Archive for July, 2006
July 30th, 2006
Here’s a way one city is addressing the homeless problem: Orlando bans charitable groups from the feeding homeless people in parks.
I did a bit of checking and discovered that Las Vegas passed the same ordinance one week before Orlando. It’s all in the name of safety and aesthetics of course. It will be interesting to see how far the anti-charity spreads among city councils…and if Canadian cities import the "solution".
It will also be interesting to see what charitable groups do about it. Yesterday, the organization Food not Bombs successfully managed to comply with the restrictive ordinance while still feeding the homeless. A resourceful bunch. Non-aggressive resistance is still alive. Huge kudos to "Food not Bombs".
Technorati Tags: Food not Bombs, Politics, Charity, Homeless, Hunger
July 28th, 2006
I was shocked to find myself in Minnesota last night, in 1989…and think that I could just as well have been living in the Longdale Mississippi in the early sixties (recall the 1963 murder of three civil rights workers). Well, that’s a stretch, but not much.
I’m referring to the movie "North Country", which I watched in some trepidation, with my wife, and my daughter and her boyfriend. It tells the story of Josey (Lois Jenson) who after ten years of witnessing and enduring both subtle and in-your-face sexual harassment at a Minnesota iron mine, launches America’s first-ever class action lawsuit for sexual harassment.
The film, while based on a real event, is "fictionalized inspiration" and can be charged with being preachy and inflated. But there’s a case here for some Flannery O’Connor wisdom: "To the nearly blind you draw with large startling figures, to the hard of hearing you shout." And this is what the film does with great effect.
It ends with a courtroom victory. Other women, inspired by the courage of Josey (Lois), stand up and join her, giving legal and moral weight to the class action.
But in real life it wouldn’t be until fourteen years later, in 1997, that federal appellate Judge Donald Lay, in reversing a lower court decision, would write concerning Jenson vs. Eveleth (Corp): "The emotional harm, brought about by this record of human indecency, sought to destroy the human psyche as well as the human spirit…. The humiliation and degradation suffered by these women is irreparable."
Allow me a wee bit of fulminating as I make this connection: Tragically, our own Christian churches have contributed to a Patriarchy where women, once chattel and non-entities, are still defined into "roles". The roots of this kind of Patriarchy, if not continually pulled up, will reestablish and poison again.
As followers of Jesus, we need always to read our culture, our bible, our theology, through the lens of the gospel. In Jesus, there’s not a whisper of misogyny.
Here’s Dorothy Sayers’ wonderful take on Jesus and women:
Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as "The women, God help us!" or The ladies, God bless them!; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.
Technorati Tags: North Country, Jesus, Patriarchy, Christianity, Misogyny
July 27th, 2006
I was impressed by a recent (July) Christianity Today interview with Rev. Dr. David Zac Niringiye, an African Bishop of a church in Uganda.
In responding to a question about how our Western churches can become truly countercultural, he said we need to begin by reading our Bible differently. He says we North Americans love the "Great Commission" passage because we read, "go and make disciples", and think, "go and fix." As the Bishop says,
But when read from the centre of power, that passage simply reinforces the illusion that it’s about us, that we are in charge.
He suggests we adopt instead, the "great invitation" of Jesus. That is, his "come and see", and "I will make you".
He’s right. When we learn to read the Bible from the perspective of the weak, the hungry, the disabled, the economic outcasts, the immigrant workers, it is possible to break down our barriers of us and them, our tribalism, our hidden racism. And where barriers are broken, people are touched.
But we will only learn to read scripture from this perspective by befriending those "on the outside". Willingly de-centreing ourselves, going beyond or outside of our "culture" in this way, of course, is truly countercultural.
Technorati Tags: Countercultural, Rev. Niringye, Bible, Christianity, Poverty, Religion, Spirituality
July 26th, 2006
"The secret to a happy and lasting marriage", my wife said to a friend yesterday, "is learning how to fight well."
I have heard her say this before. I’ve never liked the answer…it seems so negative. Everything in me wants to say something like, "Having found the right person, love simply endures."
My wife however, hearing this, would smile and humour my quixotic side, and allow me to go on tilting at windmills, ah, for a time. Not that "compatibility" is unimportant. My wife would simply say that it’s not key.
You see, she looks deeper. There is, within her "inscape", an intuitive amative (love expressing) pragmatism. In other words, she knows the value of true communication.
Her, "learning how to fight well", is really a way of saying that in a marriage it’s critical to tenaciously keep lines of communication open. She would tell you that it’s imperative to fight for those connections and openings, to keep things flowing, even when they hurt.
Well, I’m here to tell you that with me, Debbie almost met her match. I can close down like a prodded sea anemone. That is my default position. Another phrase comes to mind…passive aggressive, which when I heard the term for the first time, oh, twenty years ago or so, had me heading for cover. But my wife would find me and shine a light under the layers. Which I know for her was excruciatingly hard work.
Of course what that is, is nothing but active love. It’s caring enough to hurt. It’s saying that you matter, and not just for the moment.
What happens to you when you know you matter to someone? You either grow or run. I’ve done both but perhaps, as twenty years may indicate, I’ve learned to run less and grow more.
I’ve even learned, I think, to occasionally seek out and shine a light under my wife’s "layers".
And all this only because someone loved me enough to "fight well" with me.
Happy Twentieth Anniversary Love…, s.
Technorati Tags: Marriage
July 25th, 2006
This is in response to a comment on the Achan post. The question was:
Does your spin on the Achan story depend on the notion that there must have been other “Achans†who weren’t caught?
The way I see it is if the events in the Achan story" are interpreted literally, then obviously you can have only one Achan. Things are what they are. God commands the wiping out of nations and anything associated or "touched" by them, like Achan and his family. And so it goes, the sacrificial altar humps along, (throughout scripture) claiming its victims and restoring "meaning" and "peace", and keeping the sacrificers safe and on the right side. (And far as we’re concerned, all we need to do is make sure we stay on the right side.)
If however you question this kind of God and refuse an Arianistic split between Father and Son and believe the Son wholly reveals the Father, then things look much different. The first difference is that the interpretation of the Achan event must be seen not only theologically but also anthropologically. That is, that this culture, as those around them, lived within the cult of sacrifice. But with a difference–that the writers interpreted the events within their culture as best they could, with the "light" they had. And that "light" was God’s gradual self-revelation.
In fact the story of scripture is that this "light" grows through God’s slow but persistant self-revelation; even while God continues to work within our own sacrificial matrix as a way of finally undoing it. The light becomes successively brighter as we move through the historical books, then through the poets and especially the prophets; and finally, in Christ, we discover that the "light" is the Light of the world.
With this anthropological as well as theological understanding in mind, "my spin" on the Achan story is that it doesn’t need other Achan’s, actually, doesn’t need an Achan at all. That’s because an "Achan-like" culprit/victim will be found. That is just the intransigence of the "scapegoating mechanism".
In the same way, Christ didn’t plan his being sacrificed, it wasn’t a Father/Son sacrificial pact as the substitution atonement theory presents. What Christ did know is that his studied non-association with sacrifice and scapegoating, powerfully represented in everything from the healing of the Gerasene demoniac, a quintessential scapegoat, to the cleansing of the Temple and its sacrificial fascination, would inevitably result in his being sacrificed. As Caiaphas says from deep within the mechanism, "better to have one man die in exchange for the nation…" And so Christ is sacrificed, and predictably "peace" breaks out, Pilot and Herod become friends over the sacrificial altar.
And without the resurrection, the mechanism stays hidden, violence casts out violence claiming sacred status, the "power of sin" holds, Satan doesn’t fall like lightning. But mercifully, of course, the resurrection redefines everything.
Technorati Tags: Sacrifice, Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Religion, Violence
July 24th, 2006
Many years ago I read a great book called "The Brothers Karamazov". I recall very little of it today. But I did learn something about the author.
He lived in a desperate time. He himself was desperately poor, plagued by epilepsy and mental problems. And the world he lived in was filled with starvation, syphilis, filth, waste, and pogroms.
Something stronger held him together and he wrote about it as only he could, with humour, beauty, and psychological insight. Later in life he wrote:
Love all of God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding universal love. -Fyodor Dostoevski
When the basis of our lives is love, when, as Bob Marley sings, our "religion is love" the things, the stories that are uniquely ours, and that only we can uniquely communicate, become gems of goodness that keep our world upright and work towards a completed creation. Share, publish, paint those stories.
Technorati Tags: Dostoevski, Love, Peace
July 22nd, 2006
Just to address, in part, some of the very welcome comments appearing on this blog…
The logic of violence is truly a hard thing to break through. That the Bible is replete with wrath and violence is no secret but to then extrapolate, that, "wrath is an inescapable reality of God’s person" is the "logic of violence". It is, in fact, the "divinization" of our violence.
Let me explain. You’ll remember the story of Achan who kept a bit of spoil for himself, from a previous battle, and as a result Joshua’s campaign to wipe out the Canaanites stalled. After a search they came upon Achan and after a brief interrogation he pleaded guilty for keeping a "devoted thing". And so Achan and his family are killed:
"All Israel stoned him to death; they burned them with fire, cast stones on them, and raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his burning anger."
The story describes perfectly how the sacrificial mechanism works. The rising internal agitation–in this case over a lost battle–that threatens indiscriminate outbreaks of violence, finally gives way to an exclusive focus on a "culprit" (considering the size of the Israelite army we can guess that Achan wasn’t the only one to keep back some booty). Nevertheless, Achan is killed and God turns from his "burning anger". Peace is restored. Sacrificial violence triumphs.
It is easy to see how the wrath of "all Israel" in the stoning of Achan, is projected on God, as "divine wrath" precisely because "peace" breaks out. And the peace that comes at the expense of the victim is naturally translated as God’s approval.
But now, think about this is personal terms. How often have we been involved in a situation where the group we belong to, or church, or nation etc., is unified by the expulsion of a victim (scapegoat) and is justified in terms of being God’s will, or for the greater good of the people? (Remember Ciaphas?)
This sacrificial mechanism is nothing other than "the power of sin" because it keeps alive our sorting out of "us and them", violent or otherwise, while hiding from us our own involvement.
This "mechanism" is what God wants to destroy because it is destroying us. To continue seeing God as sacrificial, wrathful, is to undo what God is trying to do. It is to charge God with using the same mechanism to destroy the mechanism. It is tantamount to "Satan casting out Satan".
Technorati Tags: Scapegoating, Christianity, Peace, Violence
July 21st, 2006
I took this picture a week ago.
After the acrid smell of what I supposed was diesel exhaust wafted into the room, I got up from in front of CBC’s broadcast of "Trudeau II, Maverick in the Making"…to close the window.
I didn’t even notice it had rained. And there it was, curving over the Bell Tower.
And it was enough. Rainbows always are. And politics and pollution dropped away.
Speaking of rainbows…
…this picture was taken at Hope Mission’s annual Street BBQ.
Technorati Tags: Rainbows, Beauty, Peace
July 20th, 2006
I’m not saying that the mesmerizing power of mimetic (imitative, reciprocal) violence has abated. It obviously hasn’t. What I am saying is that the rising voice of the "victim" is slowly destroying any ability to coronate our violence with the mantle of divinity. But without sacred violence’s ability to curtail mimetic violence we face the reality of apocalyptic violence. We have been undone from within. And it is the fault of the gospel.
In this light it might be instructive to revisit Jesus’ statement: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." I used to wonder about this remark. But again, the fruits of a non-sacrificial reading of the gospel clarify things. Christ is making the simple and profound observation of what happens when the lie of "sacrifice" is exposed. When the mechanism of scapegoating, which is responsible for the founding of our religions and cultures, is destroyed, that is, when "Satan falls from the sky like lightening", we are in the most precarious of places.
No longer does "the peace that this world gives", hold. The spell of "redemptive violence" has been broken. But that’s dangerously good news.
For the first time, we are at a place where we can existentially "see" the gospel holding out our only hope. We are at the place where narrow fundamentalist interpretations of the gospel, that at one time allowed us to feel soul-safe while accepting an essentially fatalistic view of the world, no longer hold. No longer are we able to have heaven in our pocket while staying blind to our complicity in sacred violence.
Anthropologist, Rene Girard, has said in his book, "Violence and the Sacred", "For the first time we are faced with the perfectly straight-forward, even scientifically calculable choice between total destruction and total renunciation of violence."
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. (John 14)
Technorati Tags: Christianity, War, Peace, Non-violence
July 19th, 2006
Rabbi Michael Lerner | End the Suffering in the Middle East"
The people of the Middle East are suffering again as militarists on all sides, and cheerleading journalists, send forth missiles, bombs and endless words of self-justification for yet another pointless round of violence between Israel and her neighbors," writes Rabbi Michael Lerner. This most recent episode of irrationality "evokes tears of sadness, incredulity at the lack of empathy on all sides, anger at how little anyone seems to have learned from the past, and moments of despair as we once again see the religious and democratic ideals subordinated to the cynical realism of militarism."
Rabbi Lerner’s, "anger at how little anyone seems to have learned from the past", cries out for explanation. If we are unable to learn from our past, is there something in the way we remember our past that hides from us the key to our education? What rationale, or what screen is laid over our minds and souls that keep us "ignorant" and so binds us to reacting in the same violent ways and reaping the same violent consequences?
It’s complex. And there are few survey sticks. But, could it be that the screen is "history" itself? When we write, for example, our "history" of a war, we automatically invest it with meaning. But that meaning is itself a screen, a veil. Why? Because inevitably our story of why and how the war was fought will be couched in primarily moral and "politico-religious" justifications. (If you don’t’ think that war is always "religious" go back and read the text of any "war-speech" by any President, Prime Minister or Chancellor.) These justifications of course provides our violence with an aura of respectability. For without this "aura" how can we have any sense of moral superiority with respect to our use of violence?
The interesting thing is how this aura of respectability is breaking down on all sides and how, because of this, for the first time, apocalyptic or "limitless" violence threatens our existence. And I don’t mean that our existence is threatened merely because we have the means to blow up the world. I mean that any restraint religion once had to bestow meaning and so sacrilize and sanction our violence, all violence, is almost exhausted. The Gospel has undermined sacred violence (another name for myth). The "myth" however, again, because of the gospel, no longer hides from us the humanity of the victims of violence and war. And this is why it is so amazing, not to mention paradoxical, to hear the last vestiges of Christian myth-making, Christian sacrilizing of war, by someone like Dr. Charles Stanley.
I’ll attempt to conclude this thought in tomorrow’s post…
Technorati Tags: Christianity, Politics, Religion, Violence, Michael Lerner, Charles Stanley
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