Grantwriter

Manifesto of Bishop John Shelby Spong

2009-10-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday October 15, 2009 A Manifesto!

The Time Has Come! I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither
tolerate it nor listen to it any longer.
The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one. I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged. In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer. I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on
which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable. I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite. I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some
ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote. The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon. I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people. Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue
about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever. This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong

Fun facts from the 1500's

2009-09-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

A little history from John Obrien. Enjoy.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . .. . brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married. Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs." There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake. England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus,someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer...
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor" But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low.

And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

So there's this blonde on a plane...

2009-08-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

A PLANE IS ON ITS WAY TO TORONTO WHEN A BLONDE IN ECONOMY CLASS GETS UP AND MOVES TO THE FIRST CLASS SECTION AND SITS DOWN IN A VACANT SEAT. THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT SEES HER DO THIS, ASKS TO SEE HER TICKET AND THEN TELLS HER THAT HER TICKET IS FOR ECONOMY CLASS AND THAT SHE WILL HAVE TO GO BACK TO HER ASSIGNED SEAT. THE BLONDE REPLIES, 'I'M BLONDE, I'M BEAUTIFUL, AND I'M GOING TO STAY RIGHT HERE UNTIL WE GET TO TORONTO." THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT GOES INTO THE COCKPIT AND TELLS THE PILOT AND CO-PILOT THAT THERE IS A WOMAN SITTING IN FIRST CLASS THAT BELONGS IN ECONOMY AND WON'T MOVE BACK TO HER SEAT. THE CO-PILOT GOES INTO THE FIRST CLASS SECTION AND TRIES TO EXPLAINTO THE BLONDE THAT BECAUSE SHE ONLY PAID FOR ECONOMY, SHE WILL HAVE TO LEAVE AND RETURN TO HER SEAT. THE BLONDE REPLIES, 'I'M BLONDE, I'M BEAUTIFUL, AND I'M GOING TO STAY RIGHT HERE UNTIL WE GET TO TORONTO." THE CO-PILOT GOES TO TELL THE PILOT THAT THEY PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE THE POLICE WAITING WHEN THEY LAND TO ARREST THIS BLONDE WOMAN WHO WON'T LISTEN TO REASON. THE PILOT SAYS, 'DID YOU SAY SHE'S A BLONDE? I'LL HANDLE THIS - I'M MARRIED TO A BLONDE. I SPEAK BLONDE." SO HE GOES BACK TO THE BLONDE AND WHISPERS IN HER EAR FOR A SECOND AND SHE SAYS, "OH, I'M SORRY," AND GETS UP AND GOES BACK TO HER ORIGINAL SEAT IN ECONOMY. THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT AND CO-PILOT ARE AMAZED AND ASK THE PILOT WHAT IN THE WORLD HE SAID TO MAKE HER MOVE WITHOUT ANY FUSS. THE PILOT RESPONDS, "I TOLD HER FIRST CLASS WASN'T GOING TO TORONTO."

The United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns

2009-08-13T01:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8NQGKDszq8

Detached Retina

2009-06-10T00:44:00.000-07:00

Today I found out I have a fully detached and torn retina in my left eye. This was discovered during my annual eye appt when you cover one eye, look at the little light etc. everything went fine with the left eye covered/right eye working but when I covered the right eye and the tech said to look straight ahead into the light, I said I don't see any light. She said let me adjust your chin and head position against the machine, which she did, but still no light. she pushed the apparatus away and began waving her hand in front of my left eye. I said all I could see was movement and shadows. Turns out I've been living with this for months (even driving!), but didn't notice it because I already have peripheral loss of vision to my left. I thought the things I couldn't see clearly were somehow impacted by the peripheral problem when in reality I can't see anything in front of that eye AT ALL! My right eye has done a good job of compensating so fortunately I've been able to proceed as if I had better vision on the left. Fast forward: I spent most of the afternoon in a vitreous retinal ophthalmologist's office in Mt View (a friend drove me). The condition is operable, although of course there is no guarantee of significant improvement. As Dr. Boldery said, "With luck you'll be able to see the large E on the eye chart." He did advise the operation might be worth it because in the event something happens to my right eye (God forbid), I would want as much use as possible out of the left one. The drawbacks? Lots of pain and swelling following the surgery (under local in a hospital) and weeks of eye drops and follow up visits Oh for joy... Next I will be seeing a colleague in Dr. Boldery's office who specializes in precisely the kind of reparative surgery I need. If we all agree, which I suspect we will, I will go to Good Samaritan in Los Gatos for the procedure. It is covered by Medicare so I might as well let them pay before they go bankrupt or are bought out by John Deere

Guns, a Plane Ride, and War

2009-05-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Guns, a Plane Ride, and War by Susan R. Johnson, MD, FAAP 5/22/09 www.YouAndYourChildsHealth.org I recently evaluated a kindergarten-aged child who began having physically and emotionally violent nightmares since November of last year. In her first nightmare, she and her classmates were standing up against a wall and their teacher was shooting at them. In her kindergarten class, gunplay had been allowed in the playground for most of the school year. According to her parents, children were shooting one another, sometimes in the back, with “imaginary” automatic weapons. Her parents wanted her out of that kindergarten class. There were other kindergarten classes at that school where the teachers did not encourage gunplay and usually redirected it. The parents wanted my help and advice. I remember when this issue came up with my 5 year old son. I attended a class at the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto where a psychologist discussed gunplay as being normal and part of the “healthy” development of young boys. Somehow that argument has never made sense to me. I thought about the current state of our world and our relationships. I thought about what Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Buddha, Christ and the Dalai Lama would have to say about this topic. I knew that if you made gunplay “strictly forbidden” and showed a strong emotional reaction to it, then the child would actually be drawn to the activity. Yet, gunplay was so easy to redirect. Just stating in a matter of fact voice that it was never okay to hurt another Human Being was enough. We did have water filled toys for squirt fights and my son received a gun with suction darts one time for his birthday, but shooting at another Human Being was never okay. Interestingly, my son's early exposure to gun play was an invitation to a classmate's birthday party. The entire class of 5th grade boys spent several hours firing paint balls at each other. Frankly, that activity didn't make sense to me either. I pondered over all of these questions as I boarded a plane for the East Coast where I was invited to speak at an elementary school about the seven essential ingredients for a healthy child and healthy family. The young man who sat next to me must have been in his mid to early 20?s. He could easily have been my son. He told me that he had just finished a second tour in Iraq and was on a 21 day leave. He was traveling all over the United States to see everyone, family and friends, that he had ever known or cared about before he had to return. He was going to be sent to fight in Afghanistan this time. I thanked him for going to Iraq. I shared with him that my Grandfather had taken care of soldiers that had survived the Bataan Death March. My father-in-law had fought in the Army during World War II and my Dad had served later as a ship's doctor in the Navy. I asked him what were the hardest things he had to endure while in Iraq. He talked about not being able to bathe or shower for 70 days at a time and explained why Baby Wipes were so appreciated. He was grateful for the Girl Scout cookies, Starbucks coffee, and Gatorade though also said one of his comrades just had six cavities! He was moved by the outpouring of care packages that they all received from people they had never even met. I asked what he missed the most thinking he would talk about something he missed from his home town. He told me, that as strange as it may seem, what he missed the most right now was his gun; even though he didn't want to miss it. “You see”, he said, “I clean my gun everyday, I care for it, and I sleep with it. My gun is my friend and it makes me feel safe.” I told him that I didn't want my son to go to war because I just didn't believe that killing ever solved any problems. For me, war just generated more hatred, grief, and revenge. He agreed. He said that he had enlisted in the military because he wanted to serve our country, and he was promised tuition for education, good pay, health benefits, and of course travel all over the world. He said that just about everyone he knows in the service is drinking alcohol, getting stoned, and taking drugs just to numb the pain. “You are psychologically messed up and maimed for life”, he said. “What is the point of having money for education when you can't use it? When you come back, you don't fit in.” Many guys he knew were now yelling at the ones they loved and were sometimes violent. The saddest thing for him was that three of his fellow comrades had recently committed suicide during their 21 day leave because they did not want to return and because their lives at home were in such turmoil. He, himself, had been married for several years and he and his wife were now getting a divorce because she couldn't understand why he wanted to go back. He said he had a high probability of being killed because of his particular job. I asked him why he was going back. He told me, “I am going so your son doesn't have to go. So other mother's sons don't have to experience what I have had to experience. I have decided to continue doing this job to keep someone else from taking my place, to save them.” “But what should I tell my son?”, I asked, “If he wants to serve his country?” “Tell him”, he said, “That I would not have my son do this.” The plane descended and I wanted to cry. He was one of my sons. He was one of OUR sons. When I finally arrived at the home of the family where I was to stay for the weekend while giving my workshop, I met the parents who also had a daughter attending kindergarten. I told them that they had to excuse me for I was feeling a little overwhelmed from my plane ride. “I hate war”, I said. “It makes no sense. When will we as Human Beings learn to respect each other, to love each other, and just get along?” Then the mother shared something with me. She had been a CNN war correspondent for many years and even had written a book about her experiences. She said once you see a father grieving for his dead child that is cradled in his arms, it doesn't matter anymore which side of the war he is on. I did not need to ask her what she felt about gunplay in her daughter's kindergarten class. The answer was already in her eyes.

Suicide is not painless

2009-05-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

One of the lines from the great TV series MASH I've never liked is from the opening theme song: "Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please.." I suppose if the one committing suicide does it via carbon monoxide poisoning or a drug overdose, it could be considered painless; hanging oneself or slitting one's wrists or throat would, I assume, not happen without pain. Here in northern California the #1 method of suicide used to be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Now it is jumping in front of a train on the Caltrain tracks and it occurs with alarming frequency.
I'm writing this because a very good friend of mine from my time in Cleveland took his life this week. I don't know why - not that it would alter my emotions - but according to a friend of his, Scott was having "difficulties." I myself was hospitalized twice in a psych unit in 1996 for suicidal ideation. I wanted to take my life because I was newly disabled and didn't see any future for myself. Fortunately, my psychiatrist did see a future for me and made sure I was safe and taken care of in the hospital. In a twist of irony, it was my friend Scott who drove me home after I was released the first time. On the way to my house he told me about a mutual friend of ours who had taken her life while I was in the hospital and I was shocked and deeply saddened that Shana would choose to sit in her garage with the engine running for some unknown reason. She had a new boyfriend and they seemed to be doing well together. When I finally saw him he was so grief-stricken that he could barely talk.
This is the part of suicide I think of most when I think about it not being painless: the tremendous hurt and grief it causes family members and friends who survive. Scott has two sons, both in Arizona where his former wife lives. The oldest boy, Thomas, is in college; the younger one, Allen, is about to graduate from high school. Whatever happiness or sense of accomplishment he would have felt at commencement will now be nearly blotted out by the shadow of grief hanging over his head.
Here is what I've learned about suicide: It often happens when the person feels there is no way out for whatever situation they are in. It could be a relationship issue, financial difficulties, a job loss, or even the death of other family members. What one needs in such a predicament is this:
1. To be surrounded by others who can help him or her see that their problem can be dealt with. There are all kinds of community resources and private practitioners who can provide counseling, debt consolidation or whatever. How many of us have lived through the break-up of a relationship, a divorce, the death of a loved one or a sudden job loss? There IS life after these things happen; the person contemplating suicide just doesn't see it.
There was a woman in the psych unit with me the first time who had slit her wrists in frustration because her husband had become unstable and she was overburdened with caring for him around the clock. Since I was newly disabled and being cared for by home health aides, I suggested to her that she could hire someone to look after her husband. Surprisingly, that idea had not occurred to her. Just think of all the stress, the grief and drama that could have been avoided had she known about home health agencies.
On the Caltrain tracks near where I live there are now signs posted at regular intervals that read, in both English and Spanish, "STOP! If you need help for a problem, call this number..."
I don't know what was troubling Scott. In all our emails, phone conversations and occasional face to face meetings over the last few years, he never mentioned anything. And this is the other thing one needs to do when feeling overwhelmed:
2. Get help. Let someone know what you are going through; don't be ashamed to ask for help - it is not a sign of weakness but of strength.
When I look back on my two incidents of nearly taking my life in 1996, I now realize several things:

I could easily have been hurt and not dead - alive and in tremendous pain.
I would have inflicted upon my family and friends a grief so terrible they would end up burdened for the rest of their lives
I would have missed out on all the wonderful experiences I've had in the last 13 years - and all those that still await me.

Former Miss California defends gay marriage

2009-04-23T02:00:00.001-07:00

Friends: I hope you will read this wonderfully crafted, Biblically sound statement in favor of gay marriage by former Miss California Nicole Lamarche, a Pacific School of Religion graduate who is now a UCC minister in Massachusetts.

Peace, Grant F. Sontagrainbowrev@comcast.net
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=75378698854&h=E5TMd&u=p2Y5A&ref=nf

Enya

2009-03-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

In the 90's someone introduced me to the New Age music of the Irish singer Enya and I fell in love with it. When I went for an MRI in February of '96 I took a CD with me as a friend suggested I do that as a way of drowning out the hammering noise of the machine (it sounds like a jackhammer in your ears). The radiology tech piped the music in, adjusted the volume to my satisfaction, and off we went. He liked the music so much he wrote down the info off the jacket.
Months later as I lay in the hospital following the removal of a tumor which the MRI had confirmed, a friend brought in a portable CD and Enya comforted me again. The CD went with me to the rehab hospital where I spent three months following the stroke that occurred after the removal of the (benign) tumor. Again the melodies soothed me off to sleep at night.
When I returned home from the hospital and clicked on "Play" to listen again, this time Enya's voice filled me with anxiety as it brought echoes of the stroke. In time my anxiety subsided and now I can listen again in peace and gratitude. Thank you Enya.

Tzu Chi

2009-03-12T01:35:00.000-07:00

Most of what I have learned about Christianity since Sunday School has left me with the impression that this is the religion that cares - about other people and all of God's creation. In the United Church of Christ, my denomination, we aim especially to help especially those who suffer or are victims of injustice. While it is never stated as such, I have gotten the impression that "we" do this at the exclusion of much of the rest of Christendom. In fact,I don't recall being specifically informed about the benevolence of traditions other than my own. My eyes were opened the other night by a sign in a restaurant window that read, ".. To let go is actually to receive boundless happiness." - Tzu Chi Foundation. Wondering what this foundation was, I looked it up and discovered it is a spiritual organization devoted to relieving the suffering of Taiwan's impoverished East coast. You can read more about it here: http://www.tzuchi.org/global/about/index.html

"Lenting" Go of Resentments

2009-02-26T00:09:00.000-08:00

First off, let me admit that I am a person who harbors resentments all too readily. The Oxford English Dictionary definition speaks for me: Resentment: 1. "An indignant sense of injury or insult received or perceived..." 2. "A negative attitude towards society or authority arising, often unconsciously, from an aggressive envy and hostility, frustrated by a feeling of inferiority or impotence."
The word itself is derived from the French for re + sentiment, or, to re-feel, to feel again. I can testify to my own tendency to re-feel slights, real or imagined. What I don't understand (yet) is why anyone would want to keep on feeling something that is uncomfortable (and has proven ill consequences for one's health). The only thing I can come up with is that it's like picking at a scab - you know you're not supposed to, and in a way you don't even want to, because it's painful and could cause bleeding or lead to infection. And yet there's a sort of perverse satisfaction at continuing to pick at that scab - to re-feel the sensation, even if it's one of pain.
Last Sunday when I arrived at church - late, as usual - I saw in the bulletin that the preacher was the youth minister and I was disappointed because, truth to tell, I didn't think she was all that good the first time I heard her. However, as God is wont to do in trying to get through to us, the minister's message was just what I needed to hear. She observed that Lent begins this week and that, traditionally, people decide to give up something in order to prepare for Holy Week and Easter coming 40 days from now. Typical things one might give up include rich foods (chocolate!), alcohol, tobacco, and even one's money in the form of donations to help those less fortunate. But what if, the youth minister posited, we decided to give up some of our resentments during Lent? Brilliant! I decided then and there that I would do just that, and in fact I let go of a resentment I had recently cultivated toward a family member who had not yet acknowledged an act of kindness toward him on my part.
One spiritual practice I've learned to engage in when feeling resentful is to pray for that person and so that is what I have been doing. What a wonderful - and welcome - surprise awaited me the next time I turned on my computer and checked for messages, because right there in front of me was a thank you note from the family member in question. No more resentment on my part, and clearly not on his. So, what are you giving up for Lent?

Jewish Humor

2009-02-24T04:08:00.000-08:00

Remember the Jewish Catskill comics of Vaudeville days, such as Shecky Green, Red Buttons, Totie Fields, Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, and many others? They had a great gift for humor... and not one single swear word in their comedy. Here are some examples of their work:

* There was a beautiful young woman knocking on my hotel room door all night! I finally had to let her out.

* A car hit an elderly Jewish man. T he paramedic says, "Are you comfortable?" The man says, "I make a good living."

* I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.

* I've been in love with the same woman for 49 years. If my wife ever finds out, she'll kill me!

* We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.

* My wife and I went back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night; only this time, I stayed in the bathroom and cried.

* My wife and I went to a hotel where we got a waterbed. My wife called it the Dead Sea.

* She was at the beauty shop for two hours. That was only for the estimate. She got a mud pack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off.

* The doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.

* The Doctor called Mrs. Cohen saying, "Mrs. Cohen, your check came back." Mrs. Cohen answered, "So did my arthritis!"

* Doctor: "You'll live to be 60!" Patient: "I AM 60!" Doctor: "See! What did I tell you?"

* A doctor holds a stethoscope up to a man's chest. The man asks, "Doc, how do I stand?" The doctor says, "That's what puzzles me!"

* Patient: "I have a ringing in my ears." Doctor: "Don't answer!"

* A drunk is in front of a judge. The judge says, "You've been brought here for drinking." The drunk says, "Okay, let's get started."

* A bum asked a Jewish fellow, "Give me $10 till payday." The Jewish fellow responded, "When's payday?" The bum said, "I don't know! You're the one that's working!"

* Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? They're worth it.

* I wish my brother would learn a trade, so I would know what kind of work he's out of.

* The Harvard School of Medicine did a study of why Jewish women like Chinese food so much. The study revealed that this is due to the fact that Won Ton spelled backwards is Not Now.

* There is a big controversy on the Jewish view of when life begins. In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from medical school.

* Q: Why don't Jewish mothers drink? A: Alcohol interferes with their suffering.

* Q: Why do Jewish mothers make great parole officers? A: They never let anyone finish a sentence.

* A man called his mother in Florida, "Mom, how are you?" "Not too good, "said the mother, "I've been very weak." The son said, "Why are you so weak?" She said, "Because I haven't eaten in 38 days." The son said, "That's terrible. Why haven't you eaten in 38 days?" The mother answered, "Because I didn't want my mouth to be filled with food if you should call."

* A Jewish boy comes ho me from school and tells his mother he has a part in the play. She asks, "What part is it? The boy says, "I play the part of the Jewish husband." The mother scowls and says, "Go back and tell the teacher you want a speaking part."

* Q: How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb? A: (Sigh) "Don't bother. I'll sit in the dark. I don't want to be a nuisance to anybody."

* Did you hear about the bum who walked up to a Jewish mother on the street and said, "Lady I haven't eaten in three days." "Force yourself," she replied.

* Q: What's the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mother? A: Eventually, the Rottweiler lets go.

* Short summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.

Depression

2009-01-31T01:45:00.000-08:00

I suffer from depression, something of course I don't like, but I'm not ashamed to admit it. Beginning in adolescence, then through college and beyond, I had what I call garden variety depression - a general sense of unhappiness about my life and myself. I began no see a psychiatrist during my sophomore year in college because I was so torn up inside that I was spending hours a day on my dorm bed curled up in the fetal position. Depression is exhausting; it strips you of energy and enthusiasm. And it's not just about feeling down; it's classified by health professionals as a mental illness.
In my twenties I would have said that depression is something that's kind of in the air - like what was called vapors in the Middle Ages. I know now that it is really about brain chemistry.
In 1996 I suffered a massive stroke, after which I became despondent, obsessing about being disabled and then deciding I wanted to end my life. I had what used to be called a nervous breakdown. My psychiatrist put me in the psych unit ("mental ward") until I could get well enough to return home. She said the reason that people who are suicidal are put in the hospital is so that they will be safe and their medications can be monitored, and adjusted if necessary. I was already taking Effexor, the drug we settled on after I tried - and rejected - Paxil and Zoloft. Dr. F. told me that even though I had a depressive personality before the stroke, I now suffered from post-stroke depression, an entirely distinct clinical diagnosis. I still suffer from it, twelve years after the blood clot lodged in the right parietal lobe of my brain. And even though with the help of therapy and medication I have achieved some degree of normalcy, every once in a while the bottom drops out again - as it did last night.
I don't know what happened, but after I went to bed I couldn't stop obsessing about my life being of little worth (note: this is not the same as feeling suicidal. I KNOW what that feels like and I know to get help if that happens). The ironic thing is that just yesterday I received praise of the highest order from several different people I interact with personally and professionally. They just think Grant is the greatest, but inside I don't feel so great - I just want to crawl in a hole and hide. I ended up lying in bed awake all night until 7:00 a.m., at which time I called a friend and told him how rotten I felt. He asked what about, and I ended up spouting off about how I was in the best physical condition of my life in 1996. I worked out every day on my lunch hour, using Cybex machines for muscle, lap swimming for aerobics, and tennis for the sheer fun of it. And there I was, playing sets on the rooftop courts at the Athletic Club at One Cleveland Center, and other men watching me play would actually approach me and ask if I would play them. Since the rule of thumb in tennis, like other sports, is to find someone at or above your level of play, I was obviously being approached by men who either thought I was as good as they were or better than they were. Something like this had never happened in my life before. In sports since junior High I was always the skinny unco-ordinated one who didn't know the rules, would drop the ball, or get killed playing defense. When I quit high school PE to join the tennis team I felt liberated. I practiced and practiced and practiced - and the main friend I played with was a classmate who was just enough better than I was that we both got a good workout when playing matches.
So last night I'm lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, and obsessing on my losses instead of focusing on my gains. It was a real bitch. Fortunately I have tools to help me and I know how to use them. So I can say now, twenty four hours after the clouds moved in, I am feeling just enough better to take an Ambien and go to bed, listening to some soft music, wondering what the morning will bring.

Inauguration benediction by the Rev. Joseph Lowery

2009-01-21T01:01:00.001-08:00

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way, thou who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee. Shadowed beneath thy hand may we forever stand -- true to thee, O God, and true to our native land.

We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day. We pray now, O Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant, Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration. He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national and, indeed, the global fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hand, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations. Our faith does not shrink, though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

For we know that, Lord, you're able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor or the least of these and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union. And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little, angelic Sasha and Malia.

We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone, with your hands of power and your heart of love.

Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right.

Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen!

REV. LOWERY: Say amen --

AUDIENCE: Amen!

REV. LOWERY: -- and amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen! (Cheers, applause.)

END.

The inauguration prayer of V. Gene Robinson

2009-01-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've
preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us
will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new
president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every
religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's
reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm
aptain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our
presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN."

HAIL TO THE CHIEF

2009-01-20T22:44:00.000-08:00

YES WE DID! There isn't much that will get me out of bed before 8:00 a.m. but there I was by 8:30, transfixed in front of the television along with millions of others in this country and abroad, watching Barack Hussein Obama take the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States of America (I often cringe at the bare term, United States, as Mexico is officially the United States of Mexico - how many can you name?)
There haven't been many times in my life when I've been proud to be an American, but today was one. Everywhere I went I found people excited by today's events - from the desk attendant at the rehab pool I go to, who greeted me with a "YES WE DID! to a young man from my church who said at last he feels safe. And isn't it a nice twist of irony that the leader of the party that is now in power invoked many of the things we traditionally associate with the other party: a strong defense, fiscal soundness and the red white and blue, The outgoing president was today stripped of its failed portfolio by a man of Kenya and Kansas, Hawaii and Indonesia, whose middle name is Hussein, and who embodies in his person the American dream. YES WE CAN - and YES WE DID!
I must add that I am already weary of the comparisons of Obama to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. He is neither. He is his own man and it is unfair to lay upon him a mantle only history can bestow. As the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishiop from New Hampshire said at one of the prayer services, we need to remember that Obama is a human being and not expect him to be superhuman. I am also loathe to mention the fate that befell both Lincoln and King, and we - and the Secret Service and law enforcement officers - must do everything in our power to prevent any harm coming to this promising young man and I invite you to pray with me that God will protect him and his family for many years to come. Frankly, Obama makes me think more of another American martyr, JFK because of his youth, his enthisiasm, his liberal values, and his powerful rhetoric, not to mention his children running around the White House. There was plenty of skepticism - and prejudice in 1961 about electing a Catholic as President, but he proved his detractors wrong, just as I am confident Obama will do in 2009 and beyond.
I enjoy the pomp and pageantry that surround an event such as today's. Some of the highlights for me were the beautiful Capitol building festooned in red, white and blue, the poise of California Senator Dianne Feinstein at the microphone, and Aretha Franklin in her beautiful hat singing My Country, 'Tis of Thee. I also deeply appreciated Colin Powell's words to George Stephanopoulis that "Now we have a President who is qualified and competent (read, dig at Bush), who happens to be African American." Yes indeed. I hope we won't make as much of the color of his skin as the conent of his character.
So here's to the forty-fourth President of the United States of America. God bless Barack Obama, and God bless America!

An Open Letter from Barack Obama to his daughters

2009-01-16T00:41:00.000-08:00

'What I Want for You — and Every Child
in America' By President-elect Barack Obama
Parade Magazine: Publication Date: 01/14/2009

Dear Malia and Sasha,

I know that you've both had a lot of fun these last two years on the campaign trail, going to picnics and parades and state fairs, eating all sorts of junk food your mother and I probably shouldn't have let you have. But I also know that it hasn't always been easy for you and Mom, and that as excited as you both are about that new puppy, it doesn't make up for all the time we've been apart. I know how much I've missed these past two years, and today I want to tell you a little more about why I decided to take our family on this journey.

When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me-about how I'd make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want. But then the two of you came into my world with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day. And suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn't seem so important anymore. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours. And I realized that my own life wouldn't count for much unless I was able to ensure that you had every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment in yours. In the end, girls, that's why I ran for President: because of what I want for you and for every child in this nation.

I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential-schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college-even if their parents aren't rich. And I want them to get good jobs: jobs that pay well and give them benefits like health care, jobs that let them spend time with their own kids and retire with dignity.

I want us to push the boundaries of discovery so that you'll live to see new technologies and inventions that improve our lives and make our planet cleaner and safer. And I want us to push our own human boundaries to reach beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other.

Sometimes we have to send our young men and women into war and other dangerous situations to protect our country-but when we do, I want to make sure that it is only for a very good reason, that we try our best to settle our differences with others peacefully, and that we do everything possible to keep our servicemen and women safe. And I want every child to understand that the blessings these brave Americans fight for are not free-that with the great privilege of being a citizen of this nation comes great responsibility.

That was the lesson your grandmother tried to teach me when I was your age, reading me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence nd telling me about the men and women who marched for equality bcause they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something.

She helped me understand that America is great not because it is perfect but because it can always be made better-and that the unfinished work of perfecting our union falls to each of us. It's a charge we pass on to our children, coming closer with each new generation to what we know America should be.

I hope both of you will take up that work, righting the wrongs that you see and working to give others the chances you've had. Not just because you have an obligation to give something back to this country that has given our family so much-although you do have that obligation. But because you have an obligation to yourself. Because it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential.

These are the things I want for you-to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That's why I've taken our family on this great adventure.

I am so proud of both of you. I love you more than you can ever know. And I am grateful every day for your patience, poise, grace, and humor as we prepare to start our new life together in the White House.

Love, Dad

POLICE SHOOTING SPARKS PROTESTS

2009-01-09T05:17:00.000-08:00

Well, it happened again - a white police officer shoots a black man which provokes a storm of protest from the community. In this case the community is Oakland, California, across the San Francisco Bay from where I live. And the police officer was employed by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). But the incident is particularly awful in that the man was shot in the back while in police custody and lying on his face on the concrete subway platform where he was apprehended for creating a disturbance on New Year's day. The man, Oscar Grant, was pronounced dead at a local hospital a few hours later. He was unarmed. The police officer has not been charged with any crime and now cannot be questioned or disciplined by the BART administration because he resigned abruptly while still in hidng. Oakland, a city adjacent to Berkeley, home of the Universityy of fCalifornia, has a diverse but heavily black population. The mayor, Ron Dellums is black. The chair of the BART supervisors is black. Both have gone on record acknowledging the tragic shooting. Both have asked the community to remain calm so they can restore order in the wake of protests that became violent at times and resulted in 100 people being injured and 300 businesses damaged. One resident said in exasperation, "This is like 1964 in the South all over again."
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20090109/Train.Station.Shooting/

DOUBT

2009-01-04T00:58:00.000-08:00

I saw the movie "Doubt" tonight and I am certain only of this: Meryl Streep is still an outstanding actress!

OBAMA PICKS A CELEBRITY PASTOR

2008-12-18T13:47:00.000-08:00

This is from my best friend's blog:

The choice of Rick Warren to offer the invocation at the presidential inauguration certainly was a political one. I'm not even all that surprised that Barack Obama chose him as a way to offer a "big tent" philosophy.

However if I was advising him I would have advised him to choose an "in the trenches" pastor, someone who knows the daily struggles of members of her congregation, someone who attends monthly trustee meetings, someone who sits with his parishoners and holds their hand while they are dying. Why choose a celebrity pastor? I have nothing against Rick Warren personally - I certainly don't agree with him on lots of issues - and I'm sure he will say wonderful things. I just wish the choice was less flashy and more sensitive to those who faithfully offer outstanding pastoral leadership day in and day out without drawing attention to themselves.

OUR MUTUAL JOY

2008-12-17T23:00:00.000-08:00

Our Mutual Joy
Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.

Lisa Miller
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob,David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single)regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion,"says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.

The battle over gay marriage has been waged for more than a decade, but within the last six months—since California legalized gay marriage and then, with a ballot initiative in November, amended its Constitution to prohibit it—the debate has grown into a full-scale war, with religious-rhetoric slinging to match. Not since 1860, when the country's pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny. But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell—and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher—this time the sides are unevenly matched. All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections.

The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."

To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children;visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution,marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world. (The fact that homosexual couples cannot procreate has also been raised as a biblical objection, for didn't God say, "Be fruitful and multiply"? But the Bible authors could never have imagined the brave new world of international adoption and assisted reproductive technology—and besides, heterosexuals who are infertile or past the age of reproducing get married all the time.)

Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew. Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce (leaving a loophole in some cases for the husbands of unfaithful women).

The apostle Paul echoed the Christian Lord's lack of interest in matters of the flesh. For him, celibacy was the Christian ideal, but family stability was the best alternative. Marry if you must, he told his audiences, but do not get divorced. "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): a wife must not separate from her husband." It probably goes without saying that the phrase "gay marriage" does not appear in the Bible at all.

If the Bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)." The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who "were inflamed with lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery. In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.

Marriage, specifically, has evolved so as to be unrecognizable to the wives of Abraham and Jacob. Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th. (In the NEWSWEEK POLL, 55 percent of respondents said that married heterosexuals who have sex with someone other than their spouses are more morally objectionable than a gay couple in a committed sexual relationship.) By the mid-19th century, U.S. courts were siding with wives who were the victims of domestic violence, and by the 1970s most states had gotten rid of their"head and master" laws, which gave husbands the right to decide where a family would live and whether a wife would be able to take a job. Today's vision of marriage as a union of equal partners, joined in a relationship both romantic and pragmatic, is, by very recent standards, radical, says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History."

Religious wedding ceremonies have already changed to reflect new conceptions of marriage. Remember when we used to say "man and wife" instead of"husband and wife"? Remember when we stopped using the word "obey"? Even Miss Manners, the voice of tradition and reason, approved in 1997 of that change. "It seems," she wrote, "that dropping 'obey' was a sensible editing of a service that made assumptions about marriage that the society no longer holds."

We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future. The Bible offers inspiration and warning on the subjects of love, marriage, family and community. It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving pairs. Gay men like to point to the story of passionate King David and his friend Jonathan, with whom he was "one spirit" and whom he "loved as he loved himself." Conservatives say this is a story about a platonic friendship, but it is also a story about two men who stand up for each other in turbulent times, through violent war and the disapproval of a powerful parent. David rends his clothes at Jonathan's death and, in grieving, writes a song:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.

Here, the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations.

In addition to its praise of friendship and its condemnation of divorce, the Bible gives many examples of marriages that defy convention yet benefit the greater community. The Torah discouraged the ancient Hebrews from marrying outside the tribe, yet Moses himself is married to a foreigner, Zipporah. Queen Esther is married to a non-Jew and, according to legend, saves the Jewish people. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, believes that Judaism thrives through diversity and inclusion. "I don't think Judaism should or ought to want to leave any portion of the human population outside the religious process," he says. "We should not want to leave [homosexuals] outside the sacred tent." The marriage of Joseph and Mary is also unorthodox (to say the least), a case of an unconventional arrangement accepted by society for the common good. The boy needed two human parents, after all.

In the Christian story,the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well— no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend—as evidence of Christ's all-encompassing love. The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ. "The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."

The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage. If one is for racial equality and the common nature of humanity, then the values of stability, monogamy and family necessarily follow. Terry Davis is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hartford, Conn., and has been presiding over"holy unions" since 1992. "I'm against promiscuity—love ought to be expressed in committed relationships, not through casual sex, and I think the church should recognize the validity of committed same-sex relationships," he says.

Still, very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal. The practice varies by region, by church or synagogue, even by cleric. More progressive denominations—the United Church of Christ, for example—have agreed to support gay marriage. Other denominations and dioceses will do "holy union" or "blessing"ceremonies, but shy away from the word "marriage" because it is politically explosive. So the frustrating, semantic question remains: should gay people be married in the same, sacramental sense that straight people are? I would argue that they should. If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color—and no serious (or even semi serious) person would argue that. People get married "for their mutual joy," explains the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center in New York, quoting the Episcopal marriage ceremony. That's what religious people do: care for each other in spite of difficulty, she adds. In marriage, couples grow closer to God: "Being with one another in community is how you love God. That's what marriage is about."

More basic than theology, though, is human need. We want, as Abraham did, to grow old surrounded by friends and family and to be buried at last peacefully among them. We want, as Jesus taught, to love one another for our own good—and, not to be too grandiose about it, for the good of the world. We want our children to grow up in stable homes. What happens in the bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad." Let the priest's prayer be our own.

With Sarah Ball and Anne Underwood

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653
© 2008

AGING PARENTS

2008-12-06T02:41:00.000-08:00

My 84 year-old father is in the nursing unit at the retirement community where my parents live. He has congrestive heart failure which I knew nothing about until my uncle had the same thing. chf is caused by a build-up of fluid in the heart chamber. Consequently it places pressure on the heart, causing reduced oxygen to the brain and any number of problems because of that. In my uncle's case he remained alert and interested in things until he died after a few years with the disease. In my dad's case it has left him confused, which is distressing to all of us but especially to my mother, also 84, who is with him daily. My sister and I are doing the best we can to be of help but we both live at a distance and so our visits are infrequent. I talk to my dad regularly and I always end my phone calls by saying "I love you," because I do, and you never know when that will be the last conversation you have. Guide us waking and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace. - The Book of Common Prayer

Care to guess where this came from?

2008-11-15T00:38:00.001-08:00

One of my (bad) habits is surfing the web late at night when I should be doing homework or in bed. Tonight I was educating myself on programs of study at various California seminaries and colleges when I came across the following:
"Church teaching makes certain judgments about the personal sinfulness of acts ... the prejudice against homosexuals is a greater infringement of the norm of Christian morality than is homosexual orientation or activity."
I must admit I was rather surprised upon discovering that this statement was issued by the Washington State Catholic Conference in 1983. What is not so surprising is that I found it on the website of Santa Clara University, a Jesuit institution in the Bay Area of Northern California. The Jesuits (Society of Jesus) are well known for their scholarship as well as their liberal approach to social issues. Perhaps this statement of purpose from the University bulletin is a fitting summation:
"The University is thus dedicated to a community enriched by men and women of diverse backgrounds, respectful of difference and enlivened by open dialogue, caring and just toward others, and committed to broad participation in achieving the common good.

Rosicrucian prayer

2008-11-02T00:49:00.001-07:00

Lest you think I have taken complete leave of my senses and joined the Rosicrucians, a mystical order of the "rose cross" originating in Medieval Germany, let me assure you that is not true - however, I came across the following prayer on "war" which I found moving as well as germane to our times. May it speak to you as well:

I am guilty of war when I proudly exercise
my intelligence to the disadvantage of my fellow man.

I am guilty of war when I distort other's opinions,
which differ from my own.

I am guilty of war when I show disregard
for the rights and properties of others.

I am guilty of war when I covet what another has honestly acquired.

I am guilty of war when I seek to maintain my superiority of position by depriving others of their opportunity of advancement.

I am guilty of war if I imagine my kin and myself to be a privileged people.

I am guilty of war if I believe a heritage entitles me
to monopolize resources of nature.

I am guilty of war when I believe other people must think and live as I do.

I am guilty of war when I make success in life solely dependent
upon power, fame, and riches.

I am guilty of war when I think the minds of people should
be regulated by force, rather than by reason.

I am guilty of war when I believe the God I conceive is
the one others must accept.

I am guilty of war when I think that a land of a man's birth
must necessarily be the place of his livelihood.

When all men will frankly perceive their common dependence, an understanding will emerge that will transcend the barriers of time and space, creed and race.

Rosicrucian Order - creed of peace - Ralph M. Lewis - 1944

PIETY AND POLITICS ON THE ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE

2008-10-15T23:39:00.000-07:00

"Piety and Politics on the Road to the White House"
by John H. Thomas
General Minister and President, The United Church of Christ
Address given at The City Club Forum
Cleveland, Ohio
October 10, 2008
----------------
Long before “God bless America” became the mandatory benediction for
presidential campaign speeches, religion played a shaping role in presidential politics.
George Washington, in his first inaugural address, spent nearly a quarter of his relatively
short speech acknowledging “the Great Author of every public and private good,” and
noting “the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men” and which, he believed,
represented a “providential agency” that had advanced the United States to the “character
of an independent nation.” A recent historical study of the 1840 election between the
Whig, William Henry Harrison, and the incumbent Democrat, Martin Van Buren, reveals
the religious demographic of the vote, with preferences clearly marked by
denominational affiliation and, in some cases, by theological perspective within
denominations. While the fortunes of the economy loomed large in the election – Whigs
nicknamed the president Martin Van Ruin as the economy slipped into recession – the
peculiar pieties of Americans manifested themselves strongly on Election Day.
I begin with these historical references as a reminder that theological perspective,
denominational ethos, and personal piety have played an important role in American
public life for a long time, sometimes in deeply spiritual ways, often in more superficial
veneers or even in embarrassing bigotry and prejudice. Woodrow Wilson’s expansive
internationalist moral vision exemplified in the American crusade to make the world safe
for democracy and in his quest to establish the League of Nations displayed him as an
heir to the impulses of the 19th century Evangelical social reformers who railed against
the evils of slavery and alcohol. Contrast that with Al Smith, the first Catholic candidate
for president who endured vicious attacks from nativist and anti-Catholic antagonists.
When pressed by reporters for how his views contrasted with various papal encyclicals
2
deemed inconsistent with American ideals, is reported to have replied, “Will someone tell
me what the hell a papal encyclical is?”
Jimmy Carter, who spoke comfortably of his own evangelical piety, confounded
liberal Protestants and secularists with the image of a sophisticated President who was
also a regular Sunday School teacher in his Southern Baptist church in rural Plains,
Georgia. Contrast that with Howard Dean who, in his attempt to claim the mantle of
piety famously overreached when asked to name his favorite New Testament book. He
responded, “the Book of Job.” Whoops. Where were Job’s friends when Howard needed
them! Ronald Reagan somehow managed to convey the impression of a deeply personal
Christian piety without any potentially awkward connection to a particular denomination,
tradition, set of doctrines, or local church membership, something Barack Obama no
doubt wished he could have done last Spring when his affiliation with Trinity United
Church of Christ and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright nearly scuttled his candidacy.
George W. Bush is, in an odd and perhaps not immediately apparent way,
reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson, though one would never confuse the two for the
language and style of their piety remains dramatically different. Yet one senses in both
presidents a highly personalized, one might even say pretentious piety that involves an
almost mystical relationship to God or Jesus, a relationship granting them a privileged
and uncontestable moral vision for the world that is inaccessible to the rest of us mere
mortals and, therefore, unaccountable in political terms. There was for Wilson and is for
Bush a principled – perhaps we might say “messianic” – certainty unencumbered by
intellectual or religious doubt that leaves us somewhat breathless, either in admiration or
fear. In the hands of ideological zealots such piety becomes a potent weapon, as likely to
lead to tragedy and disaster as to the Kingdom of God.
On September 12, 1960, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy gave a major
speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to address the significance of
his Catholic faith in the face of the lingering anti-Catholic feelings of many voters. It
was, from a political standpoint, a successful speech, reassuring the audience of
Kennedy’s commitment to the separation of church and state and stressing that “I am not
the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president,
3
who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and
the church does not speak for me.”
Central to Kennedy’s speech was a tight compartmentalization of faith, personal
piety, and public responsibility. He called for a nation “where no Catholic prelate would
tell the president how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for
whom to vote. . . .” He professed belief in an America “where no public official either
requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of
Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.” Kennedy noted that pamphlets quoting
Catholic leaders had been circulating. “I do not consider these. . . quotations binding
upon my public acts.” Rhetorically he concluded with what he perhaps intended to
suggest was his true creed and his allegiance to his primary sacred text: “If I should win
the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the
presidency. . . . For without reservation, I can “solemnly swear that I will preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution, so help me God.”
Kennedy’s attempt to privatize religion was not so much a reaffirmation of the
separation of church and state, or the disentangling of religion and politics, as it was an
attempt to divide private piety and public life into two separate arenas a President can
inhabit at the same time without one shaping the other. It was as if he were saying,
“Don’t worry, there’s nothing about my Catholic faith that will intrude into my public
responsibility.” Given the political needs of the day, Kennedy may have had to say that.
And given what we know of Kennedy, he was perhaps telling the absolute truth about
himself! This makes all the more ironic the near canonization of the Kennedys by many
Roman Catholics of a certain generation. I vividly recall the entryway to Alphonse
Morello’s Funeral Home in Easton, Pennsylvania where I served as a pastor. On one side
were portraits of Pope John Paul II and the Virgin Mary. On the other side of the foyer
were Jack and Jackie. The holy family according to the Democratic Party!
In 2006, forty six years after Kennedy’s speech, another soon-to-be Democratic
candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama, would give a markedly different speech
about the relationship of faith and public life. Much had changed. Evangelicals, and
more conservative Catholics had entered public life with vigor with the rise of the Moral
Majority, the Christian Coalition, and family values leaders like Gary Bauer and James
4
Dobson. The so-called “culture wars” had raged with issues like school prayer, Roe v.
Wade, the rights of homosexual persons, creationism and intelligent design captive to the
political process and exploited eagerly in presidential campaigns, perhaps most
dramatically in places like Ohio in 2004 where Bush’s slim majority rested, at least in
part, on wedge voters provoked to anxiety over the specter of gay marriage. Religion had
roared back into presidential campaigns in highly partisan ways, making candidates’
piety at least as important to many voters as their more traditional credentials.
In the wake of all of this, Obama’s speech proposed a new engagement of faith
and public life, and by extension a new way to view the issue of piety and presidential
politics. “It’s time,” said Obama, “to join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith
with our modern, pluralistic democracy.” Obama was critical of conservatives, “all too
happy. . . to remind evangelical Christians that Democrats [allegedly] disrespect their
values and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious
Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and
intelligent design.” But his sharper critique went to the Democrats who at best, he said,
“try to avoid the conversation about religion and values altogether,” or at worst, “dismiss
religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature
of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical.” Senator Obama demonstrated his
split with Kennedy most clearly when he said, “secularists are wrong when they ask
believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. . . . To
say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy
debates is a practical absurdity.”
One way to read Obama’s speech is to see it as a call for progressives to
reacquaint themselves with the language of piety. But it is certainly also a call to liberate
piety – and the church – from captivity by the far right of the political spectrum. As one
commentator describes the organizers of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition,
“their primary goal was not religious but political; to enlist evangelicals, many of whom
had eschewed political activism altogether, behind conservative Republican candidates.”
Indeed, one of their colleagues described evangelicals as “the greatest tract of virgin
timber on the political landscape.”
5
Many believe 2004 was the high water mark of the marriage of Evangelicals with
the Republican Party. Sarah Palin’s selection was, in part, an attempt to re-ignite the
wars of religion that had benefited Republicans in previous elections, but the strategy
doesn’t seem to have gained much traction beyond the right wing base of the party. It
does seem to be the case that the dominance of so-called family values as political litmus
tests has slipped in prominence. Even Evangelicals are calling for a broader agenda.
Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, responding to critics like
Dobson and Bauer, rejected the notion that an embrace of concern for creation meant
betraying the pro-life cause: “Tell the parents of children who are mentally disabled
because of mercury poisoning – tell them that the environment is not a sanctity-of-life
issue.” And there are many Catholics beginning to stand up to the threats of bishops
refusing communion to candidates over the issue of abortion, recalling their church to the
broader moral agenda of a “seamless robe” concern for the sanctify of life championed by
leaders like Cardinals Bernadin of Chicago and McCarrick of Washington.
I have no doubt that Senator Obama’s reflections on the relationship of faith and
public life are sincere. They are consistent with his own religious biography eloquently
laid out in his book, The Audacity of Hope. But there is also a political calculation. His
speech in 2006 was given at a conference organized by the socially progressive
Evangelical leader, Jim Wallis. Obama’s friendships include the well known Evangelical
and author of The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren, as well as so-called
“emergent church” leaders Tony Jones and Brian McLaren. At a closed door meeting of
religious leaders with Obama in Chicago in June, only a handful of us represented the old
liberal mainline Protestant churches. Most were a new generation of Evangelical leaders
like megachurch pastor Joel Hunter and Rich Cizik who have broken from the old
religious right in their embrace of other moral issues like global poverty, AIDS, the
environment, education, health-care and the like.
At the meeting in Chicago with Senator Obama, Franklin Graham, son of Billy
Graham, played the “guilt by association” ploy, noting Obama’s “Muslim background,”
and then proceeded to relentlessly press the Senator on the question, “Do you believe
Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, the only way to salvation?” Rev. Joseph
Lowrey, the old war horse of the Civil Rights movement, nearly bolted from his chair
6
next to mine in objection to this line of questioning. Do we really need to know what our
president thinks about this complex text from the Gospel of John? The exchange raised
for me the central question of this lecture: “What kind of piety is needed in today’s
public square, and in the occupant of the White House?”
Early in our history, John Adams wrote Thomas Jefferson about the dangerous
and corrupting power of human self-deception: “Power always thinks it has a great soul
and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service
when it is violating all His laws.” Adam’s letter is cited in Reinhold Niebuhr’s book, The
Irony of American History, written in 1952 to address the Cold War struggle between
communism and freedom. Niebuhr was a profound public theologian who distained the
naïve optimism of theological liberalism as well as the privatized piety of those whose
religion actually masked the narrow parochialism of conventionality and American
smugness. He called for an active, “realistic” engagement in the world, tempered by a
healthy regard for original sin and its expression in human vanity and pride, both
expressed in personal and corporate ways. Written in the years following the triumphs of
World War II, Niebuhr’s book challenged the dangers of unrestrained American idealism.
To read it today amid the new American messianic zeal and religious certainty of our
current War on Terror is to be haunted by lessons not learned from Adams.
Not surprisingly, the President to whom Niebuhr turns at the end of his book is
Abraham Lincoln, quoting from the Second Inaugural. It is worth hearing again in the
current context:
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has
already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease
with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier
triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible
and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may
seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing
their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be
not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been
answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. . . . Fondly do we hope,
fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
7
Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as we
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.”
Lincoln’s piety – and his rhetoric – saw beyond narrow partisan interest to an arc
of providence that both encompasses and motivates our actions, and at the same time
limits the seductive dangers of our own pretentions. Historian Allen Guelzo of
Gettysburg College leaves us with an agnostic Lincoln in his book Redeemer President,
agnostic in the sense of not being able to claim with certainty a personal relationship to a
divine Father in the more classic evangelical mold. We are a long way from our current
president who seems to have seen God face to face and who hears Him with some
regularity. No, Lincoln’s is a different kind of piety, steeped says Guelzo in “faith in
divine superintendency,” a confrontation “with the Calvinist God who could not be
captured or domesticated. . . , who possessed a conscious will to intervene, challenge,
and reshape human destinies without regard for historical process.” Guelzo suggests,
echoing Niebuhrian themes, that
it was the tension between his Calvinistic “melancholy” and his bourgeois
aggressiveness which acted as the best mutual restraint. . . . His confidence in the
direction of providence kept his determinism from collapsing into helplessness in
the darkest hours of the war, and it was his determinism that prevented his . . .
optimism from soaring into arrogance in victory.
One wonders where we might be today had such a piety and rhetoric guided our
nation through the seven years since September 11, 2001. Could we hope for a
presidential piety and for forms of religious engagement in public life that move beyond
secular distain on the one hand and partisan certainty on the other, in short, a piety rooted
not in utter assurance and arrogance, but in a confident faith tempered by doubt and
humility in our own human capacities? And could we dare hope for a political process
where such a piety might actually be honored and valued rather than swept away before
parochial moral litmus tests or lost in the foolishness of backing a candidate solely on the
basis of whether he or she believes Jesus is the only way to salvation?
8
Niebuhr does not use the term piety. But surely it is to a public and personal piety
that he refers as he draws his book on democracy’s struggle with Communism and his
reflection on Lincoln to a close:
There is, in short, even in a conflict with a foe with whom we have little in
common the possibility and necessity of living in a dimension of meaning in
which the urgencies of the struggle are subordinated to a sense of awe before the
vastness of the historical drama in which we are jointly involved; to a sense of
modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us for the resolution of
its perplexities; to a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and
foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy’s demonry and our vanities;
and to a sense of gratitude for the divine mercies which are promised to those who
humble themselves.
American voters are, it seems, easily seduced by optimistic and self-righteous
interpretations of their own history, by messianic convictions about their current
circumstances, and by the notion that their public life, their commonwealth, can easily be
reduced to the diminished virtues of either “blue” or “red.” The road to the White House
has not often been paved with theological subtlety or a piety marked by modesty in the
face of the historical drama in which we are involved. In recent years in particular God
has been enlisted in the partisan fray with an ideological certainty that makes a mockery
of the awe toward which Niebuhr beckoned. But it is worth remembering – both in
gratitude and in hope – that, at the most perilous moment in our national history, we were
guided by a president more trusting in the mystery and majesty of God’s providence than
in the platitudes and certainties of his own faith, a providence in which blue and gray
were both inextricably linked and whose trajectory cannot and must not ever be easily
conformed to our own crusade, no matter how grand or noble it might appear.

A California priest's courageous homily

2008-10-11T00:04:00.000-07:00

On November 4, California voters will be asked to make a crucial decision regarding gay marriage. This year the California Supreme Court ruled that gay mariage is legal in this state - not only for residents, but for any couple coming from out of state who wished to be married here. A group of homophobic citizens challenged that decision by accumulating enough signatures from like-minded registered voters to put the issue before the populace on the November ballot. The result is Proposition 8, which states, in sum, "Shall the Constitution of the State of California be amended to read that only marriage between a man and a woman is legal in the State?" Thus a YES vote would so limit the Constitution and deny same sex couples the right to marry in this state. A NO vote would not so limit the Constitution, thus allowing same sex marriage. As one might imagine, there is a lot of emotional energy (and money) being expended by persons and groups advocating for their respective positions. Many UCC churches in the Bay Area and throughout the state are urging a NO vote on Prop 8. (There may be some confusion at the polls if persons opposed to gay marriage think they should be voting NO, and/or persons in favor of gay marriage think they should be voting YES. I myself encapsulate the issue this way: 8 = hate. If you are against hate - and homophobia - then you should vote NO. If you are in favor of prejudice - and homophobia - then you should vote YES).
With all this in mind, I commend to your attention this homily recently given by a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Fresno, an agricultural region in what we call the Central Valley (aka San Joaquin Valley):
ABC Action News Exclusive - Father Geoffrey Farrow of the Saint Paul Newman Center in northeast Fresno shocked parishioners Sunday morning when he came out against Proposition 8, an initiative that would eliminate the right for same sex couples to marry in California.http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=6431105 Below is the homily that Geoffrey Farrow gave last Sunday in Fresno:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Fr. Geoffrey Farrow 10.05.08* (Respect Life Sunday) As most of you know, I was appointed pastor here at the Newman Center on April 15th of this year. When I arrived, I set out to address a series of various projects to repair our facilities. To date, most of these deferred maintenance items have been addressed. In the middle of dealing with contractors, the parish finance committee, the building department of the diocese, neighbors, etc., I received a FAX from the bishop's office on the 30th of June. It was the bishop's pastoral letter for the month of July. This single FAX threw my whole summer, and in fact, my whole life into a turmoil. Recently, I was speaking with some of our parishioners who advocate for the ordination of women. In the course of our conversation, a question arose which has haunted me: "At what point do you cease to be an agent for healing and growth and become an accomplice of injustice?" By asking all of the pastors of the Diocese of Fresno to promote Catholics to vote "Yes" on Proposition 8, the bishop has placed me in a moral predicament. In his "Pastoral," the bishop states: "Marriage is much more than simply two persons loving each other. Marriage is naturally, socially, and biologically, directed to bringing forth life." Actually, there are TWO ends to marriage: 1) Unitive and 2) Procreative. The unitive end of marriage is simply a union of love and life. The Procreative end is, of course, to create new life. It is important to understand that the unitive end of marriage is sufficient for a valid marriage. The Church sanctions, and considers a sacrament, the marriage of elderly heterosexual couples who are biologically incapable of reproduction. So, if two people of different genders who are incapable of reproduction can enter into a valid marriage, then why is that two people of the same gender, who are incapable of reproduction, cannot enter into a valid marriage. The objections which are raised at this point are taken from Sacred Scripture. Scripture scholars reveal the problematic nature of attempting to use passages from the Hebrew Scriptures as an argument against same gender relationships. Essentially, these scriptures are addressing the cultic practices in which sex with temple prostitutes was part of an act of worshiping Pagan gods. With regard to the Pauline epistles, John J. McNeill, in his book: "The Church and the Homosexual," makes the following point: "The persons referred to in Romans 1:26 are probably not homosexuals that is, those who are psychologically inclined toward their own sex-since they are portrayed as Œabandoning their natural customs.¹" The Pauline epistles do not explicitly treat the question of homosexual activity between two persons who share a homosexual orientation, and as such cannot be read as explicitly condemning such behavior. Therefore, same gender sex by two individuals with same sex orientation is not "abandoning their natural custom." In 1973, as a result of a greater understanding of human psychology, the American Psychological Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1975, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Church's watchdog for orthodoxy) produced a document entitled: "Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics." In this document, they made the most remarkable statement. They stated that there are "homosexuals who are such because of some kind of innate instinct." While these statements are hardly glowing affirmations of gay and lesbian persons, they represent a watershed in human perception and understanding of gay and lesbian people. These new insights have occurred as a result of the birth and development of the science of psychology and understanding of brain development in the 19th and 20th centuries. The California Supreme Court cited and quoted an amicus brief filed by the APA in the Court's opinion issued on May 15, 2008 that struck down California's ban on same sex marriage. Specifically, the court relied on the APA's brief in concluding that the very nature of sexual orientation is related to the gender of partners to whom one is attracted, so that prohibiting same sex marriage discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, rather than just imposing disparate burdens on gay people. In directing the faithful to vote "Yes" on Proposition 8, the California Bishops are not merely entering the political arena, they are ignoring the advances and insights of neurology, psychology and the very statements made by the Church itself that homosexuality is innate (i.e. orientation). In doing this, they are making a statement which has a direct, and damaging, effect on some of the people who may be sitting in the pews next to you today. The statement made by the bishop reaffirms the feelings of exclusion and alienation that are suffered by individuals and their loved ones who have left the Church over this very issue. Imagine what hearing such damaging words at Mass does to an adolescent who has just discovered that he/she is gay/lesbian? What is the hierarchy saying to him/her? What are they demanding from that individual? What would it have meant to you personally to hear from the pulpit at church that you could never date? Never fall in love, never kiss or hold hands with another person? Never be able to marry? How would you view yourself? How would others hearing those same words be directed to view you? How would you view your life and your future? How would you feel when you saw a car with a "Yes on 8" bumper sticker? When you overheard someone in a public place use the word "faggot?" I remember the first time I heard that word, faggot, I was hanging out with my cousins. They all played on the football team of the Catholic high school in our town. One of them spat out the word in the form of a curse. I was just a kid in the 5th grade, I'd never heard the word before, and so I asked: "What's a faggot?" A faggot is a guy who likes other guys, was the curt reply. Now pause. Think. What would those words mean to someone in junior high school who discovers that he/she is attracted to people of their same gender? The greatest fear that he/she would have is that they would be rejected by the people they love the most-their family. So, their solution is to try to pass as straight, deceive, and in effect-lie. Of course, this leads ultimately to self loathing. It should come as little surprise that gay teenagers have elevated suicide rates. According to the Center for Disease Control's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (1999), 33% of gay youth will attempt suicide. The bishop states: "The Church has spoken out constantly that those with a homosexual orientation must be respected with the dignity of every child of God. Every individual is created in the image and likeness of God and should never be subjected to prejudice or hatred." A pious thought uttered by a cleric, robbed of any substantive meaning, as the executioner begins his work. Only a few select people actually read those documents. What most Catholics hear about being gay or lesbian at their parish church is silence. A numbing silence, which slowly and insidiously tells them, "You don't belong here, this is not for you, and you are not welcome." It is not the crude overt vulgarity of some churches. But rather, it is the coldness of a maitre d' who simply won't seat you, or the club which has put you on a waiting list with no intention of allowing you to join. And simply asks you to wait in polite almost, apologetic tones. In effect, the bishops are asking gay and lesbian people to live their lives alone. Why? Who does this benefit? How exactly is society helped by singling out a minority and excluding them from the union of love and life, which is marriage? How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives? What is accomplished by this? Worse still, is to intimidate a gay or lesbian person into a heterosexual marriage, which is doomed from its inception, and makes two victims instead of one by this hurtful "theology." This "theology," which is parroted by clerics in polished tones from pulpits, produces the very prejudice and hatred in our society which they claim to abhor. When the hierarchy prohibited artificial birth control, most of the faithful in the United States, Canada and Europe scratched their heads in wonderment and proceeded to ignore them. There is an expression in theology: "the voice of the people is the voice of God." If your son or daughter is gay/lesbian let them know that you love them unconditionally. Let them know that you are not ashamed or embarrassed by them. Guide them as you would your other children to finding true and abiding love. Let them know that marriage is a union of love and life and is possible for them too. I do not presume to tell you how to vote but I do ask that you pray to the Creator of us all. Think and consider the effects of your vote on others, especially minorities in our society who are sitting next to you in church, and at work. The act of casting a vote takes you a few minutes but it can cause other human beings untold happiness or sorrow for a lifetime. It can grant them hope and acceptance, or it can cause them to lose civil rights. It can be a rebuff to bigotry and hatred, or it can encourage bigotry and hatred. Personally, I am morally compelled to vote "NO" on Proposition 8. It is my hope that the people of California will join with those others around the world such as Canada, Europe and South Africa who welcome their gay and lesbian family members fully into society by granting them the civil right to marry. I know these words of truth will cost me dearly. But to withhold them, would be far more costly and I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well. Jesus said, "The truth will set you free." He didn't promise that it would be easy or without personal cost to speak that truth.

Merrily We Roll Along

2008-09-27T23:35:00.001-07:00

Since getting my California drivers license a week ago I have made 4 solo voyages -- all to my immense satisfaction. Trip #1 was an easy one -- just up the street to a local eatery and then from there through a residential area to a bank ATM. Unfortunately the sun was just setting during this last portion, and given the canopy of trees and lack of street lighting in some places, it was difficult to see. I made it home without incident but I now have a new rule -- no driving after 5 p.m. unless absolutely necessary, and in familiar territory that is well lighted.
Trip #2 was up the street again, this time to El Camino Hospital here in Mt. View where my occupational therapist is. The trip requires going about half a mile up Grant Rd, a busy major thoroughfare with a speed limit of 35-40. My GEM car only goes 25 mph at top speed (and it actually inhibits you from going any faster), so I stay over in the right lane and let people in a hurry pass me by. It may help that I have a yellow sticker on each side of the car that reads, "Patience Please: Disabled Driver"
Trip #3 was up Middlefield Rd into Palo Alto where I have therapy activities 4 days per week. I drove myself to the Betty Wright Swim Center where I exercise every Friday. The staff there was thrilled with my success, as were several swimmers I know. One of them, Molly Hale, actually just re-learned to drive herself. She was in an auto accident years ago, not wearing a seat belt, and suffered a spinal injury that rendered her paraplegic. She has a specially outfitted van with hand controls for gas and brake. She enters the vehicle on a lift that accommodates her wheelchair and then she just wheels right under the steering wheel and takes off (with seat belt). She actually had the same adaptive driving instructor as I did. Unfortunately for me (but not for her), Sam seems to have a better understanding of motor impairment than brain injuries such as mine. During our practice sessions, at a STOP sign by a crosswalk, I several times came to a stop at the line on the other side of the crosswalk. Sam said, "What are you doing? You're blocking the crosswalk - remember to stop behind the first line!" When I thought about this I realized I was counting the lines in the same manner you would if there were two parallel lines on a chalk board and you were counting them. #1 is the one at the top and #2 is the one at the bottom, right? I was stopping my car behind line #1 so I didn't see what Sam's problem was. When I explained this to Anne, she said, "Just think of it as stopping behind the first line you come to - et voila, I haven't made that mistake since.
My all electric GEM car (www.gemcar.com - I have the e2 model) has a spinner knob on the steering wheel so I can steer and make turns using just my right hand, and an adaptive turn signal lever that I operate with my right hand. I also have a panoramic rear view mirror and wide side mirrors on right and left. Because I have residual peripheral blindness on my left side (hemianopsia), some of my friends assumed my biggest challenge when driving would be to see things on that side. Actually it is not. I am used to driving my electric scooter and constantly turning my head to the left to make sure I don't miss anything over there. The biggest challenge, as far as I'm concerned, is simultaneously processing all the data and sensory input coming at me simultaneously: e.g., there's a traffic light up ahead and a car waiting to turn left; there's a car behind me and one behind that; there's a school zone between where I am now and the traffic light - oh, and wait, there's actually a stop sign about a block before I get to the traffic light; there's also a girl riding a bike over on my right and a car coming toward me with only one headlight, etc. But the biggest challenge of all is figuring out which lane I need to be in on a multi lane road in order to proceed where I want to go - straight ahead, left, right etc. On roads I know from traveling them repeatedly, I've actually memorized some of this (to go straight across El Camino on Sylvan Street, stay in the right lane, but the right lane at Moorpark only goes right so be careful!)
Therefore Trip #4 last Thursday was a real test of my skills as I was taking a route to my storage unit in Sunnyvale I hadn't driven yet, even though I've been a passenger headed there any number of times. Without going into undue detail, I found the correct lane to be in every time, kept to the right except when needing to make a left turn, and did not exceed the 30 mph speed limit! I was thrilled.
The part of driving that has returned most naturally is the rate of acceleration, braking distance and use of turn signals -- although, as my instructor Sam pointed out, it seems I had some poor driving habits that have carried over from before the stroke!
The best part of being able to drive again is of course the freedom and independence it gives me. I still use Santa Clara County's Outreach paratransit system for rides further than my 6 mile radius(because of battery discharge) or when I need to get my scooter on board for use at a destination such as Stanford where there would be too much walking involved. But for as helpful as Outreach is, using it requires being ready at least half an hour in advance of their scheduled arrival, which also means they can be half an hour late in coming to pick you up. Now, GEM car wheel firmly in my grasp, with just the right amount of pressure on gas pedal and brake, proper use of turn signals, frequent mirror checks and constant mental chatter - look ahead, do this, get in that lane, slow down, etc., I can come and go when I want. It feels like being 16 all over again.

Between Pride and Despair

2008-09-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

You may remember the controversy created earlier this summer when a contemporary American politician visited Jerusalem and, in keeping with Jewish tradition, placed his prayer in the Western Wall (aka Wailing Wall or Second Temple Mount). The prayer was written on hotel stationery (Jerusalem's best, the 5 star King David) and was retrieved by, in my opinion, unscrupulous journalists who then publicized it to the world. I defer to the ethicists as to whether my re-printing it here compounds the original sin or simply repeats what others have done, however, in light of this evening's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I thought I would sign off in this manner: Lord, protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just, and make me an instrument of your will.

My very own blog!

2008-09-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

My best friend has been after me to "GET YOUR OWN BLOG!" because he is tired of my trying to critique his. so, Kent (www.progressiverevelationblogspot.com) here you go. now you make the first post!