It's Not Unusual

There are things we must do.

Eat.
Poop.
Sleep.
Say John McCain is a war hero.

These are simply existential conditions. I don't mean existential in the confused way people sometimes mean it- perhaps saying it in response to a poignant image or mind blowing pickle. In this case, I mean existential to describe something necessarily a matter of existing, and not existing as simply taking up space and using energy. I mean necessary to a particular mode of existence. So, a certain type of person, to be the type of person they are, has to say John McCain is a war hero.

I, however, don't think there is anything heroic about dropping bombs on civilians from far above them. In certain circumstances, you probably wouldn't either. If that person were dropping bombs on you, or if that person were dropping bombs on someone you thought was "good", you would likely think that person dropping bombs was a bad guy. If there were other people trying to stop that bad guy, you might think they were your defender, and if your defenders could stop that bad guy, and make him fall from the sky, you would probably be happy, perhaps even feel more secure if they sent that bad guy to a secret prison in Guantanamo, or some CIA Black Site in Eastern Europe, or perhaps to a prison in Hanoi. That bad guy would be getting what he deserved; you would not think he was a hero. But that's probably not the person you are so one of the things you might do is say John McCain is a war hero. He is a war hero because he dropped bombs on civilians from far above them.

What do you suppose this says about this type of existence? I mean, who are you, if something you need to do as a matter of your existence is say John McCain is a war hero. Who are you if your way of being includes eating, pooping, sleeping, and valorizing the killing of people just going about their own lives?

Eh, maybe it's better to not think about it.

Give Us a Break, It's Hard To Squeeze Caring Into a Couple Hours On Sunday Morning

"The heart which has been made free with the freedom of Christ cannot be indifferent to the human longings for deliverance from economic, political or social oppression."
Samuel Escobar, Peruvian theologian.

So what are you saying? Are you saying just because I don't care to do anything to change economic, political, or social oppression, I'm indifferent? Maybe I have other things to do. Maybe I'm perfectly happy the way things are. Maybe I don't want people in my congregation to go elsewhere if I challenge them. Maybe, I've convinced myself I don't contribute to economic, political or social oppression. Did you ever think of that? So, I'm not free!? I'm not really a Christian!? Where do you get off saying what I can and can't do? Oooh you make me so mad with your presumptions! What do you know, Peruvian jerk!?

A Hot Dog At A Ball Park Is Better Than A Steak At The Ritz

A bratwurst on the lawn should fall somewhere in between.

We are having our ever-popular End of The Summer/Honoring The Blood of Labor BBQ and Drum Circle (minus the drum circle).

If you can read this, you are invited to come over anytime after 6PM Saturday August 30th. I suppose, even if you are illiterate but nonetheless find out, you are welcome.

Bring something to share. If you can't, offer to give Monster Machine a back rub.

Here I am.

That Was A Freebie

Somebody with more resources or access to video equipment than I should put together a fight scene of sorts wherein McCain and critics are fighting and a la Batman (the wonderful TV series), McCain always responds with a POW accompanied with a trumpet blare.

At first it'll work a bit, but then the POW defense loses it's effect with the critics just standing there as McCain swings away with POW AFTER POW...

How many houses do you have? POW

What exactly is heroic about dropping bombs on civilians in North Viet Nam? POW

Why does being in a prison camp qualify you to be president? POW

How does marrying an heiress (an heiress you had to leave your wife to snatch up) make you a self-made man? POW

Is there any problem you don't think can be solved with bombs? POW

So you can't specify an income level that makes someone "rich" but you think the bottom is somewhere above five million dollars? POW

What's the difference between Sunni and Shia? POW

How does owning a home with his and hers dressing cabanas keep you in touch with average Americans? POW

Doesn't your immediate call to respond militarily to Russia followed by a retraction days later, actually impugn the statesmanlike judgment you claim is your greatest asset? Doesn't it make you seem like a hothead who shouldn't be trusted with a military? POW POW POW



Of course, give crediit to me once you've put it all together.

Like The Fella Once Said, "Ain't That a Kick In the Head?"

In case you're a better person than I and don't know, Todd Bentley is a Canadian faith healer in Florida.

Hmm.

I don't like the phrase "faith healer". I don't think he heals by faith or heals faith so it may be more appropriate to call him a belly kicker.

Yes, that makes more sense in light of what he does. Or did. He would attempt to heal people by kicking or kneeing them in the stomach. No... not heal people. He would attempt to extract money from naive and desperate people by kicking them in the gut. That's not really healing. So maybe he should be called a money kneer.*

Anyway, now he is separating from his wife and is no longer suited to his ministry, which if you remember, was kicking people in the belly.

I think it's appropriate to give someone time to heal their marriage. It's appropriate to give someone rest from their ministry, especially if that ministry is a strain on their marriage. Someone cheating on their spouse has other concerns than ministry. There are all kinds of reasons why he ought to take a break from his work. The greatest is, he kicks people in the belly.

Some of the Dominionist/Reconstructionist "thinkers" with which I punish myself are ecstatic about Todd Bentley's failure. It proves he is a false prophet and teacher- something like, "See, he can't keep his marriage together, the Bible says he ought to, his belly-kicking can't be of the Lord."

That's strange. It's difficult to not see it all as glee over his tragedy, but then I see his kicking people in the belly as evidence that his belly-kicking is not of the Lord, so I'm not looking for evidence that he's wrong... or nuts. So to suddenly focus on him again (I'd first learned of him when the Dominionist/Reconstructionists were up in arms over his kicking a person who had colon cancer) at this time seems like adding insult to injury. (I'd have said "kicking him while he's down", but somebody already used that joke.) But if I were looking for evidence against him or a way to prove he was wrong, well I suppose I could use something like his marital problems to do so. But then, I would be a very different person if I thought I could look for something like evidence to do something like prove Todd Bentley is a crazy person to people who do not think he is a crazy person already.

It seems a silly game to me. Like I said, I see his kicking people in the belly as evidence that he is wrong and crazy. I don't look for a Bible verse to say:
"I have brought upon them toward the belly of the sick, a healer.
I have caused him to kick upon it suddenly.
Verily it shall be for their healing and they will know I am the LORD."
or contrarily:
"Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them,
Neither shalt thou take of the knee and strike it on the belly
It shall be an abomination and the knee that striketh shall bear its iniquity."
And I'm doing us a favor by being more specific about things then we generally are when we say, "The Bible says bleh..." about some such or other. But even if these verses did exist (which they do, as you can see) I still wouldn't say that that alone says enough to tell us whether we ought to kick someone in the belly to heal them or not, though let's not beat a dead horse.

Imagine you were on one side or other of this fight. I don't mean in the way you probably know about it now; as a casual outsider you are not in this fight and it's easy to say whatever it is you say about it. Imagine you are in this. The complex web of commitments and concerns, belief, knowledge, possibility, life and all would make you such that you might save your money to make the trip, drive who knows how many miles- or probably more likely, convince a loved one to drive, stand among the crowd suffering the pain of whatever debilitating condition you have, waiting your turn to be kicked in the belly, in front of a crowd of thousands, by Todd Bentley.

Or not.

If there were a Bible verse that spoke to the issue (which I already pointed out, there is) you would read it in such a way that resonated with who you are, whoever that might be.

But here we have the Dominionist/Reconstructionists offering instruction to whom? Who will read their treatises and say, "You know, I was realy into Todd Bentley, and I was all feeling bad for him and his wife then I found out about their marital problems, and I was hoping his ministry wouldn't suffer too much, and I was hoping to get the chance to go to Lakeland this weekend and have him kick the diabetes right from my belly, but he's gone. And now that I read this article by Janet Folger... I'm convinced all that was a mistake."?

It's not that we can't learn from this; maybe we just did.

* It seems like kneer, one who knees, should be spelled with three es because words like sneer, beer, etc. are one syllable words and kneer should be two... Kne-er or Knee-er? I need a ruling on this. Wait, one who sees is a seer. Okay, kneer it is.

I Am Just Like You, You Are Just Like Me, We All Stand Or Sit When We Pee

I don't imagine that anyone anywhere could or should be exactly like anyone else in a community. I would say it's an impossibility but that would perhaps be too strong given my sense of how much I think one can say about certain things.

Even in some sense of community, none of us can respond faithfully to some call of God by saying, doing, or being what someone else has said, done, or been. I would say that is impossible, but that doesn't stop us from pretending we can overcome difference or imagining faith is self-reproduction. It seems we live in an era in which we attempt to overwhelm difference through the imposition of identity or by clinging to the illusion of common features. Well, it seems a lesson of history that humans do that always, but I suppose I can only speak for now, and say that now, we attempt to overwhelm difference in our own particular way. That is a tragedy insofar as any good news of the Good News is concerned.

Fortunately, it seems less and less tenable. Unfortunately, as it seems less and less tenable, I'm sure we will make more desperate moves to preserve some common sense.

Anyway, I think we are meant to be together in our difference through the unity of the Holy Spirit, not through what amounts to nothing more than the dominance of one human tradition or another. We ought to be committed to what and how we, as real existing individuals in different communities understand the leading of God, and we ought to remember that how we are led is not to be confused with how another ought to be led. As someone more high-fallutin' than I said: "Even in the Apostles' days, Christians were too apt to strive after a wrong unity and uniformity in outward practices and observations, and to judge one another unrighteously in these matters; and mark, it is not the different practice from one another that breaks the peace and unity, but the judging of one another because of different practices… For this is the true ground of love and unity, not that such a man walks and does just as I do, but because I feel the same Spirit and Life in him, and that he walks in his rank, in his own order, in his proper way and place of subjection to that; and this is far more pleasing to me than if he walked just in that track wherein I walk." That was Isaac Penington, so I guess you can't argue against it; an old quote proves everything.

Wait, that's not true.

Anyway, I don't say this as a lesson to anyone, only as background to what follows.

This:
I see limits to that unity- real, existent, historic, practical limits. I don't mean there is a limit to the unity in the Spirit or that this limit requires division. I think there is an incredible beauty and value to difference- especially as we attempt to live with it, but perhaps as a result of the possibility of sin, or the nature of some Hegelian dialectic,* we can only go so far.

It is one thing to say, "I am such and such and they, way over there, are other, but I am okay with that and I need not make them like me for them to be fine." That's more of a "live and let live", which is an unusual decency in our world, but still not the unity in the Spirit. I am writing about being different but being together, the kind of together in difference for which a marriage, a good marriage, is an apt metaphor.

In this unity, difference is a blessing. The "other" is a gift. In the unity of the Spirit we are moved beyond ourselves and are better than we would otherwise be- if we are indeed in a community wherein we are free to be different. In this unity, even with difference, there is a sense of "us" and a sense of what can be. But there is the practical limit. Even at our most subjectively responsible, I mean even as we most honestly confront the reality of our humanness and submit to transcendence, we can only be what we can be. We can only go as far as we can go. To return to the marriage metaphor, there is only so much difference I or The Qweenbeen could live with. Even if we need to attach a negative value to it and say it is a failure, there are actual things, actual practices or ways of being that would push us in different ways.

In a communal way, there may be moments of divergence.

Long-time readers of my interweb diary have unenvied social lives but may also have observed that I may seem a strange fit in my Evangelical Friends community. I am deeply committed to it even as I see us distancing ourselves from what it might mean to be either. Seriously- we have an Annual Conference. We are not a Yearly Meeting. No one would confuse any of our Southern California meetings for peace churches. We disdain our Quaker intellectual and spiritual heritage. We are broadly seduced by the promise of "attractiveness" and "relevance". We seem to desperately want to be Free Methodists (not that there's anything wrong with Free Methodists), and aggressively deny or qualify anything that might be called Quaker.

Strange.

Well, not so strange if I want to invest these phenomena with cosmic or spiritual significance, but someone else can do that.

As I said, we ought to be committed to what and how we understand to be the leading of God, but it seems that it is possible two or more cannot always remain together in that. I would suggest that my own commitment to that understanding, an understanding that I express as an Evangelical Friend- as a Quaker- makes me less and less suitable to be a part of one community or another- many communities actually. It may even make me unsuited to be a part of some people who want to at least call themselves Quaker. Funny, no?

For much of my cognizant spiritual life, I have thought there is a value to being committed, in difference, to becoming more than we presently are. There has been a reason to confront frustration, my own limitations, our collective foibles, to speaking, perhaps prophetically, about concerns we might otherwise ignore. But we can only be what we can be. For some time now, I have struggled to know where and when a point of difference makes for incommensurate difference. As condescending as it sounds, it's a helpful question: ought one spend time explaining math to a dog? That points two ways.

As noble as it sounds to be committed to being a voice of conviction and unpopular opinion, there is a matter of confession to it. It is quite possible that I am excusing myself from being what I am led to be, from doing those very things that I feel compelled to do as a matter of faith because I am not a part of a larger body that values those things. As an example, I have said no one would likely confuse any of our EFCSW meetings for peace churches. It is good to be a reminder to what we say we value, to being a remnant. But might the resources spent being a reminder be spent better or more faithfully applied elsewhere? Isn't there a taint of cowardice in staying away from or not deliberately creating a community wherein peacemaking, as an example, is valued and done? I have to admit that facing a resistant community becomes the path of least resistance when the alternative is pursuing the unknown or creating something new.

If I am supremely committed to the idea that a people of God ought to be X, and I know that a people, given their real existent historic conditions, cannot possibly be X, then doesn't it seem I've let myself off the hook if I choose to be among that people? Doesn't it seem like I've made it possible to never have to confront the challenge of being X?

I am not deceiving myself that the presence of difference would be avoided in any other community- even one with resonant values and commitments. I am more trying to not be seduced by the beauty of difference itself, especially if its shininess distracts me from living in the Kingdom of God.

So... fish or cut bait.

*Ugh- I don't really think that.

Hang On To Your Ego
It Ain't Me Babe- Bob Dylan
Oye Como Va- Tito Puente
The 59th Street Bridge Song- Simon and Garfunkel
I Got a Home In Dat Rock- Paul Robeson
Sex and Dying in High Society- X
Jumpin' At The Woodside- Duke Ellington
Nitemare Hippy Girl- Beck
Here We Go Again- Ray Charles
My Funny Valentine- Chet Baker
Communication Breakdown- Led Zeppelin

WWJD? BKBTRPAOTD II

So previously I said, "In a Grahamsian scheme, we easily identify conservative American values with the holiness that comes from being a Christian and that is no mere coincidence." By that I don't mean that Christians prefer Republicans to Democrats because Republicans are conservative and Democrats are liberal. It may be that a certain type of Christian does prefer voting Republican, but I am only partly concerned with that. I mention this because it may be too easy to dismiss the premise if one reads it as just another complaint about the dominance of Evangelicalism by the Religious Right.

What I mean by identifying holiness with conservative American values is the tendency to see Christianity as a source of moderation or as THE basis for civic virtue (I'm talking to you believers in a Judeo-Christian ethic). It's the lie that equates being a good Christian with being a good citizen. A Christian is ultimately a good, but not as a citizen, rather as part of a people who are led by the Spirit to follow Jesus' example and live as His body to reveal us for what we are: destroyers. Where we are confronted by the Word- not necessarily the word- our economics are revealed as deadly, we see our patriotism is murder, our religion is exposed as a system of exclusion and dominance. If we're not... well then, we're not.

Of course my own voting preferences are probably clear. I think John McCain is a reactionary militant who would get the US into more military conflicts were he president. Seriously, make Georgia a part of NATO so we can go to war with Russia? That's the benefit of his decades of experience? That may play well to the majority of Americans who haven't seen a war they didn't love, and as such may really be the benefit of his years of experience, though it doesn't change the assessment that he's the guy fishing with dynamite. I've already mentioned I prefer Obama for the iota of difference that may come about in terms of policy, but don't confuse that for what I mean here by politics, and don't think one is conservative and one is liberal in relation to what I said before. Barack is as bourgeois as McCain. I do think Barack is a more thoughtful leader and find him more sympathetic but am also very mindful that expecting much more is an ideological trap.

If Jesus is our model and the communities of the New Testament are examples of the type of communities from that model, then the religious is political. Followers of Jesus are by virtue of their leader, political. I don't mean in the theatrical sense in which religion and politics are broadly taken (a sense that seems perfectly designed to undermine the possibility of religion or politics). I mean in the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophetic model wherein the Word of God confronts a people committed to being a nation of the world rather than a people of God.

What does that mean? In short, it means if you are going to be a follower of Jesus you are going to be political, but only to the degree that Jesus was political- only to the degree that the religious and political leaders of the day found him a threat and killed him.

WWJD? BKBTRPAOTD

One of the most hollow forms of resistance to peacemaking by Evangelical Friends is also the most enduring. I'm not suggesting that all Evangelical Friends have dismissed peacemaking- only that one particular way Evangelical Friends who have is especially empty. But ironically, for its emptiness it rests solidly as the foundation of some of our worst behaviors.

It is the belief that personal holiness or one's own relationship to Jesus is the best and only way to pursue peace. I don't take issue with that conceptually. In fact, I would say that sincere and devoted disciples of Jesus would be incredibly committed to peacemaking and that people who are committed to peacemaking are following a Jesus-like example. Where it becomes hollow and perhaps duplicitous is under the shadow of a Modern Grahamsian* political philosophy that deceptively compartmentalizes the religious from the political. I say deceptively because there is no way of being that is not political, but the ideological genius of the Grahamsian school is to convince its adherents that they are not political.

For example, in the Grahamsian School, integration and civil rights concerns of the mid 20th century US were deemed too political an issue to address critically through institutional or organizational avenues. It was not the kind of thing about which an evangelist should speak because it was the kind of thing Jesus would fix when he got here. So one was off the hook; the job was to evangelize not to prophesy. How convenient that the two could be separated in such a way that maintained the status quo.** Can I use the word hegemony or does that make it too wonky? Maybe. So I'll say that the Grahamsian assumption that politics and religion can be separated supports and justifies (that's really important) the acts and values of... of... oh I have to write it... the acts and values of the bourgeoisie. Uck. Sorry, but that's what it is.

So it isn't that Grahamsians are not political. It's that their politics can be hidden in plain sight. Their politics are the fodder for the politics of domination, however it's fodder disguised in the landscape. That Billy Graham, for example, could advocate the destruction of people's drinking and irrigation water in North Viet Nam and be apolitical is borne by his commitment to being political in a way that supported the dominating politics. I know that line is anachronistic- I don't think Billy Graham would have thought of the North Viet Namese as "people" at the time. The point is, nothing is apolitical, and the pretense of being apolitical is a politics of domination. We act politically when we say teaching poor people Christian vocabulary is acceptable- necessary even, but challenging our justification of political and economic institutions that depend on there being poor people is boat-rockingly dangerous, praying for the quick end to a war or violent conflict is good, challenging our support of a culture of violence is too controversial.

Practically, I have heard more than once from more than one person in response to some hippy Jesus idea of mine or other that we'd do more for peace by learning to forgive people in our families than challenging our support of militarism and nationalism. That the two could be mutually exclusive or prioritized thusly is firmly nailed to Grahamsian politics. In a Grahamsian scheme, we easily identify conservative American (hey, I didn't say bourgeoisie) values with the holiness that comes from being a Christian and that is no mere coincidence. No coincidence, rather a hollow but consequential deception.


* This word is hilarious. Find out why.
** Really. Find out why it so hilariously appropriate that I call it Grahamsian.

The Title of This Post Should be "ZING!"

I know few people actually read the swill put out by the likes of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, or Jerome Corsi. I mean, I know the books they put out are national best-sellers, but it would be hard to call what the majority of their fans do with the books "reading". Pawing at the pages, furrowing their brows in frustration at the strange squiggles on the paper, prominently placing them on their shelves to give a veneer of legitimacy to their outlandish beliefs- we could call it that. But "reading"?

No.

If you are eating any of the nonsense that feeds the Obama=Things That Scare Me phenomenon, any examination of said nonsense probably doesn't matter to you. Obama is somehow both a secret Muslim and a reverse-racist Christian. A ghetto thug and a Harvard elitist. Too inexperienced and a Washington insider. That's cool. But if you would, nonetheless, at least like to read an hilarious sentence related to Jerome Corsi's latest hit piece, you could do worse than this:
"The book has already had more holes shot through it than one of Dick Cheney's hunting partners."

Take That, Death

Skybalon- Hello
The Qweenbean- Oh good, I was just calling to make sure you were okay. I just heard there was a motorcycle accident at Citrus.
Skybalon- Oh I know, I was right behind it. Ha ha, what a dummy. I guess I beat the universe again.
The Qweenbean- Well I'm glad you're okay.
Skybalon- You know I'm worth more to you guys dead though.
The Qweenbean- That's short term, I'm a long term thinker... That's the only reason I keep you around.
Oh, can that go in the blog?
Skybalon- No.

Some of My Best Friends...

In an experiment in online diarying excellence I will begin sharing posting responsibilities.

It's an experiment I've been intending for some time, but as long time readers of my tubejournal may know, the universe is cruel but also, I am a lazy, lazy man. Now though, I will, as time and pertinence permit, share the posting duties with very special guests.

So without further ado, I hand over the reins to Ham on White.

Why am I Ham on White?

Oh, it's just a pseudonym. Everybody gets one.

I know, but why Ham on White?

Meh, because you're White.

Yeah, but other white people you mention aren't labeled White.

No, yeah, sure, but you're really White.

What do you mean "really White". That doesn't even make sense. I'm just white.

That's why. Because you believe there is such a thing as "just white". You say you're just white; you don't see that White is really about erasing identity or creating the idea of "the one" cultural standard. It's a little like the human equivalent of labeling foods as ethnic. Mexican food is just food, Chinese food is just food, but when we use those labels, it's to create a certain idea of food as different- an idea that doesn't really correspond to the foods in the places we call Mexico or China anyway, but it's a description of food that depends on something being normal and something being different and the imagined culture relative to each.

Right, it is different. We call it "Mexican food" because we know it's not regular food. What's wrong with that?

See, it's that idea of something being "not regular" that makes you Ham On White. It's that you think that there is something regular and then difference from that. It's that you think there really is some thing that is standard, and then some thing that is Black, some thing that is Mexican, some thing Chinese. Whatever. It's that standard- that power to create and use identity, whether it's the standard or the other that is White. In this case, those categories exist because of and for racism.

What? I'm racist because I'm White?

Short answer, yes. You can only be White because of racist categories. You only see these differences because of your racist eyes.

So are you saying I'm racist just because I see differences? That's absurd. It doesn't mean I hate Mexican food just because I can see that it's different. Why would it follow that I hate Black people or Yellow people just because they're Black or Yellow.

No, it's not that you see difference. It's what this difference means and what counts as difference to you that makes you racist. It's about the possibility of that category at all. You are not just noticing that you have a different color skin than someone- as if you were noticing they wear glasses, you have a blue sweater, they have curly hair, you have a zit on your forehead, they are six feet tall. It's what the difference means and carries. It seems that for you, a racist is someone who actively hates someone of a different race. I know you believe you would never dream of going out of your way to hurt anyone because of their skin color. But you live in and depend on a way of being that requires this categorization by something called race- which isn't really anything at all- it exists for domination. It is a kind of difference that depends on injustice.

Do you realize what you just said? You're saying Black people exist because of injustice. Is it wrong that Black people exist?

You're missing the point if you think I'm saying a difference in skin color, or even noticing difference is wrong.

Look at me, I know Black people. I work with, well no I don't work with Black people. You know I don't even think Black people come to clean this building. That's weird. They're Mexicans or something. How about that? But, you know, I don't freak out when I see a Black person. I don't automatically lock my car doors when there's a Black person in the cross walk. And look, I'm talking to you, right? If I were a racist would I be talking to you?

Yes. But if it's any consolation, you're supposed to be racist. And when you think about it, it's an advantage. First of all, you are mired in this racist atmosphere but you don't see it because it's just the way it is. You are racist, but you see it as normal and not racist, so when you are challenged by your racism, you get to be indignant rather than repentant. I mean look at you- You're a decent guy. You work hard. You go to church. You don't use the "N word". You readily condemn something like lynching in the past or Nazi skinheads today. How could you be racist?

Exactly, I couldn't be.

Is America ready for a Black president?

What?

Is America ready for a Black president?

I don't know. Maybe. It depends on who it is. If you're talking about Obama, maybe. If he gets past some of the things I know people aren't comfortable with, like his pastor, or Ludacris, or his elitism, or his name even. Anyway, doesn't the fact that he could even run for president, and really run, not like Jesse Jackson, show we're not really racist? I don't know, it's a good question though.

No, it's a stupid question that can only mean something in a racist world. Obviously, there is an amount of legal institutional oppression that has been addressed , but that these categories and questions can exist show how we see the world through racist eyes. And you buy it whole hog.

Argh, wasn't this supposed to be a guest posting? Why are you even writing any of this? I have something else to say and I resent your hijacking this post and the suggestion that I am racist simply because I think White and Black people are different.

Okay, go ahead then.

Well, I forgot what I was going to say. Oh right- I was going to explain why you shouldn't let your daughter listen to rap music, but maybe I'll save that for some other time.

Okay, I look forward to it. Thanks

Just Because You're Paranoid

Though I think my internets journal is a gift to the soul, others may think there is nothing edifying to this- it's merely self-indulgent claptrap. Well, without conceding it may be the latter, I offer this.

On the scale of what is good for you it may not be much, but, and this is an important but, when I last went to vote, I discovered I had been removed from the voter list. That was a drag. I don't know why, and neither does anyone else. Or at least, if anyone does know, they're not telling me. I have been voting in every election at the same place for almost a decade now, but last election my name was gone. Crazy, no?

The above link allows you to verify your registration and avoid any possible frustration or anxiety that follow from knowing your name has mysteriously disappeared from the voter rolls.

It also signs you up to receive propaganda but you can unsubscribe easily enough.

So, even if you are so blinded by the spirit of the Anti-Christ* that the rest of my internets log does not speak to the condition of your soul, perhaps this little link may still be of use to you.

Enjoy

* I love that line.

I For One Welcome Our New Masters

I made a perhaps too subtle reference to the anniversary of our glorious triumph over man and nature. This post may be in the same vein but in another direction. I suppose making the metaphor and its carried meaning deadly- (I mean a vein's flowing in reverse can't be a good thing).

Anyway, back when we were becoming death, the various science type persons on the Manhattan Project were given a survey asking how they thought the subsequently created device should be used. At one point, a demonstration that privately showed the power of the weapon to Japanese mucky-mucks, a demonstration that did not include use on a civilian population, was a viable option. That action was one of the survey options.

Of course we know now that it was only possible to get reliable data on the long term human consequences of the bombs by actually using them on actual humans. Anything else would have been purely academic. Plus there was the added bonus of scaring the shit out of the Soviets and letting the whole world know we were the one's in charge of this new order of new maps, stabilized currencies, world banking, and neo-colonialism. (Oh right, I use the word "shit" in this post. Language warning and all that. You know in case your nuclear era delicacies make you sensitive to that word.)

It was necessary to commit a very public act of power that showed the whole world just how great, if not wonderful, we were. We were revealing just what kind of benevolent world dictator we would be. How fitting that today's dubious commemorations should come so closely to yesterday's accomplishments.


It's not quite full circle. I mean to go from Berlin 1936 to Beijing 2008 may be a circuit, but we can't leave out August 1945 for its world stage performative relevance. What is that? An ellipse?

The Jokes Just Write Themselves

Russia moves closer to war with Georgia over South Osseti

"The Georgian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement calling on the international community to 'give Russia the message that invading the territory of a sovereign state and bombing its territory is unacceptable in the 21st century.'"

LA Times

Where's he been?

A City on a Hill

Pakistan's ruling coalition parties say they will begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf.
BBC News

Ugh. Those poor Pakistanis struggling with democracy. I don't mean struggling as they are with military juntas, the assassinations of opposition leaders, ensuring free and fair elections. I mean their struggle to understand, as we clearly do, that impeachment has no place in a democracy.

The Marketplace of Ideas

EXT. DOWNTOWN STOREFRONT - MIDDAY
People and vehicles move across frame. One person exits store looking beleaguered carrying a large heavy wooden cross perhaps expressing something like buyer's remorse. CUSTOMER on the street lets person clumsily pass and then enters the store himself.

INT. SOFTLY LIT RETAIL "LIFESTYLE SENSITIVE SHOPPING ENVIRONMENT", AN ENGINEERED SENSE OF ECLECTIC, BUT HIGH END, NOVELTY - TIME OF DAY IS INDISCERNIBLE FROM INSIDE

CUSTOMER enters store and casually looks around. He is soon, but not too quickly, greeted by a CLERK

CLERK
Hi welcome to Reflections, can I help you with anything today?

CUSTOMER
I hope so. I'm looking for a God.

CLERK
Well then you've come to the right place. Did you have a particular God in mind?

CUSTOMER
Oh I dunno. What's your most popular?

CLERK

(Searching shelves and then retrieving and showing Customer a picture of Bahá'u'lláh.)

Well we have a few that are very popular right now... What do you think of this?

CUSTOMER
That's God?

CLERK
Yes, well the Supreme Manifestation of God at least.

CUSTOMER

(Gestures around face and neck as if stroking an imaginary beard.)

Ehh... I don't know... he seems kind of...

CLERK

(Answering for Customer.)

Beardy?

CUSTOMER

(Quickly adding.)

And old-

CLERK
Yes bearded and old are standard with most of our Gods.

CUSTOMER

(Carefully searching the displays then excitedly pointing to a God of gold calligraphy.)

Yeah I see... Oh, what's that one?

CLERK

(Going to display and grabbing God to hand to Customer.)

Ah yes, the name of God. One of our most popular.

CUSTOMER
Squiggles uh- can I see it?

CLERK

(Handing God to Customer.)

If I may, it looks very good on you.

CUSTOMER

(Looking at self in mirror.)

Yeah, it's pretty good... I like that it's shiny. I dunno. Seems kinda' pokey in some places

(Handing it back.)

Maybe I don't want something too popular...

CLERK

(Sizing up the Customer.)

Hmm... perhaps you'd like something a bit more... Classic! I'll be right back.

(Clerk goes to the back. Customer searches the displays alone, examining the different Gods. He knocks two arms off of one multi-armed deity and self-consciously tries to cover it up. Clerk returns, bringing a statue of Zeus and picture of Centeotl from back.)

CLERK
I think you might like these. Zeus and Centeotl.

CUSTOMER

(Taking the Zeus statue and examining him.)

He's beardy too... But I like that he looks so regal and majestic

CLERK
He should. He's the king of the Gods.

CUSTOMER
Huh- King of the Gods? That sounds pretty good... Why's he the king?

CLERK
Well he killed his father, thereby rescuing his brothers, whom his father had eaten, and then with his sister fathered many of the other Gods, so they all kind of owed it to him-

CUSTOMER

(Thrusting back Zeus in disgust.)

Ugh- with his sister?! That's awful!

CLERK

(To himself but still answering the Customer.)

Yeah there's a lot of incest with these Gods... And their early creations... Makes some of them a tougher sell...

(He speaks fully to the Customer again.)

You're right, you don't want him. It gets worse, he liked to turn into an animal to seduce virgins. But what about Centeotl- he's primarily the God of corn.

CUSTOMER

(Beginning to show his confusion and frustration.)

Corn?

CLERK

(Sensing the Customer's disbelief.)

Well... it's pretty important to some people.

(Now the Customer is looking as if he's losing interest and takes in the store's full pantheon with a mixture of reluctance and disgust.)

CUSTOMER
I guess what I'm really looking for is just something to justify my existence. You know, to maybe make me feel a little more secure, like I'm okay and despite all the craziness everything else is gonna be okay too. I dunno. Do I even need a God for that?

CLERK
Oh sure, and just about any of these can do that.

CUSTOMER
Really?

CLERK
Sure. I think we can set you up with a really nice God if that's what you're looking for.

CUSTOMER
All right. But nothing too expensive.

CLERK
Of course not, I think you will be quite pleased

EXT. DOWNTOWN STOREFRONT - MIDDAY
CUSTOMER exits store wearing an NOTW hat or some such like that. Walks out of frame.

FO

Wait, I Thought You Could Do That in Texas

Texas Executes Mexican Killer Amid International Protests
LA Times

Oh, I see what they mean.

Please, This Is Supposed To Be a Happy Occasion, Let's Not Bicker and Argue Over Who Killed Who

Well maybe not never again.

It's Like I Care Too Much

Classic Grandpa once described me as offering golden word juices for the world to love. Or something like that. Whatever he precisely said, it was a beautiful image appropriate to the mission of my lame online diary. But this mission doesn't only include making my life-giving mind drippings available, it also involves pointing out where else one may find vital language fluids. Here is one example. It is especially helpful if you, as the author suggests, are confused about why you ought to be afraid of Obama. "Is he a radical Islamist terrorist, or a reverse-racist Christian fanatic? Is he a fist-bumping ghetto gangsta, or an arugula-munching metrosexual elitist? Is he too black, or not black enough?"

I Say Potato, You Say... Wait, How's That Gonna' Work

Sometimes people who feel the need to justify why they are not a Christian via Christianity's many foibles use the division of Christian traditions/denominations as a reason to reject the ideas and practices of Christianity. Does that make sense? What I mean is, for some it's possible to look at all the various and incompatible yet passionately defended expressions of Christianity as evidence that there can't be anything worth committing to, with the infighting itself providing a "See, it's all bunk," opportunity.

First of all, people looking for that opportunity should realize it's perfectly acceptable to be indifferent to all manner of things. I think we are blessed to live in an age wherein it is unnecessary (more and more so anyway) to justify why one would not be a Christian alongside the many other things that one is not. Go with it. You don't live with Bushido, or feudalism, or Magik, or Shaktism, or chivalry and you do so- or do not do so- without justification. That's fine. It can be just like that if you let it.

Just leave it alone. No. Stop. Don't pick at it or mess with it. Go on, you have nothing to say with it.

Hmm... Maybe, if you can't stop, it's likely because it's more a part of you than you'd like it to be, in which case you're stuck with it. Sorry.

Secondofly, haven't you heard the justification that denominations/traditions are like different flavors of the same thing? Each denomination contributes something unique to the broader body but is uniquely for itself. You could say it's similar to what happens when ordering a pizza for a large number of people. I like mushrooms but not olives. So-and-so likes olives but hates onions. She likes pineapple but won't eat meat. Who's-his-face has to have anchovies. What's-his-stink likes everything except bell peppers. It's a big confusing mess, but when we all come together and make our contribution we finally have something we can all agree on and consume: a pizza with half cheese and half everything from which some people can pick off the things they don't like. It's like that, right? Or it's like a restaurant that serves something for everyone. It's all one pizza or it's all one restaurant so there's really not the division that some people see. It's all a matter of flavors and preferences piled on top of the dough in the pizza trope or prepped by Latin American immigrants in the back a la the kitchen metaphor. Isn't it one big happy family of consumption?

Ugh, really? You think so? How could you think something like that? Your faith as a matter of consumption and no more than aesthetic preference? Yeegads that's awful. How much more shallow could we be? He likes dunking but she likes sprinkling; we say Jesus is in the cracker but they say around, but who cares because those are matters of taste? Yeesh.

A friend and I, The Brownloveshark, if you must know, were talking about the Lord's Supper (as it's called in some places) this past weekend and I was getting all excited about the possible beauty of a Friends perspective on the matter. I was also getting pretty despondent about the emptiness of some of our actual Friends practices and statements about it. But then I was quickly cycling back to optimism in thinking about the allowance for the diversity of practices that are technically possible given our position on the matter in our present version of Faith and Practice. Then I took a nap with my baby. Then I made dinner.

Anyway, I don't believe that one who says "Jesus is literally in this piece of bread" is in the same camp as one who says "around" the piece of bread nor are they of the same camp that says, "Skip the bread all together." Same camp? Pfft. It's not even the same planet. Those are completely different ways of seeing the world, of understanding how humanity relates to divinity and vice versa. I don't believe Jesus is literally in a piece of bread, or around a piece of bread, or symbolically present with a piece of bread (though I will drink wine) and not believing those things is at the core of the content of my faith which is my relating to God. I will say though, if you believe that a piece of bread is somehow a conduit for God's love, if you really believe that, you'd better eat that bread as a matter of relating to God. I don't so I won't. But whether one does or not, it's a matter of the most important type of commitment and a source for the deepest kind of difference.

Really.

It's not the same thing. However in our present Evangelical context we try to overcome that difference by saying we are united by agreement in the doughy core of faith. (Well, some Evangelicals are more honest and say Catholics aren't a part of the deal, though how they then excuse Lutherans and Episcopalians is a matter of dishonesty. But it's the best kind of dishonesty: religious.) So our written statements of faith carry the life of our bodies and we say if we agree on these basics then there is no division among one group that says by practice you really must consume God's grace through this bread and another that by practice says we symbolize the reception of God's grace in ritually eating this bread, or between one that says in its actions women are by their very nature unable to have religious authority over men and another that says in its actions men are just as qualified as women to be church leaders (see what I did there?), or one group that shows marriage is only for the pairing of a penis and a vagina and another that shows... Oh wait, no. Not that last one. They are out of the fold no matter what they say. Am I right? (High five). My point is, this Statement of Faith phenomenon, this imposition of agreement is a type of unity, but it is not the unity of "The Lord's Supper" or anything that might be called "good news".

I suppose it's necessary, if we're committed to an idea of God bound to a kind of geometric certainty that these very real differences be washed away so the diversity of practices give way to a unity of statements. After all, it's not a very coherent world that would have Jesus present in a piece of bread and not present in a piece of bread. So, in a world of certainty we skip over the bread and emphasize the Jesus, but by emphasizing the Jesus we destroy the practices in which Jesus is known in life, well at least the lives people live as existing humans. But who told you to be committed to an idea of God bound to geometric certainty? Well, aside from those silly men who got all wrapped up in their Logic or Philosophy 101 classes and parlayed that into Christian radio shows, who told you? We, well Christian "wes" are not committed to a broad philosophical or logical concept of God; we say we're into the God revealed by the story of the Bible. But, and this is a big "but" we often seem to think that this God revealed in the Bible should be like the God of Philosophy 101 and that puts us right back into this whitewashed Christianity trap. (See how unfortunate it can be to take your college underclass years too seriously?)

Pathetic.

As Friends, sometimes we say that our practice of Open Worship is Communion. We've come together as like-minded people, we've sung this, we've read that, we've said such and such, and now we have a time to reflect on what we've sung, read, and said and if inclined, share those reflections with others.* And that's pretty good. I mean, to get people who, if pressed, would be revealed as more different than similar to come together in an act of devotion is laudable. In this respect, the pizza bit is maybe something to affirm. But insofar as it remains a matter of conformity to these external media, it's not communion. Maybe we could call it looking in the same direction, collective worship, sharing in devotion, shared assent and affirmation, something like that. But when we call it communion, well, that's where I say it's a sad thing if only because we settle for less (I say "if only" because I'm sure it's more). It's one of the sadder aspects of Evangelical Friends that we confuse the Word of God with the word of God and imagine an awkward and wooden conformity to the latter can be communion with the former.

That we can collectively say "P-I-G" means "pig" is a simple matter of human cleverness and should not be called communion. Our getting together periodically to say "God is big, hooray" is of similar stuff. It may take a degree of work and ultimately be impressive, but let's not call it communion. It is us becoming and being with us. Or if I make a concession and say it's a kind of communion, I can only say it's communion among humans. Again, given our histories and regular demonstrations of how divided we are, human communion could sometimes be a step in the right direction, but a step that should be taken cautiously given our tendency to replace division with domination. But God with us communion, something divine and transcendent, the communion of the Word taking on a body and setting up his tent among us, that is something else. Unfortunately through what we've sometimes accepted as communion, we make it all the more difficult to be struck with the divine.

When we come together, in our Evangelical Friends Meetings for example, we do so as people who are on the same page. We are an "us". And as I've said already, that being "us" is not communion. Saying "God is big" in unison is not the rending of the veil that opens the Holy of Holies. It may, at times, most times, create a thicker and thicker insulation that adapts us to each other but prevents us from being in communion with God. The process of becoming more and more adjusted to each other does create community, but it depends on exclusion. The unity of those who know "P-I-G" is pig is not the fellowship, to refer to a model, of a Gentile and a Jew, a woman and a man, a free person and a slave, clean and unclean sharing a table. I don't mean there is a miracle in the meal, I mean that there could be a meal is the miracle. The revolutionary, dying to one's self, new life grace, is not the act but is seen in the act of people who ought not be together sitting at a table with each other.

I suppose we can say there's magic in some food and when we eat it we take in God. We could also replicate 1st c. Asia Minor to the last detail and say we are part of the same community as the true church so we have communion when that is done. Or maybe we can be more sophisticated and pick certain practices and rules we think are mentioned in the Bible that ought to be retained and repeated and somewhere in that is communion. No one will stop us. But I think as Friends we can have something else, especially when we recognize silence is not for reflecting on what we've said or done but on what God does do. Silence is not the thing we must do to build unity, but the starting point to seeing our practices as the barriers that God overcomes. It's the reminder that all our language fails, even, especially even our well-crafted statements of faith. It's the recurring starting point of a life together in solidarity through difference rather than an erasure of difference. It is knowing and showing that Christ is here to teach us.

We have the faintest hint of that in our current version of Faith and Practice (I'd better be careful or it may not be in the next). Of course there's a whole lot of else and inertia to deal with and most people don't want to do that even on their best days, and with our ever-growing fear of difference and willingness to draw faithless lines in the sand, we may not be presently experiencing our "best days".

But we can hope, and you know what they say, "Poop in one hand, hope in the other, and see which fills first." Oh wait, that's not encouraging.


*Of course, not every meeting in our Yearly Meeting cum Annual Conference practices Open Worship nor would they say this is a description of how they do it if they did. Whatever.

The End

It was only a few days later that Zachary Baumkletterer collapsed over his desk at work. Tom Houston and Hilary Whitaker carried him down to the first aid room, where the nurse said his pulse was weak but not too bad, but she would like to be on the safe side. So she called an ambulance, and they took him to City Hospital.
Two days later, because Zack didn't have any family, it was Mr. Pencewaite and Pastor Westman who appeared before Judge Larner, along with the Resident from the hospital, and they all agreed that the best thing would be to commit Zack to the Maplewood Neuro-Psychiatric Institute on a temporary basis.
The doctor there says he is making very good progress. Only yesterday he told Mr. Pencewaite that Zack could probably be discharged and go back to work in a couple weeks.
"I can practically guarantee that he'll be as good as new, fully cured," he said. "Some of the treatments we have now are just amazing. And when the hair grows back over his temple you won't even be able to see the scar."

Nag, Nag, Nag

"Finally I made my choice. I would give my place in the boat to someone in the water, and I would see what it was like to swim for a while instead of sailing. If it turns out that Hardin is wrong after all - if there really is room enough in the boats - then if I'm still around when the others have gotten in I'll be glad to get back in too. I don't want to die. I would be glad to live in God's world. But if Hardin is right... Well, a lot of dark faces disappeared while I sat in the lifeboat. Maybe God will call this white face to join them."
Zack's voice was soft as he ended, hardly to be heard. He did not look at the other man now. And in the quiet moment that washed over the two of them there the Pastor paused, too, thinking that there were not many in his congregation like this man. Nor did he easily think of anything to say, though he had no question at all about the direction which his remarks should take. But he knew he had to say something, and so, after the pause, he said, "Zack, I wouldn't for the world want to say or do anything that would dampen your zeal for the Lord, nor, for that matter, to question the seriousness of the problem you're tackling. It does seem to me, though, that we need to combine zeal with God-given wisdom and knowledge. Could we agree on that for a start?"
Zack said yes, he could, and that in fact was why he was attracted to Hardin, although his choice differed from Hardin's in the end.
"Well then, frankly," the Pastor continued, "doesn't it seem to you that you could do the poor of the world more good by seeing to it that you stay in shape to live out your normal life and to work in the normal way, giving a part of your income over many years to the relief agencies, rather than giving so much now that soon you won't be able to work at all and maybe even die prematurely?"
Zack looked at him and said, "I don't know. Do you think I could?"
"I've got no doubt of it at all." As he said it he thought to himself that maybe this simple observation was all that Zack needed. But as soon as he had that thought he had a second one, more doubtful.
"I've thought about it a lot," Zack began. "I thought of it myself, of course, before I really cut down. And people at the office have suggested it, and Mr. Pencewaite, and now you. But I still don't know. You see, if I died somebody would move into my job, and he'd leave a vacancy and someone would move into that, and so on. Maybe at the bottom of the line somewhere someone would get a job which would make the difference in his surviving. And if I die I'll be leaving a part of the world's food and resources-the part I'd consume if I lived - for someone else. On the other hand, maybe the poor would be better off if I stayed around. I really don't know.
"One thing, though. I think it would be suspicious if the people who decided who should live and who should not were deciding about their own case, too - especially if they generally decided that it would be better for the world if they themselves were to live. A Christian, anyway, has to remember how deceitful and wicked the human heart is. Sometimes I want a good meal so much that it just seems incredible to me that I could work out that computation in any unbiased way. If I had to depend on that I might just as well give up and order myself a big steak. It would be better if there were someone else, maybe in the church, someone we could trust, and who would make the judgment about us."
The Pastor moved a little. He was about to speak but Zack went on, not noticing him.
"I know you've just said that you think it would be better for the world if I lived. I hope you won't mind if I say that doesn't help me very much." And here Zack looked at the Pastor and then looked quickly away. "It's because you... well, you say it too quickly. You say it right off, as soon as the subject comes up. And that makes me think you don't say it because you know something about me and those other people and have thought a lot about what each of us contributes to the world. I think you say it mostly because we're friends and I'm a member of the congregation here and you love me."
Zack paused momentarily, and then went on.
"Or look at it this way. Is there anyone at all in our church to whom you would say that he should give up his place in the lifeboat so some black African could live? Maybe there is, but I don't think so. I don't imagine your saying that to anyone we know. I think you'd talk to everyone else in our church just as you talk to me. And, you see, it would seem to me if anyone claimed that it was better for the world as a whole for everyone here to have good food and plenty of clothes and a nice house and so on, while a lot of people starve in other parts of the world. It would seem odd to suppose that all the people here did the world so much more good than so many people elsewhere."
Zack shifted now in his chair and waited. But the Pastor did not speak, because in at least one thing Zack was right. He too could not imagine himself saying to any member of his congregation that he or she should starve so that some African might live.
Finally Zack went on.
"Anyway, that's what I come to when I follow that line of thought. But also, I'm not sure that whole line of thought, a sort of utilitarian adding up of the benefits and costs, is the right way to go about it. Most of the time, I guess, I think I ought to just go by what is right and fair and just, and leave the benefits and losses up to God. When I think that way I ask myself whether I have more right to a good dinner or a second suit of clothes than does any one of thousands and thousands of people who don't have those things. And I don't think of any reason to suppose I do have more right to things like that. I suppose I'm better educated than most of those people, maybe I'm even smarter than many of them, and maybe I've got the edge on them in some other way, too. But it doesn't seem like those things give me any special right to the things that are scarce. And that seems to me a lot firmer than any computation of what would do the world the most good."
"Do those other people have more of a right than you have?" the Pastor asked.
"No, I can't see that they do. But if we have equal rights and there isn't enough for both of us, it doesn't seem odd to me to think that a Christian might lean a little bit to the short side for himself. When it's a matter of a massive famine that will mean, of course, going below the line."
The two men did not part easily that night, for they respected each other. Before their visit was ended each one loved the other more than he had before. But when Zack finally left to go home the Pastor knew that he himself had failed.

Still With The Story?

Zack was glad to stop in at the parsonage the next evening. He liked and respected the Pastor, and he had grown spiritually a great deal under his strong and sensitive preaching. They exchanged a few pleasantries, and then the Pastor said what he had heard, and he expressed his concern in a kindly way.
Zack said, yes he was doing that, and he believed he was following the commands of Christ.
"I guess there were three people, more than anyone else, who got me to thinking about this," he said to the Pastor. "And two of them were in our church. The first was Mr. Toosma. You remember him?"
"Of course," the Pastor nodded. "The economist who spoke here on Layman's Sunday."
"The thing I remembered most about his sermon," Zack said, "was his saying that loving our neighbors as ourselves obviously entailed guaranteeing our neighbors an income large enough to live on. I know he said it when he was talking about tax reform. But it seemed to make a lot of sense to me, and I thought it had to apply all over if it applied at all. I knew there were a whole lot of people in the world who didn't have enough to live on. I began to wonder if I did love them as much as Jesus said we should. And what I could do to try to help them live."
"But did you ever think, Zack," the Pastor said gently, "that maybe you're taking Toosma too literally? Maybe you need to give him a little room for rhetoric, and interpret him a little more reasonably. After all, I don't think he's starving, is he?"
"No," said Zack, "I don't think he is starving. But I don't see what that has to do with me. What he does is his own affair, or maybe his and God's. I really mean that. I don't want to criticize him, but it was his argument, not his example, that struck me. Could I really love my neighbor in the Sahel, and know that he was starving, and then go ahead and buy a rump roast for myself at the A&P?"
Zack paused, but the Pastor said nothing now, waiting for him to finish. So Zack went on, "The second person was John Phillip, the Christian editor who spoke to the men's fellowship a while back. He told the story of a Christian leader who couldn't eat his egg one morning when he was a guest in a South American home, because he noticed the children of the house staring at it. He realized that his hosts had saved the egg for him, but the children were hungry. And he couldn't eat the egg because he was so tender-hearted. He had to leave it for them. And then Mr. Phillip suggested that when we sat down to eat we might try to imagine the poor and the hungry standing by the table, looking at us. And then, he said, we could send some money for the relief of the poor."
And now Zack looked intensely at the Pastor.
"You know, I tried that, and I could do it. I really could imagine the black African from the Sudan, the Indian child from Ecuador, the starving woman from Bangladesh still holding her dead baby, all standing beside my table as I ate. And I thought that if they were really here I wouldn't eat it all myself. I'd at least share it equally. Of course, they weren't really here--only in my imagination. But they really do exist and they really are starving, this very day. They're not here. But does a thousand miles, or two or three, really make all that much difference in what we ought to do?
"And then the third man was Garret Hardin."
The Pastor looked puzzled. "Who's that?" he asked.
"Hardin is a biologist," Zack said. "I haven't ever seen him, but I've read a little of his stuff and something about him. As well as I can get it, Hardin thinks that the United States and a few other countries are like lifeboats in a sea full of drowning people. If we try to take everyone in, the boat will be swamped and everybody will drown. The only thing to do is to leave most of the people in the water to drown. That way the people who are in the boat will have a chance to survive. So, Hardin says, the U.S. can't feed the world. If we try it then the population growth in places like India will soak up everything we send and demand still more. We'll be drained till there's not enough left to do any good here or there. The only thing to do is to let starvation take its toll in other places while we try to get our own lifeboat into some safe haven where maybe we can start over."
The Pastor looked more doubtful than ever. "That sounds pretty hard-hearted to me," he said. "Is this man Hardin supposed to be a Christian?"
"I really don't know at all," Zack replied. "A lot of Christians, and some other people too, have criticized him for being hard-hearted as you say, or selfish, or something like that. And maybe he is hard-hearted. I don't know. But what really attracted me to his thought was that he seemed to be more hard-headed than most of his critics."
"How's that?"
"Well, most of the people who criticize Hardin seem to be just assuming that of course we can have just about every nice thing there is, with only a few adjustments. If we just ate a little less beef and a little more chicken, or if we just got rid of a few mean people in the Department of Agriculture or the Du Pont Company then we could have a comfortable life here and we could eliminate poverty everywhere else and things would be fine all over. But mostly, it seems to me, they believe things like that just because they want to, or maybe they couldn't stand it to believe anything else. But Hardin talked seriously about the possibility that we may really have to make hard and tragic choices - that there is going to be pain and sorrow and starvation no matter what we do - but that our choice may have a little effect on how much there is and on whom it will fall. It seemed to me that he was willing to stick his neck out and make a hard choice and acknowledge it. And I thought a Christian ought to try to be at least as hard-headed as that. So I said to myself that maybe Hardin is not. And if he's right and there aren't enough places in the lifeboat, then what side of the gunwale am I going to be on? In the end my own decision for myself is different from Hardin's, I think, but I learned more from him than from most people."
Zack was getting a little steamed up. He had been pretty pale lately, but his face was flushed now.
"That's why I couldn't get interested in anything like the weekend conference on Alternative Life Styles that the Inter-Faith Coalition sponsored last month. Somebody was coming in overalls to conduct a workshop on how to live comfortably on $33,000 a year. But I already know how to live comfortably on $33,000 a year. And if I didn't know how, I could just set a budget of thirty-three thousand and stick with it and I'd learn soon enough. But while I was living comfortably I'd know that around the world some of my neighbors were still fighting to survive on maybe $100 a year, or even less. And so what good what it be?"
Zack leaned forward, hands gripping the chair, staring at the Pastor. For a moment his intensity seemed to surge out, filling the living room. Then he sagged back, the passion ebbing from his face, his hands relaxing.
"Anyway," he went on, "I put the three of them together. The love that Toosma mentioned, Phillip's imagination, and Hardin's hard-headed lifeboat. I imagined myself in the lifeboat, and I looked out and saw my neighbors in the water. The waves were green, but the black heads and the brown heads were everywhere in the waves. Maybe it was God who gave me a love for them - I suppose it was. The lifeboat bobbed up and down in the swells, but it was dry. But in the swells some of the heads would go under and then they would come up again, glistening wet and gasping. Some of them went under and did not come back, and after a while I knew I would not see those faces again.

Frequently Feingold

You know how there are those literary and cinematic clichés and conventions used to depict dystopic societies- things like secret laws, trials without transparent process, hyper-militarism, government seizure of people and property without any suspicion of wrong-doing, and perhaps worst of all the categorization of everday behaviors as potentially threatening and criminal? They are elements of some of the most significant literature/art because these conventions are able to hold a critical mirror up to our existence. The irony of it is we know they are horrible as a matter of entertainment (or even seen in someone else's country) but then we embrace these things as our civic salvation when a matter of our own governance. It's very much like the irony of self-described followers of Jesus embracing the very same modes of being he confronts and challenges in the Gospels. Isn't that funny? Strange funny, not ha ha funny.

Also, you know how in those same stories there is a hero who stands against the world by simply doing the common? The world is so screwed up the mundane has become heroic.

Remember any of that from high school English classes?

Anyway.

In completely unrelated news Russ Feingold, PBUH, has introduced/sponsored legislation undoing MY PRESIDENT'S creation and use of secret laws and challenging DHS policies that allow security agents to flout the 4th amendment of the Constitution.

A completely unheroic and common thing to do would be to let your Senator know what you think of Russ Feingold's proposed legislation. Unless of course you're a 30 percenter, in which case you should just go watch TV.

I was going to write, "in which case you should just go read your Bible," but that sounded needlessly harsh though I thought it would fit with the Sinclair Lewis chestnut "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." See how thoughtful I am to have not written it that way.

In Former Soviet Union, Meaning Carries Symbols
Higher Ground- Stevie Wonder
Maggie's Farm- Bob Dylan
Get Back- The Beatles
Night Train- James Brrown
I Held Her in My Arms- Violent Femmes
Alienation's For the Rich- They Might Be Giants
Anatome- Joe Wise
Kid A- Radiohead

And Yet Again

A lot of people around the building began to look at Zack in an odd way, and then they would look away quickly, a little embarrassed, if they thought he noticed them. It wasn't that none of them was a churchgoer. Many were, and they understood giving money to charity and giving to church relief projects and things like that. Some of them had even fasted, as they called it, skipping a meal on a special day and giving the money for a special project in the church connected with the famine. And a couple of them even had a special sort of piggy bank on the dinette table. At dinnertime everybody would put in a coin. And when these banks were full they were going to take them down to the church on a special Sunday, and all of the money would go to send wheat and rice to the famine-stricken areas of the world. They understood things like that. But none of them had sold or given away all of his or her clothes except for one complete outfit (and a pair of pajamas, as Zack explained somewhat sheepishly later on). And so they had the feeling that Zack was doing something they didn't really understand all that well.
The next solid piece of information was dug out by Hilary Whittaker, who was a real health nut and blunt mannered as well. When he knew that Tom Houston had broken the ice, he watched for a good chance to ask Zack right out what he actually was eating. Zack told him it was mostly beans and rice and potatoes (but he didn't know how to make anything you could really call lunch, to put in a bag). When Hilary asked him how much, Zack told him what he generally had in the morning and the evening. Hilary had his little book of calorie counts and protein content and things like that, and he added it quickly. Then something happened to his face, and he added it again. He got the same answer, and he knew how thin Zack was getting, and he didn't add it a third time. Instead he said, "Do you know what you're doing, you idiot? That's below the starvation level! If you go on like that you'll actually starve to death. Actually starve, do you hear?"
Zack said yes, he knew. He'd gotten some books from the public library and added up the figures just as Hilary had. "But," he went on, "do you know that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the world, maybe millions, who don't eat any more than this day in and day out? I read somewhere that there are ten thousand dying of starvation every week. I'm probably the only person you've ever seen who was starving, but I've read that in Calcutta they pick up the bodies every morning on the streets. Starving to death isn't all that strange, you know. It happens every day."
And Hilary opened his mouth and shut it and walked away. He could talk your ear off if he got going about health, but he didn't know what to say to somebody who knew he was starving himself and went right on doing it.
John Pencewaite, in the personnel division, wasn't at a loss like that. He had a master's degree in counseling from the University of Michigan and had been a high school counselor (not an academic counselor, he sometimes made a point of explaining) before he came here to work. He did not send for Zack until he did his own homework - looked up Zack's personnel file, talked to a couple of people, thought out some alternative moves.
"That fellow Baumkletterer is a good worker, damn productive," he told the Assistant Director. "We've made an investment in him, recruiting him, training him, carrying him along the ropes. There's no sense letting him go down the drain without a fight. I know something about these religious types. They're not all hopeless."
When he talked about Zack he always called him "Baumkletterer," but when Zack came to his office he tried to get him on a first name basis right away, jollied him up a little, and eased into the topic at hand.
"I can't tell you, Zack, how proud all of us are to have someone like you working here. What you've been doing in your own quiet way has really got a lot of us thinking about what's really worthwhile in life, you know."
And he went on like that for a while, gradually suggesting that he was concerned, just a little, that a person might go overboard on something like this, all with the best will in the world. And then he started casually throwing out the figures he had worked up. What they showed was that if the most affluent nations would just cut down on their standard of living a bit, there would be enough for everyone. It wouldn’t even have to be a drastic cut - just things like eating less meat, not using synthetic fertilizers on lawns and golf courses, driving smaller cars. They could still have a comfortable standard of living, a good life, and there would be enough for everyone. And he suggested that if Zack were to cut down his own consumption just that much then he would be doing his fair share.
Zack didn't say anything right away. He was a little doubtful about some of the figures, and he wondered if Mr. Pencewaite wasn't just making some of them up. But he really didn't know. And then it occurred to him that the figures and the whole line of thought that was being suggested were just irrelevant to him.
And so he said that maybe Mr. Pencewaite was right, and he hoped that the affluent nations and the people in them would cut back on their consumption in that way. But he really couldn't see how that had much to do with him. For it seemed to him just about as plain as anything could be that people generally weren't cutting back like that, and so there in fact wasn't enough for the poorest people in the world and it didn't look as though there would be. And he believed he had to choose his own actions according to the actual conditions in the world, not according to the way the world would be better if everyone did something better.
In the actual world there were thousands upon thousands of people whose daily diet was below the starvation level, who wore the one and only set of clothes they had day in and day out and nights too, and so on. That was the world in which he had to act and to justify his acts. And if he was to love those people as he loved himself he didn't see how he could justify keeping more food and clothing for himself than they had for themselves. He couldn't see that he had any more right to a good dinner or an extra pair of pants than they had. So far as he could see, if he loved them as he loved himself he would share equally with them, and that was what he was trying to do, as much as he could.
Mr. Pencewaite had taken too many courses in counseling to get into an argument with Zack. He didn't even openly acknowledge the clash of ideas. He just slid over to his first back-up plan. He'd been wondering, he said, if there wasn't some way in which Zack's concern, and his real vision in these things, couldn't be communicated more widely in the company and the community. "Just for example," he said, looking up at the ceiling for inspiration, "maybe the cafeteria could start serving a No-Meat Special. Good nourishing food, but no meat. It would be low-cost, too, and if people wanted to contribute the money they saved then I'm sure the company would take care of passing it along to a UN agency for world relief."
He went on to explain that of course they would want Zack's advice and leadership in setting up any program like this and in getting it across to all levels in the company.
"Or I'm sure I could get you on the program for one of the Rotary Club meetings," he went on. "That would give you a real opening into the whole business and professional community around here. With your enthusiasm and your presentation there's no telling how big this thing could get. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Mayor get City Hall behind some sort of consciousness-raising projects across this whole city. And of course all of us want to have you in on it all the way because of the thought you've given to these things and your real concern for what's happening."
Mr. Pencewaite went on in that way for a while, and Zack said that well, sure, he'd be glad to help in any of those things if Mr. Pencewaite thought they would do any good. But inside he couldn't get up any enthusiasm for what was being suggested as his part in them. He really wasn't much of a public relations type and he didn't know anything special about how you organized a citywide project of this sort, and he couldn't see how he could give the Mayor any worthwhile advice about that.
Mr. Pencewaite could sense that lack of enthusiasm, too. He judged that even if he did get Zack involved in some such project it wouldn't put an end to the primary thing he was doing. So he sort of tapered off, and they left what the next step would be, rather vague, and Zack went back to his desk.
As soon as Zack left his office, Mr. Pencewaite picked up the phone and called Zack's pastor. The Rev. Frank Westman appreciated Mr. Pencewaite's call. He explained that he had a fairly large congregation and naturally he couldn't know what was happening to every member all the time. Since Zack was a bachelor and lived alone, there was probably no one to notice something like this quickly. But it did sound serious, and he would try to talk to Zack soon.