YOU give them something to eat...

Mark 6: 34-44

34: As he went ashore he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
35: And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late;
36: send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy themselves something to eat."
37: But he answered them, "You give them something to eat." And they said to him, "Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?"
38: And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see." And when they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish."
39: Then he commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass.
40: So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties.
41: And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.
42: And they all ate and were satisfied.
43: And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.
44: And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.

Give us this day our daily bread…

Is there any excuse we can offer to those who suffer from hunger? Are we waiting for another miraculous feeding? If my memory is on track, the phrase “You give them something to eat,” includes an emphatic “su.” This is the pronoun for “you” and it is often used when the person doing the action is to be particularly emphasized. “YOU give them something to eat.”

Well…why don’t we?

From the United Methodist Reporter:Interfaith gathering highlights hunger conference

An interfaith convocation of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., will highlight a three-day conference June 4-6 focused on world hunger.
-snip-
In the United States, 36 million adults and 13 million children are undernourished, according to Bread for the World's 2005 hunger report (see Reporter Interactive, March 16). Worldwide, 852 million people are undernourished, and 6 million children die each year, mostly from hunger-related causes. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization defines undernourishment as receiving less than 2,500 calories per day for men, 1,900 for women and 1,500 for children.
"Hunger is one of the great barriers to health and justice in the world today," said the Rev. R. Randy Day, top executive of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries. "Food security is often the first step towards peace within and between nations."
-snip-
"This is a no-brainer. We know how to end hunger — it's not like putting a man on Mars," said H. Eric Schockman, president of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger and chairman of the National Anti-Hunger Organizations (NAHO), an alliance of 13 U.S. anti-hunger groups. In June 2004, NAHO released A Blueprint to End Hunger in America, a document that recommended continued funding and improvements for federal nutrition plans and expansion of state and local programs.
"The blueprint says that if we put 6 to 10 billion dollars a year into our federal nutritional programs between now and 2015, we will end hunger in America," Dr. Schockman said. "That's $21 to $34 per person, per year. That's what it comes down to.... Nutritional programs equal a grand total of 1.01 percent of the entire federal budget. If we add on what the blueprint says we need, we will bolster that up to 1.24 percent. Is that a heavy price to pay to end childhood hunger, senior hunger and hunger in working-poor families?"
The convocation's Islamic representative is Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain at Washington's Georgetown University. Mr. Hendi noted that a belief in social justice is common to Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and that it can bring the faith groups together to help end world hunger.
"Maybe this can become a role model for religious communities elsewhere and could lead the way for a better future for all of us," he said. "One of my favorite passages in Christian Scripture is Matthew 25:30-46, in which Jesus speaks about those who found him hungry and fed him, and those who found him naked and clothed him. That is what we are all about — our ability to respond to the call of God and to the call of good people, good prophets and messengers in other traditions."
-snip-
At a May 13 food-aid conference in Kansas City, Mo., Lelei LeLaulu, president of the relief group, Counterpoint International, said that if the war on terrorism is to succeed, it must be accompanied by a war against hunger. Mr. Hendi agreed.
"Many people around the world see America as a prosperous nation that is trying to — as they say in local languages — suck the blood and the money of the poor," Mr. Hendi said. "I don't think that's the case, but if that is the perception and if that's what they use to recruit terrorists amongst the poor, then let us eliminate poverty. Let us eliminate that possibility, and by doing so we give more room for the voices of sanity. Then people may say, 'Wait a minute. That's not really the case. America is standing in the forefront of eliminating poverty and hunger around the world.'"

“This is a no-brainer. We know how to end hunger “ “…then let us eliminate poverty…” Obviously, the people at this conference aren’t waiting for a miracle
Its not miracles we need. It is the “ability to respond to the call of God.”

"The Shattering of the Vessels"

Was reading an essay the other night in class (do it all the time; what, you think I prepare those lectures? Hah!) and came across this fascinating sentence, an explanation for patriarchy I'd never heard before (which, in itself, is telling):

"Cultures in which female circumcision is common are strongly patriarchal and pronatalist. Women in these traditional cultures are believed to be weak and incapable of controlling their sexual urges. They are allowed little contact with men outside their families and are expected to hide their bodies from public view. Their social roles are circumscribed to child care and domestic functions....They are socialized by their mothers to believe that removal of external female genitalia is a religious obligation that promotes purity, cleanliness, and fertility....Their identities as desirable women depend on the submission of their physical bodies to the dictates of social norms. The custom embodies their inferior status."

This comes from an essay, "Social Bodies: Tightening the Bonds of Beauty," by Deborah A. Sullivan, who is described as a professor of sociology at Arizona State University, so I assume the information is accurate enough. What caught my eye, of course, is the sentence in bold type. Precisely the opposite assumption of the one we make in the West, where there is even a question as to why women have orgasms (the subtext of the question being: why do women need to enjoy sex, since men have the stronger sexual urges anyway?) And, interestingly, just another way human beings establish identities (boundaries, more properly) for others, based on sexuality.

Homosexuals are another case in point. We cannot define homosexuality without puting sexual practice at the center of their identity. When we "define" male-female bonding (sexually, emotionally, socially, spiritually), we don't automatically define it in terms of sexual coupling. To the extent we do, we realize that is adolescent, and we soon move past it. We don't look at married couples and imagine their sexual practices alone. We take them as a couple, and consider the complexity of their lives. I never imagine another couple, whether old friends or mere acquaintances, in terms of what happens in their bedroom. But a gay or lesbian couple? It's the only topic on everyone's mind, even if it is the topic we dare not name. What do they do, how do they do it? This is the issue with the gay priests in the Episcopal church. Gene Robinson is apparently another step up the controversy ladder because he is not celibate. Which means, of course, we're all thinking of him in terms of what he does in the bedroom, not the bishopric.

Curiouser and curiouser...

In Paul's day (and Jesus'), people were divided by ethnos, a word which commonly carried a connotion of religious and moral inferiority among the Jews (as in Matthew 6). It's not coincidence the word is closely related to ethos: habits; laws; the customs of the fathers. People in first century Palestine, brought together under the Pax Romana, lived cheek by jowl with various and sundry cultures, a mix not uncommon in Europe and the Middle East today, but still so odd in America we call it "multiculturalism." It didn't serve to break down differences so much as to reinforce them, as a way of maintaining identity. Ethos and ethnos, then, come to define us. What habits and customs we approve determines who we accept as our "own." So when Paul said: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus," (Galatians 3:28), it was a radical statement indeed. Now our definition is to be in God: not in ethos, or ethnos, nor in sex or human law.

When the woman comes to anoint Jesus in Luke 7, it's easier now to see why she was considered a whore. Her sexual advances were on display for the entire roomful of men. To their understanding, she was doing exactly what women do: unable to control her sexual appetites, she was instead parading them. But Jesus chose to define her in God, and took what she offered as an act of devotion. It is not the act that is always the standard of definition: it is our arbitrary standards. It is where we choose to put the boundaries. And God is always pushing those boundaries around. From the Psalm this morning, for example:

50:7 "Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God.

50:8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.

50:9 I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds.

50:10 For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.

50:11 I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.

50:12 "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.

50:13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

50:14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.

50:15 Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."

Part of the re-writing of the requirements of the law conducted by the Exilic prophets. Consider, for example, the reading from Hosea, also for this morning:

5:15 I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. In their distress they will beg my favor:

6:1 "Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up.

6:2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

6:3 Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth."

6:4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.

6:5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light.

6:6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

The Exile was the shattering of the boundaries for Israel. When Ezekiel saw the spirit of God leave the temple and mount a throne-chariot with four faces, able to go any direction at once and at will, it marked as dramatic a change in human history as the call of Abraham (according to Thomas Cahill, one of the "Hinges of History") or the Renaissance of Greco-Roman culture, or the Enlightenment itself. Until that vision, gods had always been tied to location. Even the God of Abraham called Israel to a land that was given to them. The logical assumption was that God was tied to that land. It was with Ezekiel's vision that God finally became the God of all Creation, in fact as well as in profession. Clearly this was a long time in coming, but we tend to retroject beliefs on earlier times, and this belief in God's transcendence took another few centuries and the final destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. to become an accepted doctrine. But Ezekiel's vision gave Israel reason to believe they could "sing the Lord's song in a foreign land."

Perhaps we need the boundaries to be shattered again.

"Jesus Had a Really Bad Weekend for your Sins"

I want to recommend the hour of "This American Life" that I just heard. I took the title for this post from it, somewhat out of context and therefore incorrectly. It's from Julia Sweeney's segment of the show. I first heard her do "And God said 'Ha!'" on "This American Life," if I remember correctly, and her segment in the current show is in that vein. She details her own spiritual crisis, one not unfamiliar to anyone in the 20th century who starts asking questions about God and faith and evil, and especially the atonement theory (if I dared, I'd adopt that quote as my personal label for the atonement theory, which is probably why I used it here).

The show is "In Defense of Godlessness." Unfortunately, it won't be available on their website until next week, if you missed it on the radio. It features a truly excellent historical summary of religion in American life. The historian interviewed argues that the "Founding Fathers" had a truly radical idea, one that grew out of the religiously based wars of 16th century Europe and was based on John Locke's argument that the cure for such horrors was a secular-based government. This idea was so radical that the Constitution almost was not approved, because of Article 6 (no religious tests to hold public office), which critics recognized would permit Catholics, Jews, "Mohammedans," and even infidels, to hold public office. In the 19th century Protestant clergy decided the Civil War was God's punishment for not mentioning God as the source of our law in the Constitution, and they wanted the Preamble amended to reflect the 'right' language.

And you thought Pat Robertson and James Dobson were recent phenomena.

When it comes up on the website next week, listen to it. It's worth it. Even Julia Sweeney's religious crisis, painful as it is, is worth it. She considers her attitude faithlessness, finally; the conviction that God is not there, that no one is overseeing our lives here, that death is merely the end of the brain and other bodily organs. I see it as the beginning of faith, as the extreme end Kierkegaard proposed we might need to come to, in order to come to belief. The "dark interval," as Crossan calls it, that we need in order to learn to rely on God, not ourselves. The mystics and monks call it part of the package, in one form or another. But we can talk about that later. It's still another subject.

Speaking of news coverage...

A few random bits from Harper's Index, )with oriignal references):

Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on a single defector : 100[Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington)]

Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents : 0[Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington)]
....
Percentage of the world's Anglican bishops that have condemned the U.S. Episcopal Church's ordination of a gay bishop : 34[Anglican Communion Network (Pittsburgh)]

Number of U.S. Episcopal churches that are now affiliated with dioceses in Rwanda or Uganda : 38

These surprise me. As someone with his ear held not too closely to the Episcopal ground, I'd understood there was a larger groundswell of outrage at the ordination of a gay Bishop. I wonder how much of that is weighted toward the U.S., how much toward Africa. It is a significant number, but it makes me wonder again about the actions at Lambeth. Of course, that was in 2004. I entirely missed this, from 2003.

The appointment of a gay man has angered conservatives within the Worldwide Anglican Communion, which is locked in an increasingly hostile battle over the issue of homosexuality.

On Thursday, the Archbishop of Nigeria threatened that his church would break ties with the Diocese of Oxford if the appointment was not rescinded.

Many who read the Bible literally, point to a verse in the Old Testament condemning men having sex with each other as an "abomination"

So is the Anglican Communion about to break up?

Funny, I didn't even hear that question being asked until 2004.

The connection here is U.S. news coverage. An Anglican gay bishop is ordained in England in 2003, and I didn't even know about it. An Episcopal gay bishop is ordained in America in 2004, and the Church is coming to an end. In fact, I learn about it while writing this post, checking Google because I can't remember where the conference occurred at which certain bishops were asked not to take communion. I type in "Gay Bishop Anglican," or some such, and this is the first story that comes up.

Hmmmmm.....

You see, it really is all about the U.S. (or "US"). If it doesn't happen here, it doesn't happen. 38 U.S. churches have not associated themselves with African diocese over the 2003 ordination. It's doubtful they were even aware of it. And, of course, the African diocese didn't seize the opportunity that the U.S. ordination and publicity accorded them. Yet I am told the Episcopal church is not, by any means, the largest part of the Anglican Communion.

Curiouser and curiouser....

As for what does happen here, the question of what our government is doing is still pressing upon us. Evidence continues to mount that, unlike Nixon, who was concerned with governance, just paranoid about his ability to do it, this Administration, as Molly Ivins has pointed out, seems only to be interested in ruling. They don't want responsibility, they only want power.

And so far, thanks in no small part to journalists like Judith Miller (when is Jeff Gerth going to retract his Whitewater stories?) they seem to have it.

It's still Newsweek's fault...

A military inquiry has found that guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba kicked, stepped on and splashed urine on the Koran, in some cases intentionally but in others by accident, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The splashing of urine was among the cases described as inadvertent. It was said to have occurred when a guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into a detainee's cell. The detainee was given a fresh uniform and a new Koran, and the guard was reprimanded and assigned to guard duty that kept him from contact with detainees for the remainder of his time at Guantánamo, according to the military inquiry.

The investigation into allegations that the Koran had been mishandled also found that in one instance detainees' Korans were wet because guards on the night shift had thrown water balloons on the cellblock.

In another case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Koran, but investigators could not determine whether a guard or detainee had written it.

Last week, the head of the investigation, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of the Guantánamo Joint Task Force, announced at the Pentagon that his preliminary findings had uncovered five cases in which the Koran was mishandled at the prison, but he refused to provide details.

In releasing those details in a final report on Friday, General Hood emphasized that any abuse of the Koran was unusual and that the military had gone to great lengths to be sensitive to the detainees' religious faiths, including issuing more than 1,600 Korans at the detention center.

"Mishandling a Koran at Guantánamo Bay is a rare occurrence," General Hood said in a statement released by the military's Southern Command. "Mishandling of a Koran here is never condoned."

The investigation was started about three weeks ago after Newsweek magazine published an article asserting that a separate inquiry by the military was expected to find that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet at the detention center. The magazine later retracted the article, but the assertion led to violence in the Muslim world that left at least 17 people dead.

General Hood said last week that there was no credible evidence to substantiate the claim that a Koran had ever been flushed down a toilet at the prison.

Frankly, what's truly amazing about this article is what it says that is known to be wrong. Only the White House has said that the Newsweek article prompted violence in "the Muslim world" (which part is that? Did we divide up the globe between the three religions of Abraham, and nobody told me?). That has been specifically denied by Hamed Kharzai, and by Gen. Richard Meyers. The desecration of the Koran has been alleged by numerous sources, so many that the Pentagon's insistent claim of "no credible evidence" now sounds as legalistic and carefully parsed as "what the meaning of 'is,' is." And it all fits the pattern of word-games that have become the hallmark of this Administration.

So now we learn that the Koran wasn't flushed down a toilet, but was treated as a toilet, albeit in a way so convoluted and bizarre one has to wonder about the veracity of the excuse of "inadvertance." Now we are told there are only five instances deemed "credible" by the Pentagon, the same Pentagon that finds it entirely credible that all acts of torture and humiliation, while conducted across the globe at U.S. military prisons almost simultaneously, and all conducted by U.S. soldiers put in charge by superior officers, is the act of "bad apples" and individuals, and no one with command authority has any, well, authority in the matter. So while there is no "credible" evidence of intentional desecration of Korans (It's now the Britney Spears defense: "Oops! I did it again!"), there's plenty of evidence of negligence. As the article points out, why this evidence is credible is not explained in the report. Perhaps the distinction is being made as to where the desecrations took place, since the Human Rights Watch report alleges most desecrations occurred at Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta, the camps that preceded Gitmo. Perhaps it's all in the timing. Perhaps it's a question of what "credibility" means:

"The fact that ICRC documented these allegations, documented them and formalized them, I think makes a difference," [ICRC spokesperson Simon] Schorno said. "We researched them and found they were credible allegations."

Although Red Cross employees did not personally witness any mishandling of Qurans, Schorno said, they documented and corroborated enough reports from detainees to share them with Pentagon and Guantanamo officials in confidential reports.

Schorno said the Red Cross would not have raised the issue if it had been an isolated incident, but he would not offer specifics about the number of complaints.

And there is, of course, the simple fact that this problem is not restricted to Gitmo, nor is it simply a problem of negligence on the part of a few guards. This press release was issued Thursday.

“In detention centers around the world, the United States has been humiliating Muslim prisoners by offending their religious beliefs,” said Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch.

On December 2, 2002, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized a list of techniques for interrogation of prisoners at Guantánamo, which included “removal of all comfort items (including religious items),” “forced grooming (shaving of facial hair, etc.),” and “removal of clothing.” Each of these practices is considered offensive to many Muslims. These techniques were later applied in Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

The purpose of these techniques, Human Rights Watch said, is to inflict humiliation on detainees, which is strictly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Several former detainees have said that U.S. interrogators disrespected the Koran. Three Britons released from Guantánamo have alleged that the Koran was kicked and thrown in the toilet. A former Russian detainee, Aryat Vahitov, has reportedly made the same claim. A former Kuwaiti detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, has said that the throwing of a Koran on the floor led to a hunger strike at Guantánamo that ended only after a senior officer expressed regret over the camp's loudspeaker. Human Rights Watch also interviewed detainees who described a protest at a U.S. detention site at Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan in early 2002 that was set off by a guard’s alleged desecration of the Koran.

Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantánamo, has described a female interrogator wiping a detainee with what the prisoner was made to believe was menstrual blood.

U.S. personnel have also used dogs as part of the interrogation process, which—in addition to inducing fear—many Muslims consider to be unclean. In December 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld approved “using detainees’ individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress” at Guantánamo. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, authorized Abu Ghraib interrogators in September 2003 to “exploit Arab fear of dogs. ” The interrogators then used dogs on detainees in a manner that was captured in the Abu Ghraib photographs.

But, of course, the Pentagon didn't bring any of this up in its new briefing to reporters, so it cannot be mentioned in this front page NYT article.

"but it's alright, it's alright
for we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong"
-Paul Simon, "American Tune"

Friday Kitsch Blogging!

Godzilla welcomes you to Texas Kitsch-Blogging!

Of Gulags and Gitmo

In agreement with Athenae, let me note that the point was made excellently on NPR tonight.

Gitmo is not a gulag. Neither is it a POW camp. It is something else. It is not (quite) Stalinesque; but it is not American. And it is certainly not good.

Those who do not learn from history...

Listening to "Democracy Now!" this morning, and they replayed a clip from the movie "All the President's Men," where "Deep Throat" tells Woodward that CREEP (the ability to translate that acronym is a test of your knowledge! Young whippersnappers need not apply!) manipulated the Democratic primary process to maneuver McGovern into being the candidate. "They wanted to run against McGovern," Deep Throat tells Woodward. And anyone who remembers what was revealed about the "dirty tricks" campaign cannot seriously doubt that CREEP both had that aim, and managed to succeed at it.

Amy Goodman also interviewed George McGovern, who recalled being told by even his friends that he could not accuse the President of the United States of being corrupt. He didn't say he was criticized for being too "shrill," but perhaps only because the political lexicon didn't yet include that term.

And then there was COINTELPRO, for which Mark Felt was responsible and convicted for illegal activities of that program (he was pardoned by Reagan). Jennifer Dohrn is being interviewed now, a woman who was investigated by the FBI on the orders of Mark Felt. She claims the FBI file on her included a plan to kidnap her son when he was born (she was pregnant when the FBI was pursuing her to get her sister, Bernadine Dohrn, a member of the Weather Underground, and because of her own political activism).

And all of this sounds so painfully familiar. Perhaps it is simply the nature of governance, to abuse power in the name of stability and security.


Note to the eagle-eyed: spellings of proper names have been corrected.

Great Selchie of Shule Skerry: Part 2

The problem with discerning evil begins with the problem of defining evil. It is essentially a moral proposition: evil is that which is not good. But this is not an essentially ethical proposition, at least not in the Western sense, where "ethics" comes from Aristotle's use of the term to describe the habits a member of a community should cultivate in order to achieve a "good" life ("good, " for Aristotle, being essentially one lived happily within a community, and through which one obtains all the benefits of that community). The word Aristotle used, "ethos," meant simply custom or habit. It did not convey the meaning of a systematic order of principles of behavior that it does today, and it certainly did not posit a state of opposition between "good" and "evil." That position, at least as understood in Western culture, as actually more Persian. We get the idea of good v. evil most directly from the Zoroastrians.

It really isn't even a concept in the Bible. God faces no opposition in Creation, or even in the Garden of Eden. It is Milton who later imagines Satan in possession of the snake. Satan has no place in the Hebrew Scriptures except in Job, and there he is merely the first "devil's advocate," providing a literary figure to pose challenges to God, but entirely without authority of his own. Satan reappears in "Q" for the temptations in the wilderness (he does not appear there in Mark, and John has no temptation scene at all). But the idea that God is not the only power on earth is distinctly non-Hebraic. So the idea of evil as a power, is a later Christian rendition, drawn from many sources, not the least of which is the Hellenistic idea that all creation is founded on chaos, which chaos will rule again if it is not actively, and ceaselessly, opposed.

But I digress.

The "problem of evil," then, is a creation of conflicting understandings. For the Hebrews, all things come from God. For the Greeks, all things come from human effort, and the caprice of the Gods (sometimes good; usually bad). The good stuff usually comes from human effort (see Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics). But that's really one question; the other one is, "what is evil?" How do we define it?

Definition, in part, is of course a matter of drawing boundaries, and boundaries are important definers not only of ideas, but of who we are. And defining "evil" allows us to extirpate it from ourselves. After all, I may not be good, but I am surely not "evil." "Evil" is an extreme, even an active thing, a malice that seeks destruction, the "power that seeks my life." But the predator seeks the life of the prey, and we no longer see that as evil, but simply as the balance of nature. Without predators the prey, from insects to deer, soon overrun their corner of the ecosphere. Predators are not evil, they are necessary.

People are evil, because they act out of motivations, because they act on free will. But to the extent that will is inhibited, is not under the control of the "self," (we can leave the establishment of the "self" in Western civilization for another day), we mitigate the punishment, the responsibility, for certain actions. As the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed yesterday, mens rea (a criminally culpable state of mind) is still a necessary part of our criminal law. In fact we get into trouble when we attach the word "evil" to people. It allows us to denigrate them, degrade them, de-humanize them, and then we are free to be evil, too, in the name of opposing evil.

Which is precisely why Jesus tells his disciples: "Love your enemy."

But isn't there evil in the world? If not human, then biological? Cancer, AIDS, bacteria, viruses, earthquakes, famine, flood, fire?

Evil is, first, a moral standard. Evil is not even understandable as a concept outside of some moral system, some moral framework. That framework may indeed be applicable to the world as a whole, but you first have to recognize what you are doing; you first have to take responsibility, as Sartre pointed out, for making that application, that system, universal. And then you have to consider whether or not that system, that standard of measure, has legitimate application to the cosmos as a whole, whether it applies in the truest sense of the word, "universally."

Tekn out of its moral context, but still retianing its moral overtones, "evil," we might agree, is at least that which will kill me, which seeks my life, whether maliciously or simply by its nature. Disease, virus, bacteria, cancer, psycopaths and murderers: all evil. But then is the gunner evil? The Selchie pronounces him good. (That line is so sharp the irony would cut your throat if you moved wrong.) The Selchie pronounces him good, and we can take it in a moral sense (he is a "good man"), a social sense, a professional sense (he is a "good gunner"). And yet he will kill, intentionally, the son and the Great Selchie. He will be a murderer, an intentional taker of life, of life as connected to human life as any life can be, because this animal, like us, can speak.

And yet, will that be evil? The Selchie doesn't think so. The Selchie thinks merely that is fate. This is the very definition of fatalism, the very root of the idea: not that death is to be embraced and welcomed, but that death is inevitable. Beowulf similarly faced death, accepting that his fate as a mortal was to die, and the only control he had was how to face that fate. The Selchie not only faces it, he knows precisely when it will happen, and knows long before, when it will happen. He knows his connection to the humans who hunt the selchies, and he accepts it. Indeed, what else can he do? It is not good; it is not evil; it is fate.

I was considering this again last night, trying to teach the rudiments of deductive reasoning to a writing class. I lean heavily on the syllogism chestnut of "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal," and it suddenly occured to me how this worked as a piece of deductive reasoning. Mortality is proven by death, not by living. In the purest sense, we are none of us proven mortal until we die. We assume our mortality because of the syllogism; because everyone we know, and have known, and will know, have proven mortal. But we still have trouble accepting that we will die. As Derrida puts the question: "My death. Is it possible?" Even if we accept that it is, we still can't quite imagine what our death is; we still can't put ourselves in that place where the end might simply be blankness, non-existence, no-longer-me. We function in terms of the syllogism: since everyone else is mortal, we must be, too. But until that is proven true, we don't really know, and we don't really quite accept it.

The Selchie accepts it, which, in terms of the moral universe of the song, if not the moral reality which created it, is wisdom. But this wisdom leaves us with unanswered questions: is that all there is? Is good only definable by its shadow, its opposite? Is there ever an absolute absence of good, which absence has a presence and can be defined as "evil"? Or does good stand alone; and what would that look like?

"There is a crack, a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in"

Hebraic? Or Hellenistic? What's your weltanschaaung?

Today President Bush spoke at Arlington National Cemetery, and assured his audience, once again, that "freedom is on the march." Gen. Richard Meyers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reassured us once again that all American soldiers die to preserve "our freedom." A term which didn't apply in Vietnam, or Korea, or the Philippines in the 19th century; certainly that wasn't why the North went to war in 1861. If anything, it was the Southern states that fought for "freedom:" freedom to own slaves, freedom to viciously exploit human beings, abuse them, torture them, all in the name of commerce. "Freedom," of course, is an amorphous term, so our public officials use it widely, as it means whatever we, the audience, want it to mean.

But the subtext, the accepted premise, was that freedom is always threatened, and therefore must always be defended, fought for, purchased with blood and steel and might and, especially, young people. It used to be the old who went to war, rather than the young. War was a man's endeavor. In the so-called "Middle Ages," it was the landowners who went to battle, while the peasants stayed home. And those landowners, by the standards of the time, might be quite old. But it was their duty to fight, to protect their peasants, to conduct "public policy" (such as it was) not just with their speeches, but with their own lives.

Thus have we "progressed." Democracy means every man is a king, so every man has to shoulder the burden of war. But some must shoulder it more than others, as our current President prefers us not to remember. Now it is precisely the peasants who die, who are roused with fine speeches to pay the price of the conduct of public policy (such as it is) by our "leaders." Such is the true nature of social "progress."

But what is your worldview? What position do you start from? That the world is essentially chaos, and chaos will one day take over, freedom will falter if not fought for? Or that the world is good, that "We can't put it together. It is together." (The Last Whole Earth Catalog) ? President Bush pushes both ideas at once, a cognitive dissonance at once both quaintly, and frigtheningly, American. Freedom will fail if we do not constantly fight and die and struggle to establish it; and freedom is democracy, and democracy is inevitable. As an old judge used to say to me: "We preach it round and square."

The better to keep ourselves in power, I suppose. So long as you can keep the people off balance, unsure of how to interpret the next action, the next episode, the next international incident, they return to the oracle for information, for reassurance, for insight into whether this one, this time, is good, or bad, or what we should be ready to do about it.

The soldiers of America did not die for freedom: they died in war. They died because human beings are stupid and ignorant and greedy and short-sighted and vicious, cruel brutes whose behavior puzzles the fiercest, crudest predators on the planet. They died because they are all too easily convinced that perpetual peace is possible only through perpetual war. They died because they believed they were doing good, or that God was on their side, or that they would enjoy the spoils of war, or that they were protecting their families, whom they loved. They died because they were good and noble and true and believed in a greater good.

Why they died no longer matters: they deserve recognition because they were children of God, and they can do us no more harm or good now, and because it is the right thing to honor them in their absence. What matters to us is what we learn from them: their deaths, their lives. Were they soldiers in the never-ending battle against chaos, against evil which will win if we are not ever vigilant, and ever faithful? Were they standing on the wall between civilization and the forces that would destroy all human social order just because it is chaos itself?

Or are there truly cracks in everything, and that's how the light gets in? And their deaths are those cracks, too? Cracks that let the light in, and show us that, in fact, all creation is good? What kind of world would we live in, if that was how we lived? What kind of lives would we lead?

Honor the war dead today: meditate on those questions.

An Anecdote

A comment at Eschaton indicates that, in at least one town, "Pray for our troops" magnets are replacing "Support Our Troops" magnets.

Which, strictly speaking, means nothing at all. But it anedcodatally supports a number of polls which indicate the ongoing war in Iraq is now supported by a lower percentage of people than those who don't support it. And it might signal a shift from a martial and militaristic spirit, to a sympathetic and empathetic one.

If this is true, revulsion at what is being done to them, and the paucity of reasons for it, may not be far behind.

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 7:21-29

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.'

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!"

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

I couldn't help reflecting on this gospel passage this morning, that Jesus doesn't promise any interest by the Almighty in acts of power; even in acts of power in the name of God.

Doing God's will is not defined here; but it clearly has little, if anything, to do with "deeds of great power."

A brother asked Abba Poeman

"What does it mean to be angry with your brother without a cause ?" He said, "If your brother hurts you by his arrogance and you are angry with him because of this, that is getting angry without a cause. If he pulls out your right eye and cuts off your right hand and you get angry with him, that is getting angry without a cause. But if he cuts you off from God--then you have every right to be angry with him."

Memorial Day

The stories about its origin are indeed varied. Perhaps it began as "Decoration Day." The stories I heard was that families would go out to the cemeteries to honor the dead from the Civil War. Graves would be decorated, picnics would be held. The dead and the living would both be honored. Where it originated, and how, is still subject to debate and conjecture. But this much seems clear: we used to be more mature about such things.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.--Walt Whitman

"The beautiful uncut hair of graves." We used to put our graves beside our churches, so we knew where our dead were. Now in our sanitary ways, and our sanity, we keep them as far from the beaten path as possible; along with our hospitals, our nursing homes, our "funeral homes." We don't want to be reminded of death, unless it is on TV, and involves the death of "bad people." Or just the unknown faceless ones, the bodies at the crime scenes that always get the stories going.

We used to recall that war had a high price, and yet we too easily forget how easily is it paid when all the bodies are out of sight. It wasn't long after the Civil War, after all, that we were engaged in the glorious adventure of liberating the Philippines. Apparently inspired by that venture, Mark Twain wrote his famous "War Prayer." But even so, we used to honor our dead soldiers.

Perhaps the Gettysburg Address is linked to Memorial Day, too. The eloquence of Lincoln is unimaginable in any living politician. But just try to imagine any of them even addressing the subject of death in this way:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln praised those who died in a valiant struggle to preserve the union, to keep the nation from ending. "I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,/And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps./ What do you think has become of the young and old men?/What do you think has become of the women and children?" I think: "A wise man who speaks his mind calmly is more to be heeded than a commander shouting orders among fools." I think: "Wisdom is better than weapons of war, and one mistake can undo many things done well." (Ecclesiastes 9:17-18, NEB)

I think it is time to praise famous women and men, and for believers to remember their Creator, and to honor the dead not for what they fought for, but because they, too, were God's children.

Let us now sing the praises of famous men,
all the heroes of our nation's history,
through whom the Lord established his renown,
and revealed his majesty in each succeeding age. Some held sway over kingdoms
and made themselves a name by their exploits.
Others were sage counsellors,
who spoke out with prophetic power.
Some led the people by their counsels
and by their knowledge of the nation's law;
out of their fund of wisdom they gave instruction.
Some were composers of music or writers of poetry.
Others were endowed with wealth and strength,
living peacefully in their homes.
All these won fame in their own generation
and were the pride of their times.
Some there are who have left a name behind them
to be commemorated in story.
There are others who are unremembered;
they are dead, and it is as though they had never existed,
as though they had never been born
or left children to succeed them.
Not so our forefathers; they were men of loyalty,
whose good deeds have never been forgotten.
Their prosperity is handed on to their descendants,
and their inheritance to future generations.
Thanks to them their children are within the covenants-
the whole race of their descendants.
Their line will endure for all time,
and their fame will never be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace,
but their name lives for ever.
Nations will recount their wisdom,
and God's people will sing their praises.

--Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15, NEB

"I can resist anything but temptation."

Which means I cannot resist this, found via Watertiger.

Female Orgasm: Proof of God

Women have orgasms because they can. Women have orgasms because it's the right thing to do.

Women have orgasms because by and large they refuse to launch monstrous ultraviolent illegal soul-deadening wars over oilsucking phallocentric powermad landwhoring BS powergrabs and therefore they fully deserve all the inexplicable otherworldly cosmically infused clitorally energized pleasures they can get.

Did you catch that keyword? That note of strangeness? It was right there, in the word inexplicable. Because apparently, as far as science is concerned and despite the obvious reasons I assert above, no one really seems to know exactly why women have orgasms at all.

Observe, won't you, a new book by a soft-spoken scientist named Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd, from Indiana U, that basically claims there is no justifiable evolutionary need for the female orgasm whatsoever, that it really serves no known biological purpose and that it's becoming, therefore, increasingly obsolete and redundant and more or less unnecessary.

....

But now witness, argues the book, the heartbreaking number of modern non-ape women who have tragically low or nonexistent sex drives but who still feel absolutely compelled to pop out a nice brood of offspring. The female orgasm, clearly, ain't for procreation. It has no effect on the transport of sperm. It doesn't drive maternal desire. So, if the urge to orgasm has no connection with the urge to procreate, why do women get them at all?

This is the great thing about science. It gets all flabbergasted and confounded and scrunchy when confronted with things it doesn't quite understand and that it can't quite figure out and that don't fit into neat categories, especially if said things are astounding explosive events that make women moan and writhe and gasp and grin and feel their deep inborn prelapsarian connection to just about all of eternity, in the space of about 17 seconds.

There is no room in this mode of science for, you know, mystery. There is no room for the deeply funky or the hotly mystical, the moist divine wild card. This is because stiff little science tends to cram all possibility for a given explanation into the great maw of cold beautiful logic and spits out, sadly and tellingly and almost without fail, the cosmic hunks of mystical possibility as if they were indigestible bones.

That scientific view is, of course, one way to look at it. There is, naturally, another.

You'll have to go read it to find out what that is. Here's a hint: what if it's (gasp!) "spiritual!"

Here's another hint: Julian of Norwich speaks unashamedly (and uncontoversially, at the time) of God as Mother as well as Father, in her "Shewings." Many mystics speak of the mystical union with God in sexual terms. So it's not outside the concept of Western Christianity at all.

And scientists really should be careful about trying to define everything in purely material terms. Especially when they don't otherwise have an answer.

What's going on here?

I found this rather infuriating article courtesy of Elaine Supkis at Culture of Life News II. Here's a little snip:

Everyone agrees that Ligaya Lagman is a Gold Star mother, part of the long line of mournful women whose sons or daughters gave their lives for their country. Her 27-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman, was killed last year in Afghanistan, but American Gold Star Mothers Inc., has rejected Lagman, a Filipino, for membership because — though a permanent resident and a taxpayer — she is not a U.S. citizen.There's nothing we can do because that's what our organization says: You have to be an American citizen," national President Ann Herd said Thursday. "We can't go changing the rules every time the wind blows."

I cannot know what is in the hearts of those who would deny this mother a measure of gratitude and honor for the sacrifice of her son. But, in the heiarchy of temple worship, there were those who were worthy of approaching the throne of God, and those who were not:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: "Speak to Aaron and say: No one of your offspring throughout their generation who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord's offering by fire, he shall not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the food of his God, of the most holy as well as of the holy. But he shall not come near the curtain or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries; for I am the Lord; I sanctify them. Lev. 21: 16-23.

I guess alien status is the new blemish in the sanctuary. The Lagmans may eat of the food, but they better stay out of the sanctuary, because they are not worthy.

For the Lagman family...

Psalm 55

1. Give ear to my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication.
2. Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in my complaint. I am distraught
3. by the noise of the enemy, because of the clamor of the wicked. For they bring trouble upon me, and in anger they cherish emnity against me.
4. My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.
6. And I say, "O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest;
7. truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
8. I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and the tempest."
9. Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech; for I see violence and strife in the city.
10. Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it;
11. ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace.
12. It is not enemies who taunt me-I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me-I could hide from them.
13. But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend,
14. with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God with the throng.
15. Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.
16. But I call upon God, and the Lord will save me.
17. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he will hear my voice.
18. He will redeem me unharmed from the battle that I wage, for many are arrayed against me.
19. God who is enthroned from of old, will hear, and will humble them-because they do not change, and do not fear God.
20. My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me
21. with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords.
22. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.
23. But you, O God, will cast them down into the lowest pit; the bloodthirsty and treacherous shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.

Friday Kitsch Blogging!

The Founder of the Feast welcomes a new member.


A close up, for aficionados.

And yes, those are the "Six Flags of Texas" in the background. We'll get around to Texas Kitsch, too; have no fear.

Addendum: It occurs to me an introduction is in order. The "collection" (such as it is), began with the Godzilla figure, purchased for now obscure investment purposes several decades ago (it seemed like a good idea at the time). My source and investment advisors were, and still are, in Austin, and I cannot recommend them strongly enough.

As the Founder of the Feast, Godzilla now serves as guardian and tour guide for the junk (oh, sorry, kitsch) that has accumulated like scum after floodwaters recede. The Jesus Action Figure is one of the later acquisitions (also purchased in Austin; the town just seems to inspire this kind of collection), and I kept it in the blister because the packaging itself is just so cool. It even has a collection of scriptures on the back (sadly, not shown) that includes one from the Gospel of Thomas. Timely and contemporary, too!

We will return to the discussion of folk music and theology shortly. In the meantime, enjoy the introduction to the collection. Your tour guide, who knows he looks much bigger in the movies, welcomes you.

Great Selchie of Shule Skerry: Part 1

In Norway, there sits a maid
By lou, my baby, she begins
Little know I my child's father
Or if land or sea he's livin' in

Then there arose at her bed feet
And a grumbly guest
I'm sure it was he
Saying here am I thy child's father
Although that I am not comely

I am a man upon the land
I am a selchie in the sea
And when I am in my own country
My dwellin' is in Shule Skerry

And he hath taken a purse of gold
He hath put it upon her knee
Saying give to me my little wee son
And take thee up thy nurse's fee

And it shall come to pass
On a summer day
When the sun shines hot
On every stone
That I shall take my little wee son
And I'll teach him for to swim in the foam

And you will marry a gunner good
And a proud good gunner I'm sure he'll be
And he'll go out on a May morning
And he'll kill both my wee son and me

And lo, she did marry a gunner good
And a proud good gunner I'm sure it was he
And the very first shot that ere he did shoot
He killed the son and the great selchie

A "selchie" is a seal, I think in Gaelic dialect of Scotland. That, at least, is my understanding. The song is originally British, of that I'm sure. The reference to Norway is probably a sign of transliteration from dialect to more standard English over the years. At any rate, it is one of my favorite songs, and Judy Collins' version of it is as poignant and aching as the story itself.

Post-Enlightenment, especially post-Industrial Revolution and medical science revolution (someday the discovery of antibiotics may properly be ranked with the wheel, fire, writing, and the Industrial Revolution as true major shifts in human existence), we have quickly lost touch with the fatalism that pervades most of world literature before the "change." We call it fatalism, itself an anachronistic term in this arena. For most of human existence it was not fatalistic to expect death, death with no reason or purpose or aim, except to pronounce the end of life. It was not fatalism to face such things, it was simply the nature of existence. It was the condition that prevailed. It underlines particularly the elgiac tone of Old English poetry like "The Wanderer" and "The Wife's Lament." Death was not something feared so much as inevitable, as sure as doom and loss. Nowhere is this clearer than in Beowulf. When he is young, he is chided at Heorot for his brashness, for taking chances by coming to the mead hall to tackle Grendel. But when he is an old man, and a king himself, he is faced with a dilemma. A dragon has been aroused, sleeping on his hoard of gold, and how flies at night destroying the homes of Beowulf's people (if you've ever wondered where Tolkien's Smaug came from, it's right here). Beowulf is finally faced with Hobson's choice: fight the dragon himself (his best thanes prove afraid to face the worm), and die; or let the dragon destroy his people. Either choice means the end for his people. When Beowulf finally falls in victory, the people lament both his loss, and the knowlege that they are now lost, that the next king over will be by soon, having heard the news, and plunder their land, and destroy their village. It's not an ending that would win approval in the movies or on TV today, but it was standard fare in the mead halls for centuries. Homer's Iliad and Oddyssey are only slightly less fatalistic in their presentations of human existence. Neither lightly nor for nothing did Shakespeare observe that: "As flies to wanton boys/ are we to the gods."

Christianity, ironically, set out to change that. Nietszche would later misread it as a slave's philosophy, accepting death precisely when death should be challenged. But Christianity is not about accepting death; it is about understanding that we live not in the kingdom of death, but in the kingdom of God.

What does this, then, have to do with a selchie? It's a beautifully elegiac poem, one about inevitability, a fatalism underlined by the repetition of the open stanza at the closing: a cycle, that will endlessly repeat itself. It's a magical poem: "I am a man upon the land/I'm a selchie in the sea." But the fantasy underlines the connection between humanity and the rest of creation, how the two are bound together in the same cycles. The only difference is: the animal knows the secrets of the cycle, and can explain them to us. And the animals accept what we must come to accept: that death is an inevitability. And also, that individualism doesn't matter: the cycle of life and death and mystery rolls on, and we can only accept our place in it. The maid in the song is as helpless to avoid her fate as the selchie. Both face wonderful gains and terrible losses; and both must take them as they come.

The proclamation of the kingdom of God was meant to change all that.

Eat a live toad first thing every morning...

And nothing worse will happen to you all day.

(The "Q" here is Helen Thomas, yesterday.)

Q The other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, we are -- that's where we currently --

Q -- in view of your credibility is already mired? How can you say that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically-elected governments in Iraq and --

Q We're we invited into Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, and we are there today --

Q You mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments --

Q I'm talking about today, too.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.

Q Did we invade those countries?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve.

"Invade." "Invite." What's the difference? A couple of letters? We can't be so particular when Freedom is on the March!

Cui prodest?

A prison released Monday a Baltimore nun who damaged a nuclear missile silo in a peace protest. Though her protest has garnered attention, some have focused on a well-known celebrity the nun met while in prison.

Three Dominican nuns, two from Baltimore, were convicted for painting crosses in blood on a Colorado nuclear missile silo in 2002.

WBAL-TV 11 News reporter Rob Roblin reported Sister Carol Gilbert is one of three Dominican nuns convicted of cutting through a fence and painting crosses in blood on a Colorado nuclear missile silo on Oct. 6, 2002.

I know the law views the concept of "damage" differently than its ordinary connotation, and that the law here proscribed the conduct of the nun in rather more specific language than this news report indicates.

But one has to wonder which "damage" was deserving of the prison sentence: cutting the fence? Or painting the cross? Sr. Gilbert spent 33 months in prison for this act. Another nun will serve 41. Justice is not just a matter of doling out punishment for actions the State declares a crime. Justice is also a matter of dealing fairly with all persons, and of upholding the law no matter what compelling reasons demand you break it. As Bob Herbert says this morning:

People have been murdered, tortured, rendered to foreign countries to be tortured at a distance, sexually violated, imprisoned without trial or in some cases simply made to "disappear" in an all-American version of a practice previously associated with brutal Latin American dictatorships. All of this has been done, of course, in the name of freedom.

Cui bono is the Latin phrase most often cited when seeking to fix blame. "Good for whom?" is supposed to be the question. "Follow the money," as Deep Throat told Woodward, but that would be more properly rendered as the question made out of Seneca's statement in Medea: Cui prodest? "Whom does it benefit?" In the original the issue bears an even sharper point: cui prodest scelus, is fecit. "The murderer is the one who gains by the murder." Should the murderer also gain by avoiding justice?

So, cui prodest in American justice today? And, who pays? Justice is a zero sum game, if it is not used to bring balance. The image of Blind Justice holding a scale is not an arbitrary one. When injustice is done, the scales are not balanced, and the only question is: who pays? Two nuns? Lyndie England? Should justice be more balanced than that?