Making Meaning in A Hurricane

I guess Glenn Beck said that the coming Hurricane Irene was a “blessing” . Having read a brief snippet about it, I can’t agree with the whole “blessing” concept. Tragedy is never a good thing.  Beck says it proves his point that “emergency preparedness is a good idea” and that he’s not delusional, disruptions in the food chain could happen. Anybody that needs a tragedy to make their opinion valid has got their priorities wrong. Opinions aren’t worth that much.

Having said that,  people make blessings out of tragedies all the time by making meaning out of them. Nobody wishes for an addiction in their present or future, but people transform themselves because of one daily in little rooms in church basements and detoxes and sober houses around the globe.   No one wants sudden death of a family member or the end of an era — no one. And yet, from these ashes of the tragedies can, often, come newer and deeper, more meaningful lives.  Mostly, it is because tragedies sweep everything from our lives, including the frivolous — and we have a lot of frivolous in our lives today. Somehow our souls know what’s really important in our lives and we keep it locked in our hearts and minds and we can pick it out of the wreckage and ashes of our lives

After I wrote the blog about the Sabbath, a Jewish friend wrote back and explained what it was like  to experience Sabbath and I joked that “that kind of a Sabbath would take unions(for the time) and a lot of power outages (for a technology-free Sabbath)”.  Mr. Beck was right about one thing: the coming hurricane (if it materializes) will remind us that we’re not in control around here. Even if corporations or our bosses want us to go to work, when the 100 mile an hour winds come through, we can’t.  Even the unions couldn’t give us that kind of time at home, though I’m not sure I’d callit a holiday.

The power outages will apparently come with the storm, according to local news reports. If we have blackouts, after some period of time, we here will be iPod-less, computer-less, internet-less and so on. The only thing left at home will be us — and natural sunlight when we have it. What’s left will be what’s important — the stuff that God created.  Even if — due to traffic jams, flight delays, work schedules, and so on — we can’t be with the things that matter, our hearts will find them. We call our kids or our parents, we worry about loved ones and friends. We protect important things.

Remember all those in-class assignments about what would you put in the boat? This is the time when we actually do just that. Whatever you think about, whoever you think about, as the hurricane approaches – that is where meaning lies for you. That is what’s important. Realize that it’s from God, and treasure it with everything you’ve got while you’ve got it.

Peace,

John

Sabbath? What Sabbath? — How We’re Killing Ourselves

Exodus 20: 8 – 11 (NIV translation) “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.  For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Deuteronomy 5: 12 -15 (NIV) “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work,  but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day”

This morning, I preached in different wards in a mental hospital and got the same response — a sense of longing — so I thought I’d share my thoughts here, just in case anyone else needed to hear them.  After I read the two passages above, I read from the gospel of John, various verses that show the crowds coming toward Jesus or the disciples coming to Jesus and Jesus going away from them to be alone — on a mountain, on a lake, on a boat, later to the Garden of Gethsemane … alone.

“For a guy who had three years in which to save the whole world”, I told them, “he sure took a lot of time off”.  And it’s true. Throughout the gospels, the people keep coming to — or at — Jesus, and he keeps getting away to be by himself. Why? Because he needs to hear himself think. Jesus goes away because he needs to listen to God, because he needs to just rest, because he needs sleep, because he needs to pray. If Jesus is like God, maybe he needs to time to admire the created world. In any case, he needs to be restored — and so do we.

I had a client who wen to detox the other day because he was overwhelmed with a million problems and his addled brain was the only thing he had left to cope with.  Scheduled for a five-day detox, he left after three. When I asked him why, he explained that visitors had told him of drama at his apartment so he was worried. “And”, he said, “I felt like I wasn’t doing anything there. I was just taking a rest. I was just resting.” When I pointed out that he was supposed to be doing that, he said, “Oh, yeah”.

While most of us would like to think otherwise, we aren’t really that different from my client. We feel, like him, that’s there’s something wrong if we’re resting when, in fact, God commands us to rest. Not only is resting not wrong, it’s the opposite of that. It’s the right thing to do. In this society today, we have come to believe that we’re somehow bad if we’re not working or busy doing something. If we’re not producing or consuming, there’s something wrong — but look where it’s gotten us.  We’ve gone insane. Our planet’s a mess, our lives are a mess, our children are — egads! — bored. We work and we work and we never get ahead. Maybe the reason we never get ahead is because we work and work, as odd as that sounds.

When we don’t stop to hear ourselves think, we go off without thinking. When we don’t stop to let our heads stop spinning with to-do list after to-do list, we feel like our head spins and we wonder why. Schools are getting rid of recess because “our kids need to be more productive”. I and my peers had 1/2 day kindergarten and I ended up with two Master’s Degrees, so I have trouble seeing the link. Our businesses are open more often, and yet the economy falters. Our families now have both parents and any teenager working, but our families are falling apart. Our employers tell us to work harder, advertisers tell us to work hard so we can buy more. This new “toy” is replaced by that new “toy” so we work to get it.  In the world of addiction, a person spends $50 on a drug, then $100, then hundreds in a night on their drug if choice and — before their brain can clear  – they have already decided to and acted upon their next spending extravaganza.  In short order, they end up someplace in their lives they can’t have imagined.

For the rest of us, it takes a longer time to end up at that place, but we end up there nonetheless. ten or twenty years of new technology and the old pay grade and we end up some place where we can’t imagine and we can’t figure out how we got there. For myself, I now often take my iPod with it’s “Lectionary” app to the hospital to impress the kids there — and to lighten my load, somewhat from carrying that big, thick Bible and “only carrying” the scriptures I need for the day. When they turn off the Wii on the ward, I can say that my family has one of those. And when I go home, I plug that same iPod into the cassette player in my car and listen to whatever I’ve already programmed.  One of my children has a cel phone and we all have our computers and of course there’s the TV with Netflix. In our house, we all play one form of computer game or another on a fairly regular basis. There is no end to the possible distractions we can use to also not rest while we “come down” after a “hard” day’s work or school. It goes on and on. My kids think there’s something wrong if they’re not plugged in on waking — because they saw me playing on my computer when they went to bed.

I consider myself a fair-to-middling Christian most of the time, but Sabbath is hard. Stopping and doing nothing is hard. And by “nothing”, I mean the actual nothing, not the “plug and play” nothing that I usually do. For the last few weeks, I have been trying to cut down on my electronics time, and have found myself with extra time to get caught up on paperwork, extra sleep to meet the day, extra brain cells not lost to sleep, time to make lunch, not buy it on the road and so on. I find myself actually seeing my wife — if she’s not too busy working. The other day, someone apparently used my debit card numbers in the midwest somewhere and I had to stop using my ATM card, which meant going back to the old-fashioned: checks!  I can only use them when the bank is open, so one more piece of slowing down has happened and it’s excruciating until I realize that I have more money left at the end of the week.

But back to the Sabbath: the Sabbath has two parts. The first is simply not doing any work. It is resting and doing nothing because our bodies weren’t designed to “go” 24/7.  This allows the troubles of the week, the thoughts about work and kids and clothes and sports and what-activity-to-do-next stop.  Our brains can clear up and — as a special bonus — we don’ t get ourselves into more of the trouble that our activity has already caused.  If addicts took a day off of their drugs every week, their lives would go to hell 1/7th slower at least. They stand a chance of getting clean because they have a day where the poisons in their system aren’t getting in the way. Their spouse doesn’t yell and their kids don’t cry and they might have enough money for bread and cereal before the weekend’s over.

The second part to the Sabbath is focusing on what’s important. For Christians, Jews and Muslims (I think), it’s a day to focus on God, whether through worship and a sermon to think about, experiencing holiness and remembering there’s more to life than we normally see, taking a walk in nature and actually seeing a sunrise or a mountain. Sabbath is time with your children and family, renewing the relationship just by being there, seeing how goofy your child can be telling knock-knock jokes or how tender your spouse can be when they are relaxed.

Sabbath is about listening to yourself, and hearing yourself think. It is about connecting with that “still small voice” within you — the Spirit of God that gives you the best advice of all because it speaks directly to you in a way that no one else can.  Now that your brain is clear, you can put life in perspective, and with that perspective, you can see the direction your life is going. You can decide whether or not you like it going that way. If you like what you see, you can do more of that. If not, you can do less of it — or none at all.  You don’t get to a place you can’t imagine — or at least you don’t get there quickly.

That’s what we’re missing when we don;t take Sabbath — Energy, because we haven’t stopped working; Clarity, because we can’t hear ourselves think over all the other voices in our lives — the “shoulds”, the “to-do’s”, the mindless moving from this to that and the distractions that keep us from seeing reality;  Perspective on the “same-old-same-old”; Awe as we stop to look around us; and Choices about what to do when we re-enter the “normal” busy-ness of life.

Can you imagine what would happen to you as a person — and society in general — if we had more energy,clarity, perspective, and awe? Can you see how different our lives and our civilization would be? Can you imagine how much better our choices would be if we just “kept the Sabbath” ?

Why is it so hard to do?  What’s a Sabbath? We need to start remembering.  Amen.

Peace,

John

Why Is It Admirable to Be Wrong? A Question about Human Nature

I read a quote today from Bernie Sanders — but it could be from anybody, at least for purposes of this blog. Sanders, in talking about Republicans and the Debt Deal, contrasted the President’s way vs. Congress’ way. … “I think it’s a disaster for the country, but they (Republicans) have to be complimented. And I contrast that to some Democrats, including the president….”

I have heard this kind of talk before from liberals and even radicals. I heard it often in seminary — “at least so-and-such is blatantly racist…”.  Or, “Well, at least he’s or she’s honest about their hatred of [name the group]…” There’s a saying, “Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t”. Why?

Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that you or I believe person X is doing something wrong — but telling us they’re going to do it, and being straightforward about it — why do we admire their honesty more than we are disturbed by their action?   I think we often do, but I don’t know why.

In the psychological world, there’s talk about the question, too. We talk about congruence – “having your insides match your outsides” and how powerful and perhaps charismatic, that is. Virginia Satir used to call congruence “juiciness” and equate it with mental health. But among her devotees, there is some question — just because someone believes something’s right and acts on it, doesn’t make it mentally healthy. Or is that, in fact what we’re saying?  There is a book called “Power vs Force” which says that people who act in accordance with their own nature can determine The Truth and will have real power — versus the need to force other people to do X or Y… The author believes that the Universe has a certain Truth and, when we act in accordance with that Truth (which is Good), we have power.  When we don’t, we need to force the issue. (I haven’t read the entire book because it’s actually a bit overwhelming for me to think about, so I may be misinterpreting the author’s thought).

On a more practical level, I tell my clients all the time to act on their feelings and their thoughts and see what happens — but this is usually for people with exceptionally low self-esteem. They often get incredible results because they exhibit congruence to themselves. Whether that equates to power or respect from others, I can’t say. In any case, they become themselves and they become “their best Selves”.  But I also have to tell people, just because you want to do X doesn’t mean you should…”.  That seems to strain them somewhat — or restrain them.

Further, (as I also tell my clients) as one who was bullied, just because a bully said they were going to roust me for my lunch money didn’t make it a good thing when they followed through.  My decision to spare myself by running,, avoiding, or whatever had at least as much validity (and was just as honest) as their desire did to hurt me.  If an abusive spouse says, “Don’t ask for/about X or I’ll kill you”, is it really admirable when the person does and they do as well?

We admire strength in this society on a gut level. Strength and honesty are both good things, but strong, “honest” abuse is not.  Why do we think it is?  Hitler used to talk about The Big Lie and say that if you told something that was clearly and obviously not true with enough conviction, you could make people believe it.  More often than not, this is true — at least until we think about it, further down the road — assuming we think about it at all.

I don’t have an answer to this. I just have the question. I would love some ideas on this one. Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

 

Peace,

 

John

No Tax Freeze Without Representation!!!

From toady’s Huffington Post:

“On the Senate side, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) will serve on the commission, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced. Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) will represent House Republicans, said Speaker John Boehner.

All six Republicans have signed a pledge to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform that they will not vote to raise taxes”.

Who the heck is Grover Norquist? Unless he’s elected, he shouldn’t have enough power to determine the fate of America. Again, as I said last week, elected officials who refuse to negotiate are not States-people, concerned with the welfare of their constituents or the country as a whole.  Trench warfare is not bipartisanship. Also, as I said last week, — like it or lump it —  Standard and Poors lowered our credit rating because they weren’t convinced that we could solve our debt crisis with the way things are between the parties. Forgetting whether their math is wrong, whether they have the right to do so or not, they have done so and they’ve named their reasons. Since then, the stock market has taken 3 massive hits (with one rebound good day in the middle). Once again, Republicans are saying in advance that they won’t negotiate and once again the stock market takes a hit. Are these people listening?

A recent poll said 60% of Americans think we should tax the rich. Grover Norquist thinks we shouldn’t and 3 Senators and 3 Representatives are listening to him. I assume Nordquist is rich, but I don’t know that. Whether he is or he isn’t, who the hell is he to shanghai my and everyone else’s democracy? Let him cast his vote like everybody else. Let him have one vote, like you, me and the person next door. I was slightly distressed when Labor spent a whole lot of money on ads in Wisconsin to oust people that needed to be ousted. But they are a whole organization, representing thousands — maybe millions — of people. They also fought over six seats.  Thousands of people trying to sway opinion for 6 votes — that’s democracy.  One man owning 6 representatives? That’s something alright, but it’s not democracy. And I don’t want to hear that his voice is part of a grassroots movement to lower taxes. I suspect the only part of Grover Nordquist that touches grassroots is the heel of his shoe!  And a movement? That requires more than one person. 60% of people with a desire to tax the rich? That’s a movement.

Nor do I want to hear how this is “fair” under the phrase “no raising of taxes on anyone!”  I haven’t heard anybody arguing for tax increases on the middle class or the poor — not Obama, not a Democrat or a Republican or a Socialist. What everyone is arguing about is tax increases on the richest of the rich.  I’m not for it myself, but if 60% of America — heck, even 51% of America wanted no tax increases on the rich, I’d have to settle for that, because it would be the way we do things in America — it would be a representative democracy — the kind of thing our fore-fathers fought for, the kind of thing our Constitution says we have, the kind of thing we’re trying to export as ideal around the world.  It’s not perfect and it’s messy, but it’s us at our best!

If Nordquist wants to own a country, let him buy a little island somewhere — and let him move there! Meanwhile the rest of us will hem and haw, argue, and fight and come up with solutions for our lives.  When did Nordquist become king in a country where we already have a system of government? And why are the Republicans  letting him? As strange as it sounds, we have gotten to the point where the new call to our Patriots should be “No Tax Freeze Without Representation!”, because the only people who don’t want a tax on the rich are … some of the rich.  Even some of the rich think we should tax the rich.

If Nordquist — whoever he is — can have his pledge for  ”Americans for Tax Reform”, then I can have my “Americans for Taxing the Rich and Supporting Everyone Else” pledge. Can I have some bi-partisan support for that?  How about multi-partisan support? How about no parties involved support for that?  Can I get a witness??!!

In America, if Grover Norquist can have one, so can I — and so can you.

Peace,

 

John

 

Why The Stock Market Dropped

There are going to be complicated understandings in the news about why the Stock Market had such a major drop.  They include a poor economy in the U.S. (but we already had one before this), a debt crisis in Europe (ditto, though maybe it got a little worse), or some combination of the two. Then there are the “daily horoscope” explanations of why — “the market crashed because sparrows flew from Wisconsin, thus ruining the Brazilian Rainforest yesterday”.

At least as understandable as any one of them is this: The economy isn’t stable because our government isn’t. After months of wrangling and a near-stoppage re: the debt ceiling, we thought for a minute that it would be stable, but now we know that it’s not.  Immediately after the last round of arguing and a near-default, where everyone took a sigh of relief, the Repo-blicans proved that they were still not going to discuss things. The “Super-Committee” that’s supposed to put forth a budget plan by November will be composed of Republicans who will stick to the same “No Tax Increases!” plan that worked so well last time. John Boehner has said that they won’t even put somebody on the committee who will raise taxes on the richest of the rich.  That leaves a Super-Committee-Who-Won’t-Agree-On-Anything. The Dems will want to raise taxes to increase revenue and the Repos will refuse. Even if they come to another “compromise” like the last one, they will battle with their bravado until the last minute once again. And most of America (60% according to the polls I see) want a tax increase on the richest. That means that Dems will look dumb if they back down and Republicans think will look “weak” if they do. This is not the way to a compromise. If Dems harden their stance and Repos continue to stand their ground, by November, we will have … nothing.

Once again, the economy could go into some sort of spin because both parties won’t move at all, leaving a government that gets nothing done.  Even corporations need to know which way the wind blows. How can you predict earnings if you don’t know what the laws governing your item will be? How can you make plans not knowing if the economy looks like the Tea Party wants it or the Supposed Socialists want it? You can’t.  How are people going to have confidence in the economy if all they hear about is stagnation in the Capitol? If they don’t have confidence that their leaders can do anything, or that the economy will re-focus on jobs and such,  why would they buy anything?

It’s a no-win situation because our politicians want it to be a no-win situation for their “opponents”. “No” and “No” don’t add up to “Yes”. It doesn’t work that way.

So what to do? Write, call, yell at, protest, any politician who gets on the Committee  and says in advance ”I want a no-compromise compromise”.  Politicians used to be “Statesmen” and “Stateswomen” who knew the art of the deal, how to compromise, and understood that there’s a reason we have Branches of Government and two houses of Congress — because we need everyone’s input. I don’t remember anything in the Constitution saying anything about parties, though. Those we may not need. The woman whose view of life I most value, Virginia Satir, says that “if you can’t come up with at least three options, you’re not being creative enough”. We need States-people who are creative and can get things done, not partisans who are nay-sayers and don’t.

For people who want the economy to be stable, and investment, jobs, and profits to happen, the Repos are doing everything they can to make sure it won’t happen if it’s not their way. Help them find somebody who can flex. Tell them to avoid anyone who can’t or won’t.

Just a thought.

 

Peace,

 

John

I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made For These Days

I don’t want to whine, so I won’t. Grieve, yes. Whine, no.

The title is a direct quote from Brian Wilson who felt overwhelmed by all of the changes in his world about 40 years ago.

I  guess the dreams of my generation are over. I know that some people were never all that excited about the views of 60′s hippies. Further, I’m not exactly old enough to actually BE a 60′s hippie. I was 9 years old when Woodstock happened (but I was in Upstate New York at the time), but have always seen those days as exciting and good for America.  I always felt more at home with my older peers than my own age-mates. Even still, I think my class in High School and college was the the last class who might have seen this coming and didn’t like it. This, then, is my view of history for the time I lived it, even with possible rose-colored glasses about it all.

When I was a kid, we wanted things to be better for everybody. We thought that if Black people could actually be a part of the political process, as despised as they had been in some places, then the world would be a place we could believe in. We were right. Then, we were against the war in Vietnam – not because we couldn’t win, but because war itself was wrong. We were right there also, I believe. Next, we thought that women we equal to men. We were right there. At the same time we started talking about ecology and taking care of the planet because air pollution and water pollution were killing us. Yup, we were right there, too.

Then, it became about sex — gay folks (“homosexuals” back then) had the right to have sex without being arrested. People could have sex because it felt good and they could have it as often as they wanted with who ever they wanted, because it was good.  Women could have abortions for the same reasons they could now have orgasms — because it was their body, and their life to live.  Later, we came to understand gay people and found they were more than a sex drive.  Except for the sex without commitment thing, I think we got it right, to this day. I’m not for abortion, but I still believe that women are intelligent people and sometimes intelligent people have to make difficult decisions. It’s when unintelligent people start making decisions that I think we mess up, so I like intelligent women and men wrestling with their consciences in a free society where discussion happens and people have what they need.

Then, something happened. Maybe it was disco or maybe cocaine or maybe conservatives pushed back, I don’t know. I like to think it was Jordache Jeans.  I remember jeans being what everyone wore, because they were cheap and we were one people.  Then someone figured out that they could make five times the price for these things that used to make us all look equal by sewing a horse’s head on the butt pocket. Now, it was about sex and money and we bought it. Music was no longer about people, it was about sex. Where we used to think we were too fast-paced, suddenly it was about cocaine to make things go faster — and money bought cocaine and cocaine bought sex and life was no longer about beauty of nature and equality for people.  We’d had enough of that. Now, it was about greed and speed and to hell with anyone else.

To make things worse, our “Uncle Ronnnie” came to power and told us we were right to believe in greed and be self-interested. We went in the wrong direction fast, because suddenly hippies were wrong and it was personal. It was ok if whites had more power. It was ok if men became violent. It was patriotic to tell unions off. It was ok if women had all the orgasms they wanted, but they couldn’t have abortions, because it wasn’t their decision. They were smart enough to claim their bodies, but they could no longer claim they had minds without men, who “obviously” knew more.  We were going to “correct” the “mistakes” of the 60′s and re-write history. When Reagan said we should have\could have won Vietnam, people believed him. And we fought mini-wars to prove it to ourselves. Since then, we continue to fight wars because “that’s what we do”, not because we actually believe in any particular country’s freedom, but because war is what we do. It’s who we are.

Yes, Clinton got two terms, but the entire last one was spent defending himself because he wasn’t “moral” enough to run the country. Then it was Bush Jr and were into mindless greed and mindless war and mindless life, all the while calling ourselves “Christians” and “Patriots” for living that way, actually despising “liberals” for being “unpatriotic” and not-the-right-kind of Christian because we weren’t for capitalism at all costs.

Did any of this work for us? Were more people getting what they needed? It probably looked like it for a while, but it wasn’t true. No one needed a mansion or a Lexus or a Hummer, but they thought so anyway. And things got bad, and things got worse.

So, finally, they got so bad that we elected a man of incredible ideals and rhetoric and I had hope again. But those people who came after my generation yelled even louder, demanding what didn’t work and saying it had to. They-of-the-louder-voice fought to keep liberal voices from “taking over” because we and our ideals threatened their ideals. We looked like Rodney King. All the while we were being beaten verbally, the people in charge told us they felt threatened.  They weren’t even going to talk to us unless they got their way. Last night, they won. We lost.

I don’t get it. I want peace, they want war. I want justice, they want injustice. I want equality, they want inequality. Their “girls” are taken more seriously than our women. The economy is in the tank. A few people get rich while a lot of people get poor. There’s a bigger gap between rich and poor. Nobody has a job. No one can afford their houses, but “they” win? Really? Yes.

I guess I just wasn’t made for these times. When my time comes back, call me. In the meantime, I’ll be busy helping poor people, believing in women’s intelligence and trying to secure housing for people of all colors.  It doesn’t look like I’ll run out of things to do.

Peace,

 

John