2019-09-17

Climate Strike! Act 5

Act 5
Thrilling Conclusion

One of Mary Oliver’s best known and best loved poems is “The Summer Day.”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Well, Mary, one thing I plan to do with my one wild and precious life is oppose the oil companies that want us to keep burning fossil fuels. Here’s what the web site 350.org says:
“Even if we do manage to keep most of fossil fuels in the ground, a world that’s 1.5°C warmer [than preindustrial] is going to be a much different, scarier place. We’re only at +1°C now, and we’re already seeing more storms, flooding, heatwaves, drought, and island nations at risk of going underwater. The basic facts of climate crisis are grim: the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground for us to stay below 1.5°C of warming -- and fossil fuel companies aren’t going to do that without a fight. We know exactly what we have to do — keep fossil fuels in the ground and quickly transition to 100% renewable energy. The science says it’s still possible to stay under 1.5˚C – but we’ll need to halve emissions by 2030, and increase the share of solar, wind and hydro energy dramatically in that time. Renewable energy is getting cheaper and more popular every day. As renewables grow and provide more clean, free energy to replace fossil fuels, we’ve seen emissions decrease in many countries. We’re not alone — the worldwide movement to stop the climate crisis and resist the fossil fuel industry is growing stronger every day.”
Maybe there’s a realistic chance of keeping the temperature rise to within 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial, or maybe there isn’t. I don’t think that matters. I mean, obviously the temperature increase will make a huge difference, but our odds of preventing it don't matter. What matters is that our joy and compassion call to us to put an end to fossil fuel use. What matters is that doing everything we can to put Exxon and Shell out of business is fun – whether in the end we put a dent on those behemoth corporations or not.

And when I say “fun,” I mean it’s joyous and compassionate to facilitate the transition of the beautiful and worthy human beings who work for those companies into vocations that do not stunt their spirits by paying them to harm themselves and others.

The toil of body and soul, we offer up to the universe, and what the universe makes of it is not ours to say.

Yes, strategizing is a part of doing. Goals and outcomes and plans for achieving them are the manifestations of compassion. It’s possible to plan for results, however, without expecting or needing them. Our hearts turn over to grace their labor, their sweat -- all that our hearts are and have. Grace has its own way of shaping what our hearts bequeath it.

So join me as part of the Climate Strike this Friday Sep 20. Three days before the UN Climate Summit in NYC, young people and adults across the globe will strike to demand action be taken to address the climate crisis. CUUC members will meet at Grand Central Station on Friday September 20, under the opal clock at 11:30am, or at the Starbucks by Foley Square before 1:00pm. We will join the march going to the Battery Park rally.

See the Action Network's info on the Climate Strike -- HERE.
See the info sheet for Metro New York area UUs is HERE.
CUUC members and friends, see HERE.

What else you gonna do with your one wild and precious life?

What else that would be as much fun – as joyous and compassionate?

* * *
Climate Strike! Act 1: Fermi's Question
Climate Strike! Acts 2-3: Truths Still Inconvenient. Polls.
Climate Strike! Act 4: Joy, Compassion, and the Big Picture

Climate Strike! Act 4

Act 4.
Joy, Compassion, and the Big Picture

Stop worrying. Seriously, climate anxiety is a real thing and it would be better not to suffer from it. Some people have gotten so stressed about reports of inevitable near-term social collapse due to climate change that they’ve gone into therapy. The American Psychological Association now recognizes “eco-anxiety” as "a chronic fear of environmental doom".

I know that fear can be a powerful motivator in the short term. Most of the politicians in office now got there by playing to fear. Fear works, in the short run, but it makes us miserable and stressed. We end up anxious and depressed. Let us take action to mitigate climate change, but not out of fear. We don’t need your fear, your anxiety, your stress, your worry, or your panic.

I know that Greta Thunberg – the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist – says she wants grown-ups to panic, but I disagree. What we’re after is sustainability, and panic is not sustainable.

And, no, we don’t need hope either – at least not the usual understanding of hope, which is often just fear trying to be optimistic. If you have hope, that’s fine, but it isn’t necessary. If you lose it, you can still happily carry on -- if you're spiritually prepared to. To begin that preparation, reflect on this: in a situation devoid of hope, caring for each other and our home is as worth doing as ever. We do it for its own sake -- not for the sake of a hoped-for outcome.

Maybe it’s the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself and maybe it isn’t, but even if it is, the point isn’t to last forever. Whether as individuals or as a species, the point is to have a good run while we’re here. Enjoy the bliss of existing for the instant we have – and when I say “we,” I mean both "you and me individually", and "humankind."

Our species, homo sapiens, has been around about 200,000 years. Our genus, homo, has been around ten times that long -- so the duration of the genus homo, so far, is 2 million years. Homo sapiens is the sole surviving species of that genus. The others have all come and gone. Some of the more significant or longer-lasting ones:
  • homo habilus (2 mya - 1.5 mya),
  • homo ergaster (1.8 mya - 1.3 mya),
  • homo erectus (1.9 mya - 0.14 mya),
  • homo antecessor (1.2 mya - 0.8 mya),
  • homo heidelbergensis (0.75 mya - 0.2 mya),
  • and most recently, homo neanderthal (0.24 mya - 0.04 mya)
Homo erectus lasted 6-8 times as long as homo sapiens has so far.

Still, we had a good run. If the measure of flourishing is population numbers, we've flourished, particularly in recent centuries. If the measure is the overall well-being of the members of our species, we were doing OK for the first 90% of our 200,000-year run, but took a bit of a hit 12,000 years ago when the agricultural revolution allowed the rise of the centralized state, concentrations of wealth, large standing armies, slavery, oppression, and a considerable boost in the proportion of us in misery. But we've also taken some strides toward equality that suggest that maybe in another century or two -- if we were to last that long -- we might work out the kinks of the agricultural revolution and enjoy its benefits more than we suffer its downsides. Moreover, even amidst our atrocities, we did some amazing stuff: art, literature, music, science, and spiritual practice. If this is the end of the run for the species -- and, indeed, the genus -- to which we belong, let us face that demise with the same equanimity and quiet pride with which we hope to face our individual demise, when that time comes.

The Earth has seen five mass extinctions. The first one was 444 million years ago: the Ordovician extinction. 86% of all species went extinct. Then life bounced back. New and different species emerged and flourished.

Then 69 million years after the first mass extinction – that is, about 35 times as long as the genus homo has existed – another mass extinction hit: the Devonian extinction of 375 million years ago. 75% of all species went extinct. Again life bounced back – new species proliferated.

124 million years went by – that’s 62 homo durations. Then the third mass extinction: the Permian extinction of 251 million years ago. This one was a real doozy: 96% of all species ended. From the 4% that were left, new life forms again sprang forth and filled the earth – this time for 51 million years.

The fourth mass extinction, the Triassic extinction of 200 million years ago, wiped out 80% of the species of the time. This time life bounced back with the age of the dinosaur – about 700 species of which we’ve identified so far, though paleontologists think there were lots more we haven’t discovered yet.

Dinosaurs owned this planet for 134 million years – about 67 homo durations – until they, along with 76% of all species then in existence – were wiped out in the fifth extinction: the Cretaceous extinction 66 million years ago.

Five mass extinctions. The time between them was anywhere from 51 million years to 134 million years -- and the last one was 66 million years ago. So if we’re heading into the sixth great extinction, that would be within the schedule range.

My loyalty and identification is with life itself. My heart’s devotion, inspiration, faith, hope, and love lie with all of life – not the DNA that defines me as an individual, nor the DNA that defines my species, nor that which defines my genus, order, class, phylum -- or even kingdom. Rather, my belonging is to the beauty and the wonder of life, always finding a way. Consider the stand of aspen trees that is actually all one plant, one root system, one organism that can live, possibly, for 100,000 years. Or the slime molds that work in tandem, signaling to each other to join and form a multicellular mass, like a “moving sausage.” Or the vast and bizarre varieties of mushrooms. We – and this time when I say “we,” I mean “we living things” – will find a way. We always bounce back.

Life. Is not that the God that is a mighty God? Is not that the love that will not let us go?

We don’t need fear or hope, but we do need two things: joy and compassion. We need as deep a sense as we can reach of the joy there is in this wonderful mystery of being alive. We may not have tomorrow, so, friends, let us delight in today. And let us reach out in compassion to do everything we can in the time left to us to ease what suffering we can.

Joy and compassion. Those are the qualities that make for a good life in a world that faces no environmental dangers. It turns out they are also the qualities that make for a good life in this world that does face environmental dangers.

* * *
Climate Strike! Act 1: Fermi's Question
Climate Strike! Acts 2-3: Truths Still Inconvenient. Polls.
Climate Strike! Act 5: Thrilling Conclusion

2019-09-16

Climate Strike! Acts 2-3

Act 2
Truths Still Inconvenient

It’s been 13 years since the 2006 release of “An Inconvenient Truth” – the slideshow that brought so much attention to climate change that it earned Al Gore an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize. The predictions back then are all coming true – in some cases faster than predicted.

Through most of the 200,000 year history of homo sapiens, CO2 levels have been around 280 ppm. 350 ppm appears to be the upper limit of what the planet can handle without becoming a very different sort of planet. Above 350, NASA said, you couldn't have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." The journal Nature said that above 350
"we threaten the ecological life-support systems that have developed in the late Quaternary environment, and severely challenge the viability of contemporary human societies." (McKibben, Eaarth 16)
By 1960, we reached 320 ppm.
By 1980: 341 ppm.
We passed the 350 mark in 1987 – 32 years ago.
By 2000, we were at 370 ppm.
By 2010: 392 ppm.
As of 2019 May, we’re at 415 ppm of CO2, still adding another 2 or 3 ppm every year.

The Earth has seen CO2 levels this high before – but not for at least 2.5 million years – in other words, not in Quaternary Period, and not when there were any people or civilizations or mass populations depending on agricultural and finely tuned economic systems. The longer we stay above 350 – and the further above 350 we go – the more and stronger hurricanes, floods, and droughts; more sea level rising; more dying of coral reefs.

Even if rich countries adopt draconian emissions reductions, it is improbable that we will be able to stop short of 650 ppm of CO2. As Bill McKibben notes,
"Even if you erred on the side of insane optimism, the world in 2100 would have about 600 parts per million carbon dioxide. That is, we’d live if not in hell, then in some place with a similar temperature."
Right now, annual global average temperatures are about 1 degree Celsius hotter than pre-industrial temperatures. Because of the climate change that has already occurred, increased frequency and severity of heatwaves and floods have reduced global grain yields by 10%. That’s already happened. Over 1 million people living near coasts have been forced from their homes due to rising seas and stronger storms. That's already happened.

We will probably see the annual global average temperature reach 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter by the year 2030 – and some time around mid-century, we’ll hit 2 degrees C higher than pre-industrial. The difference between 1.5˚C and 2˚C could mean well over 10 million more migrants from sea-level rise.

Act 3
Polls

Americans may be warming to the concept that the planet is warming. On Thursday September 12, the Washington Post reported results of a poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation. (The WaPo article is HERE. A PDF of the full poll report is HERE.)
“The poll finds that a strong majority of Americans — about 8 in 10 — say that human activity is fueling climate change, and roughly half believe action is urgently needed within the next decade if humanity is to avert its worst effects. 38% -- nearly 4 in 10 -- now say climate change is a “crisis,” up from less than a quarter five years ago.”
Another 38% say it’s a major problem but not a crisis. 15% say it’s a minor problem. Only 8% said, “not a problem at all.”

So, what are we willing to do about it? How about increase federal gas tax by 25 cents a gallon? Only 25% supported that.

A 2-dollar tax on monthly residential electricity bills is supported by 47% of us – almost half. A 10-dollar tax on electricity bills, however, garners only 27% support.

On the other hand, 60% of us are in support of “raising taxes on companies that burn fossil fuels even if that may lead to increased electricity and transportation prices.”

The most popular approach: raise taxes on the wealthy households. Over two-thirds of respondants – 68 percent – were in favor of that.

* * *
Climate Strike! Act 1: Fermi's Question
Climate Strike! Act 4: Joy, Compassion, and the Big Picture
Climate Strike! Act 5: Thrilling Conclusion

Climate Strike! Act 1

Act 1.
Fermi's Question

I think often of Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) – the great Italian physicist. He asked an intriguing question. He looked out at the stars and asked: Where is everybody?

Number 1: Our Sun is a young star. It's 4.6 billion years old, while most of the 200 billion stars in our galaxy are about 10 billion years old or older.

Number 2: There is a high probability that some of these stars have Earth-like planets which, if the Earth is typical, may develop intelligent life. Fermi could only make a rough guess about the number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy. Since getting the data from the 2013 Kepler mission, our current best estimate is that there are 40 billion Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way with surface temperatures conducive to life.

Number 3: These older stars with Earth-like planets would be way ahead of us in developing interstellar travel – some of them billions of years ahead of us.

And number 4: Given that one-tenth the speed of light should be achievable, and that a ship going that speed could get from the far edge of the galaxy to the opposite far edge (a journey of 105,700 light years) in just over a million years, the galaxy could be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years. Given billions of planets that have billions of years of head start on us, a few tens of millions of years is nothing.

So: where is everybody?

Scientists have offered a number of possible answers to Fermi’s question. Maybe the probability of life forming from nonliving matter -- or the chance that life would, within a few billion years, develop to the point of space travel -- is much lower than Fermi imagined. Or maybe extraterrestrials have swung by, but are too clever to have been detected. Maybe.

But the answer that haunts me is this conjecture: It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself.

Intelligence emerges in response to competition for scarce resources. If resources are plentiful, or species don’t need to outsmart other species to get them, then all species remain comparative simpletons. So wherever intelligence emerges, it necessarily comes with aggressive, instinctual drives.

When that ancient competitive, aggressive drive to consume resources, extend longevity, and reproduce is suddenly paired with powerful new technology: boom. The species destroys itself through environmental destruction or super-powerful weapons, or at least blows itself back to a pre-technological stage. That's the conjecture: that any species on a trajectory of evolving increasing intelligence will necessarily figure out how to destroy itself before it figures out how not to.

If true, it would explain why no extraterrestrials have colonized the galaxy. Perhaps this self-destruction has already happened on billions of planets. Perhaps it is now happening here.

* * *
Climate Strike! Acts 2-3: Truths Still Inconvenient. Polls.
Climate Strike! Act 4: Joy, Compassion, and the Big Picture
Climate Strike! Act 5: Thrilling Conclusion

2019-08-24

A "Faith" for Everyone

Faiths are different. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daosim, Confucianism, Sikhism, Jainism, animism and others -- and the variants of these, sometimes numbering into the hundreds -- are all different. This is unavoidable. Religious diversity does raise some problems and challenges for us, but addressing those problems calls for learning how to accept -- and if possible celebrate -- differences rather than suppressing or erasing them.

So when I say, "a 'faith' for everyone," I do not propose to lay out some common core that all, or most, religions have, or should have. Instead, I urge a way of understanding what faith is. This understanding may be shared by everyone, regardless of their faith.

Thus, atheists, too, have (or, as I shall suggest, "do") a faith -- though atheism is not it. Atheism rules out certain faith traditions, but does not itself constitute a faith. In the same way, "non-model-airplane-builder" rules out a hobby but does not itself constitute a hobby. But while a person may not have any hobbies, everyone has/does a faith. The faith of an atheist may not have a name -- but ze does have/do one. Like any faith, it may be weak, middling, strong or any gradation thereof. It may not, however, for a functioning human being, be nonexistent.

Faith is:
  1. Committing to the fullness of our being;
  2. Opening our hearts to the unknown;
  3. A way of interpreting existence.
Before I unpack these, I need to acknowledge a common cultural conception (that is, a conception of what "faith" means that is common in English-speaking culture). According to this conception, faith is a non- (or perhaps ir-) rational conviction of the truth of certain propositions for which the evidence is nonexistent or, at best, weak.

You may want to argue that the meaning of the word is determined by the way that most people use it. So if this conception is indeed common -- if that is the way that almost everyone understands what the word "faith" means -- then that IS what faith means. We can't very well go around employing new and different definitions of words if we expect to be understood when we speak.

In fact, though, people commonly do associate faith with rather more than simply "believing without evidence." Faith is imagined to be personally transformative, to bear some relationship with transcending ego-centric desires, with enabling us to face life's uncertainties and unknowables, and with how we make meaning of our experiences and our lives. These are widely understood functions of faith. Let us understand what faith is by its functions. Whatever, then, serves these functions -- whether it also involves believing without evidence or not -- deserves the name of faith. Let us now take a closer look at each of these functions.

First, as Virginia Knowles writes by way of describing the thought of Unitarian theologian Henry Nelson Wieman:
“Religious faith is the act by which we commit ourselves with the fullness of our being, insofar as we are able, to whatever can transform and save us from the evil of devoting ourselves to the transient goods of social success, financial opulence, or even scholarship or beauty or social concern.”
This fits the traditional understanding that the outcome of faith is personal transformation and transcendence of ego-centric desires. This important function may be served without any non- or ir-rational conviction that flies in the face of evidence. Faith is a name for whatever it may be that commits us to the fullness of our being rather than the limited and narrow parts of our being concerned with what Knowles and Wieman call "transient goods."

Second, American Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg describes faith as "the act of opening our hearts to the unknown." This fits the common understanding of distinguishing faith from reason and evidence. While reason and evidence tell us about what we can know, faith is an approach -- specifically, an open-hearted approach -- to the unknown. Rather than merely believing without evidence, however, faith is a willingness to go forward to take in new evidence and new experience, ever-willing to be transformed. This throwing ourselves into the unknown can feel like leaping -- hence, "leap of faith."

"Faith" names the antidote to ego preoccupations with achievement and with knowing. Faith is the courage to offer up all that we are to the world around us, not knowing what the world will ask or what we will find in ourselves to offer. Faith's opposite is not doubt, but despairing withdrawal.

Third, from theology professor James Fowler: faith is “a way of knowing, construing, and interpreting existence.” This preserves our very common sense that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. are faiths. They each know, construe, and interpret existence in a particular way.

The common conception of faith as a set of unshakable convictions impervious to evidence does convey, for all its misdirection, one implication that is true: evidence alone is not enough. Evidence is not the same thing as meaning and does not suffice for meaning. Mere phenomena present us with “a blooming, buzzing confusion” (William James) until interpreted, contextualized, made sense of. Animals -- most notably humans -- must make meaning from the raw phenomenal evidence. There are many various ways to put the same evidence together into a structure of value and meaning, and each way is a faith.

Faith is best understood not so much as something we have or lack, but as something we do and sometimes fail to do. We "do faith" when we commit to the fullness of our being, with hearts open to the unknown and minds engaged in meaning-making.

2019-08-21

We Need a Tribe

Things get difficult sometimes. We need the tribal connections that modern life precludes. Thus we are left often alone, “like a motherless child.” And what we do encounter of other people may be negative: there is a fear of difference in the land that is further tearing us apart. We are in a difficult time – have been, really, for about 12,000 years.

Here’s the thing: we need a tribe. We crave the face-to-face community – groups of up to 150 where everyone knows everyone else, everyone is accountable to everyone else, every one is known, and everyone belongs. We keep each other in line, which meets our need for connection and interaction, which gives our lives meaning. Here’s part of how it works:
“When a person does something for another person – a prosocial act, as it’s called – they are rewarded not only by group approval but also by an increase of dopamine and other pleasurable hormones in their blood.” (Sebastian Junger, Tribe)
Some of us can get that rush from abstract charity, but most of us need that face-to-face contact with those with whom we are devoting cooperative labor.
“Group cooperation triggers higher levels of oxytocin, for example, which promotes everything from breast-feeding in women to higher levels of trust and group bonding in men. Both reactions impart a powerful sensation of well-being. Oxytocin creates a feedback loop of good-feeling and group loyalty that ultimately leads members to ‘self-sacrifice to promote group welfare,’ in the words of one study. Hominids that cooperated with one another – and punished those who didn’t – must have outfought, outhunted, and outbred everyone else. These are the hominids that modern humans are descended from” (Junger 27).
Yet modern society isn’t tribal. It’s vast, it’s anonymous, it’s full of strangers. We ourselves are cogs in an incomprehensibly large economic system in which disposable producers make disposable products for disposable consumers. This is not the world evolution made us for.

Millions of years of evolution selected us to be social, caring for and protecting the tribe. As Sebastian Junger notes:
“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”
In the 1700s, the European colonists and Native Americans were never far from each other. The colonists, we know, were commercial and industrious. The indigenous peoples were communal and tribal. Colonial society was wealthier, more advanced. The Europeans had more stuff, more powerful tools, could do more things, and they were always working on getting still more.
They were making "progress" happen. Yet something weird was happening. From time to time a European would “go native” – defect from white society and go live with a native tribe. This never happened the other way around. Not that our European ancestors were terribly welcoming overall, but there were some attempts, say, to welcome Indian children into colonist towns and homes. They never wanted to stay. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin wrote:
“When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.”
In 1782, six years after the colonists had declared their independence from Britain, Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote,
“Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European.”
Tribal life was 95 percent of human history, and it meets the needs we evolved to have.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors
“would have practiced extremely close and involved child care. And they would have done almost everything in the company of others. They would have almost never been alone.”
Almost never alone. We traded that for more individual autonomy and choice and privacy, for being left alone – being left . . . alone.

Was it a good trade? We gained wealth. We lost our strong tribal connectedness. We pay the price in that loss and in higher rates of depression. The World Health Organization reports that people in wealthy countries suffer depression at up to eight times the rate of people in poor countries.

Consider fraud as an indicator of our modern disconnection from one another. Defrauding these government programs such as unemployment assistance, welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid costs us over $100 billion a year. Insurance fraud takes $300 billion a year. The rich do more fraud than the poor, measured in dollars. Fraud by American defense contractors is estimated at around $100 billion. Securities and commodities fraud – insider trading, kickbacks and bribes, false accounting – and illegal banking practices triggered the recession of 2008, total costs of which have been estimated at $14 trillion.

Hunter-gatherers had the same impulses to seek material gain at the expense of the group, and, indeed, ultimately at the expense of their own well-being – but they lived in small groups where almost everything was open to scrutiny, and tribes devoted considerable energy to monitoring one another to ensure equity. The group’s survival depended on equal resource distribution to keep everyone alive – which was crucial because, unlike in modern society, everyone was needed. It was a lot harder to get away with cheating.

Junger writes that in these communities,
“authority is almost impossible to impose on the unwilling. Males who try to take control of the group – or of the food supply – are often countered by coalitions of other males. This is clearly an ancient and adaptive behavior that tends to keep groups together and equitably cared for.”
Transgressors against the tribe’s norms were punished by public ridicule, shunning, and ultimately assassination of the culprit by the entire group. Infractions commonly punished included freeloading on the work of others, bullying, and failure to share.

People everywhere in all times have faced temptations to dishonesty – but long ago we had social structures that were more deeply connecting and that made cheating more difficult. Modern society is based on hierarchy. Our hunter-gatherer forebears had leaders, but those leaders had to be in a caring and accountable relationship with those they led. Then, about 12,000 years ago, that changed.

The rise of agriculture was a package deal that included domestication of such animals as the cow and the pig and some others, along with the cultivation of crops, most importantly grains: wheat, barley, rice, and maize. Only with the rise of agriculture did the centralized state become possible. Only grain crops have a set annual harvest time and are
“visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable’.” (James C. Scott, qtd in John Lanchester, "How Civilization Started," New Yorker, 2017 Sep 18)
Thus reliance on grains made a workable taxation system possible.
“The taxman can come, assess the fields, set a level of tax, then come back and make sure he’s got his share of the harvest.”
That’s what led to the birth of the state:
“complex societies with hierarchies, division of labor, specialist jobs (soldier, priest, servant, administrator), and an élite presiding over them.” (Scott, New Yorker)
This system required huge amounts of manual labor, which was often forced. With agriculture came the first slavery. Agriculture allowed support of large standing armies, transforming war from feuds between clans into mass slaughter. No wonder Jared Diamond called the Neolithic Revolution “the worst mistake in human history.”

2019-08-20

How Can There Be Such Wrong?

Renewal Happens, part 2 of 2

Opportunities for renewal, for starting over, are ever-present. But there's a price for renewal. New beginnings come with loss.

All the things that religion is – the ethics and values we live by, the community bonds and the rituals, the experiences of transcendent wonder – all of that: it’s nothing if it doesn’t make us more alive, if it doesn’t open us to the fullness of everything, if it doesn’t prepare us to say YES to all of life, even the hard parts, even the loss. And renewal does include loss of what was before – just as loss of what was opens the space for renewal.

We have to say good-bye in order to say hello -- that's the cost of renewal. Novelist Daniel Abraham points out:
“The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid. And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.”
Even as our hearts are lifted by new births and babies among us, we carry, too, the grief of absent loved-ones. Edna St. Vincent Millay captures this poignant ambivalence in her poem, “Spring”:
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
“It’s not enough,” says Millay. The bloodroot blossoms now sprinkled across our congregation’s property are so lovely – and far too delicate to bear the weight of the world’s grief.

Sara Teasdale feels the overwhelming inadequacy of spring as she writes in 1917, in the midst of the carnage of World War I. Her poem is called “Spring in War Time.”
I feel the spring far off, far off,
     The faint, far scent of bud and leaf—
Oh, how can spring take heart to come
     To a world in grief,
     Deep grief?

The sun turns north, the days grow long,
     Later the evening star grows bright—
How can the daylight linger on
     For men to fight,
     Still fight?

The grass is waking in the ground,
     Soon it will rise and blow in waves—
How can it have the heart to sway
     Over the graves,
     New graves?

Under the boughs where lovers walked
     The apple-blooms will shed their breath—
But what of all the lovers now
     Parted by Death,
     Grey Death?
In war time – and it is always war time somewhere on this weary world, and tragic loss is never very far away – it can seem a wonder that the grass would have the heart to sway over graves. How can the daffodil and bloodroot blossoms around us dare to shine forth? Do they not know my mother is no more? Have I not told them of my father’s death? Did they not hear of the Parkland shooting? Do the names Michael Brown and Eric Garner mean nothing to them? Have they no inkling of the refugee crisis, or what is happening at our country’s southern border, or in Yemen? Do they not read the paper? How dare the flowers stand there in small and silent beauty?

And yet, they do. There they are – matched in their shameless impudence by the boughs above them budding with fresh leaves, and, above them, the sun that has the effrontery to shine so brightly.

Do none of them know that animals, including human animals, died and are dying – horribly, tragically, and much too soon? Do they not know how much we loved those taken from us?

No. They don’t know. Life, heedless of calamity, refuses to be stopped, though its continuation only means more death.

In the book of Job, Job cries out “Why do I suffer?” After his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar have offered their trite moral simplifications, Job is still left crying, "Why do I suffer?"

Finally, God Godself appears in a whirlwind to answer the charge that Job’s suffering is unfair and without basis. It’s not clear, however, that what God proceeds to say can be accurately called an “answer.” God unleashes four chapters of rhetorical questions that invoke the wonders and grandeur of creation. Here’s a sampling from chapters 38 and 39.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?...
Or who shut in the sea,... made the clouds its garment...
Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place...
Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?...
Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew?...
Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?...
Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?...
Do you give the horse its might?...
Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south?
Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high?”
Does this answer Job’s question? Does this explain why Job suffers? No. It does not. It is, as Millay said, “not enough.” Yet, confronted with the marvel of creation in this way, Job’s complaint is stilled. Job says, "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Humbled and speechless, Job abandons his plea.

But the plea returns. It returns recurrently in our lives as it returned to Sara Teasdale in 1917: how can there be such wrong?

If the wonders of creation seemed to Job to dwarf his own suffering, there are also times when the immensity of the world’s pain dwarfs the green grass of spring, the new leaves, the little flowers. And so it is, and so it is, and so it shall be.

Ours is to be open and present to both sides when they come – the death and the renewal alike -- for, in truth, both sides are always come.

So, yes, stop and smell the flowers, now that it is spring. Work hard and take breaks. Strive to get that hit -- and don’t forget to touch every base.

* * *
See also Part 1: Start Over 'Cause It's Never Over

2019-08-07

Start Over 'Cause It's Never Over

Renewal Happens, part 1

Marv Throneberry, 1933-1994
With baseball season upon us, I am remembering some of the grand tradition of New York baseball. Let us take a moment to fondly remember Marv Throneberry.

Marv Throneberry was first-basement for the 1962 Mets, arguably the worst major-league team ever. Throneberry’s batting was mediocre. Where he stood out -- in a bad way -- was as a fielder and a base runner, where his ineptness rose to legendary heights. As the New York York Times reported in its obituary when Marv Throneberry died:
“In a game against the Chicago Cubs, Throneberry hit what appeared to be a game-winning triple with the bases loaded and two outs. The problem was that everybody in the dugout noticed that he missed touching first base. When the Cubs' pitcher tossed the ball to the first baseman, the umpire called Throneberry out. The inning ended and the runs didn't count. Casey Stengel, the grizzled manager of the Mets, couldn't believe it and began arguing with the first-base umpire. As they exchanged words, another umpire walked over and said, 'Casey, I hate to tell you this, but he also missed second.'"
In sports, you get a new beginning with each new game. The score and mistakes from previous games don’t carry over. In life, though, past practice tends to carry over. We know that each day is a new beginning – but sometimes maybe it feels like the same old, same old. Life can sometimes grow stale. Freshness is all around us – this is always so and especially flagrant in spring – yet we can lose touch with it.

Spiritual renewal – the reinvigoration of our connection to the freshness of life, of each moment – is what spiritual practice is for. Spiritual practices are renewing practices. So if you’re feeling a bit stale – if you need some renewal – if it feels like even when you hit a triple, you still miss a base – or two -- take a look at the list of spiritual practices I’ve compiled online at Voices of Liberal Faith dot org. There you’ll find 185 spiritual practices so far – and the list keeps growing. The list is divided into categories and if you’re looking for a quick shot of renewal, you might look particularly at the practices in the category, “Occasional” or “Worth a Try.” If nothing else, simply take a break – a sabbath – from your usual work.

The formula I recommend for taking quiet, contemplative breaks is one hour a day, and one day a week, and one week a season. Step back in some form to let yourself take in both the big picture and little details you haven’t been noticing – take an hour a day for this – one day a week, the weekly Sabbath – and four times a year, take a whole week to really slow down and step back. One hour a day, one day a week, one week a season.

H/D + D/W + W/S

It's a good a formula for renewal. The discipline of it is helpful in that it guides us to get renewed even when we might not have noticed we were growing stale. After all, just because you’re standing there apparently safe on third base, doesn’t mean you haven’t missed something basic and are about to be thrown out at first, and all the accomplishment of your runs batted in erased.

For some of us, on the other hand, renewal just happens. You get tired, you rest. You get hungry, you eat: you’re refreshed. The day is renewed with each sunrise. And after winter comes the renewal of spring. Renewal just happens. You don’t have to do a particular spiritual practice to experience renewal. So maybe, for you, the only issue us is just to pause to appreciate the wonder of renewal. So let’s investigate that: this natural, recurring, inevitable renewal that just happens.

It’s a grace – a blessing we have done nothing to earn or deserve. It is granted – but we need not take it for granted.
“Life is never a material, a substance to be molded. Life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.” (Boris Pasternak).
As spring’s annual renewal burgeons around us, let not creation play to an empty house. Be there to drink it in the fresh green, the audacious colors of the flowers. To refer again to a figure from New York baseball, it was Yogi Berra who said,
“it ain’t over til it’s over.”
Game 2 of the '73 World Series, 10th inning. Bud Harrelson 
has been called out at home plate though Oakland catcher
Ray Fosse's swipe tag appeared to be off target. Willie Mays,
shown protesting, was on deck. But it wasn't over. Two
innings later, Mays' final hit of his career would win the game.
Author and hospice and eldercare provider Kate McGahan added,
“True, it's not over till it's over. And even when it's over, it just begins again.”
It was 1973 July when Yogi said “it ain’t over til it’s over.” He was then the Mets’ manager, and the Mets were in last place. But it wasn’t over – because it wasn’t over. The Mets would go on to win the division that year, beat the Reds for the National League pennant, and take the World Series to seven games before losing to the Oakland Athletics. THEN it was over. But only until the next spring.

The Roman poet Ovid in the first century wrote:
“As wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
Always, for ever and new.
What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed.”
No failure is ever permanent – and this also means that no success is. And that’s a good thing. We can’t be stuck, either in our ashes or on our laurels. There’s always the new day, the new season, the new year. There’s always starting over -- professionally and financially, socially and relationally. Even spiritually, there's always starting over. There's a saying among some Buddhists: Yesterday's enlightenment is today's delusion. There are no permanent accomplishments, victories, or even insights. As author Marty Ruben said,
“What's wonderful about life is you always have to start over. No matter how many meals you've eaten, words you've spoken, breaths, you've taken, you always have to start over.”
* * *
See also: Part 2: How Can There Be Such Wrong

2019-06-10

The Better Your Boundary, the Less You Need a Border

Crossing the Line, part 2 of 2

Having good boundaries solves the 84th problem. Do you know what the 84th problem is? (I’ve told the parable before -- HERE -- and it's worth re-telling).

The Buddha comes to town, and a farmer comes to see him and starts complaining about his problems. His wife this; and his children that; and the ox is sick; and the soil is poor; and there hasn’t been enough rain and, if there were, the roof would leak; and the people to whom he sells his rice are cheating him.

The Buddha stops him and says: You have 83 problems. Farmer says: That sounds about right. How do I fix them?

Buddha says: You’ll always have 83 problems. Maybe you solve one, or it goes away on its own, but another pops up to take its place. Always 83 problems. Farmer says: Well, what good are you?

Buddha says: I can help with the 84th problem. Farmer says: What’s the 84th problem?

Buddha says: You think you should have no problems.

For the person with good boundaries, problems don’t bother them. Problems arise. One responds to them as well as one can. This is life. Whether you call them problems or challenges, there’s always the next one to meet.

Having good boundaries doesn’t keep out your 83 problems, but it does keep out the 84th problem. Your problems then don’t define you; you aren’t consumed with the thought that you shouldn’t be having this problem.

The 84th problem is the extra. Your problems (or challenges) are enough by themselves; you don't need to add anything extra. But we often do add extra problem to our problems. Whenever we're annoyed by the problem, when we think it's wrong that the problem exists, when we let the problem trigger our reactivity and upset our equanimity, we are adding extra problem to our problem. Good boundaries keep out that extra bit.

Life IS problems, or we’d have nothing to do with ourselves, no reason for being. We need problems, challenges, but we don’t need the problem OF the problem. We don’t need the extra, the 84th problem.

Everything has its place. This is a very ancient spiritual insight and teaching. All things belong. On the one hand, being mindful that all things belong eases anxiety, irritation, annoyance, anger. On the other hand, it’s also true that if all things belong, then so does your anxiety and anger. This, too, is recognized in ancient spiritual teachings, though the very modern perspective of evolutionary psychology helps us understand it.

Anxiety belongs because our ancestors needed anxiety. Anxiety about that lion prompted them to run away, anxiety about a brewing storm prompted them to seek shelter. Homo sapiens emerged with a particularly advanced capacity to worry about the future, to imagine dangers that weren’t immediately visible. This was probably driven by the processes that made us not only social animals – as wolves, orcas, emperor penguins, chimpanzees and others are – but ultra-social: able to adaptively cooperate at an extraordinary level because of an astonishing capacity to imagine ourselves into another person’s situation, grasp what they’re trying to do, so we can help them do it.

We were motivated to be helpful because we were able to imagine the future – farther into the future and in more detail than other species. I would help you because I imagined a future in which you would help me – and that capacity allowed systems of reciprocal altruism to begin to form.

As our symbolic language emerged, we were able to communicate to create shared imaginary futures, and then cooperate to bring them about.

Which is all very wonderful. But there’s a rub.

Our ability to imagine the future, and to be goaded to appropriate action by a little anxiety about that future, can easily go to far. Evolution gave us these goads, but it didn’t give us very good mechanisms for turning them off when they’re no longer helpful. Our brains were built to worry, and it’s very easy for them to fall into a pattern of worrying even when it does us no good, and only produces chronic stress and anxiety.

Making matters worse, the futures we imagine aren’t just worries about the weather, or predators, or food sources. Our imagined futures are heavily peopled. "Can Bob be counted on?" "Was Sue lying, and she’ll stab me in the back?" Our brains evolved to negotiate the fantastically complex balancing act of wanting and needing to cooperate, but also guard against being taken advantage of – balancing the costs and risks of cooperation against possible benefits.

This balancing act is carried out through – or manifests as – our sense of fairness. We are as ultra-social as ants or bees, but for us, our sense of fairness is the crucial regulator of our sociability. My brain is built to monitor possible future scenarios of people being unfair to me, and whether they’ll think that I’m unfair to them, and whether they’ll think I’ll think they’re unfair to me – it’s exhausting. Or, rather, it seems like it would be exhausting, but in fact our brains seem to rarely tire of thinking about fairness. Our ability to think about fairness in such complicated ways is also our beauty as a species.

So we are built to worry what other people think, and to want to be in agreement with them. Yet, the more clear we are about who we are, the less need we’ll have to be self-protective, i.e., defensive. So here’s my thought about boundaries and borders: the better your boundary is, the less need you have for a border. That is: those who are self-differentiated don’t have to be self-protective.

When difference and conflict aren’t a threat to your sense of self, then ego defense mechanisms don’t get triggered, and the walls that block empathy don’t go up. When boundaries are solid, borders don’t have to be. When we’re comfortable with ourselves, we can let people in -- we can take down the walls that shut them out. When we don’t require conformity of ourselves, or of others, we can be free to connect with and work with very different people, appreciating and not being threatened by their difference – while also appreciating and not being scared by our own differentness.

This is true on the personal level, and it is true on the national level. As a nation, the US has lost its boundary. We have no clear sense of who we are as a people. We are, as it were, “out of bounds.” The old story that defined our nation was deeply problematic in many ways. It was a story shot through with patriarchal and supremacist assumptions, and the critique that helped dismantle the old story was well warranted. But a new and better story has not emerged. In the interim, we don’t know who we are, don't know what "America" is.

In compensation for our lack of boundary definition, the national psyche instead turns to border protection and a very literal wall -- blocking empathy, blocking compassion, blocking our own growth, blocking the very connections that our spirits crave.

As our national norms break down, lines are crossed. Lines of civility are crossed. These lines helped "political leaders hold two opposing ideas in their heads simultaneously:"
"...the first is that your political opponents are wrong about many things and should be defeated in elections. The second is that you still need them. You need them to check your excesses, compensate for your blind spots and correct your mistakes." (David Brooks, New York Times, 2019 May 9)
But it's gotten easier and easier to cross the lines that held our leaders in a system that helped them know how to work together amidst disagreements, and find and build on common ground while respecting the beneficial role of political opposition. Crossing those lines makes it harder and harder to cross the lines that exclude and shut out -- the lines of enmity and othering.

The task before us is daunting. But as Rabbi Tarfon says, be not daunted. You are not obligated to complete the task. Nor are you free to abandon it.

The task is to strengthen our boundary – clarify our principles, know our story and stick to it, develop equanimity in our integrity, bring our nonanxious presence. Only thus will we be able then to cross borders, replace walls with bridges, join hands, and end the loneliness.

* * *
See Part 1: Good Boundaries

2019-06-09

Good Boundaries

Crossing the Line, part 1 of 2

Some lines, it’s good to cross. Other lines are better respected.

Edwin Markham (1852-1940)
You’ve probably heard the verse by Edwin Markham, titled “Outwitted.”
He drew a circle that shut me out -
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!
In those four lines we see both the good and the bad of the lines we draw – the boundaries and borders we put up. Some lines shut people out. Other lines hold people together. And sometimes it’s the same line: holding US together and keeping out THEM.

Our monthly theme for June is Borders and Boundaries. These two words are synonyms – or they used to be. They both mean the outer edge, the bound or the limit of something. In recent years, though, the words have come to be used in different ways.

A “border” is more often now used to mean the kind of line that shuts people out. Divinity students at the Unitarian Universalist seminary, Meadville Lombard in Chicago, must design a focused project to carry out during their internship, and it is an explicit requirement of the project that the student show how they cross borders in their ministry – borders of race or culture, gender or generation. Crossing borders is a crucial component of building a more just and harmonious world – a more beloved community. Those lines that shut people out: we have to find ways to erase them.

Boundaries, on the other hand, in the recent usage trend, are a good thing. Having good boundaries is a part of being psychologically and emotionally healthy, and a key to effective leadership.

Boundaries, we are told, need to be maintained. Borders, however, need to be erased, or at least crossed with facility.

What I’d like to do today is first talk about good boundaries: what that means and why it’s helpful to have them. Then we’ll take a look at borders – the lines we draw that shut people out.

Having good boundaries is also called being self-defined, differentiated, or having a well-developed self. Good boundaries are what let you be guided by what you think of yourself rather than other people’s opinions. Without those boundaries, your identity merges with the people around you. You’re more susceptible to “groupthink.”

On the one hand, you’re more controlled by other people’s judgments. On the other hand, you’re also more controlling – more devoted to actively or passively trying to control others.

The self-differentiated person, on the other hand, is more able to say, “I’m going to do me, you do you. I’m not interested in judging you, or in your judgments of me, but I am interested in nonjudgmentally watching how we each are and looking for ways we might harmonize or complement each other. There’s not a right answer or a blueprint for how we should work together or play together or be together. Rather, as I do me and you do you, I’m open to being surprised, to discovering unexpected creative ways that our different gifts can synchronize, or contribute in different ways to a common goal."

Many psychologists note that a person’s degree of self-differentiation, while it probably has some genetic component, is largely influenced by family relationships during childhood and adolescence. Once established, the level of self boundaries tends often to be set for life. It can be changed, but it’s hard. It takes a structured and long-term effort to change it.

People with poor boundaries may be chameleons or bullies, or vacillate back and forth. Chameleons depend so heavily on the acceptance and approval of others that they quickly adjust what they think, say, and do to please others. Bullies likewise depend on acceptance and approval of others, but pursue their need by dogmatically proclaiming what others should be like and pressuring them to conform. Disagreement is a threat to chameleons and bullies alike.

A third type of poorly differentiated person would be the extreme rebel who routinely opposes the positions of others. Reactionary opposition is just as much a way of being controlled by others as reactionary agreement is.

Of course, we are all, as our seventh principle says, interconnected. We depend on each other. But a person with good boundaries can stay calm and clear-headed in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection. They can assess criticism in the context of their own long-term principles and considered values rather only reacting from the emotions they’re feeling in the moment.

Boundaries keep you contained – rather than a puddle of emotions and needs for acceptance. Boundaries thus afford integrity: the ability to live from a consistent set of thoughtful principles rather than being pulled this way and that by the shifting currents of opinion and judgment of others.

In a couple, when the partners are self-defined, they can each talk about what they’re thinking and listen carefully – rather than taking on anxiety about the partner’s issue and reacting out of their anxiety. Each can appreciate the other’s decision-making strengths while also able to think things through for themselves. Neither assumes the other generally knows best, but looks at each situation fresh.

They can talk about their fears or concerns without expecting the other to fix or solve them, but simply because sharing our fears helps us think more clearly about them. When they bring their anxieties to each other, the interaction doesn’t escalate the anxiety. Their boundaries help keep the anxiety contained and thus manageable. Each is a resource for the other: emotionally available without either fixing or blaming.

The difference between a request and a demand is in whether you’re upset if it isn’t met. Sometimes its clear that a demand is being made: "Do what I’m saying or I’m going to be angry or upset!" That’s a demand. Other times, what is presented as a request is not revealed to really have been a demand until after the answer is “no.”

But the extent to which you are upset if the answer is “no,” is the extent to which there was some demand in your request. You might hide the upset – the anger or disappointment – and pretend you’re not upset, but if you are, then you were demanding.

When we have good boundaries, when our perceived worth doesn’t depend on things going our way, we can make true requests, and if the request isn’t or can’t be met, we roll with that without getting upset or anxious.

Good boundaries aren’t a barrier against caring, but are a protection of our integrity. They don’t make us detached or aloof, but allow us to be present to a situation without taking anything personally, without taking on the anxiety.

The notion of being a nonanxious presence in the midst of anxiety once seemed self-contradictory to me. My strategy for being present was to show that I was just as worried or scared or angry about the situation as anybody else. My strategy for being nonanxious was to check out, become detached, emotionally distant.

But the reality is that taking on someone else’s anxiety isn’t really being present to it. Nor is detaching and not being present to it being nonanxious – detachment is one way of being anxious. The only way to be truly present is to be nonanxious, and the only way to be truly nonanxious is to be present. And that requires being self-differentiated, having good boundaries that allow you to know that your worth, your dignity, the worth-while-ness of your life is not threatened by whatever mess of which you might happen to find yourself in the middle.

* * *
See Part 2: The Better Your Boundary, the Less You Need a Border

2019-04-26

Hope Amid Despair

The call to neighborliness is the promise we have made to mystery.

I am not entirely clear on what that means – even though it’s my own sentence. Still I felt when I first wrote it and feel still that it is somehow pointing to something that matters. And it gets clearer as I hold that sentence before me and lean into it, and live into it.

The call to neighborliness is the promise we have made to mystery.

I think that is the call that we – we who constitute Community Unitarian Universalist – answer and aspire to answer. It’s what we do in our being here, in our participation in congregational life: we answer the call to neighborliness and live into the promise we have made to mystery.

Today’s topic, “Hope Amid Despair” – is the culmination of a scattered three-part series that began last December with “Reality Amid Ideology.” I started that sermon with this sentence to which I now return: the call to neighborliness is the promise we have made to mystery. We Unitarians Universalists are a part of a covenantal tradition – a tradition of covenant with something that is more powerful than you or I, something mysterious that calls us to our better selves, something that we all sometimes stray from, but that ever-beckons us back to a truer path -- something that defines us as a people.

We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person – every being, I’d say. We covenant to respect the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. The interdependence of existence, and inherent worth and dignity, are powerful. There is a quality of mystery and awe there. How could this be, this total interdependence, this inalienability from concern and respect? That’s why I say we’ve made a promise to mystery: because our covenant commits us to principles ultimately inexplicable.

We sometimes fall away from our covenantal promise – and we do so in the same way the Ancient Israelites did. We fail to care for the vulnerable.

Love of God and love of neighbor are the same thing. Jesus was explicit on that point, and before him, Jeremiah said it. They are the same thing. Love of God and care for the vulnerable are synonyms. Care, kindness, and compassion are, for us, rooted, after all, in a promise to uphold everyone’s worth and dignity because, mysteriously, it’s inherent – and a promise to respect the web of existence because, mysteriously, we’re an interdependent part of it.

This promise we made to mystery calls us to neighborliness. The call to neighborliness prompts us to make a promise to mystery. I don’t know which came first because it seems to me they emerge together, or, rather, they are the same thing.

A month ago, in part 2, “Grief Amid Denial,” I mentioned four things that we are losing that are good to be losing. US military hegemony is waning – which is a good thing because military dominance inevitably turns the possessor into the global bully.

Second, US economic dominance is waning – which is a good thing because economic dominance was never sustainable, or fair to the rest of the world.

Third, the ethnically northern-European have lost the capacity to maintain “our kind of America” – which is a good thing because that kind of America depended on subjugation, exclusion, and exploitation of other ethnicities.

Fourth, the old-line Protestant churches are waning – which is a good thing because religious institutions that saw no need to distinguish between Bible-thumping and flag-waving were never conducive to real spiritual flourishing.

These four, in various ways, constituted the support structure for the American way of life. Without them, the fabric of American life is coming unraveled – which it needed to do, but that doesn’t make it easy.

We’re in a tough spot. We don’t know how to weave a new fabric. We are, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.”

Those most benefited by the old order are most likely to be in denial about these changes, most likely to believe that there’s not really any problem that can’t be straightforwardly corrected. There’s clinging to the notion that these things that are waning can be shored up and America can be made
"great again."

Change is always going to be spelled L-O-S-S for some, and to get past being in denial requires the practices and rituals of grieving – preparing us to move on. So as reality is antidote for ideology, grief is the antidote for denial. Yet grief can slide into despair, so today, part 3, we look at hope amid despair. Our reliance, abroad, on military and economic might and, at home, on privileging persons of northern-European descent and faith institutions of old-line Protestantism in turn rested on fossil fuels and Enlightenment rationality.

Fossil fuels are not sustainable – both because they will run out eventually and because burning them overheats the planet. Enlightenment rationality gives us the wonders of science, but emphasizes control and “a vigorous individualism that has trivialized the common good.” Sensing that these have about reached their limit stirs up anxiety, and the anxiety manifests in exacerbation of what was worst. Greed has been a problematic current of America from its beginning. Anxiety heightens it.

We commit ourselves ever more ruthlessly to self-serving wealth, and those who have it are most able to amass more, so “wealth and control flows upward to the few on the basis of the cheap labor of the many.” Spiraling income inequality results.

Privatism is a related problematic current in American history. Anxiety exacerbates it. The notion that there are common goods that we can collectively realize, and that the form of our collective action is called government grows increasingly quaint. When we privatize everything from schools to prisons to health care should be privatized then the wealthy get health care and education but no one gets the benefits we would all receive when more of our neighbors are educated and healthy.

Which means that prisons are run for profit rather than based on a serious attempt to balance the needs of public safety and the public good of rehabilitating convicts into productive workers, and are thus subject to reform as we learn more about how to effect the optimal balance.

Privatism renders neighborhood “an unfortunate inconvenience rather than an indispensable arrangement for viable human life” (Brueggemann 116). The proliferation of “survival shows” on television and film reflects and dramatically performs this “privatism in which everything is raw competition.” The fantasies that become popular at any given time are metaphors for how reality feels, and the US today has come to feel, to many of us, like “The Hunger Games.”

Violence has long been problem in American culture. Anxiety prompts more of it. The dominance of the gun lobby has represented our readiness for violence in protection of privatized greed. Privatism leads finally to “every one for their self” in a competition in which it behooves us to be armed. In our anxiety about loss of the old way of life, we react in ways that make us less connected, more isolated, less secure, and thus more anxious.

How do we break out of this vicious circle? We are not ready yet for a blueprint, a program, an agenda. We cannot properly assess proposals until we have done the work of imagination.

We suffer, as I mentioned in the first installment, from a failure of imagination, and exercising and strengthening our imaginations is the first task. Before we turn to the policy-makers we need first to turn to the poets and prophets – or else the policies will have no coherence.

We must “dream of possibilities for peace and justice with lesser measures of U.S. hegemony” – in place of the military force of empire.

We must “dream of a lowered standard of living among us, but with a genuine neighborliness in which all share” – in place of the economy of empire.

We must “dream of a new cultural pluralism in which the marker is not nation, race, ethnic origin, but the capacity for neighborliness” – in place of privileging European descent.

We must “dream of a religious [pluralism] in which particular faith is deeply held in the presence of other deeply held faiths” – in place of our historic centering of old-line Protestantism.

We are not ready for details, for we have not yet coalesced around a dream. Recall that Martin Luther King’s dream was articulated in several of his addresses leading up its most famous expression in Washington DC in August 1963. Only after that dream exercised the imaginations of a significant number of people could we then follow with policy: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the fair housing act of 1968.

Hope amid despair was exemplified by Alaxchiia Ahu – also known as Plenty Coups – who lived from 1848 to 1932 in the Montana area. He was the principal chief of the Mountain Crows of the Crow nation. He saw that his people could not win against white encroachment and settlement.
Under his leadership the Crow acquiesced. Unlike the neighboring Cheyenne and Sioux, they did not opt for the noble destruction of going down fighting.

Alaxchiaa Ahu (Plenty Coups), 1908
It was a time of despair. The buffalo went away – slaughtered by whites intent on undermining the livelihood of the indigenous people. “The hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. There was little singing anywhere,” he reported.
“The Crow experienced this as death of established social roles, of standards of excellence, and of personal identities. It is for good reason that the nation lost its sense of life, meaning, and energy….The Crow entered a time when everything familiar and reliable ceased and they were required [as Plenty Coups said,] ‘to live a life that I do not understand.’”
Plenty Coups had experienced a vision when he was young, and this vision – received, processed, and interpreted by the tribal elders – was the cornerstone of his leadership of his people. Under that vision and leadership, the Crow people came to understand:
“All our traditional way of life is coming to an end. We must do what we can to open our imaginations up to a radically different set of future possibilities. In the face of the discontinuity that is upon us, we must preserve some integrity across that discontinuity."
There is reason to hope for a dignified passage across this abyss because there is still, even in the midst of all loss and grief, a basic goodness to the universe.

And: we shall get the good back, though at the moment we have no more than a glimmer of what that might mean.

Plenty Coups was “committed to the bare idea that something good will emerge.” The old way of life was passing and would pass away entirely, yet somehow “traditional tribal values, customs, and memories” would find a future flourishing in the new context, whatever it would turn out to be.
There are possibilities of hope that transcends our limited capacity to understand them.

Thus the Crow resigned themselves neither to despair nor to the suicide of resistance, but embraced, instead, the only hope available. It was a hope that required adapting – learning what could be learned of the new reality in preparation for an unforeseeable future.

Plenty Coups famously urged his people:
"Education is your greatest weapon. With education you are the white man's equal, without education you are his victim and so shall remain all of your lives."
Through many trips to Washington DC to represent his people, Plenty Coups kept the Crow on their original land while many other tribes were relocated to reservations distant from their homeland.

For us today, says theologian Walter Brueggemann,
“the prophetic task is not blueprint or program or even advocacy. It is the elusiveness of possibility out beyond evidence, an act of imagination that authorizes the listening assembly to imagine even out beyond the ken of the speaker.” (127)
The name for imagining beyond evidence is: faith.
“Walking by sight is likely a return to the old ways that have failed. Walking by faith is to seek a world other than the one from we are being swiftly ejected.” (128)
The crucial step in this walk is turning from the narrative of empire to the narrative of neighborhood. From the standpoint of empire, with its market economy, neighborliness appears as miraculous.

What, people caring about each other when they aren’t paid too? That’s spooky supernatural stuff!

The Bible offers us some stories dealing with empire, for its texts were largely composed under imperial oppression: the Babylonian Empire, the Roman Empire. And so the subversive stories of neighborliness in the Bible do appear as miracles. For instance, the story of the loaves and fishes. As I read that story, there was a miracle there. Nothing supernatural about it, though. It was the miracle of neighborliness.
“Jesus talks a great deal about the kingdom of God -- and what he means by that is a public life reorganized toward neighborliness.” (Brueggemann)
Neighbors gather, community and abundance happen.

That’s the kingdom – the kin-dom -- of god Jesus was talking about: public life reorganized toward neighborliness. A crowd of people in the grip of scarcity thinking had gathered to hear Jesus teach. They had secreted away for their own use food for themselves. Under the influence of this remarkable teacher, they began to open up, began to sense the intrinsic abundance of the life they breathed, and the universe in which they swam.
From that sense of boundless provision welled up a gladness to share of this plenty of which they were suddenly so acutely aware. From the bottoms of bags and folds of clothes came forth food to share.

What happened in the loaves and fishes story? Neighborliness happened. Just as neighborliness happened in the story of Elisha and the widow’s oil. She has one jar of oil, from which she is able to fill many vessels with oil – enough so that the sale of that oil will pay her debts and provide enough for her and her children to live on. Where did all that oil come from?

I imagine it came from Elisha himself organizing the neighbors to help out a widow in need.
“Unlike the economy of empire where all flows to the top, the economy of this narrative features miracles of abundance that are unexpectedly and inscrutably given among the lowly.”
Thus neighbors come forth with life-sustaining gifts for a resourceless widow who was about to be devoured by predatory economic arrangement.

Of course, we need the market economy, but we need that sphere to be A sphere of human interaction, not THE sole or dominant sphere.

Of course, we need Enlightenment rationality and the scientific method. But science is about control: prediction and thereby control. The kind of explanations that are scientific are explanations we can use to predict – and hence to control. And that’s been very helpful for developing ways to care for each other – medicine, food production and distribution. But again, that needs to be A sphere, and not so dominant a one.

Our spirits yearn to not merely control our world, but to befriend it. A world that we control – or that we are trying to, or imagining we could, control – is a world in which we ourselves never quite belong – never love or are loved, but can only covet.

The call to neighborliness – the promise we have made to mystery – that is our hope. Your presence here to be with each other, to make the unmarketable abundance of community, is the embodiment of that hope. With the wider culture around us sliding toward despair and desperation, all we need to see hope right now is to look our congregation's building on a Sunday morning.

2019-04-25

Whose Jesus?

Rev. Naomi King
I served our congregation in Gainesville, Florida for seven years before leaving there to put myself at your disposal. One of my neighbor colleague ministers in Florida at that time was the Rev. Naomi King. At state clergy gatherings where I had a chance to talk with and get to know Naomi and attend some worship services that she led for us, I discovered she is at least as creative as her father. Rev. King’s father’s name, you see, is Stephen. For those who like their theology traditional and settled, the daughter is also scarier than the father. She gave a presentation once and just the title would make the blood run cold if you’re the sort of person who believes the faith of our fathers is not to be meddled with. It was titled, “The Queer Pirate Jesus Wheels into Port.”

With that as my introduction, Happy Easter, everyone! It’s the most significant day on the Christian calendar. Early Christians met to celebrate on Sunday, rather than the Jewish sabbath of Saturday, because their savior was resurrected on Sunday. We gather here on Sunday, every Sunday, in continuation of that tradition. And today is THE Sunday – the Sunday that is that reason all the other Sundays are celebrated.

Some of us are Christians, and many of us who don’t call ourselves that now were raised in a Christian tradition. And all of us are shaped by the influences of Christianity throughout culture. The understanding we have of Jesus is important, whether we are Christian, Jewish, atheist, or however we might identify our faith. So on this Sunday of Sundays, let us ask again: Who shall we say Jesus is? Who, and whose, is Jesus?

I didn’t see Naomi’s presentation – I only know her title: "Queer Pirate Jesus Wheels into Port." Provoked by that title, another minister, Rev. Thom Belote, and I have reflected on the idea. I’ll be utilizing some of what I learned from Rev. Belote (HERE), along with my own thoughts.

If the resurrection is about renewal, and if renewal is about getting a different perspective on things, what different perspectives on Jesus might we consider? Consider this – you may have known about this, but you might not. In the deaf Christian community there is fierce debate about whether Jesus knew sign language. Until I learned this, it was not a question that had ever occurred to me. But, then, I’m not deaf – yet. For a deaf Christian, I can see how this would be important. From their point of view, they need to know if this man – this man that their faith tells them is God – was able to communicate with people like them. For a deaf person, it’s the question of whether God is accessible to them. And that matters.

Forensic anthropologists' reconstruction of a
typical 1st-century adult male Palestinian Jew.
Likewise it matters, as feminists have been pointed out, that God is presented as male. And it matters that Europeans have been depicting a Nordic looking Jesus for hundreds of years. Whose Jesus is it?

As for Jesus’ sexuality, official doctrine is that he didn’t have any. Authors such as Nikos Kazantzakis in “The Last Temptation of Christ” and Dan Brown in “The Da Vinci Code” have imagined a sexually active heterosexual Jesus. Others imagine that he might have been gay. There’s not much evidence either way on that question, but there is that curious case of the naked young man in the Gospel of Mark. In Chapter 14, as the Roman soldiers are arresting Jesus, we read:
“All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.”
So there was a scantily-clad young man hanging out around Jesus and his followers. Speculation about what he was doing there can only be an exercise of our imagination – fan fiction, perhaps -- not history. (Still, imagination is essential in theology. If we aren't pushing the edge, we're not only humorless, but a faith is losing freshness. For "cyborg pirate ninja Jesus" see HERE.)

Still, Carter Heyward, of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, speaks of the queerness of Jesus. She says:
"The term 'queer' as I am using it, let me be clear, is not simply a code-word for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other ways of being at odds with dominant gender culture. 'Queer' is not simply a reversal of a negative epithet so often hurled against LGBT folks in homophobic culture. 'Queer' is not simply a synonym for being 'odd,' 'unusual,' or 'out-there.' Queerness is public solidarity in the struggle for sexual and gender justice and of irrepressibly making connections to other struggles for justice, compassion, and reconciliation. [Episcopal Divinity School] is, by the grace of God, a Queer seminary."
Such “solidarity in the struggle for sexual and gender justice” is found in the way the Jesus of scripture breaks gender rules and gender roles. He befriends prostitutes, lepers, and other outcasts, challenges traditional family values, and ignores his family of origin in favor of those who became his "siblings" by loving God and neighbor. He makes a new family of allies – an experience all too common among LGBTQ folk who have been rejected from their families of origin.

Jesus’ ministry embodies radical acceptance. African-American Christians connect Jesus’ own scourging and crucifixion with their people who have been the victims of whipping and lynching. And LGBTQ Christians view the Passion as a hate crime. Was not Matthew Shepard crucified?

Queer Christian art has adapted traditional iconography such as the Stations of the Cross and the Passion narrative to address LGBTQ suffering. In so doing, these artists enlarge the way we all see God. A Jesus that is accessible across a greater range of diversity is a prompt to us all to recognize the image of God in ourselves and in others.

Jesus’ ministry and teachings were subversive of the order that privileged some. (Were I here to add “at the expense of others,” then I would be merely redundant, for privilege by its nature is inherently unequal. When a good or a benefit is equally and universally provided or protected, we call it a right.)

Jesus’ continual theme throughout his teaching is this concept usually translated as “Kingdom of God.” I will often use “Kin-dom of God,” as better capturing the realm of concern and respect for all that I think Jesus had in mind. The original Greek – which isn’t really original, since Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Greek, but, as the language in which the gospels were written, is as original as is available to us – is basileia tou theou.

Theologians seeking to avoid the connotations of English translations, speak of the basileia – the siblinghood of radical acceptance that is Jesus’ predominant theme. Theologian Robert Goss, for instance, writes of:
"the basileia, the reign of God which signified the political transformation of his society into a radically egalitarian, new age, where sexual, religious, and political distinctions would be irrelevant. Jesus acted out his basileia message by standing with the oppressed and outcasts of society and by forming a society of equals." (Elizabeth Stuart describing the work of Robert Goss, as quoted by Terence Weldon, HERE)
For Goss, the resurrection represents God’s endorsement and confirmation of Jesus’ basileia message. The resurrection tells us that not only Jesus, but God, is on the side of the oppressed. This is what Goss means when he says that at Easter, Jesus became the “queer Christ.” Goss is making no comment on Jesus’ sexuality. Rather, he’s starting with the standard claim that the resurrection turned Jesus into Christ because the resurrection signaled the special status of Jesus as the messenger of, the bringer of, the embodiment of, salvation. And then he’s adding that, in particular, the resurrection turned Jesus into queer Christ because the salvation that Jesus represented lay in what Jesus taught: namely, a basileia of respect and acceptance for queer people, and for all people. The resurrection reveals God’s orientation toward the excluded.

Thus Goss calls the resurrection God’s “coming out” as queer – queer in Carter Heyward’s sense of queerness as “public solidarity in the struggle for sexual and gender justice and of irrepressibly making connections to other struggles for justice, compassion, and reconciliation.” Jesus’ call for radical equality continues to resonate wherever there is inequality of concern or respect.

So where does the pirate bit come in? Hold on to your chair, mateys. On this point, Rev. Thom Belote, engaged in a very different project, made a discovery. Rev. Belote was trying to get inside the mind of Thomas Jefferson, because Jefferson had some rather Unitarian ideas about Jesus and authored the first laws guaranteeing religious freedom in the U.S. Belote read hundreds of pages of laws that Jefferson wrote for the State of Virginia. One discovery he made was that the punishment for piracy in the State of Virginia was significantly harsher than the punishment for the equivalent of highway robbery. This was baffling. Why would this be?

He explains:
“The basic answer is that highway robbery exists within a closed system; pirates live outside of the system and threaten the entire system. Highway robbery is a form of illegal commerce, but it reinforces the validity of commerce. Piracy is an attack on not only the material goods that are plundered, but it is also an attack on the idea of property. If a mechanic quotes you an exorbitant price to fix your car, you would accuse the mechanic of highway robbery, not of piracy.”
Yes, pirates are thieves and criminals. Specifically, they are thieves and criminals who function outside of the dominant social and economic system.

Kester Brewin, a British Christian blogger offers this analysis:
“What pirates do, as a rule, is emerge from the underbelly of a ‘stuck’ orthodoxy and, by way of actions that are initially perceived as heretical, reinvigorate that practice. And this is what Jesus did. He saw a religion blocked – a temple which had access restricted by merchants and priests. And he set about plundering the booty in the temple, and setting it free for all to enjoy. This was the heresy of Jesus Christ.”
Jesus upends and plunders the social system when he says that in order to follow him you must first sell everything you have and give the money away to the poor, when he overturns the tables and drives the moneychangers out of the temple (which leads directly to his execution), and when he overturns the law by pronouncing that the “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) In parable after parable, Jesus’ teachings ransack accepted economic principles.

As Christians identify themselves with a symbol of death – the cross – so, too, pirates identify themselves with a symbol of death, the skull and cross-bones. In both cases, the symbol proclaims fearlessness of death. Pirates and Christians both claim a radical power beyond the powers and principalities that pretend to rule the world. By renouncing life, the pirate and the Christian claim life.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul describes the early Christian church. His words might also describe a band of pirates:
“Honor and dishonor, praise and blame, alike are our lot: we are the impostors who speak the truth. We are unknown and yet are well known. Dying we still live on;
disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; in our sorrows we have always cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we own the world.”
Pirates have a certain attraction that no other criminals have. Children on Halloween don’t dress up as arsonists, aggravated assaulters, or tax evaders – but every year a number of them will dress up as pirates.

I think we romanticize pirates because they represent subversion of the usual order of privilege and inequality. While other thieves and crooks pretend to be normal law-abiding folk, the pirates are out there openly under a flag of their own, the jolly roger. They capture our imaginations with a vision of a life liberated for the sort of inequalities that pervade mass society, and that weigh down the spirits of everyone, whether you’re on the top or the bottom of that inequality.

It’s not that pirate ships were utopian models of egalitarian sharing – but they did represent small face-to-face community, where everyone knew everyone else, and where they were out from under the sort of inequalities and frustrations perpetuated by invisible and faceless bureaucrats.

In recent times, the Somalian pirates were certainly problematic. The international community united to take steps to effectively end that problem – and we absolutely had to do that. But at the same time, let us remember the bigger picture.

Let us remember the 1801 to 1805 war against the Barbary States undertaken by the Jefferson administration to suppress the Barbary Pirates who were interfering with the crucial trade interests of the young nation. It was the first but not the last time the United States would go to war against a part of the Islamic world to protect our financial interests. Let us remember the conditions to which the Somalian pirates were responding. Western powers came to Africa, enslaved the people, established colonies, stole the natural resources, divided Africa into oddly shaped nations without any understanding of or regard for local history, and overthrew politicians that Africans elected when the Western powers didn’t like them. Who should be lecturing whom on respect for property? Or even on respect for life?

Jesus was a subject of an empire militarily and economically oppressing the conquered people of Israel. Jesus’ actions and teaching reverse the economic and political worldview of Rome. When Jesus upsets the moneychangers' tables outside the temple, he's upsetting not just tables, but a religio-economic worldview that protects privilege. So, yeah, it’s not so big a stretch to compare him to a pirate.

On this fine Easter morning, the stone of the tomb is rolled back, and the tomb is empty – because the queer pirate Jesus is wheeling into port somewhere else. I don’t know if Naomi talked about the significance of wheeling into port, and Thom Belote’s reflections don’t go into that. Wheeling into port, to my mind, suggests two things. It has a feeling of bringing it home – coming from “out there” and into our hearts with the message of basileia – of beloved community of radical acceptance.

More darkly, though, I reflect that pirates don’t come into established ports unless they have been captured and are being brought in to be locked up and executed – as, indeed, Jesus was. Yet even from the gallows – or the cross – they inspire imaginations to dream of what liberation might look like.

Other theologians and writers have developed the idea a disabled Jesus, an immigrant Jesus, a woman Jesus, a transgender Jesus. When all of us imagine a Jesus that is accessible to each of us – not narrowly cast as a Nordic-featured straight (or asexual) white able-bodied citizen of the empire – then possibilities of liberation open up to us all. When we all see the image of God in each of us, we see it better in ourselves as well.

Yes, these are imaginative exercises, but the gospels were imaginative exercises from the beginning. Theology IS imagination. Our imaginations empower us, and our imaginations make empathy and compassion possible. The basileia is an imaginative exercise – and one of tremendous power. The basileia is for all of us – everyone needs to see it embodied in someone that looks like them. We all also need to see it embodied in someone different from ourselves.

When Rev. Thom Belote explored Naomi King’s ideas of queer pirate Jesus, he concluded by musing that perhaps his next sermon might be: “The Transgender Cowboy Buddha Skips to the Market.”

Happy Easter and may we all be risen.