Happy New Year!

Ah...I can hear the wheels turning all across America: it's New Year's Resolution Time!

Some folks give up smoking. Some folks give up meat. Some folks give up smoked meats--a two-fer, if you will.

If you're like me (And I would never wish that on anyone!), you begin the resolution process by thinking about what other people's resolutions should be. Now, lest you think I'm insane, I usually only focus on people that I know, as trying to come up with over seven billions resolutions might make me miss a ballgame on TV.
But, speaking of other people, here's a resolution worth considering: Be gracious to others. I'm speaking from personal experience here. I've also been thinking about an adult Sunday School class topic: "Judge Not", about why being judgmental comes so naturally to us, but is an incredible hindrance to peace in the world around us, as well as happiness within.
It's almost effortless to be gracious to someone who is cheerful and smiling and always ready with a compliment for us. It's quite another thing to be gracious to someone who seems rarely, if ever, satisfied with our efforts. Whether we are able to put this understanding into words, we recognize that these folks find little satisfaction in the world because they set their standards and expectations for others impossibly high. In other words, disappointment is guaranteed. I say that I speak from personal experience because this is what I (and my two brothers) witnessed firsthand in my dad.

It's a good thing that Jesus never told his followers to like other people, isn't it? He "only" told us to love each other! Well now, that seems kinda backwards, doesn't it? Liking seems so much easier than loving. But is it? To like is a choice; to love is a compulsion. We like people whom we find pleasurable to be around, or who have qualities or talents that we admire. Often times, we may never meet these people, but that doesn't stop us from liking them. And who we like reveals a lot about what we value in Life and in ourselves.
Loving someone is a completely different story. While liking someone is a rational response, a choice made with varying degrees of thought, loving someone is always irrational, whether or not we want to think of it that way. There are, of course, varying degrees and kinds of love. Love for spouse, family, and friends is a much more intimate feeling than the kind of Love the Bible demands. Love for all people--and all of Creation--is simply an acknowledgement of our connectedness, our spiritual kinship, our (sometimes) desperate need for one another. Love of this kind is based on respect, esteem, and compassion, for others, but also for ourselves. My Christian faith demands that I love everyone, even the Unloveable. And especially those I do not like! 
And at a certain point in my life, I ceased liking my dad, but continued to love him terribly. Or, as Shakespeare says about Othello, "He loved not wisely, but too well." My brothers and I grumbled constantly about our dad being a perfectionist--someone who expected everything to be flawless, even when it was painfully obvious that said perfection had never been experienced, and never would be. In our own unique ways, we all found escapes or diversions to help us keep our sanity. I don't know about my brothers, but when I look back at this strained  relationship, I see a pain other than my own. Under all the layers of anger and hatred I experienced while trying to come to terms with my pain was also the pain of another--a gift, if you will, that I certainly did not ask for!
And, late in life, it occurred to me that people who set impossible standards for others do exactly the same thing for themselves. The disappointment they feel about the faults and complications of the world around them is nothing compared to that inner judge that finds them lacking in everything they do. The constant voice of judgment that they hear wears them down until all they know how to do is show their frustration in ways that are riddled with hatred, anger, and fear. And rather than heap more judgment and damnation upon themselves, they give it to others--unwanted gifts that harm both donor and recipient.
The truly sad thing is that the one thing desperately needed is the one thing that they can neither give nor receive: compassion. That voice of judgment makes it clear that they are totally undeserving of the kindness of others. I simply cannot imagine what it must feel like on the inside to be so consumed with self-hatred that all human interaction is tinged with hatred and recrimination.

So, this year, step back. Think about what it is that motivates others to find fault with everyone and everything. Think about the enormity of pain, grief, and guilt they feel each day. The only humane response is compassion, whether or not they are able to receive it and express their gratitude. We must take comfort solely in the knowledge that we are doing the right thing, and that, perhaps, a small light has shone inside of the other, and a warm place has been kindled.

Solution or Resolution?

One would think that to dwell in Christ’s presence would be all that we would need; that trusting in Him would give us the confidence to meet the challenges of the day. Haven’t we all told ourselves that if we literally walked with Jesus, as his disciples did, we would be even more confident and reassured—nothing in life could cause doubt or distress. And yet…

            …with Jesus sleeping peacefully on the boat, how did the disciples react when waves came crashing in? They were afraid. They wanted a solution. They wanted Jesus to DO something to end their fears. Clearly, his presence was inadequate for what the disciples believed they needed, but only because their beliefs were based on fear.

            “Somebody needs to do something!” is our normal, human response to crisis or conflict. A solution—quick and effective—is what we require, mostly so that we can get on with our lives. But what we discover, if we are paying attention, is that most crises and conflicts are not ever really solved, they are resolved. In other words, they must be allowed to “play out”, to continue, to reach the end that God intends. To bring our selfish needs and desires to the table can become a hindrance rather than a help. Of course, this does not mean that we do not invest ourselves in attempting to end conflicts, especially when there is discord between people. No, we do not remove ourselves from conflict; rather, we humble ourselves, seeking Christ’s presence in the midst of the storm. But, unlike those frightened disciples, we look (and act) with confidence, knowing that our investment of love, faith, and trust will help us discover how God’s will is unfolding, even when things aren't necessarily going our way.

            How many times a week do we pray “Thy will be done?” but assume that God’s will is really our own all along? After all, our rational mind’s ability to connect the dots, figure out how to use the TV remote, and navigate city streets without mishap seem like sure indicators that successfully completing a task must by definition carry with it God's approval. But while our mind is indeed a gift from God, it can become a stumbling block when we attempt to use it to confront the walls that divide humanity one from another. The rational solution too often boils down to what we think is best, and “best” usually means what is most efficient--what requires the least effort with the greatest return. 

            When we seek God’s presence in the midst of troubles, we find that His will rarely follows the path we would have chosen. The path is rocky, shrouded in fog, and seems to go on forever. This is because God’s grace gives dignity to the distress of the troubled souls that confronts us at the same time that it gives dignity to our feeble attempts to assuage that distress. A simple solution, that is, the solution we would have preferred, is not an option. Anyone who has ever held a screaming infant in the wee hours of the morning has been an unwilling participant to this frustrating reality. We try everything—changing the diaper, warming the bottle, rocking and singing—and nothing works. Or so we think. But if we step back we'll notice that what is “working” all the time that we are panicked is simply our presence, our touch, and our words of comfort, no matter how feeble and ineffective they seem. Our presence allows Christ to be present in us, and we say to the wailing child, “Peace! Be still!” even though the howling continues, even though our rational mind is thinking of pillows and soft sheets.

Our panic in a situation like this is normal; it is a part of what makes us human. Ironically, panic can be gift, just like faith. It reminds us all to clearly that we are not in control; that it is God who uses us, not the other way around. Too often, in our frailty, foolishness and panicked state, we break the emergency glass, grab God out of the box, then race to the chaos, where we discover God has already been. We do not take God into battle; He waits for us there. And although we fail the test before we even start, God’s grace always rescues us. This usually occurs when we look back and say, “Now, how did that happen?” We charged in, ready to be a problem solver, but what we found is that we brought our own problems--our own vanities, our own weaknesses, our own doubts--to the table. Grace took all the brokenness that everyone offered up and, somehow, all was mended.

“How did THAT happen?”

What happened was the revealing of God’s will, which is the resolution of all human action and interaction. Just as TV sit-coms always have happy endings; our faith assures us that our “ending” is equally as glorious, but it plays out over the course of an entire life, not just one day, or a thirty minute episode. When we ponder how God is at work through us, we are amazed, reassured, and humbled all at the same time. We realize (again) that there really is only one set of footprints in the sand. And those prints go deep because they are not simply burdened by our physical body, but by all the baggage we carry each day: doubt, fear, and pride.

Solutions puff us up, because we only see ourselves at work—efficient, talented, and effective. Resolution humbles us, because we see God at work, and we recognize that we are just as troubled and conflicted as those whom we reach out to help. We realize (again) that God’s will is always done; and what seems like foolishness at the start, becomes a glorious revelation once it is resolved. You would think that all these glimpses of grace imprinted on our hearts would give us the confidence and courage to handle our daily challenges without fail. But all it takes is for that first wave to come over the side and soak our brand new shoes…right?

What about Kim Davis?

"Be Thou My Vision, O Lord of My Heart"

What does it mean to have the “vision of Christ”? It means to see the suffering in the world, and to look for ways to alleviate it. It means seeing past the hatred and selfishness that rules our lives. It means seeing oneself as a vehicle of healing, transformation, and reconciliation. It means a life of surrender, a life of service, a life of stewardship—taking care of God’s creation.

What DOESN’T it mean? It doesn’t mean feeling victimized. It doesn’t mean feeling like you’re under attack. It doesn’t mean feeling that, at any moment, God could be conquered. And yet, because we’re human, we give in to these feelings of hopelessness and despair on a daily basis. And that’s OK. That’s part of what it means to be human. What’s not OK is when we choose to give in to hopelessness and despair and then ask God to exact revenge on those who we feel are persecuting us. Or to side with those who mistakenly feel victimized because of their faith. It’s one thing to pray for those who struggle with their faith; it’s quite another to uphold and/or validate another’s moments of doubt and despair as a sign of solidarity.

It’s one thing (and a good thing) to pray for Kim Davis; it’s quite another to “show solidarity” with her. The first is an acknowledgment of the human frailty that we all share. The latter is surrendering to the satanic desire to rule in God’s stead. Heaven help us when people who say they want to rule the most powerful nation on the face of the earth bargain with the Devil to increase their chances of success.

Re: "My Traitor's Heart"

I have to give you page numbers, because Rian Malan's book, My Traitor's Heart, does have chapters, but they are not numbered. The book is reflections on apartheid by a native South African whose last name is synonymous with that dreaded word, thanks to his grandfather who helped develop the policy. The author, a Baby Boomer, does his part to play the role of the "liberal, socially-conscious" teenager by growing his hair long and by spray-painting "Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud" on a wall in his neighborhood, totally ignorant of the fact that his gesture of racial solidarity is lost on the few Blacks who would actually see it, because they are illiterate. As the Seventies inch toward the Eighties, he flees his homeland, ostensibly because he can no longer stand to watch the oppression. Or is it guilt over his family connection and the inherent complicity?

A letter from a former Black domestic in his old home brings him back to South Africa to face the reality that is his country. And all the time, the undercurrent of the book breaks the surface and asks, "Why?" The Why that is apartheid; the Why that is simply the color of our skin.
One of the many "Whys?" begins on page 148 and it tells the story of Simon Mpungose, better known to history as "The Hammerman". On November 29, 1985, he was executed for a series of
crimes, culminating in murder, where he would break into the homes of white South Africans and bludgeon them with a hammer. He never harmed the children. In response to the question, "Why?", he replied, "Because I want to die."
Was it because of racism? Poverty? Yes, but mostly No.

Malan discovered that the source of this disaster began in the days of the great Shaka Zulu over one hundred years earlier. Tracing Simon's lineage, Malan examines the role of ancestry and family ties in the determination of one's life. According to Simon's relatives, who laughed when they heard that he was executed, he was cursed from the moment he was born. Through no fault of his own, Simon was an outcast from the moment of his birth; he was shunned, dismissed. Early in life, he was pawned off to relatives who felt nothing but contempt for him. He was smart enough to know that there is no peace where there is no welcome. So, he left his homeland, not knowing that he was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, the world of apartheid. Of course, there is no kindness in this world. One thing leads to another, and a kind-hearted, intelligent doomed man finds himself on trial for murder. After his poorly-translated testimony is given to the judge, he breaks down on the stand. On page 184, he says, "I saw there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I would start a life of damaging things and others, knowing it was a path of no return."
The "it" he's referring to is the weight of the Past and its insistence that It has Its way.

Let's be honest; we don't like the concept of Determinism in our modern world; it takes away from the power we feel when we seek out and find new avenues of Freedom. We can take some comfort in Malan's portrayal of Determinism in that he couches it in the terminology of the "native": shades, or ancestral spirits that are always there, always watching, nodding assent, or demonstrating their anger. Spirits who must be pleased so that one's life will go well. How primeval! How antiquated! But the great Southern writers paid homage to the past by emphasizing the importance of Place in personal development and understanding. Place was just as important as family for Faulkner and Welty and O'Connor. Ultimately, their stories were about stories, the stories of where we come from and the influence that this will have on where we go.
Zoom to the present, and think about those few times when we gather as families. The best times are those when we re-live (re-live!) history, and share stories about our favorite moments. That used to be all that we had, all that we needed. But then came the photograph. We no longer needed our imaginations to summon up pictures to correspond to the stories we would hear. But as we modern people teach ourselves to see little value in the past, the family photo album ceases being a starting point for remembrances and, instead, becomes merely iconic images of something irretrievable. Pictures that bring tears to our eyes do so not because of the memories they engender, but because of the emptiness they expose in our hearts.

Malan's book is a quest for THE answer to racial reconciliation. Whether your heart leaps in joy or sags in sorrow at the death of "The Hammerman" is not the focus of Simon's story. Rather, it is his discovery that it is in the human heart, in its anguish and loneliness, that a common bond among all humans is found.


But how does that awareness translate into political action? Ah, there's the rub!

How We Got "Here" (from May, 2014)

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone by now that Cliven Bundy, the rancher guy out in Nevada,  is not a victim or a patriotic American. Rather, he is a coward, a racist, and a moocher, in the worst sense of the word. It's truly sad that we've sunk so low in this country that we feel like we've got to "take sides" on every media event that happens in this country. Just like Tawana Brawley incident back in 1987, a stunt hits the headlines, and prejudices and fears determine where we feel we must "stand", as if taking sides somehow justifies or solidifies our standing in the eyes of those we despise or those we need. Both the hatred we feel and the need for approval that we crave are based in fear. Ultimately, one must feel sorry for Mr. Bundy, because he is clearly a very ignorant man. Ignorance is accidental; stupidity is intentional. Those who came to support Mr. Bundy, and the media who portrayed him as some kind of martyr are stupid. They willingly ignored the facts, the evidence, and chose to allow their fears and delusions guide their thoughts and actions.

What makes all this doubly sad is that when fear mixes with pride, a person becomes blinded to anything but his or her own fantasies and fears. When presented with the facts, instead of acknowledging their momentary lapse of reason, he or she lapses into more convoluted delusions. Conspiracies become more insidious, plots more nefarious. Soon, everyone is an enemy.

We live in new times, disconcerting times, and these are times of our own making. Words like "conservative" and "liberal" have become absolutely meaningless. And yet we try continually to make ideas and events of today fit categories that worked a long time ago but no more. Those who call themselves "conservatives" rarely have a clue as to what that term once meant, though they try to attach themselves to its history and heritage. Calling Ronald Reagan a "conservative" is truly the height of folly. Likewise, those who tout their "conservative" status based on the "Founding Fathers" usually have no idea about the central ideas that instigated the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. Revisionist history used to be an invective hurled at "liberals", but now revisionist history has become the mainstay of the frightened white male and his minions, those who all to often latch on to the Republican party.

This is NOT to say that Democrats are no less culpable or guilty. In reactionary times, one must look at what caused the disconnect; what made people lose their ability to reason, to think objectively. It's easy to point the finger at Fox News, because they intentionally seek to be divisive, belligerent, and unabashedly proud of the lies and stupidity they produce solely for the purpose of irritating the "opponent" and comforting the delusions of those who turn to them for the truth. In true Orwellian fashion, they then tout themselves as an alternative to deception and blatant propaganda. But we must remember that these hacks are not OUTSIDE the mainstream, but firmly entrenched in it. The Fox "News" Corporation would not exist had it not been for a major shift in the thinking and the articulation of said thinking in this country. We went from a worldview where "If the White Man said, it must be true to" to "Don't Trust Whitey!" The imbeciles at Fox seek to re-fashion the thinking of the the white, male authority figure in multi-colored hues, but the deception just doesn't work. Much of their drift into, and their acceptance by the "mainstream" is revealed in other networks' attempt to model themselves after the friendly, fluffy, forgettable formatting of the fools at Fox. Regardless of flavoring, cotton candy is still cotton candy; but it is not our teeth that are rotting. It's our minds. But this is only a tangent, valid though it might be.

What has happened? Well for one thing, "authority" became a four-letter word, thus all four-letter words became acceptable. Hierarchies, like the statue of Saddam Hussein, were slung to the ground to the sound of maniacal jubilation. The results? Now, good is bad, left is right, up is down, everything is relative. A social and cultural tsunami hit this nation, and it seemed that no one had a solution beyond finger-pointing. The world of "Every man for himself!" began; everyone, in their own special way, began thrashing around for some kind of flotation device, some kind of stability and feeling of security. As Christopher Lasch pointed out: survival, rather than self-improvement, became the foundation of modern life. Both Democrats and Republicans latched on to our fears and developed a language that resonated with our anxiety; and instead of calming us or reassuring us, they ratcheted up the "fear factor", so that our sense of powerlessness might make them seem more powerful. I don't know which is worse: The Democrats belief that we can forge a new world based on mistrust and envy, or the Republicans belief that distorting the past and promising a return to a place that never existed is how to restore calm, prosperity, and goodwill. Either way, the conservative beliefs that life is basically tragic and that there are limits to what society and/or the individual can achieve have been discarded as antiquated and a hindrance to progress. (Traditional values, then, became anathema to people who called themselves conservatives, one of the sad ironies of modern life.)

Both Envy and Greed find their base in a sense of entitlement. Both used to be part of the Seven Deadly Sins. In 1981, we began the process-- not as hated enemies, but hand in hand -- to change that, to change the look of morality in this country; to accommodate our feelings, our passions, our predilections. To do so, we had to cast aside our humility, our spirituality, our innate sense of worth. Three decades later, we see the results: a Dow Jones Industrial Average that went from just under 1,000 to over 16,000. Where once there were less than 600,000 millionaires in 1980, now there are close to ten million. But if we are honest, we will have to admit that a concomitant amount of misery -- economic, social, and psychological -- was created as well as all this wealth. Had the idea of "self-interest" instead of  "selfishness" held sway over the past thirty years, most of this misery would be non-existent. Yes, we will always have to poor, but that doesn't give us license to intentionally increase the percentage. And let's not forget gated communities, home security systems, and personal arsenals: all of these are the result of our participation in the dissolution of community, our withdrawal from the public in favor of the private, our self-destructive desire to fill our lives with things rather than Happiness or Joy. The fear and anxiety of these times is, indeed, of our own creation. 

For those of a religious bent, one need only look to the Old Testament to see the validity of this assertion. When "God's people" retained their humility and their humanity, they thrived. When they turned their backs on their Creator, when they began to live for themselves, disaster struck. (I mention biblical history because so many who see economic growth as a sign of God's favor, turn a blind eye to the reality of our selfishness.) And what did God's messengers tell the people when their world fell apart? That THEY were the cause of it. Their agony and misery was self-inflicted. All they had to do was "turn back to God", regain their love of others -- family, friends, slaves, strangers, the poor, the rich -- and things would turn around. But what are we Americans encouraged to do? Ask for divine Providence to smite those who have brought all this anguish upon us. "Hate your neighbor as yourself", in other words. It's pathetic.

So where does this leave us? We have leached the vocabulary of political debate of all meaning; it did not happen on its own. The sad truth is, there will be no resolution, no reconciliation until we let go of our fears, and the fragmented desires that spring from them. We will not be the engineers of said reconciliation, but we will be the beneficiaries. We will not only be relieved when it happens, but we will be humbled, in that it will come from dimensions and directions we thought no longer existed.