GOD BLESS THE CHILD

My wife and I like to watch the BBC News that comes on PBS at 10 pm in Minneapolis.  A different perspective, more international focus.  But last night, as you might imagine, the news was all about the baby prince that had been born.  Live shots outside the hospital, the “reaction of the world” and so on. We switched to the local “news leader” and got the usual mix of mayhem and misdemeanors, followed by a cheerful, indeed chirpy weather report (low humidity is on its way!), and a sport reporter’s righteous indignation about a baseball player being suspended for the year for steroid use (“I’m shocked! Shocked that gambling is going on here!” declaimed Inspector Renault)

I hope the Third in Line to the Throne has a blessed life.  I hope the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge get some help with their interrupted sleep (I imagine they will).  Having raised two daughters, I know the joy and the travail of that great work.

But seriously, is this child more important than all other babies born July 22, 2013?  Is his life going to make that much of a difference?  We say in this country that we are all equal, but we know that circumstances of birth make such a difference.  A child born in an affluent neighborhood has a leg up in so many ways in relation to a child born in a poor neighborhood. 

I’m not discounting family values or individual initiative nor the power of people and communities to change.  But Grosse Pointe, Michigan has received a lot more political and economic favors than Detroit, Michigan, no matter how much people scream about those receiving food stamps.

We humans have built an economic system and a political system in which there are many winners and many, many more losers. We humans built it, not some unseen hand or divine idea.

There’s been a lot written and said about Trayvon Martin—whether George Zimmerman saw him as a threat because he was black.  I haven’t heard or seen much that maybe Zimmerman saw him as a threat because he was young.   So many of the youth in our parish have related stories about being followed in a store, or stopped by police, because they are with a group of other youth.  So many youth feel judged by adults in their community.  True, many of these are people of color, but even the white youth have had that experience. 

It is so easy to see “the other” as a threat, and when there are more than a couple of “them”, our fear rises up.  One reason we run a youth leadership program at our church—where youth go into the neighborhood and engage adults—is to help break down adults’ fears of youth.   I hope we’re making a difference.  “Stand your ground” with a gun usually begins with “this is my ground and not yours” in the mind.

I’m not Pollyannaish about the world (look it up, young people!), but I want to see the world today as a blessing—for the little prince and for all the little ones we call human beings.

Be blessing. Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick

P. S.  Here’s the beginning of a poem of mine in progress, about the role of fate.  I’d love to hear ideas about where to take it:

CHANCE

Maria was born in Reynosa

and Mary in McAllen; one has
the right to drive across the Rio Grande,
the other the right to swim across the Rio Bravo.

Abraham was born a Christian

and Ibrahim a Muslim, and both
believe the other will live forever in hell.

Delwyn got to the party a half hour

after the fight broke up, but just
in time for the bullet.  A tornado
took Paulette’s good tree, and left
the bad one standing…

THINKING ABOUT FREEDOM

I was in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, where we had lived from 1993-2005.  Part of the beauty of that city is being able to buy a coffee and sit in the park next to Congress Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was voted upon.  Not to mention seeing Betsy Ross’ house, where Ben Franklin lived, and on and on.  And Rocky, of course.

There’s also a lot of contradictions about our national conception of freedom in Philly.  There were people active in the Underground Railroad, and there were people who hunted, harassed and killed them.  Philadelphia was the capital during George Washington’s time as President, and photos of recent excavations of the house he lived in showed the quarters for his slaves, right across the street from where the stirring words were ratified: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

On a hot day, after walking around the historic area, I went in the air conditioned interpretive center, and watched a movie filmed around 1976, where key players of the Independence movie met up 200 years after the revolution, and then re-told the story of those days and years of the founding of our nation.  A couple things struck me: one was the scene of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a more somber moment than its raucous passage.  One of the voices said something to the effect that “we thought we were signing our death warrant.”  I tend to forget at times what courage that took to be so publicly identified with the cause.

The other thing that struck me was that, except for a brief segment about appointing George Washington as commander of the army, very little of the story presented was about the battles, the military, the war itself.  Rather it was about the ideas.  The idea of government based on the consent of the governed.  The idea of liberty for all, as compromised as that was in reality. 

I think about that today because many Face Book posts I saw this morning were about “thanking the troops for our freedom”.  I have become more and more wary of that sentiment.  I understand and honor the sacrifice that many of our troops make.  But I worry about our core belief as a nation that it is our military that makes us free.  I could argue that war may have been inevitable to win independence from England, and that war was inevitable to end slavery.  I can make the case that by the time we entered World War II, we had no choice. But so many of our wars that have been promoted as protecting our freedom are not about that at all: the Mexican War, the wars against the native nations, the Spanish-American War had nothing to do with freedom, but with gaining land and projecting our power.   Our recent adventures: Iraq, Viet Nam, Grenada, Panama—how was our freedom protected there?  You could make the case that the initial invasion of Afghanistan was needed to weaken Al Qaeda, but can you make the case that our 12 year occupation is about freedom?

I would like to see posts today about Thomas Paine and Abigail Adams as defenders of our freedom. I would like to hear the commentators at “A Capitol Fourth” and “Macy’s 4^th of July Fireworks” leave the military out of it for just one day, and lift up Sojourner Truth, Eugene Debs, Bayard Rustin, Clyde Bellecourt and Cesar Chavez as defenders of our freedom.  I would like to have an honest discussion in our nation about why we spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, and I would like to have a discussion about why our nation—the land of the free and the home of the brave—has been involved in more wars than any other nation since the end of World War II.

My parents both served in World War II, and I honor their service.  I know people who have come back from wars who suffered terribly, and we need to do all we can to help them heal.  But I would love to see this Independence Day, or one soon, be an independence from our love affair with war.   And I especially would love to see me, and my fellow Christians, live out our freedom maker’s call to love our enemies.

A happy and reflective 4^th of July!

Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick

ART FOR COMMUNITY’S SAKE

I’ve been in Philadelphia over the weekend, visiting arts group and talking with artists and community members about how art can transform communities.  Philadelphia is known as the city of murals, and you wouldn’t be disappointed if you came with the expectation to see a lot of them.  There are huge multistory murals on main streets and in downtown, and there are large and small murals in many, many neighborhoods.  A lot of that is done through the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (http://muralarts.org/).  I’ve seen many of the wonderful murals they have commissioned, cajoled or inspired, but today I saw what has become my favorite: a garbage truck mural!  A city garbage truck—picking up recycling to be exact—right in the middle of 11^th Street near Lehigh!

I spent some time at the Village of Arts and Humanities in north Philadelphia (http://villagearts.org/).  It is located in a neighborhood that has—or had—a lot of empty lots.  A lot of lots.  Many of these have been transformed by the organization to be gardens of different types: vegetable gardens, where youth and elders were watering (before the thunderstorm broke through the 90 degree heat).  Gardens with mosaic benches and sculptures.  An open air stage.  There was nothing going on when I was there; and there was everything.  There was nothing going on when I was there; and yet, because of the art and the space it created for people, it felt inhabited.

Some of the murals in the Village area were on buildings whose backyards were full of junk and weeds.  Some were on vacant buildings.  Most people in the Philadelphia area probably never venture to see the great art work there, because it’s in “a rough area”.  I last saw the area 8 years ago, when I was still living in Philly, and some things have not changed: beautiful community-created art next to abandoned buildings.  In some ways, that is exactly where art should be: calling attention not primarily to itself, but to the community that created it and lives in and around it, and their longing for justice, healing and love.

I suppose you could ask if all the effort that went into creating the gardens and sculptures and murals and other public art made any difference.  I sometimes ask myself that about our Semilla Community Arts Program and the ministry of our church in general.  But when I was walking through the uninhabited inhabited beauty of those gardens today—smelling the flowers, and stopping under the shade trees, and even keeping an eye out for rats as I walked through an overgrown jungle of weeds—I had no doubt.

Be beauty.  Be justice.

Patrick

AND THEN THERE WAS CHAOS…

We started our day camp week at our church an hour ago, and like most of the ones I’ve done in the last 30 years, the first day is a dance between chaos and order I used to say that the first day was a battle between chaos and order, but now I am seeing that it is more of a dance, where two partners lean into each other, pull away, improvise, come together, sometimes fight.  I’ve worked in inner cities my whole professional life, and so the joys and struggles of such neighborhoods come to camp as well.  Children who pre-registered don’t show up, but a bunch that didn’t do.  Volunteers show up too early or too late.  Young ones at the first camp refuse to leave their mom or older brother; older young ones refuse to even acknowledge that they have a mom with them.

Our theme this week is Creation, and we acted out the creation story in Genesis, using our hands to represent wind, water, sky, plants, trees and animals (including leopards!  And hippos!).  We have values we want to impart to these children: respect, sharing, care for the earth.  We are teaching skills in mosaic and photography and urban gardening.  But my hope is that the main thing we are teaching is that they have been created by a loving God and called to be creative.  Incredibly creative. 

I see the wonder and joy of that creativity in the littlest ones, and at times it is a struggle to contain it!  I also see how even the 10 year olds are already looking at their peers to see if it’s OK to sing, or act like a hippo or do anything risky.  How our social life—and in many ways our educational system and even our church life—beats the creativity down in us!  I want to say to the older kids: you’re great—just let loose!  (I do have to say to a lot of them—including some volunteers—please sit down!)

This is how the story of the great creation begins: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  The Hebrew word for wind also means spirit or breath, so that “sweeping over the face of the waters” can take on so many levels of meaning.

This is what I want to take away from it this beautiful morning: the wind blows where it will. It will blow the daylights out of our plans sometime this week, I’m sure.  But if we listen and watch, it will also blow some amazing things around.

Be wind!  Be beauty.  Be the justice of everyone is a creator.

Patrick

What do we need?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we need and about how much we have.  Two tragic news stories have especially impacted me:  one is the Oklahoma tornado, the other the collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh.  More than once, I heard an interview with someone from Oklahoma who said in so many words, “We lost everything we have…but we still have each other.”  I heard similar words after Hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters.  Often there is a promise to rebuild, and more than once I’ve heard someone say, “We can always get new things.”

The promise to rebuild to recover is often lifted up—directly or indirectly—as the true sign of determination and hope.

It struck me today that I have rarely seen an interview with someone who has lost everything they’ve had and also lost their loved ones.  We will see pictures of them mourning, and we will see a lot more pictures of help and “consolation” coming in from people down the block and round the world.  I am grateful that people offer help and consolation. But sometimes I wonder what the limit of our consolation is.  Can we as a culture stand with and in a tragedy that seems to have no hope: everything gone, and loved ones gone? 

My guess is that the more than 1,000 workers who died in the factory collapse didn’t have much stuff to lose.  The average wage for a garment worker in Bangladesh is $37. A month.  Which is criminal.  And I’m sure more than other workers get in Bangladesh, and many other countries. 

What is the connection between all the things we have, and those wages?  Last week, I heard a snippet on Democracy Now, talking about how consumption in the US and Europe drive clothing companies to use cheaper and cheaper labor.  A statistic that jumped out at me was this: the average American buys twice as much clothing as we did in 1980.  Why? I don’t think it’s because we’re better clothed necessarily, in terms of quality of clothing.  It may be that spiritually we are more naked than we have been, despite all the clothing we own.

The increase in the amount of clothing we buy might be due in part to the fact that hardly anything is repaired anymore—clothing, electronics, furniture and other stuff—and that it is “cheaper” to buy new rather than fix something old.  (Although there are hidden costs, in terms of our exploding garbage and carbon problems).  But I think that all of us, even the most frugal, have bought into some part of the clothing industry’s theology that to be whole, we need to be made new.  In clothes.  In spring. In summer. Next year.

I hated that my parents were so frugal when I was growing up, even though I did understand the Depression and the War and all. I did not like getting hand-me downs, and I didn’t like that we got school clothes once a year in the fall, and bigger than we needed, so hems could be let out as we grew.  But I’ve come to see the value of not having so much stuff, and honoring what we have enough to fix it instead of throwing it out.

Both my parents bought into the belief of material progress, and as times got “better” we got air conditioning, frozen instead of canned juice and so on. But there is a dark side to our technological progress, and it is seen both in our waste, and in the working conditions of people in Bangladesh that our consumption makes necessary.

My father broke a bone in his back in a jeep accident in England, after the end of World War II.  He didn’t know what he wanted to do, or could do (he had only finished eighth grade, because his mom died and he had to help take care of the other children and work on the farm).  He decided to become a barber, and shared with me a few times how challenging the life was for a North Dakota farm boy—even one who had seen Europe—to be in postwar Minneapolis, with the money he could afford for food and rent.  The poem below is about that time.

Be justice in buying.  Be beauty in consolation.

Patrick

BARBER COLLEGE, 1946

Your back no longer good

for farming, you went to

barber school on the GI Bill,

rented a room off the downtown

thrum, and night after night

rehearsed your next life.

Snip. Cut. Clip.  The red crease

on your forefinger and thumb from

holding scissors all day long,

their heads unknowable lands.

Your job to harvest

the wheat and chaff a man’s

scalp pushes up every fourteen

days.  Sometimes, I imagined

they sculpted the word fortnight

to divine your hands: fort: a stone

rebuke; night: the last word before

the light goes out.

Each evening, you took off the white

coat, shook off the tin hair bits,

the tailings of gold and coal

your day coughed up. You walked

down the back stairway

where smells of Vitalis and sweat

still mingled, a troubled marriage.  You lit

a Camel and dwelt in its forgiving

breath for a moment.  Then out onto

Washington Avenue, where winos

and streetcar bums had begun

their rounds.  Did you ever

touch their hair made wild

by grief, or reach in your pocket

and hand over a quarter, your next

night’s meal two slices of bread

smothered in hot milk?  I would like                         

to be the spoon you ate with, its tensile                     

wish, the way it held up straight

to your mouth, a smile invading

yours, the silence it fathered

when you laid it down on the dark oak table.

Home to you for many

months, this city running

to grab the men the war coughed

back to its lakes and streets. You hated

its lights, its  velocity, its insistence

on corn and lumber and steel.

You went to barber school,

you told me because you didn’t know

what else to do.  Your fingers

gun-locked, your eyes opened

to the distance family breeds in us.

Every day, you practiced the comb

and cut, the clippers to the neck,

the uneasy truce of the straight edge.

I wonder what your final exam was:

one crew cut, one heiney,

one fat old man going quickly bald?

Then, no more wandering, no crop chasing

or dark night shooting at enemy planes.

You had paper now, permission

to hold men’s heads in your hands

for the rest of your life.

Sunday was the fabulous May Day Parade in Minneapolis, put on for the 39th year by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater. The weather cooperated, the spirit was joyful and bright, and as is always the case, the color, the energy, the beauty and the profound challenge to re-think and re-live our world into a better blessing were fantastic. If you've never been to one of the parades, get there next year!

After the ceremony in Powderhorn Park, my wife and older daughter and I were walking around the lake, eating Kettle Korn and stopping at the various booths. One particularly touched me, a group which teaches a way out of trauma that seeks justice and reconciliation rather than revenge. I don't know a lot about their approach, but I do know that that approach is something we really need.

Something happened a few days ago that has struck me also. Protestors gathered at the funeral home where the Boston Marathon bomber's remains were being prepared for burial. I didn't see all the signs or hear all what they said, but I can infer from the funeral director's words that the protestors believe that the man is not entitled to a proper burial.  That his victims didn’t receive justice, so why should he?

I understand the anger, the sorrow and even the rage of those who suffered from the bombing (although I don't know if any of the protestors are in that category).  I have friends whose loved ones were murdered, and have spoken at funerals of senseless shootings.  I know that I would feel a desire for revenge if one of my loved ones were murdered, but I also know that would not be justice.

This Sunday, I am going to preach on justice at our church, a church which may be divided--by age, by culture, by theology--on what justice means and what issues should be addressed. Even when we might all agree on something--for example, that human trafficking should stop, and that we should do what is in our power to stop it--as we get into what that entails, we may start to lose some of that agreement. What would justice for that issue be? Would it be to find, convict and lock up the perpetrators? Would we need to jail the "johns”? Most of us would not prosecute those children who were forced into prostitution, but how about those who were forced as children and now are still "in the life" because of fear, addiction or not knowing how to leave it?

All of those have to do with a sense of retributive justice--of those who've done wrong "getting what they deserve", and I imagine the protestors at the funeral home were motivated by that. But if that is the limit of our justice, we have a pretty small sense of it. If we looked at justice as restoration, rather than just punishment for wrongdoing, what would be steps that we would take? What healing would be possible, and who would have to change?

The group that was sharing information about their program had a diagram showing how trauma can lead to a cycle of depression, isolation and eventually can lead to victimizing someone else.  Not all victims of trauma become perpetrators, of course, but some do.  Victims of child abuse and children who witnessed domestic violence are more likely to become abusers as adults.

They had another diagram as well. Which showed a new path which could lead to a justice that restored the victim and held the perpetrator accountable, but also sought to restore the community and the perpetrator as well.  Not an easy road, and one that—contrary to what we might believe and wish—requires the victim to take a risk, and endure the pain of confronting and eventually forgiving their perpetrator.  That is a radical kind of justice and very challenging, but what healing it could bring!

During the last few weeks, after the Boston Marathon bombing, there was a quote circulated that was attributed to Martin Luther King but turns out to not be his.  But the quote stands as a challenge to us: “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.”

This is a quote from Doctor King, and I close with this hope: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Be a deeper Beauty.  Be a more radical justice.

Patrick

 

(In another post, I want to explore what this means for the church. Unfortunately, too often we in the Christian church have made justice into something that God has to do to us, because we are wrong, and Jesus becomes the just, innocent victim who takes our place. Pretty limited understanding of what God is doing to restore the earth, in my opinion).

WHERE IS EVIL LOCATED?

As I write this, one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing is dead, a police officer dead and another critically wounded, and the other suspect is the subject of—as it is chillingly put “a massive manhunt”.  I hope that it ends soon.  I want to hope that he can be “taken” alive, so we that maybe we will find out why this happened, if there are others involved or more attacks planned, but given what seems to have happened overnight, I doubt it.

I put quotations around those two, because I want to talk about how we talk about evil.  I want to see those responsible for this crime caught. I want to see structures and policies in place that help prevent these. But I also want us to think about how we think about and talk about evil, and how that can actually contribute to evil.

One of the commentators on TV this morning said something like (it’s not a direct quote): “what’s particularly chilling is that those who are alleged to have done this horrendous evil seemed to be just like any average American youth.”  The implication being that your average American youth couldn’t do violence like what was done.  I hear young people who knew the brother still at large talk about how he was just a regular guy, laid back, good student, good wrestler, liked to talk about which rapper was better, how the Red Sox did.  In other words, one said, “just like everybody else.” 

What’s behind us is that, I believe is the belief that evil is done by someone else—that it is outside us.  That people who do evil are evil people, and if you’re a good person, you can’t do evil.  Evil people, in our collective mind, must look different, act different, talk different (watch how the right-wing talk folks use this to attack immigration reform).  Evil people are to be “hunted down”, “taken”, “terminated” and so on.

I’m not against prosecuting people who do evil, or trying to stop them.  But when we locate evil outside ourselves, we almost always end up causing evil ourselves.  Because it’s too easy to break the world into evil people who do evil, and good (innocent, law abiding—pick your judgment) who do good.  If we believe that, then what we do to stop or counteract evil must, by definition, be good.  Which, history has shown us is not true at all.

We have been pretty expert at locating evil outside ourselves: Reagan’s “The Evil Empire”, Bush’s “The Axis of Evil”.  No doubt, there was enormous evil done by the Ayatollahs in Iran, Hussein, the Soviets, the north Koreans.  But our response has multiplied that evil, while baptizing it as good.

Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org) had a section today on the genocide trial of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt in Guatemala.  Rios Montt was backed by the US during his reign, where tens of thousands of civilians were murdered by the army (including some trained at our School of the Americas).  We funded and supported his reign of terror, because ideologically he “was on our side” during the Cold War against the Soviets. The genocide trial was stopped by the Guatemalan Supreme Court recently, because evidence points to the involvement of the current President, General Otto Pérez Molina, in the genocide.

The victims tortured and killed by the regime included teachers, church and labor leaders, many peasants, most of them indigenous, entire families with children, entire villages.  Rios Montt was not just supported by our government, but because he was a “born-again Christian”, by many prominent right-wing Christian leaders in the US.

They played a clip from an interview from recently after the genocide in which the journalist, Allan Nairn, was being interviewed on Charlie Rose, along with Eliot Abrams, the Undersecretary of State in the Reagan Administration at the time of the genocide, who was closely involved in funding and directing all the military regimes in Central America.  When    pushed for investigations and war crime trials for those involved—both in Guatemala, and their patrons here—Abrams essentially responded that “we” won the Cold War by what we did, and if “you” are asking these questions, “you” must have wanted “the other side” to win.  We = good, you = evil. 

This good/evil has all sorts of implications.  As long as we locate evil outside ourselves, we will always prosecute those who we see as evil, and never get to root causes.  Criminals—need to be locked up (while causes of crime ignored).  Criminals with guns need to be locked up (while our love of guns as a nation is elevated to a “right”).  Leaders of “terrorist groups” like Hamas need to be assassinated, and their family and homeland destroyed, while Israel—who has killed far more civilians than Hamas—needs to be rewarded with more military aid from the US.  And in a less violent sphere, our politics has degenerated to such a point that we can’t sit down and listen to opposing views, and compromise is seen as a sellout.

Thomas Merton, the great poet and Trappist monk has an essay somewhere (It might be in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander) where he talks about how we as a society have created a worldview that evil is outside us, and how that worldview perpetuates evil.  I will try to hunt that essay down.  In the meantime, maybe these words of Jesus from the gospel of Luke might help (Luke 6:41-42):

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

As we seek justice in the Boston Marathon bombings, let us also look for injustice inside us.  And together, with our “enemies”, seek to understand.

Be justice. Be beauty (even when the world seems so ugly).

Patrick