas isnt' just for Christians

Michael Feinstein explains in the NYTimes why Jews write Christmas songs:

The evolution of Christmas is reflected to a degree in its music. As the holiday has become more secular, so have its songs, with religious and spiritual compositions largely supplanted by the banalities of Rudolph, sleigh bells and Santa. Many Christians feel that the true essence of Christmas has been lost, and I respect that opinion. It must be difficult to see religious tradition eroded in the name of commerce and further dissipated by others’ embrace of a holiday without a sense of what it truly means to the faithful.

Yet I also hope that those who feel this encroachment will on some level understand that the spirit of the holiday is universal. We live in a multicultural time and the mixing, and mixing up, of traditions is an inevitable result. Hence we have the almost century-old custom of American Jews creating a lot more Christmas music than Hanukkah music.

If you look at a list of the most popular Christmas songs, you’ll find that the writers are disproportionately Jewish: Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” (yes, Mel Tormé was Jewish), “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Baby,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Winter Wonderland” — perennial, beloved and, mostly, written for the sheet music publishers of Tin Pan Alley, not for a show or film. (Two notable exceptions: “White Christmas,” introduced in “Holiday Inn,” and “Silver Bells,” written for “The Lemon Drop Kid.”)

...In my holiday shows, I’m always looking for novel expressions of the season, and when I introduce a new song I don’t usually think about the religion of its creator. That said, I’m always pleased to discover a surprising juxtaposition. It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that the sugarplums, holly and mistletoe all tap into a sense of comfort, longing, security and peace that so many fervently desire; that we all wish the clichés were true. As Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists and everything in between, we are all more alike than we are different. That’s something to celebrate.

Feinstein is right-on here. Jesus and what he stands for isn't just for Christians. The real problem, if there is one, isn't that Christmas is being stolen or commercialized or lost; it's that for the most part Christians don't pay any attention to it's meaning for the rest of the year.

Keillor Tells Unitarians and Jews to not mess with Christmas

Garrison Keillor having a little fun in a Salon article:

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday -- if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

It's getting big-time coverage here in his home state and is apparently lighting up the blogosphere.

Bigfoot Spotted in MN

This is what happens when it gets cold here in Minnesota. The brain cells sloooow waaaay doooown and we see things that are not really there, or find ourselves paying attention to stories like this that we would normally ignore.

It seems a deer camera mounted in northern Minnesota caught this image on a recent night. It must be true; I read it in a reputable newspaper.

Buy a Real Tree

I don't really understand the appeal of artificial trees. I guess it is just a matter of convenience. Or safety. We have a fake tree at church because fire code requires it. But there is nothing like the smell of a real tree. And, they are grown locally; artificial trees grow in China. Real trees are also more environmentally friendly:

Live trees actively photosynthesize as they grow from saplings, which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. After they have been cut and Christmas is over, they're usually chipped for mulch. As mulch, the bits of tree very slowly decompose, releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. So in the end, a real Christmas tree is carbon neutral, putting the same amount of carbon dioxide back into the air as it took out (albeit much more slowly).

The tree farms that grew the trees also replant after the trees are cut.

Artificial trees, on the other hand, don't come out even in the carbon balance. Petroleum is used to make the plastics in the trees and lots of carbon dioxide-creating energy is required to make and transport them.

Because these trees just end up in landfills after a few years' use, "those greenhouse gases are lost forever," Springer said. "There's really no opportunity to recycle those."

Buy a real Christmas tree this year.

It's Cold Up Here

It's warmed up to 2 below. We got about 8-9 inches of snow out of the mega-storm that moved across the country. It is quite beautiful outside and bitterly cold. Yesterday afternoon there were five robins sitting briefly in a tree in front of our house and I image the conversation was something along the lines of "whose bright idea was it not to fly south this winter?"

Congrats to Meagan

I just received this text from my daughter: "Just turned in my last assignment of my college career." She graduates this Saturday and I am very much looking forward to seeing her receive her diploma.

For the last several months she has been fretting about job prospects; they are bleak and in a few months she has to start paying back the student loans. But hopefully for a few days at least she can enjoy the moment and feel a sense of pride in her accomplishment. I am happy for her and proud of her.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Praying for Obama

Apparently these shirts are no longer for sale. It was a nice way for conservative Christians to show their support for President Obama, unless you happened to look up Psalm 109:8.

Which is Greener: Paper or Digital?

The answer may surprise you. From an interview posted on ZDNet.com:

“Other than pushing the ‘cool’ factor, one of the main selling points being made by marketers of eReaders is that they are greener than print. It is little surprise that the common view held by consumers who don’t know the backstory is that going digital means going green and saving trees. Many are in for a rude awakening. When subjected to ‘cradle-to-cradle’ life cycle analysis, eReading is not nearly as green as many naively assume it is.”

“There is no question that print media could do a better job of managing the sustainability of its supply chains and waste streams, but it’s a misguided notion to assume that digital media is categorically greener. Computers, eReaders, and cell phones don’t grow on trees and their spiraling requirement for energy is unsustainable.”

“Making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals including gold, silver, and palladium as well as extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. To function, digital devices require a constant flow of electrons that predominately come from the combustion of coal, and at the end of their all-too-short useful lives electronics have become the single largest stream of toxic waste created by man. Until recently, there was little, if any, voluntary disclosure of the lifecycle ‘backstory’ of digital media.”

“Sadly, print has come to be seen as a wasteful, inefficient and environmentally destructive medium, despite the fact that much of print media is based on comparatively benign and renewable materials. In addition, print has incredible potential to be a far more sustainable medium than it is today…

I was watching CBS News last night and watched a segment about the hottest toy this Christmas: Zhu Zhu Pets. A small 16 person company in St. Louis came up with the electronic hamster idea and Toys R Us picked it up and they can't keep them on the shelves. So now they are ramping up three more factories - in China, of course - to keep up with demand. If they can get them onto the shelves they are projecting $50,000,000 in sales. Not bad for a 16 person company.

Where were these when our kids were little. We had so many living, breathing, pooping hamsters and dead hamster horror stories. Battery operated ones would have been great.

Everything Is Already Made In China

Nobel Prize winning economist/NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman has been arguing that the Chinese government is severely undervaluing its currency and that this is contributing to the worldwide recession. Krugman says, among other things, that the unbalanced flow of cheap Chinese exports to America would be balanced out with more American goods going to China - if the Chinese currency were fairly priced. I don't pretend to understand all of the economic arguments here, but I was reading a rebuttal in Forbes.com by a Chinese businessman and Forbes contributor Shaun Reign and was amused by this response:

Krugman believes appreciation would allow the Chinese people to buy more American exports. But what American exports? Everything is already made in China. America exported its manufacturing jobs years ago.

Good Housekeeping

Via Rod Dreher I came upon this very good speech by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the economy. Here is a sample:

'Economy' is simply the Greek word for 'housekeeping'. Remembering this is a useful way of getting things in proportion, so that we don't lose sight of the fact that economics is primarily about the decisions we make so as to create a habitat that we can actually live in. We are still haunted by the dogma that the economic world, 'economic realities', economic motivations and so on belong in a completely different frame of reference from the sort of human decisions we usually make and from considerations of how we build a place to live. And to speak about building a place to live, a habitat, reminds us too that we look for an environment that is stable, 'sustainable' in the popular jargon, a home that we can reasonably expect will be an asset for the next generation.

Economics understood in abstraction from all this is not just an academic error: it actually dismantles the walls of the home. Appealing to the market as an independent authority, unconnected with human decisions about 'housekeeping', has meant in many contexts over the last few decades a ruinous legacy for heavily indebted countries, large-scale and costly social disruption even in developed economies; and, most recently, the extraordinary phenomena of a financial trading world in which the marketing of toxic debt became the driver of money-making – until the bluffs were all called at the same time.

If we are not to be caught indefinitely in a trap we have designed for ourselves, we have to ask what an economy would look like if it were genuinely focused on making and sustaining a home – a social environment that offered security for citizens, including those who could not contribute in obvious ways to productive and profit-making business, an environment in which we felt free to forego the tempting fantasies of unlimited growth in exchange for the knowledge that we could hand on to our children and grandchildren a world, a social and material nexus of relations that would go on nourishing proper three-dimensional human beings – people whose family bonds, imaginative lives and capacity for mutual understanding and sympathy were regarded as every bit as important as their material prosperity.

Practically speaking, this means that both at the individual and the national level we have to question what we mean by 'growth'. The ability to produce more and more consumer goods (not to mention financial products) is in itself an entirely mechanical measure of wealth. It sets up the vicious cycle in which it is necessary all the time to create new demand for goods and thus new demands on a limited material environment for energy sources and raw materials. By the hectic inflation of demand it creates personal anxiety and rivalry. By systematically depleting the resources of the planet, it systematically destroys the basis for long-term well-being. In a nutshell, it is investing in the wrong things.

The whole speech given as a keynote address at an economics conference in London is a good read. I must admit that I am somewhat torn on the issue of what kind of economic growth we need. On the one hand I think it is beyond dispute that if the rest of the world grew in the manner that the US economy has grown it would mean the environmental degradation of the planet. On the other hand lots of people are out of work right now including friends of mine. We need some kind of economic growth to put people back to work.

I read lots about small-scale, environmentally friendly, self-sustaining, economic growth and it all sounds very attractive and ethical. I am all for stepping off of the mindless, dispiriting consumer train of endless addictive growth that also despoils the plant. But how a better way gets implemented on a large scale that avoids massive unemployment and dislocation isn't clear to me. On the other (third?) hand, our current way of living is no guarantee that we won't see massive unemployment and dislocation. So maybe it is time to give "another way of living" a try.

Victory Gardens

Last night fellow church member Veda Kanitz and I attended a workshop on community gardens at Dakota Tech. The Dakota County Health Department is making grants available next year to organizations to start or expand community gardens. It is perfect timing for us at Open Circle as a community garden is one of the next phases of our landscaping overhaul at church. I would say based on what I heard last night that we have an excellent chance of getting a grant.

During last night's presentation mention was made of Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, one of the few continuing Victory Gardens in the United States. When this was said a man sitting next to me, just slightly younger than me, asked: "what is a Victory Garden?" The older-than-me man sitting on my opposite side replied that he was "too young to know."

Well, I am too young to remember Victory Gardens, but I have been using a Victory Garden Cookbook for more than 20 years, and used to watch the PBS show regularly as we once upon a time had a large vegetable garden.

Victory Gardens were begun during World War I and it is said that during Word War II there were nearly 20 million Victory Gardens in the country that provided more than a third of the produce the nation consumed.

Like many Americans our family is rediscovering the virtues of vegetable gardening. As our home yard is full of perennials and shrubs, we have been gardening on a small plot at church, as have a few other families. The community garden would allow us to open this up to the neighborhood. In particular we would have a chance to offer plots to some of the lower income families who live in the neighborhood around the church.

We need Victory Gardens again. A home or community garden not only provides fresh produce, but it cuts down on dependence on food that is shipped from across the country and world. It saves oil. It makes us more self-sustaining. It gets our hands dirty in a good way. It builds community. If that isn't a recipe for Victory I don't know what is.

Parents Who Yell

The NYTimes has an article today about today's parents who don't spank; instead they yell:

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”

Been there; done that. Although there is an apocryphal story that my son Ryan loves to tell about me once chasing him around the house with a wooden spoon, we weren't spankers when our kids were little. There were a few pops on the butt when they were toddlers (and apparently, according to this article, we stunted our kids emotional development when we did that - sorry kids) we mostly used time outs and loss of privileges and tried to teach about natural consequences.

But there a few times - maybe more than a few - when I yelled. I will only speak for myself here. I can still remember what it felt like to be at my wits end and lose it with the yelling, and then feel absolutely mortified afterwards. I can remember Meagan especially bursting into tears once after I yelled at her because she so rarely pushed my buttons. Ryan was a little better at knowing where they were.

There comes a point when your kids get old enough and they begin telling you about what a bad parent you are, and you just say "you can take it up with your therapist." And then they go off to college and you look back fondly on helping with homework and the lunches and reading to them and all the hugs and kisses that so often made things better. There are a few things, though, that I would just as soon forget about. It's funny how those are the things that come up around the dinner table now when we are all together.

Leadership Conversations

Sometimes it takes 15 years to get it right.

We have never done much in the way of formal leadership training at Open Circle. We are a relatively small congregation and our structure has been pretty fluid through the years. Leaders have just stepped up and into many positions; for certain positions we have a congregational call process where we ask the congregation to identify the people who best represent the values of our community. Mostly we have been blessed with hard-working, gifted people who have stepped up to get the work done. But not too long ago we had a bad "match" that ended badly and we realized that it would be helpful to have a structure in place to have intentional conversations about leadership with current and prospective leaders in order to get to know prospective leaders and to better match gifts with needs.

Two books we found very helpful in this regard are Bruce Sanguin's The Emerging Church and Anna Christie's Evoking Change. Both talk about the importance of paying attention to the emotional and spiritual health of leaders and both have suggestions for how to better equip leaders.

So we are 5 weeks into a 7 week session on the spiritual and emotional foundations of leadership. It has been a great experience with the group we have. Each week we begin with a meditation; each meditation is led by a member of the group. That person is also responsible that week to share something of their creativity. We have had baking, crafts, writing and journaling thus far. Then there is the information part that includes: spiritual practice, meta-narratives of scripture, faith sharing, self-definition, boundaries, and staying connected across differences. We will close with a session on group dynamics. We have had great conversations about our roles as leaders at church, in families, at work. The benefit of this kind of gathering for getting to know leaders, learning from each other, and better matching gifts with needs is readily apparent.

Two weeks ago we had a very interesting session on faith sharing. Faith sharing is something we don't do much of in progressive churches. We know what we don't believe, and many of us are fairly uncomfortable in settings where people are sharing their faith. But it seems fairly important for leaders in a progressive church to have moved beyond "I don't believe this anymore" to be able to comfortably talk about what they do believe. So the group had a week to do their homework and everyone came with a written statement of faith. None of them sounded anything like the Nicene Creek - Thank God! We are learning something here - but each was well-thought out and articulated a positive statement of that person's faith. It was a great exercise.

It's never to late to learn from your mistakes and change the way you do things.

The Perfect Church

Posted today on a COB listserve:

It strikes me as reasonable that none of us can ever really know exactly what a church is like, until we enter it ourselves, until we become a part of it. And then, of course, that church is "like" what it is like, at least in part, because we have joined it!!

Its kind of the ecclesiastical "Uncertainty Principle." You cannot both know "the perfect church" and be a part of that church, yourself. By joining the church, we make it imperfect! All of us. . . . . .

Running in the Snow

My favorite time of year to be out running is in the fall when the air is cool and the leaves are in color (at least the colors I can see!). But my second favorite time of year to be running is when snow is falling. Today was one of those wet, snowy days - no ice yet - that was perfect for running. I try very hard to avoid being "preachy" about the benefits of exercise, but it is one of the simplest ways I know to feel better immediately with that endorphin high, and long term from being in shape. Why everyone doesn't get that I don't understand.

Headlines That Make Me Laugh

Limits on exec pay cause worries of brain drain

That's the headline from an MSNBC article. Would these be the same brains that led these banking and auto giants into the mess they, and we, are in right now?

Spong's Done Arguing About Homosexuality

I haven't read anything by John Shelby Spong recently not because I find him disagreeable but because I don't really think he has said anything knew in a while. But a friend sent me Spong's recent email posting and I found it interesting:

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy...

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church...

Spong deserves enormous credit for the pioneering leadership he provided on this issue. Long before mainstream Christianity had joined the battle for glbt equality Spong was up to his keisters in the struggle. So it is good to hear him say that the battle has been won.

Is he right? Is the battle over? I think it is. I stopped arguing with conservatives about this issue several years ago for the same reason. The final outcome is no longer in doubt and I see no purpose in arguing with the "flat-earthers" who can't seem to see that they are making the same kind of arguments once made by Christians who defended slavery. Whatever the Bible may say about homosexuality, followers of Jesus should be welcoming homosexuals with open arms and celebrating their out, open, and married presence in the church.

It's one of the (but not the only) reasons I don't do denomination stuff anymore. We are still fighting the battle there and all the while the denomination dies. And the conservatives don't care; they are going to take the ship down. So be it. I have more than enough to do welcoming those wounded by these church wars and figuring out together how we move forward and live into a new and liberating vision of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

So bully for Spong!

Witches in Africa

Apparently it has become something of a competition between some Christian groups in Africa to identify and punish witches:

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria's 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

...Sam Itauma of the Children's Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced...

"Even churches who didn't use to 'find' child witches are being forced into it by the competition," said Itauma. "They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism."

I hear evangelicals in my denomination and others speak glowingly about the growth of Christianity in Africa and how this is the hope for the future of the church, and a haven for those in this country wanting to find a more comfortable adjudicatory fit.

We stopped burning witches in this country hundreds of years ago and have made continual , if slow and hard-fought, progress in human rights for minorities, women, and gays. And this is the Christianity they want to take us back to. (And no I am not saying any one I know endorses this kind of behavior, but this is the spirit of much of the celebrated African Christianity - ant-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-woman, anti-witch.)

Hummers Still Around

For the last couple of days I have been watching a hummingbird at the feeder. On Friday morning we had our first hard freeze and I woke up early in the morning thinking about the glass feeder I still had outside, worrying that it might be frozen and cracked. So I got up and brought it inside; the contents were frozen but the feeder hadn't cracked.

As it was getting light I watched outside and saw the hummer buzzing around where the feeder was supposed to be. I took the feeder back outside and shortly thereafter the hummer was feeding.

I shared this on Sunday morning with a woman at church whose spouse is an avid birder. He called me up in the afternoon and wondered if he might come and watch for the bird. He was at the house for about half an hour when it showed up. He identified it as a female Ruby-throated hummingbird; I thought I had been seeing some red on the neck but his picture and his better eye than mine didn't see any. In any case he said this was the latest confirmed report of a hummingbird in MN. (Update: On reflection I wonder if he said that if it had been a male it would have been the latest... I will have to find out.)

This morning we woke up to another fresh snowfall of several inches. I went out and cleaned off the feeder posts before light but then didn't watch the feeder until later in the morning. It didn't take long for the bird to show up and it has been in and out of the feeder every half hour or so.

Obama Wins Peace Price

President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, he hasn't done anything yet to deserve it. And I am an Obama supporter. It isn't his fault that he won, of course. In fact, if I am correct nominations were closed for the prize shortly after he took office. So the Nobel Committee was really awarding the American people the prize for moving the country in a different direction.

It will be interesting to see how Obama responds. I hope he either declines it or accepts it on behalf of the American people. If he accepts it he has big shoes to fill to live into its meaning. If we get mired down even further in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the Middle East blows up, or we get hit with a big terrorist strike, this prize will be prime material for political commercials in the next election cycle.

Evangelical Christian Changes Mind on Homosexuality

Evangelical Christian Brent Childers explains in Newsweek how he changed his mind on homosexuality:

So what it is that would bring someone from a place where he once declared himself a "Jesse Helms Republican," a man who condemned homosexuality as a threat to children and society, told his own son that being gay is a ticket to hell, to travel from Hickory, N.C., to the West Lawn of the Capitol building on Oct. 11, 2009? How can one travel from the seemingly impossible road of bigotry to one of acceptance and love for our LGBT brothers and sisters? The answer is one that I hope religious leaders such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson (and most importantly, their followers) will hear.

It's because something deep inside told me that I needed to step out in faith onto a bridge of knowledge and understanding. I didn't know where this bridge would take me but something was telling me it was a path I needed to walk. My own mother challenged me in 2003 to look at my beliefs and the true intent behind the teachings I held in blind faith. "Do you think your views are Christ-like?" she asked me. Her question was dead on: once I walked away from the Church's teachings of rejection and condemnation, my relationship with God transcended to a higher spiritual plateau. I realized an unparalleled sense of spiritual clarity when I opened my heart and mind to a genuine expression of love, compassion, and acceptance of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

This new voice—Christ's voice—became the core principles of my faith: love, compassion, and respect. That voice I now realize was desperately wanting to be heard, a voice no longer comfortable with the place in which I had chose to confine it for so long—a place of bigotry, prejudice, fear, and misunderstanding.

Childers has left the SBC and is now worshiping with Pentecostals and at a non-denominational church.

Everyday Miracles

My newsletter article this week:

I don't often make note of the feast days of Catholic Saints, but September 25 was the feast day of Saint Finbar, an Irish monk who lived as a hermit on a small island at Lough Eiroe, off southern Ireland. According to Catholic tradition, many miracles were attributed to St. Finbar upon his death in 633, among them the sun not setting for two weeks. Finbar's hermitage locale remains a pilgrimage destination to this day.

Finbar's own Christianity, though, was apparently rooted as much in local druidic tradition as Catholic teaching, and was likely grounded not in supernatural miracle but in the everyday miracles of the natural world: "the early Irish texts suggest a God who is immanent in every part of creation -- in Sun, Moon, stars, wind and wave -- indeed , inseparable from the creation, even as the unutterable mystery of the universe confounds our understanding and perception."

I have recently been re-reading Elaine Pagels' book Beyond Belief. Pagels is one of several scholars who think that the Gospel of John was written in conversation with the Gospel of Thomas, or perhaps to correct and combat the teachings of the community of Thomas. Whether Pagels is right about this is a matter of much dispute among scholars and is as we are fond of saying these days "above my pay grade" to know.

What is indisputable, though, is that the message of the Gospel of John that Jesus is God, and that Jesus came to save us, and that we are in need of salvation, and that this salvation is not possible apart from believing in Jesus became the orthodox position within Christianity and was eventually incorporated into the creeds and remains an essential element of Christian teaching to this day. Pagel's book tells the story of how this came to be.

The notion that God is within us, that we don't need salvation so much as illumination, as taught by the Jesus found in the Gospel of Thomas, isn't orthodox. The orthodox position holds that we can't save ourselves or help ourselves because all vestiges of the immanence of God within us were obliterated by original sin and now we need divine help from the outside.

I don't agree with this for a moment. Neither did Finbar, and neither did a host of Christian mystics who would follow through the centuries and keep alive within Christianity the notion that the divine spark is present in each of us and in every tree, flower, wisp of wind, and ray of the sun.

We don't need Jesus to save us. We do need to be reminded from time to time, though, that the divine spark is there within us and around us. If we listen. If we are attentive. What we can learn from Jesus is that there is a way of living that puts us in touch with the God within and around us.

For many Christians, of course, it is the miracles of Jesus and the miracle of his resurrection that make the difference, just as it was the miracles attributed to Finbar that made him worthy of being a Catholic saint. But I will settle for the everyday miracles of friends and community and the beauty that is everywhere we look, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Jesus and the Constitution

I missed this the other day when Andrew Sullivan first posted the link, but this interactive "print" of Jesus holding the constitution surrounded by famous God-fearing American leaders is entertaining. Mouse around and you will find Reagan and Kennedy but no Carter and Clinton, among modern presidents. Down in the right hand corner under the influence of Satan, who is present in the picture, you will find a politician, a lawyer, a professor tightly grasping a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, and a Supreme Court justice covering his face in shame as he realizes the damage he has done to the country. Thankfully the minister is on the opposite - and blessed - side holding his Bible.

Inside Baseball

In a few minutes the hometown Minnesota Twins play their final regular season game in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Next year they get their own brand-spanking-new outdoor ballpark. The way baseball should be played.

It is worth noting, though, that right now it is 44 degrees outside and raining hard. As it has been for most of the past week. Snow is forecast for the weekend, when, should the Twins win today they will be hosting the Yankees. But with global warming on the way by next year I am sure it will be warm here in April and October.

Update: What a game. On to New York to play the evil Yankees. The Twins have yet to beat them this season. But there is at least one more game to be played in the Dome.

Forbes on Moore on Capitalism

Michael Moore says capitalism has to go. Michael Maiello, writing in Forbes, says Moore is partly right:

In practicing what we call capitalism, America has recently been missing the point. Our current system isn't eliminating scarcity and poverty; it's causing scarcity for most people and delivering extreme prosperity to a powerful minority. More than 85% of the financial wealth of the U.S. is held by 20% of the population, says G. William Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Over the last decade, wages for most have fallen against very low inflation even as productivity and profits have risen.

We overwhelmingly support unequal outcomes so long as there's something resembling a fair (but not level) playing field. We're fine with rich kids having material and social advantages over poor kids. We just ask that the game not be actively rigged against people. So long as the law doesn't favor Best Buy ( BBY - news - people ) over Circuit City ( CC - news - people ), we can accept that Circuit City will go into bankruptcy and be sold to an online retailer while its former rival moves into its empty storefronts.

But our laws aren't applied equally or fairly. Underneath the Trinity Church in Manhattan's financial district there's a magic revolving door. If you go into it and run fast enough it'll let you out either at 1 Wall, K Street or Pennsylvania Avenue (sometimes it gets stuck and you wind up running into the World Bank).

...The argument for capitalism is that nimble, clever and brave entrepreneurs acting out of self-interest will lead humanity away from want and scarcity. It's hard to see how international conglomerates bribing politicians at home and abroad, exploiting cheap labor and loose environmental standards around the world and depending on the implicit and sometime explicit support of the U.S. military really compares to the capitalist ideal.

I think Moore's a little too flip about how important it is for people to be free to chase their fortunes. Some take Moore's own financial success as irony. I see it as hopeful. We need more Michael Moores. But we don't get them in a system where, say, the telecom, television and radio industries are difficult to disrupt because only the largest companies can afford access to a spectrum that's supposed to be held in the public trust...

If you want a system that encourages more plucky entrepreneurs like Michael Moore then you have to do some things that the big corporations won't like. We need access to higher education that doesn't depend on crushing student loan debt. We need, as Franklin Roosevelt suggested, to look at health care as a right not a perk provided by an employer or a service to be bought and sold. We need a strong enough social safety net so that the risk of failing in an entrepreneurial venture isn't life-crushing penury. Ultimately, we need to take all the love and care that we give to big corporations and transfer that to individuals.

The problem with the right-wing defenders of capitalism is that they don't really believe in free-market capitalism. They believe in big business, which is the only player that has the resources to fund teams of lobbyists and contribute endless sums of money to the system to make sure their interests are taken care of.

Not all of us are fine with a playing field that isn't level and rich kids having material and social advantages over poor kids. What ever happened to the idea of merit? How about a system where a kid can't get into an Ivy League school unless he is smart enough to be there. Or a system where an Ivy League graduate who fails at every job he is handed in his life can't be considered a serious candidate to be President of the United States. One of capitalism's biggest recent failures. (Yes it was economic as much as political: the worst President money could buy) In any case...

I think capitalism is the best economic system we know for unleashing creativity and allowing individuals the opportunity to ply their craft and lift themselves up intellectually and materially. When it works the way Adam Smith talked about it, it's not only economically but spiritually liberating.

But Adam Smith never dreamed of multinational corporations that move jobs around the globe to find the cheapest labor. Smith never dreamed of AIG or Exxon. Smith's capitalism was small scale. Smith assumed there would be spiritually-based (Christian) self restraint and concern for the plight of other humans. He assumed a moral framework in the culture for capitalism that no longer exists.

Thus the need for a strong government with regulatory powers and a healthy social safety net that provides health care for all. Power bumping chest to chest with power. It's the only way to rescue capitalism from the people who control the money and practice crony capitalism and corporate welfare and keep the "free market" from being anything resembling free.

I look forward to seeing Moore's movie.