Planet or Plastic? Earth Day 2024

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 Planet or Plastic?

Plastics are overwhelming our earth. Micro-plastic pollution is found in our drinking water, our food and even in our own blood streams. Every piece of plastic ever made is STILL in our environment. Amazing.

Today is also the beginning of Passover, Pesach. A time of remembering. A time to retell the story of what we are called to do and who we are to become as God’s people. It is a retelling of the escape from captivity. It is a time to reconsider where we have been and where we are going. Can we remember, turn around and move in another direction?

We have been living in a captivity to our hungers for extracted wealth from our earth, a tragic environmental Ponzi scheme, a plundering of nature — a using resources which should be set aside for our children and grand children. This over-exploitation has been increasing each year.  We in the United States lead in extractive exploitation.  If the entire world lived as we do it would take the resources of FIVE EARTHS to provide sufficiency.

We face the question today, how then shall we proceed?

Enter Wes Jackson — someone who has been thinking about this dilemma for four decades.  Jackson is co-founder of the Land Institute in Salinas Kansas.  Elaine and I stopped to visit back in 2019.  I had read his work.  I knew of his friendship with Wendell Berry; and, I confess to being more than a little star struck.  After all Wes was one of the early recipients of a MacArthur Fellowship.  I expected our visit to last an hour and then be on my way.  

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Wes Jackson and his “computer” July 2019

We talked through the entire morning and toured the institute research facilities and farm research plots in Salinas.  (Other research goes on around the world where institute scientists are working to discover new paths of regenerative agriculture.) 

I found in Wes a friend… and mentor — someone with a deep concern, clarity about his vocation and a surprising light-heartedness.  He confessed the dilemmas we all face.  The human contradictions faced as we move from our extractive and fossil-fuel based systems.  We laughed often; spoke of authors who had influenced us (Ivan Illich, Walter Brueggemann) and spoke of the need for a broader dialogue between science and religion.  I loved it when Wes brought out his “computer” to take notes. It turned out to be his old Underwood typewriter!

Wes Jackson was more than a farmer and scientist. He is a person who has done his theological reflection about our creatureliness and relationship with the ecosphere. There were more than two dozen scientists and interns at The Land Institute seeking to establish perennial polycultures, developing perennial grains, legumes and oilseed varieties that can be grown together replicating the patterns evident in native ecosystems.

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Wes Jackson at Land Institute, July 2019

We stopped on a hillside and Jackson pointed out the native prairie grasses and the cultivated fields below. “Modern agriculture” he argued has been moving in ever more destructive ways for the past 10,000 years. The Green Revolution, and the heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers, did produce more in the short term; however at the same time they were depleting the resources of our soil, water and fossil fuels ever more rapidly. 

In late June, we will come to Earth Overshoot Day. The day we have used up the energy needed to see us through a year without extracting more. It is a day when we can admit our captivity to oil and gas — and their extract — plastics. Forgive my saying it, but it is about theology. It is about who we are and where we are headed as we live before a God and who asks us to continue in the co-creation of our planet.

I give thanks for the true “master theologians” of our time like Wes Jackson.  He told me he had been “excommunicated” from his United Methodist Church in Kansas several years earlier by a pastor who considered him a heretic. On this Earth Day, I wish the church had more heretics like him.  Maybe with time it will.  Whatever your theology — or even if you have none — let’s work to make this happen sooner rather than later.

This is also the beginning of Passover 2024. Pesach — a time to remember who we are and what it means to live with responsibility for our actions.

Changes in our behaviors must come if our grandchildren are to receive the gifts of this wonderful planet with which we have been blessed. We are using up our natural resources 1.75 times faster than they can be replenished! 

Woke Smoke

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Woke Smoke

I work up this morning, birds chirping outside.  Good thing.  It “beats the options” as they say.  Sorting through “news” of the day, I read a strange, recurring theme – one word repeated in many places.  The word?  WOKE.  It has been used in disparaging ways for a few years. In government, education, religion, and more there are warnings of the dangers of “woke-ness.”

Dozens of arguments in recent months seem to begin and end with stressing the dangers of being “woke.”  Nothing much more.  Just a label, a four-letter word that carries a dumptruck load of fear and grievance.   Here are a few examples from this past week:

  • Bill Barr, former U.S. Attorney General, warns of “wokeness” as a reason he would support the former president, that grievance-filled ghost of an administration-past. Mr. Barr earlier called him “a grotesque embarrassment” but one idea had tipped the scales, had caused him to reverse.  It was a concern about being W-O-K-E!
  • After 92% of the Indiana University faculty voted “no confidence” in President Pamela Whitten, sadly, the response from many was the claim this was ALL about “woke-ism in the academy.”
  • Well documented and tragic reports of the destruction coral reefs around the globe are presented.  Sure enough, there it is – responses calling it “woke science.”
  • Pope Francis is viewed favorably by 3/4ths of American Catholics, even so, there are disgruntled ones, some bishops and cardinals, who call him the “woke pope.” 
  • The newly formed “Global Methodists” are issuing warnings that upcoming United Methodist General Conference will be overrun by persons with “woke theologies.”

There is, of course, a history of how this word has evolved in use.  For some it is a verb, as in the past tense of “wake.”  Here it means to be alert, aware, attentive.  A decade or more ago scholars began to employ it as an adjective common in African-American vernacular speech, as in an awareness of racial discrimination and prejudice. This was the threat – and the opportunity – presented to many who didn’t want to be awakened to the racism in our society.

The word was repurposed, turned inside out and upside down.  It became a quick way to avoid dealing with the realities of discrimination in our society.  It is a way to flood the zone with smoke – to hide and obscure the need for conversion.  It gained currency as a powerful “code word” allowing the user to avoid thought or conversation.  It avoids the hopes for a civil society.  Rather than being alert to a new day, experience or danger, it is turned into a verbal cudgel.  It becomes an imprecise way to avoid facing our nation’s history and bigotry.  An avoidance mechanism.  Our nation’s original sin of racism is dodged by using a single word.  Nice trick – avoid and redirect the word as a weapon.

Critiquing something as “woke” is lazy.  It is a way to obscure, suppress, and avoid any call to rethink the old assumptions and categories. It demonstrates that change is always resisted; it is difficult. What’s the old saw?  Only a baby with a wet diaper is comfortable with change. 

For a fine reflection on a Biblical way of understanding the importance of “woke” as a spiritual activity, look to Dr. William Lawrence’s, “When the Church Woke.”  Bill, former dean of the Perkins School of Theology, points to the Biblical call for wokeness – it is about conversion, metanoia, deep personal and social change. 

https://www.umnews.org/en/news/methodism-overdue-for-becoming-woke-author-says

Glad I woke up this morning.  I am reminded of Lamentations 3:22-23, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” 

As with many things, one can choose the lazy path of chirping out the fearful words, “woke, woke” and avoid an honest, healthy way forward.  Instead, one can let the smoke clear and choose to be woke in “hope, hope” shaped by active care for others and for the healthy and honest ways forward.

The “Good” in Good Friday

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The “Good” in Good Friday

Perhaps I was six or seven when the question first came.  What is “good” about Good Friday?  Our lives are full of questions; or at least mine is.  These days most of my questions are about more mundane things, like “How did those spots get on my shirt or on my necktie?”  Any man over seventy-five will understand.

After more than seven decades, the more profound and intellectually jarring theological question about the goodness of Good Friday still stirs in my spirit. I don’t have the one right, true answer as many of my conservative friends suggest they have.  The soup stains on my necktie are so much more easily explained.

Other friends, more secular searchers, ask, “Why a focus on the cross? Isn’t there a better, less violent, symbol?”  Without answering, I think of all the modern-day crosses people bare. I have been with families after a painful death, a murder, a rape, or a drowning.  There are realities of starvation, war, captivity, and financial ruin. Abuse and discrimination are crosses of a different sort. Sin is woven within the human condition.  Evil is present. No matter our desires for something less violent and more velvet — there is brutality and death.

Catehdral de San Isidore in Argentina

I recall the historic theories of the atonement.  Jesus’s death is portrayed as Ransom, Substitute (suffers for), Penal (suffers instead), Example, and Victor. Each theory today is understood in decidedly individualistic ways.  It is a quid pro quo formula as in Jesus did this and I get some reward. Such theology appears deeply embedded in St. Paul’s perspective (I Corinthians 15 or II Corinthians 5).  

It was my beloved New Testament professor, Robert Lyon, who challenged me to think beyond this; to think more deeply and widely.  The word study he assigned me was on the word λύτρον, meaning either redemption or ransom (Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28).  I can still see the twinkle in Bob’s eye as he said, “And the context? Who is this ransom for and why?  What is the larger Biblical frame?”  These were the years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights struggles over racism and sexism.  Bob wasn’t dismissing classic atonement theories out of hand; he was asking for more – for a deeper grasp of the whole of the scriptural story.  What does “ransom” have to do with justice?  What if this is bigger than an individualistic transactional act? What if it is transformational for the entirety of God’s purposes?  What if it is not primarily about one’s personal “free of sin” credit card?  What if it is for ALL and for the entire Creation!

Walter Brueggemann suggests we speak of the execution of Jesus rather than his crucifixion. ALL THINGS are seen as potentially redeemed and redeemable: corrupt institutions, the violence of every empire, the despoiling of creation.  Brueggeman speaks of God’s purposes as displayed in the life of Jesus as prophetic imagination.  He speaks of “the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is birthing before our very eyes.

For me, even with food stains on my shirt, the questions in my spirit find greater meaning. This is the GOOD in Good Friday – God’s promise displayed for all persons and all creation.  If we have eyes to see it and the will to live into it.

Ides of March 2024

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Headlines from Bloomington, Indiana – Ides of March, 2024

Local woman wears a hardhat when outside in her yard; permanent jewelry store opens; wheelchairs available in state parks; and, seven in ten (7 in 10) pregnant women test positive for toxin found in weed killers. 

Story one: Angela Connor, 64, has been doing battle with a pair of red shouldered hawks in her back yard.  For over a year, the protective raptors have dive bombed down attacking her from behind when she is gardening.  After suffering several attacks and lacerations from their talons a friend offered a remedy of sorts.  “For some reason they don’t attack the white DeWalt hard hat” when I wear it she said.

Story two: “Permanent Jewelry Store opens in the Mall.”  Is it the jewelry that is permanent?  or is the store?  I suspect neither.  Perhaps my epistemological understanding of “permanence” needs an update.

Story three: Motorized wheelchairs are now available for free in many Indiana state parks.  Good news.  Thanks to the ADA this may be a permanent option — for a while at least!

Story four: Speaking of permanence and mobility, recent research finds four times more amounts of the poison dicamba in the urine of pregnant woman than was present ten years ago. In Indiana, we value healthy corn and soybean crops, (5.4 and 5.5 million acres respectively) and our lovely lawns.  Are we choosing healthy corn and weed-free-yards over healthy children?  Weed killer residue is carried in wind and water miles away from where it was applied.

Summary: I’m glad (sorta) that raptors are protected by federal law; in the future my impermanent body may still see natural beauty via a motorized convenience; I pray we learn to value healthy soybeans less and healthy children more.  And, amid this cavalcade of news, I failed to mention the governor authorizes carrying of firearms in State House. That’s the news that’s “printed to fit” the majority sentiments from Indiana today.

Pick-Up Theology

~ philipamerson

Pick-up Theology

It happened again, recently.  A public gathering, I prayed or presided in some fashion.  A reception follows. All seems “normal” until one of the folks nearby starts to share a story and stops, “Woops, I forget, a preacher is here.” Often, I could anticipate what was going to be said. I have heard the story or off-color joke previously… I do not have “virgin ears”… but, somehow, I represent a purity zone. Clergy are thought to reside in the “Area 51” of polite conversation.

At times it is even worse. I am cornered as “an expert?” Some long-stored-up theological questions are brought forward. Many are just silly.  Some would require a semester course in seminary, or perhaps the completion of a dissertation. Many are qustions that require attention throughout a lifetime. Some questions are asked as a “gotcha.” They are meant to make the preacher squirm.

Often, it begins with the words, “Pastor, I am not very religious, but I am spiritual and am troubled by some things; can you help me understand?”  Here are a few I have encountered:

  • “What kind of fish swallowed Jonah?”
  • “Did Jesus really walk on water, or did he know where the rocks were?”
  • “If Jesus was alone when tempted in the desert, who knew to write about it?”
  • “Do you believe in Hell?”
  • “Do dogs go to heaven?”
  • “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?”
  • “In the Prodigal Son story, doesn’t the older brother get a bad rap? What did he do wrong?”
  • “Is everyone forgiven no matter what they do?
  • “Where did Cain find a wife? Isn’t marrying a sister incest?”
  • “Wasn’t Catholicism invented in 1054 so political leaders could break with the Eastern Church?”
  • “Does U.S. House of Representatives Speaker, Mike Johnson, have a Biblical Worldview?”
  • “Don’t you think Pope Francis is a Socialist?

Only a sample of the queries are here, some serious and knowledgeable, others an effort to be cute, too many with monistic (either/or) assumptions that miss the discovery and value of paradoxes within the theological task. (e.g., “If one would be master he/she must first be servant.”) I have learned the value of the rabbinic method of answering a question with a question.  This is not the time for an overview of differing Biblical texts and literary scriptural devices. Much as I would like, there is little time to teach about the call to live in terms of the realm of God. (And there is certainly not time to speak of my preference for Kindom of God rather than Kingdom.) Often personal faith-journeys, current events or some family disputes are at the core of the seriously asked questions. 

I find it a little like the “pick-up” basketball games played while growing up in Indiana. You call your own fouls and get to choose your team mates. The game unfolds “on the spot” but there are certain moves and shots that need to be tested against the other players. Could I make that hook shot now? Could I guard that more experienced player this time?

If possible, when these “questions for the pastor” spontaneous moments come my way, I invite folks to do their own study, later, and suggest a book or two to read. Then, I look for JOY. Is there a way to find in this moment the wide and wonder-filled sense of holiness carried within a smile or even a light chuckle?  Perhaps thereby, faith is made more durable, understood with a richer complexity, and invitationally rather than a collecting up the right set of answers.  So, when recently asked “Did Adam and Eve have a belly button?” I paused for a moment and said, “O yes, I think so, and I am certain God continues to have stretch marks from such births.” I was rewarded with a smile.

I am told that Thomas Langford, the former Duke Divinity School Dean, enjoyed driving a red pick-up truck around Durham and especially on the university campus.  The license plate on the truck read “JOY N IT.”  Folks who didn’t know Tom, might have mistakenly thought he was expressing his joy in driving that pickup.  Others knew better.  He was perhaps speaking of the joy of the truck, but I suspect he was also talking about the joy of a life of faith, of living and leaning forward into the questions, of imagining the joy of a life of gospel relevance… filled with gratitude and delight.

The poet John Keats wrote “Call the world, if you please, the Vale of Soul-making.”  This task of “Soul-making” involves asking good questions and establishing habits of the heart. Habits of study, meditation, observation and being open to new imaginative insights, and yes, humor.  It is the keeping of these patterns, until these patterns keep us. 

So, I look forward to the next set of “questions for the pastor.”  Maybe I can do better next time.  Until then, I will remember the words from correspondence that is included in the Bible, James 1:2-5: My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. (NRSV).

Locked up in the Rush County Jail

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Locked Up in the Rush County Jail

Tears fall from her chin; she carries a never ending uneasiness. Ashamed she waits.  In a nearby cell, he fidgets, knees bouncing uncontrollably, repentant without a path to forgiveness, he waits for a phone call.  Both have made serious mistakes. Life-altering condemnation results, closing off future options. I do not know these two personally, but I can “see” them sitting alone, or with a cellmate, or standing in shackles in a courtroom.  Such scenes continue across my state and our nation.  Each person has a name, a history, a family, friends, and enemies waiting on the outside.

They have “done harm.”  Some crimes are extremely serious, I understand.  Much of the damage, however, has been done to themselves and their loved ones. This self-harm is often rooted in addiction or psychological illness. Some are dangerous to themselves and others.  Sometimes, not always, these who sit and wait have journeyed through poverty, homelessness and/or abuse. We all lose. In Indiana alone the estimates are that opioid addictions cost the state between $4 billion and $5 billion in lost revenue, incarceration, and recovery expenses every year.

I write of “Rush County” jail more as metaphor than the actual place. There is a Rush County; Rushville, Indiana is the county seat. It is grand old town, where Wendell Willkie headquartered his 1940 campaign as the Republican candidate for the President.  It is east and south of Indianapolis.  Traveling south and east it is on the way to Cincinnati. With a population of roughly 6,200, it is like hundreds of towns dealing with the scourge of addiction and other illness. It is a symbol that across the board, once arrested, so many are rushed to vilification, only to languish in jail.  It is quick judgement and slow justice. The wheels of our legal system grind ever more slowly as so many weep and wait for that phone call.

In Monroe County, my home, our jail is a disgrace – overcrowded, unhealthy, and understaffed. Monroe is regarded as one of the most progressive counties in Indiana, yet every month seems to find another incident reflecting the horrors of our jail. We have a fast train into jail and a slow walk to trial. This, despite a sheriff, judges and commissioners who diligently seek to change the situation and build a safer facility.  It is already too late for so many. 

Our county jail is only a few blocks from where I live.  Walking along the sidewalk paralleling the jail I see scrawled messages in chalk or paint.  These are messages of hope, love and encouragement to prisoners who can look out and see what friends and family have written.

Over my decades as a pastor, I have met with, walked alongside, and known far too many who are like the two persons imagined in the opening paragraph. I do not know names of those currently in Rush – or Monroe – County facilities.  I do know these are not only imaginary.  These exist, just as surely as you do, good reader.  I know parents and spouses, children today who have loved ones being held, awaiting trial.  

I may not know or understand all the “crimes,” but I do know there are currently over a half-million such persons held in over 5,000 local jails and youth detention centers in the U.S.  There are another 1.5 to 2 million persons held in state and federal prisons. Our nation consistently has the highest incarceration rates in the world.  Our practices still have the mark of primitive and counterproductive logic.  It is built on monistic, either-or understandings of human behavior and psychology.  It is not far removed from shameful practices of shunning, exclusion, and projecting our fears on the most vulnerable among us.  Are there evil actors? – yes, of course.  Might our systematic response be greatly flawed? – yes, of course.

Frankly, much of what continues is often based on simplistic theologies of good and evil that are subject to manipulation and misuse by the wealthy and powerful.  We have become experts at isolation and seem to know very little about restoration. Our young believe our systems are rigged in favor of the wealthy. Are they not? I find myself thinking of the families who see loved ones locked up for minor crimes of addiction, while at the same time watch a former President of the U.S. use his power and wealth to manipulate the current court systems to avoid trials and dodge accountability. 

We spend more than $182 billion on incarceration each year in the United States.  Increasingly this is built on “for profit” prisons, that turn incarceration into a profit-making venture with the inmates as customers-without-a-choice facing exorbitant expenses for phone calls or other prison “benefits.”

I am far from being an expert on how to best address these concerns.  There are many acronyms for efforts underway, already proposed and practiced. Over the years I have seen us turn to more flexible sentencing, home confinement, halfway houses, drug courts, mental health courts, restorative justice and/or restitution options, community service, etc.  It is a complex system, filled with obstacles and some more enlightened practices.  My appreciation for conscientious judges, defense and prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, jail and police officers is enormous.  I am grateful for, and applaud, all those who are pushing for reform, for a better way.  Still, too many languish behind bars, weeping alone and waiting for that phone call.

Shall we Overcomb?

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Shall we Overcomb?

It was mid-September 2016.  Elaine and I were traveling in the Canadian Rockies; part of our 50th years of marriage celebration.  Walking in the lovely city of Banff, Alberta I spied a t-shirt in the tourist shop window. We laughed. I pointed it out to others who were on the trip.  I shared my concerns about Donald Trump. 

Two in our group were retired attorneys now living on Long Island. One was volunteering as a Catholic lay deacon who shared my concerns about “the Donald’s” mean-spiritedness, misogynistic behaviors, and racial bigotry.  The other attorney laughed saying, “I worked in the prosecutor’s office in NYC for years. Everyone knew he liked to pretend to be something he was not. We all knew Trump was ‘mobbed up’ with the Russian mob.”  “Don’t worry,” he said, “a guy like that will never be elected.”  “Okay,” I thought, “if you say so.  You have seen him up close.”

That was then.  He was wrong about Mr. Trump’s possible election.  Ever since, I have recalled the “mobbed up” comment.  As president, Mr. Trump spoke fondly of Mr. Putin and his dictatorship in Russia. There were other troublesome moments like a phone call that appeared to be asking for a bribe from the Ukrainian president.  In the intervening years as Mr. Trumps actions have become more bizarre. Now, he says the quiet part out loud about admiring dictators and hoping to be a totalitarian leader of the U.S.  I keep thinking about that conversation in front of the shoppe window in Banff.

This past week (2/2024) at a rally in South Carolina, Trump, railed against NATO countries suggesting they didn’t pay enough in dues.  He claimed, “one of the presidents of a big country asked whether the US would still defend that European country if they were invaded by Russia.”  Astonishingly, Trump replied “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

The words “mobbed up” keep recurring, ever gaining more salience for me.  I didn’t buy the t-shirt on that September day in 2016.  I buy that he was unelectable.  I was wrong.  Our nation keeps living though what seems to be an unending nightmare.  A nightmare that could endanger the future of our democracy and the freedoms of my grandchildren and the hope for freedom for children around the world.

There is much beauty in our world — in nature and in our flawed but essential institutions of democracy. Will truth and liberty and civility be easily combed over? Don’t fall into the trap I did — believing that IT CAN’T HAPPEN.

The Principle of Clarity

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Full text of Bloomington Rotary Reflection Notes 2-7-24 (Parts were edited out at presentation for brevity.)

Mark Twain once said: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

There is another side to this wisdom.  For me, now that I am in my late 70s, I am often surprised by how little I know.  Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson have written we need to often add an “Ignorance-based world view.”  Philosophers call this the Principle of Clarity.  The administration of Indiana University would benefit from a familiarity with this Principle of Clarity.  Clearly the administration’s failure to support the Kinsey Institute and canceling of the exhibition of Palestinian artist Samia Halaby at the last minute after months of planning demonstrate an abandonment of Academic Freedom that is dependent on open conversation and dialogue.

I mention Wes Jackson in honor of our speaker today who, of course, offers much valued alternative perspectives on agriculture. Wes is a geneticist, farmer, winner of MacArthur Genius award for research on perennial polycultures at The Land Institute in Salina Kansas.

As we enter Black History month while facing continuing racism exhibited by candidates for the highest offices in our nation and in a world filled with violent problems that seem intractable, there is need for open-minded clarity.  If you are like me, it is too easy to live in an information bubble, supported by confirmation biases. Without looking at events from multiple perspectives, it becomes easier to argue than to respectfully disagree. It leaves us in zero-sum worlds where an understanding the opposite person’s perspective and experiences are disregarded.

Last week, Traci Jovanovic offered a helpful word about knowledge of others related to the war in Gaza.  It caused me to think of my second visit (of what I think are now six trips) to Israel/Palestine; this in the 1988.  Mickey Mauer invited many civic, corporate, and religious leaders from Indianapolis. We met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in political, economic, and educational arenas.  Near the end of trip, several of the Indy leaders held an unscheduled meeting seeking to come up with a solution they could offer after hearing from a few of the many sides in the region.  It was 40th anniversary of State of Israel and in the early years of First Intifada.

My friends, these leaders, were going to suggest ways to fix things. After a few minutes, feeling discouraged by the well-intentioned naivete of some, I left the meeting and sat in the bar with our Israeli tour guide and Palestinian bus driver. We chuckled together about the well-meaning effort to find easy solutions to struggles that had gone on for decades, centuries, well… millennia.  Indiana Jones movies were popular in those years.  I recall the Palestinian bus driver saying, with a wink to the Israeli tour guide, “Well, maybe these Indiana Joneses can solve things.  I wonder have they fixed all the problems in Indiana?”

Humility is a virtue that is enhanced by honoring the Principle of Clarity. For those of us who are Christians, it is worth noting that the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem have been entrusted to Muslim families for hundreds of years because the various “Christian” denominations and sects struggle and disagree over who should have what spaces in the church.  Alas.

One of my friends over the years was Palestinian Christian Rev. Alex Awad.  He worked with United Methodists who visited the region, was pastor of the East Jerusalem Baptist Church and taught at the Bethlehem Bible College. Several years ago, Rev. Awad suggested that perhaps the future will need something more connected at the grass roots, something deeper than politics. He said, “People must start dreaming about Palestinian and Jewish children playing together without refugee camps, segregation walls and tanks.  Then we can truly call it a Holy Land.”

Israeli peace activist Amos Oz has written “I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity, let’s say a conflagration, a fire, there are always three options. 1. Run away; 2. Write a very angry letter or hold a demonstration; 3. Bring a bucket of water and throw it on the fire, and if you don’t have a bucket, bring a glass, and if you don’t have a glass, use a teaspoon, everyone has a teaspoon.” In his book “How to Change the World” Oz suggests everyone can join The Order of the Teaspoon.

I am glad there are some people in this room working to find BIG SOLUTIONS to war and violence.  There are also small things we can do, right here, now, at home.  Welcoming the immigrant, finding shelter for the unhoused, saying no to racial prejudice and discrimination, seeking to mitigate domestic violence and gun play on our streets.

Jon Paul Dilts heads our club’s peace building committee.  He reminded me that February is Rotary’s “Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention Month.” The February issue of Rotary Magazine offers several grass roots ways to seek clarity – to work across differences.  Much of the brokenness in our world has been ongoing for centuries, millennia.  Big steps and small ones toward peace are required.

I close with the wisdom of my friend Wes Jackson who said, “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”

Orbits of Delight

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Orbits of Delight

This morning (1/1/24) I wake at the beginning of my 78th orbit around the sun.  What a journey!  Earthbound all the while, I didn’t notice the spinning while traveling roughly 30 kilometers a second. Thankfully, gravity prevailed along with the persistent tugs of other gravities like tradition and creature comfort. As 2024 begins, I make no New Year’s Resolutions.  Instead, I will look to the delights ahead; 366 days to enjoy (it’s a Leap Year). Here are eight “in-joy-ments” I anticipate, let’s call them Orbits of Delight drawn from life lessons thus far and based on emerging hunches in a journey toward hope. You can keep the change.  I will:

  1. Delight in laughter – remembering the foolish things I say and do, more than suffering over the nonsense of others (especially the U.S. Congress).
  2. Delight in weaving community — looking more peripherally making fresh connections with friends, neighbors, and strangers.  
  3. Delight in the currency of the Spirit – spending and saving a different form of wealth; banking on common humanity through greetings, stories, smiles and hugs.
  4. Delight in tables of fellowship — hosting picnics, parties, and meals to listen for laughter or reach out in care for fear or grief.
  5. Delight in welcoming the poor and immigrant – as Rev. Murphy Davis put it, welcoming others “not as a problem to be solved but as a mystery to be loved.”
  6. Delight in the achievements of friends – making a phone call or sending a note of celebration.
  7. Delight in the beauty of nature – walking and marveling in the land, vegetation, animals, and the sky (including a near total solar eclipse on April 8th where I live).
  8. Delight in being a member of the extended household of God – while patriotism, has it’s merit, it is a puny, second-rate, counterfeit to God’s intentions for me, for us all.

America’s UnCivil Wars

~ philipamerson ~ 1 Comment

Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley, campaigning in New Hampshire at the end of 2023, was asked a simple question “What caused the U.S. Civil War?” Haley’s response was word-salad. It was mumbo-jumbo talk about differing theories of governance. We hear you loudly and clearly Nikki Haley. One hundred and fifty-eight years after the end of the U.S. Civil War, she was unable to give the clear one-word answer to the question.  It was SLAVERY.

If anyone believes racism isn’t deeply embedded in our national psyche, our politics and civic discourse these more than fifteen decades later, they are either ignorant of history and/or unwilling to confess a sin that continues to erode our best future. There is considerable irony, of course, that the question was asked in New Hampshire.  New Hampshire is a state from which thousands of brave young men gave their lives to end slavery.

The answer Nikki Haley gives – or fails to give – underlines our need for national confession of sin, repentance, and reconciliation. It exemplifies our continuing Un-Civil Wars. If the Confederacy had prevailed in 1865, would someone like Haley be able to hold political office today?  One wonders. Yes, there are several auxiliary causal factors to U.S. Civil War; however, why avoid the basic truth?  It was, and is, wrong for human beings to be treated as property to be held and sold? This was the crux of the war — the evils of racism as evidenced in slavery.

On April 9th, 1865, General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Five days later President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, D.C. A surface telling of the history misses that thousands of troops continued fighting after April 9th and April 14th. 

It also misses the continuing Un-Civil Wars across these past fifteen decades (Reconstruction, Lynchings, Jim Crow Laws, Segregation, Red-lining in housing, Unequal school funding and dozens of other discriminatory acts). The UnCivil Wars continue today as is evidenced clearly in voter suppression efforts and racial gerrymandering. Racist impulses and ideologies continue to shape our political conversation and actions, national values, and self-understandings. If one believes otherwise, please explain why Haley’s answer could not have included one simple word?