January 30th, 2012 |
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From Thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
The Book of Common Prayer–The Apostles Creed
Reporters from national news networks manage to find their way to West Virginia when a disaster occurs. Tiny West Virginia communities, like Seth, Bolt, Horse Creek, Comfort and Montcoal go unnoticed until a devastating explosion occurs, as it did in April two years ago when 29 miners died at the Upper Big Branch mine.
When the reporters arrive, I entertain the hope that they will call attention to the marvelous people who live here, without relying on the old and tired stereotypes so often associated with Appalachian people. I hope, also, that the coverage will help people living in other parts of the world realize there are important issues here in Appalachia that are worthy of attention—issues that affect them.
Words from a recent novel haunt me. “When nothing matters, everything is permitted.” Those words make a strong case for the subject of judgment—judgment among the quick and the dead—gracious judgment for soul’s health. Call it my search for a tough-love-God in the midst of a death-dealing world. Where else is there to look but among the living and the dead—those among us, and those who have gone before us?
I shall begin with Nitro, West Virginia, in search of the quick and the dead. Then it’s on to Mississippi, and finally to stop along the presidential campaign trail.
Nitro—A Boom Town
If you find yourself driving on U.S. I-64 between Charleston and Huntington, you will see a turnoff for Nitro. Located on the Kanawha River, it’s home to some 7,000 people, according to the 2010 census.
If you drive to Diehl’s Restaurant, you’ll see a bit of Nitro’s history on the wall. Proud of their sports heroes, you’ll discover pictures and sports memorabilia from Nitro High School graduates J.R. House, who had a career in major league baseball, and Josh Culbertson voted the best high school football player in West Virginia in 2005. You might also learn Hall of Fame pitcher Lew Burdette was born in Nitro.
Nitro was assigned its name by the United States government back in World War I days when it became a boom town in more ways than one. It drew lots of folks attracted to live and work there because of the large federal plant that produced nitrocellulose for wartime explosives. It brought jobs and economic health to West Virginia.
Following World War I, Kanawha Valley attracted huge chemical companies. DuPont, Union Carbide, FMC, Bayer, Dow, and Monsanto moved into the region. Their presence resulted in the area being dubbed “Chemical Valley.” It was the best of times and the worst of times. Jobs brought people, jobs, and money into the area. It also brought air and water pollution. When I moved to Charleston in 1974, the smell of chemicals was obvious, and folks joked that the river would never freeze because of its chemical content. That, thank God, has changed since chemical production has fallen on hard times. You don’t believe me? On January 11, a local angler hauled in a 48-inch monster muskie out of the Elk River, a tributary of the Kanawha River.
This past week I sat down for an interview with a National Public Radio reporter. He didn’t fly here for a story about a big fish pulled out of a once-polluted river. He came to write about the defoliant, Agent Orange—dioxin. During the Vietnam War, between 1961-72, our nation sprayed 19,000,000 gallons of Agent Orange in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia. It is estimated to have killed or maimed some 400,000 people, as well as being responsible for 500,000 children being born with birth defects.
A huge class-action law suit will begin here in mid-February. The plaintiffs will claim that Monsanto polluted the city of Nitro during the period of time when Agent Orange was being made in a nearby facility. They are seeking medical monitoring for at least 5,000—and perhaps as many as 80,000 former Nitro residents who may have been affected by dioxin spills, leaks and dumping by Monsanto. The NPR coverage, and hopefully the major media outlets, will cover the trial. Pay attention, because corporate polluters are affecting the health and welfare of communities, here and around the world. They benefit from the waste they create and the wars they support. Nitro, West Virginia, provides ample evidence of that fact.
Homemade Agent Orange Comes Home To Haunt Us
This time fifty years ago—1962—long before I knew where Nitro, West Virginia, was located, I was a student at Virginia Seminary in Alexandria. Having processed out of the Marine Corp, I had traded my copy of The Uniform Code of Military Justice for a Bible. There would be no more helicopter vertical envelopment exercises; no more practice attacks on a fortified position. The attack then would be on the study of systematic theology and church history.
I was living in Northern Virginia. Quantico, where I had done my basic training, was just south on I-95. The Pentagon was a couple of miles from home. Just across the Potomac River was the home of The Commander in Chief, President John F. Kennedy.
What I knew fifty years ago was that the war in Southeast Asia was escalating, thanks to my paying attention to the New York Times and the Washington media. Troop strength in Vietnam was 900 in 1960 when I was in the region. By 1962 it had grown to over 16,000.
What I didn’t know back in 1962 was that on January 18, 1962, the United States was beginning to spray Agent Orange in Vietnam and adjacent countries. I knew what Dress Blues were—a Marine uniform—but I knew nothing about Agent Orange. That would change when in 1974 I accepted a call to be the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charleston, West Virginia.
By 1974, Vietnam Veterans were coming home. Along about 1975, a Vietnam veteran asked if he could use an office at St. John’s to offer help to returning veterans who were suffering from war-related problems. I gave him permission to open an office two doors away from mine. What yeasty times they were. Down the hallway from the veteran’s office was another office, Committee Against Registration for the Draft.
By invitation, I sat in on a few group sessions of what would be the early beginnings of the West Virginia chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America. The testimony was heartbreaking. I listened to men with posttraumatic stress disorder, alcohol and drug addiction, and stories of men affected by the killing and rape they had been involved in while in Vietnam. This led me to individual counseling with a woman whose marriage was coming unglued because of her husband’s drug use and abuse.
That office began the fight here in West Virginia to get Congress and the Veteran’s Administration to recognize the possible long-term health consequences of Agent Orange by a growing number of Vietnam veterans who had handled the defoliant, or who had been sprayed by it inadvertently while serving in Vietnam. Today Agent Orange is recognized as a health issue, one treated and supported with government money.
A number of months ago the connection between Agent Orange, Nitro, Vietnam, and Vietnam veterans came home to me in a most graphic way. West Virginia Supreme Court Justice, Margaret Workman, a long-time friend, asked me if I would work with Janet Gardener, her former sister-in-law in New York, to arrange a showing here of her documentary film, “The Last Ghost of War.” I said yes. Narrated by Kevin Kline, the movie traces the history of Agent Orange with footage from Nitro and Vietnam.
The movie was shown at the LaBelle Theater in South Charleston, a short distance from Nitro. It was there that the connection became vividly visible, not only in the film but in the audience. In attendance were men who had worked at the plant and had suffered health problems. Others were local Vietnam veterans with health issues. The Charleston lawyer, who has carried this case against Monsanto for the plaintiffs, spoke. He will represent the people in and around Nitro in the upcoming trial as the people move forward to discover if Monsanto has polluted their community and endangered people’s lives.
Let Me Now Praise A Famous Man—A Republican At That
Former two-term Governor and once chairman of the Republican Party, Haley Barbour is in big trouble in Mississippi. Before leaving the office of governor, he granted clemency to 215 convicts, of which 189 had already been released for some time. An enormously popular Republican, not only in his home state but also around the country, he has probably done as much or more than anyone to build and bolster the GOP.
If I had lived in Mississippi, I most likely would not have voted for Barbour for governor. For a while there it looked like he might throw his hat into the 2012 presidential primary ring. As a GOP presidential winner, I would not have voted for this Washington all-time K Street mega-lobbyist.
Having said that let it be known I’m not here to bury Barbour, but to praise him. I applaud him for his willingness to use his power as governor to grant clemency to these prisoners.
Over the past 48 years as an ordained minister, I have spent my share of time in jails and prisons in Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Delaware, and West Virginia. I’ve done work with men and women, who have been given long sentences for violent crimes. I have visited political prisoners in El Salvador as well as men on death row in Georgia, Delaware, and North Carolina where I had to witness an execution.
What drives me toward these cages we call prisons, these home grown gulags, is the simple Christian imperative bequeathed to the followers of Jesus to “set the captives free.” That instruction is grounded in a radical faith-based understanding of mercy and forgiveness. Discipleship requires a Christian to seek God’s grace in order to live a faithful life.
I don’t have to minimize my concern for victims of violent crime one bit, particularly folks who have had a loved one murdered, in order to view the governor’s action as the right thing to do. I can tell you for sure that it takes courage for a governor to offer clemency in the form of a pardon or parole to prisoners, particularly men and women found guilty of a violent offense.
On more than one occasion, while serving as the director of Christian Social Ministries in the Diocese of North Carolina, I joined with faith-based leaders to visit governors on the eve of executions in order to plead for a halt to the execution. I remember one in particular where the governor actually began to sweat when a member of the delegation, a former college roommate, reminded him of the days when both of them rejected capital punishment. That, of course, was prior to a possible second term as governor.
The American criminal justice system must not only guarantee a fair trial for the accused, reparations for victims and their families, and a method of restorative justice that not only confines people but also offers them a way home when they have done time and displayed changed behavior. Governor Barbour knew what most of us fail to recognize. Prisoners who are released after long confinement are the least likely to commit a violent crime. Locking people up and throwing the key away, except in special situations, is unacceptable behavior in a nation that relies on mercy to temper justice.
I watched Haley Barbour interviewed on CNN the other night. I liked what he had to say. Most of the time politicians talk about being a Christian in order to win votes. One need only watch Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to see what I am talking about. When it comes to Barbour, he is not afraid to talk about his Christian faith, about mercy and forgiveness. It may not win votes with some, but it does influence people willing to listen.
If you want to see a program yours truly was a part of in Delaware, one based in a community that is living out the message of forgiveness, check out The Way Home program. (http://www.thewayhomeprogram.org/)
Dumber Than Dumb On The Campaign Trail
Please don’t ask me why, but I’m watching the GOP presidential debates, at least portions of them. It reminds me of when I was a kid watching horse races at the cheap, half-mile tracks in Maryland. The race was exciting and held my attention. It was great entertainment, but the horses were a bunch of nags, one step away from the glue factory.
To continue with the analogy, I might add that a horse is certainly capable of holding the lead from the starting gate to the finish line. Most of the time, however, the horses take turns sharing the lead right up to the end of the race. And don’t the media relish the frequent change of front-runners? Mitt Romney from start to finish, how dull. A neck-and-neck race is what the media commentators love. Right now it’s Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in a neck-and-neck duel.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, please excuse the horse race analogy. It just is just too good to pass up. This GOP field of candidates is full of nags unsuitable in every way to be considered for the office of President of the United States.
Does anyone remember that terrible 1994 movie, Dumb and Dumber? It was about two incredibly moronic characters, played by Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. With a heavy dose
of slapstick comedy and gross humor, moviegoers watched the escapades of these two dumb and dumber characters as they traveled across the country. In like manner, from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina to Florida, with places yet to visit, these presidential candidates lumber, stumble, and blunder along toward November. Pretty dumb, don’t you think?
Chris Wallace on Fox Network says what needs to be said about the nineteen GOP debates that have afflicted viewers. “They’re all stupid. It’s like you’re tuning in to a car race, you really want to see if there is a wreck.”
And like someone fixated on a gruesome accident, knowing I should turn away, I somehow can’t take my eyes off this race. Right now, thanks to media coverage, I’m fixated on Newt. Don’t laugh! Newt does us a great service. His slimy campaign surfaces the polluted poison of prejudice and privilege that lies buried beneath our life together in America. It is poison that needs to be eradicated, not buried in some political dump.
A newt by dictionary definition is “a small, slender-bodied amphibian with lungs and a well-developed tail, typically spending its adult life on land and returning to water to breed.” Hey, Jon Stewart, go to work on that tidbit. The Newt we know doesn’t meet the size requirements, and the only water he seems to return to is the hot water of married life.
On Sunday I listened to Newt speak at a rally in The Villages, Florida. He played two cards that are frayed from constant use. One is the “Obama is the Food Stamp president.” It reminded me of times when I have spoken to congregations about prisoners, blacks and Latinos, poverty, and gays, when no one there had ever been incarcerated or even visited a prisoner. No one was Black, Latino, poor, or gay (at least no one was willing to say they were gay). The white population in The Villages is about 98 percent; median housing cost is $240,000; and, by survey, lesbian population is zero percent, gay men 0.1 percent. Do these people—the median age 69.2—know anyone on food stamps?
The second card is the Israel card. He says that Palestinians are an “invented” people and that he is Israel’s number one fan. What isn’t invented, however, is the fact that Sheldon Adelson, who is the self-proclaimed “richest Jew in the world,” and a large contributor to AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, has dumped $5 million into Newt’s campaign. In Cocoa, Florida, Newt called Adelson “very deeply concerned about the survival of Israel.” My view: Put a Newt in the White House, or anyone fawning over the Jewish vote and the Israeli lobby, and war with Iran won’t be far away. If voters care about Israel and Palestinians, boo when you hear the name Newt Gingrich.
One more comment before I put Newt to bed with whom ever he wants to sleep. CNN reporter, John King, became shark bait at a recent debate when he asked Newt to comment on the ABC News interview in which his second wife had said Newt had asked her for an open marriage so that he could have sex with other women. You know what? I don’t care where Newt puts his penis. I care more about where, if elected, he’d put our missiles, weaponry, drones, and our troops. I hate to admit it, but it tickles me when the fire with which he plays burns this “family values” guy. Forgive me, Lord! I really do want to be a forgiving person. I just wish Newt would say he’s sorry.
January 30th, 2012
January 8th, 2012 |
Is anyone out there still writing 2011 on a check and then having to go back and manipulate the 11 into an acceptable 12? Come on now, own up. Entering a new year, however, does take an adjustment or two in more ways than just writing a check. Especially when the Apocalypse—the end of the world is staring us in the face.
I used to laugh at those bumper stickers plastered on the back of cars that read “In Case Of The Rapture This Car Will Be Without A Driver.” Of course I knew what it meant. When the end of the world takes place—the Rapture—real born-again Christians will be taken up into heaven and the sinners and non-believers will be left behind.
Maybe my laughter hid more than it revealed. Perhaps it was a sign of my uncertainty, my anxiety. Would I be left behind? Or, if the flight crew of a plane I was traveling in disappeared, would I wind up being ash in the middle of an Iowa cornfield? With election primaries going on, you can understand why I have Iowa on my mind. I could just as easily have made it a snow-topped mountain in New Hampshire, or a cotton field in South Carolina.
Please don’t make fun of me, but I think I should offer a few thoughts about the Apocalypse. Consider it a subject too long avoided in these Notes, or perhaps these writings are preparation for being sucked up out of my car or, on the other hand, being fertilizer for a crop of corn in the year 2012. Only God knows.
A Thought About The 2012 Election And Root Canals
I remember back in 1999 when we were waiting for the ball to drop on Times Square in New York City. Folks were braced for an apocalyptic big-bang moment—the Y2K Millennium crisis—the worldwide crash of computers when 12:59.99 on the clock rolled over at midnight into the numbers 2000. The world, so some doomsday techies predicted, would be plunged into chaos. I’d better not have made plans to fly over Iowa
Last year in Raleigh, North Carolina, a 32 year-old Army veteran with two tours in Iraq behind her, began organizing RVs full of people who traveled around the country warning people that the Apocalypse was going to take place on May 21. She had bought into the message being broadcast on the Family Radio Network by Harold Camping, a longtime end-of-the-world prognosticator.
So here we are at the beginning of a new year once again facing the coming Apocalypse. According to the Mayan Long Count calendar, the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012. That date was inscribed in stone 1300 years ago near modern-day Tabasco, Mexico. Hot sauce, indeed, from the heart of the Maya population. The significance of this stone carving is hotly debated. Mayan government officials, however, are predicting a surge of visitors to the Maya areas of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Lots of money will be headed south of the border.
With the 2012 presidential election already in motion, evangelist Pat Robertson has issued another dire prediction. No stranger to apocalyptic visions and voices—he’s done it on a number of occasions—Pat has told his television audience that God has spoken to him with a message. The Virgin Mary may have been given a message from an angel about the birth of Jesus, but Pat Robertson needs no intermediaries. His message, mind you, is straight from God.
“Your country will be torn apart by internal stress. A house divided cannot stand. Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country, which is at odds with the majority. Expect chaos and paralysis. Your president holds a view, which is at odds with the majority –it is a radical view of the future of this country, and so that’s why we’re having this division. This is a spiritual battle, which can only be won by overwhelming prayer. The future of the world is at stake because if America falls, there is no longer a strong champion of freedom and a champion of the oppressed of the world. There must be an urgent call to prayer.”
Pat says he knows who will be elected president. God has told him who that person is but Pat refuses to divulge the name. Sounds like a rigged game, don’t you think, one that God wins no matter what happens? If prayer gives us Obama, then hallelujah, God hears our prayer and the Apocalypse takes the good folks to heaven. I’d say, however, that chances are better than even money that Obama and his followers won’t make the trip. On the other hand, if we pray and God gives us a candidate that will keep America alive—and you can guess who that will be even if the Republicans haven’t got a clue yet—then God hears our prayers and we can continue on with an endless fight, year-in-and-year-out about who will be president.
A curmudgeonly television political commentator says this long presidential campaign is like an endless root canal procedure. I agree but I don’t believe even God can put an end to it, and if God can’t put an end to it, how in the world can God deliver an Apocalypse?
Remembering Roosevelt And The 1936 Election
A friend sent me a Christmas e-mail that took me back in time. It reminded me that time marches on, but it also doubles back on itself. It should serve as a warning to people who put their stock in a progressive view of history.
It was a You Tube clip of President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressing the Democratic State Convention in Syracuse, New York, on September 29, 1936. Mimicking the Republican Party’s apocalyptic prediction that a vote to return Roosevelt to the White House would lead to dire consequences, FDR goes after the “smooth evasion” of the GOP.
“Let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, ‘Of course we believe all these things; we believe in saving homes; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die. We believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them—we will do them better, and most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”
That You Tube clip was a gift worth sharing, so here, I pass it on to you.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRZUaW0HwCM) It might be a much-needed dose of laughing gas for this seemingly endless root canal we are undergoing in this electoral season.
Would You Like To Buy An Election?
While watching MSNBC, I heard correspondent Andrea Mitchell say that people should be paying attention to the news, particularly in an election year. So who could argue with that observation? Then she used a marketplace analogy that made me laugh.
She said people should understand the importance of the upcoming presidential election—pay attention to the debates. It’s crucial, she said, looking right into the television camera—“You’re buying a president of the United States.”
Prior to Christmas, Judy and I went to a market here in Charleston to purchase a tree. I looked at all of them. Some had red tags attached to them. I was informed that the red tag indicated that the trees had already been sold. Now there’s an analogy for you. Politicians are like red-tagged Christmas trees. You can’t buy them. They have already been bought. By corporations, special interest groups, and rich people who are in the big tree buying category.
Thinking About Our New Way To Fight New Wars
Our president, backed up by the Secretary of Defense and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has announced that military spending will be cut. We are being told that “an outdated cold war-era systems” will be replaced by a new approach that will rely on a smaller, more agile force concentrating primarily across Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East.
On the surface this seems to be good news, particularly given our military failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the financial extravagance of these wars, given our harsh economic situation at home.
What should cause concern, however, is the but President Obama attached to his announcement. “Our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority.” And how, I might ask, is our military superiority to be maintained?
Here’s my take on the future of our military role in the world.
· We have our eyes set on destabilizing Iran and will do everything we can to overthrow their government.
· Our new military policy may have us shy away from a ground war, so we will solicit and support allies to do the dirty work. Israel will be our surrogate, especially when it comes to Iran. Plans are already underway to send troops to Israel for spring “exercises” and “drills” euphemisms that hide more than they reveal. (While the news media was fixated on election news, I had to go to the Jerusalem Post for this news. Our media outlets are silent on this subject.)
· Our new boots on the ground will be an ever-growing mercenary army employed by corporate “security” firms. Blackwater-type companies will employ former troops back home who can’t find work, or who relish the big salaries offered them—more than they ever made in military service.
· Our justification for choosing Iran as a target is our fear that they will become nuclear capable. Interesting, isn’t it, that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is never mentioned?
· The right wing is attacking Obama for the military cuts. That will mean this issue will be a campaign issue. Obama will have to look even more like the Commander in Chief. Look for more saber rattling and more money, lots more money, directed to prop up allies and support surrogate allies in and around the world.
A Bucket List For Big-Bang Believers
Some of you may have seen the delightful movie, “The Bucket List,” staring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, two terminally ill cancer patients who decide to skip out of the hospital and live out the last days of their lives doing the things that always wanted to do before they die.
These two seem to have nothing in common. Nicholson is a corporate billionaire and Freeman is a blue-collar mechanic, but each one has their own list of goals they’d like to accomplish before they “kick the bucket.” Therein lies the genesis of the movie in search of a name—the bucket list.
Don’t you just hate people who want to tell you about a film they like and wind up bending your ears with more than a preview? So, with that in mind, I won’t go on any longer describing the 97-minute film because some readers may want to pull it up on an iPad or rent it. I’ll just say that it’s full of fun, but beneath the laughs is a poignantly bittersweet story that offers a reflective opportunity for viewers to come to grips with living close to the apocalyptic moment when the world ends—the end of one’s own life.
Some believe that our world—Planet Earth—began with a Big-Bang. Apocalyptic prognosticators, like Nostradamus, Jeanne Dixon, Hal Lindsey, and Jim Jones, have predicted that’s how the world will end—with a Big-Bang. From my vantage point, I tend to think that T.S. Eliot was on to something in his magnificent poem, The Hollow Men.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Tending To Those Who Whimper While Others Look For A Big-Bang
The Apostle Paul, the writer of what eventually became the New Testament Epistles, was the single most important figure as far as shaping an understanding of Jesus after his death. Interestingly enough, he never met Jesus. What he knew about Jesus was a combination of hearsay—the various oral traditions that circulated—and a spiritual reality he was able to discern through the people whose lives had been transformed by the Jesus way-of-life.
His earliest writings were spiced with apocalyptic visions. He truly believed that history would come to an end during his lifetime with the arrival of Jesus. Obviously there would be no unmanned automobiles, but believers would indeed be lifted up to heaven. Paul’s obvious lack of interest in marriage was most likely due to the fact that he thought it a waste of time with so little time left—that is unless lust got the best of someone.
But here’s the interesting part. Paul seems to have lost interest in a final Big-Bang Apocalypse when he realized it would not take place in his lifetime. All the evidence from these writings tells us that he turned his attention to the here-and-now world of daily living—the questions that arose around how to walk-the-Jesus-walk in the various communities where the newly formed churches had come into being. And, by the way, that meant resisting the Roman Empire that demanded ultimate loyalty. Tradition tells us that Paul met his death, after prison time in Rome, at the hand of Nero.
I have had my share of quarrels with Paul over the years, but I must say the Epistles have helped me understand that conflict is vital; in fact it is absolutely necessary in order for change to take place inside institutions as well as in society. The Apostle Paul battled inside the church community and with the Roman Empire. His ethic of resistance, modeled after Jesus, has kept me inside the Christian narrative even during those times when I have felt the church bastardize, betray and make irrelevant the powerful life-changing message of Jesus.
Paul put the Apocalypse in its proper place and that’s what I choose to do. I am not looking for the end of the world in my lifetime. What, if anything, these doomsday reports do for me is that they remind me that my life is going to end, and the lives of those closest to me will also end. And since life is precious and short at best, forget a Big-Bang Day. As T.S. Eliot reminds us, the world ends with a whimper.
A whimper, by dictionary definition is “a series of low, feeble sounds expressive of fear, pain, or discontent.” Tending to those who whimper in our world, that’s where pastoral and prophetic care lies, for people inside or outside a faith-based community.
Where I Find Hope In A Whimpering World
I did my very best to stay away from my computer and Facebook while my grandson and granddaughter from Durham, North Carolina, visited here with their parents during the Christmas holiday. After all, what’s the good of Facebook when you can have face-to-face? And if I were to have been mesmerized with Facebook messages, I’d have missed finding out what’s going on with these young people. Which means I’d have missed an opportunity to have my hope for the world renewed and elevated.
What a gift to be able to have them talk with me about their lives—their questions, concerns and doubts, their hopes and fears about the world they face. Their astuteness far surpasses mine when I was their age. I told them, at one point, how I would love to live another fifty years to see how things are going to turn out. You can see how much I want to avoid my own Apocalypse.
In bed, I tell Judy how fortunate I am to have them in my life and how they bolster my faith in the next generation. Holding her before slipping into sleep, I am comforted by their presence upstairs. The words from the Christmas carol, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” repeat themselves and have run through my brain endlessly this season—“tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.”
Comfort and joy as I wait for the Apocalypse.
Let’s Invade Canada And Steal Their Health Care
Speaking of joy, let’s talk about laughter, the outward and visible sign of joy’s presence.
Two dear friends who live in Maine just sent me a You Tube clip of Jimmy Tingle, the marvelous comedian who, like Stephen Colbert in 2008, has declared himself a candidate for president in the 2012 election. Tingle’s campaign promise for America, “Humor For Humanity.” There he is at the Barley House tavern in Concord, New Hampshire. Microphone in hand, he tells the people, “Humor is healthy. Humor is healing. Humor is hope. Ha, Ha, Ha. If my message resonates with you, go Ha, Ha, Ha!
Pointing to a young man who is wearing a tin foil hat, Tingle makes him the Secretary of Defense. “We are going to invade Canada and steal their health care.” Get a laugh yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGejKi-NC4w&feature=youtu.be. If there is room on the West Virginia ballot in November for a write-in candidate, Jimmy Tingle is my man.
January 8th, 2012
December 17th, 2011 |
What child is this, who laid to rest,
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
William Chatterton Dix
William Chatterton Dix, the author of this lovely carol set to the music of Greensleeves, was an Englishman who lived in the nineteenth century. At the age of 29 he suffered a near fatal illness that put him in bed for a number of months. During this period of his life, he went through moments of severe depression. Miraculously, it was during those difficult moments that he wrote a number of beautiful hymns. He found his faith in those dark-night-of-the-soul moments—the bleak midwinter days of December.
Living with Judy all these years (whose favorite hymn, by the way, is In the Bleak Midwinter) I have come to prize what she does in the mid-December preparation for Christmas. Our home comes alive with a tree, holly, magnolia leaves, ribbons and bows, and a whole host of Christmas decorations collected over the years that bring back memories galore. And always there is the crèche with Mary and Joseph, the animals, shepherds, Wise Men, and the baby Jesus.
Opening the kitchen cupboard, I see mugs unpacked for the season, ready for hot beverages. They’re alive with seasonal symbols. One, given to us years ago, reads: Jesus Is The Reason For The Season. I’m not particularly fond of that phrase because the season belongs to more than folks who adore Jesus. Jewish friends celebrating Hanukkah will attest to that fact. Nevertheless, the little mug gives me reason to pause and ponder.
Jesus is the reason for the season. But who is this Jesus, who, as the familiar carol says, is sleeping on Mary’s lap while angels are singing and shepherds are glaring?
That’s the question someone asked me recently over a cup of coffee. That’s the question I’d like to explore in this issue of Notes. I have carried His Cross on my forehead since I was a baby, sworn allegiance to Him over the years, studied His life, attempted to follow His teachings, and been forced to redefine Him in my daily encounters in an often times confusing world. And sometimes I have had to apologize to people for the way the Christian Church has been responsible for violence, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and a host of other less than admiral sins.
I shall utilize some of the familiar and traditional Christmas carols to define my own understanding of the Babe of Bethlehem. Give credit to those who have taught me about Jesus since I was a child, and blame for any distortions of mine that cloud the radical message birthed in a manger in that far-off land still longing for a Prince of Peace.
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For know a blessed mother thou shalt be,
All generations laud and honor thee;
Thy son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,
Most highly favored lady. Gloria!
Basque Carol
This Christmas I choose not to confine Mary, the “most highly favored lady,” to a crèche or a church doctrine that insists she had no sex with Joseph because she was a virgin. Of note is the fact that the Biblical word for virgin also means young woman. I see Mary incarnate in a young woman who lives in Afghanistan. Her name is Gulnaz.
Gulnaz is a 19-year-old woman who was raped by a man who broke into her home, tied her up and then raped her. Charged with a “moral crime,” she has spent almost two years in a prison cell, like some 600 women who languish in prison charged with a similar crime. In Afghanistan, a woman goes to jail for have sexual intercourse outside of marriage. These women are seen as a disgrace to their family and tribe. Virgins are favorite targets for the officials who administer the law.
Gulnaz appealed her case and lost. The court of appeals refused to accept her accusation of rape and raised her sentence to 12 years. The court said it was impossible for her to get pregnant after her first sexual encounter, so the sex must have been consensual.
Assisted by an American lawyer, Gulnaz has now been pardoned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and released from prison but not until she is forced to marry the man who raped her, a man she cannot stand to look at.
Mary and Gulnaz are disgraced for pregnancies considered outside the custom and law of their particular tribes. Of course, Joseph was no rapist, and Mary wasn’t forced to marry someone who had violated her. But both women were isolated from their community over their subject of their virginity. In Joseph’s case, he does not abandon Mary. He becomes a model for manhood out of his respect for Mary and their newborn child.
On the world scene, not just in Afghanistan, large numbers of women are not treated as equal to men, live in poverty, and are treated violently. In our own nation, where women have made great strides in matters of equality, new statistics reveal that one in four women are the victims of severe violence. We still have a long way to go.
One of the most profoundly radical passages in the Bible is the one in which Mary refuses to be disgraced and, instead, claims her “low estate”—a term which by definition means she lives in poverty as part of the lower class. As humble as she is, she proclaims a message of liberation boldly in what has been called Mary’s Song—the Magnificat. The message: God will pull down the mighty from their thrones; send the rich away empty while feeding the hungry. It is a revolutionary message fit for today’s world scene where the rich control the power and resources, and the poor eat dirt and grovel for crumbs that fall from the world’s economic table. It fits well with the 99% and the 1% message proclaimed by the Occupy Wall Street movement. The protest in the streets could very well serve as the clarion call for believers who celebrate Christmas, as well as those who do not bow down to the figures in the crèche. Mary speaks for the one percent.
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Good Christian friends rejoice with heart and soul and voice;
Give ye heed to what we say: Jesus Christ is born today;
Ox and ass before him bow, and he is in the manger now.
Christ is born today! Christ is born today!
John Mason Neale
John Mason Neale was born in London in 1818, an Anglican priest, he wrote numerous hymns, like O Come, O Come Emanuel, Good King Wenceslas, All Glory, Laud, and Honor. I have a fondness for him, perhaps because he was not afraid to stick his neck out. He loved to challenge the powers-that-be, once making trouble for a bishop who inhibited him from serving as a priest for 14 years. His ox and ass in the manger are essential characters in the carol Good Christian Friends Rejoice.
The traditional Christmas story says that Jesus was born in a stable with observant animals. I have always loved this link between Jesus and creation—the link between human beings and the animal world. But I am unwilling to wallow in a romantic view of that manger when I know the stinking smell of poverty and the stench of lies that try to mask the smell of death. Those smells do not resemble the fragrant smell of myrrh or the sweet incense in a sanctuary church or amidst the perfumed worshippers.
I smelled the stench when I watched Senator John McCain on television speaking about the so-called end of the war in Iraq. He described the war as a “noble cause.”
Look, I’ve spent my time over the past ten years organizing in every way possible to keep our nation from going to war in Iraq, and then, after we did go to war, working to get our troops back home. My civil disobedience in my congresswoman’s office, and the penalty time spent working on a stinking garbage truck, were part and parcel of my passion devoted toward getting troops home from a rotten, stinking, unnecessary war.
God knows, I certainly celebrate the return of our troops, even though some will remain in Iraq, but it is blasphemous bullshit to call the war there a “noble cause.” If John McCain had a scintilla of integrity at this point in his life, he’d say the whole shooting match was a dreadful episode in our nation’s history. He could do that without disparaging the more than a one million men and women who served; the 4,409 troops killed; the 30,000 plus wounded; and $1 trillion American dollars flushed down the toilet. In fact, he would honor them with the truth. But he won’t. I’d suggest he forgo a cup of Christmas wassail and, instead, swallow a chalice of shame.
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While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around.
And glory shone around.
Nathan Tate
Nathan Tate, the son of an Irish clergyman, was born in 1652. He lived a tragic life. His father attacked and robbed, his home burned to the ground, Nathan eventually became a playwright and later the Poet Laureate of England. Unfortunately, he died an alcoholic in a debtor’s prison in 1715. Despite all of this, he gave us the beautiful Christmas hymn, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks, which concludes with the hopeful words, “All glory be to God on high and on the earth be peace; good will henceforth from heaven to men begin and never cease.”
My mind goes back 39 years to a 1972 Christmas Eve when I was the minister at Trinity Episcopal Church in Martinsburg, West Virginia. I cannot remember what the weather was like or what I preached, but I do recall what was gong on in the world.
What I remember quite clearly was the fact that while angels flew from the hymns and the Christmas manger story, American planes were conducting bombing raids on North Vietnam. Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong, in particular, were pummeled. Between the 18th of December and the 30th, American pilots few nearly 4,000 sorties. That included more than 700 B-52 flights, “area bombers,” capable of dropping bombs from a height beyond the sight of the flight crew. It was the first time we used these planes in an outright attack on cities. It was a terrorist attack by any definition of the word terror.
I was 37-years-old in 1972 and now I am 76. And still the bombs are falling. I have no church to tend to or pulpit from which to preach. But if I did, I would call attention to the fact that as we find ourselves this Christmas singing about angels heralding the arrival of the Prince of Peace, U.S. drones are hitting targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan with weaponry that is killing men, women and children—the kind of folks that fill church pews to hear the Christmas message—“peace on earth, good will toward all”
I know very well that I would also call attention to the shepherds who are a part of every Christmas pageant and placed in every crèche. They were the very first ones who received the message about the birth of Jesus, not from a gaggle of drones but from a flock of angels. Heavily romanticized, shepherds were, in fact, as one Biblical scholar puts it, “lower class.” They were considered by the upper class as “the scum of the earth.” Shepherds were thought of as thieves, “Reputed to steal as many sheep as they could during the night, out in those hills.” They were “known for their vulgarity, foul language, and lack of moral integrity. Shepherds were the lowest strata of Jewish society.”
This choice by God—the chosen ones taken from the bottom of the social and economic barrel—reminds me of the words from the old hymn Amazing Grace. “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!”
It is a message about the so-called wretched of the earth, the disenfranchised—written about by Frantz Fanon— who will redeem the earth. It’s an appropriate Christmas message. I would only add, redeemed by the grace of God found among the meek who will inherit the earth– the same grace I see operative in the Occupy Wall Street folks, and the revolution taking place in the Middle East and parts of Asia where people, so many young people, are rising up to challenge the abusive power.
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Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.
Coventry Carol
Three days into the 12 days of Christmas, the church calendar takes a sharp turn in a dark direction. December 28 is Holy Innocents Day, a sobering day set aside to remember the children slain by Herod. In the same way that Pharaoh had set out to kill all the male babies in order to do away with the newborn Moses, so too did Herod—Caesar’s representative—kill all the male babies in order to do away with the newborn Jesus.
The Jews were under the boot of the Roman Empire when Jesus was born, as they had been under Pharaoh’s imperial rule. Occupied and oppressed. The holy people of God looked for the arrival of a messianic figure, like Moses, who would lead a revolution capable of overthrowing the conquering colonial power headquartered in Rome.
Three days into the 12 days of Christmas gifts will be exchanged at the local mall, Christmas trees will already appear in street gutters, there will be a rush to start a new year, life will go on its merry or not so merry way. Our nation, emulating imperial Rome, will continue to reward power with more power, bigger and bigger military contracts to support a militarism that contradicts all that the Prince of Peace came into the world to challenge and overcome with his nonviolent love.
The birthing narrative begun in a wooden manger in Bethlehem is an invitation to a story that will inevitably lead to more wood, the hard wood of a tree in Jerusalem. In between the birth and crucifixion of Jesus will be a story that invites all who are able to recognize nonviolence as the resurrecting power required to address the wounds of a war-weary world.
“O come let us adore him” are words from the much-loved hymn, O Come All Ye Faithful. They will be sung with deep emotion by Christmas Eve worshipers. But this adoration will be meaningless if it fails to lead to a discipleship willing to engage the conflict inevitable for real change to take place around our priorities and the priorities of our nation.
Frederick Douglass put it well when he said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” That could well be the clarion call for Christians, and non-Christians alike, to engage and challenge the powers-that-be which are based in greed and hell-bent on the use of violence to protect a selfish way of life. The message of a confrontational Jesus must be preached, taught and lived by Christians or else the Babe born in Bethlehem will be stillborn, unable to be the source of rebirth for people yearning to be freed from the greed that spawns poverty and relentlessly and inevitably leads to war.
It is said by some that God writes with a crooked line. Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes poetry with a crooked line. I give you a few lines from his poem Christ Climbed Down as my way of pointing to what I’ve so feebly been trying to say in this issue of Notes.
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year and ran away to
where there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars.
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night of everybody’s soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the craziest
of Second Comings.
December 17th, 2011
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