HEROD STOP HEROD

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the celebration—if that’s what it is—of the slaughter of every male child under two in the region of Bethlehem by Herod’s henchmen.  It’s the part of the Christmas story that usually doesn’t get told.  It is commemorated in the third verse of the Coventry Carol:

Herod the King, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young, to slay.

It’s not a part of Christmas that is clean and tidy. It’s not just.  It’s not peaceful.  It’s horrible.  And it keeps happening.

Many of us were moved by the photo of Aylan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian boy, who was washed up dead on the Turkish shore, when his family was fleeing the war, and trying to get to Greece.  No one knows for sure, but probably close to 15,000 Syrian children have been killed in the war.  Tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died in the last 12 years, as they have in Afghanistan.  As they have by the millions because of hunger, poverty and disease across the world.

All of this is human wrought.  And the Herods among us keep multiplying

Tomorrow is the 125^th anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, in which 300 some Lakota people were slaughtered by the U. S. Army.  Tomorrow, or someday soon, the Obama administration is going to begin raids to deport the children and their parents who fled violence in Central America.  God knows when the next police shooting of an unarmed African-American will happen, but it will happen too soon.

I am tired of being outraged. And tired of feeling powerless to change. 

But I will not give up.  I will keep working to defy Herod and protect those he would slaughter.  Maybe I can’t do much, but I can at least bear witness.

I wrote this poem several years ago when the father of a young child—who had played Baby Jesus during Christmas—was deported.  It was recently published in RiverSedge magazine. I thank God the family is together again.  And I thank God that God is not going to give up on our sorrow and our struggle.

 

Baby Jesus’ dad got deported.

 

He wasn’t old.
He wasn’t wrong.
He wasn’t slick.
He was just there.

He was there riding a train.

He was there grilling a steak.
He was there picking up trash.
He was there, lying next to his wife,
The moonlight soft, the whisper slow.

 

Baby Jesus’ dad got deported.

We saw him off at the airport.
Forehead blessings. Tears. Promises
Of return.  There isn’t much
You can say to the baby Jesus
When the baby knows it all.
 
The nation will survive
Without baby Jesus’ dad.
The steak will be a bit overdone.
The reading and math a bit slow.
The nighttime drops of liquid moon
Will float and flee before the dawn.
 
Baby Jesus’ dad got deported.
He took his shoes off.
He emptied his pockets into the plastic tub.
He raised his arms for the magic wand.
He squeezed himself into the air.
 
Wave goodbye, baby Jesus.
Wave until your arm grows thorns.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be sorrow clamoring for hope.

Patrick

The Day Before

CHRISTMAS EVE

 

Our Marias are in labor, our children push

towards the light: In Syria, a girl dreams

of peace, on the border with Mexico,

a Honduran boy dips his toes and his heart

into the waters of the Rio Bravo.  In
Ferguson, in Staten Island, in Minneapolis,
those felled by bullets, by choke holds,
by the color of their skin are being born
again in voices that will not keep silent.
Where are our Josephs standing guard?
Where do our shepherds keep watch?
On the very edge of heaven, that
luminous space so close to earth
you can hear the heartbeat, you can
taste the blood, the angelic voices
strain against the command: wait
with your song until the birth occurs;
hold your wings against the darkness.
Who will join their chorus? Who will
speak the word that gives birth to joy?

Be justice. Be beauty. Be born anew.

Patrick

HEROES OR JUST PLAIN JOES AND JANES

I have a conflicted relationship with Veteran’s Day.  Both of my parents served during World War II and my father was in combat.  They were proud of their service and I am proud of them.  Later in their lives, they changed their minds about the use of our military, as our military became more of a way to exert our power (and often to prop up corrupt regimes) than to fight against tyranny.

I prayed for veterans on Sunday in worship, especially those who have been injured physically, emotionally and morally.  I’m glad I did that, but I am uncomfortable about the way the church’s concern with caring for people in the armed forces and veterans so often morphs into a blessing—even an enthrallment—with the military.

We get church newsletters from different congregations, and I see many of their websites and posts on line.  Almost all of them this month had special recognition for Veteran’s, including special worship services.  But I do ask: when was the last time you saw an announcement for a special service for union members near Labor Day or May Day?  Have you ever seen a church newsletter promoting support or prayer for those who have worked to oppose our unjust wars?

November 11 was originally Armistice Day, meant to commemorate the treaty at the end of World War I.  It was meant to celebrate peace, not military strength.  That treaty, with its heavy punishments of Germany, helped fuel the rise of Nazism.  And our triumph in World War II, in my opinion, helped fuel our invasions of the last sixty years: Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Granada, Panama, Iraq, not to mention all our proxy wars in Latin America.

I’m not a pacifist.  There may be times when violence, including military force, is necessary.  But most of our wars since World War II (all of which has meant us warring against nations and peoples much poorer than us) don’t fall into that category.  And every use of violence creates the conditions for more violence, if not directly causing violence. 

Part of that violence is turning soldiers—from our country and others—into killers, and then not doing enough to turn that killing off when they come back.  Which may be impossible to do in the first place.  A big part of the violence in El Salvador today is because of the oppression and violence for decades, and all the young people who served in the army or the guerrillas who have not truly reentered society.  We live in a very anxious time in our country, as seen by the upswing of racial violence and the exploding scapegoating of immigrants and the poor.  We’ve all heard a lot about suicides of vets.  I fear we may be hearing more about homicides, if we don’t change our worldview and our practice about the use of force.

There was a report on the BBC News today about how some veterans don’t like to be called heroes, because they don’t feel that adequately represents who they are, and the messiness of what they had to do.  One ex-marine talked about how “maybe the pendulum has swung too far from the guilt over what happened to Viet Nam vets”.  I think that “guilt” is exactly the right word—for what we did to the vets returning from that war, and what we did to the Vietnamese.  We won’t assuage that guilt by simply thanking vets “for their service”.  We need to come to terms with what was done in our name, and what continues to be done.

So today, I will honor my parents and my other relatives who served in the military, as well as many friends and parishioners over the years. But I will also honor those who have worked against unjust wars—including veterans like John Kerry and Ron Kovic in the Viet Nam era, and Camilo Mejia and others who resisted the Iraq war. And because of my Irish heritage and my service now in a heavily Mexican community, I want to honor the San Patricios—the Saint Patrick battalion: Irish-Americans and Irishmen who defected during the Mexican War to fight for Mexico, because of the cruelty and injustice of what we still are reaping the fruits of.

This poem was written in honor of my father, Walter Hansel, who was threatened to be hit for speaking German when he went to kindergarten in 1917 (during World War I), and whose German helped the country of his birth during World War II and the occupation.  It was first published in Ilanot Review, an English language journal in Israel.  Ironically, the issue whose theme was “Conflict” came out just before the last war in Gaza.

 

FALLING

 

A man hung from his parachute

like a seed softly whirligigging down,
shouting “Don’t shoot—I surrender!”                       
in the tongue of the enemy, your first tongue.
He had no way to reach
his weapon, but the men under

you did, and in a minute—though your voice

was raised and your rank commanded
obedience—it was the county fair
in Shreveport, in Pembina, in New Ulm                    
and New Prague, step right up, everyone                  
wins a prize, the lights flashing,
the girls all giggles, and bullets
and a ribbon for the man who hits the nose.

Then, silence, the head of the boy

on his chest, his body limp
in its harness, gravity doing
its work.  The son of German cousins—
perhaps the grandson of your grandfather’s friend—
spoiled blood over his uniform. Father,

why did you tell me this story

and not my brothers?
Your memories are like your hands:
big, calloused, open.
 
His boots newly shined, pulled him
down to the earth he finally
met as a shroud, a nothing,
a home. Your men did not speak.
They held their rifles across
their chests, as if bearing sick children.

 

Be justice. Be beauty. Be honor.

Patrick

 

 

 

WHOSE LANGUAGE IS IT ANYWAY?

So I haven’t written in my blog for awhile.  All kinds of excuses: lots of stuff going on at work, nice long vacation, health problems.  Sometimes I think that—just maybe—I have only so many words in me in a given week or given day. And because I am doing a lot of writing every week: sermons, lessons, grant proposals, reports, my poetry residency at Roosevelt High School, sometimes it feels as if I’ve run out of things to say.

That of course, is bullshit.  Like everyone else, there is barely a limit to the words I have in store for me, both in my brain and in the common language that we share.  Part of what has kept me from writing here is a lack of energy (which really means a lack of commitment to summon my energy for this blog, rather than summoning it for work, obsessing about a topic on Face Book, or TV).  But I think that part of the block has been that I’m afraid what I will write won’t be beautiful, profound or at least funny.

That is a trap of course. I imagine a lot of writers—and other creators—feel that way quite often.  When I am most connected to my writing, I’m not worrying about that.  The act of creating is in itself sufficient blessing.  But when I’ve been depleting myself, my ego asserts its primacy over the creative spirit in me, and I judge myself by how others might react to something I might write, and so I don’t risk.

 

This also is vanity and a chasing after wind (Ecclesiastes 2:17), a more elegant way of saying this is bullshit. 

 

So here goes: I love language, and I hate that it is more and more under attack.  By that, I mean truthful, engaging, polysemous (look it up!) use of language.  Nothing like a presidential campaign to bring out the demons of anti-language. From Trump’s “Mexico is sending rapists” to all of the Republicans saying climate change is not real (which is like saying math is not real).  To me, the worst of the bunch is the claim that immigrants are bad because “they refuse to speak American”.  Which is untrue.  Most immigrants strive to learn English. But many also speak their mother tongue (and often more than two languages).  Why is that a threat to people—enough of a threat that the candidates can milk it for its fear factor?

 

Many people in the world are in daily contact with more than one language.  Many people move for work, education and family reasons, and come in connection with other cultures.  Many people are Socrates.  (It’s a thinker, that one).  A French person who knows English or Spanish or German is not considered a threat to other French people (Arabic, yes, due to the fear of “terrorists”, another slaughtering of our daily tongue).  Vietnamese who speak English and Cantonese have work and education possibilities beyond those who only speak Vietnamese.

 

Maybe it’s part of our tortured immigrant past; a ghost that will not stay quiet.  My father started kindergarten in 1917, speaking only German.  Bad timing, dad.  We were at war with Germany, and the teacher threatened to hit any child who spoke the “language of the enemy”. He went home crying, and his father declared “From now on, we only speak English in this house”.  So many immigrants made similar decisions—that to be accepted as American, one had to deny one’s culture and language, rather than add to it. 

Is it because we stripped away so much of our immigrant past, including the beautiful languages that we brought, that we are so afraid of people who choose not to do so?  (The irony here is that English is the most mixed up language of them all, having incorporated words, syntax and sounds from a whole bunch of nations).

This summer, I was able to visit the grave of my grandparents in Langdon, North Dakota. I never met my grandparents.  My grandmother Anna died from complications of childbirth when my dad was twelve, a wound that profoundly affected him and his family.  My grandfather Jacob died while I was in the hospital as an infant with brain trauma.  I heard stories from my dad of his mom, and how she would sing to him at night in Polish or Russian. How he remembered one word in particular she would bless over him as he went to sleep: dobri.  Good.  Good boy.  Good love.  Good night.

This is a poem I wrote for my grandmother, who came to this country speaking four languages, though she had not had much schooling.

 

FOR ANNA SEBASTIAN

 

You brought four languages

with your name and passport,
picked from the air churning
around a Europe torn over,
never forgotten even as you
whittled your tongue down to fit
America. Erde, chleb, víz, dam.
Earth, bread, water, blood.

With a burnt oak chest and your

memory tight as a grave stone,
you left Kalusz the year                     
the cemetery stopped burying,                                   
to try your back and your will
in this new world of
osprey and buffalo,                                        
of homesteaders and wandering
bands of railroad men, of prisons
full of money and the wishes
of beggared children.

You told my father “All my children

will go to college,” but you
died after giving birth to the last
boy; and, that year, the barn
burnt down, and the man you had
married for love and for his thick
German hands tripped over the wounds
and fell into a deep well, where
sorrow and rage made love                            
in the darkness, each upon each.                                
 
Where do you converse now,
granddaughter of conversos?
Where does your spirit fall?
This air we breathe descends
back to 1907; back to farewells,
hard bread and want.  I want

to call you back from my genes,
the ones that make us speak
in any tongue, the ones that look
out this morning at a leafing tree
in early spring and cry out
for a word stronger,
deeper than green.                                                      

Grandmother,

I write to you from a century
my father failed to see,
where all his children went
to grad school, where I live
with a wife and daughter from Chile,
and a daughter who descended from slaves,
where no record of you
past the town of your birth
exists on line, in a museum
or a box.  Where have you
gone? Can you see that I offer you
my fingers, the dirt of city soil
under the nails, the scent
of my daughter’s hair as I bless                                 
her onto the school bus
taking her to her bilingual world:
Tierra, pan, agua, sangre.
Dirt, bread, water, blood.

Be beauty. Be justice. Be the language you were born.

Patrick

WHO IS BEING PERSECUTED?

With the recent Supreme Court’s ruling on the right to marriage has come a lot of anger by some folks, and also the claim by some that their religious rights are being violated, or even that they are being persecuted because they are Christian.  (The definition of all Christians as those who don’t believe in the right of gay and lesbians to marry is another issue).  At the same time, I’ve seen people say that white people, straight people and Southern people are now being persecuted.

 

Some of this may be the heated rhetoric of the moment, but I think a lot has to do with a deep sense of loss. A loss of a perceived way of life, and a powerlessness to do anything about it.  I think the loss is real.  I think the powerlessness is a trap.  A trap by those who felt and perceived themselves to be in the “in-group” (even if they weren’t really), and now see others “taking their place”.

To play off Lord Acton, powerlessness tends to corrupt, and the projection of powerlessness tends to absolutely corrupt our vision and our ability to even distinguish truth from fear.

I have served in inner city communities for over 30 years, and in almost every circumstance there was an in-group that felt neglected/rejected/even attacked because a new group of people were coming in—and not only that, taking ownership!  In the Bronx, the in-group was Afro-Caribbean and middle-class African-American, the new group was Latino and poorer African-American.  In the current parish that I am serving, the in-group was white, the new group is Latino. 

 

(This is an oversimplification, because in each of these there were a lot of other dynamics: how different groups use space, how different people make decisions, even different conceptions of God and what being a Christian is.  Not to mention language!)

 

These church dynamics are connected to what is happening in the society at large.  My home town of Austin Minnesota was 99.99993 percent white when I was growing up (I just did the math!).  Now it has large Latino, Karen, Sudanese and other populations, and soon the schools will be majority non-white.  Some people have welcomed the change, some have not.  I often hear that “Austin has changed”, usually with a tone that means the change hasn’t been a good one. 

 

I’ve tried to put myself in the minds of the people who are uneasy or fearful about this kind of change.  It’s not so easy to do that, because I have my own fears and disquiet, and often the words we speak out of that are not very open to dialogue.  As more of my life has become about art, I’ve began to see that it’s not so much the thoughts that drive us, but the images we store.

 

I think about most people in my parents’ generation, or even my older cousins, who grew up in homogenous communities.  What they “saw”—on TV and in life—were white people everywhere, men running the show, no openly gay or lesbian leaders, and people of color almost always in the position of either entertainer (including athletes) or threat.  I put “saw” in quotes because another reality was present, but one had to look at it, and indeed, look for it.

 

Now “all of a sudden”, Latinos are living “among us”, gay people are acting as if they are “normal”, people “we don’t know” are running the show.  (I don’t have to explain the quotes, I think.)  I can imagine that this can cause some huge dissonance in people’s minds and hearts.  One way to deal with that dissonance is creativity.  Create something new, beautiful and challenging. Unfortunately, our media/entertainment industry, our economy and our politics don’t put a high value on creativity. (We claim to, but really, the underlying assumptions and structures don’t change much).

 

The other way to deal with dissonance is to make it into a contest, with a winner and a loser.  How much we do that!  The news report which movies scored the most at the box office, which politicians are leading in the polls, which company made the biggest profit.  Not which contributes to the community or our sense of it.

 

A couple years ago, there was a story about a small town in Iowa where significant ethnic change has occurred.  An elderly resident was quoted as saying something like: “I’ve lived in this town my whole life.  Why do I have to press 1 for English when I call the bank that I’ve banked at for 60 years?”

 

Now, we could laugh at the relatively minor inconvenience, compared to say, facing persecution and fleeing your homeland to come to the US and different languages, laws, customs and assumptions.  But I believe that this woman really felt her security was threatened because something so basic was now accommodating people she couldn’t understand and perhaps feared.  My guess is that she felt that she had lost, and some others had won.

 

For me—at least on my healthiest days—security comes from a loving, engaged God, and a family and community that is welcoming, honest and has the courage to be curious.  But to be honest, I too often feel threatened by people who have different opinions from me.  I don’t want to be, but there is a visceral, physical reaction in me that I can’t always control.  When my reptilian brain is running the show, look out, because the images it follows and finds can be horribly cruel and terribly blind.

I do have the power to seek, however.  To seek new images and communities that will be a challenge but may be a kind of salvation.

 

So,  I don’t think I and my fellow white people are being persecuted.  Many of us are suffering, and it would pay to seek the real causes of that, rather than attribute it to the victory of another group, and thus our defeat.

 

I don’t think that I and my fellow straight people are being persecuted.  We’re maybe not as cool as we used to be, but coolness is a rather fickle lover.

 

And I don’t think that I and my fellow Christians are being persecuted in this country (there are horrible persecutions in other places, just as there are horrible persecutions by Christians).  I do think that as people of faith we have an incredibly rich, mysterious, humbling tradition of the play of power and powerlessness, and where true power resides.  A deeper wrestling with that may be the way of a renewed vision.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be a seeker of new images.

 

Patrick

WHY ARE WE SO ANGRY AT PEOPLE WE DON’T KNOW?

I spend way too much time on Face Book, I admit.  I’ve tried not to get entangled in endless, fruitless debate, but sometimes my reptile brain wins out and I jump right in.  I do read a lot of posts about a lot of different issues, and I’m troubled about the current emphasis on “celebretizing” issues and really troubled by how personal people can become about people they don’t know. 

Why the incessant focus (and venom) about Caitlyn Jenner, Tony Campolo and Rachel Dolezal?  I know that the news media loves to make the story about a person and their motivation.  It makes it easy to avoid hard analysis and honest discussion of what the societal issues are about.  But why do we do it?

Especially many friends on the left—where I find myself most often—have been as celebrity-focused and judgmental as Fox News is.  I’ve heard such absolute moral certainty about what Tony Campolo’s and Rachel Dolezal’s motivations are, and how wrong they are.  (This is mirrored by the right’s moral indignation about Caitlyn Jenner, of course).

To the best of my knowledge most of us have never met them. (I have met Tony Campolo a couple of times, but I can’t say I know him.) We're basing our opinions on what we've read on-line, from our favored sites, mostly, I would guess.  I have a feeling that all three of them may have complicated motives, and probably are complex people.  I don’t think labeling them and condemning them so strongly is all that helpful to understand them.  And the real danger, to my mind, is that we become convinced of our righteousness, because we “know” what they are doing, and why they are doing it, and why they are to be rejected.

Beauty is bright colors, for sure; but also various shades, including gray areas.

Justice is diminished when we make it black and white.  I’d rather be a little uncertain about what motivates folks.

So…be beauty, be justice, be uncertain.

Patrick

WHAT IS BIRTH BUT A PASSING BETWEEN WORLDS?

I haven’t written anything in a while, partly because I’ve been busy writing other stuff: proposals, plans, poems, stories.  But partly—or maybe mostly—because I haven’t felt like I had much to say. As a pastor, I’m called to say something every Sunday: something that is relevant, important and has an effect on the hearer: either to move them to action or move them to a different feeling, idea or level of trust.  To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure what I hoped for from readers when I started this blog.  I have appreciated the few comments I get, but I would like more interaction.  I write because I need to write.  And when I don’t feel like I have anything to say, it’s hard to need.

Enter the metaphor of birth, which rose in last Sunday’s sermon as a way to talk about great changes, and the shock and joy they bring.  The texts were Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dead bones (Ezekiel 37) and the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.  I was trying to get at why change—especially change that pushes us into unknown territory, or into relationship with people we don’t know, who are different, whom we fear—why is that so hard?

So I talked about birth—the pain of the mother, and the noisiness of the place of birth. I have been privileged to be present at the death of many people, and it is a holy time.  To hold the dying one’s hand, to pray, to anoint—or the last time I was present at a dying—to sing Josephine’s favorite hymn while my wife held her hand and gently stroked her head.  Those are sacred moments.

I’ve never been present at a birth.  I’ve held babies on their first day of life, with proud parents and family around.  I baptized a baby on her first day of life, with her mother holding her, before the child was taken by Children’s Services, because the mother was addicted. Those were sacred moments, too.

I’ve never been present at a birth. But I’ve been told that the birthing process can be very loud, as the mother experiences the pain.  There are also moments of quiet, either of peace or of exhaustion.  But there comes a moment when everyone there really wants to hear something: the cry of newborn!

Many times, I’ve preached or written about the pain the mother goes through and the joy she hopes for after it is over.  But then I started thinking about the pain the baby goes through.

All of us have this in common: we were born.  We don’t remember anything about that (at least not consciously).  But we can suppose that it was quite a trembling, fascinating event.  To leave a place of warmth, to arrive at a place twenty some degrees colder.  To leave a place of darkness, to come to a place of bright light.  To leave a place of protection, sheltered in the flesh of another, to one of being exposed, to strangers, and naked at that.  To leave a place where sound comes only through the loving flesh of your mother, to this noisy place we call life.  And on top of all the shock to our senses of sight (brightness), hearing (noise), physical touch (cold), we also really experience smell for the first time. As we breathe, we smell.  And then soon we taste.

No wonder babies cry!  It’s a cry of pain!  But also of exultation: I am here! I am alive!  I belong to the world! 

I think of all the changes I want to see in our world: an end to violence, a loving repair of the planet, equality and quality for all in so many ways.  All those are pretty big births, and are going to be full of shock and pain.  But isn’t it worth it?  Isn’t the joy promised—even if not fully given—worth the struggle?  I sure hope so.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be birth.

Patrick

GOOD FRIDAY BIRTHDAY

So today is my 62^nd Birthday.  My dad, who was a self-employed barber, retired at 62 ½.  That ain’t happening for a couple reasons. One, we don’t have enough in retirement yet, though we’ve been saving (and unfortunately, more and more people are having to retire later, given the “fundamental structural variables in our increasing globalized, inequitable economy ad infinitum”).  Two, I’m having too much fun.  Most days.  At least part of every day.  Today I am

There’s a lot of hope in my day, and a lot of sorrow.  Mourning over the students murdered in Kenya, and the ongoing killing in Syria, Iraq, so many parts of the world. Morning a dear friend from high school, who also is an April birthday boy, who died last month.  Hopeful, because it looks like diplomacy did work (duh!) in the Iran talks.   Hopeful, because our church walked with four other churches throughout the neighborhood today, praying for those in recovery, affordable housing, the arts, youth and families and so many more joys and sorrows life has given us.

This is the first time my birthday has been on Good Friday since…well, since my birthday. My actual one, in 1953 (it could land on Good Friday 2-3 more times before I die).  My Mom would kid me when I was a kid about my birth having caused her to miss Easter that year.  My birthday landed on Easter three times: when I turned 30—in Cuajimalpa, a barrio of Mexico City, while in seminary; the year we got engaged and married; and the first Easter of New Creation/Nueva Creación, the church we planted in Philadelphia.  Alas, the next time it will be on Easter, will be 2078, when I will be 123.  Or dead.

It is strange celebrating my birthday on Good Friday—the two moods are quite different, but the solemnity of the Christian feast also has joy and wonder in it.  The humanness of the story of Jesus’ death is so moving, and for most of my life—even during the time I was an atheist—the humanness of Jesus has been connected to all human suffering, struggle and triumph.  I remember seeing in Mexico a painting by Chilean artist Guillermo Nuñez, who was in a concentration camp during the military dictatorship.  It was simple and profound: the barbed wire of the concentration camp came from the left and the right to the middle of the picture, where it was twisted into a crown of thorns.  There are so many being tortured and murdered still today, in so many places, and sometimes I just want to give up.  But I will now

(You can read a letter from Nuñez from the period of the dictatorship at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1977/may/12/inside-chiles-prisons/)

For 40 years, I have fasted on Good Friday, as a spiritual discipline.  For about that long, I have broken my usual Lenten discipline (no coffee, sweets or alcohol—some good stuff too, like trying not to be sarcastic and be patient) on my birthday.  Like a bit of Easter in the midst of the penitence.  So I’ve thought a lot about what to do when my birthday came along this year.  Do I fast, in keeping with Good Friday, or delight, in keeping with my birth?  My wife suggested this morning that maybe I could “celebrate Good Friday this year by not fasting”.  That felt like a betrayal to me, but when I checked my spirit on that, it was more to keep my tradition going, then to keep the day as I have kept it.

So I fasted until the close of our Community Way of the Cross, and then ate, in fellowship with the other urban pilgrims.  It was a blessing to my spirit.  It also was a spark—no, more of a volcano eruption—to my flesh.  If you don’t drink coffee or eat sweets for weeks, maybe you shouldn’t have two cups of coffee and two cookies on an empty stomach.  I think I’ll be down in time for Easter!

Today, I wrote poetry, as I do almost every birthday.  I will work on my Easter sermon, which I do every Good Friday.  I also have to work on a funding proposal, which is due Monday.  As I’ve written elsewhere, when writing a proposal, you have to detail what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, how it will be measured, what will be different.  Really focused, linear and to each point the funder asks for, explicitly or implicitly.   Look out for surprises!  Whereas celebrating a birthday, and the celebration of the death of whom I love as the giver of all is so open-ended.  There are surprises a plenty.

One of the blessings of Face Book is receiving lots of birthday wishes.  The best so far is a friend who saluted me as “being a Servant of the Holy and joyful in the world.”  May that be your blessing as well.

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be birth.

Patrick

GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS

I haven’t checked the news sites to see if there’s any progress on the talks with Iran.  “Time is running out”, as they say.  But apparently, from what I’ve heard on the news and read in various forums, time is not running out on our country—and the people in it—claiming the role of “good guys” and casting our adversaries in the role of “bad guys”.

Thus with Iran and the nuclear issue.  So much of the discussion has been “how do we keep Iran from getting the bomb” and why that is a bad thing.  Although I don’t see very much written or said that it is a bad thing because nuclear weapons are bad, but rather it’s a bad thing because Iran is bad, and “we” have to stop them.

There is no doubt that Iran’s government has a long way to go to be considered democratic and free. There is progress in that area, both in civil society, and in the new government.  But the Iranian government continues to oppress its people.  They’ve killed and tortured.  They’ve imprisoned dissenters. There is also no doubt that Iran also is involved in supporting state or militia violence—In Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq (though ironically, on “our side” in the latter).  There is also no doubt that Iran has a pretty big and well trained army, which should give pause to any war plans by other nations.

I read a site today where it stated, unequivocally, that “Iran is the biggest exporter of violence” in the region.  Let’s look at that for a moment.

In the last 15 years, the United States has invaded and occupied two countries—Afghanistan and Iraq.  Conservative estimates put the dead in Iraq at at least 1 million as a result of the war.  We’ve bombed at least four other countries in the region: Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan.  Our military budget is larger than the next 10 countries combined.  That includes China, Russia, the Koreas, India, etc.

Let’s also look at our record on democracy in Iran.  The United States overthrew the elected democratic government of Iran in 1954, and helped install the Shah. We provided military aid to him and helped train the SAVAK, the secret police that used torture and rape constantly.  We provided military aid to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, including intelligence on how effective Saddam’s chemical weapons were in killing Iranians. 

And on nuclear weapons.  The US has lots of them.  We’re the only country that has used them. Our ally in the region, Israel, has them and refuses to sign the international treaties on nuclear weapons.  We tried to stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, but did not with India, our ally.

So the destabilization and militarization in the region is much more complicated than just Iran’s misdeeds.

I truly hope that an agreement will be reached with Iran and the other powers negotiating.  It won’t solve all the problems in the region, but it might bring us a step back from violence.  It has the promise of helping Iran back away from its war-like rhetoric and actions. And it may even hold the promise of helping us back away from ours.

Be justice. Be beauty.

Patrick

WHAT FALLS AWAY IS ALWAYS

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and I have green, proud green on my chest and heart, and green, sorrowing green in my heart.  The sorrow in me is for the death of a dear friend, a sorrow that has barely begun to bloom.  It is like the stems of the bushes and the limbs of the trees here in Minnesota, who were stirred by the early spring come after winter, but have not risen, have not blossomed.

Mark and I were in every class together our freshman year at Austin Pacelli High School (Go Shamrocks!): Latin, English, Biology, Algebra I, Civics, Religion, Phy Ed.  I think I got them all.  Even into our early sixties, we would quote to each other the rousing dictum: Agricolae portam frumentam per silvam ad equis in agris. Words to laugh about, to toast with.  We stayed close though we went to different colleges; we were “young urban professionals” in Minneapolis before there was such a term, doing jobs we knew we wouldn’t do for long—he driving a school bus, me serving as a home health care aide.  We were a part of each other’s weddings, and in fact, I caught the garter of his wife that he threw at his wedding, and gave it back to his wife Debbie at mine.  He became a lawyer, I a pastor, but continued to share our love for politics, poetry, sports and above all family.

Mark stayed in Minneapolis and built a career as an honest, caring, dedicated lawyer. I lived on the East Coast for almost 23 years, but we stayed in touch.  Many friends call each other on their birthdays, or Christmas or New Years or another holiday.  We called each other every election night, as much to commiserate as to celebrate, and always ending in laughter and wishes for each other and our families. He was a partner in the firm that Walter Mondale is a part of.  The senior senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar and him shared a secretary for awhile.

I write all these words, and smile, and feel empty.  I want to bring Mark back, talk with him, go to the Twins home opener and drink a beer.  I want to touch his hand, and salute him.

This time of Lent is a time to reflect on our mortality, as we reflect on God’s.  I am called as a pastor to talk about death often—as death approaches, at the moment of death, at the funeral, in the long, lonely painful times after.  I do so joyfully, knowing my own doubts about what death is, and what comes “after”, when there is no after, no before, no time, but just is.

As I age, I have found that I can less and less explain death and the promise of resurrection my faith leads me to.  There is less and less certainty, and more and more hope.  I’m OK with that this St. Patrick’s Day, but it hurts.  The thing about St. Patrick that most draws me is his desire and his decision to go back to Ireland—the land of his enslavement—and serve the people who had mistreated him, even willing to face death.

Mark died the same day as a long-term parishioner, Josephine. My wife Luisa and I were privileged to be her pastors for almost ten years, and privileged to be with her the morning of her death.  The morning I was singing to myself the old hymn “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” because we were going to sing it the next Sunday.  When we went to Jo’s room at the care center, her one surviving sister, Ruth was there.  Jo was “there” in the sense of her body and her labored breathing, but her eyes showed no recognition.  I had brought the old hymnbook to sing and asked Ruth if Jo had any favorite hymns. Ruth said Jo’s favorite was “Softly and Tenderly”, and so I sang that to Jo, as Luisa knelt by her bed and softly and tenderly stroked her head.  It was a holy moment, and I am grateful for it.

I am not grateful for death.  When my father was dying of lung cancer, we prayed for the ending of his suffering but I did not pray for his death.  Mark and Jo were suffering, but I do not rejoice in their death, though it brought an end to their suffering.  I am with Dylan Thomas on that one:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But I am also with Theodore Roethke, in one of my favorite poems, “The Waking”—a poem that started me writing poetry:

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Mark would have loved that poem, I think.  And does, somehow, in some way, still.

Though he is still. And is no more.

The bonds of love that hold us together in life are not broken in death, but oh they are surely tested and tried.  I want to hold onto each cord of each person I treasure tonight, but I know that I do not have the strength—do I even have the will?—to do so.  But I hear around me the call to let go: let go of Mark, let go of Josephine, let go of my desires and my plans, let go even of my life.  But these hands, these hands of mine…

 

Trust, hands, that what falls away is always and is near.

 

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be sorrowing green.

Patrick