Posts filed under 'A Fig Just Dropped Archives'
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
June 24th, 2010 |
High Noon At The White House
Before going to bed two nights ago, I visualized General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in mid-air on his flight back home to meet President Obama at the White House. I then peeked in on Mr. Obama readying himself for bed. I wondered if either one would sleep well, or sleep at all.
This meeting between McChrystal and Obama was classic theater, shades of the movie “High Noon.” It brought back memories of when President Truman called General MacArthur home in 1951 to chastise him and relieve him of his post during the Korean War. MacArthur’s letter criticizing Truman didn’t appear in a magazine, like McChrystal’s interview which appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine. MacArthur’s words, written in a letter, were read on the floor of the House of Representatives and distributed to the press.
This issue of Notes is devoted to the talking points and tipping points which surround this dramatic and important moment involving General McChrystal, President Obama and our war in Afghanistan. But, before I say more, I should offer a word of explanation about talking points and tipping points.
Talking Points & Tipping Points
The term talking points is quite common these days. Unfortunately, it has become a derisive term employed by politicians. Both the political right and left love to say that their political opponents cook up talking points for the media, as if the information presented is bogus, party-line propaganda. In fact, comedian media mogul Jon Stewart, loves to belittle political talking points as nothing more than a superficial examination of issues.
The dictionary definition, however, rescues the term. “A talking point in debate or discourse is a succinct statement designed to persuasively support one side taken on an issue.”
The term tipping points has become popular as a result of Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.” Gladwell’s point is simply this: Little changes can have big effects. Something which seems very small can result in a huge turn of events. As the old saying goes, “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Having defined my terms, it’s time to offer a few of my own talking points about the McChrystal-Obama confrontation, and how I see what took place at the White House as a tipping point for President Obama.
So What Did Take Place At The White House?
I heard someone on television say that General McChrystal had been “taken to the outhouse” by President Obama. Hardly. What he meant was that McChrystal had been taken to the woodshed.
For my young readers, the term refers to a day long-gone when a father would take his son out to the woodshed for a spanking.
Since there isn’t any woodshed at the White House, Obama did his handiwork in the Oval Office. McChrystal, who is known as a straight-talker, got punished for criticizing the Obama team’s conduct of the war—comments made at a Paris pub in the presence of too much booze, and in front of a Rolling Stone interviewer.
As The Worm Turns
There is an old proverb that says “Tread on a worm and it will turn.” This means that even the most defenseless creature will, when sufficiently provoked, attempt to defend itself.
When General MacArthur gave his farewell speech before Congress (interrupted fifty times by applause) after having been fired by President Truman, he concluded his remarks with these words: “I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”
General MacArthur did not fade away, nor will McChrystal. Even though he left the White House, having swallowed his punishment quietly, humbly, apologetically, and in an honorable military way, the worm will turn. Mark my words, the worm will turn when folks begin to feel sorry for General McChrystal, and remorseful for having to watch this fallen warrior bite the dust. In the long run, most Americans, when given the choice between siding with a soldier or a politician, will choose the man in uniform.
The worm may turn even more vigorously as the war turns even more deadly and voices are raised which say, “Obama should have listened to this straight-talking general who told the truth about the ambivalent and conflicted policy makers in Washington. Sure, McChrystal broke a time-honored tradition which prohibits military personnel from openly criticizing a superior officer. But Obama should have exercised his authority by slapping McChrystal’s wrist for his subordination and sent him back to Afghanistan with a renewed commitment to get the job done no matter how long it takes to win this battle.”
How Long Will It Take To Win This Battle?
Over the Memorial Day weekend the Turner Classic Movies channel offered a large menu of old war movies. I suspect that a few more will air over the Fourth of July holiday.
Watching bits and pieces of these black and white films, there was, of course, no technicolor blood. Instead, there was a sheen of romanticism that covered the action—a diaphanous scrim constructed to soften, even hide, the the brutality of war
I grew up with these films. They hid more than they revealed.
Albert Einstein had it right when he wrote sharply about war, as if he wanted to rip all romantic notions from the subject matter. “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
That said, let’s be clear—crystal clear (I might say McChrystal clear) about the policy the Good General, and his replacement, General David Petraeus have each committed themselves to in this already nine year old war in Afghanistan.
Russia spent nine years back in the 1980’s fighting to control and occupy Afghanistan. It is estimated that one million people died as the Soviet Union threw its mighty military force in harms way in a war that consumed 25 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. Despite this commitment of troops and money, Russia was eventually defeated and forced out of Afghanistan. The war became Russia’s Vietnam experience and eventually contributed to Russia’s loss of the Cold War.
The diaphanous scrim that covers the war in Afghanistan must eventually be removed if our nation wants to see the reality that lies behind the romantic myth that we can win this war. The ongoing commitment that President Obama has made toward counterinsurgency (COIN) in Afghanistan guarantees an extended and costly fight—one that the American public will eventually abandon support for. COIN is a bankrupt currency.
Exit strategy? Forget it. Look instead for a metaphor—a symbol to describe our presence in Afghanistan. One might best consider Jean-Paul Sartre’s play in which three characters are locked in a room with no windows, no mirrors and a locked door. Near the end of the play, one of the characters demands to be let out. His demand causes the door to open but the three still cannot find the courage to leave.
The play, in case you hadn’t already guessed its title, is No Exit.
A New Rock Star On The Scene
Candidate Obama, as he campaigned, supported a continued war effort in Afghanistan. I cringed each time he made that commitment. But since I am not a one issue guy when it comes to voting for candidates, I voted for Obama hoping that his supporters could turn him around on this war. I hoped that, once elected, he would see the folly of our continued military presence.
The poet, Alexander Pope coined the phrase hope springs eternal in the human breast, but in all honesty, this breast of mine is devoid of hope when it comes to Obama pulling our troops out of Afghanistan and back home any time soon. Although I live in the United States, hold a U.S. passport, and vote and pay taxes as a U.S. citizen, I feel like a Cold War Russian trapped in an endless war, where lives and dollars are being wasted.
Remember, if you will, that Obama did not support a counterinsurgency policy in Afghanistan until he became president. After he was elected, he sent General McChrystal, who “wrote the book” on counterinsurgency, to lead that policy in Afghanistan. Now he has appointed General Petraeus to carry out the same policy.
In other words, McChrystal may have disappeared from the stage, but the same rotten play goes on. Petraeus and Obama are on the same page when it comes to policy. When our president, following McChrystal’s dismissal, said in his address to the nation that the policy for war in Afghanistan would not change, I believed him.
Following McChrystal’s dismissal, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Senator Bill Nelson from Florida met with General Petraeus and issued this statement: “In our discussion, General Petraeus reiterated that this change was only a change in personnel, not policy. He expressed a readiness to carry forward the U.S. strategy on the ground in Afghanistan that he played a key role in developing.”
The Nebraska Nelson showed up on cable news saying this about Petraeus: “He’s the guy who can take over and ram this policy through.” And how can he do that? Simple. As NBC correspondent Richard Engel put it, Petraeus is a “rock star.” Who knows, perhaps he might eventually do what General Colin Powell couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Petraeus could very well be an electable presidential candidate.
Obama’s Tipping Point
Prior to McChrystal’s fall from grace, the nation was focused 24/07 on the BP oil spill that is ravaging our precious waters and the wildlife dependent upon those waters, as well as the people whose very livelihood depend on clean water. .
Prior to calling General McChrystal home, President Obama was being warned that his lack of attention, and his tardiness in addressing the spill, might very well cost him his home—eviction from the White House in the next election.
One political analyst, frustrated over Obama’s temperament around this disaster in the Gulf, wondered out loud why our leader can’t seem to work up a good old display of anger. Maybe, he asked, our calm mannered president is lacking in pissedoffterone.
I think you know very well what he’s talking about. He’s not hankering for a leader stuck in the angry mode. No, he’s merely looking for more than cool. I am too. Let me put it this way: There’s a time for Zen and a time for Zing. Zing, that’s the thing your supporters are looking for, Mr. President.
I hear a lot of my friends say that President Obama has disappointed them over more than one issue. My take on it, however, runs deeper than that. Forget my disappointment. I believe he has disappointed himself by not living up to the serious change he promised to deliver around the way business is transacted in Washington.
In a previous issue of Notes I agreed with Garry Wills, when he wrote in The New York Review of Books, that Obama should forget about another term in the White House and just plunge ahead with his plans for change, as if he would only be a one term president.
Here’s where the tipping point I mentioned above comes into the picture. I am talking about presidential tipping points—those moments or events, some big and some small—that proved fatal to our recent presidents. Think tipping points: The Tet Offensive in Vietnam for Lyndon Johnson. Watergate for Richard Nixon. The Iran Hostage Crisis for Jimmy Carter. The lackluster presidential campaign performance of George “Papa” Bush up against Bill Clinton.
I’ll make an observation, even though it may rub a few of my friends the wrong way. The war in Afghanistan stands a good chance of being President Obama’s tipping point. His willingness to walk the same path toward war that his predecessor, George W. Bush walked may very well tip him out of the Washington and back to Chicago in 2012.
Ticker Tape News
Watching cable news, prior to the President Obama’s address to the nation, my eyes caught sight of the moving ticker tape flashing news at the bottom of the screen.
• At least 115 million widows around the world live in devastating poverty. The most dire consequences are faced by 2 million Afghan widows and at least 740,000 Iraqi widows who have lost husbands to war.
• A Pew Research Center for the People and The Press/Smithsonian Magazine poll reports that 41 per cent of Americans polled say that Jesus will return to earth within the next 40 years.
How does one consume a diet of news like that? Okay, so let’s not question the forty one percent—which translates into four out of every ten people I pass on the street while walking. The only question that hangs in the air is this one: When Jesus comes back, will he find you hard at work doing what the Bible requires of believers—that is, taking care of widows and orphans? And better still, will Jesus find you hard at work organizing to stop your nation from eliminating war—one of the reasons we have so many widows and orphans?
A bumper sticker I saw last week on the back of a car says what I’m trying to say, but with fewer words. JESUS IS COMING BACK. LOOK BUSY.
Always Leave Them Laughing
George M. Cohan, who I mentioned in my last issue of Notes, wrote a song way back in 1903 entitled “Always Leave Them Laughing.” After this rather heavy issue of Notes, that’s my intent—to leave you laughing. And what better subject is there to laugh about than television’s endless subject for advertisements—erectile dysfunction (ED).
Prior to Father’s Day, my Sunday newspaper arrived with a USA Weekend insert full of articles about men’s health. Inside was an article “For Men Only” by Dr. Oz—the wizard doctor on TV. Honest, what I am about to tell you is true. The good doctor is concerned that Viagra might not be the answer for men who think they have ED. Perhaps the problem is psychological or may be the result of being overweight. So here’s a tip for how a man can tell if he needs medication.
“Before going to bed,” says Dr. Oz, wrap a strip of lick-and-stick stamps around your penis. If they break apart overnight, you’re having erections while asleep, and the problem is probably psychological, not physical.”
Thinking about this engaging subject, it came to me that men could very well be valuable assets in helping to rescue our economically distraught U.S. Postal Service. Buy stamps, brothers, so we can keep our post offices open and the mail arriving daily without interruption. We certainly don’t want our nation to suffer from postal dysfunction.
June 24th, 2010
March 26th, 2010 |
Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty?
I suspect all of us have had the experience of going into someone’s bathroom and finding reading material next to the toilet. In fact, it’s a rare occasion, when I close the bathroom door behind me, not to find books and reading matter lodged in a basket or on the floor.
I would suggest that you can tell a lot about the people who live there by the reading material for a guy like me making only an occasional visit. Being a student of bathroom reading material, you might call all me a lavatory anthropoligist or a privy psychologist.
Just recently I found a turn-a-page-a-day calendar close at hand. It was one of those calendars with a message—little tidbits of folk wisdom for each day. The reading for my particular visit to the bathroom challenged me with a familiar question I’ll bet my readers have seen more than once.
It read: “Is the glass half full or half empty?”
I don’t want you to think I sat all day in that bathroom pondering the words, “Is the glass half full or half empty?” But I do want you to know that I carried that little question out-and-about for some time. Not as long as Congress has been chewing on the recent health care bill, but for at least as long as it took me to plop down in front of this computer.
When you stop to think about it, the question is naggingly demanding. It’s one of those either/or type questions. Like a true or false question, it doesn’t want to tolerate one single bit of ambiguity. There seems to be no third option. Come on now, it says. Answer up, is the glass half full or half empty?”
Not only does this question demand a clear-cut choice—either half full or half empty—it also implies a psychological judgement. I’ll bet you know what I’m talking about.
Say the glass is half full, and you are automatically placed in the camp with the optimists—the happy crowd. Say that the glass is half empty, and you will surely be looked at suspiciously as a pessimist—an unhappily negative nabob.
Well, call me stubborn, if you will, or even indecisive, but I’m going to say that the glass is both full and empty. Don’t tell me I can’t have it both ways either. I’m happy with my answer, and I’ll tell you why. But to do so, I’m required to spend a little time reflecting on the subject of happiness.
The Health Care Bill—Half Full/Half Empty?
While many of my friends jumped for joy when the Health Care Bill was finally passed, I found it hard to join the celebration. It’s an ugly piece of legislation passed in an ugly way by a bunch of ugly politicians fronting for a host of ugly lobbyists.
Okay, go ahead and tell me to cheer up and see the glass half full. Tell me to put on a smiley face and stop looking at the half empty glass. No thanks. Real social change is not made that way.
This bill, despite the cheerful liberal hype and the right-wing apocalyptic panic, is a glass half full of snake oil. Call it a new version of Hadacol—the old-time cure-all that was no more than high content alcohol with an additive that rushed the booze rapidly into the blood stream. I suggest we call this bill Congressional Hadacol.
Some seventeen thousand physicians at Physicians for a National Health Program have spoken the truth. What’s needed, they insist, is a single payer health care plan. Instead of that, look at the half full glass we must now drink from:
• About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out.
• Millions of middle-income people will be pressured to buy commercial health insurance policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income.
• Women’s reproductive rights will be further eroded, thanks to the burdensome segregation of insurance funds for abortion and for all other medical services.
• Insurance firms will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of their shoddy products. This money will enhance their financial and political power, and with it their ability to block future reform.
• Health care costs will continue to skyrocket.
• The much-vaunted insurance regulations - e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions - are riddled with loopholes, thanks to the central role that insurers played in crafting the legislation.
• Older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female workforce can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017.
Happiness May Grow In Unexpected Places
The subject of happiness is very much in vogue these days. Elizabeth Kolbert, in the March 22 New Yorker, reviews a number of books about happiness research. The conclusions are interesting. Some are even startling.
• People tend to think that hitting the lottery will make a person happy. Not so. Even accident victims lead happier lives. Check the news out of Connecticut where two sisters in their 80s are fighting in court over lottery money.
• Studies show that women find caring for their children less pleasurable than napping or jogging, and just a tad more satisfying than doings dishes.
• Research out of Afghanistan indicates that, despite three decades of war and destitution, Afghans, on average, are pretty cheerful. How about this: The happiest areas are those in which the Taliban’s influence is strong.
• The average level of self-reported happiness in the U.S. has remained flat over the past three and a half decades, despite the fact that per-capita income has risen from $17,000 to almost $27,000.
Carol Graham, in her book “Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires” concludes that, for the most part, rich people are happier than poor folks, but the relationship between money and happiness is less straightforward than is generally assumed. She writes: “Higher per capita income levels do not translate directly into higher average happiness levels.”
What this means, of course, is that happiness can’t always be bought with money, and people who live in poverty, even amidst war, may be happier than we think.
Dereck Bok, in his book on happiness, concludes with the observation that “People do not always know what will give them lasting satisfaction.” Nor, I might add, do folks know where they will find happiness. Like a green sprig growing out of a brick wall, happiness somehow can find a way to grow in the most unexpected places.
Happiness has a will of its own.
A Little Girl Gets Venus As A Gift From Her Father
In the last issue of Notes I made a couple of references to Jeannette Walls, the author of “The Glass Castle” and “Half Broke Horses.”Since then, Judy and I have had the chance to spend a day-and-a-half with her in a seminar around the subject of “Poverty, Resilience, And the Art of the Memoir.”
Briefly, Walls grew up poor—dirt poor. Her family life was rootless—constant movement from one poverty stricken situation to another in Arizona, California, Nevada and finally Welch, West Virginia. Frequently homeless, often living in unlivable housing, and always influenced by the erratic behavior of an alcoholic father and a weird, child-like mother, Jeannette Walls proved to be one of those indomitable human beings.
I recommend “The Glass Castle” as a remarkable story of the triumph of the human spirit. My god, I ask myself, how could this woman effervesce such joy, such brilliant energy, given the harsh world she grew up in?
Jeannette Walls was encouraged by her husband to write her story. He was convinced it was an important story to tell—an empowering story for readers. Some, of course, would think that she, her brother and two sisters, should have been taken from their parents. Her father smashed windows in a drunken rage, and took food money to buy booze. Her childlike mother, secretly eating candy bars, grew fat while the children lacked food. And perhaps the most painful part for the children was the way they were looked down on as white trash by neighbors and schoolmates.
But the twist in the story comes about when Walls tells us that she never felt unloved in this crazy, dysfunctional family. She sees her father, even in his worst moments, as a bright man who passed knowledge on to her, along with a love of nature. Without money at Christmas, and no desire to fall prey to the materialism of the season, he told Jeannette that he would give her any star in the heaven above as a gift. Pointing to a bright star in the sky, he told her it—Venus—was his gift to her. It was a gift that to this day keeps on giving joy to her.
Walls’ story is about love, experienced in the midst of poverty. It has much to teach any of us who think we know all there is to know about poverty, and what needs to be done with and for the poor. The wisdom of the poor serves as a corrective to the arrogance of the rich.
A Great Threesome—Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness
I took three years of Latin in school but I’ve forgotten more Latin than I can remember. But I do remember this: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres—All Gaul is divided into three parts.(The first line from Caesar’s history of the Gallic Wars).
Looking back on my schooling, I’m struck by the significance of the number three. Childhood with Three Bears and Three Little Pigs. Learning Lincoln’s words, “Of the people, by the people, for the people” in Mr. Clark’s history class. And, somewhere along the line, there was the three monkey philosophy—Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil. Ah, and Mark Twain’s trio—Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.
What I am leading up to is that magnificent triplet handed down to us in The Declaration of Independence, those “unalienable rights”—Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The interesting fact about these words is that Jefferson, with Benjamin Franklin’s assistance, borrowed the phrase from John Locke, with one correction. Locke’s unalienable trio was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” In Jefferson’s rewritten version, the word property was replaced by the word happiness.
Jefferson also altered the Bible by taking a pair of scissors to the Gospel stories. He discarded the supernatural stories about Jesus—the virgin birth and the resurrection—and pasted together, in a 46 page book filled with what Jefferson called “the pure principles” which Jesus taught—the very human stories of Jesus. He called the stories “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
Some Christians may not like what Jefferson did when he focused his faith around the humanistic Jesus at the expense of the spiritualized stories about the man from Nazareth. But Jefferson’s cutting and pasting teaches us a great deal about his values.
Jefferson was a white member of the landed gentry, which means he had money, land and slaves. But at the end of his life he was deeply in debt. I like to think that this man, who substituted the word happiness for property in the Declaration of Independence, must have appreciated the words of Jesus about the dangers inherent in money.
From the Gospel of Matthew: “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money…Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Happiness as a substitute for property serves as a warning against the snares of materialistic capitalism. Now all we need to do is to discern where true happiness is to be found.
Glenn Beck And John Stuart Mill
Friends are urging me to scream, shout and yell about the Fox Network Fool, Glenn Beck who has gotten a lot of mileage lately going after organized religion. Beck says people should flee from churches that preach “social justice,” because the term social justice is a “code word” for communism and Nazism.
So far, as much as I can’t stand Beck, I have not joined in the campaign to force Beck off the airwaves. In his treatise, “On Liberty,” the philosopher John Stuart Mill makes an impassioned defense of free speech. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. I agree with Mill on that.
Perhaps Beck’s outburst does have a kernel of truth to it. I sure as heck would flee from a church that preaches a brand of social justice that beats up on gay people in the name of God, or denies communion to someone who is pro-choice on the issue of abortion.
But I would indeed receive a serendipitous blessing if I could find a few churches I could flee to where a pro-gay, anti-war, clean energy rather than mountaintop removal of coal message was being preached. Maybe Glenn could help me find them. So far, my search has been fruitless.
Happiness And Prophetic Discontent
I consider myself to be a happy person. My family and friends confirm that observation as well. So my happiness must show. I love life, I’m healthy, have a great partner I married 52 years ago, enjoy wonderfully loving children, and have an awesome array of friends. If that weren’t enough, I’ve enjoyed my work as an ordained minister over the past forty-six years. As they say in religious circles, I’m indeed blessed.
That glass I’ve been writing about in these Notes, has been more than half filled. It has overflowed more times than enough. Or, as it is said in Bible-speak, “my cup runneth over.”
But I must be careful not to view my own happiness like some kind of Lazy-E-Boy recliner. Oh, how it could swallow me up. I could begin to think that happiness, especially my own, is the end-all-and-be-all of life, the pièce de résistance of my spiritual life, the entre of my religion. Quite frankly, as many of you know from my writings, I deplore a great deal of religious spirituality that feasts on its own personal peace, at the expense of serious social justice—that takes pride in its own mellow meditative exercises.
I know you must feel my own dissatisfaction with religion when I say those things. Maybe you are tempted to come to my rescue by saying that I should look at the half full eucharistic chalice I have drunk from in my church, and not the half empty part of it. But I cannot do that, even though I recognize the chalice is both half full and half empty.
Elizabeth Kolbert, in her New Yorker article on happiness, comes to my rescue by quoting John Stuart Mill. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
I have come to understand in my life that prophetic dissatisfaction, as annoying as it may be to my friends and enemies alike, is critical in healing not only my sin-sick soul, but a world in which redemptive grace is mediated through cultural and political change. Indeed, such prophetic dissatisfaction hallows and embraces a deeply spiritual dark night of the soul that promises rewards beyond mere happiness.
I know the American fear of China—that the Chinese are taking over the world. But there is an old Chinese proverb that speaks truth to me about the subject of happiness, and so I will close with it.
If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.
March 26th, 2010
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