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?

A Master of His Art

Joseph Flummerfelt is not a household name, but he was well-known and deeply appreciated by lovers of choral music around the world. He recently died, and this is an at-best amateur musician’s appreciation of him.

I first became aware of Dr. Flummerfelt because of the choral leadership position he held for many years at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. I knew of the College itself because of its long and outstanding tradition of preparing musicians for professional positions in churches. He was the school’s chief choral conductor, and I owned a couple of his recordings. His Westminster choirs often performed with the New York Philharmonic, and with other ensembles as well.

When our younger daughter, Rebecca, was choosing a college, she knew that she wanted to study vocal and choral music. I may have been the one who suggested to her that she look into Westminster Choir College. On the weekend we visited and she auditioned at Westminster, we were able to sit in on a rehearsal for an upcoming performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah Oratorio. Dr. Flummerfelt was working with the choir on the “Baal Choruses,” where the prophets of the “false god” challenging Israel’s “true god” cry out to Baal to light the fire on the water-soaked altar Elijah has prepared.

What impressed me at the time was not only Dr. Flummerfelt’s attention to the myriad musical details, but his eagerness to teach the students what that unusual series of choruses is all about. It’s not often choirs get to petition Baal! He was as interested in getting them into the text of the music as into the music itself. He knew that choral music, fine as it might be as just music, is a vessel to convey a story, an image, or even a faith to the hearer. I wish all choral conductors took this part of their job seriously.

My second first-person memory was at the commencement ceremony when Rebecca graduated from Westminster. Dr. Flummerfelt was the main speaker, and he gave a thoughtful, insightful, and yes, inspiring address on the relationship between breath and spirit in singing and in life. He knew, of course, that the biblical words for breath and spirit are the same in both the Hebrew and the Greek languages. He tied them together in the act of singing in his send-off for the class. I don’t know if he’d have agreed to let me call what he said a sermon, but that’s what it was to me…an inspired and inspiring homily.

In recent years Rebecca’s career path gave me my only opportunity to shake hands with Joseph Flummerfelt. Many of Rebecca’s singing colleagues in the Philadelphia area are Westminster grads, and her Crossing Choir is directed by Donald Nally, a Westminster grad and close associate of Dr. Flummerfelt. Dr. Flummerfelt sat in the pew behind ours at a Crossing concert we attended several years ago, and Rebecca introduced us to him after the concert. I doubt that he remembered the moment for long, but it was an honor to me to shake the hand that so beautifully conducted those choirs.

Joseph Flummerfelt is important not only because he was a fine choral conductor, but because he was a teacher, and an inspiring teacher at that. He left the world not only with recordings of his own work, but with a host of students who carry on his passion for the best in choral music. I am grateful our lives crossed paths—though not closely enough that I could ever call him “Flumm,” as many did. I am grateful for his influence upon Rebecca and so many others.