A generation of Christmases

This is the last Christmas during which our Myers family tree will shine its colorful lights upon the quiet wooded scene in the background. Shortly after the first of the year, Maxine and I are due to move to a retirement community a few miles north of here. No window in our new home will look out on a scene quite like this one.

We’ve celebrated thirty Christmases here. That’s about a generation. Our children grew up in this place, and are now in their own places, completely immersed in pursuing careers and nurturing their own families and friendships. We grew old here, and are now making the kind of move old people make on the way to the final good-bye. We are sad to leave this house, but eager to be settled in our new one. We look forward to making new friends and to exploring new experiences.

So, the generations come and go. The Jewish and the Christian scriptures are absolutely clear about that. No particular generation or time or era or epoch is the final—the forever—one. By God’s design, each is a way-station to the next, charged only with leaving this temporal world in better shape than it had been.

Maybe that’s why, at Jesus’s birth, the angels sang a song that embraces both the uncreated and the created, and that touches each human being. Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to all is a hymn that celebrates all universes and universalities, yet at the same time it is a tune as close to us as our next encounter with worldly reality.

Praise God, live in peace, and be good to all. That’s about it.

Okay, I can expand on it: Trust love, grace, and peace; live day-by-day truthfully and justly; and forgive yourself and one another when anyone screws up so you and they can get back to the high calling of trusting love, grace, and peace.

Our family will gather around this tree one last time in the days after Christmas. We have different ideas about glorifying God, but we are almost always very good to one another, and to the many other people we meet upon our various journeys. Because none of us claims perfection, we know a thing or two about forgiveness. The generation succeeding us contributes enormously to the common good as educators and musicians and neighbors and citizens. Something good started flourishing under this roof, whether we knew it or not at the time. We are grateful.

If you are used to looking for a Christmas card/letter from us, it’s not in the mail. You will hear from us when we are in our new home. Meantime, there’s this house to sell, and a move to negotiate.

So, one more time, from this home to yours, Merry Christmas to you…and to all.

From my perspective...

The current impeachment inquiry of Our Current President (“OCP”) is important, necessary, and the right thing to do.

But it will not result in his removal from office. OCP has a long, long history of worming his way out of, or making people forget, every charge and accusation ever brought against him. His loyal base and trembling hangers-on will stay with him no matter what, even should he “stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody.” What makes anyone think they will abandon him over a quid pro quo regarding Ukraine and the Bidens?

Meanwhile, Australia burns, Venice drowns, deserts expand, storms get increasingly destructive, etc. Our United States of America willingly gives up its leadership role in the world, turning the planet over to narcissistic dictators and despots. Earth mourns.

If in 2119 humanity is still around to remember history, this impeachment process will be but a blip on its radar, no matter how it comes out. But Earth’s forever-altered climate, which our elected leaders have decided is not worth protecting, will be the main story from the 21st century— unless we have fought ourselves to death first because those same leaders valued conflict over cooperation.

Who won?

I promised I would let my loyal readers know how the Orange School Board race I wrote about last week turned out.

The Hunting Valley-resident candidate received a little more than 15% of the vote, and the two incumbents almost equally split the remaining nearly 85%. So they easily retained their seats.

Late last week we (and I assume everyone else in the district) received a letter from the Hunting Valley resident reiterating her concerns and denying she had anything to do with the vetoed attempt to tax Hunting Valley at a different rate.

Unfortunately, the incumbents never directly answered her concerns in a widely-distributed way. I think that is too bad. I don't know if that was a calculated plan or just the feeling they didn't need to. I think one good thing about this election campaign is that it did put some issues before us all, issues that might come back to trouble future requests from the school to increase our property taxes. I do not think it will be wise just to pretend none of it happened. I also think there will need to be some healing between the several communities that share the same school district.

I am happy the election turned out as it did. I hope the Orange Schools will not take the results as a sign they can rest on their laurels or do not need to take questions and critiques seriously.

Money and Politics, Up Close and Personal

Our local school district is a good place the witness the power money is having and is trying to have on the American political and social compact.

It’s a bit complicated to explain, but I will try. The Orange School District serves the residents of five communities and of small sections of some neighboring communities. We are located on Cuyahoga County's far southwest side, and comprise one of the more affluent areas of the county. There is relatively little poverty in our district, though there is some. I’d guess many of us are at least upper middle class, and the class category goes from there up to and including very, very wealthy. Why Maxine and I live here is another story, involving the church I was called to serve in 1989. It was not easy to live at or near the lower end of the income scale for the area, especially with two children going through the school system. Nevertheless, we have loved living where we live.

By far the wealthiest community in the Orange School District is Hunting Valley. Its 700 residents live mostly in homes you cannot see from the roads that make their way though the wooded landscape. Imposing gates keep unwanted visitors away. The homes you can see are large and beautiful, and just the landscaping around those closed gates is often spectacular.

Our current president has glad-handed folks in at least one of Hunting Valley’s estates. Donors have, in general, been very generous to Republican candidates, through I read that at least a few Democrats call Hunting Valley home.

As the most recent Ohio state budget was being considered by our legislature, the senator representing Hunting Valley (and other nearby communities) slipped into it an amendment to lower the property tax rate for Hunting Valley residents. This idea has been reported to have been under consideration by some Hunting Valley political leaders for some time. Apparently the fact that Hunting Valley sends very few children to the Orange Schools (in part because many of the relatively few school-aged kids who live there go to private schools) was deemed sufficient justification for the proposal. Some say now that many of the residents did not know anything about this plan; I have not heard anyone own up to being in the dark about it.

Had that amendment become law, it would have cost our district some $3 million per year in tax revenue, and it would have paved the way for other communities in other school districts to try to do the same thing. It would have meant either that our highly-regarded school system would have had to make significant cuts in what it offers, or to ask the rest of us to make up the difference via an increase in our tax rate.

Fortunately, Republican Governor Mike DeWine noticed the last-minute amendment, and vetoed it. I don’t agree with lots of things he is doing, but he seems at least to be a decent human being, with a sense of fair play. The offending state senator has admitted the way he did what he did was not the best.

You might think that would have ended it, but you’d be wrong. It’s school board election time. Two incumbent candidates with long histories of involvement in the Orange Schools were on the ballot for the two vacant positions. Then, a third candidate, this one a resident of Hunting Valley, threw her hat in the ring. She is on the faculty of Cleveland State University, where according to her publicity, she does outstanding work, including developing programs to help students who have come from poorer school districts succeed. She has also been successful in “doing more with less.” I have no reason to doubt her accomplishments in higher education.

But she offers no claim of experience with the Orange School District, or with any other public school system. She has no children, so she’s never even been a parent of a school student. She has not denied the charge that she’s never stepped foot in an Orange school, nor attended any meetings of the School Board or any of its committees or working groups.

What she has done is focus on statistics that show that Orange students do not do as well on standardized tests as do students in other top-ranked school districts, and the fact that the per pupil cost in Orange is one of the highest in Ohio. There are solid responses to her charges. I will not review them here, but I can share them with you if you are interested.

I will say this: our two daughters received outstanding educations at Orange, educations that served them well when they went to college, and into their lives and careers. They enjoyed many opportunities for enrichment in school, and their teachers and guidance counselors were almost always excellent and willing to work with them personally when they needed it.

Back to the money: I first became aware of the Hunting Valley candidate when news came out that she’d held a fund-raiser at a local Country Club, attended by many of Hunting Valley’s powers-that-be. Contributions of $500 and up rolled in. Her first financial report reveals that she has raised some $29,000 for her campaign, while her two opponents have raised $3,600 and $2,400. When asked about the disparity, the Hunting Valley resident candidate pointed out with pride that “no one has ever raised as much as me.” Among other expenditures she reported $11,600 as going to a public relations firm for “outreach.”

The election is next week, and our school district race has been the topic of many neighborhood discussions and several articles and opinion pieces in our local paper and even in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I think there is significant support for the two incumbents, for whom I have already voted. In a public forum, I heard their responses to their challenger’s concerns, but they haven’t done much to counter her criticisms more widely. I worry that voters who simply see the stats she cites will vote for her. We’ll see what happens.

No matter how this very local election turns out, it is a great object lesson in the place of money in our political process, here for all of us to see. How much greater it is on the state-wide and national scale! And how desperate “the 1%” must be to separate themselves from the merely well-off, as have Hunting Valley’s leaders. What are they afraid of losing, behind their closed gates? Why do they feel they should be excused from full proportional participation in the education of our community’s children?

Thinking and writing about this has, however, made me face where I stand in the hierarchy of privilege and wealth in our nation and world. It’s satisfying to take self-righteous pot-shots at those who have more than you do. It’s not so satisfying to realize how much more you have than the largest portion of the human race, and to seriously wonder how they view you and the way you use money to take advantage of them. After all, you are just protecting what’s yours. Who can argue with that?

Or is it mine only, really?

I will let you know how our school board election turns out.

Strange behavior

So strange the behavior of us church folk, and I suspect of most religious folk…

We willingly and, out of what feels for all the world like our own free will, gather regularly in response to the One whom we acknowledge to be greater than any one of us and than all of us together, the One who created all things and who desires the reconciliation and well-being of all things.

We gather to sing together, to pray together, to listen together, to eat together, blending our variety of voices and hopes and hungers and needs into one unholy mix that we believe is, in fact, made holy by our coming together the name of the One.

We gather to hear that our hurts are felt, our worries are known, our anxieties are understood, our isolation is overcome because we dare speak out loud about them in the presence of the One.

We gather to hear scripture and hymns and prayers and liturgies and sermons and the dreaded “announcements” urge us to welcome the stranger, share with the poor, embrace the outsider, seek justice for the oppressed, include the excluded, empty ourselves for the sake of others, and take risks for the One who made and loves us and in whom we trust.

We confess our sins and our mistakes and our errors before the One and everyone else, and know the forgiveness we have received gives us courage to try again, and to do better the next time. And what we are too afraid to share with everyone else, is quietly put before the One who loves us anyway/nonetheless/in-spite-of-it-all, and we are free.

We scatter to try to live our lives as best we can in response to the One, a few of us doing great things, most of us doing little things, some of us still trying to figure it all out, knowing we will find welcome that next time we gather.

So strange…so counter-cultural…so important…so misunderstood…so humbling…it’s a wonder we keep on doing it.

Wrapping up Climate Action Week with "what-ifs?"

Last week was a week designated for taking action regarding the Climate Crisis our planet faces. Of course, only one week out of the year is 51-weeks-short of what we could be doing, and I believe, should be doing.

I started the week by writing to two Orange Village officials about the environmental impact of a supposedly “green” housing development going up not far from our home. One wrote back, the other promises a phone call this week.

In the middle of the week I wrote to our Ohio U.S. Senators regarding climate. Senator Portman hasn’t responded (he probably will), and Senator Brown sent me a very comprehensive email stating his position.

Our main project this week was to eat locally-grown and produced vegetable-based meals. Perhaps you saw the post about that. As the week ended, I think we fulfilled that commitment quite well, and I don’t feel any worse off for it. I confess that it’s a bit of a challenge to think about where we go now food-wise, given our attention to planet-healthier eating options for a whole week. As I indicated in my original post, these are not entirely foreign practices for us, but maybe we’ve at least moved the marker a little closer to a truly sustainable diet.

Posting bogs about these acts is also part of my action. I realize my readership is extremely small, so I don’t expect to have much impact. I am not generally comfortable with participation in mass demonstrations, even though I know they can be very important. So if I write something that perhaps increases the awareness of one or two persons, that’s a least a small contribution.

I end this Climate Action week with a cluster of “what-if” questions that keep rattling around in my mind. I will try to state them as clearly as I can:

“What if we as a human race began to do all the things the scientists tell us we must do to counter the more drastic effects of climate change, and then discovered that the climate would have stabilized even if we had not done them? Are not climate-positive actions good for and beneficial to us without regard to their impact on our planet? Is doing the right thing for the sake of our planet’s future also doing the right thing for us as individuals and as societies?”

Do those questions make sense? Are they worth considering? I plan to keep working on them.

Thanks for reading.

How we eat

During this Climate Action Week, Maxine and I are doing a little something new. We've been inspired to do this by the report a couple of weeks ago regarding food and the climate/environment.

We are making an effort to eat locally-grown and produced food, and we are not eating meat.

When you live in Ohio, eating locally-grown food is much easier in September than it is in February. We belong to a food-buying club/co-op that provides us a bag full of fresh fruits and vegetables each week from May through October. I think being more intentional than we usually are about eating local during this week is helping us see how challenging it can be even when it is relative easy to do it.

At this point, we do not think we will give up all meat permanently. Maybe we should. There are many good reasons to do so. But to the extent that we do eat meat, we want to eat meat that is from animals raised as humanely and sustainably as possible. (I tried to write "slaughtered/harvested humanely," but that's a tough stretch.)

The environmental/climate implications of changing how we eat are profound. The major way we do agriculture, which could indeed "feed the world" if it were done justly, is extremely destructive to the natural environment, and contributes to the increasing rate of global climate change. Clearly, the billions of people now on planet Earth are not about to feed themselves year-round the way our agrarian ancestors did, so becoming more efficient and sustainable in the mass production and distribution of food should be a high priority for us and for the agricultural industry.

Maxine and I do not think these changes in our diet will prove to be permanent changes, although we have, in fact, been moving in these directions for many years. We think these are good moves for us and for the environment.

Nor do not believe what we are doing this week deserves any particular praise. It is more for our own awareness than for anything else. But I share it because it might get someone else to think about their own food habits. Perhaps you'd like to comment with your thoughts on the matter. I'd be grateful.

Have we given up on goodness?

Sometimes I think that when it becomes just too challenging to be "good," we revert to being "bad." That when doing "the right thing" gets really tough, we wallow in doing "the wrong thing."

That's what seems to have happened to our beloved nation, as well as throughout the world.

We–the USA–were, for years, proud to be the land where people could come when they had no other options. We celebrated any steps we took to overcome our legacy of institutional slavery and racism. We believed everyone deserved a fair shot at succeeding financially and socially. We counted on open and peaceful elections, and on our free, even if not always absolutely fair, press. Women felt, I believe, increasing power to determine their own destinies.

Courts could be counted on, at least some of the time, to side with the individual, particularly if their rights were being limited by practices and laws beyond their control. Our nation claimed to want to lead the world into new experiences of freedom and liberty.

We knew that compromise was essential to the survival of democracy, and treated our political adversaries with at least enough respect to give compromise a chance. We held that the minority always deserved to be heard and responded to, and that elected officials represented geographical areas inhabited by people of all kinds, not just their own partisans within that area.

We held that politeness and even grace should be the basis of almost any relationship.

In the last couple of decades or so many of us decided that all of this national "goodness" was too hard to pull off. It was not worth the effort. We began to doubt our own ability to be the nation we liked to say we were. Enough of us who had been trying to be that kind of citizen quit trying, which allowed those who never believed in such ideals anyway to step out of the shadows and into the light. Social media and the internet created breathing room for the worst of our doubts and fears, and continues to pump oxygen into them.

What will it take to restore our determination to be our best ethical selves in the the most just possible USA? What kind of leaders will successfully challenge us to go for "goodness" again?

Not those who shout and chastise and blame, or who refuse any compromise (except, when it serves their purposes, compromise with truth), or who lecture us as if we were ignorant. It will take quiet-spoken, thoughtful, and patient Americans who are willing to listen to all voices as well as to take responsibility for the decisions they finally make to get us to where we need to be, to where I honestly believe most of us truly want to be.

Enough, already!

Please, spare me any more jokes and Facebook memes about Sharpies!

The tendency of both President Trump and the press to blow something way of proportion has been demonstrated once again.

The president could have admitted he was wrong–blaming his "mistake" on bad information received from an underling–and that would of mercifully been the end of it. But he never makes mistakes, as he has told us so often, and he never, ever will admit to a mistake, as we have seen just as often.

The press–particularly organizations like CNN and USA Today–could have chalked it up as another awkward Trump misstatement, and let it go at that, but they continue to beat their drums about it. And the more they talk about it, the more he pushes back about it. Who knows how many words have been written about the presidential Sharpie?

There are, of course, serious issues behind all of this hoop-la.

For starters, President Trump, unlike most more-ordinary human beings, is never wrong. In order to prove he is right when he has been found to be wrong, he is willing to twist any agency of the government he can get his hands on participate in his mistake. That's a problem because it makes him sound like every self-obsessed dictator in human history.

But it's a problem for the press as well. Focusing endless attention on a relatively small matter, the press mostly ignores the major damage being done at the same time by a government bureaucracy accountable to no on but President Trump and his tweeted whims. This distraction from what really matters, from what is really eating away at our national psyche and health, is no doubt well-planned.

Which leads all this being our–the American peoples'– problem. The more we are chew on the silly and the ultimately inconsequential, the less likely it is that we will recognize the deadly poisons which government of, by, and for the people is being fed every day by the Trump administration and a Republican Party that has lost its way.

Thanks for reading. Now, please put your Sharpies away.

Monsters, then and now...

The Cleveland Museum of Art currently has special exhibition called, "Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders." It's a fascinating look into how depictions of fantastical monsters were used in medieval Europe to bolster claims of political and religious power, to define adversaries, and more. The description below at the entrance to the section on Aliens stuck me as being very relevant to our times. Made-up images (and words) still shape our perception of others, filling in the many blank spaces of what we do not know. What if we just tried to learn about others, instead of "monsterizing" them?

I highly recommend the exhibition. And if you feel that you need a break after you see it, pull yourself back together in the "African gathering place" in the Atrium. You will be glad you did...and it's all free!  

Truth is what I say it is

I am pretty sure that when Pontius Pilate responded to Jesus’s assertions about “truth” by asking “What is truth?” he was not at all interested in anyone’s answer to that question other than his own.

Pilate the politician was only invested in “truth” as he saw it, framed it, pictured it, promoted it. Truth was his “truth.” It was the world as he saw it, life as he lived it, reality as he wanted to try to shape it.

What is truth? Truth is me, because truth is what I say it is.

The what is truth? question has never been more important, nor more in contention, than it is today. Truth-discovery has never been easy, but the rise of the internet has made the process many times more difficult than ever before. Everyone’s opinion seems to have equal weight with everyone else’s opinion because that opinion, no matter how bizarre, can be shared instantly with everyone else. It’s all out there to see and to read and to share again, and the more it’s shared the more like truth that opinion seems to be. We have all participated in this practice. And numbed by the constant flow of information through commercially-driven sources of “news,” the less likely it is that the receivers of information will feel they have the ability or the responsibility to discern truth from falsehood.

I write the above in reaction to President Trump’s re-tweeting of a tweet by a known conspiracy-enabler claiming that Hillary Clinton had something to do with Jeffery Epstein’s death. Apparently there is not a shred of evidence for this charge. But that didn’t stop the President of the United States from sending it out “over his signature” to the world, but particularly to his loyal followers who will no doubt take it as true because it comes from him (truth is me, because truth is what I say it is) and send it on to others.

Donald Trump rocketed to political prominence by trying to convince the world that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. (Not true, as he later half-heartedly admitted.) As a candidate for President he cast doubt on the integrity of our elections before he was elected (ironic, yes?). Almost daily he gnaws away at the credibility of our news sources when he doesn’t like what they say about him (even Fox has not escaped his ire), at the credibility of science when its conclusions are not convenient for him, at the credibility of our courts when they don’t side with him, at the credibility of our constitutional checks and balances when they stand in his way, at the credibility of our allies when they want to do things differently than he wants to, even at the credibility of his own advisors when they have ideas other than his own. No truth but his “truth” matters because he himself is all that matters.

What is truth? Truth is me, because truth is what I say it is.

Conspiracies? You like conspiraracies? Here's one for you: A small group of highly-placed people is working together to undermine our republic by challenging the credibility of our most basic institutions. They know, as sure as they know the sun will rise tomorrow, that if they are successful the day will come when in the public’s mind there will only be one source of truth: the Tweets of Trump.

Frightening.

If I were the President of the United States, and had to spend a day in Air Force One traveling to Ohio and then to Texas in order to visit the victims of two mass shootings, I wonder what I’d be feeling and thinking as I flew 30,000 feet plus over this blessed land, home to 325,000,000 human beings…

I like to think I’d be feeling deepest sorrow as I reflected on each life forever changed by bone-shattering bullets.

I like to think I’d get outside of myself long enough to demonstrate genuine compassion for and understanding of others.

I like to think I’d be asking what more I could do, in my position, to keep these atrocities from happening, and that I’d be reviewing all of my assumptions about what works and what doesn’t work so I could re-examine them in the days to come.

I like to think I’d be asking my advisors to come up with creative and doable ideas–ideas that a majority of Americans would likely support–to limit gun violence.

I like to think I would set wheels in motion to again allow the Centers for Disease Control to track and study gun violence so action and legislation can be based on real information.

I like to think I’d reflect on the epidemic of violence of all kinds in our society, and determine at least to use my voice to speak against it.

I like to think I’d ask myself what I could say and do to lower tensions between Americans so we can have reasonable and respectful debates about how to reduce the likelihood that we will kill one another.

I like to think I’d listen respectfully to those who respectfully speak their differences with me, and let those who seem to me to be doing nothing more than shouting in order to get attention to carry on…at least for today. Tomorrow, I like to think I’d think, will be soon enough for me (and for my staff) to shout back at them.

I like to think that because I genuinely want to focus on those who are suffering, I’d let reports of my visit stand on their own. I like to think I do not have to constantly write my own reviews, that I can let who I am speak for itself.

I like to think I’d be quiet and sit in silence for long periods of time as we flew from here to there, maybe staring out my window upon the land we all love. Maybe I’d pray–I like to think that I would–for victims, families, first responders, communities, the USA…and for myself.

That’s at least the start of what I like to think I’d think and feel in my time in the air–above it all, yet immersed in it all.

Where negligence deadens desire

You may recall that an asteroid whipped by earth last week at a heart-stoppingly close distance.

If it had hit earth, no one on the planet would ever have forgotten it.

That's the way it is with disasters that did not happen. Sadly, more than enough disasters DO happen that it's comforting to celebrate one or two that we know did not.

A letter in yesterday's mail included a quote by Marcel Proust that relates directly to last week's near collision. It was in a fund-raising letter by Crossing Choir Director Donald Nally:

Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it – our life – hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly. But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! if only the cataclysm doesn't happen this time, we won't miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn't happen; we don't do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn't have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are human and that death may come this evening.

What are you and I putting off doing today that we would regret not doing were an asteroid to crash into our heads tonight?

P.S. Yes, it was a fund-raising letter. Donald Nally writes the most interesting – and I trust, effective –  fund-raising letters!

Getting along together

I believe that the majority of Americans really want to get along better with one another than we are these days. I suspect only a minority of us feel good about our distrust of one another, about our constant finding fault with one another, about our isolating confinement with those whose behavior and thoughts closely correspond to our own. Unfortunately, much political strategy rests upon dividing us rather than uniting us.

We know that we are a diverse nation, made of as many different kinds of human beings as evolution has so far generated. And we know it is not good for us to be constantly at odds with ourselves. Most of us, I dare to believe, wince when words–words of others as well as words out of our own mouths–build new walls between ourselves and someone else, and silence fills the space between us. But often we accept those words, or at least permit them, because it’s too hard to sort them out. I’ve been there, done that, many times.

But if we never sort out what’s behind thoughts and words, we will never “get along with one another” on other than a superficial level. If we always “let it go” when someone says something about us or about someone else that we know is simply not true–or even just not true to our own experience–we close the door on genuine understanding.

Our common response to someone saying something we profoundly disagree with is to shoot back with our own version of truth. But it would be better to learn to ask follow-up questions. Why do you think that? Will you tell me more about it? We can learn to do that and to practice it, but it takes hard work.

It also takes a willingness of partisans on both (all?) sides of issues to be willing to give to the other what they want from the other: respect, openness, and a willingness to understand. If we are more committed to our “talking points” than to listening and responding to the substance of what the other has said, we will be at best difficult partners in any dialogue. For this reason, candidates’ debates are almost always dismal failures as debates.

Getting along with one another in a tense environment requires intentional and mutual effort. Each of us has a whole fistful of stuff we don’t like about the state of the world these days, and about some of our sibling Americans as well. I will continue to express my concerns and critiques and even anger when I feel I must. But I will also try to understand those who stand somewhere other than where I stand, even when I see little prospect that we will ever be able see eye-to-eye.

To understand and to agree are not the same thing. But we will never begin to agree without at least some understanding.

When mere law is inhumane

In the world in which we live, nations have the right to protect their borders and to exercise control over who crosses them. But nations also have at least as important a responsibility to treat those who come to their borders as humanely as possible. I’d even go so far as to suggest that the responsibility to be humane toward all is more important than is the right to control borders.

Separating children from their own parents except in cases where the child’s fundamental well-being is at risk is inhumane. It is the most extreme and harmful inhumanity of a number of inhumanities our government is reportedly visiting upon people being detained now, apparently with many more detainees to come. If we must round-up human beings, then we must have adequate and humane means prepared to house them. Unless, of course, as one Facebook commentator called them, you consider them to be “cockroaches.”

It’s the law, some claim. We are only enforcing the law.

But there are limits to the law. At least the Christians among us know that…don’t we?

Stronger Together

The 75th Anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France should remind everyone of the incredible power that comes of working togther to achieve a shared purpose.

If, in the face of growing German and Japanese military power, the other major nations of the world at the time had each decided to respond alone for fear of losing their individual national identities, there is little doubt that the outcome of World War II would have been quite different. The power to divide is the power to defeat. It is one thing when an adversary or enemy determines to divide us from one another; it is quite another thing if we decide to do it to ourselves.

Following World War II, the victorious nations decided to work together through the newly-formed United Nations and other cooperative ventures and alliances. Even more dramatically, they decided to helped the nations they had defeated to rebuild and eventually become part of the greater family of nations. These decisions, achieved through long and difficult negotiations and compromises, were not perfect nor did they achieve everything dreamed for them. But they did give the human family a means by which to resolve differences and to face common threats and challenges.

It's hard to believe anyone would intentionally throw all that away. Yet in our time, the nations that were at the heart of that vision of a family of nations seem intent on dismantling what the previous generations had created. Old and new fears and threats are somehow driving us back behind the ancient barricades that have led to disaster throughout human history. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

The global enemies we all face...war, injustice, climate change, oppression, population migration, the list goes on...all demand global responses. Fear of them drives us apart, because it somehow seems easier to face them alone than to have to deal with others. But none of them can be solved alone, because borders and barriers mean nothing to them, especially in our century. No nation can put a tariff so high on the enemies of us all that they cannot be exported to within its boundaries.

Rather then being driven apart by our common fears, we must dare to be brought together by our common hopes. It takes hard work, risk-taking, and yes, even some degree of vulnerability, to get there, but we really have no choice. None.

"The time has come," the walrus cried...

I’ve been losing sleep over Netflix’s David Attenborough-narrated series, Our Planet. As we have come to expect, the stories it tells of the wonders of the natural world are astonishing. Planet Earth–our planet–is more finely-tuned and intricately-woven together than anything we could possibly make up ourselves.

My sleep loss, however, is not the result of watching the revealing visuals of nature in action. I am losing sleep because this series intentionally faces the changes being wrought in the natural world as a result of human numbers and activities, particularly in the form of climate change.

Beautiful pictures tell some of that tragic story…the deathly pale coral reefs, the rain forests destroyed to make way for coffee plantations, and so on. Statistics about declines in numbers of fish and of Africa’s great beasts and the like tell the story in another way.

Among the most disturbing images to me were those of walruses driven by melting ice to a small, rocky piece of land. According to Attenborough, in order to escape overcrowding there, a number of them somehow climbed up the steep cliffs framing the coastline. When those walruses tried to move back down to the sea, they lost their footing and tumbled over and down those very same cliffs. Their enormous bodies bounced helplessly from one rocky outcropping to the one below it until they finally thudded among their kin huddled at the cliff base.

Human compassion for walruses does not come easily, but when I watched how horribly those lives ended as a result of our human impact upon our shared environment, I felt sorrow, frustration, and anger. I wasn't sure I wanted to watch any more of Our Planet, but I have forced myself to do so. The hour elicits a wide range of my emotions.

It is hard to believe that there are still people–some of them powerful and influential–who continue to close their eyes to the reality of human-caused climate change. New evidence of it in fires and floods comes in almost daily, as well as new ideas on how we might limit it, if not stop it altogether.

But our Secretary of State celebrates the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap because of the commercial opportunities it will open up. No thought of the cost, either to nature itself or to us, who are as dependent upon nature as are walruses. You and I can do what we can, and surely more than we are now doing individually, but what we need is competent national and international leadership.

“The time is long passed,” the tumbling walrus cries, “to talk of climate change and to take action to address it…before it’s too late for you and your kind.”

Religious Warfare Ahead?

Should American political candidates engage in religious/theological debates?

I say no, not in the public arena and not as part of our political process.

Of course, I am interested in the religion of the people asking for my vote. I am interested in a lot of different kinds of information about them, their lives, their convictions. I want to know what I can about where they are coming from.

But they are not running for office in a religious institution. The United States of America is a secular political entity, committed to a particular kind of political structure and order. Religion has played an important role in our history and continues to influence our self-understanding, sometimes to the benefit of the common good and sometimes not. But we are a land of many faiths and non faiths, and we have been able for the most part to live and work with one another across the lines that separate our various deeply-held convictions from one another. We have been able to vote across those lines.

It’s fine with me for a candidate to publicly acknowledge her or his own faith or lack thereof. But a politician’s policies and proposals must be defensible in terms of their political merit.They must stand or fall on their own before the body politic’s court of opinion. While public office holders may be personally committed to serving a deity, their first responsibility as elected leaders is to serve the common good. It’s often difficult to do both, but it’s the job they sought.

We are being distracted by too much already, while issues such as income inequality, immigration, climate change, social security, trade, American’s role in the world, and the like are being managed by tweets and sound bites and who-caught-who saying which incorrect thing. Theological debates about who loves Jesus more and who Jesus loves and how the Bible should be interpreted will only be one more national distraction from what needs to be done politically. Such debates belong in houses of prayer, not in the halls of congress. Candidates should avoid them.

Question for Our Holiest Seasons

This is a photo of a portion of "Sacrifice of Isaac" by Italian Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530). It hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is unfinished, but finished versions are in museums elsewhere. It pictures the moment when God tells Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, thus rescinding God's earlier order.



I wonder: what if Abraham had been so attached to God's old order that he had refused to heed God's new one?

What if I am?

...to protect life...

“Government’s role should be to protect life from the beginning to the end.”

(Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, upon signing the “heartbeat” abortion restriction bill)

Dear Governor DeWine,

I truly appreciate your passion for the role of government in the protection of life. I say this despite the fact that you eagerly signed the so-called “heartbeat bill.” Your signature on that legislation gives evidence of a lack of understanding of and compassion for the agony many women experience when they discover they are carrying a fetus they did not plan for and may not be able to provide for.

That said, I look forward to your continuing to keep alive the ideal you have put before the people of Ohio, and before your own political party. The Republican party has become quite adept at creating legislation and promoting rules that are antithetical to the protection of life at almost any stage. It seems more committed to protecting the life–the health and well-being–of corporations than of human beings.

It begins with health care: does not the protection of life mean, above all else, access to needed health care for every American? How can such access be limited by lack of money?

How about income inequality? Every study confirms the common sense assumption that those who are poor or even just surviving marginally do not enjoy the quality and length of life of those who are better off. Does your party commit itself to monetary policy, including tax law, that at least makes it possible for all Americans to secure adequate resources to meet basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter?

How about the administration of justice? From our police departments to our prison systems, is everyone given a chance to be heard fairly in a court of law and, if sent to prison, to be not only corrected but also rehabilitated?

And what about guns and all the forms of violence that plague our communities? It is quite clear that we could enact a number of controls on access to guns that would not “take away” our Second Amendment rights. You cannot claim that government’s job is to protect life from beginning to end and then not even be willing to study gun violence.

Climate change? There’s a threat to the lives of millions, maybe billions, maybe every last one of us and our descendants that your party studiously ignores. It’s a threat that can be met with new technologies, and with new jobs. The Republican party cannot continue to pretend climate change is not a grave threat to us all and expect anyone to think it is concerned with the protection of life, human and non-human alike.

Governor DeWine, you have articulated up a lofty role for government. I have given you few of the many areas where your sincerity regarding it will be tested. I wish you well as you lead your party to help Ohio’s government live up to it.

Sincerely,

KDM

Back To the Same Playing Field

I recently heard an extended report on conditions in Venezuela, where the electricity has been off for some time now and nobody apparently has the power to turn it back on. Thirty million people are suffering unbelievable depravation because political gridlock has rendered the government powerless.

The gridlock has come to this because, after years of economic chaos, two men both believe they should be president, and neither will yield to the other. My guess is that they both are so convinced that only they can save the country from disaster that neither is willing to admit defeat in order to save the country from disaster.

Probably they both believe that “only I can be the president Venezuela needs. Only I can do what Venezuela needs done.”

Are we setting up the same kind of political stalemate that has resulted in disaster for Venezuela? I hope not, because I still believe our dedication to democratic institutions is strong enough to withstand the ego of a U.S. President who believes “only I can be the president the United States needs.”

For democracy to work those who hold power at the moment must have some confidence that those who are now out of power will not destroy the nation should they come to power. But as the Republican Party has moved further and further to the right, the Democratic Party has moved further and further to the left. The farther they move apart the more surely each will come to trust only themselves and their kind with the reigns of power, and the more surely they will believe it is in the best interests of the country for them do everything possible to keep the other out of power. That kind of thinking spells disaster for democracy.

What I am looking for in our next president (hopefully to be elected in 2020) is someone whose strong political convictions are expressed within the context of a profound respect for what it means to be a democratic republic, and for those who do not agree with that person. I am looking for someone who can get a broad cross-section of Americans back on the same political playing field.

Who are you looking for, post Donald Trump?