On Our Way to The Inn

Friday afternoon is never a good time to drive Philadelphia's Schuylkill Expressway. Fact is, there's hardly ever a good time to enter that sometime parking lot, sometime race track that winds its way along the river after which it is named.

But there we were a week and a day before Christmas Eve, in a snow storm. We were headed down (literally) toward the heart of the city, and so was everyone else in the world. Snow was blowing across the roadway and sticking to it. Traffic was moving…perhaps ten miles per hour. Drivers were being uncharacteristically cautious. We would get to the Airbnb in West Philly that we’d booked, but when?

Not being very familiar with the area we were listening carefully to Ms. GPS’s calm voice. About an hour into our slow descent, she advised that we’d save seven minutes by taking the next exit and cutting through neighborhoods to our destination. That sounded very good to us, not only because of the shorter time, but also because (and even more urgently) I had to find a bathroom quick. Surely there’d be a convenient gas station near the exit.

Not to be. We exited, and pushed slowly up a hill in a thick stream of cars moving by fits and starts, nothing but city parkland all around us. We finally came to an intersection, turned left, crept our way through fairly down-and-out neighborhoods, and turned this way and that on a route that seemed intentionally circuitous. Not a gas station in sight. I grew desperate. I told Maxine I had to stop. She suggested a bar that we were approaching. I didn’t have to go that bad.

Finally, around some corner under some commuter rail tracks we saw a CVS Drugstore. A drug store, where health is dispensed, surely would meet my need. I turned into the snowy parking lot, frantically found a place to park, and abandoned my wife in the car as I ran in to seek a bathroom. It was then I realized I was outside my comfort zone in more than one way. I was in a strange, inner city, and yes, largely black, community. Would THIS drug store respond to my need?

Of course it did. Unlike our local suburban CVS, it did not openly offer restroom facilities to the public. You had to ask to be let into a locked area to get to them. I will never know whether they let me in because they let in everyone who asks, or because I looked as if I posed no danger of doing something in them other than what they were intended for.

Much relieved, I said thank you to every employee I saw on the way out of the store, and returned to Maxine in the car. At least I could relax as we finished our tortuous trip to a residence we’d never before seen.

As usual in Philadelphia, there were few places to park within sight of our place, but we did find one. I squeezed into it, then walked to the sign to see what kind of restrictions the city placed on parking in my spot. It was something like two-hour parking during weekday day-time hours until 10:00 pm. It was 4:00 pm Friday. The snow was still falling; traffic everywhere was a mess. Surely every traffic cop (including every meter maid, or whoever checks the meters) had more important things to do than give parking tickets to hapless out-of-town visitors, who might be in town to spend money, as visitors do. I decided to risk it: make it to 10:00 pm and we’d be in free for the weekend.

Of course we didn’t make it. Later that evening I found an envelope stuck under a wiper blade. The law had noted our parked Prius just after 5 pm and issued a ticket two hours and one minute later. That will be $26, you who apparently cannot read. No warning, no welcome to Philadelphia, please note the parking restrictions on this street.

I am sure residents of that street truly need and want the powers-that-be to enforce the laws so they can park there, but there is more than one way to tell otherwise benign persons that they’ve made a mistake. And it’s not a big deal for me, that parking ticket. Actually, $26 does seem too small even to cover the cost of issuing the citation.

But the message from the CVS staff and the message from the city authorities are quite different, and made me think about the journey of the holy family to the stable. Ordinary folk offered them welcome and helped them address their urgent need. The Roman Empire collected what they owed, not caring a bit about them as persons until they realized that they represented a threat to its oppressive law and order. Things operate just about the same way 2,000+ years later.

What if we learned to do more than say Merry Christmas?

The rest of the weekend was wonderful, and included two fine concerts of seasonal music, quality time with our daughter and friend, and a reunion with two long-time friends we had not seen for years. Philadelphia is a great city for us to visit, from its music scene to just the right CVS when you need it.

Let’s do more Merry Christmas-ing, friends. It’s needed now, perhaps more than ever.

Give a me gun for Christmas, Jesus

Sad the Plain Dealer cannot give up wrapping front page in hand gun ads. Desperate for revenue, I guess. Really hope they will resist temptation to do it again on Christmas Eve, although being forced to see all those instruments of death will make the contrast with the message of Jesus even clearer. (It is Herod and his warriors who carry the guns in the story. But perhaps if Mary had had one...I can’t think it.)

The power behind the church's mission

This one's for my more religious-type friends.

One of the joys (and frustrations) of worshipping in a church tradition different from your own is that the hymns are hardly ever quite the same. Today at Christ Episcopal Church we sang Rusty Edwards', "We All Are One in Mission." I've sung it dozens of times in Presbyterian settings, but this was the first time I sang this stanza:

We all behold one vision,
A stark reality:
The steward of salvation
Was nailed upon a tree.
Yet resurrected Justice
Gives rise that we may share
Free reconciliation
And hope amid despair.

It is in the original hymn, according to the web, nestled between our usual Presbyterian second and third stanzas. Seems to offer theological justification for being "one in mission." I wonder why we Presbyterians omit it? Not enough room on the page? Theological considerations? Other reasons? I invite your comments.

(BTW, today's homilist quoted Karl Barth, with approval!)

Another Gun Massacre

The Cleveland Plain Dealer rejected the following letter to the editor because it is too long, and they didn't print my shortened version, either. So here it is, all 340 words of it. Maybe in memory of the 20+ worshippers in Texas who lost their lives this morning because someone . . . I don't know what to say. 

Perhaps the most telling sentences in Stephen Halbrook’s October 27 opinion piece (“More Gun Control Laws Won’t Stop Vegas-type Massacres”) are these: “Pseudo protection offered by paper laws guarantees nothing. Every person is ultimately responsible for his or her safety.”

Halbrook disdains the rule of law because laws don’t guarantee anything. He believes in the law of the old West, the law of the gun. He and no one eise is responsible for his own safety, and he is apparently not responsible in any way for the safety of others.

It’s true, I admit: laws do not guarantee anything. But they sure make life a lot safer on a daily basis for all of us. Traffic laws don’t guarantee I will not be killed in a head-on crash, but knowing that almost all drivers will stay on their side of the road and not drive on my side makes me a lot safer than if everyone could drive wherever they felt like. The beauty of laws regarding who drives where is that I do not have to confront and deal with life-threatening chaos every time I get behind the wheel. I am safer, and my life is easier, and I like that.

I assume that Mr. Halbrook would never think of contacting law enforcement if he received a death threat in the mail, or if someone were stalking his house. After all, he is ultimately responsible for his own safety. “Real men” need no one else.

The gun lobby apparently wants a return to the good old days before the sheriff came to town, when everyone had a six gun and was free to use it without fear of the consequences. I do not want that, Mr. Halbrook, either for myself or my children or grandchildren. Frankly, thinking like yours make me fear for their future, and for the future of the rule of law. For your sake and mine, I hope you and yours do not get the kind of world you are trying to create.

Way Behind

I confess that I am way behind in commenting on the antics and terrors of President Trump and the Bannon-entralled Republican Party.

I further confess that I cannot keep up with the disaster. Every day, two or three new horrors assault common-sense.

Lord, have mercy. That's about all I can say, or pray.

Beyond this Present Devastation

Anyone who doubts our utter dependence upon nature’s graces or our frightening vulnerability in the face of nature’s power is not paying attention. We can design and build the very best we know how, and still be wiped out. A storm, a fire, an earthquake, a hurtling asteroid; a microbe, a parasite, a cell gone awry.

I am not suggesting at all that we must not do our best to defend ourselves against such threats, or to work to overcome them. To do otherwise would be to deny our nature as living organisms.

But we also must realize that everything we do is related to everything else, and that what promises security from one kind of threat may heighten the dangers posed by other threats. Then we must not let our fear of negative consequences, known or unknown, keep us from doing anything at all.

So we move forward, step by step, thoughtfully and fearlessly casting what light we do have into the shadows around us as we try to find the best path into the future. It does us no good to deny either the light we carry or the darkness around us, to ignore what helps us see something and what keeps us from seeing anything.

As I write this I am thinking about what I know about science and technology. They are neither our saviors nor our servants, but tools that will be only as good as the use we make of them. Hammers can build and they can destroy. It depends on what we decide to do with them.

In the aftermath of the current spate of terrible natural disasters, many of them focused on our home continent, we will not move forward without sound science and reliable technology. We must not allow preconceived notions, even those born of religious faith or political convictions, to blind us to what we can perceive, measure, understand, share, and do using our best intellects.

To do any otherwise is to deny the intellects that, I believe, God has given us. Trusting this gift, I am both humbled and empowered.

Fiddlin' Around

President Donald Trump has given new meaning to the old notion of “fiddling while Rome burns.” His administration’s announcement yesterday about rescinding DACA (a message delivered by his beloved Attorney General) was a cynical and calculating pandering to the worst in American society.

I understand why it would be better for DACA to be legislated. But it hasn’t been, and who’d bet on it ever becoming law? The victims are some 800,000 young adults living within our borders who probably have cleaner criminal records and are contributing more to our economy and society than any random sampling of 800,000 native-born Americans. They’ve all been checked out in ways I’ve never been. Now their future is in the hands of a dysfunctional Congress. How is that just?

Ohio’s Republican Senator, Rob Portman, likes to present himself as a compassionate human being. After all, he is against human trafficking and the opioid epidemic, and backs legislative efforts to combat both. But what kind of opposition does he face on those issues? I haven’t heard of any demonstrations in favor of human trafficking and drug addiction. But when it comes to DACA, he hides behind “the law” and “the constitution.” I take neither lightly, but there are situations when the right thing to do does not neatly fit into legalistic categories. This is one of those situations.

I do not know if DACA would stand up in court. Maybe President Trump should have let the Attorneys General who threatened to take him to court if he didn’t rescind it have at it. His own Justice Department, of course, would have sided with them, so they’d probably win. But he’d have shown himself as a man of compassion. Instead we see, again, the “realDonaldTrump.”

On the day of the President/Attorney General’s announcement, the other news was of hurricane-caused destruction and suffering in Texas and Louisiana; of an even larger storm bearing down on small islands and no doubt the U.S. mainland; of N. Korea and the U.S. brandishing nuclear weapons at each other; of tens of thousands of acres of the North American continent being incinerated; and of a hundred other tragedies. Nevertheless, they found time to appeal to his “base” and put the future of 800,000 human beings in doubt.

Good performance, Mr. Trump . . . your fiddling while the republic burns.

Birds At Home

Standing on a short ladder, I reached up to the top of the downspout–where it bends just under the gutter–and unceremoniously pushed the now-empty robin’s nest off its perch. It sailed to the ground, and landed with a soft thud.

I reached down to pick it up, intending to carry it back into our woods so it could return to the earth, and noticed how solid it felt it my hand. I examined it carefully, turning it over and over. It had suffered no discernible damage from its fall. And it was beautiful.

Through the years I have been caught up short by many of the wonders of nature’s works. But two days ago that perfect home for hatching and raising a new generation of robins struck me as one of the most magnificent of those wonders. It is perfect. It is strong and solid, but light-weight; woven tight, but soft.

How do robins know how to do that?

Season after season robins construct who-knows-how-many nests, most of them never seen by any human being. And now I held one of them in my hand, and it was, it is own way, as magnificent as the Alaskan mountains and glaciers we saw just a couple of weeks ago. And I, being human, almost swept it away without a thought.

Around the corner of our house, not far from the robin’s nest, we hang a wren house. At least a dozen–maybe more–generations of wrens have been hatched there, and we take special joy in watching for them each year. One (a male, I’ve read) claims the house first, builds a nest, and then sings for a mate. When he finally attracts the perfect partner, they work together to produce and nurture the new chicks. When they are feeding them the parents fly all day for days to and from the evergreens behind our house, feeding the hungry children until they fledge. One day they are all there; the next they are all gone. We rarely see the leave-taking.

This year’s wren nesting seemed as if it would never get off the ground. No one showed up until late June, and he (as I understand it) sang for weeks with no apparent success. Finally, just before we left on July 30 to be away for more than two weeks, a second wren did show up. We figured we’d miss whatever was to happen next.

The same day that I removed the robin’s nest I peered into the wren house through its entrance. Yes, there was a nest in there. But there had been no activity since we’d come home, and I figured the nesting was done. I took the house down and opened it to clean it out. The jumble of twigs and grass that wrens use to make their nest cradled two tiny, dead birds, just beginning to show their feathers. Some tragedy had befallen our wren family. It had been a difficult season for them from beginning to end.

It may be time for a new wren house. I want to offer these little birds we so enjoy watching and hearing the best home that I can. I could never build a nest the way birds do, but I do like to help them when possible. Their success and mine are interwoven as intricately as the grasses in that robin’s nest. Their intelligence and skill are different than any I possess. Sometimes I think it is equal to mine.

Nature’s results are never 100% what we think they ought to be, or even what they need to be for success. In this, as in perhaps every way, human beings are just like everything else. It’s pretty humbling. Awesome, even.

ABOUT THOSE STATUES...

ABOUT THOSE STATUES…

I have been reading and thinking quite a bit about the “Confederate Statues” controversy, and offer the following thoughts:

(Be advised, I am a “northerner,” so my views may reflect some geocentric bias.)

1. The conversation is helpful to me personally. For as long as I can remember I have felt ambivalent about these memorials; now I recognize why.

2. One possible solution: contextualize the statues historically by placing a similar-sized statue of a slave in chains next to each one of them. Doing this will preserve the history that many today claim they do not want to lose. Slavery is, after all, what they were fighting to preserve. An explanatory plaque would be a cheaper, but less effective, alternative.

(I know that some argue that the Civil War was not about slavery, but slavery was the intractable problem that led to everything else associated with the war.)

3. Another solution: move all the statues to museums that teach the history not only of the war itself, but of the century that followed it. Or maybe move them to battlefields or Civil War cemeteries, such as Gettysburg and Johnson’s Island, where they really can serve a historic purpose. My understanding is that many of them were put up decades after the war, as much to bolster the legalized racism practiced in most of the south in the early 20th century as to honor particular soldiers. These statues do not need to be displayed in places of honor in order to be useful, though I am not sure how much instructional value most of them actually have.

(I am wary of destroying history’s artifacts when they make us uncomfortable. Second only to the crimes against people perpetrated by Isis has been its destruction of historically significant works of art in the ancient world. Isis’s fundamental contempt for human culture and history is a crime against us all.)

(I am also wary of angry crowds taking it upon themselves to pull down and destroy statues. Mob action is a highly risky last resort, maybe.)

4. The Governor of Maine compared the destruction of Confederate statues to the possible destruction of 9/11 memorials? Really? That’s bizarre.

5. Speaking of history: weren’t these Confederate Generals traitors? Didn’t they participate in an armed rebellion against the country of their birth and to which many of them must have sworn allegiance when they signed on as soldiers and officers in the US Army? (Robert E. Lee, chief among them.) To have allowed them to go back home to take up their lives again after the war was one thing. To honor and celebrate them is quite another. What Americans would want to do that 150+ years after the last shots were fired?

6, in which I answer the question I posed in the final sentence of #5: Americans who long for another rebellion against the United States of America, that’s who would want to honor and celebrate those rebels; Americans armed to the teeth because they think the only way to save their country and their way of life is by violence; Americans who wear Nazi symbols and who wave Confederate flags because they want their convictions to become our fears.

7. Where else on earth would any government tolerate for a moment, much less for a century and a half, the near veneration of those who had taken up arms against it, leading to uncountable loss of lives and properties, for a cause–chattel slavery–that history has judged to be absolutely evil? We are such a complex amalgam of competing passions!

Donald Trump and the Threatened Triumph of Ideology over Democracy

It is increasingly apparent that ideology is threatening to overcome our democracy. The right is currently in the driver’s seat, but the left could just as well be there, and may well be in the future.

As we have become more and more fragmented and compartmentalized socially and politically, a vacuum has been left in our national fabric. It’s a vacuum that ideologies are eager to fill. We know and encounter one another on increasingly impersonal and functional terms, and are less able than in the past to match faces to the names of people with whom we interact. One sign of this is the unacceptable and offensive habit of talking on a cell phone will paying for purchases. There is apparently no need to acknowledge the human being who is serving you when you’ve got your own little circle of friends and family to attend to. Online shopping regularizes our indifference to people who are different than us, and makes such indifference acceptable.

Ideology categorizes people, problems, and solutions according to impersonal standards. Its success depends upon blindness to the rich variety of humanity and of human experience. The more we know about and understand one another, the harder it is for us to speak and think in discrete categories about one another. Ideology subverts democracy, which functions because we are individuals who participate with one another in public, civic activities (such as voting), by shaping us into compliant cogs in someone else’s ordered machine. That machine depends upon adherence to particular laws and rules which cannot be broken without threatening the entire machine. Democracy, by definition, is messy…the way life itself is messy.

Earlier this week our all-powerful immigration folks deported a man to Mexico who had been living illegally in the United States since 2001 but who has been, by all accounts, a contributing and responsible member of our society. You can say (as some of you will) that they were only enforcing the law, and you would be right to a point. But not to the point of justice, which should be the goal of all law and its enforcement. When Jesus was criticized for breaking Sabbath regulations, he told his accusers that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. Laws and rules should serve people and human flourishing, not stifle or exclude them.

What does President Donald Trump have to do with all of the above? As a narcissist, he is the perfect leader in an era of ideology over democracy because is actually interested in neither. His primary and consuming interest is in himself and (perhaps) in a very, very tight circle of immediate family members. People who are driven by ideology (think Steve Bannon) can run roughshod over him because he cannot see how their plans affect anyone other than himself because he cannot see anyone other than himself. I believe he is, in fact, being used by extreme right-wing/alt-right forces to place America under lock and key. Then, they’ll throw away the key.

Yesterday I read that Trump’s Chief of Staff came very close to suggesting they are “looking at” the First Amendment, perhaps to find ways to “protect” the President and other political leaders from criticism. Today’s headline is that Trump is wondering if he might be able to pardon himself. This is narcissism run amok with political power, and one can only wonder how long and far it will have to go before the whole nation figures it out.

Not Enough America to Go Around?

How do those of us who are appalled by the dangerous and disheartening directions our country seems to be heading celebrate the Fourth of July…Independence Day?

Someone who shares my political apprehensions said to me last night, “It’s hard to celebrate the Fourth with what’s going on.” I think I have been feeling the same way recently, but her speaking those words jolted me into analyzing my feelings.

I realized that since last November I have been thinking a great deal about what it means to me to be an American, about what patriotism means to me, and have been expressing my patriotism in statements of resistance to current political trends and follies. In a way, it is easier to celebrate the Fourth of July when what today means to me as an American is under attack.

What does being an American mean to me? Start with freedom and liberty . . . the freedom and liberty afforded each individual as Americans together. It’s not just MY freedom and liberty that matter to me, but the freedom and liberty we all are promised. So, to be an American is to be one who is as passionate about the freedom others enjoy as about his or her own.

Justice…justice for me, justice for you, justice for each one. “Equal justice under law,” expresses the American ideal of justice. I deserve justice no more than does anyone else.

Opportunity and responsibility go hand-in-hand with freedom and justice. (That’s a lot of hands!) I have had many opportunities in my life, and I’ve carried out at least some of my responsibilities. Every American is deserving of opportunities no less than those afforded to me, and every American should be free to assume all the responsibility she or he can for living in our society.

The point I am trying to make is that being an American is not just about me, nor is it just about people like me. It is about all of us together. There are basics we all should be able to enjoy even as we fuss and fume with one another about how as many of us as possible might achieve them.

Unfortunately, complex and intertwined economic, cultural, religious, and political forces are converging in our time to isolate us from one another. They are stoking fear that each of us can only get what we think we want if we deny others what they need, as if there is not enough America to go around. We harden our hearts and minds to let no outsiders into our circle, and America–first the ideal and then the reality–fragments.

Last week we were able to visit Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. Not a one of those has any meaning to me as an individual unless it speaks to and of the experiences and aspirations of us all. They speak of big hopes and of bold dreams for today and far into the future.

We also visited the 9/11 Museum and Memorial. It, too, is about us all. It tells a horrible story, but also points to how we face and overcome adversity and terror.  We face and overcome them together, by birth or adoption sons and daughters together of what Independence Hall, Lady Liberty, and Ellis Island represent.

The American patriot never stops believing there is more than enough America to go around. Happy Fourth of July, all 325,000,000+ of us!

A Text for Yesterday and More

Yesterday evening – toward the end of the day of shootings in Alexandria and San Francisco – I happened across the following by Argentine-Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman:

You want to free the world, free humanity, from oppression? Look inside, look sideways, look at the hidden violence of language. Never forget that language is where the other, parallel violence, the cruelty exercised on the body, originates.

It seemed an appropriate text for another day of horrendous violence in our violence-saturated world. I sat quietly, stunned, for a full five minutes after I read it.

Watch out, Dean, for what you say. You do not own a gun, but what if your words help accelerate our spiral into anarchy?

My Personal Gripe with Airlines

Allow me a first-world complaint, please. Such complaining comes with privilege.

A day after members of congress grandstanded their scolding of airline execs, word slips out that American plans to squeeze seats even closer together than they already are on the major airlines. The space between seats is already too small for "normal" sized humans, and virtually impossible for 6'6"-ers like me. I fly with my knees wedged against the seat in front of me, or with one leg snuck into the aisle. They don't like that much. I know because they crash their food carts into that leg when they can.

It's all intended, of course, to make us pay extra to purchase a seat we can sit in, which should be a minimum acceptable standard, a Creator-endowed human right. I should not have to pay extra for size beyond my control.

Then there are the glossy, full-page ads for the wonders of first-class, so generous that there's not a crumb left for the peasants. And boarding procedures that prioritize the lucky few in a thousand categories far above most of us . . . how do they ever dream up all those upper-crust categories? It's humiliating and it's silly.

There oughta be a law, and there would be, but we don't want to over-regulate the airlines, do we?

It was good optics to bawl out United's President for the unfriendly dragging of a passenger off one of his planes. But ordinary, day-in, day-out indignatives affect 90% of airline passengers. These corporate-generated indignities heighten the stress and frustration which the cabin crews have to manage as best they can. 

Despite it all, I will no doubt fly again. May the cameras roll when they drag me off, felled by a blood clot in a leg I had not been able to move for hours. Maybe someone "up there" will notice. Or even care.

My Very Good Friday

Today began with a three hour visit with my friend Eric, incarcerated in Ohio's Grafton Correctional Institution. He's been there more than two decades. He said something this morning that seemed appropriate for Good Friday, though I didn't recognize it until during worship this evening.

Eric told me that someone once told him that he needed, in prison, to live each day as if he were going to "go home" (be released) tomorrow. He called it the best advice he'd ever been given.

Somehow we got distracted from what should have been an obvious follow-up conversation about what that advice means to him. But on my drive home I thought about what living every day like that might mean to him: to live as if tomorrow he will be free and ready to take his place in society; to do what he can today to prepare for what he most dearly hopes for in the future; to be able to move into new life without regret or remorse. Eric has always seemed to me to live that way, and maybe now I know why.

Tonight's Good Friday service was beautiful, as Episcopal services, I am learning, tend to be. Long, yes, (as Episcopal services also tend to be) but filled with powerful, compelling, poetic words and soul-touching music and rich symbolism and actions.

In some strange long-distance leap from Grafton's visitation room to that classic, colonial American-like sanctuary, I heard Eric's words: "Live each day as if you are going home tomorrow."

Somehow the rituals of these somber services of Holy Week prepare us for the joy of Easter. But by Easter I mean not just the day after tomorrow, but tomorrow itself. They help us taste the freedom for which we devoutly long, to do what we need to do to live the kingdom of God in whose midst we are, to live forgiven of regret and liberated from remorse. Eric's advice from prison is good advice to all who live in prisons that keep us from real life.

At the end of the service worshippers were invited to come forward "to offer their adoration of the Cross by touching it and offering silent prayer." The Cross in question was a simple wooden one with a symbolic "crown of thorns" hanging from its crossed beams. From the choir area I watched worshippers come forward, almost lean on the cross and silently pray. (We were leading the congregation in singing, "My Song is Love Unknown.")

Toward the end a man with a maybe three-year-old child in his arms came forward to touch the cross. First he touched it, and then he guided her hand to touch it, too. He was white, the child was black. I don't know their story. I do know the scene brought tears to my eyes. Not just, perhaps, father and daughter, but also white and black. I know she learned a whole lot of real Christian theology tonight. And I know that they are ready for God's realm of peace, justice, and freedom that is at hand–so near they reached out together and touched it.

When Our President Gets Generous, Hold On to Your Wallet

I am amused and appalled by Donald Trump's donation of his first quarter's presidential salary to the National Park Service. That comes to $78,333, a pittance given his administration's proposed $1.5 billion cut in the Park Service's funding for the coming fiscal year. It's even a pittance compared to  $229 million, which is how much Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says the Service is behind "in deferred maintenance on our battlefields alone." Trump designated his "gift" for historic battlefield maintenance.

If he'd given the NPS the value of the perks and benefits he's received in flitting back and forth to Florida and in maintaining and protecting luxury homes for his far-flung family this might be a different story. Perhaps it would provide enough money to remove all references to "climate change" from all Park Service signs and publications, no doubt a costly project. But perhaps ExxonMobile is underwriting it already.

Of course, Trump's minions made a big deal of it. Smilin' Sean Spicer presided over the giving of the check to Secretary Zinke, who was accompanied by Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Superintendent Tyrone Brandyburg, who just happens to appear to be black! A perfect photo op if the world ever saw one.

President Trump's gift is amusing, but in an appalling sort of way. The president who is hellbent on turning our Park Service, and many other beneficial government agencies, into charity cases, donates money that means nothing to him to the maintenance of historic battlefields.  Battlefields . . . lest anyone doubt his love for military spending.

He turns the National Park Service into a plaything for him to be "generous" to, or not, upon his whim. Take away $1.5 billion here, put in $78 thousand there. Enough $78 thousands gifts and you might get to $1.5 billion some day, or even to $229 million.

What a joke. When will everyone see the sham and shame this guy represents?

What Facts Support the President's Environmental Actions?

If I thought anything President Trump and his administration are doing was based upon facts, or even informed observation, I'd be more likely to be giving him a chance.

For example, his actions yesterday regarding the environment and global climate change: the vast majority of experts in those fields are convinced that those actions fly in the face of facts.

(Disclaimer: majorities can be wrong, and the "vast majority" of environmental and climate change experts might be wrong. But the rigors of the scientific method, which include the verification by others of observations and conclusions, have proven over time to provide reliable information, information upon which we can base informed decisions. Yes, new information can alter or even disprove previously-held conclusions. That's the way of science. But in many situations we must make our best decisions now based upon what we know now, because the future can't wait.)

So, whose verified or at least potentially verifiable research did the Trump team cite to justify pulling back on President Obama's environmental policies or reopening the way to increased use of coal and other fossil fuels? Who is saying that pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere will not hasten the onslaught of the most drastic effects of climate change, evidence of which we are already seeing around the globe, not to mention in our own backyards, this March of 2017? Which economists (those practitioners of what someone once called 'the dismal science') believe that government deregulation will revive the struggling coal industry?

The rest of the world, including even China, is positioning itself to move toward a future of cleaner energy, while the United States seeks to revive the towering smokestacks that once dotted our skylines and filled our lungs with deadly particles and poisons.

I believe we can protect the environment, can possibly manage climate change, and can create and maintain good jobs. But not by increasing our use of fossil fuels. Trump's actions encourage the fossil fuel industry that helped elect him and they encourage the short term interests of people like me who prosper when the markets go up. But they are not good for our children or grandchildren. And the coal fields of Appalachia will remain as depressed as they are.

Today's Plain Dealer reports that a Cleveland City Councilman is on his way to Washington to try to counter the planned near-destruction of the EPA by President Trump and the Secretary of the Late EPA. What better messenger can there be than one whose city's "burning river" proved to be the flame that ignited the largely bipartisan environmental protection movement that cleaned up the Cuyahoga River and much, much more?

Your thoughtful and informed responses will be welcomed.

Gunboat Diplomcy

We probably will not see any large demonstrations in favor of restoring cuts in State Department funding to the budget President Trump has sent to Congress. Who cares about a bunch of diplomats putting in their time on foreign affairs when we've got the USA to take care of?

There might be a few little shows of complaint about cutting back on "foreign aid." But again, who wants to give anything to anybody but us, even the teeny, tiny little bit we presently give? Let them take care of themselves.

There no doubt will be (and is already) quite a hue and cry regarding the massive increase in "defense" (i.e., "war") spending, but we really, really need that...or do we? Does that 10%/$54,000,000,000 increase have any verifiable rationale behind it, or is it just a number that sounded good to the folks in the White House? It will certainly play in Peoria, and wherever tanks and boats are made.

So, we cut back on our ability to know and analyze what's happening around the world, to craft strong AND thoughtful responses to challenges when necessary, to make friends by showing ordinary people in faraway lands that we are generous nation, to do the hard work of making peace...and then, when we end up with no apparent option but military force, we blame everyone else for forcing us into wars that sacrifice American blood and waste American treasure.

All this, like so much else these days, makes no sense whatsoever, and is a disgrace for our nation.

Song of the Earth

Song of the Earth

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.  

                                                                                            Wendell Berry

I write about an experience that I really cannot put into words. That experience was at a concert of music that perhaps 99.9% of the population does not know.

I do not intend to sound "elitist" in making such a judgment. Indeed I, despite having been aware of the music for decades, never understood it in the way I understood it at that moment. I barely understood it at all. Nor did I feel what I take to be its "message" until that night, that moment, at that concert. (Even these words are inadequate.)

I will begin with a confession: I've always had more than a little trouble with Christian teachings on the resurrection. I know I should have always been certain about resurrection–both the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of individuals–because I have, in my role as a pastor, often stood firm on the subject in the presence of others. People no doubt thought I was certain. Fortunately, there are biblical and liturgical words as well as prayers that make it easy to sound certain, because they sound certain. I just had to read them with conviction.

Unfortunately, from my standpoint, much of what has found its way into our prayers and into our liturgies and into our common cultural understanding of resurrection is either quite unbiblical, or at best a tiny minority report within the greater biblical witness. It is also hard to make sense of.

I have great problems, both theologically and personally, with the soul-body dichotomy that comforts many. I cannot wrap my mind around notions of a heavenly dwelling place for disembodied spirits somewhere "up there." I struggle with the idea that eternity has the wherewithal to judge lives bound by constraints of time and space. I don't know what eternity with "all the saints" would actually be or feel like (should I make it into that great company), and seriously doubt that I would have the patience to live with so august a gathering for that long. And though I like to sing, I would hope there are long breaks in the rehearsals and concerts of the heavenly choirs.

I've gone from fairly serious to fairly silly in the above, but you may get the idea: I am not comfortable with somehow being split in two so that the two halves of me end up forever totally separated from each other. I am not comforted by the thought of being thus divided. I think, I feel, I know that soul and body are each integral to who I am. Resurrection without both (or all) parts of me makes no sense to me.

Anyway, the concert I speak of was by the Cleveland Orchestra last month. Under the direction of guest conductor Donald Runnicles, and featuring mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and tenor Paul Groves, the Orchestra performed Gustav Mahler's Song of the Earth.

If I haven't lost you yet, hang on, and I will do my best to keep you in the fold.

Gustav Mahler wrote really long, really complex music in which he tried to sort out the meaning of life and of death. Song of the Earth was composed in 1908, and takes around a hour to perform. Its words are from the works of a German named Hans Bethge, who creatively reworked them from "classic Chinese poems." In Mahler's hands, Bethge's poems are about life and death...no, they are about life that dies. Or about death that lives. In the earth.

Here's another confession those of you who do know Song of the Earth will probably chuckle over, because it reveals how limited my appreciation of music can be: I've had recordings of Song of the Earth for maybe 40 years: an old, old LP, and a much newer CD. I've listened to it now and then and tried to follow it and understand it, but never really got into it until last month. Maybe I wasn't ready for it until that night I sat still for an hour and concentrated on it (concentration is a life-long problem of mine).

I listened hard to it, and this is what I think I heard: The hope for us is in return to the earth, in return to the soil, in return–body and soul–to the land from which we came. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," as the liturgy says, reflecting the Genesis 2 creation account, and the New Testament assurance of the redemption of the earth, of "all things," in Jesus Christ.

Or, as the priest assured me Wednesday night as he crossed ashes my forehead, "From dust you have come; to dust you shall return."

The final words of the Mahler's Song of the Earth are these, sung exquisitely last month by Michelle DeYoung:

Where am I heading? I go, I wander into the mountains.
I seek peace for my lonely heart.
I go to my native land, my home!
I shall never roam in distant lands.
My heart is quiet, and awaiting its hour!
The beloved earth everywhere blossoms forth in spring and greens anew!
Everywhere and forever the horizon brightens to blue!
Forever...forever...

As "forever" (German ewig) faded, I felt a comfort about my place in eternity that I cannot recall ever before feeling, a comfort and a peace about death that I cannot put into words. Did hints of the texture and smell of the good, rich soil of my native Iowa make their way into my subconscious? Was that the peace beyond my understanding? I do not know. I cannot put it into words.

Does what I have dared confess and affirm in this essay cast doubt on my identity as a Christian? I don't really think so. The claim–my lifelong conviction–of God's incarnation in Jesus the human being makes me think that what I am questioning and finding is very much Christian.

I have no illusions that I've experienced anything new (as evidence, the Wendell Berry quote at the top). But that experience and the way I felt it was and is new to me. It comforts me. I am consoled.

Serious Thoughts While Celebrating My Birthday

Today is my birthday, and I should be posting something light and positive. Certainly the past year of my life has brought me a lot of personal joy and satisfaction. I am grateful to be alive and reasonably healthy. I am grateful for every member of my family, and for my friends.

But I’ve always been a fairly serious person, with an eye turned upon the larger context within which we all live. So the reflections that follow are dark, because I believe our context is darkening quickly.

One of the more troubling ads from last year's presidential campaign featured an American immigrant praising the wonders of our nation and its freedoms. He had obviously been here a long time. Toward the end, as he was summing up his feelings, he called the Second Amendment to our Constitution the basis of these freedoms.

I was stunned. Guns, in the hands of citizens (even a citizens’ militia), are the foundation of freedom in our democracy?

A gun is a weapon. It is an instrument of bodily injury and death. I assume even the most ardent gun enthusiast fears a loaded gun aimed at his or her heart.

The basis of our liberty is guns, and the fear and death they bring with them?

I was raised with the conviction that the basis of our liberty is the rule of law...that the framers of our Declaration of Independence and the authors of our Constitution struggled mightily to replace the power of kings and princes with the greater power of words. Not just any words, but words carefully constructed and mutually agreed upon to represent their best attempt to provide a basis for a fair, just, secure, and peaceable society. It was to be a society in which all could participate equally as common citizens, in which no one was above anyone else by virtue of birth or station in life, and in which every man, woman, and child and her or his dreams and hopes were respected. The founders’ words did not guarantee anyone's success, but they did attempt to guarantee everyone’s right to have a shot at success.

Of course, our founders tended to define "everyone" shamefully narrowly. “White, male, landowners” was one way it was put. It was not the best or most generous way to define “everyone.” Enlightened legislators and passionate agitators and a bloody Civil War determined it was also not the final way to define “everyone.” We have traveled a long, long path. Mostly by law, though sometimes with the prompting of guns. But in the end law prevailed. We remain a constitutional republic, under the rule of law, not of individuals. We are still on the path.

Many are wary about where this path has taken us in the last 40 or 50 years. Perhaps you are. “Wariness” is caution about a thing or a situation, perhaps a lesser form of fear. I understand that many Americans who see things differently than I do are wary, fearful even. Socialist Bernie Sanders strikes fear in many hearts, as does "crooked" Hillary.  The threats, real or overblown, of gun confiscation, of no choice of doctors, of jobs that don't pay well when they are available at all, of children’s education being limited to public schools, of a truly multi-cultural and multi-racial and multi-religious America…these and many other fears coalesced to put Donald Trump in the White House. I can understand that many people are wary about these and other things.

This is my invitation: tell me more about what you are afraid of, and I will try to understand you better. If you will allow me, I will even share my point of view with you. I disrespect no person because of their opinion and outlook.

But this is what I fear barely three weeks into Donald Trump's presidency and the Republican party's dominance across the nation. Will you give me a moment to hear me?

I fear the collapse of the rule of law, and descent into a sort of vigilantism that ruled in "the old West." I fear the demise of respect for true learning and education, with broadside the attacks on science and scientific method and public education. I fear the shredding of a truly free press, starting at the top with a President more concerned with what is said about him than with what he actually says. I abhor the denigration of women as well as of minorities of all sorts, who are where they are today because of hard-fought battles to secure their rightful place in American society. I am wary of the demeaning of the judiciary and of judges by our President when they dare to interpret the law as they see it. I disdain walls built to keep people apart because of their skin color, economic status, religion, or national origin. I weep over the blatant rape of our natural world in the quest for more wealth for a few.

I am terrified that in our fear we have forgotten that in the end, we all have to live together, as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

But more than any of those, and perhaps underlying them all, I fear the carelessness, the callousness, the seemingly-calculated clumsiness of our current crop of political leaders and institutions, which intentionally or not make mockery of government "of, by, and for the people." Yes, I fear some Democrats almost as much as I fear most Republicans. But on the whole I feel as if our nation is victim of a terror attack from within, from this President and his appointees and this Congress, and the terror I feel is real. It is a terror far beyond wariness, even beyond mere fear.

If I owned a gun, perhaps, I would feel better. But probably not. I feel people who share my fears are faced with a powerful opposition that has been led to believe that the basis of our freedoms is guns in the hands of as many as possible. And that opposition holds those guns. That is not freedom, certainly not for me. It's anarchy. And anarchy is not pretty, no matter how rosily it is idealized by some.

Today I turn 74 years old. I claim that's old enough to have some perspective on American history. This is it: I have never been more afraid for the land of my birth, for the land I love, for the United States of America, than I am today. Give me reason to feel otherwise, if you can. Give me reason to be confident of our future as a free people.

I’m serious about this.

Am I Proud that Donald Trump is President?

In a word, my answer is "no." Which you probably knew already.

Some of my Facebook friends keep asking me, forwarding to me boilerplate posts to which they hope I will "like," or maybe even "love." What I really want to do is "weep," but that would attract the kind of attention none of us needs. So I scroll through them.

But I am not proud that Donald Trump is President. If for no other reason that what he said to a White House gathering to mark the beginning of Black History month, which I will paste here for all to read. And weep.

Well, the election, it came out really well. Next time we’ll triple the number or quadruple it. We want to get it over 51, right? At least 51.
Well this is Black History Month, so this is our little breakfast, our little get-together. Hi Lynn, how are you? Just a few notes. During this month, we honor the tremendous history of African-Americans throughout our country. Throughout the world, if you really think about it, right? And their story is one of unimaginable sacrifice, hard work, and faith in America. I’ve gotten a real glimpse—during the campaign, I’d go around with Ben to a lot of different places I wasn’t so familiar with. They’re incredible people. And I want to thank Ben Carson, who’s gonna be heading up HUD. That’s a big job. That’s a job that’s not only housing, but it’s mind and spirit. Right, Ben? And you understand, nobody’s gonna be better than Ben.
Last month, we celebrated the life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., whose incredible example is unique in American history. You read all about Dr. Martin Luther King a week ago when somebody said I took the statue out of my office. It turned out that that was fake news. Fake news. The statue is cherished, it’s one of the favorite things in the—and we have some good ones. We have Lincoln, and we have Jefferson, and we have Dr. Martin Luther King. But they said the statue, the bust of Martin Luther King, was taken out of the office. And it was never even touched. So I think it was a disgrace, but that’s the way the press is. Very unfortunate.
I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things. Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.
I’m proud to honor this heritage and will be honoring it more and more. The folks at the table in almost all cases have been great friends and supporters. Darrell—I met Darrell when he was defending me on television. And the people that were on the other side of the argument didn’t have a chance, right? And Paris has done an amazing job in a very hostile CNN community. He’s all by himself. You’ll have seven people, and Paris. And I’ll take Paris over the seven. But I don’t watch CNN, so I don’t get to see you as much as I used to. I don’t like watching fake news. But Fox has treated me very nice. Wherever Fox is, thank you.
We’re gonna need better schools and we need them soon. We need more jobs, we need better wages, a lot better wages. We’re gonna work very hard on the inner city. Ben is gonna be doing that, big league. That’s one of the big things that you’re gonna be looking at. We need safer communities and we’re going to do that with law enforcement. We’re gonna make it safe. We’re gonna make it much better than it is right now. Right now it’s terrible, and I saw you talking about it the other night, Paris, on something else that was really—you did a fantastic job the other night on a very unrelated show.
I’m ready to do my part, and I will say this: We’re gonna work together. This is a great group, this is a group that’s been so special to me. You really helped me a lot. If you remember I wasn’t going to do well with the African-American community, and after they heard me speaking and talking about the inner city and lots of other things, we ended up getting—and I won’t go into details—but we ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years. And now we’re gonna take that to new levels. I want to thank my television star over here—Omarosa’s actually a very nice person, nobody knows that. I don’t want to destroy her reputation but she’s a very good person, and she’s been helpful right from the beginning of the campaign, and I appreciate it. I really do. Very special.
So I want to thank everybody for being here.
— President Donald Trump, celebrating Black History Month 02-01-2017.

Does this kind of thing matter? Does the ability to speak in sentences make a difference? Is it a concern when he keeps reminding folks that he won the election and that the press is his enemy? Yes, it does when he is the President of the United States. Taken together it is a sign that he is a man ripe for being controlled and misled by those around him if they seem to agree with his unformed and uninformed thoughts. 

And then there's that phone conversation with Australia's Prime Minister.

Me, proud? Sorry, can't say that I am.

A Nation of Immigrants

We lived in the Washington, D.C. area in 1976 when our United States of America celebrated the Bicentennial of our founding. If I remember correctly one of the main themes of that celebration was that we were, and still are, and always will be, "A Nation of Immigrants." Except for the native peoples whose lands are within our borders, every single one of our families is originally from someplace else.

Few of our ancestors came from someplace else's upper and privileged classes. Most of the original immigrants who came here were poor, oppressed, and often without any other hope in this world. Some of them even came here out of fear for their very lives.They were refugees, seeking asylum.

I trace my family lineage back to Norway, Germany/Switzerland, and Bohemia. I doubt that the original Myers immigrants faced much resistance based on their country of origin in the 1750's. I don't know much about my Grandmother Myers' families' experiences, but Nordic types probably assimilated relatively easily. My mother's Czech ancestors came here just around the turn of the 20th century, and I understand that "eastern" (more properly "central") Europeans did face discrimination initially, although their skin color probably saved them from the worst of it. Race, whatever it is or isn't, matters.

It is easy for me to forget that my forebears came from someplace else because I've always been here, as were my parents. It is easy to forget to be grateful not only for the courage of those who first came, but also for the nation that gave them a chance, though sometimes begrudgingly.

Many Americans are here because their ancestors were brought here against their will, often as slaves. That African Americans are also here today is testimony to the very different level of courage required of their forbears. That they are Americans with us is testimony to the nation that still has not completely given them a chance, and to the magnanimity of their spirits.

The clear intention of the Trump administration is to encourage us all to forget...to forget our past, and to forget to be grateful. It is doing everything that crosses into its bone-headed little brains to say to the world, "We don't respect you and we don't want you. Go away and go home."

Is this the kind of America Americans want? Is this really what everyone who voted for Donald Trump was hoping he would do, and is it the way they hoped he would do it? The heavy-handedness and clumsiness of his immigration order is evidence that the White House is not up to the job it has been given to do. Even some Republicans and conservatives are saying that now.

And is it the kind of American the world wants, and needs, and looks to? I'd like to hear from the people from other lands who happen upon this blog. How do we look to you now?

We are "A Nation of Immigrants." Even President Donald Trump cannot change that fact.