What is Faith without works?

The question of God, for most people, both inside and outside the church, often comes down to this: is God a cosmic parent, or not?

If God is a cosmic parent, a sort of uber-daddy, then the question of evil smacks us right in the face. Why do bad things happen? Why doesn't God take care of me? Why did God make all those poor people, evil people, etc., etc., etc. Most of these questions, of course, are not new. They are asked throughout the Bible, raised in books like Jonah and of Job (the former categorized as prophecy, although it reads like a "wisdom" text, the latter categorized as "wisdom" although used in part, especially by Handel, as "prophecy."). It's a reductio argument to simplify it to the issue of "cosmic daddy: yes or no?," but that's where most of the questions start, for most people.

I mention this because Jim Wallis was on "The Daily Show" last night, touting his latest book. At the end of the interview, he told Jon Stewart his two "conversion" stories. The first, he said, occurred when he was six years old, at a tent revival. The children were made to sit in the front row, where the preacher could see them eyeball to eyeball. And in the midst of his fiery sermon full of brimstone and damnation, this preacher asked the children how they would feel if Jesus came back that day and took their mommy and daddy, but left them behind because they weren't "saved." Well, as Wallis said, he realized he'd have to take care of his 5 year old sister, so he answered the altar call right away!

But his second conversion, "the one that took," as he described it, was when he read Matthew 25. That's the parable of the sheep and the goats, when Jesus divides the good and the bad, and says "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." That, said Wallis, was the point, for him. We are here to take care of each other, especially to take care of the poor, the downtrodden, the marginalized. Because, said Stewart, faith without works is dead; and works without faith...ehh, it's still pretty good!

I think Wallis agreed. I know I do.

If God is a cosmic parent, judgmental and demanding, then we are doomed, and we'd better get out spiritual houses in order and, especially in this post-Romantic world where the individual is the measure of all things, we'd better be sure we measure up to God's requirements. But if God wants us to take care of each other, there is no cosmic parent coming home to see if we've gone to bed early or thrown a wild party instead; no rich daddy who's gonna send lawyers, guns and money to get us out of this. In that case, it's up to us. And what difference does religion make in that choice? Perhaps no more than creating the motivation for your action. Perhaps no more than giving us a Martin Luther King, Jr. Or a Dorothy Day. Or a Thomas Merton, an Henri Nouwen; or my late mother in law.

Religion can be transformative. It can give you a reason, a strength, a power, a desire, to act. It can persuade you that there is no cosmic "Daddy," but that the universe bends on an arc toward justice. Perhaps it does no more than that. But in this world, that is always more than enough.

Let me add a P.S. to this: Atrios has an add flashing on his site this morning that quotes 1 Timothy 6:17-18, in the context of the most expensive Presidential inaugural in history (At long last, have we no shame? Apparently not.) I note it in passing since I can't, for awhile, create a post on that topic. But it's entirely relevant to this issue, and we'll get to it as soon as possible.

"The Hidden Wound"

I shouldn't rely on Atrios for my springboards, but what the heck. He picks this up from DailyKos, so we're all in it together. The question before the house is: when will the U.S. accept nationalized health care? And the consensus answer is: when business demands it. And that is because?

Because we are a humane culture that cares about people first? Because we are a caring and generous people who take care of the needy, the poor, the destitute, the downtrodden? Because charity begins at home, and we take care of our own in this land of the free and home of the brave?

No. It's because Coolidge was right, and the business of American business is business. And it's become the business of American culture, too. We're all about business. All the time. All the other myths we tell ourselves about ourselves: George Washington and the cherry tree; Abe Lincoln and the log cabin; the Alamo; religious liberty; our generosity: it's all smoke. Ours is a "bottom line" culture, and the bottom line is: when it starts hurting business, is when we start doing something about it.

As Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO of GM says: "I don't feel good about health care costs. I don't feel good about what it does to our profitability." What it does to the workers, is another matter. If not, in other words, for union contracts, market pressures, competition, legal obligations, well...this issue probably wouldn't even arise.

It would do us all well to remember the violence that greeted the birth of the labor unions. It would do us all well to remember people like "Mother Jones," who championed the cause of child labor protection. It would do us well to remember that when Teddy Roosevelt had his "bully pulpit" and acted to establish Yosemite National Park and the National Parks System, he did nothing to change the practice of using children to run factories on the "graveyard shift," where they were often left alone all night to attend large, powerful, and dangerous machinery. Changing that situation, one that we consider as abhorrent as slavery today, took a an unstinting effort by a lot of people. It wasn't finally done because business demanded it. It was done because humane, compassionate, caring people, demanded it. It was done because using children like that was almost as corrupting and debasing and inhuman as treating human beings as slaves. The practice of treating humans as less than human is a deeply ingrained one in American society, part of what Wendell Berry calls the "hidden wound" that we inflicted on ourselves early in our history, and from which we have never fully healed.

And we won't heal from it, until we realize that people matter more than things, that families matter more than possessions, that neighborhoods and schools and communities matter more than corporations and bottom lines. One does not negate the other, but we act as if it were either/or: either we have profit, or we have compassion; either we have the corporation, or we have no jobs at all.

If we wait for business to demand this change, we concede that business is all that matters to us, that mercantilism is all that counts. Why does it feel daring and naive and pointless, to tell Americans that there is more in this world than that?

Streams in the Desert

'dread pirate roberts" makes a good point, and raises a valid question. I answered it in the comments, but thought it deserved a more "public" airing:

you are on a roll. i kinda translate a lot of your posts into what i can get, as a member of the bigger community. ethics, morality, responsibility, personal response to other's needs, altruism, politics.....i'm with you. and i do appreciate, as a participant, the spiritual dimension of a group, congregation in your lexicon i suppose, chanting or singing together so that all breath together. con gusto helps. dancing too. also seems to work for deity-based as well as non theistic groups.

i do wonder though what you think will happen to those of us who don't believe that a day of accounting is coming, and how you balance your belief in that reckoning with your respect for us.

I had a neighbor once who was the kindest, most generous, most caring person I have ever known. He worked on my house, did carpentry for the other neighbors, fed all the animals around him. The squirrels ate out of his hand. Spiders lived in his windows inside the house, because he wouldn't kill them. They didn't have hospitals, ambulances, welfare, any help, he explained; so he couldn't bring himself to make their lives harder. He climbed high into my trees to trim them, built decks and fences for friends and neighbors, charging nothing for his labor, lived simply, and was unfailingly friendly to all he met.

In short, he was a textbook "Christian."

Except he was an avowed atheist, and used to discuss the subject of religion with me whenever we had the chance. He disagreed with me, but was never disagreeable, and I never tried to change his mind. In sermons, later, after I moved to go to seminary and beyond, I'd use him as an example of a "Christian." Because he was, whether he confessed Christianity or not. Do I mean he was "saved"? Not in the usual narrow sense; but he was saved from much of what confines and binds and traps the rest of us. He was saved, as far as I've ever been concerned. And if there is a heaven (my doubts are based on metaphysical issues more than anything else) and he's not there; then it won't be heaven as I understand it, and I won't want to be there, either.

The question is always: did you think about what you could do to help? If you did, justice will uphold you. If you didn't, justice will question you, perhaps even judge against you. I don't want to see that happen, but to believe in justice is to believe in judgment. I'd rather believe in helping people, and let justice roll down like waters, bubble up like streams in the desert, and make all the dry places blossom, and green with life. Life into the ages.

"Let justice roll down...."

I have only preached once in a "black" church. It is not something I will ever forget.

As you might expect from my writing style, my preaching style is anything but fiery or inciting. I may make you think; I won't often move you emotionally. But in a pulpit exchange I took a dare against myself, and volunteered to preach in a small African American UCC church in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was a typical black southern church: small, simple, spare. People drifted in. The service had no formal start, no formal end. I had a sermon written out, prepared, ready for delivery. I knew better than to try to be what I was not, and they were good people: kind, friendly, ready to receive whatever I might have to give.

I'd like to say I was transformed, swept up, carried away in a "Hollywood" moment into my apotheosis, my moment of glory. I wasn't, of course. But as I preached, they started responding. No one had ever responded before. Preaching is a strange art, hard to get used to. It isn't a speech: you aren't campaigning, or selling a product, or promoting a new venture, or lecturing, or teaching. Not exactly. And people in most churches, most white churches, sit stiff, and still, and quietly, and listen. You aren't used to people listening so carefully, being so aware that they shouldn't respond at all. You don't realize you aren't used to it until they do it. No one wiggles, shuffles, coughs. And it isn't because you are mesmerizing; it's because they are reverent, and listening: they are paying attention to every word. And they don't move; and they don't answer; and you don't pause.

Except that day, they did answer. Slowly, at first, and it moved me, and I spoke back to them. And as I spoke back, they spoke, and before long, we had a conversation going. Me leading, them leading, me answering, them answering. It didn't exactly flow, except for me it did. It was remarkable. When I got an "Amen!", I knew I'd said something right; it was an affirmation, not of me, but of the words I was saying, the spirit I was speaking for, and speaking in. It was a spiritual experience; at least, for me.

Why am I telling you this? Because the "conventional wisdom," the commonly accepted definition, that religion is a "personal experience," a private practice, is bunk. That is an acculturated norm of Protestantism, and it has no basis in anything except social practices that value appearance above all else, of a bourqeois middle class that will always value "order" over justice. Religion is not private, it is public. It is not personal, it is shared. If "religion is responsibility or it is nothing at all," then it clearly requires relationship, someone to be responsible to. And that someone is never merely some conveniently abstract notion of deity: that's too easy. We can shape that responsibility too quickly into what is comfortable for us. Religion is shared in part because it is not about us at all. It is about others.

Religion is also shared because the truth of the revelation is discovered by the community, not by the individual. The Bible is not transmitted by one person, but by so many people we've lost track of them. Read it carefully and you hear the Psalms echoed in the Prophets; or is it the prophets echoed in the Psalms? Names change because stories were blended together from disparate sources. New themes arise, arguing with others. The assurances of Proverbs are challenged by the vinegary despair of Ecclesiastes; the assurance of justice by the prophets is wondered at in the singular story of Job. The prophets who listen to God are set against Jonah, the one prophet who wanted nothing to do with God's message. And yet that is the "sign" Jesus says will be given to the people. It is, in other words, messy. and it is not, not ever, all about you.

The community confirms whether or not you speak the truth. The community decides whether or not you speak God's word. Somebody has to do it, and the community is the best place for that. So it has to be shared. It has to be shared, and it because it's messy it keeps spilling over its proper boundaries, and getting into the public marketplace, the communal discourse on all things. Sometimes it belongs there; sometimes it doesn't. The community has to decide that, too. Sometimes religion is matter out of place. Sometimes it's a matter of our looking with new eyes.

To make a long post slightly longer, the community in question is bounded: it is composed of it adherents, not all the members of the city, state, nation, or even neighborhood. Justice Thomas, for one, would do well to keep that in mind. Nor, ordinarily, should the communities mix. But then we have the example of Dr. King, and of the civil rights movement; and before that, of the abolitionist movement. But the confession of that community is that it does overlap with all the other communities. And that is where the friction comes in, the messiness. It is all about, and always about, boundaries.

Having brought this little church into my discussion, it would be unfair not to conclude with them; because while the topic is huge, and contains all of humanity, it is not abstract and ethereal, but concrete, and ultimately real. Those people in that church, above all, respond to the Word because it shapes who they are, and why they live. Only people who truly live the Word of God, and need the word of God, and understand the word of God, answer that way. Downtrodden people. Oppressed people. People who do not fear the day of the Lord, because they know it will bring justice. People who do not fear being swept away when justice rolls down like waters, because they will be rejoicing in the bath of redemption, in the rain of accountability. People who have been held accountable all their lives know that when that rain comes, it will be their confirmation, their vindication. And they listen carefully, for the word from Aquinas, or Augustine, or Barth, or Tillich, or Buber, or Meschach, Shadrach, and Abednego. People who have known persecution and known faith, know that the universe bends in an arc toward justice. And they welcome it.

And the people for whom the day of the Lord will be a dark day, don't understand the accounting that is coming. And will never understand; and even on that last day, will ask, in that most plaintive and pitiful cry of all the Gospels: "Lord, when did we see you?

May we be counted among those for whom that cry is one of wonder, and not of fear and terror.

“What will happen if I don’t help?”

Listening to Dr. King’s speech on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated, I heard him exegete the story of the Good Samaritan, something I’d never heard before. He pointed out that the priest and the Levite who pass the man by, lying beaten on the Jericho road, asked themselves the question: what will happen to me, if I help that man? He pointed out that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a treacherous one, falling as it does from 1200 feet above sea level in Jerusalem, to 2200 feet below sea level, and winding all the way down to Jericho. But the Samaritan, he said, turned the question around. The Samaritan didn’t ask “What will happen to me if I help,” but: “What will happen to that man if I don’t help?”

The application to the civil rights and economic justice struggle that Dr. King led, is obvious (we overlook the fact that this speech was made in support of a quest for better treatment of sanitation workers). It’s not a call to sacrifice we hear anymore. It’s not a call to shared responsibility that we hear anymore; not from our churches or religious leaders; certainly not from our politicians. Here in Houston, there is a “mega-church” that puts up billboard proclaiming: “We believe in you!” And yet it purports to be a Christian church. My personal experience with that church was that it gave away turkeys at Christmas to a HUD low-income apartment complex that our denomination owned, until the year they decided the people should come to the church (a few miles away), rather than the church deliver the turkeys. At that point I knew they were no longer asking: “What will happen if we don’t help?”

Its pastor has published a best-selling book, Your Best Life Now. A pastor in my denomination once urged the rest of us to learn from this pastor's style, because he preaches to packed houses every Sunday morning, and heads a huge church. Of course, there is nothing in this man's preaching regarding sacrifice, or humility, or asking: “What will happen if I don’t help?” It's all about how he, and his church, and his god, believe in you!

I use this church as an example, not as a particular scourge. This is the public face of religion in America today. Either it seeks power and self-aggrandizement and wealth, as in the case of Dr. Dobson or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, or it seeks to sugar coat everything in the vague but compelling notion that “This God’s for you!”

To listen to anything Dr. King had to say, whose every message was as grounded in the stories of sacrifice of the Hebrew Scriptures (Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego were put in the furnace in Babylon, for refusing to pray to Babylonian gods; their salvation was not assured when the furnace doors opened) as it was in the stories of the civil rights struggle. Dr. King, could freely discourse on Biblical history and Christian theology and the parts of American history we still wish to ignore.

That is who we remember today. The man who publicly asked us to think about the question: “What will happen if I don’t help?”

Martin Luther King Day

Most people seem to like the "I Have A Dream" speech, and with good reason. But I like this one, too. An excerpt from the "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to ace the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Voting rights. "Foreigners." "Enemy combatants." Suspected "terrorists." As the French say: the more things change, the more they remain the same.

And try to imagine any religious leader today comfortable conversing publicly about Augustine, Aquinas, Buber, and Tillich. Or trying to expose injustice, rather than aggrandize him-, or her-, self. And then, of course, there is that condemnation, based on the word of God, of "order" defended against injustice.

We don't hear too many "Amens!" anymore, punctuating the speech of our religious leaders. There's a reason why.

"That's right, you're not from Texas..."

Maybe the "blogosphere" should consider specializing, now. Rather than a proliferation of "left wing" blogs that all analyze a news story ad nauseum, and all chatter in thrumming chorus everytime "we" are disparaged by "them," maybe we the bloggers should be paying attention to what "they," the right wing politicians, are doing. Particularly what they are doing at the local level. Maybe the blogosphere needs more blogs about state politics and politicians. The famous dictum of Tip O'Neill was that: "All politics is local." And the local has a way of becoming national: as a case in point, consider Texas.

The Texas Legislature, in its last regular session, faced a huge revenue shortfall. One problem was state funding for education, a problem the "Lege" never solved. In four subsequent special sessions, it still didn't solve it. But Gov. "Goodhair" Perry made sure it solved one pressing problem: redistricting. It's not about governing. It's all about power.

Sound familiar?

Consider that, as goes Texas, so, at least the Bush administration hopes, goes the country. Bush is from Texas, but so is Cheney (he lived here while running Halliburton). Gonzalez is from Texas (execution capital of the world; no wonder torture isn't so bad). Rod Paige came from Houston. Scott McClellan's mother is the State Comptroller. And almost the entire Texas House delegation, one of the largest in Congress, is GOP now, thanks to Tom DeLay. Texas, like it or not, rules.

And now, Texas wants to privatize every major public roadway in the state. Just ask Ric Williamson, chair of the Texas Transportation Commission, and Rick Perry's good friend: "In your lifetime, most existing roads [in Texas] will have tolls."

The Legislature has passed a law allowing private companies to build toll roads in Texas, and one from Mexico already wants to build a toll road paralleling I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas (the major interstate up from Mexico). Part of the deal would include not only condemnation of private property for the road, and toll revenues, but the exclusive right to rent the property along the toll road, a right to run for at least 50 years. Imagine the possibilities.

How does this affect you, a non-Texan? " 'The federal government and other states are carefully watching to see how we do this,' says Williamson. He adds that the next project likely to attract investors will be the I-69 corridor, which will run from Laredo through -- or maybe around -- Houston."

When the budget crunch hit Texas 2 years ago, the Legislature didn't do anything for public school funding, causing a crisis in many public schools; and it lowered the already stingy CHIP payments, throwing many poor children onto the tender mercies of financially strapped county hospitals. The national echo of that sentiment, which Molly Ivins has documented was intentional, not accidental (Grover Norquist finds a very receptive audience in the Texas GOP) is the current Social Security "debate." Now, when Ric Williamson says "The federal government [is] carefully watching to see how we do this," it's time to pay attention. And perhaps to be afraid.

Because: "That's right, you're not from Texas. But Texas wants you anyway."

Mom has left the building....

Since the "blogosphere" is still resonating over Armstrong Williams and other blog related matters, it's interesting to see that Frank Rich has something to say on the subject this morning:

...the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.

On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams....Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm....

But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."

As Mr. Rich says, a bit further on:

That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.

Indeed.

“This is the time of tension between dying and birth” --T.S. Eliot

Hair on the beloved’s head is sensual. To run your fingers through it; to admire it; to note its color and sheen and gloss. Even to let it play about you: “Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown.” (T.S. Eliot).

But if your beloved’s hair comes off on your fingers? Do you run your hand through it then? Or when you find it on the bathroom floor? Or in the bathtub?

Dirt is matter out of place.

“Dirt” is what you find on the living room carpet. In the garden outside, it is soil.

It’s all a matter of boundaries.

Foreign nationals on our territory are “foreigners,” perhaps even suspicious. But when we travel to their countries, we are “tourists.”

“We” are never “dirty; but “they” can be.

It is all a matter of who is on the right side of the boundary.

Or “trolls,” since we are on the Internet. They are annoying, obstructive, abusive, distracting. “They” are out of place. Just as most of the country seems to feel, now: like everyone not with them, is against them.

Understanding is all about boundaries. How alike are these things we don’t yet know from these things we know? How are they different? What are the boundaries? What is its “place”?

Those who are not with us, are against us, we say, and we draw a boundary. Jesus even said it: “ ‘The one who isn’t with me is against me, and the one who doesn’t gather with me scatters.’ ” (Luke 11:23, SV) But earlier in the same gospel, John says: “Master, we saw someone driving out demons in you name, and we tried to stop him, because he isn’t one of us. But [Jesus] said to him, ‘Don’t stop him; in fact, whoever is not against you is on your side.’ ” (Luke 9:49-50, SV) It is the perfect description of the bounded, and unbounded, basilea tou Theou (“empire of God”).

And empire, of course, must have a boundary; it must have a place, and over against that are the people who are "out of place." Something out of place is “against us.” Against our sense of order, or decency, or what is “right.” The order we were taught; or that we understood from childhood; or that we finally accepted. “We” are never “dirty; but “they” can be. So: do we make our opponents? Or do we simply confirm their opposition? If we have opponents, doesn’t that confirm our power? Because there is no power, without resistance. But if we make our opponents, aren’t we then as guilty as they, whenever there is war, or the threat of war? Do we ever stand outside the economy of exchange? And does God stand within our economy, or the economy we can percieve?

God is with us. That is the Christian confession. But where is "here," and who is "us"? “Whoever is not against you, is on your side.” “The one who isn’t with me is against me, and the one who doesn’t gather with me scatters.” It’s an inclusive exclusion. Those who aren’t against you, are with you. Those who aren’t with you, are against you. There is a division; but it is not up to you to enforce. The center does not control the boundaries. It does not hold. Whether or not you hold to the center, is all that matters. Those who are holding with you, are with you. Those who are not holding with you, are against you. But to take a position against them, does not further define you. In fact, it moves you away from the center. When Jesus says it, it is a challenge to those who listen, to consider where they stand. When we say it, we move ourselves away from the center, and try to put our selves in its place.

This is why the peace of God passes all understanding. It is its own boundary (else it were boundless, and so at once everything and nothing), but it passes beyond all our boundaries, and so beyond all our understanding. It does not even define itself by boundaries, but by who comes to it. It is bounded and unbounded, and by focussing on the center, not the edges, it remains true. It does not allow us to worry about who, or what, may be out of place. About whether "they" are trolls, or foreigners, or even Democrats or Republicans.

Which makes it hard to stand under.

Where's Mom?

This just in: force is gone.

From the Washington Post this morning:

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

As Josh Marshall says: "George W. Bush, bringing 'cheap grace' out of the seminaries and into the White House."

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must the asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

"And when force is gone, there's always Mom..."

Thoreau made a comment somewhere in Walden about the news, and why he didn't follow it closely. Essentially, he said, it's all the same: the story doesn't change, only the names of those involved are different.

The story of CBS and Dan Rather proves, once again, that most news is merely gossip. Atrios has covered it well, and it's now down to the silly stuff: an endless repitition of an invented story line that is impervious to analysis or correction, and as such virtually divorced from reality.

If that isn't gossip, what is?

And when everything in the public discourse is gossip, what portion of the public discourse gets taken seriously? And if we can't have a public discourse that is serious, what do we do? Seek an alternative path to power? Or abandon the struggle for power altogether?

Addendum:

The "blogosphere" is like a drumhead: touch it at any point, and soon the whole thing is resonating to the same pitch. And right now it is ringing enough to give some of us a headache.

What is happening now is "framing," which is back to "gossip." What "really happened" is always, finally, "what people say happened," be those people journalists, bloggers, historians, or neighbors over the back fence. But, just like gossip, does it help to contribute to the story, to try to add your version? Or is it better to stand apart from it? Is engaging in the struggle for power, engaging in the struggle for truth?

Or is it really all just about power? Which, like luck, is always fickle, and seldom leaves the party with the one who brought it....

Morning Prayer

Thersites quoted a lovely poem by Seamus Heaney (which reminds me I have to do more reading in modern Irish poetry), but more importantly it reminded me of the Irish -Scottish traditions of wholeness with Creation, which is an important part of the tradition of Celtic prayer. And that led me to remember this, from Carmichael's notes in the Carmina Gadelica:

My mother was always at work, by day helping my father on the croft, and by night at wool and at spinning, at night clothes and at day clothes for the family. My mother would be beseeching us to be careful in everything, to put value on time and to eschew idleness; that a night was coming in which no work could be done. She would be telling us about Mac Shiamain, and how he sought to be at work. If we were dilatory in putting on our clothes, and made an excuse for our prayers, my mother would say that God regarded heart and not speech, the mind and not the manner; and that we might clothe our souls with grace while clothing our bodies with raiment. My mother taught us what we should ask for in the prayer, as she heard it from her own mother, and as she again heard it form the one who was before her.

My mother would be asking us to sing our morning song to God down in the backhouse, as Mary's lark was singing up the clouds, and as Christ's mavis was singing it yonder in the tree, giving glory to the God of the creatures for the repose of the night, for the light of the day, for the joy of life. She would tell us that every creature on the earth here below and in the ocean beneath and in the air above was giving glory to the great God of the creatures and the worlds, of the virtues and the blessings, and would we be dumb!

My dear mother reared her children in food and clothing, in love and charity. My heart loves the earth in which my beloved mother rests.

Catherine Maclennan, nee MacDonald, crofter, Achadh nam Breac, Moydart.

And this is the prayer her mother taught her:

Bless to me, O God,
My soul and my body;
Bless to me, O God,
My belief and my condition.

Bless to me, O God,
My heart and my speech,
And bless to me, O God,
The handling of my hand.

Strength and busyness of morning,
Habit and temper of modesty,
Force and wisdom of thought,
And Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night;

Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night.

O Superman

Courtesy of Holden's obsession with the Gaggle, the President's Press Secretary finally tells us what we're up against:

Q Right, but other than Iraq, where is the enemy now? Where are you concentrating your efforts?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's a multi-front effort, John. There are a number of ways we're going after the enemy, from cracking down on terrorist financing to working with other nations to share intelligence and act on that intelligence. We're also working from a military standpoint to go after those who seek to do us harm, whether it's in Afghanistan or Iraq or elsewhere.

Q But -- it's all kind of ephemeral now. I mean, you could point to Afghanistan before and say, here's where the terrorists are; you could point to Indonesia and say, here's where Jemma Islamiya is. But, as I say, it's kind of ephemeral. We don't really -- where is the enemy these days?

MR McCLELLAN: John, I'll give you an update. The enemy is the ideology of hatred and oppression that people espouse. That's what we're up against. We're working to defeat an ideology of hatred and oppression. And you do that by going after the terrorists, who have no regard for rule of law, no regard for innocent civilians, and all they seek to do is spread chaos and fear and intimidation.

Is it entirely too obvious to be asking: How do you "kill" an idea? Or should we be even more afraid, that this Administration truly believes it is engaged in a battle with evil?

This is not a slip of the tongue, a verbal lapse, a momentary faux pas. This is the considered statement of this Administration as a defense of its foreign policy. It is a battle against evil. Theologians and philosophers have spent eons arguing over what evil is, and even where it is. This Administration, however, not only knows, but knows it can eradicate it. And the irony is, this answer is the very definition of "ephemeral." The enemy is something we cannot touch, taste, feel, smell, or hear; but we can kill people, and that will be our victory. How many, which ones, where are they? That, apparently, is to be decided on an ongoing basis. There are, in other words, no rules. Only power.

And, of course, in one more twist of the ironic knife, according to most Christian doctrines, the "ideology of hatred and oppression" is precisely the 'original sin' of which we all partake. One could well call it the original sin, stemming as it does, like all "sin," from selfishness.

Laurie Anderson wrote a song many years ago; some of the verses have been going through my head lately, and this starts them up again. The song is "O Superman." It starts like this:

"O Superman O Judge O Mom and Dad"

But the lines I'm thinking of, are these:

" 'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!"

Is this where we are? No longer even on the darkling plain, no longer hearing the rumble of the ignorant armies clashing by night, but left believing that love is gone, and justice is gone, and there's always force? And when force is gone....?

Seeking The Place of Resurrection

EBW, here, from a book published by Akwesasne Notes (Mohawk Nation).

It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited.

This reminds me of a quote one of my friends used to have on a poster depicting, I think it was, Geronimo. I don't now remember the original speaker of the quote, but it still rings true. It was said about the Europeans advancing on them. "The love of possession," he told his people, "is a disease with them."

A striking insight, and one at the heart of that Irish poem quoted below. Tales of wisdom and spirituality (two conditions, as the poet said, that often appear alike) are replete with stories of those who have little, giving even that freely to thieves who think it valuable. But this prompted my thinking in another direction.
Wampum quotes this statement in the context of a discussion of Jared Diamond's "European triumphalist" theories. It is that since of triumphalism that is so interesting. The common response in Western European cultures to religion has been that there can be only one: reason, or religion. Many of the myths that are still current about the "Middle Ages" (even the name is derogatory) are attempts to establish supremacy over faith by raising the platform of reason. Any attempt to challenge this hierarchy is usually challenged on the grounds that it is "unreasonable" to do so, as if one were insane or an idiot.

This strife, in other words, didn't start with the Enlightenment.

Where does this energy come from? Earthquakes happen because tectonic plates shift, releasing vast amounts of potential energy, energy stored by long years of slow accretion as the plates move about. Every system produces reactions based on the generation of energy. So what is the generator in Western European culture that drives this engine of triumphalism, of supremacy, of the need to assert, once again, that there can only be one? Is it because we are, ultimately, the most oppressed and exploited?

Sister Helen Prejean was on NPR this evening, and in her soft Louisiana accents, she said that the Southern states execute more people than the rest of the country, and that, like slavery and civil rights, they won't stop until they are forced to. She connected it, in other words, to the culture of the region: a region that subsisted for years on repression, before the Civil War, and continued its oppression of poor whites and poor blacks (no longer slaves), after the Civil War. That's a fairly blatant kind of oppression, but still invisible enough to many who are raised in it and under it, and accept it as the fish accepts the water it swims in. What is the source of this less visible oppression, and is it that which drives us, grinds us, burdens us, and causes us to insist on one answer, one final relief, once and for all some condition that we can assert and know and accept and start (?) to live by?

Can we know the place for the first time, the place we start from? And knowing it, can we go on from there? Or is just knowing it, the journey?

The title of this post refers to a Celtic Christian belief. The monks who spread out from Ireland as the Roman Empire collapsed were driven to seek the place of their resurrection. Not coincidentally, we get the idea of "holy ground" from them, as well. However we concieve of "resurrection" (secularly, spiritually, religiously), is that what we are driven toward? And if so, is it this oppression in our Western culture that drives us, now?

(Ed. note--for those of you noticing, yes, this post was the victim of a late night spurt of inspiration; unfortunately, the spirit doesn't come with a spell checker, or a grammar check to be sure proper syntax is observed. So, yes, this has been amended since first it went up.)

Pray Without Ceasing

Yeats was right. The center cannot hold. It is, in fact, up to us. We have to hold; hold onto the center.

"What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars.
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together,
But every sone would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions."

Disturbance, of course, is a matter of opinion. If the neighbor is a poet, there is much less of a problem. But these two poets (Yeats excluded, for the moment) raise the same question: what life have you that is not lived in community? Even the monk in his cell presumes the presence of an audience, an other, to hear his words:

All alone in my little cell, without the company of anyone; precious has been the pilgrimage before going to meet death.

A hidden secluded little hut, for the forgiveness of my sins: an upright, untroubled conscience toward holy heaven.

Sanctifying the body by good habits, trampling like a man upon it: with weak and tearful eyes for the forgiveness of my passions.

Passions weak and withered, renouncing this wretched world: pure and eager thoughts; let this be a prayer to God.

All human life is lived in community, and in relationship to a center. That center may be many things: but the question is not what it is, but what it does for you. In times of crisis, it may make you despair (Psalm 22, or much of the book of Jeremiah); or be the cause of your ruin (Job). In times of crisis, the question is: does the center hold for you? Not hold onto you; but hold for you.

This is the confession of Israel. This is the confession of Christianity. That no matter what happens, the center holds. It maintains. (Crisis can, of course, be too much good as well as too much "bad." The unknown Irish poet above clearly understood this; perhaps too much, in fact.)

But the center doesn't hold onto you. You do that. The widening gyre of the falcon away from the falconer marks a boundary away from the center, but the center has no power to set that boundary, nor to restrain it. The restraint, the hold on the center, is all ours. Whether the center we grasp can stand the strain, of good times or bad, of slack times or full, is another matter.

How do you hold the center? That is still another question. But (pace Athenae), that may start as a question of theology, but it is "dead" unless it becomes an activity.

For now: we do live "dispersed on ribbon roads," but this is not merely a question of space, of proximity. Our metaphors should not replace what we are concerned with, nor get in the way of our understanding. Even dashing to and fro, we can be in community together. But if the dashing to and fro is not understood spiritually as fully as it is easily understood physically, then we don't even make the first step toward finding a center that will establish us.

Living Backward

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.--Marshall McLuhan

I understand that, in the time of Abraham, the "direction" of time was conceived in a different metaphor from ours today. We think of time as an "arrow," and as going "forward" away from us, into the future.

But in Abraham's time, I'm told, the future was behind you. It couldn't be seen, even if you turned to look for it. And the past was in front of you, because it is what was known. You couldn't turn away from it, because you always knew what it was.

Now, the weakness in this is obvious: fear of the future, and comfort in the past. It is what keeps societies static, or locked into class hierarchies, keeps women and children tamped down as secondary to the patriarchy, because "We have always done it this way" (except much intriguing evidence, from the Bible itself as well as other sources, indicates that is anything but true). Still, the weakness in the other approach is only now becoming apparent.

If the future is before you, waiting just beyond the end of your nose, beckoning like a siren to Ulysses, then the past is what you have (rightly) abandoned, and should move away from as quickly as possible. Except the past clings to your back, insists on being taken along, is not so much discarded as disregarded, and that kind of ignorance only brings misery, not bliss.

Institutions, for example, function like humans. They have a "genetic" heritage, and they live it what they were born with, just as humans do. Odd, isn't it, since institutions are the product of human effort. Surely they are amenable to reason? Not so, of course, any more than humans are. Institutions live out their past into their future, and carry with them always, because of that, the seeds of their own destruction. Our cells, biologists now say, tick away to death; so, too, do the instutions we create. But looking only to the future, thinking only what is in front of us is real, that we have "passed through" what we have left behind, discarded it as a snake its skin, we have trouble seeing that. And so we make the same mistakes again and again, and are surprised again when our institutions let us down, fail to live up to their creeds and credos, their highest and best ideals, fail to be the shining city on a hill that we are so convinced can be, or has been, built somewhere, if we could just find it, or just return (in time or space) to it.

If the past is before you, you don't make this mistake. You know the limits and the possibilities and the potentials like the back of your hand. If the future is before you, you start to imagine that paradise lies just beyond the next valley, that El Dorado is just over the next rise. Both views have their advantages; but both views have their vulnerabilities, too.

Is it possible to achieve a reconciliation?

There is no power without resistance

Listening to reports this morning about the Bush Inaugural, and suddenly aware again of how much power breeds insecurity.

Tom Ridge announces security plans for the inauguration, plans to insure terrorists cannot disrupt this "celebration of democracy" (which is apparently what they are calling it, now). 6000 policeman; 100 city blocks closed down; numbers piled on numbers, grim faces and weaponry and steely determination, all meant to convince us that we are safe, that we are secure.

But the numbers, and their necessity, of course, betray our insecurity. The higher the walls, the sharper the points on the wire, the more broken glass is scattered for our protection, or dogs who are trained for combat, or soldiers are hired to carry weapons for us....the more we tremble, and wait for the inevitable catastrophe, and wonder when the doom will finally fall.

6000 police; 100 city blocks closed. What does that say, except that we are terrified, and that we must be terrified, and nothing can protect us except greater and greater efforts? And when those efforts fail even in a military base in a combat zone, when even a mess tent can be infiltrated and people killed, what can we say except: "You can't protect yourself from someone determined to kill you." And when we ask why they are so determined, we are told: "Because they hate our freedom."

And the irony of posting 6000 police officers and closing 100 city blocks and making the inauguration itself and "invitation only" event, while loudly proclaiming our "freedom," is lost entirely.

There is no power without resistance. Power needs resistance not only to be powerful, but if it is going to exist at all. Without resistance power has no force. It is a blow against empty air, a fierce punch into darkness that meets no opposition. So power manufactures its own resistance, creates its own opponent.

And so we build our walls higher, and put more guards atop them, and curl more razor wire between us and "the world," and buy a few more dogs, and leave on more lights...and wonder why we still can't sleep at night, why we still cannot relax, and why "they" hate "us" for our "freedom."

And never wonder for a moment about what freedom is, or whether we ever had it, or what it takes to keep it. Or about the paradox of power: that to have it, is always to exert it, because you will lose it if you don't. And yet, once you exert it, you have lost it, and lost what power promised to secure for you. All you have left is power, and resistance. And neither of those is freedom; or security.

"Why Does God Hate Me?"

(This started out as the first sermon written in seminary for a homiletics class. It was something of a revolt against the assigned text, which was the verses from I Corinthians. This is a less satisfactory revision; the original is lost in a box somewhere, if it exists at all. Reviewing this copy, it is obvious that there is much more to other issues than is said here; and much could be said better, or more clearly. But it raises some valuable questions about the center, and whether or not it holds. Perhaps that's why it seems to demand it's place here.)

Text: Deuteronomy 5:22-31
I Corinthians 4: 1-5

Annie Dillard, the essayist and novelist, says that she kept on her mirror, for several years, a newspaper article, with a photograph. The photograph is of a young man, heavily bandaged; only his eyes, she tells us, and down to his lower lip, are visible. He is a burn victim, for the second time in his life. This was years ago, when burn victims suffered even more than they do today. She tells of reading about burn victims who lay in their beds. weeping, as the drugs seeped out into the bandages, with no skin to hold them in. They often committed suicide, later. Because, she says, they didn't realize the world could include such suffering, "that," as Ms. Dillard puts it, "life would permit them personally such pain." "Why does God hate me?" the newspaper reports the burn victim asking. He had been burned by gasoline when he was 13; it took years of painful treatment and surgery to recover. And then a bowl of gunpowder exploded on him. He said that when he realized what had happened, that he was on fire again, he thought "God couldn't do this to me again. "

"Why does God hate me?" Paul tells us we are stewards of Christ, and that we must prove ourselves trustworthy. How do we answer this man?

Or consider: a young couple, happily married, decide at last it is time to have a child. But something decides otherwise, because try as they might, no child is conceived. Medical science is invoked, painful and expensive; a private task becomes a public commitment, other people, strangers, are involved; the struggle goes on, and …nothing happens. No child. They describe it, separately, to you as a loss, but what have they ever had to lose? There is no baby who suddenly stopped breathing in her crib one morning; no daughter who succumbed to a cruel illness, lingering to the end, while the parents wept; not even a fetus delivered still-born. There is nothing, and yet they mourn, and describe it as a hole they cannot see, can only feel around the edges, can only wonder as to what would have filled it, and how that would have felt. And they want to know: Why has God done this to us? Why does God hate us, that we are denied what others must struggle to avoid? They don’t want to hear about Abraham and Sarah, or Zechariah and Elizabeth. That stuff doesn’t happen anymore. They don’t want God to exalt them; they want to know why God has abandoned them.

Paul tells us we are stewards of the Lord. As Christ’s steward, what do you tell them?

Or what about the woman whose mother dies of cancer, in a long, lingering decay, a terrible wasting dance with death? A decent, God-fearing woman, a Christian who quietly and humbly loved Jesus, and lived as spiritual a life in this material world as a wife and mother can. A woman who survived the death of her husband to raise four children alone; who had to turn her house into a nursing home for first her own mother, and then her father, and even for her brother-in-law; and who was finally able to enjoy life on her terms, and spend time with her favorite sister, and enjoy the coming grandchildren. A woman who, just when life was leaving her alone to enjoy herself, got cancer. Why did God let her die so slowly, and in such pain, over such a long time? Why did God let her waste away, day by day by day?

Paul tells us that the Lord will come and bring to light what darkness hides. I certainly hope so.

Because sometimes it seems that whatever is in the dark is just too much to have to put up with. I understand why Annie Dillard would read that newspaper clipping every morning. As she says, this is the Big Time here; the real thing; it doesn't get closer to the bone than this. And yet we know we are called to be trustworthy; we are called to account by the world, by our families, by ourselves, as the stewards of Christ. If we don't answer, who will? And we don't know what to say. Annie Dillard asks that someone please explain to this poor bum victim just what in the world is going on. And send her a copy of the explanation. I don't think she's joking. But if she gets an explanation, I sure need to see it.

Paul, of course, is not talking about suffering in his letter to the church at Corinth, but then he seems to have a different worldview from us. He perhaps understands the place of suffering in the life of the individual. God, at least in the Old Testament, works through nations. When God speaks to Moses at Sinai, it is the nation of Israel that trembles, and asks Moses to see to it that doesn't happen again. The entire nation is scared witless by the noise on the mountaintop. And God understands; God tells Moses to tell Israel "Get into your tents again." God speaks to Israel, and bothers with individuals only to speak through them to the nation as a whole. Even Paul sends letters to churches, never to individuals. At least no such letters have survived.

But we cannot tell the burn victim, the infertile couple, the daughter of the cancer victim, that their suffering is illusory because God is only concerned with nations, and the nation did not suffer because of their loss. We cannot tell them that they are too individualistic, that they must look upon this from a larger scale, that people die every day, or go unborn, or suffer horrible injuries, and it was just their turn. We cannot say God didn't do it, that these things just happen. We are stewards; we must prove ourselves trustworthy. How do we answer?

God only directly answers the questions of a suffering person once in the Bible, and then out of a whirlwind. It is the answer of a God of nations, God's answer to Job; it is the answer of a God of the Cosmos. "Were you there when I laid the foundations of the world?" Well, no, obviously not. And so, the logic runs, you have no reason to question my actions. At least, that's how the book of Job puts it. But that is not the only answer.

The shortest verse in the Bible is: "Jesus wept.” When brought news of the death of his friend Lazarus, John tells us Jesus wept. An odd response, don't you think, from someone who could raise people from the dead. But Jesus didn't think of that, apparently; instead, he wept. What else would we do, in the same situation? "So pass no premature judgment, but wait until the Lord comes." Paul is talking about people in the church at Corinth thinking themselves better than other church members because of who they claim allegiance to. Paul is telling them they cannot judge themselves; it is for God to judge. So what does that have to do with suffering?

People are born to suffer as surely as birds fly upward, the book of Job tells us, and it certainly seems true. We have no answer to the problem of suffering; as if an answer would relieve the pain, anyway. We ask God why, and we get no reply. But long ago, we asked God to stop talking, because we feared what we heard. We went into our tents, and now we poke our heads out, time and again, and look around for God's presence. Since we hear nothing, we conclude God has gone on to other matters. Or we decide God has moved into the tent with us, and will take care of everything, that God is concerned, first and foremost, with our well being. After all, what could be more important? We follow the true God; those others, over there; well, one can't be sure, now, can one? We will prove ourselves trustworthy stewards and what could be easier? After all, God will take care of everything.

But Paul says we cannot judge, least of all what God intends, or another believes. And if we cannot judge whether you are as trustworthy a steward of Jesus as I am, I cannot judge even myself. Paul's robust conscience almost hides the fact; "I have nothing on my conscience," says Paul, "but that does not mean I am innocent. Only God can judge guilt and innocence. " There are things about myself hidden even from me, Paul writes. If we cannot know ourselves, how then can we know the reason for pain and suffering?

Annie Dillard wrote a letter to the burn victim, but she doesn't know if he got it. Nor does she tell us what she said. Doesn't matter. The attempt is enough; the effort to make the connection, to bridge the gap between two people, to try to show that suffering can be uniting, rather than closing one off from creation. Frederick Buechner tells us that God does not give answers to the world's problems and questions. God gives God's self. As stewards, we do not have answers; we only have offers: of hope, of love, of charity, of companionship on the journey. We can only offer God. And in the attempt, at least we can prove ourselves trustworthy. As for the silence, which is the presence of God in the world, the very being of God among us, sustaining us when all else seems to have failed, the words of Annie Dillard give some sense of direction. She says we are met by the silence of the world, an obdurate silence of the objects of creation that says precisely nothing to us. I say it is a silence thas. She says we must begin there, recognizing what is irrevocably true:

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.

'Tis the season to give statues...

Obligatory Koufax award notice.

Actually, if I hadn't gone to Metacomments, and been directed to Bouphonia, I wouldn't have realized this blog was even in contention for anything. So let me just say:

It's nice to be noticed. And even more flattering to have been voted for. But you really have no idea what a shy person I am.

Besides: Wolcott and Americablog seem to be battling it out, with First Draft coming in third so far (and deserving the win, in my book; if it doesn't go to Metacomments or Bouphonia.)

Feel free to vote your conscience. Just remember: people have died from being noticed.

Trust me on this....

We Interrupt this Program...

This seldom gets done here. Atrios and other blogs have a larger audience and a better platform for this kind of thing. But since it gets a bit long winded, and it isn't completely out of character, this is as good a place as any for a rebuttal to David Brooks in 30...make that 100... words or less (well, we'll see about that).

How much of what he says, was said about Vietnam? "Vietnamization" was supposed to secure the country because the Vietnamese would "take responsibility" for their government. As if they didn't have one in the first place (there isn't one in Iraq, Mr. Brooks; had you noticed?), and there wasn't a stable social structure that we pretty much helped destabilize (war, no matter how much Mr. Brooks and his ilk want to assert otherwise, is NOT a stabilizing influence on any nation or culture).

In fact, there were institutions in Vietnam, and the childish idea that the Vietnamese didn't want freedom (what, they wanted war instead?) while the Iraqis do (want freedom, that is. Is that anything like wanting the foreign armies to get the hell out?) Can institutions even be built in chaos? Do they arise like the logos from primordial disorder, spreading order as they go? Seems to contradict the more realistic political philosophies of Hobbes and Machiavelli, as well as most history. Institutions that arise to impose order on chaos tend, in fact, to be authoritarian and dictatorial, not democratic and egalitarian.

"Vietnamization" also carried the concept that, once the U.S. had "turned over" the war to the Vietnamese (it was their country, we were just using it to field test our "domino theory"), they would carry on without us, plucky people that they were. The images of the last helicopters to lift off from Saigon are still fresh in the minds of us young enough to remember when they were first broadcast on TV. It didn't take long for the war to end when we left, and it isn't hard to see that we were the reason the war went on as long as it did, and caused as much damage as it did. Well, it isn't hard for people willing to take responsibility for their actions in the world; which doesn't necessarily include the majority of Americans alive at any one time.

So what, exactly, is Mr. Brooks saying? That history does not repeat itself? That we can learn from the mistakes of the past, and the lesson is that we can do it all again and do it right this time? That, as long as our hearts are pure, our efforts will never fail? Ironically, because he would not consider himself "liberal," even in Reinhold Niebuhr's sense of the term, Mr. Brooks recalls this bit of insight:

Modern man's confidence in his virtue caused an equally unequivocal rejection of the Christian idea of the ambiguity of human virtue. In the liberal world the evils in human nature and history were ascribed to social institutions or to ignorance or to some other manageable defect in human nature or environment." Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952, p. 4)

New institutions, in other words, will save us. Save us from the "pre-modern" Iraqi culture; save us from our own failed attempts at imposing democracy on another people and country; save them from the "ignorance" of the insurgents, or the defects in our original plan (or lack of one) following on our invasion. There is no ambiguity in this situation or in the human heart that cannot be solved by still more "positive thinking" and the establishment of a good institution, such as the concept of a majority that rules because it is right, not because it is powerful. That this is precisely the problem our military faces, and provokes, is of no matter. Mr. Brooks is confident this power will occur and be effective when the right institutions are finally established and are allowed to flourish.

How, exactly, they will be established, much less flourish, much less perform this miracle that cannot otherwise occur, is yet to be determined. But be optimistic, and everything will turn out for the best. This is, after all, the best of all possible worlds. To deny it, is practically un-American.