Lent and Trayvon: Wrong Is Wrong — Who Hurts?

The backlash has begun … or continues, maybe. In response to the Trayvon Martin shooting and all the ruckus that has ensued in the media, conservatives and White supremacists are showing their wounds — or perceived wounds. The Huffington Post reports this morning that some conservative columnist wrote a response to the idea that Black parents have to talk to their kids about how to behave so as not to get shot by saying what he “has to” tell his (White) kids about not getting shot by Blacks. In addition to this, some White supremacist organization is “patrolling” the streets of Sanford, Florida to “prevent” race riots from happening. Their stated reason is something like “Al Sharpton gets to do it. Why can’t we?”.

Also, this week, NBC has fired the man who seemingly edited the original 911 call and seemingly started the whole thing.The person who covered the editorial for the Huffington Post responded by explaining why the article is “racist” and saying that the man’s experience isn’t enough to have him ranting like this.

So let’s get down to facts — or at least my opinion of them.

1) Trayvon’s name is apparently spelled with a “Y”. I have spelled it without one since this whole thing began. I checked it in a couple of sources when I first wrote about it. I’ve seen it spelled both ways, but it seems to be spelled with a “y”. I was wrong, I guess. Still, if that’s the biggest mistake I make here, I’m ok with that. Should his parents ever read this and be upset because I mis-spelled their son’s same, I apologize. Having seen my name mis-spelled since forever I know that it’s kind of depressing. To those who say that I shouldn’t claim to speak for someone whose name I can’t even spell correctly, there might be some merit to that statement, but I have come down on the side of trying to understand the whole scenario, and that’s where I hope my post is different.

2) Yes, NBC’s editor caused a furor with his (or her) decision to put out the tape edited this way. He (or she) deserved to be fired.

3) Based on the article the conservative man wrote, there are apparently times when his life was threatened by Black folk at an amusement park. This is real, and for the reviewer to discount it is to say he shouldn’t complain because his “near-death experience” wasn’t scary enough or bad enough or difficult enough. Assuming that’s true, blaming him for being a victim on that day is wrong. Blaming the victim is always wrong.  It just is. The reviewer had no right to discount the conservative man’s experience.  It is in discounting people’s experience that we keep hate alive. By telling people they shouldn’t feel that way, we traumatize them, and it explodes later — in this case, on the internet.

3) Apparently, both Travon and Zimmerman felt afraid of the other and one of them is dead, the other injured. Irrational fear is not our friend. Rational fear might be good for us, but if we fight others because of it, there’s the chance that people will die.

4) I would be happy to arrest Trayvon for assault and Zimmerman for murder, and let the legal authorities sort this whole thing out, but that apparently isn’t going to happen — and can’t now, at least in part.

5) Young Mr. Martin’s injuries seem worse than the older Mr. Zimmerman in that he’s dead. Martin didn’t carry a weapon, let alone a gun, but Mr. Zimmerman didn’t know that, and didn’t bother to find out. He assumed that he was in danger, when he apparently wasn’t.  If the legal test of danger is “feeling unsafe”, we might have a problem here. If the legal test of danger is “actually is dangerous” or “reasonably perceived to be dangerous”, then we  have less of one, and Mr. Zimmerman should be in jail.  Martin was not — by any reasonable standard — a danger to Mr. Zimmerman, at least originally. Zimmerman was, by reason of having a gun and perceiving threats where there weren’t any, a danger to Martin.

6) The White supremacist group that is protecting against race riots is also perceiving a threat where there apparently isn’t any. In all of the marches, all of the comments, all of the youth movements about this case, I haven’t heard of one race riot. There are no burning cities. There are no calls for military to comb the streets at night by the government. In short, people with a real history of violence are saying they’re afraid of people with no call for violence. We call that “projection” in the clinical setting — I hate you, so I fear that you hate me. In the political world, we call it “posturing” or “bullying”. It’s the same logic that has Wall Street feeling scared when people say — in some non-violent way — that it hurt to have their house taken away from them. The people who took their house say “they hate us, “they are violent”,  ”they should be put in jail” and “they are being unfair to us“. Yes, there’s violence. Yes, there’s hate. Yes, somebody should be put in jail. Yes, somebody is being unfair. It’s not, however, the person sitting in the park or marching in the street. Deep down, everybody knows this. The Wall Street people know this consciously or unconsciously. The people in the park know this consciously.

During the period from Good Friday to Easter we see what happens when this trend is taken to it’s logical extreme. People arrest and kill an innocent man while all-the-time claiming he’s the scary one.  And, in fact, I’m sure Jesus was scary to the powers-that-be. That doesn’t mean there was anything to be afraid of. The most violent thing the gospels record Jesus doing is wrecking the selling area of the Temple. I’m sure that was a pretty scary thing if you were at the Temple.  Once, he also killed a fig tree by staring at it.  Thirty three years of life, and he has one bad day and one mean moment. Where does he end up? Jesus is whipped, beaten, stripped, jabbed in the side with a spear, and given vinegar on a stick.

On the other side of the coin, there are people who live a lot longer, make their money by stealing from the poor, keeping widows at bay with the laws they set up, trample on people’s lives, let alone their freedom. They have a bad day once at Temple or are anguished by the things they do during the day for the Roman military and they put up a public fuss because they feel threatened by a man who says he’s the king of the Jews but  has no army. Should Jesus have destroyed the money-changer’s business place? Probably not. Was it scary to be there when he did? Yup. probably.

In the long run, looking back on it, maybe the wrong people won on the Good Friday. Maybe the “victims” of the day weren’t the real victim. Maybe they were just bullies. In any case, next time Jesus visits, who do you think he’s going to understand best and sympathize with? And who is he going to have the harder time forgiving?

Are there people in the park who bought houses they couldn’t afford? Possibly. If there are, they know this as well, but they are loudly protesting that the banks hate them. Are they wrong to be complaining? Yes. Do they know this? Yes.  The more they feel guilty, the louder they yell. The inverse of that is not necessarily true. Just because someone’s yelling loudly doesn’t mean they’re guilty of something. They could just be in a lot of pain.  Guilty people who yell, though, yell loudly.

7) Guilty people yelling loudly. Bullies yell loudly, to squash their victim’s voice.  They do so because it works… for a while. Then it really doesn’t. Buried pain comes back louder than it did before it was suppressed. The fact of the matter is that the KKK- type people are right — there could be race riots. People have the right to be really mad about their hurts and having your son be dead is a pretty major hurt. But they haven’t rioted because they only want justice.  They don’t want revenge.  If Trayvon’s parents — and the whole African-American community — doesn’t get justice, if it festers and they keep quiet about the loss of this child — this thing will take on a life of its own for everybody. White Racists will worry more about The Truth coming out. Victims will want The Truth to come out and  will act in ridiculous ways to make sure it does.

So here’s the thing: People are hurt on both sides of this issue. Let everyone have the justice they deserve in the measure that they deserve it, not based on volume, not based on irrational fear, but based on truth. Then let’s see who the real victims are. We’ll see if the system works, we’ll see if racism exists. We’ll see if life’s consequences get unjustly applied.  But let’s get real justice for all.

Peace,

 

John

My Soul Grieves at the Gospel

I just got back from the best performance I have ever seen of  ”Godspell”.  In case you’re wondering where that was, the production was done by The Steeple Players at the Southington Congregational Church in Southington, CT. I have never seen a professional production of the play, but this was — if not on that level, only a tiny step below it. I’d pay money to see this particular production at a playhouse at any time. It was that good.

But, as I watched this peppy production with happy dance numbers, I felt this weight in my chest and felt overcome with sadness. I’ve been prone to depression, so it could have just been that, but as I thought about it, it wasn’t some biochemical mistake. It was the words of Jesus in the play. There have been other times when the gospel of Matthew has struck me as new again. The first was when I sort of ran away from seminary after a bad relationship. After a month or two, I picked up the Bible and it spoke to me like I’d never read it before. Tonight was like that.

So what’s the deal? What’s with the sadness? In both cases, I sensed that what God wanted and where I was or the society was were very far apart and I was suddenly reminded that there was another way to be — a way that made sense and made me happy, a way different than our own. That’s what happened at the play.

As the actor portraying Jesus spoke from the Sermon on the Mount, I was struck by how weird Jesus  would be in our times, how out of touch he would seem. Our ways are so different than his that’s it’s scary sometimes.

When I was in seminary, I knew a girl named Judy and one night we went out to a club and were talking about Christianity.  She said she didn’t believe in it. I remember asking something about “what part of Jesus’ words did she find offensive?”. She said, “Oh, Jesus. You mean like Jesus’ teachings? I like them. Him, I like. It’s Christianity I have a problem with”. The fact that anyone can see that Christianity and Christ are not connected says we’ve got real problems. It took me a while, but I finally understood what she meant.  Jesus and Paul are different people. The Church is built on Paul at least as much as it on Jesus and away we went. While Paul would say that he was teaching Jesus, they are clearly different in their approach, simply because they are different people. And away we went.

But our society isn’t even in the same dimension as Jesus in the Gospels.  Jesus says things like “don’t worry about what you’ll eat, drink, or wear” We’re obsessed by these things. Food has it’s own channel.  The alcoholics I see frequently are obsessed by what they drink and we believe that Prohibition was a bad idea because people naturally have to drink. And clothes? We still argue about which woman wears the same dress better.  Project Runway anyone? But what Jesus was talking about was possessions and I like possessions. We’re taught to save the economy by buying possessions. Advertising tells us all about the possessions we could have — and there are millions of them. Our goal is to acquire and Jesus says not to even pay attention to things.

Jesus says, “You can’t love God and money” — they’re mutually exclusive — as I try to save money for retirement.  Jesus talks about a man who defends himself against famine by building an extra silo on his farm, only to die a day later. The implication is that we should trust God to supply our needs.  Instead, we build “bigger and better” all the time.

Then there’s all the stuff about making a big fuss about your faith (we’re not supposed to), while on TV televangelists promote how well-to-do they are due to the blessings of Jesus, because they are a Christian. Jesus says, “don’t flaunt your religion. Pray in your room”, while people worry about the “War on Christmas” and fight about the fifth level of fish logos on their car.

Jesus refuses to get involved in a political fight over taxes, while  public supposedly ”Christian” people spend all their time doing  just that. Jesus doesn’t spend a word talking about homosexuality, while the church spends all it’s time arguing about it. The “make or break” issue of our time is something Jesus never talked about in the Bible.

Jesus says if you’re angry at your brother, you’d better watch out for the flames of hell. Our economy’s based on war, our video games are based on violence , our whole culture is engulfed in violence on a daily basis and Jesus says we’re in trouble if we get mad? Ouch.

Psychology and politics both say not to give money to that bum who asks for money because it’ll only make things worse. Jesus says to never refuse someone asking for money, and give them more than they asked for.  Either the man’s insane or we are. Guess which one I vote for.  If Jesus’ words are about how to make the world work, how to love each other, how not to judge others without look at ourselves first, we have created a world where cooperation doesn’t make the news and  all the ways we hate each other do. Our media tells us that judging others is almost a divine right.  We get to laugh at all those people on Jerry Springer. We are encouraged to call certain styles of clothes ugly. we pick on people because they are not like us while we don’t even like ourselves.

Godspell is a great play, and the Southington production is better than many. I just wish it didn’t highlight how messed up we are as a culture. Oh, well. I guess I’ll just have to listen to that Jesus guy to remind myself how easy life could be — and how far off from that we are.

Peace,

John

(BTW, look for my new blog, “Because It Matters”, starting soon. Like It Matters will still be about personal opinions. Because will be more positive and tell people about good things I want people to know about)

Bedford Falls Is The 99%, Faith Is A Choice: Christmas Movie Reviews

In the few hours I had yesterday to relax post-gift explosion, post paperwork, and post a really good dinner, the family and I watched two movies: one of my favorites of all time (“It’s A Wonderful Life”) and an over-the-top Spielberg animation movie (“The Polar Express”).  I was in one of those philosophical moods — not exactly sleep deprived but not all bright and cheery either. Anyway, these are my thoughts.

It began with The Polar Express — a movie I had seen in 3D with the kids when it first came out. A warning — NEVER bring little kids to see this movie in 3d with full-sense-around sound. When the train drives over your head, it looks, sounds, and scares the life out of you as though it were real.  Try holding a shaking while YOUR heart-rate is still above normal and see how fun it is.

At home, on our TV screen at least, the movie takes on a gentler tone, and becomes a movie about — of all things — faith.  The beginning of the movie features two different boys struggling with the same question: Do I believe and get on the train or do I let my disbelief get the best of me and let it go? One boy gets on after deciding “no” and changing his mind. The other one pretty much stays with his “no” answer until the others stop the train and wait for him. In a theme reminiscent of Walter Wangerin’s Ragman, the “believers” stop the train and go back and get the little boy for whom “Christmas just doesn’t work out”.  This boy doesn’t really make it to the big train cars, even after he gets on the train — because he doesn’t think he fits, and he doesn’t want to pretend he does, which is, of course, his choice.  The community of kids stop the train, go and get the kid, bring him hot chocolate and still he  doesn’t leave his car to check out the big train where all the fancy things happen.  But the community respects him enough, generally, to let him stay where he chooses and lets him come to them at his own pace. They bring him to the North Pole and he has to choose to move, to get out of the car he’s in, and to go see The Big Man Himself.

Whatever has happened to this child, it seems to be more than “I didn’t get a sled last year”. maybe it was the story on the news of the family that died in a Christmas fire, and maybe it was the look of the boy’s house in the movie that did it, but I was thinking real trauma from real life had taken away this boy’s reason to even hope for a better life.  This is the kind of thing that happens in people’s lives all the time. This (to use the psycholical term) “learned helplessness” requires extra care and work from an outsider to allow hope (and later choice) to happen. First comes rescue, then maybe daring to hope, then hope itself, then daring to try, then actual belief.

The other boy — the one called “Hero Boy” in the subtitles —  is too smart for belief. For him, much like Thomas in the gospels, only seeing will work to create belief and hope. But there is a part of him that wants to believe, just as I think Thomas did. Experience, “reality”, intellect, “growing up”, puberty, whatever it is, gets in the way and covers over his heart and his hope and his belief, but the spark of hope still burns somewhere within him until he’s left with, “what’s the worse thing that could happen if I believed?”.  Turns out you could die on a mountain railroad or a frozen over pond, or see a ghost hit his head on a low tunnel, or be stopped by elks, but — in the end — the North Pole actually does exist — and far more incredibly than anyone could have imagined.

As I watched, I thought of how much of faith is like that.  As we begin to remember the preposterous that we once knew , we begin to hope that castles and fairies and Santa and a beautiful reality  exists somewhere. We know too well that life makes sense most of the time. Still, love and hope and the Creator of it all aren’t always sensible — they’re extravagant and real.  So first, we get on the train because we woke up, then because we could escape the cold and get comfortable, then for some period of time, things get dangerous as reality itself gets unhinged for the smart person and the depressed one, the black one, the white one, the male and female, the courageous and the disliked know-it-all.  And if you stay on the journey long enough you get to see something like what you’ve dreamed about — only way, way better in ways and degrees you couldn’t even imagine. This is what faith promises, or hopes for, or believes in. It makes the crazy impossible train and the long walk through the snow to help others soooo worth it. What the boy was hoping for was a local town fair. What he gets is Disneyland, 6 Flags, and the Cathedral all in one. As Christians, we like to think the same way. Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims all (I think) look at faith the same way. So here’s the deal: you don’t have to get on the train. In fact,  if you get on because other people “made” you, you’re probably not going to enjoy it anyway.  But if you get on, and it’s even slightly your choice, I can promise you a pretty amazing ride to where ever that thing goes.

The second movie we watched is the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Though it is (horrors!) in black and white, and clearly set in another time, it looks so familiar where it shouldn’t  be. Further, critics have called it “hokum” in the past and talked about “Capra corn” and they — as snivelling cynics often do — miss the point. When we as a society lose track of this, we are in serious trouble, which is how we got to here.

Clearly, the movie is about a man (Jimmy Stewart)’s innner demons and his struggle to have a better life away from the people around him whom he doesn’t exactly fit with, but is called to nonetheless. Yes, the themes of “one man’s life impacts those around him” and “life is worth living” are great ones that the movie conveys extremely well, but that’s not what I want to focus on here.

The thing that makes the movie both great and “corny” to cynics is it’s realism. In the town of Bedford Falls, we have the taxi driver and the cop, the librarian and the banker. We also have the immigrant in the slums, the factory worker, and the factory owner who’s lucky to “get in on the ground floor”. We have the forgetful and the deaf, the High School hero and the supposedly “loose woman”. We have the drunken and the sorrowful who either escape their fate or don’t. We have children who catch colds while playing and others who are lucky to survive them. There are people simply trying to get by (George Bailey and his family), there are people making progress for their family (like Martini’s new house), and there are people in Mr. Potter’s slum — and they all live together in the world that is Bedford Falls. All of these folks make up what we now refer to as “the 99%” while one man — Mr. Potter — owns nearly all of it and wants it all.

He is the man at the draft board who determines who will live and who will die, just as he is the man who sets the rents and rates at home that could determine who lives or dies. He is the man who owns it all, but has nothing. He’s the man who makes the Congressman wait til he’s done.  He’s the man that calls the police over one act of bad banking while he lives his entire life acting unethically. As Jimmy Stewart’s George says in a time of economic crisis, “Potter’s not selling, he’s buying”. What he’s trying to buy is control over their “measly little riff-raff” lives while they “do most of the working and living and dying in [that] town”. As George says, “Isn’t it fair that they should do that with a roof over their heads?”

Those of us who are like George have every right to want to leave all of that working and living and dying behind and live out our dreams. We have every right to live out our destinies. But if we leave behind the rest of Bedford Falls behind mentally, if we forget that the drunk and the floozie are connected to us, if we forget that the world is made up of all those other people — with their shades of good and bad, smart and not-so-smart, we leave the world of Bedford Falls to people like Mr. Potter.

Pretty soon, children are dying from “regular life” accidents like kids playing on the pond, houses are taken away or never built, and corruption reigns in the streets — all of the things that could have been prevented if we had cared enough to know both the Sam Wainrights and the Mr. Gowers of the world and formed a bridge between them in our community, both Bert the cop and Violet the “it” girl.

The picture of community in “It’s A Wonderful Life” is what America used to be — a connected mass of one life touching and building up another. It’s a tough life, as much as it is a wonderful one, but people make progress because they know and care about each other, and they protect each other from the Mr. Potters of the world, who care nothing about them and threaten\ “offer” to dislodge people from each other.

Bedford Falls is the Social Contract in action, the psychology of community vs. our fear of co-dependence. It is the best of America for the most people, but it isn’t always fair for the George Baileys out there. It’s so unfair at times that we may want to die, but in the end it’s that very community that saves us.

We need to protect ourselves from the Mr. Potters of the world who take but give little back, who divide and conquer, who remove the very thing that keeps us going after a hard day working and living and dying. But we need to do that by accepting that George Bailey has a job to do right here at home in Bedford Falls.

Peace,

 

John

 

 

 

Five and Ten and A Hundred-Fold: The Deering Reunion

“Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹ but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²⁰ Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown”.  (Mark 4: 18-20)

 

There is a type of theology that says, rather than waiting for Jesus to return at the end of time and establish his Kingdom\Reign, Jesus’ resurrection has already changed the universe. It’s our job to start building that Kingdom\Reign ourselves, now. This kind of theology is not thoughts “out there” somewhere, it is experienced “in here”. Almost impossible to explain, it is also nearly indestructible, because it is reality – a memory lived that cannot be taken away.  It changes a person.

Some people I know – some I just met, some I have known for years, and some I am now reacquainted with – live that theology. It is who they are, and it changes their world and everyone around them wherever they go.  Yesterday, in Concord, NH, at a retirement community’s public hall, those people gathered in a room and I was lucky enough to be in the room with them. My skin tingled just sitting in a room with them as I remembered that I, too, was one of those people (the experiential people, not the retired ones. In fact, nobody in the room was retired in any meaningful way from a life of ministry).

In this room of 30 to 50 people, there were professors, nurses, world travelers and people who lived in the same place for years, elementary school teachers, teachers of the mentally challenged and the hearing impaired, musicians who have probably caused the hearing impairment of others in their time. There were landlords, and people with landscaping businesses, people who designed tools to make quilts, people who made light bulbs, and people who sold T-shirts. There  people all the way up to age 70-something. There were adoptive parents, gay parents, heterosexual parents, single parents, divorced parents – and they were builders, all of them. They have been busy for the last 40 years or so building the kingdom.  Some have built it in Columbia, and some in California, and some in Massachusetts, some in Connecticut, and many in New Hampshire. And beyond the walls of that room, there were people from all over who Skyped in (or tried) who were also Kingdom builders wherever they went. As someone there noticed, there were no stockbrokers, no investment bankers, no builders of weapons. There were only people that cared for others and made the world a better place, because they had experienced a “better place”, they had helped to create a better place for the humans they met, and they received from that better place while they were there and years later. That “better place”, that bit of the Kingdom here on earth, was the Deering Conference Center, in Deering, NH in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Yesterday, those people experienced a reunion.

The camp was led by Gordon and Cy Sherman and Bill Salt over the years. The reunion was organized by Em Ross and Cy and pulled off by them, with Gordon and Bill. The reunion was scheduled to start at 10am and finish at 6pm. I don’t know if it worked out that way, because my family and I arrived at 1 and left at 4, but in my 3 hours I (and my children and my wife) got to experience the incredible power of people who have experienced Deering.

After my first week at Deering, in 1975, I knew that I would never have to settle for “the way it is” ever again. I can remember after one of my weeks at camp, coming home and having my mother say, “That’s the way things are. You just have to get used to it” and I knew she was wrong. I knew we had choices about the way things are because we had choices about the way we saw people and the way we acted toward them.

My first week at Deering, I went because my minister, Bob Kyte convinced my mother that it was a “leadership camp”. Having been an outsider to my peers for all of 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, and part of 9^th grade, we moved to Wilbraham and I knew people, but I still didn’t have a lot of friends. I was a nerd, a little low on the hygiene, suffering from depression already and “that guy” that others picked on in school – even if they didn’t know me. When I arrived at camp, it took me at least 3 days to feel much of anything, but then I realized something was different. I was being accepted – not because I had anything or did anything, but because I was a human being and these people assumed that God had created me. I’d been to church for years and believed that God created everyone, but somehow, I didn’t think that included me. These people acted like it did. They never said anything, exactly, that I remember. They just assumed I knew it and – after awhile, I did.

Gordon, the thin guy who put out his cigarettes in an orange juice can, spoke about teaching Sunday School on Long Island and thinking, “Hey, what if we actually did what that Jesus guy said? What would it look like?”. He said that he and  his wife had decided to move their family up to New Hampshire for at least summers, and hopefully full-time at some point. People talk about living for Christ. Here was a guy who had actually done it.

Peter, the crazy elf with the very good heart, was a minister and the scales fell from my eyes about my calling to ministry. It occurred to me that the kind of people who were the epitome of joyous Christians, were probably the epitome of Christians – ministers.

I remember John and Dave, two of the campers, simply accepting me, and the girls not recoiling at the sight of me for my zits. People gave hugs all the time. Becky Johnson, my “living group” leader ( a type of small group we broke into), acted like we were normal teens and were expected to be full of life, happy, enjoying ourselves. I was considered “normal” and full of hope for the first time in years. After jumping on mattresses yelling “I am somebody! You are somebody! Together, we are somebody!” the spirit was rising in me and I was willing to be brave – I showed my smile and wanted to share the feeling. By the time the week was over, I knew I was going to be a minister and was asked to be on the state-wide United Church Youth Council. I had changed – from loser to leader and – if I could do it, so could anybody else. I really believed that then, and I believe it now. It only takes a spark to get a fire glowing… You want to pass it on. But I’m not the only one.

There was a woman yesterday at the reunion (Sarah Dunklee) that had “intentionally taken the camp experience to Columbia and tried to create it there”.  My friend Dave was involved in taking handicapped city kids to ski in Massachusetts, I think. He talked about it as a “calling”. And, in keeping with the Spirit of Deering, the kids who went helped change the mind of the mountain staff – they were going to lose money now by doing more, but they didn’t care because they looked forward to helping the kids. A mutual friend, Sue, is helping veterans who have lost limbs to ski again in Vermont.

Teachers around the circle at the reunion weren’t just teachers – they were teachers of special ed, or teachers of autistic kids or deaf kids, teachers of little kids – working with people with no voice in the political arena but affected by it – and people with even less voice than that.  They tried to create the camp experience by treasuring all of these people – and seeing them as people, loved by God.  Years ago, Gordon had shown me the story “Ragman” in a book. “Ragman” is about Jesus taking the time and seeing everyone for all they were – with whatever pace they had.  No one who reads that story leaves unaffected.

When Bill Salt talked about Deering and camp staff, it became clear that he had brought the staff that brought me. Missing were “kids” who I sent there – 4 “generations” of Deering ran through my head at the same time, while my children ran around playing with the daughter of another Deering-ite who was there.   When Roger Goode showed up, you could see the love in the faces of his friends.

When Gary Ciocci, Heather Bordeaux, and Gail Hegeman started playing “(All My Life’s A) Circle” by Harry Chapin, my mind wandered to another Harry song, “I Wonder What Would Happen to This World” which has as its lyrics, “If a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man’s life could be worth… And if a woman tried to make her lifetime something more than a servant, mother, wife time, I wonder what would happen to this world”. As Cy told me how proud she was of Gail and her professional drum kit back at home, I knew the answer was that it would like this.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve seen postings from a person I sent to Deering as a youth minister and wanted to go back, and a friend who sang Big Band music in the Southern US who also wanted to be there. I’ve seen postings from pastors who are changing the world in their little corner of it who also wanted to be there. The reality that was Deering and the building of the Kingdom of God continue on as the people talked about planning another get-together another time. God’s Deering lives on around the world and Paula Richards is selling Deering T-Shirts for it. : )

One last thing that more than just I noticed: Deering closed more than 20 years ago and the people who were at the reunion should be – as I am – getting on in years. At my 30^th High School reunion, all of the men had put on weight, lost some or all of their hair, and generally seemed like “mature” adults. Even the people with grandchildren who attended this reunion didn’t look old there. Blaze looked great (no surprise there), but everyone had the glow of youth in their eyes, giving them far less gray hair and far fewer pounds somehow. There is a belief in Greek Orthodox theology that says that sanctified people’s bodies don’t disintegrate – even when they are dead. I assume that means that good, loving and sanctified people age slower as well. At Deering’s reunion yesterday it showed.

It’ll happen again, as it has continued to happen daily since Deering existed – friends will meet and share visions and do the work the Spirit and their experiences call them to do,  because the Kingdom never goes away.  Once you’ve experienced it, you want to pass it on – really.

 

Peace,

 

John

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

Is The Landlord Evicting Us?

I was planning on taking some time off from writing, but I got attacked by a tornado.  I kid you not.  Yesterday, on my first day back at work in my private practice, a tornado’s center came down the street two blocks over from where I work. In my office, I saw bits of tree fly by (my office faces away from the street) . As I stepped out onto the street a bit later, to my left I saw this:

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and to my right I saw this:

All of this took place in Springfield, Massachusetts yesterday. When was the last time Springfield had a tornado? Never.  Springfield is about 1500 miles east of “tornado alley” if i remember correctly. My housemate said last night, “Not to downgrade your experience, but have you seen the pictures from Joplin? It looks like just a bunch of sticks”.

We have gone from a brutal summer — incredible heat — to an even more brutal winter — the worst in a very long time to unusually high temps in the last few days to… tornadoes. What the heck is going on??!!

We know what the heck is going on. We have messed with the environment too much and it is fighting back. It’s as simple as that.  In today’s newspaper this morning, there was an article that says “environmental security found lax at Nuclear Plant”. The article goes on to talk about the plant in Japan and how engineers didn’t take the threat of earthquakes or tsunamis seriously enough. Ya think?

My wife is far more knowledgeable about the environment and climate change– she’s one of those people trained by Al Gore and she gives presentations on this stuff. People stuff is more my thing. Remember when Hummers were all the rage and Detroit kept putting out bigger and bigger vehicles?  I — and nearly everybody thought that was just stupid for the environment and unnecessary in any city. Potholes would have to be craters for those things to be needed. We all knew this, but it was our way to thumb our nose at reality because we didn’t want to be told what we could and couldn’t buy.  Compare John Prine’s song “Paradise” which talks of devastating strip mining “”where Paradise lay… Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away” and James Watt — who headed the Interior Department under Ronald Reagan who said something like “It doesn’t matter if bulldoze forests, the world’s going to end soon anyway”. My point is that we know what we should do, but we thumb our noses at it like we’re running things.  Yesterday’s tornado  confirmed what I already knew: we’re not.  The more stupid stuff we do, the more deadly things we’re going to see.  The planet is kicking us off.

How and why? “Natural events” seems to be how and why is because the planet that’s bigger than all of us wants to survive. Rather like an old Star Trek episode, we think of ourselves as “life” while a bigger context reveals us to be an invading body like a bad cold or at least a foreign body.in a much larger larger system. When that body poses a problem to the larger body, the larger one fights it off and gets rid of it.

Years ago, this was called the Gaia hypothesis, “Gaia” being the Goddess of the Earth or what we would call “Mother Nature”, the premise was “what if the earth can be seen as a system with it’s own way of finding balance — a balance we disrupt with our actions? Mother Earth will get mad.”Rush Limbaugh scorns the Gaia hypothesis because he sees it as related to Goddess worship and radical feminism and whiny liberals. Rush, for years, didn’t believe in “Global Warming” aka “Climate Change”, either. While I don’t worship the planet as Goddess, my friend Cathi — a Pagan — does.  Even if Rush is right about Cathi (she IS a feminist AND a liberal — oooo, scary!), he might be wrong about the Hypothesis.

As a Christian, I don’t worship the earth,  but I try to respect it.   Biblically, we are told we have “dominion over” it. As my friend Charlie Crook ( a fairly conservative baptist, said years ago, “That doesn’t mean we get to do anything we want. A King or Queen doesn’t get to kill the people under them. That’s bad dominion”.

As a systems therapist, as I wrote in my book, “All systems do  3 basic things: 1) Take things in 2) Use the good stuff and 3) “rid of the bad stuff”. If Earth is a system, it takes in light and water and gives off carbon dioxide and — us?

Just because God created the Earth, doesn’t mean it’s not alive. God creates all kinds of life, as we in the Judeo-Christian tradition already know.  And if it’s alive, we better behave. We know what we need to do and what we shouldn’t. Let’s start acting on the good.

Peace,

 

John.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next Year — Parades Without War?

This morning, my two girls marched in the Memorial Day Parade. My wife and I and our housemate also went to cheer on our girls — in the middle of a parade highlighting Veterans from WWII. I’m sure there were others there from Kores, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. There were the Jewish War Veterans, the WACS, Army, and so on and so on.

My wife, our housemate, and myself all saluted the flag as it went by, but for different reasons. Lisa had a father in “the war” — I’m not sure which one, but “the war” anyway. My wife really likes what Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation” and overcoming the evils of Nazism. Me? Iin memory of my Grandfather, who used to — during the Vietnam era — make me salute each and every flag as it passed by. My grandpa never served in a war. He was too young for WWI snd too old for WWII, and I loved his patriotism, even if I didn’t understand it. I was — as much as an 8 year old can be — against the Vietnam war. My uncle had come home and wasn’t the same, the news was about the war every night and even my grandparents were starting to doubt the war.

I remain a pacifist, just because I like to ask old questions, like “Is war really a good thing?” (None of the adults in the house has ever been pro-war. We have each protested at least one war and we were happy on the drive that there weren’t any “We killed Osama!” signs. My daughter woke up this morning to see the pouring rain and said, “It’s God crying for all the dead people”. So sue me, I’m a liberal.)

So here I was, this liberal pacifist, who doesn’t believe in war, saluting flags at a parade my kids were in. What the heck was I doing? I nearly couldn’t stand myself and I began to think “In the old days, we would have asked for no more Memorial Days because we shouldn’t be supporting war”. And yet, as I looked, nobody seemed to be celebrating war. Even the old veterans in the cars were just happy to be there, waving from their car, much like my daughters were being seen in the parade. And for people who fought WWII, one can make the case (as many have) was a “good war”. I don’t begrudge them their days as heroes and heroines. As much as I’m against wars, I’m against clearly dumb wars even more. They have their beliefs and I have mine, making me not a great pacifist, but a damn good patriot — one of which my grandfather would be proud,

About war: I don’t think it works, and it makes a mess of things — people’s lives, their land, economies — and the list goes on. One of the reasons, for instance, that the Japanese got so far ahead of us in the last half of the twentieth century was they weren’t spending massive amounts on a military budget. They weren’t allowed to have a military. Beside that, war doesn’t work very well. Every person we kill has family that gets upset. They get upset and want revenge and rightfully so. If we kill hundreds, they kill hundreds. If they kill thousands of us, we kill thousands of them. And so it goes. It’s not working. Feedback loops never stop, they just go round and round. This particular one leaves hurt and loss in its wake.

From a religious point of view — mine anyway — GOD gave that person life. It’s not mine to take away. As long as the person’s alive, there’s a chance for “brotherhood” — a connection between us — and salvation — they can become better people.

Do I understand rage, anger, the lust for revenge? Sure I do. Do I understand evil exists? Every single day. Do I have ALL the answers? Not even. I’m pretty clear that life is a good thing and systems of death aren’t.

Ok, enough ranting. How do we balance out our love for heroes and heroines, and our need to remember those who fought and died without celebrating war? Here’s my suggestion: next year l let’s have a parade for those who fought and died because — for whatever reasons– they thought it was the right thing. Let’s take care of the people who went to war and celebrate that they are home. And then let’s celebrate human life and try to never have a war again. That’s something to celebrate.

Saved From Surgery by The Apocalypse?

I just found out I’m going to miss my surgery, or that’s date has been postponed… My surgery is scheduled for May 25, 2011, but …according to an article  in the Huffington Post ”May 21, 2011 will mark the second coming of Christ, or at least that’s what some Christian groups believe. The date was calculated by Harold Camping, the leader of an independent Christian ministry called Family Radio Worldwide, which is based in Oakland, Calif. Camping’s date is based on his interpretation of the Bible.. Camping’s group isn’t the only one following his apocalyptic prediction though. A number of loosely affiliated websites and radio broadcasts have created a movement independent of churches that have organized to proclaim the day as the end of the world. .

So should I forget my surgery? The article goes on to say: “While this isn’t the first time that the end of the world has been predicted, there are many believers that will adhere to the date, even if it passes. “It would be like telling the  Wright brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn’t even try,” Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, told the AP.”

As you probably know, this kind of thing happens often. Rev. Joe Blow or his TV evangelist wife says, “We have figured out when the end of the world is”.  People line up and get ready, and then boom. Nothing happens.  The press covers the failure of  Christianity or scripture or prophecy with an underlying tenor of “Oh, those goofy Christians again”, and I would have to agree with them: those goofy Christians again. But the implication is that I am one of ”those” goofy Christians. I’m not. More importantly, though, neither are millions of Christians around the world.

I think I’ll plan on my surgery happening anyway. Maybe Jesus will come back, and maybe he won’t, before then.  But, at this point, I can pretty much guarantee that Jesus won’t be returning on the 21st of May this year. How can I do this?  It’s very simple.  In what is believed to be  the earliest record of Jesus ministry, the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 13,  verses 31 to 33, Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. I’m fascinated by the name of the group’s website: “We Can Know. com”, because, according to the Bible, Jesus himself says, “No, we can’t”.

Now, my liberal friends are saying, “why are you even arguing about this stuff? We don’t even believe in the whole “rapture” thing. It just sounds too hinky”.  And they may, in fact, be right.  It does sound hinky. Will it happen? Who knows?

The point here is that it’s not the Bible or Christianity or prophecy’s failure — it’s groups of people who — from time to time — can’t take “no” for an answer. Inquiring minds like theirs want to know and they want to know, right now! It doesn’t matter that the faith records Jesus as saying “I don’t know and neither can you”.  Their logic is unassailable. ” If we keep trying, we can find out”. Their problem  is that they start with “and the clues are right here”.  There aren’t any clues. and they are not right anywhere.  There are people who like to spend their time solving puzzles and the weirder the puzzle the more they like it. For them, the book of “Revelation” is like an all-day sucker or a New York Times Sunday Crossword with a non-erasable pen. They can spend all day there and still get the wrong answer.

Why do they do this?  For some people it’s fear.  They like threatening people with the end of the world. It makes them feel powerful. OK, that could be my projection, but I think it’s true. Revelation is  arguably full of more chaos and destruction, terror and anguish than   any other  book in the Bible. What better than “We’re smarter than you are”, “we  know a secret” and “it’s going to destroy you if you don’t do what we say” than the book of the Revelation to John (it’s official title) ?  People with power issues can focus their wrath through that book, and they do — much more than they focus on  that Jesus guy.

To be fair, many Christians think it of as “Jesus coming back to take us to heaven” rather than fire, brimstone, and death with wings. To look forward to that is a whole lot nicer and much more Christian, because it’s more Christ-focused, love-focused,  and communion- with-God-focused.  It depends on which day you catch me, but sometimes that’s how I think of the apocalypse\rapture thing. The whole “people driving in their car disappearing” thing seems like a “B” movie plot device  so, other times, I think it’s hinky.  For people who do  like that, and I know quite a few, it’s cool to know the secret day-and-time-code but they don’t threaten with it, nor do they focus on it. .

Still, the point is that  I don’t have any need to know what day and time.   I like surprises and I trust God to get here in God’s own time. God knows better than I do.   About my liberal and atheistic friends — do I worry about theirsalvation?  No, not really,  because I don’t see God as violent or destructive at His\Her core.  Still, I know other readers of this blog who think I should be worried about them. That’s another argument for another day.

In the long run, though, I think I’ll just plan on the surgery. And if I’m saved from it before then, I’ll be literally saved from a pain in the neck. To my non-Christian friends, don’t worry that the apocalypse is happening on May 12 of this year because those people know something you don’t.  They don’t know anything. Worry about it some, maybe, in general — or maybe not. That’s up to you.  Whether the apocalypse ever happens in your lifetime,or at all, live every day like the treasure that  it is.  Give goodness and mercy to the world during your day, get beauty and awe from the world during your day. Tell people you love them.  Work on yourself, make and achieve goals, spend time in your important relationships. That way, if there’s a tornado or earthquake, you have neck surgery, or you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you’ll still be ok with yourself and the world.  And if that bus doesn’t have a driver, you’re still covered, I think.

Peace,

John

Not Missing Bin Laden Already… (thanks, Bill)

In getting the news about Osama bin Laden’s death last night, I wasn’t sure what to feel.  Do I rejoice? Do I dance around the room? Do I be happy at the death of evil — at least in that corner of the world?  It feels strange rejoicing at death.  I’m not the only one apparently struggling with this. Facebook friends were quoting scripture from proverbs about not gloating — (Proverbs 24:17 Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice). My wife informed the kids by saying, “As much as it’s not a good thing to be happy someone’s dead…”.  A client said that she didn’t rejoice because she’s sure there will be repercussions.  If this happened to a client’s parent, I might give voice to their  feelings by saying “it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy”. That didn’t feel right.

I think it’s fair to feel a sense of relief, so I allowed myself that much as I weighed my options as a Christian. Then I saw the answer!  My friend Bill McCarthy wrote “I’m not missing Bin Laden already…” . THAT is the correct answer.  As Pete Townsend wrote in Tommy, “Let’s forsake him, gonna rape him, let’s forget him better still”.  That pretty much covered all the emotions: Leave him!, no, hate him!, no let’s just forget him. It’s like a little mini-course in the complex-grieving process. As a human being, we feel bad for the loss — even if many of us thought of  bin Laden as not particularly-human-at-all. Then we move on to anger and violence. Then, when we’re all worn out from all that anger, we let go — either forgiving or forgetting — and move on.

On 9/11, nearly ten years ago, I didn’t know who he was. Shortly thereafter, I figured it out, hated him and wondered how he could do this. As a therapist, I still wonder how a human being could become that way, (but like reading Patricia Cornwell novels gets disgusting, I don’t really want to go there).   Since then, I  became sick of fighting wars over him, having seen enough people die of a stupid war. Then, while the rest of the media world, (including Dennis Miller, who I used to really like) began painting Islam as a horrible disease full of terrorist monsters, people around me — Hartford Seminary, students in my class, Quinnipiac University nearby — were beginning to make people of Islam seem like actual human beings. Not Al Qaeda, don’t get me wrong –those people are whacked — the Muslims in Central Connecticut I know are actually decent people. In much the same way that I don’t want people to think all Christians protests funerals or burn the Koran, the normal Muslims don’t want people thinking that all followers of Allah are out blowing up airplanes for fun.

So, five years into the “decade of terror”, I already stopped caring if we ever caught Osama bin Laden. He wasn’t worth my time.  Donald Rumsfeld seemed just plain evil this morning on the Today show as he talked about killing and how he wanted to do this before the regular world knew who bin Laden was. I’m sure he knew Bin Laden better than I did, and I probably should be worried, but — as a symbol of evil, terror, and all that’s bad in the world about religion– bin Laden had lost his edge for me. Rumsfeld was still stuck hating and his violence became him. No wonder he has heart problems (or is that Cheney? — anyway…)   Maybe it’s just because our military and government did such a good job protecting us, I no longer considered Al Qaeda a real threat.  I had forgotten Bin Laden was being chased. There were enough terrorists running around the planet, I didn’t care anymore about “the Original”.  In short, I didn’t miss Bin Laden because I forgot about him.

So, today, to use the words of the “honorable William McCarthy, esq.”, I’m not missing Bin Laden already.

Peace,

John