To the Oklahoma Lawmakers: poem

Fear and Loathing in Arizona

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath…” - Mark 2:27

Arizona’s new law about immigration has not created new problems or proposed “solutions” that haven’t been stated before. It is not generating new issues, only feeding old ones and ushering in a new environment in which fear rules over compassion and in which we confuse our safety with our comfort.
The main thrust of support for this immigration bill is, as far as I can tell, built on the idea that illegals bring crime and that something must be done about that. As Daniel Griswold points out on his blog, this may not be completely accurate:
“The crime rate in Arizona in 2008 was the lowest it has been in four decades. In the past decade, as the number of illegal immigrants in the state grew rapidly, the violent crime rate dropped by 23 percent, the property crime rate by 28 percent. (You can check out the DoJ figures here.)”
First off I would say that being an “immigrant nation”, which is what we have been, are and will be, is an inherently risky venture. Anytime there is free flow of anything (ideas, capital, human beings, etc.) you risk something. And I also think that Texas, New Mexico and Arizona share an undue burden as far as immigration support goes. But New Mexico, for some reason, seems not to share its neighbors’ concerns or policy decisions. New Mexico’s government officials, including Governor Bill Richardson, have largely spoken out against Arizona’s legislation. So this is not a universal opinion for border states.
But what troubles me more than the law itself is the manner in which people are being labeled and how that allows us to “other” them. What concerns me is the generic “illegal” label that gets applied with no acknowledgment of the complexity of this issue. And what troubles me even more is that such an issue is being raised over the status of “illegal” immigrants who are guilty of what is, for a single offense, a misdemeanor. Just for the record, depending on the jurisdiction, examples of other misdemeanors include: public intoxication, disorderly conduct, trespass, vandalism, reckless driving, and other similar crimes…hardly the kind of activity that motivates people to build miles of fencing or separate families for years or interrogate children.
So this leads me to think that perhaps something is going on behind the movement against “illegals” beyond just a sudden interest in law enforcement.
The truth is that I am not really worried about what the common reaction to this law will be. I happen to know and trust many law enforcement officers as just like all the rest of us – decent, fair-minded people who are not geared towards violence or wishing to inflict harm or pain on anyone, least of all the innocent. Still, they will have a duty and perhaps some tough decisions to make in the coming months.
What I am worried about are the very few who would engage in racial profiling because they believe in it, or xenophobic slants to their enforcement of the laws because they harbor their own racist ideologies. This law enables those people. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it best in a recent blog commentary on the Arizona law:

“Abominations such as apartheid do not start with an entire population suddenly becoming inhumane. They start here. They start with generalizing unwanted characteristics across an entire segment of a population. They start with trying to solve a problem by asserting superior force over a population. They start with stripping people of rights and dignity - such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty - that you yourself enjoy. Not because it is right, but because you can. And because somehow, you think this is going to solve a problem.
However, when you strip a man or a woman of their basic human rights, you strip them of their dignity in the eyes of their family and their community, and even in their own eyes. An immigrant who is charged with the crime of trespassing for simply being in a community without his papers on him is being told he is committing a crime by simply being. He or she feels degraded and feels they are of less worth than others of a different color skin. These are the seeds of resentment, hostilities and in extreme cases, conflict.
Such "solutions" solve nothing. As already pointed out, even by people on the police force, Arizona's new laws will split the communities, make it less likely that people in the immigrant communities will work with the police. They will create conditions favorable to the very criminals these laws are trying to disarm.”

This has been partially addressed. In the latest version of the bill, amended recently, the language has been changed, supposedly to “remove fears about racial profiling”. The original law said that police can conduct an immigration status check during any “lawful contact,” if they have reasonable suspicion a person is an illegal immigrant. The amendment replaces “lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest,” clarifying that police may not stop people without cause.
But here’s the catch. A police officer can pull anyone over for any reason; they just have to answer to “probable cause”, which is really verified by the police officer. I know what the law says, but I also know that “driving while black” is a very real situation and that “driving while brown” will be just as real. If we’re talking about the “few bad apples”, then the law gives them every window they need. They can say the person was speeding or jaywalking or they thought they saw them shoplifting and had to pull them aside. That is an elephant-sized loophole and it places the burden on the accused, not the accuser.
What this law really accomplishes is the spreading of the same fear that caused its inception in the first place. I understand that the federal law already requires immigrants to carry their papers with them at all times. I understand that the “probable cause” clause is in the law. What I also understand is that the wording of this law and the already unreasonably hostile environment towards immigrants (legal or not) creates an atmosphere in which legal people who happen to look “suspicious” will at least be hassled more often and where many will be subject to a new level of harassment over something that is a misdemeanor (on first offense).
Beyond the legal issues there is something else – a moral issue. The law and morality are not the same, never have been. In fact, it could be argued that our laws more accurately reflect our broken morality than any idealized one. And this law is no exception.
Until we begin to see human beings, especially in the case of illegal immigration, instead of people guilty by existence, we may be living legally but that doesn’t bode well for our principles. The borders we have drawn on the world God created are ours…God doesn’t see them. And the laws we choose to create are for us, not us for them. And, as I think the biblical record shows, these values around the care of the nomad or the stranger – at least from God’s perspective - are the exact opposite of what we are no professing.
This is the next wave of human and civil rights debate in this country. We want free trade, but closed borders. We want a global economy but a national identity. These things cannot work together – something has to give. Perhaps Arizona is the Selma of our time – the front lines of the next question in the ongoing debate – who is in, who is out? Who counts?

The Most Radical President Ever?

Speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans (an irony in itself that Republican leadership would be celebrated in New Orleans), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called President Obama the "most radical President in American history" who oversees a "secular, socialist machine."

This is from a college history professor who apparently feels that whatever President Obama has done,something he doesn't really elaborate on, it is worse than the previous 8 years which saw the unprecedented dismissal of participation in the Geneva Convention, the introduction of the Patriot Act which disassembled individual rights more than any document in the past 75 years, and introduced preemptive war as the driver of foreign policy in the past decade. This is on top of the wave of deregulation and lack of enforcement of still existing regulation (and we saw how that turned out)and the blatant misuse and abuse of the Presidential "signing statements", a practice than continues now (thanks to precedence) and was rejected by the American Bar Association as a action that "undermine(s) the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers."

My biggest gripe however is that when you watch this video, he goes from such an inflammatory remark right into the coming election season, calling on the cheering crowd to turn out and make a Republican majority and Presidency that will "repeal the radical agenda" placed into law by the current administration.

First off - how does such a sweeping and drastic statement like "most radical ever" get challenged? Shouldn't a person have to offer some evidence for such a statement? I mean, radical is a relative label. I can easily refer to the previous administration as radical (something I think I just did) and find many who would agree with me, so where does that leave us?

It is clear to me that all of this demonizing is for the sole purpose of winning elections. It is exactly where Gingrich goes immediately following his unsupported critique and listeners should have no doubt - this man is running for office and greasing the skids right now. This is what infuriates me more than the political back and forth between the partisan talking heads...the idea that in elections all things are on the table. Win at any cost - damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

In the wake of this slash and burn politicking is our national identity, our civil discourse and our democracy. Fairly soon, I'm afraid, this level of incendiary rhetoric is going to get someone killed...maybe a whole lot of somebodies. We in Oklahoma City know all about that kind of hate and how seemingly innocuous but irresponsibly heated rhetoric can feed dark hearts like gasoline on a fire.

So, thank you, Newt Gingrich. You have just split America in two once again. I'm not sure at this point that we can sew ourselves back together again. But maybe you'll win the next election. I guess that will be worth it to you.

Prop 8's ridiculous argument...

Prop 8 in California which institutes a ban on same-sex marriage is being tried once again. Yes, the voters have spoken...but the voters in Mississippi and Alabama voted at one time on the status of people with darker skin than they had...didn't make it right.

The argument that same-sex marriage weakens "traditional" marriage gets made all of the time - well, it really doesn't get made because there never is any evidence given than it does weaken hetero marriage, which seems pretty capable of weakening itself thank you very much. I have never had anyone present me with a case of how two gay men marrying makes my hetero marriage weaker. In fact, I think that by taking the "institution" of marriage more seriously we make it stronger. I'd like some propositions on real family values like good school systems, childcare, maternity leave and ways to include these things in the workplace. Focus on jobs that pay living wages, not the commitments of two human beings which are just as legitimate and well-intentioned as any hetero matching.

Well - here's a GREAT article on this issue from The Daily Beast. In it, retired philosophy professor Linda Hirshman makes mincemeat of the ridicuolus and scary argument being put forth in the courtroom defending Prop 8. It is another case, like HB 3408 here in Oklahoma, of manipulation of voters with a hidden agenda. If the argument that they are laying out in the courtroom had been front and center during the Prop 8 voting, would we have Prop 8?

Snow Day

Well, here's another day of schools cancelled (which means dad's plans cancelled too) and life inside the house (for the most part). I'm going to the store later under the premise that the roads are passable (I tried themt his morning) and that the store will be pretty quiet. I like shopping slowly.

As I peruse the internet I am aware of some key dates coming up very soon:
•Feb. 18 — Spring training: Reporting day for Red Sox pitchers and catchers; MLB voluntary reporting date for pitchers, catchers and injured players

•Feb. 20 — Spring training: First workout for Red Sox pitchers and catchers

•Feb. 22 — Spring training: Reporting day for Red Sox positional players

•Feb. 23 — Spring training: MLB voluntary reporting date for other players

•Feb. 24 — Spring training: First Red Sox full-squad workout

•March 2 — Spring training: Mandatory reporting date for players

•March 3 — First Red Sox spring training game vs. Northeastern

•April 3 — Last Red Sox spring training game vs. Nationals (Nationals Park)

•April 4 — MLB Opening Night: Red Sox vs. Yankees at Fenway Park; active rosters reduced to 25 players

It will be here before you know it. Already my Red Sox pal Jay and I are planning our trip to Kansas City for the first road game of the 2010 season. The last time we went to KC to see the Sox (and the debut of a certain Japanese pitcher) they won the whole shooting match....so, maybe we need to pay attention to such baseball voodoo!

At least this morning as I look outside it finally looks like school should be cancelled...

A Game Changer!!!

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Chief Justice John Roberts, in handing down a bombshell of a decision yesterday warned: "The fact that the law currently grants a favored position to media corporations is no reason to overlook the danger inherent in accepting a theory that would allow government restrictions on their political speech." And there's the rub.

The entirety of this decision rests on the idea that a corporation should have the same rights as an individual citizen. This ruling overturns over a century of legal precedent against such a concept. If this is not "judicial activism", I don't know what is.

The case for why this is such an egregious case of activism is made by Michael Waldman in the Washington Post:

"For starters, the court boldly reached to consider a major constitutional case when it didn't have to. The case itself addressed an arcane issue: whether campaign finance laws were properly applied to an infomercial critical of Hillary Clinton. The justices easily could have ruled on narrow statutory grounds. Instead, last summer, they announced a rushed re-argument, making clear they were itching to overturn a century of constitutional doctrine, even though the case offered no factual or trial record on the broad question of corporate spending. This week the justices struck down laws in 22 states and overturned key decisions from 1990 and 2003 -- all in the middle of a new election cycle. It is hard to remember an instance where the justices reached so far to make major constitutional law. It will have immediate political consequences. Business managers now will be able to spend at will Bloomberg-level sums in congressional races across the country. In partisan and political impact, this rivals Bush v. Gore."

We are fast becoming something that we will not like. All of the "tea-partiers" wanting the "average guy" to be heard need to kiss that dream goodbye. This is a game changer in the largest sense. We no longer have representative democracy in my opinion, unless you feel like you are represented by a corporation. What is next? Will we have candidates decked out in clothing covered by sponsor emblems? Will our next congressional representative look like a european soccer player?

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said this:

At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

So true...we are now awash in the very thing that almost everyone agrees is the major cause of gridlock and corruption at the congressional level. If you think that you don't see any action from Congress now, just wait. All it will take is a couple of incumbents being badly beaten thanks to corporate spending in response to a political ruling against their interest to have everyone at Capitol Hill afraid to even legislate anything but the mildest of appeals.

So, as I heard one commentator wonder out loud...have we now given citizenship rights to foreigners? Halliburton, for one, is registered in the Cayman Islands as a tax shelter. Why does that corporation which calls another country its headquarters get the same rights that I do as an American citizen?

Corporations are not people! They are made up of people and that is where their representation comes from. Money poisons the well again and we will soon know that power corrupts...and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A very sad day in American history.

Haitian nightmare

There could not be a worse place for a 7.0 earthquake to hit than Haiti. This is a very difficult place to live in terms of infrastructure on a good day, much less after a powerful earthquake. Many of these people have nothing and the government infrastructure is almost non-existent. I thought yesterday of how much stress and suffering 14 inches of snow brought to Oklahoma City on Christmas Eve...of how many people commented on the slow speed of emergency response and government reaction. Yet you would have to multiply this a thousand fold to even approximate the environment in Haiti. We simply cannot imagine it, nor do we want to.

And the worst part is that there is truly little a person like me can do other than donate. So I have and yet that seems woefully inadequate. So then I pray - but what do I pray for? Do I pray for food and water and some end to the immediate suffering of those who have survived? Do I pray for the shattered hearts of all of those people who have lost those most important to them? Do I pray for more reasonable government in Haiti or and end to economic blight which keeps them down? There's only so long that you can rescue drowning people from the river before you wondering who keeps throwing them in there in the first place.

In this week we mark the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...the man who reminded us that we are caught in a web of mutuality and that whatever happens to one of us happens to all of us. In this week we should remember his words as we look to Haiti, the forgotten place.

This is a quote from Tracy Kidder in the NYT: "Haiti is a country created by former slaves, kidnapped West Africans, who, in 1804, when slavery still flourished in the United States and the Caribbean, threw off their cruel French masters and created their own republic. Haitians have been punished ever since for claiming their freedom: by the French who, in the 1820s, demanded and received payment from the Haitians for the slave colony, impoverishing the country for years to come; by an often brutal American occupation from 1915 to 1934; by indigenous misrule that the American government aided and abetted. (In more recent years American administrations fell into a pattern of promoting and then undermining Haitian constitutional democracy.)"

In light of the ever sensitive Pat Robertson's comments, and the anniversary of Dr. King's birth, I want to go on record as saying (as if there were any doubt) that I'm on Dr. King's side. I don't know who this God is that Robertson talks about, but I do know the God that King told us of - a God who's heart was one of justice and compassion and who asked the same of us.

Dr. King once said, in perhaps his most controversial speech given at Riverside Church in New York City in which he spoke out against the Vietnam War, that "I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

This is time again. There is no better example for us that we are materially-driven not people-driven than Haiti. May God turn our hearts...

Please give if you can.

There's room in the world religions class, Brit...

This may suprise you, but Fox News Sunday was the site of some evangelical Christian proselytizing last week. Anchor-turned-commentator Brit Hume went on the offensive with the Tiger Woods fiasco when he said that Tiger just needed Jesus. He was working from public statements on Mr. Woods' part in which he stated that he is a Buddhist. Buddhism, Mr. Hume posited, doesn't "offer the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith".

I think that the almost complete silence on the part of Buddhists would counter that opinion, Mr. Hume. If anyone has a beef with you right now it is Buddhism. Yet even one of the more public voices of Buddhism, the Columbia professor Robert Thurman, refused to "strike back" on this morning's edition of the Takeaway on Public Radio. He was quite willing to counteract the vastly oversimplified and usually incorrect assumptions from Hume's statements, but he was very unwilling to say much more than Mr. Hume needs a comparative religions course.

The funny thing is that it takes Professor Thurman, a practicing Buddhist, to show that Hume's statement is in fact counter to the teachings of Jesus. To imply that simply being Christian means that you can make a "complete recovery", as if he no longer will have any sin to contend with or the very real issues with a wife and family is not something that Thurman (or I) agree with. Buddhism and Christianity alike prohibit Tiger's recent behavior (if the reports are accurate) as some of the worst actions a person can do.

The worst that Thurman could manage was that Hume was rude. He was rude to Buddhists and Christians alike. I'll say amen to that.

A war on terrorism is about as effective as a war on drugs...

So, having been inundated like everyone with underwear bomber and shoe bomber news...with people actually comparing Obama's response to the foiled attempt in Detroit with Bush's response to 9-11 (there's a slight difference of scale) and hearing that Yemen is the new front on the war on terror (which Dick Cheney wants to make sure is still called a war) despite this not being a new idea to the entire intelligence industry, I have had a few thoughts.

Very much like a "war on drugs" a "war on terrorism" accomplishes only two things. First, it makes people hate us more because fighting "wars of choice" really means that we are invading countries and going to war without declaring war, often in the "pre-emptive" fashion that has now apparently become the accepted norm.

Second, fighting such a war in a single-minded fashion only addresses a symptom. Just like law enforcement alone will never send drug use, military might can never kill or capture all of the terrorists. Hell, we don't even have good ways to tell them from the population of innocent bystanders in such a war.

The pieces are being put in place to open a new front in this "war" in Yemen. Yemen currently spends 6% of its GDP on its own military, often fighting the same people we would be engaging. They haven't eradicated or even slowed them. In fact, they have created more of them.

This recent article from SLATE does a great job explaining why a country like Yemen in an oil-rich area of the world struggles so much.

Journalist Brian Palmer says this: "More problematic for Yemen's long-term prosperity is the mismatch between the country's needs and means. Agriculture is a good example. While 43 percent of its employed adult men are farmers, the nation imports more than 75 percent of its food. A few decades ago, Yemenis were able to feed themselves; now many farmers have switched over to growing qat, a leaf containing an amphetamine-like drug that is illegal in most Western countries." Perhaps there's more in common with a "war on drugs" and a "war on terror" than is immediately apparent.

Corruption, greed and the merging of corporations and government (things which should be driven by very different goals)has effectively hamstrung Yemen. It is a theme which we should be familiar with and very scared of. Until we begin to understand that power concentrated in the hands of a few at the expense of the many is an equation that leads to dysfunctional social constructions like drug use and terrorism or radicalism we won't make a dent in those problems.

By and large people want the chance to live in peace, be prosperous and take care of themselves and their families. When that opportunity is hindered in some way, people react. They react and they take what opportunity is there. Perhaps it is drug production/sales/use, perhaps it is striking out in whatever way they can against what ever "enemy" they can be convinced is responsible for their plight.

Fighting this in conventional ways accomplishes nothing but feeding that beast. It is time to starve the beast by evoking the most dramatic and radical notion ever - loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Doing the Same Thing & Expecting Different Results...What's That Called Again?

We are sending more troops (30,000 more to be precise) to Afghanistan. President Obama made a powerful argument for the necessity of this action...powerful, but not convincing to me. We have spend the past 8 years engaged in nation-building and the strategy of invasion as foreign policy tool. I don't think it works.

Yes, Al Qaeda has attacked us in the past and perhaps continues to be some threat to our security. Yes, the Taliban is a ruthless organization determined to establish a totalitarian and oppressive regime in Afghanistan. Yes, we have started something and should have some responsibility to see it through. I agree with all of these things.

Here are my issues:
1. We have no idea what we are doing. Our nation-building in Iraq was a long and painful process, not to mention enormously costly in terms of lives and money. We do not understand the Arab mindset, ethos or culture at many levels . How long will it take this time as we make mistake after mistake because we, to paraphrase Tom Friedman in his opinion column in the NYT this morning, "try to make Afghanistan into Norway"?

2. We have some "nation-building" to do right here at home and perhaps we should get our own house in order before we go dictating to the rest of the world how it should be done. Lost in the shuffle of all of this talk of security is the real threat to our security...our economy is consumer-driven instead of production-driven, our debt is staggering and growing daily, and our culture is based on borrowing instead of saving. This is an unsustainable system and the biggest security risk we have...far more dangerous than Al Qaeda. (This is not to even mention the fact that we will not blink at raising the deficit or passing on debt to our grandchildren to fight wars, but will scream "socialism" from the highest tower if we dare to think about the same thing providing health care for millions of Americans. As my dad used to say, if you want to know where a person's heart is look at where they spend their money. For a nice take on "paying for war" see this site.)

3. We have Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars and a host of other nations' histories to look at - why do we think that we can accomplish what has never been accomplished with these tactics in a place that no country has ever invaded and successfully built up? And to try to do all of this on a timeline is just political gaming...

I agree with Friedman and others in the belief that a real stance for our security would not involve sending more troops to fight, but would mean the much more difficult and self-effacing move of a retreat from our addiction to fossil fuels and, in doing so, a shift of power, economic support for the totalitarian regimes we resist on one hand and feed on the other.

Our future demands some real courage...some courage beyond even the substantial amount being demonstrated by our armed forces every day. It requires the courage to say that the way we have been doing things isn't working and its time to re-evaluate our priorities and goals. It requires the courage to change. That's what I can believe in.

A Purpose Driven Life?

Rick Warren gives the standard argument against same-sex marriage in these clips - a position he basically reinterates in a more recent "Meet the Press" interview. His claim is that same-sex marriage would change a "5000 year-old" definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. There's only one issue with that - it isn't true. He goes on to claim that he doesn't want a brother and sister marrying (OK, that one is covered),an older man marrying a young girl (sorry, Rick, that was not only a Biblical custom but still goes on today in many cultures), or a man with multiple wives (You mean like David or Solomon or the many cultures which still practice that today? Read Leviticus 18:18 or Deuteronomy 21:15 if you need some insight into multiple wives in the Biblical law). The idea that monogomy is the norm that has existed through all cultures and times is just false.

I have yet to hear any commentator against same-sex marriage tell me how two loving gay partners marrying threatens my 10 year-old monogamous, "traditional", one man and one woman marriage. How does it change anything? What does threaten my marriage and the so-called "sanctity" of the "institution" of marriage is the disrespect we give to it in general. Britney Spears Vegas weddings or the moral proselytizers on their soap-boxes and their 4th marriages do more damage than a gay or lesbian couple could ever do.

The slippery slope argument doesn't work for me either. As a minister of the Gospel, I call people (same or different sex) to be monogamous couples because that is the truest form of relationship and the most responsible with the mighty power that is love. I want same-sex marriage not because I want to damage marriage, but because I want to strengthen it - and because I wish to call my brothers and sisters who are LGBTQ to the same discipleship I call everyone else to - and that includes marriage for those who wish to do the hard work of relationships.

Rick - you're missing the boat. The bibical model of marriage is not the same as our mdoel of marriage, just as the biblical model of slavery is not one that we ascribe to. The cultures and times are different. We understand (some of us) that homosexuality is not a sin or curse, but the manner in which God creates some people. It is not a choice, I did not choose my heterosexuality. It is how God created me.

I appreciate the hard pastoral position that this puts ministers in...I really do. But that doesn't mean that we can walk the line so intently that we lose our prophetic responsibility to the Gospel. Jesus was comforting and also challenging. We must be the same, even when it means that those in our own congregations are afflicted. I do not believe that Rick Warren can do the good work he has done with AIDS patients and not be changed by that. I think he addresses that in the "Meet the Press" interview. But you still have to do something, Rick. If you spend time with people dying of this horrible disease and know that they did not "choose" to have this "lifestyle" but instead are victims of a sub-culture that has sprung up from people trying to be true to themselves in a world which will not accept that and therefore forces all kinds of false living, then that new awareness asks for some sort of new response from you. No one said the Gospel was easy.

And one last thing, Rick. You can't support "equal rights for everyone" but then call those rights different things. That's called "separate but equal" and it's been tried. It doesn't work. You're going to have to bite the bullet and do some soul-searching. Either a human right is just that, or it isn't.

Health Care Reform in Oklahoma

If you are wondering what the health care reform package that will be debated in Congress soon will mean to you as a citizen in Oklahoma, read this.

There are a lot of reasons to support reform, even if it isn't perfect.

We cannot afford to do nothing.

Dissention in the ranks...

As I said my prayers last night (yes, I actually do this), I said some special words for Kileen, Texas and the Ft. Hood community. I think that the President said it well when he remarked that a soldier's death in combat is tragic enough. It is awful beyond words when they come under fire on their own soil, at their own base, fired upon by their fellow soldier.

When it happened, I immediately began to wonder what the motive was and was very nervous that we would find another Timothy McVeigh at work or, worse yet, that the shooter would be Muslim. Of course those worst fears came true. It would seem that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychologist in an ironic twist, opened fire on his fellow soldiers on the grounds of Ft.Hood. Nothing is really known about motive, though what concerns me is that the religious tradition of the "alleged" shooter instantly produces much speculation.

Why is that? As soon as the man's name is released, clearly of Arabic origin, and the nature of his religious practices are revealed the landslide of implied or bold declarations of "domestic terrorism" are released. First of all I think it odd that he is identified so quickly by his religion.

Robert Stewart, Devan Kalathat, Michael McLendon, Steven Kazmierczak, Robert A. Hawkins, Seung-Hui Cho, Charles Carl Roberts IV, Student Jeffrey Weise, Terry Ratzmann. These are all names of the shooters from the mass murders of the past 4 years. Do you know the religious practices of any of them? Was religion part of even the speculative motives for any of these people? If the answer is no (and I think it is) then is that a double-standard?

While I don't deny that religion often plays a vital role in the motivation of unstable people, such motivation is clearly not monopolized by a single religion. Islam has no special claim on motivating people to kill others. Christianity certainly has its own history with that.

So, as I pray for Ft. Hood, for the survivors and the wounded, for the families impacted in so many ways- including the family of Major Hasan, for the community wounded by this evil, I pray also for a nation which likes to pigeonhole these awful events and turn them into overly simplistic "us versus them" scenarios. The hard truth is that this may be a whole lot more of us...

Jesus once told his followers not to judge so they won't be judged. He said that the judgements we give will be the ones we get. So we'd best be aware that the standard we are establishing now is the one that will be used for us. What kind of world are we creating?

A candle against the gale...

As we gathered in the dusk of a windy evening, we knew we were in trouble. My friend, a fellow minister in the Methodist tradition, looked at me as she tried to light one of the candles we had brought for our candlelight vigil. There was no way that thing was going to either light or stay lit in the strong south wind. Here in Oklahoma, holding an outdoor candlelight vigil is a roll of the dice against big odds.

We had gathered at an outdoor park to hold a vigil for health care reform in conjunction with many others across the country. We had our sound system, our candles, our lighters, our notes...we were ready. As it reached time to start and there were just a few seats filled in an amphitheater made to hold a couple of hundred we delayed for a few minutes. But that was the crowd...

So we looked at the flickering flame, barely able to last a second in the unrelenting wind, and we counted the number of people who could make it to the hastily assembled vigil and for a moment we might have both had some reservations. What are we doing? We did throw this together at the last minute and weren't able to advertise or get much participation because people were already scheduled. What were we expecting?

The cool darkness of the evening, the small number of participants and the complete lack of any candles - a pretty crucial part of a candlelight vigil - might have been enough to completely deflate us. Yet there we stood. We had a single newspaper reporter to cover our story and no hint of a TV camera. There was just a few of us in the driving wind with no candles at all to stand against the approaching darkness.

Yet there we stood. We stood together. We stood even though we knew it was a small gesture against the torrent of opposition. We stood knowing that we were holding a rally in support of reform that none of us expect a single one of our representatives in the House or Senate to support. Yet we stood at least knowing that we weren't alone. Maybe that was why we were there. Not to be a grand showing of half of the city, or to raise a thundering cry of outrage, or to be the lead story on the evening news. Maybe we were there, in the way that we were there, just to be our small group. Maybe we were there, just like those candles were going to be symbols, to represent all of the people who think that health care is a human right. Maybe we were there for all of those people who just couldn't make it for a million different reasons, or who didn't think it would matter, or who can't speak out because of what it might cost them.

What I think is that it did matter, though maybe not for the reasons we had intended. God often works this way, foregoing our intentions and the lure of numbers we so often are beholden to in order to teach us something else. Maybe God was trying to tell us that while we may never feel like a majority, we are not alone. But it isn't the numbers that make an impact...after all, even Jesus never had more than 12 disciples.

It can be a lonely thing to be a progressive faithful person in Oklahoma. I often feel very alone as a person who wants a world oriented more towards justice than judgment, love over righteousness and grace over greed. It was nice that cool evening to feel a different kind of warmth...not the heat of a candle burning next to me, but the warmth of hope from deep inside, stirred by the presence of my fellow travelers.

And thank God for that.

Hoping for Peace

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

President Obama is announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and audible gasps are heard in the room. Then, just like clockwork, the disparaging comments start rolling in. I have to say that I’m not sure how I feel about him winning. There is a part of me that thinks it is a great statement, and another that says awards like this should be given for accomplishment, not intent.

It is amazing to me how often this happens, but there is a great synchronicity between the gospel lectionary passage for this week and this topic. Jesus encounters a rich young man who claims to be blameless before the law and seeks the final step to inheritance of “eternal life”. Jesus calls him with love to let go of one more thing – his money. We can make this just about money, and that might be a good message in our greed driven society, but the real kicker is this – you can’t halfway hope. You have to give in completely or it will never work. You have to be willing to go as far as changing what you believe in…even when what you believe in seems a long way off.

I agree with a friend of mine who said that it wasn’t so much that President Obama won the award as it was the ideals that he represents. President Obama may not have accomplished much in the scheme of things yet, but he has brought a cool drink to a very thirsty people. The reason that he was voted in and that people all around the world are responding to him, despite his lack of measurable outcomes, is that people are hungry for hope.

We’re hungry for hope instead of power, for cooperation instead of competition, for “we’re all in this together” instead of “every man for himself” and the vast yet largely quiet majority wants to see peace…real meaningful peace as something beyond just the absence of war. None of these ideals are currently measurable. In fact, if one watches nothing but Glenn Beck and listens only to Rush Limbaugh you would think quite the opposite. You would think that the world is going to hell and that President Obama is the ringleader marching us straight into the fiery pit.

This is the funny thing about hope. Look at the gospel stories. People weren’t exactly beating down the doors to get into Jesus’ group. They liked the healing and welcomed his stance against the occupying forces of Rome, but when the rubber met the road everyone but the women (in most accounts) fled his side like a fire alarm had gone off. The hope that lots of us see in President Obama is met quite often with skepticism, doubt and even derision. A lot of that is just partisan politics, but there is something else at work…something deeper and more sinister. It is a questioning of what hope really is.

I believe that a sense of hope is crucial to survival and that, ironically, the more comfortable you become materially the easier it is to convince yourself that you have no space for hope. Hope is a more necessary and hungered for commodity the lower on the ladder you get. But I want to cut my angry brothers and sisters a break, because I understand that hope can be a scary thing…especially when it asks you to give up the things you have already done…to change the way that you live…to believe something entirely new and even invisible. It asks people with power to give some of it up for at least a couple of reasons. First, it isn’t real anyway. The possessions age and crumble or break, the money goes away and power or fame is a wicked slave master. Second, this is the way that hope works...at least the way that I have learned from an itinerant carpenter from Nazareth who tells us that the first shall be last and the last first and that in the Reign of God, power doesn't look like we're used to. In order for power to be real, just like love, we have to give it away.

So, Jesus meets this young man with a serious answer for a serious question. He loves him because he deserves nothing less. He just doesn’t sugar-coat anything or deny him the truth. There is a struggle for our souls going on – one side tells us that might makes right and that we cannot let go of “the way things are” or abandon the “America we grew up in”. Another side says that we have to change things…seriously and completely change things in order to see a world that we want to see. We have hope set before us. We‘re all in the same boat, but some of us are looking beyond at what might be shoreline in the distance. Others are afraid to abandon ship…even as it cracks and splinters and takes on water.

Maybe this award is the best thing…maybe it has just raised expectations so high on President Obama that it will be a detriment. At least it seems like an endorsement of the ideals he represents - the ideals of dialogue, humility and justice...the ideals that focus on the far shoreline of hope...though I don't count him (or any human being) as having a perfect score on those accounts. Perhaps it could encourage him to seek a different path in Afghanistan, or to pursue peace between Israel and Palestine with more vigor, I don’t know. In fact, I really have no idea how anything is going to work out. I just know that from my vantage point in the boat, the stars are very bright.

Ground Zero...8 Years Later

The best defense against terrorism is a strong offensive against terrorists. That work continues.
--President George W. Bush, 10/13/2001

In Oklahoma we have a remembrance of 9-11 that is always colored by our remebrance of 4-19. On April 19th, 1995 an American groups of terrorists, born and raised here on our soil, killed innocent women, men and children as surely as those hijackers did almost 8 years later. That scar has forever changed us here locally, as the scars from New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania have left an unmistakable mark on all of us.

I consider this nation changed since that day - changed economically, socially, ethically, patriotically, democratically and even theologically. I'm not sure its a change for the better. I do think that the initial surge, just like here in Oklahoma City after the Murrah Building bombing, was one of great compassion and unity. I just don't think that has lasted.

What has taken its place is fear. The sheer terror of that day in 2001 has lingered even more than the heartwarming feelings that surrounded the stories of selfless rescue attempts and the heroic courage of the first responders (not to mention the second and third and so on...). It is the "never again" mentality which drives us now, as if we could prevent such evil.

Story after story leaks out about how some law enforcement agencies knew about this hijacker or that one before that fateful day. They could have been stopped. The pieces should have been put together. The tragedy should have been averted. I'm afraid the truth is much harder than that.

What we have at times turned into in order to secure our sense of safety is the very thing that drove the hijackers to fly those planes into buildings...ideologically-driven protectionsts willing to do anything, even engage in absolute evil, to secure our "selves" or our ideas.

In the Gospel attributed to Mark, Jesus tells us that "Anyone who wanst to save his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it" (Mark 8:35 NRSV Translation). In other words, there is no pain-free way to live, nor can we protect ourselves from all evil because we end up becoming evil when we do that. It comes down to this...if we must torture people in order to secure our lives, then we gain nothing but those lives for our souls are dead.

I believe that we are in the midst of another "great awakening" in terms of our awareness of one another, this planet and our relationship with God. I don't know what that will look like, but I do know this - I am not interested in theology than is unsustainable without fear, nor am I interested in patriotism or democracy that is unsustainable without fear.

It is time for a recovery of that word fear - it doesn't mean the same thing now that it did when it was written down. I'm good with biblical fear - the kind of respect and awe you have for a raging river or a twisting tornado - something else we are quite familiar with here. It is the fear generated by people interested only in their ratings, or in pursuing a political agenda, or worse yet saving a tired old idea of something that doesn't even exist anymore but which they are unwilling to let go...that's the soul-killing stuff.

I seek the God of Easter morning. The God who calls us to let go of the reins and trust that its not our bodies we're seeking to save but our souls. The God who calls us to awaken to the unimaginable possibility that our physical lives are not all that there is and that in the end, despite what the TV and internet would have you believe, love wins.

Tired in the Heartland...

"I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that, like religious differences, a difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse or to disturb its friendships, its charities or justice. In that form, they are censors of the conduct of each other and useful watchmen for the public." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true." --Martin Luther King Jr.

We have been at this for some time, no doubt. Perhaps it is just because the guy that I favor is in office, but it seems like the vitriolic rhetoric is reaching new heights. Whether it is the "birther" movement, the "Obama-Hitler wants to kill your grandmother" slogans, or the current "education indoctrination" criticism, the general atmosphere (at least here in Oklahoma) makes it hard to find any sense of civility or reasonable dialogue about our future together as a nation.

Yes, that's right. I said OUR future TOGETHER as a nation. Sometime pretty recently we lost the sense of taking care of one another. Someplace between Survivor and American Idol we have decided that our own personal ideologies, our own personal feelings about someone or something, trump everything else. They trump reasonable legislation, they trump any possibility of changing our minds and they apparently trump moral imperatives.

Can we really not have meaningful changes - needed changes - in issues like health reform, education or immigration without simply retreating to our corners and spitting insults at one another? I will call myself out as guilty of this during the last administration. I wouldn't let anything be good if it came from Bush/Cheney because of my ideology.

As a Christian, I believe that Christ calls us to love. To love means that we are willing to change our own minds, to see another's point of view and to try to walk a mile in their shoes so that we might understand them. athe apostle Paul once told us about love in a passage that is unfortunately usually relegated to weddings, but should be the Christian Constitution, right after the Beatitudes. Paul said:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7
translation from The Message

We may not still agree, but disagreeing with compassion and understanding is a far better place to be in than where we are now. Our lives together should not be dictated by the talking heads and blogospheres looking only to increase their ratings. They should be forged in the discipline of agape love, as Dr. King once told us. We don't know who to trust anymore because we aren't looking with the right eyes.

Frankly I'm tired of being a liberal. I'm ready to just be an American.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." --Antoine De Saint Exupery

mercy, mercy me...

“Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” – Mark 7:14-15

I am really troubled and fascinated by the decision of the Scottish legal system to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, who was convicted in the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland that killed 270. This man was the only one convicted of anything and there is some doubt out there as to the veracity of the case against him. Maybe it was entirely a politically motivated and fueled trial and conviction, I don’t know. Someone needed to be responsible, no doubt, and although I can’t say whether this guy was implicit or not, I can say that it wouldn’t be the first time that someone had been either wrongly convicted or convicted of something far beyond their actual involvement because a perpetrator was needed to satisfy some sense of justice.

And then again perhaps he was involved, even if only in planning or some downstream funding or organization. Even if his involvement was only at that level, if you are willing participating with a group or organization that believes the killing of innocent victims is justifiable you are every bit as complicit as the one who straps on the bomb or pulls the trigger, in my opinion.

My real issue with this case is what it says about our idea of justice. Is such a thing attainable? If this is the guy who really orchestrated the entire event, would his death even in the most gruesome manner possibly balance the scales against the 270 innocent lives lost? I’m sure that my feeling on this matter would be quite different had one of my loved ones been on that flight, just as I am quite sure that if someone did something to hurt my children I would have vengeance not love on my heart.

Still, the justice system seems like it ought to be built on something other than responding to our passions. When Jesus refutes the eye for an eye normalcy of his time with “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:38) it is much more than a refutation of vengeance. He is calling for us to have anger, just not to act from that anger. Just as our anger does not produce God’s righteousness (James 1:20), our justifiable and understandable desire for vengeance does not produce God’s justice.
Perhaps the most meaning in the Scottish court’s actions can be found in this: When the call came for mercy to be shown to this man whose life is over and for whom a small amount of painful existence is left, the answer was for mercy. It was perhaps more than he showed his victims if he is truly guilty of that crime, and certainly more mercy than has been shown to the countless victims of terrorism worldwide. But hell…mercy has to start sometime, doesn’t it?

C'mon Mr. Obama!

As recently as June of this year, a national poll indicated that 72% of Americans polled favored a public option in health care reform. How is it that we are now seeing the death of this as an option? How is it that in the span of a few weeks we have gone from this as a central part of the reform process to an optional one? Can we chalk this one up to effective counter-protests?

In an informal class setting before worship last Sunday, some members of Norman UCC discussed the health care crisis, the reform efforts and what we might glean from all of this both as citizens and as people of faith. We were a collection of mostly “like-minded” people in terms of our politics and views of the role of government and we had several opinions. One of the opinions voiced was that the public option is the way to reform, but it is too much, too fast. It needs to be examined more so that we are sure about where we are headed and what we are obligating ourselves to. Perhaps that is right…it certainly is a more reasoned and practical way of dealing with an issue that evokes many emotions – but mostly fear.

If we don't address the fear, we won't get anything accomplished. I don't believe that the big chunk of us who consider ourselves more moderate and reasoned in our decision-making and conclusion-drawing are living out of the same fear that the fringes are. But the fringes get the publicity and you simply cannot consume that from every direction the way that we have without absorbing some of it. Jesus once said that he is the bread of life and that we must consume him to find the Kingdom of Heaven. That means to me that if we consume fear instead of hope, darkness instead of light and hatred instead of love we will live up to the adage "you are what you eat".

We can discuss many options and you can even look at the proposals side-by-side here. There’s lots of information out there…I guess I should say that there’s lots of propaganda out there, most of it unsupported by any actual information. I have yet to hear anyone who has cried “death panels” actually support that statement with anything other than speculation about what could happen. I mean, theoretically aliens could invade the planet tomorrow. It doesn’t mean that I should be shouting that at the top of my lunatic lungs on my FOX news hour-long trip into crazyville.

Meanwhile, militia membership and activity is up dramatically, the rhetoric and general tenor of “Tea Party” and “Birther” and “Anti-Socialism” movements grows angrier. The powder keg is full, all that is needed is a spark and I’m afraid that it can even be a real powerful flashlight. Fear is controlling and dominating all of our discussions and decisions. What we need is a leader who again will say, like FDR, “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself”.

My disappointment with Obama and the administration is not with the lack of liberal agenda fulfillment. Heck, I know where I live and understand that my own personal political agenda is far too left to be implemented. I’m fine with that. I actually prefer a more centrist government…something that keeps us from swinging back and forth on a pendulum of polarization would be nice. My disappointment is with leadership. Now is the time to lay out good arguments for why we need health care reform and to demonstrate in clear terms how a public option is the best one. The “Obama is a socialist” nuts will never be with you. They are against you because you won the election or because you aren’t in the right political party or, worse yet, because you are black. There’s nothing you can do about any of those issues.

I sense that part of Obama’s pull for lots of people is that we saw an opportunity in him to have a “post-partisan” system in which we made decisions based on what is good for the country, not what makes one party successful. It’s time to go back to the grassroots organizing that won the White House. There are more people, I believe, who want this than don’t. The ones who don’t are simply louder. Let’s not make decisions that way. Evoke your base. Awaken the middle that simply stands and watches the spectacle of what passes for both journalism and politics these days, either too busy or apathetic or disgusted to do anything. That’s what leaders do.