God's Backyard

      One of the programs at our church is "God's Backyard", a youth photography project.  A photo from the collection is posted here--its title is "Take Back the Alley".  You can look at it and wonder who's doing the taking and who's being taken.  What I like about the photograph is that its layout was not designed, but rather the young photographer shot what they saw. (Most of the photographs in the collection are not attributed to one artist, but to the group).
     The different shapes and colors--even of the broken and discarded pieces make a colorful whole.
You can see where we painted a mural on a garage that had be tagged with graffiti. You can also see the "resurrection of the wild" that I wrote about here yesterday, with the plants rising out of any little foothold they can find.  The trash has been removed by now, but the mural is still there. And the plants for sure are still there.
     We chose the name "God's Backyard" for a couple of reasons. First, the neighborhood of Phillips is often seen and more often portrayed as one of the "backsides" of Minneapolis.  The press it gets is usually about some crime or problem.  It's not featured in magazine portrayals of our beautiful lakes and parks, though we have beautiful parks, and when it rains a lot, beautiful lakes at many street corners.  We wanted to make a statement that this turf is indeed a place of God's action: calling, liberating, reviving the people who live here, and the place itself.  If I may dare say so, God likes to hang out in the backyard!
     We also chose it because the back yard is where the action is, at least in Minneapolis.  It's where families have their tomato and jalapeno plants, their wading pool. It's where barbecues are held, where clothes are hung out to be freshened by the sun and the wind. If you want to run into people in Phillips, you'll have a better chance meeting folks by walking the alleys in summer, rather than the streets.
     Finally, many of the photos were literally taken from the backyard: from the alleys, from the margins.  To my artistic eye, that's where most exciting stuff takes place.  The photograph above wouldn't be the same if we just had a nice shot of the mural. It's the juxtaposition of the discarded and the growing, the used up and the new that makes it interesting.  A lot of good stuff happens in the margins, in the backyard.
     Including much of what we rightly claim as our freedom.  Many of the major changes we now cherish--freedom of speech and religion, equal protection under the law--didn't come from the centers of power. They came from the margins--often at great cost to those who brought them forward.  The battle to expand the franchise of voting didn't start in this country with the few white males who owned property who could vote in most states.  The push to expand and protect the votes of women, African-Americans, the disabled, 18-year olds didn't start with the centers of power.  It started with courageous people pushing and organizing, and eventually we were able to move enough people, of various political beliefs, to sign on.  The Voting Rights Act, the 19th Amendment for Women's Suffrage got both Democratic and Republican support, along with other parties.
      That's what bothers me about the amendments up in Minnesota this election.  They didn't start with a push from those who have been dis-empowered.  And they have no bipartisan support.  None.  It started with those who have power, and in both cases, it is an attempt to take power away, from people, especially those in the margins. In the backyard.
     As for me and my house, we're going to be hanging out in the backyard.  Drop by and have a bite with us.  If you live in an apartment and really miss the fall experience of raking leaves, you'd be welcome!

Be Beauty. Be Justice.

Patrick

P.S. If you're interested in our art program, see and like "Semilla Project" on Face Bookhttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Semilla-Project/148670385198684?ref=ts&fref=ts
     

A Resurrection of the Wild

“There will be

 a resurrection of the wild.”

 Wendell Berry

            If you don’t know Wendell Berry’s work, check him out. A powerful poet and novelist, who seems to have been born directly from the earth itself.  Berry is known for his love for the earth and all its creatures, but he is also a gentle and demanding voice for sanity in our political and spiritual discourse.

            The lines above are from his series of poems called “Window Poems”. He is talking about the resurrection of the wilderness, or as he puts it “the second coming of the trees” that will happen “when the fools of the capitals/have devoured each other/in righteousness.”  You can see that rising power of the creation in every sidewalk crack and back yard, where weeds great and small burst up at the slightest mention of rain.  His poem was in a collection published in 1968, but even with all our paving over and bombing and fracking of the world, I don’t see the earth giving up anytime soon.  Come and look at the alley behind our church, if you wish to see the earth in humble, forceful action.

            But I think he might see this resurrection of the wild as a call to our deepest natures, one that is so needed right now.  Despite all the X-Treme sports and the never-ending parade of spectacle that has infected our popular music and movies and TV and social media, don’t you think we live in a particularly timid age?  There is plenty of wildness in style, but not a whole lot in substance.

            We have 12 days left until the election (we should be going out to do Posadas of peace and sanity for each of those nights), and while I’ve heard some really crazy ideas (like cutting taxes drastically for the wealthiest among us will balance the budget), I haven’t hear any wild ideas, in the best sense of the word.  A good wild idea would be: let’s eliminate poverty. Another would be reducing our military budget by 50%, which would still leave us ahead of the next five nations (China, UK, France, Russia and Japan) combined.  Let’s start teaching Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Mandarin and Farsi in every school, from pre-kindergarten on, so we can more fully communicate with those we call “enemies”.  (By that I mean, immigrants, Muslims, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and whomever else we need to project upon).  I know people and groups are saying these things, but will we be wild enough to commit ourselves to them.

            This is not coming out as gentle as I wish. I would like to be less angry about the world right now, but I can only do that when I’m willing to be in more pain about the world (and as we all know from television, pain is something to conquer or avoid at all costs).  It hurts to see children in Syria bombed.  It hurts to listen to listen to “Christian leaders” demonize gay people.  It hurts that I feel powerless about this a lot of the time.

            So I go back to Wendell Berry. In the same collection, he writes in “Letter to a Siberian Woodsman” these lines: 

            In the thought of you I imagine myself free of the weapons and

            the official hates that I have borne on my back as a hump,

            and in the thought of myself I imagine you free of weapons and official hates,

            so that if we should meet we would not go by each other

            looking at the ground like slaves sullen under their burdens,

            but would stand clear in the gaze of each other.

I’m not sure of the line breaks, Wendell, but I am sure that I want to let go of my weapons and official hates today.

Be justice.  Be beauty. 

Patrick

           

WHY DO WE BLAME THE POOR?

“Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor.” Zechariah 7:10

Greatly missing from the debates, the ads, the speeches this election season is any mention of the poor.  Everyone is for helping the middle class, but hardly any mention is made of the poor in our country, let alone the poor around the world.  Why is that?

What is it about the poor that makes us so afraid to even mention them?  It wasn’t always so.  FDR talked about the poor, so did Johnson and Nixon.  It is certainly a part of political discussion in my wife’s home country, Chile, and many, many countries around the world.  And nary a whimper here.  The closest we get to any discussion of poverty is when there are votes to either maintain or cut food stamp funding.

I think the poor are a living, breathing testimony counter to our ideologies.  At the core of our civil religion in America is that anyone can succeed if they work hard, be responsible and thrifty, and play by the rules.   (Very rarely do we critique the “rules”.)  A lot of people do just that, and yet many child care workers, janitors and other service providers are still poor. Their presence, and that of the poor in general is a slap in the face of individualism and “free” markets, because of our belief that the market system is the engine to provide growth for everyone.  If our market system doesn’t work for the great majority of the poor, what should we conclude?  It must be the poor’s fault, somehow.   (I have to say, in fairness, that most of the programs that progressive policies have instituted haven’t so much reduced poverty, but allowed people to survive it.  Most often, they have increased resources for poor families, without building economic power.)

I have a Face Book friend whose blog includes this entry titled: “Would Jesus Start a Food Bank?”

http://robinwoodchurch.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/would-jesus-start-a-food-bank/

Do you notice anything about these proposals?  I don’t mean if you like them or not, or think they will work or not.   But that almost all of the solutions have to do with fixing or helping the poor or poor communities (there is one infrastructure one, but it is to improve public transportation for poor communities).  I’m not opposed to some of the proposals.

But look at what is missing—there is nothing saying that the rich, the haves must change.  There is no mention that the fate of those who have and those who don’t have are completely interconnected in an economic system that rewards some and deprives others.  There is no mention of oppression, and none of justice.  There is a mention that churches should be more charitable, but charity in itself still is a way for the wealthy to control how they give and to whom.  It doesn’t change the power relationship.

Probably most of us, believers or not, would be OK with the first quote from a prophet that is at the beginning of this post. Probably most of us would say that we don’t oppress to poor, the widow, the fatherless or the foreigner (we’ll look at that last one sometime soon).  But how about these prophecies:

They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Amos 2:7

Scoundrels use wicked methods, they make up evil schemes to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just.    Isaiah 32:7

The poor are not blamed for their poverty in these quotes, but rather the rich who oppress the poor, and corrupt justice. 

If that is the case today, then what is our response today?  That’s the big question. 

I’ll leave with a beautiful quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

 

“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

 

Be justice.  Be beauty.

 

Patrick

Language Love

I love language. I love how you can play with it, make love with it, use it to touch and to heal.  I think about it almost every day, because I write nearly every day, and I need to communicate in two languages at my work.  We’re in the midst of the saddest season of the year for language lovers; that is, campaign season.  Lies are butchered up into holy grail, words that stab and rend are pounded into us.  Each election we say we’re sick of it, and each election we put up with it. I wish my Dad was here to talk with me about it.  We could complain, and then we could laugh.

My father was born in 1912, and grew up in a German-speaking family in rural North Dakota.  His father (we think) was from southern Germany, his mother (who spoke Russian, Polish, German and probably more languages) came from a small town called Kalusz.   Before the first World War, Kalusz was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  After the Second World War, it didn’t exist.  It changed hands many times in the middle of the twentieth century, fought over by armies who cared nothing for the town.

My father, Walter John Hansel, went to kindergarten at the age of five, speaking only German. It was a tough time to speak only that language, because that language was used by them, our mortal enemies.  Teachers were allowed to hit students, and his teacher told his class that anyone speaking German would indeed be hit.  When he came home crying, his father told the family: “From now one, we speak only English!”  A linguistic inheritance put aside, because of the fear manifested. Not so much in little Walter, but in the teacher, the town, the nation.

My dad enlisted in the Army in 1940, and was in the Aleutian Islands on Pearl Harbor Day.  Eventually, he made it to France and Germany, as part of an anti-aircraft unit.  Like many men of his generation, he didn’t like to talk about what happened during the war.  Bits and pieces came out of him, stories that were told sometimes to one child and not another.  He served in the occupation of Germany, and our nation—who couldn’t accept his language as a five year old, now saw it as an asset.

One story he told me was about a boy of about 8 or 9, who his group met while walking around in the town they were occupying.  The down had been pretty much leveled, and no doubt the boy was hungry. He also had a little radio with him, and one of my dad’s men took it away from him.  My Dad yelled at the soldier, “Why do you want to take that? It’s the only thing he has!”  I never heard, or can’t remember what happened at the end.  My dad was a staff sergeant by then, and could have ordered the man to give it back. Whatever happened to that boy, and that soldier, I don’t know.

But today, I’m thinking that maybe the soldier who took that radio—even though he was the one with all the power in that relationship—was living the language of fear.  I don’t doubt that the soldier had experienced terrible things during the war, and I understand how revenge might rise out of that.  But during the occupation, when there was no resistance, what reason would he have to fear?

But, as I have said elsewhere, it is those who have who fear the most.  Those who have feel threatened by those who don’t.  You would think that having would give you security, but it doesn’t.

There’s a very interesting article by Chrystia Freeland in the New Yorker, where she says

“The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have found that ninety-three per cent of the gains during the 2009-10 recovery went to the top one per cent of earners...the top 0.01 per cent captured thirty-seven per cent of the total recovery pie, with a rebound in their incomes of more than twenty per cent, which amounted to an additional $4.2 million each.”

And yet these are folks who feel—in Freeland’s view—that they are victims, and that they are being unfairly blamed and even attacked.

See the article at:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_freeland

This Sunday’s Gospel is about the rich young man who had done—or thought he had done—everything he needed to do, but could not separate himself from his possessions, and so “went away sad, for he had great wealth.

I’m still waiting for the Presidential candidates to talk about poverty.  We may be waiting for awhile, but justice for the poor will come.  In the meantime,

Be justice, be beauty…

Patrick

Today Would Have Been

Today would have been my parents’ 63^rd anniversary. Today is 8 years since my Mom died, which was 8 years after my Dad did.  I called her that morning to wish her happy anniversary, and the policeman who found her answered the phone.  I called home the day my father died, and as I was praying with my sister, who was holding my mom’s hand, who was holding my dad’s, as he gave his last breath.

Since then, and since other vigils at other bedsides, it has become clear that we do not “take our final breath” as we often say.  We give it. Our last act is exhaling; it is the loss of inhaling that marks our passing.  It is a blessing, I think, to be that way.  Because if our final act were taking, we would have something we hold onto, and death, if anything, is letting go.

I confess that I am afraid of death. I preach the resurrection and I believe in eternal life, but I am afraid. I am afraid of what it will feel like. I am afraid of not knowing what will come after it. I am afraid of no longer being “me”.  I know that perfect love casts out fear, and I trust that this perfect love is always looking for me, and finding me.

I am writing this in my studio space at the Loft in downtown Minneapolis.  In a little while, I will walk a couple blocks to the Mississippi River, and sit by the memorial to those who suffered, and those who survived the collapse of the 35W bridge five years ago this past August 1.  I will run my hand over my daughter Talia’s name, and bless myself with the water that clings to my fingers.  It will not change the physical world, but I trust it will lift my spirit.

Talia is a tall and beautiful girl of 12 now, and most of the trauma of that day has dissipated for us.  Or perhaps it has been buried deep inside.  I know that when I stand by the river that almost took my child, I feel such a deep gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche, of all people, said: “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”  That’s the kind of artist I want to be.

What does this have to do with justice?  I think we have an incredible deficit of gratitude in this country.  We have been blessed with such beautiful land, such diversity of creatures, such a weaving of cultures. But we always seem to want to take more.  It doesn’t help that most of our politics, and almost all of our commercial messages are based on fear.  Fear that we aren’t enough; fear that the other side is going to take away our rights, our guns, our stuff, our power.

I’ve worked in the inner city over half my life, and one thing I am grateful for is the faith that people who suffer poverty often have—a faith that is demonstrated in generosity and gratitude.  You would think that people who have more would be more grateful and less fearful, but it is often the opposite.  The people who seem to be the most anxious and fearful are not the ones who don’t have, but the ones who do.  That goes for communities, cities, churches, in workplaces and in our nation as a whole. 

If we really want justice for all, maybe we need to be grateful more often.  Maybe we need to give more breath than take it.  Maybe we need to let go, even of the praise we might get for letting go.

Today is my day off, and there is always a desire in me to fill it up with “things I have to do.”  Oh perfect love, protect me from that!  I just want to be grateful today, breathe in and breathe out, give and receive.

One of the poets I am so grateful for—one of two who got me to start writing poetry—was Theodore Roethke. The end of his poem “The Waking” fits the power for this day: 

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow,

I learn by going where I have to go.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick

Today is St. Francis of Assisi Day--my favorite Saint, and one whose name I took for my confirmation name when I was confirmed in the Roman Catholic church.  One of the things that I love about him is his love for all of creation: sun, moon, animals, everything. He preached to the birds!  He tamed the "very fierce wolf of Gubbio" by talking to him as if he were a creature of God rather than an enemy.

St. Francis contradicted the violence and overconsumption of his day be embracing poverty, refusing to return evil for evil and living dependent on his community of brothers (and later sister, under Saint Clare) and the community at large.  His conversion happened during a time of imprisonment and illness when he fought one of the silly wars of the 13th century. 

I wonder if our national community is open to even talk about poverty, let alone decide to consume less.  I wonder if we--like St. Francis--could at least for this day, see everyone we encounter as God's beautiful creature, not as an enemy.  Or if we encounter a real enemy, treat them as Jesus called us to do: love them, pray for them, do good to them.

St. Francis was able to embrace all of creation, even physical death (he called her "sister death"). 

There's a line from one of my poems about my father, where I wrote:

"Surely the nature of death is hope."

I don't follow that teaching very often, I have to admit.  But I trust that the Spirit is moving me and moving us to let our consumerism die, let our war-making die, and cause some other seed to burst forth a beautiful new life.

Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick

Craving Justice and Beauty

I said that I would never get a cell phone.  I have one.  I said I would never write a blog.  Here is one.  The genesis of this was a frustration and a delight.  The frustration is about how our conversation has fallen, both in politics and in the church. The delight is that, as I am six months from completing my sixth decade, I have found more wonder at the beauty of creation and the incredible complexity of human beings than I have for years. Maybe decades.

             “With liberty and justice for all.”  That’s how the Pledge of Allegiance ends. (I also think that’s the part that God cares about, not whether we say “under God” or not.)  But so much of our political discourse in this country focuses only on liberty.  It is present on the right: my right to choose my own insurance plan, my right to keep more of my money.  But it’s also found on the left: my right to marry who I want to, my right to make my own decisions about my body.  I’m not opposed to liberty or human rights (though what rights we do have and what we should have are an open question).  But lacking from the conversation much of the time is the question of justice, especially justice for all.

             For example, in all the talk about health care in the last couple of years, we’ve usually avoided the key issue: why do we have so many uninsured people in our country?   It’s hard to decide on solutions to that question when we aren’t even asking it.  We are an incredibly wealthy nation, and yet we don’t have a national strategy to provide health care for all our citizens.  Almost all our talk has been focused on rights.  My right to not have health insurance.  My right to have contraception coverage.   The “my’s” have it.

Whatever justice means, it always means “expanding the tent”.  Expanding not just rights to a wider group, but also expanding the power to use those rights.  (Slow down libertarian friends—I’m not talking about a government transferring power from one group to another!).  Any movement toward justice means working through two deep human fears: the loss, or perceived loss of our power, and the responsibility that comes with using our power.  That is not done without struggle, thus the call to Spirit wounds.  Wounds that can heal.

Which brings us, in true non sequitur fashion, to beauty.  Our conversation and our life together in community cry out for more beauty in our lives.  I don’t mean a flowery, isn’t-everybody-so-precious kind of coating on our struggles.  I mean a passion to see beauty and to create it in our daily life.  Take the prophet Amos’ well quoted words on justice:

Let justice roll down like waters

            And righteousness like an everflowing stream

             This powerful call to justice is clothed in a beautiful poetic image that is repeated.  Healing, refreshing water—water we all want and crave—is the metaphor for a just life together.  We can’t control water, but we can cherish, protect and share it.

            Most of you know that I am a poet. Sometimes I will leave this with something from a poem.  These are a few lines from my poem “Questions”:

Is freedom a surname for joy,

or the fastest way to annihilate
ourselves?    Is hope an unfolding
flower, or a factory to hide in?

Be beauty.  Be justice.

Patrick