2015.07.19 Improbable but Perfect Fields for Zeal

This day marks the 167the anniversary of the first women's rights conference in history. Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of The Women's Bible, and Lucretia Mott, the conference took place in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Stanton, one of my "sheroes," was dissatisfied with traditional biblical translations, authorized and executed by well-meaning men, who apparently forgot the verse in Genesis in which God created men and women equally in the divine image. But Stanton and other women knew their bible, and they knew, too,  about the dismal status of women in society.
They brought religion and politics together with zeal.

Stanton still inspires me, though much of her bible commentary sails over my head, and I bet I'd be cowed by her formidable presence.

 

Seneca Falls, a small hamlet (2010 population, 6,681) borders New York's Finger Lakes. It was an improbable setting for feminist zeal and the birth of the impossible demand for a woman's right to vote.

 

First-Century Palestine after the crucifixion of Jesus was no more probable a setting for reformist zeal, or resurrection cheer, either. The sweetly naive, Christian song, “They will know we are Christian by our love,” written in 1968 by then-Catholic priest Peter Scholtes, has been recorded and popularized so much that many Christians today consider this an identifying refrain, a musical mantra— despite the fact that its spirituality, “We are one in the spirit,” doesn’t ring true in the face of contemporary Christian rancor and divisiveness.

Well, it didn’t ring true in the first century land some now call “holy” either. What is astounding is that Christianity, the little love-faith, didn’t miscarry completely and wash out to sea like so many other movements of zealous beginnings.

Why? Well, for one thing there wasn’t an ounce of naiveté in the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, any more than there was in Stanton and her women. No cotton candy. The early Christians had love all right, as did the women, and they also had zeal for their God of grace.

I wonder if zeal is what we softened Christians need more of today?

As Jewish insurgents in First-Century Palestine warred for power and position, they were terrified of extinction. Where was their God? Who would be Messiah/King/ Head Honcho? Who would be the King of the Jews? (The inscription the Romans put on Jesus’ s cross, King of the Jews, was not a faith statement; it was mockery because they had crucified another of the Jewish rebels, another zealot, another political annoyance.)

Something new had to happen fast—and zealously. Zeal means great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective. It’s close to jihad. The early Jesus followers had to save their people, and they had to save their sense of divine favor. Some of them followed the zeal of one man, Jesus of Nazareth, and they kept that zeal going like a brushfire. 

Do we need more zeal today? Do I, as I write and advocate for the fullness of the image of God, have enough zeal?

Reza Aslan, author of Zealot. The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, gives a stunningly vivid picture of the context of Jesus’s times. I’d studied some of this but never had it explicated in such powerful and complete ways. Both the political and historical context came alive. Context, they say, is everything. Well no, content also counts; in fact, context and content must be inseparable—held together in tension. This book succeeds.

Aslan (just love that leonine name!) is an Iranian American, professor of creative writing at the University of California, a scholar of religions and historian—not a theologian. He was born into  a luke warm Muslim home (Sound familiar, Christians?) Aslan met Jesus at fifteen at an evangelical youth camp in Northern California. He writes: “It was there that I heard a remarkable story that would change my life forever.” 

Many of us Christians hear bits and pieces of this story every Sunday in parish churches. Does it change our lives?  

Aslan’s experience sounds like, but was not, a religious conversion experience. He is married to a Christian woman and remains Muslim. His teenage zeal, however, had a life of its own —enough to fuel his pursuit of the Jesus of history and write about it. His book is not meant to be theology, any more than the Bible is meant to be history, yet the complementarity of the two shapes my spirituality and my religious practice. 

But do I have enough zeal? Can you be zealous about the whole enchilada of history, politics and religion? Zeal sounds extremist. It’s scary. My Godde, I’m an Anglican! I’m not one of the conservative evangelical Christians in the south, or wherever they are supposed to be, possessed by certain social political issues that can get confused with religious ones. They do have zeal, though. Still, the spirituality of zealotry must rise above particularity, even go beyond and deeper than social justice activism. It’s a soul-fire. It's what the women at Seneca Falls had.

The frenzied hotbox of Jesus’s day, held intact only by Roman oppression, made zeal near-inevitable. Something had to explode. This ancient empire has been compared to our American empire—too much wealth and status concentrated in too few people who hold the reins of power. Will there be a revolution, as some young people say, maybe advocate? Revolutions demand change. Collective zeal is their fuel. By 70CE the Romans had burned Jerusalem and the Temple to the ground. Messianic pretenders felt abandoned by God. All was lost.

Aslan writes: “Meanwhile, in triumphant Rome, a short while after the Temple of the Lord had been desecrated, the Jewish nation scattered to the winds, and the religion made a pariah, tradition says a Jew named John Mark took up his quill and composed the first words to the first gospel written about the messiah [sic, one of many] known as Jesus of Nazareth—not in Hebrew, the worship language of Jesus, but Greek, the language of the heathens. The language of the impure. The language of the victors.

This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ.” (p. 68-69)

This one sentence stunned me. One. One Jewish man remembered and wrote—this in the midst of violence, terror, chaos and grief. Thus began the written biblical memoir known as the New Testament. One.

Was that simple, single act of remembering and writing the real miracle? Was it zealous?
                                                         
                                     *  *  *  *

Zeal makes change, for better or worse. It is not to be mocked, and not to be exaggerated. When you force or fake zeal, you desecrate it.  Zeal is born, focused, and expressed in diverse ways: silence, creating art, music, movement, shouting and jumping, praying, preaching, storming, talking and listening into the night. Often zeal comes in childhood, and often it gets eclipsed as we grow. But something mysterious touches you to the core, and you never forget. Never. Forever. What you do with it depends on your context.

I'm haunted on and off by something a wondrous seminary professor of mine referred to more than once: "the routinization of charism."  We, dumbly rapt and determinatively zealous, middler seminarians laughed and clapped, as if we actually knew we were hearing the call to zealotry.

Zealotry was the right spiritual gift to awaken First-Century Palestine to divine grace for all. Zealotry awakened 19th century America to basic rights for all, including women. Is zeal what’s needed for 21st-century America? For 21st-century Christianity?

2015.07.12 Peacemaking Made Simple/Papal

Pope Francis right now is traveling for peace—just saying hello, shaking hands, listening and meeting folks and their leaders.




Here are his four elements of peacemaking:

1. Time is bigger than space: if you protect your own space or area you get war, but if you allow time enough to explore the space of others, you have a chance at peace

2. Unity prevails over conflict: eventually we tire of feuding.

3. Reality is more important than ideas: we can argue ideas forever, which allows the fighting to continue. A STORY transforms. Fighting must stop so we can listen deeply to the stories of ourselves, each other, and our scriptures.

4. The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts: Each part fits into the whole but each one has a different shape and place. There must be a place for every part in the whole.

I find these to be true. These basics could go on the fridge. Maybe if we keep peace in our faces, and keep it simple..............     It gets difficult when we think too big. 

My formula: War = fighting about what we love the most
                      Peace = praying, or talking, about what we love the most

We’re not the Pope or, for the most part, anyone special, but we do have the capacity for peace if we pay attention to it in our daily lives. Peacemaking isn’t always some big fat political deal, or ordeal. Maybe it’s friendship, being friends.

Ponder this simple question: How do you make friends?  How did you as a kid? Multiple ways I’m sure, but for me it was, and usually still is, “Hi.”

Just look at that photo again. Amazing how the gesture of a blessing and a friendly wave "hello" are nearly indistinguishable.

Hi. 

2015.07.05 Immigration Policy in Poetry, Sculpture, Religion, Politics—and Money

"Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." George Washington said this. It's also a biblical metaphor for the reign of God—true and a bit scary. How do we accommodate such growth?

Washington's portrait must, legally, always be on the U.S. $1 bill. But the $10 is now up for grabs with a plan to replace Alexander Hamilton's portrait, presently on the obverse side of our ten-spot, with a woman!!
 

How far has Lady Liberty come? How wide is her spread and how broad her embrace? Who shall this woman be?

In 1884, the cornerstone of the New York harbor's Statue of Liberty’s pedestal was laid. The French gave the statue, and the U.S. raised the money for its pedestal. We funded the foundations mostly by an auction of contributed art and literary works. Emma Lazarus, 34 years old at the time, donated a poem for the occasion, which she titled "The New Colossus."

Lazarus, a Jewish-American author, was born in 1849, the fourth child in a wealthy family of seven children. She grew up in New York city’s Union Square area and mingled with the literary elite. As a woman and a Jew Lazarus knew the sting of prejudice on both counts. She burned with passion for liberation and was devoted to the plight of Jewish immigrants. She had the experience of assimilation into this land of liberty, and longed for more. At the same time, she urged the Jewish people to organize for a homeland in response to rising antisemitism—well before the term Zionism came into use. Lazarus died young at 38, probably from cancer.

In 1903, 16 years after Lazarus’ death, her friends lobbied to have a bronze memorial tablet with Lazarus’ poem inscribed on it installed inside the entrance to Ms. Liberty’s pedestal. The poem reflected her soul’s words and immortalized a vision: there is hope for the “huddled masses.”

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

These fiery words recall to my mind the gospel vision of Jesus the Christ: "Come unto me all who travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you." In one prayer book liturgical version, this phrase is the invitation to the table of Holy Communion. I said it every Sunday over my early years of being a parish priest and thought these the most authentic theological words I'd ever heard. There is true divinity in all such words, calling us still to compassion and justice. How, when, and to whom do you say them?

“The New Colossus” was the projection of a young woman’s own experience and hope onto a statue, a still-standing symbol of America’s beginning and her commitment to liberty and justice for all. Darn good spirituality! The poem did not just define the monument, but also envisioned the country's immigration policy. Who can forget the call of the Lady of the Harbor? I grew up waving to her, and was awestruck looking out from the top of her "crown" at what I thought must be the whole world. 

Hers is also the call of all religions and their holy scriptures—not to mention the divine gift and vision for Creation. Liberty and justice for all make peace for all.

Over centuries, many have followed the vision, yet without legal protocols in place. They longed to breathe free. Now we have a problem with our "promised land." It seems to be a tragic irony that now we are forced to create enslavement in order to to protect liberty. It's costly to imprison illegal immigrants, most of them women fleeing violence, so we track them down and shackle them with GPS detection devices, the kind people under house arrest must wear, until we can put them through the proper paces of legalization, a protocol we might have had in place with forethought. It is no surprise to me that a woman wrote the mighty vision, that a woman is encased in colossal statuary, and that it is mostly women who still have no safe harbor. 

What will the "land of the free and the home of the brave" do now?

Are Lazarus's words still enough to inspire and inform our current immigration policy?  Does this vision have clout and spirit enough to console those who live in fear of deportation, to motivate our citizenry and government? Is it enough to inspire religions to speak out? Is it enough to fill places of worship with the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free?  Might "expired" church buildings become affordable housing and enliven the vision?

I don’t know. But I nominate Emma Lazarus as a worthy candidate to be the first woman to grace an American greenback, the $10 bill.

I have no long-term answers, but I know Lazarus's vision is more expansive than it appears, and that liberty includes all humanity on all shores, as well as our endangered planet. The hope of this is worthy of prayer and hard political work.

For liberty we risk extinction unless we broaden our embrace and open wider our hearts.

2015.06.28 Little Things Keep Me Alive

Sometimes the world seems just too darn big and unmanageable for this old woman. It's little things that keep me alive.

Have you ever been a “Mystery Reader”?  Me neither but we, Grammy and Grampy, were invited this May to be mystery readers at granddaughter Phoebe’s first grade class. We dove into the assignment with gusto.

We spent time choosing our book and rehearsed it well, not wanting to stumble over any words or be old fools in front of 6-7 year olds—brand new readers and possibly not prone to miss any tricks. We chose to read A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hoban,  illustrated by Lillian Hoban.  The Frances books had always been a hit with our now adult children. With us, too!

    


The story presents a situation of sibling rivalry and involves expert parenting and a transformation in a small six-year-old badger’s heart. We brought along some cousinly critters, tiny plush hedgehogs, as props. They served as a kind of Greek chorus of giggly squeals and hopping up and down, expertly executed by Grampy while Grammy read the story.

These children were the best audience imaginable. Not only did they listen well and give opinions about what would happen, but they sat so close, and focused their attention so intensely, it was almost disconcerting.

Phoebe of course was the star of this event. She had a birthday coming up in two weeks, which probably meant that Grammy and Grampy would take her shopping after school. A confident child about to be seven, she had a plan: first shopping for her birthday, then ice cream treats, then the playground. Who follows a grandchild’s instructions more exactly than grandparents?  

The last time we took Phoebe shopping she took a VERY long time to pick out her gift, fingering every item in the whole store before she decided on yet another stuffed animal. I doubted her plan would work. Never doubt a determined, experienced six-year old girl. She ran ahead of us into the store, went right to her heart's desire, a huge plush owl named Pinky. "It costs $25, okay?  There will be time for ice cream and the playground. I can show you where it is and how I can do things.”

And so it was: Frances, Pinky, vanilla with sprinkles, and vigorous play with applause. Thank God for grandparents—such obedient followers. Home again, Phoebe allowed her baby brother to touch Pinky—once. Just about what Frances did for her little sister, Gloria. 

Our grandparental tour continued. We saw other families—almost all of the CT. clan—each one a delight. I learned something about myself, again: spending time with adult children and grandchildren—one family at a time—is important to me. I think they call this quality time. I’d call it holy time. Little things keep me alive.

One more little thing arrived two weeks later on the back of a note shaped like a pink cupcake:

2015.06.21 Addiction Awareness

I dedicate this post to all fathers, especially those in our family, who are clean and sober and a blessing, including my own dear dad, in heaven I'm sure.  Thank you. Happy Father's Day.

I also dedicate this post to the nine people who on June 17, 2015 were shot and killed in Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. in a senseless act of terrorism. I don’t know if drugs were involved in this act, but I’m am beginning to believe that our American-dream culture is addicted to guns and the power they represent.

                                                               
“What I am about to say will make some people angry.”

Bob Stutman, an experienced DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent for over 25 years, now a consultant on the issue, said the above sentence more than once during a talk he gave recently in Boston. His warning felt almost like a threat. He was right. At almost everything he said, some heads bobbed assent and some heads swiveled negation. No one was neutral—a clear sign of the importance of this issue.

I chuckled inwardly, thinking about Paul the apostle’s preaching in Athens. Paul gave these men, and they were all men, no such warning when he harangued about this Holy One God in whom “we live and move and have our being; as even some of your poets have said.” (Acts 17:28) Some men felt angry, some hopeful, none neutral about such divine encompassment.

Do we think we can keep Divinity transcendent and conveniently far away?

Clergy were invited to attend Stutman's talk, because the current addiction crisis affects all stakeholders, and churches have a stake in the common good. I too have a stake, both personal and professional.  I grew up with alcoholism. I worked as a chaplain in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation center for six years: inpatient for 4 weeks, followed by several weeks of partial hospital aftercare. Such luxury today is costly and rare. It needs resurrection.

Why?  Addiction is of epidemic proportions; first-use age is 12, and 4th grade is the grade most at risk for recreational alcohol use; the latest killer drugs are opioids (synthetic drugs prescribed by medical doctors for pain,) and  kids get them out of the medicine chest at home, not from drug traffickers! The only thing that made me feel angry was this: WE DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Drug addiction is a disease. Our silence is a sin. 

 Bullets
    -Opioids, such as oxycontin, are synthetic drugs. Opiates, such as heroin, are natural drugs. 
    -The leading cause of death by accident, automobile accidents, is now #2, replaced by death by overdoses of pharmaceutical drugs.
    -Don’t blame pharmaceutical companies and don’t blame the drugs themselves. Think regulated medical marijuana. For the biblically savvy, don’t blame the snake in Eden either! It’s us!
    -Kids say things like: “Hey dude, this s..t’s gotta be safe. It was prescribed by a nice doctor for dad (or mom.) I got it from our medicine cabinet!”
    -The feeling you get from an opiode is not a high, a charge. A man described it as: “being held in my mother’s arms.” Warmth and safety—primal.  
    -Any pharmaceutical drug is abusable. Pills get crushed. Imagine snorting all those extended release granules of a stimulant, like Adderall or Ritalin, prescribed and effective for some conditions, but also abusable. Stutman said: “You may know and trust your teen, but do you know her or his friends?”
    -We are winning the overall drug war, because drug use is down.
    -We are losing the drug war, because drug dependency and death from overdose are up.
    -WHY? Age of first use is lower than it was in 2007 when the stats for overall U.S. drug use went down by 30% 
    -68% of high schoolers interviewed described their “biggest stress” as DRUGS. It wasn’t drugs they feared; it was being approached to use, and being unable to say no. DARE, a police program of drug resistance education, has had little impact.
    -College drug use combines often with alcohol. Every day (all 365) a college student goes from campus to an emergency room because of a drug-related incident:alcohol poisoning or drug overdose, not to mention rape.
    -NO ONE CAN IDENTIFY AN OPIODE ADDICT!  Stutman, an expert undercover agent, could, on observation, pick out addicts, but not opioid addicts.They are successful in traditional ways. Rush Limbaugh, for instance, admitted to being oxycontin-dependent for 5 years. All that time he had a regular radio show. Never mind his politics, his condition was drug-impaired. No one knew.
    - White teens use 2-3 times more drugs than black kids. Think medicine chest.
    -Urban problem? Alaska and Montana have the highest percentages of drug addiction.
    - Sports are not a safe shelter, team sports being the most vulnerable, football the worst.
    -“WE (name any group, Jews, Catholics, Swedes, abstainers, etc.) don’t do drugs.” ALL kids are at risk.
   -The U.S. prescribes more opioides for pain than any other country in the world. #2 is Denmark.    
   -Pain responds just as well to other non-narcotic medications, such as physician-recommended combinations of acetaminophine and ibuprofen every 3 hours.
    -AA and other 12-step groups are support groups for the disease of addiction, NOT treatment. There are now medications that help control symptoms, like cravings, and even death by overdose. 

A dramatic story: Stutpen received a request from a woman in Florida who asked if she could deliver a very short message after his talk to parents. He checked her credentials and said yes. She had six sentences, with props.

1)   My name is XXX and I live in XXX, a wealthy suburban area.
2)   This is a photo of my son, XX, a 2001 graduate of Brown University.
3)   This is his law degree from Harvard University.
4)   This is his MBA degree from the University of Chicago.
5)   This is an empty bottle of oxycontin, his drug of choice in 2009.
6)   This is an urn containing his ashes, 2010.

A final story: The President of Marquette University in Milwaukee, a Jesuit institution, organized an evening talk on addiction and invited all parents. The invitation threatened parents:  RSVP required. If you can’t come to this evening we are recording it and will send you a video. If you don’t respond, your student will show up for classes and will not be admitted until we have a word from you. Amen!

What to do?

     Pray for people in bondage to addiction, out loud! —whether you know one or not. And don't let "those poor people"just meet in your church basements or be confined to your own innermost disdain. Bring the upstairs and the downstairs together. Bring the inside and the outside together.
     Understand your own codependent behaviors. Listen to your kids. Don't just talk to them.
     Read about what the Gloucester, Massachusetts Police Department’s initiative NOT to charge any individual who comes to the police department for help with addiction. Police Chief, Leonard Campanello, introduced the initiative in June, 2015  with a question: What is one life worth to you?

“Law enforcement,” Campanello wrote, does not have the right to judge that life. We believe in second chances, and third chances, and in starting over. Addiction is not a crime.” His site has over one million hits and counting.
    There have been many addicts who have responded; they have been assessed and treated, using any and all available resources. The people and the politicians are behind this effort.
    Connect with other citizens in your communities to have an evening discussion on this issue.

Chief Campanello is married and is a father. He has adopted many new "sons" and "daughters" thanks to this non-traditional, gracious, and, yes, godly, innovation. Happy Father's Day, Chief.