August 27th, 2010 |
Unless our memories fail us, there are important dates—happy and sad—carved into our personal lives. You might depict them as psychic scars or tattoos. A birthday, a day when someone in our lives died, a particular anniversary, a memorable date—perhaps when a relationship began or ended, have a way of continually emerging for reflection. They cry out saying, “Please don’t forget me.”
The same proves true when it comes to life together as Americans. September 11, 2001, now commonly referred to in shorthand as 9/11, is etched on America’s national psyche. The deadly events of that day were transformational in our life together in this nation.
Transformational dates can be recognized by the fact that we remember exactly where we were on that particular day.
Ask me where I was on June 14, 1958 and I will tell you I was in Batavia, New York, being married to Judith Graham. That day changed my personal life forever.
Ask me where I was on November 22, 1963, and I will tell you that I was in Washington at the Library of Congress working on a seminary paper. It was there that I heard that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. That day changed our nation’s life forever.
On September 11, 2010, I will bet that most, if not all of my readers will be able to remember where they were on 9/11. I sure remember. It was the day that Judy and I moved back to Charleston, West Virginia. Assisting the movers as they unloaded the van, a television set hastily connected allowed us to see the Twin Towers fall into dust.
In anticipation of the upcoming ninth anniversary of 9/11—when 3,287 days will have passed —here are a few of my observations offered from beneath my fig tree.
When Buildings Go Down, The Rats Emerge
When we moved into our new home on 9/11—the future of the abandoned school building behind our new digs—was in doubt. Some of us in the neighborhood, as well as the man who owned the building, were hopeful it could be renovated into a housing complex for low and moderate income folks, like many of the people working at the nearby hospital. But that was not to be—you know— the free market being what it is and government help being what it isn’t.
When the bulldozers and dynamite showed up to take the building down, we were comforted at least in knowing that another drug store wouldn’t take its place. Instead, the plan called for a new building to house soon-to-be upwardly mobile medical interns.
That’s when the rats emerged. Seeking refuge, after having lived in the subterranean confines of the abandoned building, they sought refuge in adjacent homes, like ours.
When the Twin Towers came down—reduced to rubble, like the old school building behind my house—the rats emerged. Hidden beneath the fancy Wall Street headquarters were realities that have become visible over the past 3,287 days. I’ve seen them. Have you?
• A pack of Wall Street rats, led by Bernie Madoff, who stole and bankrupted individuals and non-profit organizations, like Yeshiva University and the Holocaust Foundation, with his $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
• A whole swarm of rats—banks and investment firms headquartered on Wall Street—that stole, manipulated and fraudulently robbed Americans of hard-earned money that, when gone, cost folks their future.
• Political rats, like Rudy Giuliani, who emerged to play the part of a hero while building his own political future on the Twin Tower ashes. Chances are good that we will see a few of these political rats emerge at 9/11 anniversary events as they prepare for upcoming elections.
• And last, but not least, President George W. Bush who spoke to the nation on the evening of 9/11: “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace…None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.” And then, after mouthing these auspicious words, ratted on us by telling us all to spend more money to fix the economy, and then sent us into a senseless and unnecessary war in Iraq that has already cost us close to $1 trillion.
Americans were angered by 9/11, grieved the loss of life, became fearful for the future, and yet hoped that our nation, like the legendary phoenix bird, would rise from the ashes to live again with a new vibrancy and direction.
But what emerged was a hawk hungry for war. And that hawk flew straight for Afghanistan and Iraq.
Peace From The Barrel Of A Gun—Like Surgery With A Bayonet
In the last issue of Notes, I ended with this quote from “Every Man in This Village is a Liar,” Meghan Stack’s gutsy book about Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11.
“Here is the truth: It matters what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don’t die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples”
Risking her life in order to report about the war, Stack returned home briefly for some rest, time to breathe—time to answer mail and phone messages, hear about the Enron scandal brewing in her hometown of Houston, and time to drink beer with friends before going back to the war.
“Here at home,” she writes, “people still feel assaulted, they believe they had the high moral ground. But I had seen U.S. warplanes drop bombs on villages of mud brick, and children killed and bin Laden vanish and the future of a broken land becoming the moral responsibility of my own country. September 11 seemed very far away, buried under the war it had called down. I am losing America, I thought as I lay in bed that night. I got caught out on the other side, stayed out there too long, and now I can’t get home.”
I read much about the men and women who are coming home disabled, suicidal, and violent from this long day’s journey into war. I have had my own dealings with difficult situations. What gets lost so often is the hell we have perpetrated on Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions of people who are refugees and homeless—over 100,000 people dead and who knows how many wounded—infrastructures destroyed—corrupt and failing political structures—intolerable environmental destruction.
During the Vietnam War we said we were destroying villages and poisoning the land with toxic Agent Orange in order that we might save the people and the country. That was our justifying lie for a war that should never have been fought, like the one in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Prophet Jeremiah rails against his people for the cheap, ugly and unreal peace that is no peace at all. “They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.” In like manner, I would say that peace from the barrel of a gun is like doing surgery with a bayonet or a can opener.
Winning Hearts And Minds—A Myth
Speaking of bayonets reminds me of my Marine Corps training long ago. It was all part of months and months of training designed around the art of war—the art of killing people. That’s what our troops are trained to do. Kill people. I make no apologies for it, and refuse to cover up the truth with fancy dress uniforms or spit-polished shoes. Paper targets imitated human beings, blanks substituted for live ammunition, and mock war battle games anticipated blood and guts battles in some land across the sea.
But things have changed when it comes to war. Today’s troops are out there in Iraq and Afghanistan to “win hearts and minds.” Excuse me! Hearts and minds?
If I am asked to name one honest-to-God authentic voice on this war we are engaged in, and where it is taking us, I would point to Andrew Bacevich. A 1969 graduate of West Point, Vietnam War veteran, former teacher at West Point, and now a professor at Boston University. I might also add that his son, a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was killed by an improvised explosive device while serving in Iraq.
In his latest book, just published, and one I highly recommend, “Washington Rules: America’s Path To Permanent War,” Bacevich writes about the shift in the military. “Winning hearts and minds now displaced fire and maneuver atop the pyramid of soldierly priorities. Among the unwritten duties that every modern president must shoulder is to explain to the American people ‘why we must fight.’ Up to this point, in justifying the Long War, Bush had expressed himself using the ideologically charged language typically employed by his predecessors. The global conflict begun on 9/11, he had regularly insisted, represented a continuation of a long-standing commitment to spreading liberal democratic values.”
Ah, don’t we Americans like to think of ourselves as “spreading liberal democratic values?” We see our nation as a “city upon a hill” commissioned by God to help bring light and peace to the world.
But listen to Bacevich’s warning: “When presidents use phrases like fighting for freedom, eliminating tyranny, and liberating the oppressed, they speak in code. Their real meaning, easily deciphered by their listeners is this: Safeguarding the American way of life requires that others conform to American values. Military victory offers the medium through which American warriors impose conformity.
The Iraq war was begun with military might—“shock and awe” and how now petered off into an effort to “win hearts and minds.” General Petraeus, now in charge of the military campaign, has changed his tune. Once a shock and awe disciple, he has now become a win hearts and minds man utilizing counterinsurgency as the tactic that will bring peace. This, says, Bacevich, and I agree, is a losing effort and will only lead us to endless war.
I’m happy that American troops returned from Iraq last week from a war we should never have fought. The Iraq War has been a disaster created by a lying president, a complicit Congress, and an apathetic public. I’m sickened by the triumphalism and propaganda around our troops trip home. Believe me, combat is not over, not when 93 bases and 50,000 “non-combat” troops with weapons are still there, and the number of private American security forces has doubled. Those troops left behind have weapons. They are combat troops.
Three Cups Of Tea With The Military
I was disturbed to see that Greg Mortenson, the author of “Three Cups of Tea” and the man responsible for building schools in Afghanistan for girls, has just recently hooked up with the military in order to assist in bringing peace to the land by winning hearts and minds.
This all started back in June when Mortenson was contacted via a note from the then top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. He saw Mortenson’s charitable approach as a way to convince the Afghan people that U.S. presence is peaceful. This from a General who covered up the killing of Pat Tillman by “friendly fire,” and who was relieved of his duty by President Obama only nine hours after Mortenson received McChrystal’s note.
Counterinsurgency calls for the military to make friends with the people, work side-by-side in community development projects, and drink tea with the locals. But when did bonding with people become a military mission? When American soldiers bond with Afghan males like they were locker room buddies, and that includes bouts of farting, I get a bit concerned. Particularly because fart is proof to Afghan men that a man is weak and cannot control his rear end. I am not making that situation up. American Ann Jones who works with Afghan women has written about it.
Look, I am not saying our troops shouldn’t be conscious of local customs or that they shouldn’t be friendly to little Afghan girls. What I am saying is that the line between social work, diplomacy, community organizing and war should be clearly defined. Non-governmental organizations like Mortenson’s organization, if they are to be in a war situation at all, should not be connected with the military in any way. It is confusing to the people who live there and it is confusing to troops who are meant to keep their mind on military matters.
The Islamic Community Center Fiasco
Two rats running wild near Ground Zero—the former site of the Twin Towers—are named Ignorance and Islamaphobia. I shall not go into detail about the battle over the proposed mosque and community center because I trust that my readers have been keeping up with the news.
A majority of Americans think that the facility should not be built there even though they believe our Constitution gives Muslims the right to do it. My take on this matter? New York City should ignore the angry, frothing mouths of media freaks and political figures eager to make hay off this project. Sure, there are people who feel pain over the fact that they have friends and relatives who died when the Twin Towers came down and don’t want the facility there. I am not questioning their motives. But someone must remind us all, as Mayor Bloomberg and other religious and media voices have done, that the religion of Islam did not create the ashes, and that perhaps this project might very well be the phoenix that rises from that disaster.
Cassius, in Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” says these words: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” And in this situation, quite frankly, the fault lies deep in the American psyche in that place where ignorance and fear of Islam is lodged. Want proof?
The Rev. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, says “I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name.”
That rubbish, from a religious leader with a following, fed to a growing number of people who believe Obama is a Muslim, is frightening. When you discover that 60% of these people have formed their opinion from the media (you want to guess which network?) you begin to understand the role of media, particularly cable news, hell-bent on twisting truth and confirming lies. Perhaps when the mosque finally gets built in New York, it will be one of those places where Americans can overcome fear of a faith other than the one they espouse.
One more thought before I leave the fiasco over this proposed building project. It has to do with Bernie Madoff, now residing in a prison cell for his shenanigans on Wall Street. Bernie is a Jew who caused great pain among many people as a result of his fraudulent behavior. Suppose a Jewish Temple had been proposed for that site near Ground Zero. Would it have been stopped because a temple would have reminded all the folks of the Wall Street disaster that caused them so much pain? I think not.
Our Students On A Path Toward Permanent War
Our local Charleston newspaper reports that the school where our kids went, George Washington High School, had a big ceremony welcoming its first Army Junior ROTC class. The students, between 85 and 90, all wore their uniforms to school. Teachers, a WV legislator, a city council member, a former colonel and gubernatorial candidate, and the school board president all gave speeches.
It was said by the school Principal that a number of the new recruits are not involved in clubs or sports and that “the new program gives them a sense of belonging.” The school board president said “Never before have we needed ROTC like we need it today.”
Sadly, I think he might just be right, given the fact that we are on the path toward permanent war.
August 27th, 2010
August 8th, 2010 |
Thomas DeGloma has written an interesting article in the summer issue of The Hedgehog. It has an intriguing title—“Waking Up in a Contentious World.”
The article begins with an account of the March 2008 four-day gathering in Silver Spring, Maryland, of over one hundred veterans of the wars in the Middle East. The event was called “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan” and was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War.
The autobiographical data gives testimony to the fact that these veterans have had a change of heart about their own rationales or ideological justifications for the war they participated in and now condemn. DeGloma cites an example of this by quoting from testimony given by Eleonai “Eli” Israel, an Army National Guard Specialist.
“Like many after September 11th I wanted to serve, again. I felt I owed something more to my country after my years of training. I trusted my president and my leadership to tell me the truth. I also trusted my own integrity. I knew that I would never willingly do anything that I knew to be immoral or wrong…. I reasoned that my actions during these missions were justified in the name of ‘self-defense.’ However, I came to realize my perception was wrong. I was in a country I had no right to be in, violating the lives of people, and doing so without regard to the same standards of dignity and respect that we as Americans hold our own homes and our own lives to.”
Eli is describing, says DeGloma, “a major transformation of consciousness, an awakening in which he realized his old perceptions and beliefs were wrong.”
The experience of war may be one place where awakenings occur, but one need not march off to battle for a change of heart—a new way of looking at the past, present or future.
In this issue of Notes I shall focus on the subject of awakenings.
Guilt—What The Skunk Leaves Behind
In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, guilt for the murder of King Duncan clings to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Duncan’s blood will not be washed away. Lady Macbeth rubs her hands, as if to cleanse them, but cries out, “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” Blood is Shakespeare’s metaphor for guilt.
I think of guilt as the rancid smell left behind after the skunk has fled. It permeates the air and saturates those left behind.
Guilt is often an inevitable emotion that follows an awakening. In the case of Army National Guard Specialist Eli Israel, you can be sure that his changed perspective on the war led him to say such things as “How could I have been so naive as to trust President Bush and my leadership? How could I have done the things required of me in the war—participating in the bloodshed of innocent people? How could I have been so blind?”
I suspect all of us could claim guilt for past actions or perceptions which we regret once our eyes are opened after an awakening has occurred. The guilt may come over how we have treated someone in the past. Perhaps the guilt is related to some past previous prejudice we harbored around race, class, religion, gender or ethnicity.
One of the most difficult aspects associated with guilt is the fact that an awakening often causes a person to believe their past was wasted because of certain choices made, opportunities squandered. Guilt then leads to remorse and regret for lost or misdirected time—time viewed as beyond redemption. In the case of war, it is hard for a nation to say a particular war should not have been fought, because we do not want to think that lives were “lost in vain.” This could well be true for any profession, any commitment—the fear that the past was wasted and cannot be reclaimed.
The life of Saul, depicted in the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles, is a vivid illustration of what I am talking about. Saul was a persecutor of Christians who suddenly had an awakening on the road to Damascus. The lyrics from a Simon and Garfunkel song could well have been sung by Saul, who took the name Paul after his awakening: “I am blinded by the light of God and truth and right and I wander in the night without direction.”
Paul’s awakening results in temporary blindness because the eyes of perception must adjust to the startling brightness of a new truth. Paul’s experience offers a paradigm of hope for anyone tempted to feel that a redemptive future cannot be salvaged from a shipwrecked past.
I do believe that guilt, with its unquenchable thirst for forgiveness, can only be satisfied by an overflowing reservoir of grace. The question then for those of us who live in a contentious, conflicted and ever changing world is simply this: Where can we find that well from which we are able to draw strength enough to continue the journey? A step forward is possible only if one believes there is a well somewhere up ahead.
A Harsh Awakening In Our Local Jail
Years ago, while I was the pastor at St. John’s Church here in Charleston, I received a frantic call from my senior warden. “Jim, meet me at the jail. Nellie (not her real name) was just arrested.”
On my way to the jail I wondered what Nellie—an elderly, retired teacher and respected church member—could have possibly done to end up on the wrong side of the law.
When I arrived at the jail I was informed that Nellie had been distracted by a friend while shopping and inadvertently put a small item into her pocket rather than the shopping cart. After checking out, a security guard stopped her as she left the store and called the police.
Within a short time, we were able to free Nellie. Shaken and dazed, she returned home. In a couple of days we discovered that Nellie had had an awakening behind bars.
Prior to Nellie’s arrest, she had been an outspoken opponent of the daily feeding program established at the church for the poor—the Manna Meal. She was unhappy seeing these people off the street in her beloved church. They were, in her eyes, dirty and ugly.
After her incarceration—brief as it was—Nellie changed her tune. She confessed to me that prior to being arrested she had never thought that she might be in the same boat as one of the street people at the Manna Meal. Her arrest had awakened her to a reality that had previously been hidden from her.
Leonard Cohen has written words I love: “Ring the bell that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Life has a way of cracking us open in ways that seem unfair, confrontational, even cruel. Experience tells me that those moments often allow for light and new awakenings.
Awakening To One’s Own Strength
There is an old children’s hymn that goes like this: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong.”
I don’t want to sound like Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author of the book “God is Not Great,” but I must tell you that the words “they are weak but He is strong” make we wince every time I hear them sung. They don’t jive with my understanding of God.
A great God, in order to be strong, should have no need for human beings to be weak. No one, God included, should have to derive strength from someone else’s weakness.
During 46 years of ordained ministry, I have encountered lots of people who have continued to internalize those words from a child’s hymn long after they have left the crib, passed through adolescence and moved into adulthood. In a weird way, God’s defined goodness and greatness, and the perfection of Jesus, have been intimidating and have thwarted their personal growth. External authority has had an undue influence in keeping folks from claiming and utilizing an innate strength bestowed upon them at birth.
I think centuries of theological and creedal authority have cursed us with God’s bravado. All the attributed characteristics—omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence—have morphed God into a bellowing Wizard of Oz figure who intimidates the Tin Men, Scarecrows and Cowardly Lions who travel life’s yellow brick roads.
I love the fact that the three weak-kneed characters finally come into their own power, not by any Wizard magic, but on their own as they discover along the way that they already possess the qualities they believe they lack. The Scarecrow, who desires a brain, has several good ideas. The Tin Man, who wants to be human, is kind and sympathetic. The Lion, threatened by his fear, finally faces danger, even though he is terrified.
Awakening to one’s own power, whether it is seen as a gift from God or not, is at the heart of human creativity, change and growth. When a person is not able to claim his or her innate power, that person is stripped of self confidence and reduced to unhealthy dependencies which fall back on someone else’s strength and authority.
I believe all of us possess an élan vital—a vital force, a life-giving urge capable of creating our own narratives again and again. Each one of us is born with this élan vital, this emerging spirit. Some call this spirit God. But all too often this élan vital is suppressed, even beaten out of us by parents, school, a variety of authorities, and yes, religion.
I truly believe that an awakening takes place—a life changing revelation—when a human being discovers this élan vital and claims the power to make creative adjustments and changes in the way life is to be perceived and lived from the cradle to the grave, and who knows, perhaps beyond what seems limited by time.
Sexual Awakening
The 2007 Tony Award winning Broadway rock musical “Spring Awakening” is a modern adaptation of a controversial 1891 play. The original play was about school children entering puberty, speculating about their sexuality. It was banned in Germany for about a century, due to its subject matter— masturbation, abortion, homosexuality, child abuse and suicide—controversial but critical subjects.
Awakening to one’s own sexuality is no easy trip. Faced with an adult world’s avoidance, hypocrisy, lies, and twisted morality embedded in secular and religious teachings, it’s a wonder that any of us arrive at a sexual awakening on the way to adulthood.
Consider the response to Kate Chopin’s novel, “The Awakening,” published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast, it caused a controversy that may have equaled the flap over the BP oil slick. Chopin’s novel challenged the social attitudes surrounding femininity and motherhood and was attacked for its frank expressions of female sexuality. The book eventually became a landmark of early feminism.
Over time I have seen enormous changes in terms of the awakening of our society around gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender orientation. The overturning by the U.S. District Court judge in California of Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, has moved gay marriage another step forward in our nation. It is a landmark sexual awakening event.
The history of racial, sexual and social injustice of all types requires an awakening on the part of the people, the politicians and the courts in order that justice and mercy might be served. The deep moral intentions embedded in our nation’s religious and constitutional intentions must continually be stirred out of deep slumber by a variety of voices—some quiet and others noisy and confrontational. It takes a variety of tactics to change a village.
An Awakening In The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death
Here in Appalachia we are witnessing an awakening in the proverbial twenty-third Psalms’ valley of the shadow of death.
Do you member the explosion that took place just four months ago in the Massey Energy Company’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, just 30 miles from my home in Charleston—the one that took 29 lives?
I say remember because the media remind me of one of those pads you write on and then erase by lifting the plastic cover. Filled with mine disaster news back in April, the pad now contains other information—the BP oil spill, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, the Arizona frenzy over immigration, and the hysteria over a proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New Your City. And, of course, American Idol—always American Idol.
The awakening that is presently taking place here around the mine disaster has to do with the fact that miners who worked in the Upper Big Branch mine are now surfacing to tell the truth about the unsafe conditions in the mine prior to the explosion. The unwritten code of silence—what goes on underground stays underground—is now being broken.
Miners who feared Massey Energy intimidation—that they would be fired if they squealed about safety infractions—are now coming forward to speak. The guilt which hovers over the mountainous valleys from which coal is drawn may well be lifting as miners are awakening to their complicity in this tragedy and are proceeding down a path that may bring much needed change in the coal industry—change that protects miners and their jobs. That would be a tribute to the 29 dead miners and their families and friends.
What Your Mother Would Like You To Be When You Grow Up
John Conroy is a reporter who braved political pressure by writing newspaper reports about Chicago police who tortured black suspects into confessions for crimes they did not commit. His story is told in the July/August edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. Conroy is described as “the kind of reporter your mother dreamed you would grow up to be: dogged, driven, caring, righteous, cranky, smoldering, and moral.”
I haven’t been asked lately to preach an ordination sermon for a new minister. But if I were, I’d challenge the newly ordained to be that kind of minister— dogged, driven, caring, righteous, cranky, smoldering, and moral.
I’ve just finished a powerful book by a marvelous reporter, Meghan K. Stack—“Every Man In This Village Is A Liar: An Education In War.” Writing about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, her work is like a straight shot of whiskey in a bar where watered-down drinks are the standard fare. Her mother should be proud of her for writing such an honest-to-God book. It’s a pride-producing book.
Bottoms up—down the hatch—a 100-proof slug on the way to the belly. “Here is the truth: It matters what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don’t die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples”
I think I’ve had enough truth, but Ms. Stack won’t let me up from her awakening and the awakening I must not avoid. “We Americans tell ourselves that we are fighting tyranny and toppling dictators. And we say this word, terrorism, because it has become the best excuse of all. We push into other lands, we chase the ghost of a concept, because it is too hard to admit that evil is already in our own hearts and blood is on our hands.”
In the next issue of Notes From Under the Fig Tree, I shall say more about this book. I invite you to do some preparatory homework by reading Ms. Stack’s remarkable writing.
August 8th, 2010
July 16th, 2010 |
A couple of weeks ago I saw a clip on CNN that featured news about spying. The woman being interviewed described a number of fancy spy devices that anyone can purchase. No CIA or FBI credentials are required, for example, to buy called Spyglasses.
Here’s how the glasses work. They’re equipped with a hidden video camera inside the frames, along with a device that records conversations. All you have to do is slip the glasses on—like a pair of sunglasses—and you can record all the sights and sounds in your line of vision. This is accomplished without anyone knowing they’re being spied on.
Spying has a long history and the subject holds a fascination for most of us. It starts at an early age and may extend for a lifetime. Remember the game, “I Spy” often played with children, on a car trip? Someone says, “I spy something that begins with the letter ‘F’” and the kids look around in search of it.
My grandson, Jesse, when he was very young, wanted most of all to go to the International Spy Museum in Washington. He left the building that day with a spy kit and went home ready to play spy.
Back when I was a kid, I was fascinated by the book and television series, “I Led Three Lives.” I was intrigued by Herbert Philbrick who for nine years did lead three lives— average citizen, member of the Communist Party, and counterspy for the F.B.I. Looking back on this phenomenon, I can see how interest in the series fed stereotypes prevalent during the McCarthy Red Scare of the 1940s and early 1950s.
Spy fascination isn’t confined to the young. It’s alive and well in the adult world. It’s what accounts for the popularity of Graham Greene and John Le Carré espionage novels. And don’t forget the enormous interest in the spy film genre—films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” and, of course, the James Bond series. I’m also of the belief that biography-lovers have that voyeuristic urge to spy on someone else’s life.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve felt like we’ve returned to the Cold War days as Russian and American spies surfaced in the news. We are still playing the I Spy game with one another.
So, let’s play I Spy. I’ll sit beneath my fig tree on this hot and humid July day and tell you what I’ve seen through my Spyglasses since the last issue of Notes.
Looking Through Glass At A Man In Jail
Right after finishing my last edition of Notes, I drove over to Logan, West Virginia, to visit Roland Micklem who was serving a thirty day sentence in the Southwestern Regional Jail. Roland was convicted of blocking a road to the Massey Energy headquarters near Charleston. In his 80s, Roland is a Christian who stands up for his belief that mountaintop removal is a sin against God’s creation.
The jail is located some 60 miles from downtown Charleston, just outside Logan. A sharp right turn off route 119, following a sign to the jail, I found myself on a steep climb up a mountain road. What I realized, when I got to the top, was that I was parking the car on a flat surface. As if to add insult to injury, Roland was confined in a jail situated on a mountaintop removal site.
Inside the facility, I was escorted into a visiting room—more like a closet—and seated in front of a large piece of glass. This would be a non-contact visit with Roland on one side of the glass and me on the other. As I’ve done so often in jail and prison visits, we greeted one another by placing our hands up against the glass. Cold glass replaced warm flesh.
What I saw on the other side of the glass was a man who refused to complain about the jail, his cellmates or the guards. He had been assigned to the laundry where his work offered a possibility that he might get a few days shaved from his sentence.
What I heard, during the course of the hour-long conversation, was a story Roland wanted to tell me, and which he has now written for publication in a Charleston Gazette article. It was a Jesus story, and it goes like this.
Inside Pod-A-1 was a steel table where Roland ate, wrote letters and kept his journal. Someone, unnamed, and no longer confined, had left carvings on the table. A cross was located at the center, with a pair of praying hands on one side and a Bible on the other side with the inscription “John 3:16”. The scene was framed by intertwining grape vines.
Roland told me that this became a shrine for him—a place of hope. Here’s what he wrote in his newspaper piece about the man who did the sketch. “He needs to know what an inspiration he was for me. Even though I was treated well and came to care for and respect each of my jail mates, the mere fact of being locked up and unable to come and go as one pleases is enough to undermine morale, and I am indeed grateful, as much for his courage and commitment as for his talent.”
Riding home I had this thought: What etchings do we human beings, myself included, leave behind for those who arrive on the scene after our departure? And will they engender courage and hope for others? We shall be known by our sketches.
Roland has now been released from jail. I talked to him by phone the other day. He is back home in Savannah, New York, where he is taking time to discern what the next chapter in his life will be—mind you, in his 80s planning another chapter.
Looking At The Fourth Of July
I’ve had a long love affair with hot dogs. I know, I know, a hot dog is not such a hot item for health conscious eaters, but what’s a woebegone weakling like me going to do when I pass a hot dog vendor and give thought to that dog, wrapped in a bun blanket and covered with mustard and onion?
I have read that Americans eat more hot dogs than any nation on earth—20 billion every year, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. Out of that number, 150 million are eaten on the Fourth of July. Typing these words reminds me of my youthful days in Baltimore when I would walk to Mandell’s Delicatessen and order a Hebrew National kosher hot dog, split and fried, wrapped in a slice of fried pastrami, lathered in yellow mustard, and placed in a chewy sesame seed roll.
This Fourth of July I caught sight of the news coverage of the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. Everywhere I looked—in newspapers and television news—I found the story of people trying to win the contest by eating as many hot dogs as they could stuff in their faces in a brief ten minutes. The event was sponsored by the organization, Major League Eating, and televised on ESPN, the sports channel. Living in the most obese state in the nation, I suspect this organization must have an office here.
Anyway, I decided to write about this on my Facebook page. I asked my friends, “While oil is regurgitating into the sea, and blood from the bodies of our troops, isn’t this Fourth of July gluttony, and the media voyeurism, obscene?”
Lots of folks responded with confirmation that this Fourth of July farce was obscene. One friend, however, surprised me with the comment, “lighten up.” It made me stop and take stock of myself. I require a lot of my readers, both in my Notes and on Facebook, not to mention the numerous conversations I have with folks about the dark state of the world.
Do I need to lighten up, go easy, step back away from the war we are fighting and the BP oil spill? Can’t I just watch the fireworks, be quiet and leave the Fourth alone?
After some thought, following my trip to the river to watch the fireworks, and I might add, eating two hot dogs, I have come to the conclusion that I can’t quit doing what I do.
The troops deserve a better nation to defend than one consumed by its own gluttony. The sea life and beaches deserve more than polluted water and oil balls along the shore. And last but not least, hot dogs deserve a more dignified epicurean ending than they got at the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Looking At A Wedding
Author Scott Turow, reviewing the book “Mr. Peanut,” recalls the words of his creative writing professor, uttered forty years ago. He told us, says Turow, “that the one subject he had always feared writing a novel about was marriage, because it still seemed to him the most complex and frequently unfathomable of human relationships, despite his long and successful marriage.” Truer words were never spoken—complex and unfathomable.
Last weekend I traveled to Virginia to do a wedding. It was held outdoors in a beautiful setting. As the preacher, I always have the best seat in the house at a wedding. I can see everything from my vantage point.
Looking down the aisle, I saw the flowers, the bridal party decked out in fancy dress, the faces of family and friends gathered for the celebration, and, of course, the bride walking toward her groom to make commitment to one another by the taking of vows.
Ah, the vows! Every time I say the words and hear them echoed by couples, staring lovingly at each other, I recognize that I am standing before a work of art in progress. The term chiaroscuro, a Renaissance art term, seems appropriate.
Chiaroscuro is the Italian word for light/dark. It describes the bold contrast of light and dark that goes into creating a fine painting—the interplay of light and shadow—dissimilar qualities that reflect complicated, often contrasting moods.
Judy and I just celebrated our fifty-second wedding anniversary. Fifty two years ago we stood before an Episcopal preacher in a Presbyterian church in Batavia, New York, and took our vows. Hardly realizing, at the time, the power of their implication, we said we would love one another “from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death.”
Chiaroscuro-like vows—the lightness of the words—better, richer and health—blended in with the darkness of the words worse, poorer, sickness, and the shadow of death.
These vows are a reminder that no painting can extend beyond the limits of its borders—no commitment beyond the border of death.
Two days before the wedding on Saturday the bride’s grandfather died. His death threatened to hang like a pall over the ceremony. But, instead, it became a reminder of those words “to have and to hold until we are parted by death.” The advice I always give to couples at a wedding rehearsal goes like this: When in doubt as to what they should do during the ceremony—just hold on to one another, then and forever.
In a very mysterious and unexplainable way, death is a gift to the living. The passage of someone’s life makes room for the narrative to continue in those left behind.
Looking At Senator Byrd’s Memorial Service
Four days after writing my last Notes, Senator Byrd died. Judy and I attended his memorial service at the Capitol here in Charleston. Without belaboring or exhausting thoughts about Byrd and what I’ve seen of this man over the years I have watched him, I’d like to cap the well of grief that poured out here in West Virginia, with a few comments about the past, pork, and privilege.
• The Past: Each one of us writes our own narrative from womb to tomb. Robert Byrd wrote his. It extended from the days when he was so poor he had no socks to wear to school, all the way to his having served for fifty-eight years in Congress—52 as a senator. On the dark side of the ledger there was the Klan, his racist views, and his support of a war in Vietnam. But, like the old saying—“God is not finished with me yet”—life was not ever finished with Bobby Byrd. He grew up until the very day he died—opposing the war in Iraq, and being critical of Big Coal. What each of us has been in the past is important, likewise the present, but what counts is what is in us to become—what we will be. And Robert Byrd was always in a becoming mode—that’s what was at the heart of his greatness.
• Pork: I’m a big fan of pork barbecue but I’m critical of political “pork.” There are more equitable ways of distributing government pork without favoring the hogs. But I get irritated when I hear folks criticize West Virginia and Byrd for all the pork this state has received. Hey, the nation comes here for troops to fight our wars, and for coal to fuel the economy, so quit belly-aching about money that has come back down our country roads for many fine and much-needed projects.
• Privilege: I choose not to romanticize Senator Byrd, because what begins with syrupy sentiment too often winds up as patronizing praise. Give the devil his due, in all of us. If there is not much to forgive in any one of us, there is really not much to love. So, returning to that word— chiaroscuro—Byrd’s life portrait mixed light with shadows. Looking at his long tenure in Congress, I must say, in all honesty, I don’t like a long running political show. Longevity guarantees privilege and privilege is a threat to democratic renewal and the fostering of new leadership. Mark my words, we’ll have to see a silk purse made out of a sow’s ear when it comes to a replacement for the man with a fiddle—Senator Robert Carlyle Byrd.
Looking At The Oil Spewing Into The Gulf
For eighty-five days I have been watching, as I am sure you have, the devastation of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. As I write these Notes, I hear the news that there is no more oil leaking into the Gulf. If the cap can hold the oil without blowing a new leak in the well, we may see an end to this nightmare.
The Gulf has been bleeding, and cameras placed deep below the water’s surface have been our submerged eyes allowing us to witness this terrible environmental disaster, twenty-four hours a day.
Naomi Klein, in a thoughtful article in The Nation, reminds us that “In the arc of human history, the notion that nature is a machine for us to re-engineer at will is a relatively recent conceit…until the 1600s, the Earth was alive, usually taking the form of a mother. Europeans—like indigenous people the world over—believed the planet to be a living organism, full of life-giving powers but also wrathful tempers. There were, for this reason, strong taboos against actions that would deform and desecrate ‘the mother,’ including mining.”
Those who believe that human beings can mine the sea for oil or the earth for coal, in a relentless fashion, without serious consequences, would do well to wake up.
A friend has just advised me to look at Dan Beauchamp’s (www.talesofcoppercity.com). Good advice. In his piece, “The Elephant in the Pews,” he writes: “I believe that we are like the fish in the sea that Bishop Ambrose wrote about in the late third century, the fish that lives in the ocean of life with its constantly shifting currents and its deep, deep darkness below, the womb that gave all of life and the world its birth and the ocean of life that sustains us until we die and return to that larger life.”
A reminder, indeed, that we best not foul the nest we live in—“this planet earth, our island home,” as the Episcopal Eucharistic prayer describes our residency. Wrath will come, for sure, from whatever source you wish to name—an angry God, the Laws of Nature, or Mother Earth.
Naomi Klein writes about our nation’s perverse path to enlightenment: “They say that Americans learn where foreign countries are by bombing them. Now it seems we are all learning about nature’s circulatory systems by poisoning them.” That sounds like William Blake—“The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”
One Last Fig For My Readers
A final thought from a man who has seen lots of wounds—physical and emotional—over my 47 years of ordained ministry. It’s a fig passed on to me, and now I pass it on to you. Chew on these words, if you will: Scar tissue is vastly stronger than the standard issue.
July 16th, 2010
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