Thursday, February 28, 2008
Showing The Colors
Maybe it's generational?
It's about the American flag.
Though I fully subscribe to the notion that patriotism is the last hiding place of scoundrels, I get all stirred up by the our flag.
I hate the national anthem, think it is a third-rate, chaotic piece of music with terrible text. I would love it if we could dump it in favor of America the Beautiful.
But when it is played at any public occasion, whether a tennis match or the change of command ceremony at Miramar last spring at which my godson took command of a unit now, again, back in Iraq, I place my hand on my breast, stand as tall as I can, and feel my skin prickle.
Every day on my walk up the hill to my writing station, as i round the curve on Princess Street and climb up to Torrey Pines, I look up to my friends' house to check for their flag, flying from their balcony overlooking the Pacific. If it isn't there I know either they are away or they expect inclement weather. When it was missing for a couple of sunny days last week I emailed them my concern. And was glad to see it up and waving in this morning's gentle breeze.
When we are in residence in Vermont for the gentle half of the year I fly the flag. I used to be lazy about taking it in at dusk or in bad weather, but now I do. I think it has something to do with getting older and more sentimental.
Having lived some of my life outside the United States likely has something to do with such strong feelings aroused by our national symbol.
Now, all this is prompted by the recent uproar over criticism of Barack Obama for not wearing an American flag lapel pin.
Which has morphed into right wing bloggers suggesting that he doesn't place his hand on his breast during the playing of the national anthem.
I hadn't noticed that he doesn't decorate his lapel like virtually every politician has since 9/11.
I applaud his courage and integrity.
Something in me wants to rip the pin from George Bush's lapel, in that shocking military gesture when a disgraced soldier has his decoration stripped from his uniform.
When the lapel pin first began appearing I was ambivalent but uneasy about it. Perhaps it is appropriate for the president to wear when he is in the presence of other world leaders. (Though I don't recall ever seeing the flag of their country on another leader's lapel.) But it so clearly has become an exploitation of the deep, irrational fears and anger of Americans traumatized by the first major military strike against us on this continent since the War of 1812, that it cheapens the symbol.
One of the hopes Obama has aroused in a lot of us - and perhaps not only Democrats or liberals - is that he might - largely because of his symbolic identity - be able to pull us back from the unexamined fears that has been stirred and exploited for political gain since 9/11. And that has made it too dangerous for the usual politicians of either party to set aside.
If Obama seems enough different from and apart from the automatic triggers that virtually every national figure has been, perhaps he can help us step back and reconsider how we might best represent our powerful nation in a this new day. There just has to be a way for us to pursue our national interests that is more creative, thoughtful and filled with opportunity, than simply sending or threatening to send our unparalleled military might.
Uncoupling the flag from our hegemony would be a beginning.
It's about the American flag.
Though I fully subscribe to the notion that patriotism is the last hiding place of scoundrels, I get all stirred up by the our flag.
I hate the national anthem, think it is a third-rate, chaotic piece of music with terrible text. I would love it if we could dump it in favor of America the Beautiful.
But when it is played at any public occasion, whether a tennis match or the change of command ceremony at Miramar last spring at which my godson took command of a unit now, again, back in Iraq, I place my hand on my breast, stand as tall as I can, and feel my skin prickle.
Every day on my walk up the hill to my writing station, as i round the curve on Princess Street and climb up to Torrey Pines, I look up to my friends' house to check for their flag, flying from their balcony overlooking the Pacific. If it isn't there I know either they are away or they expect inclement weather. When it was missing for a couple of sunny days last week I emailed them my concern. And was glad to see it up and waving in this morning's gentle breeze.
When we are in residence in Vermont for the gentle half of the year I fly the flag. I used to be lazy about taking it in at dusk or in bad weather, but now I do. I think it has something to do with getting older and more sentimental.
Having lived some of my life outside the United States likely has something to do with such strong feelings aroused by our national symbol.
Now, all this is prompted by the recent uproar over criticism of Barack Obama for not wearing an American flag lapel pin.
Which has morphed into right wing bloggers suggesting that he doesn't place his hand on his breast during the playing of the national anthem.
I hadn't noticed that he doesn't decorate his lapel like virtually every politician has since 9/11.
I applaud his courage and integrity.
Something in me wants to rip the pin from George Bush's lapel, in that shocking military gesture when a disgraced soldier has his decoration stripped from his uniform.
When the lapel pin first began appearing I was ambivalent but uneasy about it. Perhaps it is appropriate for the president to wear when he is in the presence of other world leaders. (Though I don't recall ever seeing the flag of their country on another leader's lapel.) But it so clearly has become an exploitation of the deep, irrational fears and anger of Americans traumatized by the first major military strike against us on this continent since the War of 1812, that it cheapens the symbol.
One of the hopes Obama has aroused in a lot of us - and perhaps not only Democrats or liberals - is that he might - largely because of his symbolic identity - be able to pull us back from the unexamined fears that has been stirred and exploited for political gain since 9/11. And that has made it too dangerous for the usual politicians of either party to set aside.
If Obama seems enough different from and apart from the automatic triggers that virtually every national figure has been, perhaps he can help us step back and reconsider how we might best represent our powerful nation in a this new day. There just has to be a way for us to pursue our national interests that is more creative, thoughtful and filled with opportunity, than simply sending or threatening to send our unparalleled military might.
Uncoupling the flag from our hegemony would be a beginning.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
What to Think?
I am old enough to remember stagflation during poor old Jimmy Carter's term.
My Republican friends still trash talk Jimmy for letting that happen on his watch.
When Bill Clinton handed a booming economy to George W. Bush, my Republican friends said he was just butt lucky to have been in the seat when things fell right, and doubly lucky to have left just before things went south.
Now their guy is about to bequeath what looks as if it could the most troubled economy in a generation to his successor. Although they are not as eager to defend this failed president as they once were, my Republican friends are saying he is the unlucky heir to a host of global economic issues unrelated to his management of our economy.
My growing sense is that a president (and a congress, and Wall Street) can cooperate with good economic times - and probably can do such stupid things they will negatively impact the economy - the way the world of wealth, money, trade works in the world now has so many variables and pieces to it that no one and no system, no human system, can contain all its pieces.
I liken it to the human body and medicine.
Doctors, like economists, collect mountains of data over long periods. From those data they discern trends. On the basis of those trends they concoct odds. That is, they are willing to say that when this particular set of symptoms appears, 85% of the time this diagnosis fits. In fact I know a man who works for an internet data company that sells that sort of data to hospitals in hand held computers, so when someone comes into the emergency room, a triage nurse can punch his symptoms into her computer and it will immediately display the possible diagnoses in descending order of likelihood.
You can see what a boon this is to emergency medicine.
The Federal Reserve Board does the same with the economy. It punches all the data it can collect into a data bank that also contains historical data. So if the economy has slowed to a 1% growth rate and inflation at the consumer level is running at 5%, their computer will predict what will happen if they lower interest rates and quarter percent and what if they raise them.
If only human bodies and economies behaved in as orderly a way as the data we collect.
It now looks as if the global economy has entered one of those new chapters, one which has elements we have never seen before. Like a Chinese economy that is growing at nearly 10% a year while the 2 billion people in China are beginning to gain access to the internet and build consumer desires. Or several so-called managed economies which make no pretense to being what we call free-market, but are growing much faster than ours and providing markets we desperately need.
The oldest adage in investing is that what financial markets hate most is uncertainty. Even bad news is preferable.
And brave risk-takers will find ways to make big money among all this uncertainty. Which raises the old question about whether wealth any longer has anything to do with actually producing things that people buy and use, as opposed to manipulating numbers in ways that create the illusion of wealth just long enough for the investor to make her millions and get out.
I never get settled about all this. I just stopped taking Lipitor again, for maybe the fifth time, after reading more evidence that it has bad side-effects over a long period, and maybe we have had it all wrong about this whole cholesterol business all along.
And I can barely restrain myself from telling my financial advisor to sell my portfolio and give me the money which I will sew into my mattress until we get a clearer picture of where all this is going.
But restrain myself I have, with the thin gruel of telling myself that if it all goes down the drain, I will be just like everyone else (except those oligarchs who always make money whichever way things are going) and I may as well burn the mattress with the money in it.
What to think?
My Republican friends still trash talk Jimmy for letting that happen on his watch.
When Bill Clinton handed a booming economy to George W. Bush, my Republican friends said he was just butt lucky to have been in the seat when things fell right, and doubly lucky to have left just before things went south.
Now their guy is about to bequeath what looks as if it could the most troubled economy in a generation to his successor. Although they are not as eager to defend this failed president as they once were, my Republican friends are saying he is the unlucky heir to a host of global economic issues unrelated to his management of our economy.
My growing sense is that a president (and a congress, and Wall Street) can cooperate with good economic times - and probably can do such stupid things they will negatively impact the economy - the way the world of wealth, money, trade works in the world now has so many variables and pieces to it that no one and no system, no human system, can contain all its pieces.
I liken it to the human body and medicine.
Doctors, like economists, collect mountains of data over long periods. From those data they discern trends. On the basis of those trends they concoct odds. That is, they are willing to say that when this particular set of symptoms appears, 85% of the time this diagnosis fits. In fact I know a man who works for an internet data company that sells that sort of data to hospitals in hand held computers, so when someone comes into the emergency room, a triage nurse can punch his symptoms into her computer and it will immediately display the possible diagnoses in descending order of likelihood.
You can see what a boon this is to emergency medicine.
The Federal Reserve Board does the same with the economy. It punches all the data it can collect into a data bank that also contains historical data. So if the economy has slowed to a 1% growth rate and inflation at the consumer level is running at 5%, their computer will predict what will happen if they lower interest rates and quarter percent and what if they raise them.
If only human bodies and economies behaved in as orderly a way as the data we collect.
It now looks as if the global economy has entered one of those new chapters, one which has elements we have never seen before. Like a Chinese economy that is growing at nearly 10% a year while the 2 billion people in China are beginning to gain access to the internet and build consumer desires. Or several so-called managed economies which make no pretense to being what we call free-market, but are growing much faster than ours and providing markets we desperately need.
The oldest adage in investing is that what financial markets hate most is uncertainty. Even bad news is preferable.
And brave risk-takers will find ways to make big money among all this uncertainty. Which raises the old question about whether wealth any longer has anything to do with actually producing things that people buy and use, as opposed to manipulating numbers in ways that create the illusion of wealth just long enough for the investor to make her millions and get out.
I never get settled about all this. I just stopped taking Lipitor again, for maybe the fifth time, after reading more evidence that it has bad side-effects over a long period, and maybe we have had it all wrong about this whole cholesterol business all along.
And I can barely restrain myself from telling my financial advisor to sell my portfolio and give me the money which I will sew into my mattress until we get a clearer picture of where all this is going.
But restrain myself I have, with the thin gruel of telling myself that if it all goes down the drain, I will be just like everyone else (except those oligarchs who always make money whichever way things are going) and I may as well burn the mattress with the money in it.
What to think?
Monday, February 25, 2008
Cat's Bite
Saturday night we had friends over for dinner.
Many of our friends aren't cat lovers. Jasmine, or Siamese, has infallible radar for those people and jumps into their laps without warning. They usually try at first to pretend it's fine. But it's clearly not fine at all and once we assure them it's OK to dump her off, they do.
But Jasmine is perverse and persistent. She will sneak around under the table and jump yet again into their unsuspecting and unwelcoming laps.
I used to then roughly grab her and throw her onto the floor. She would yowl and sulk, but usually give up after I took on a zealous watch.
But Jasmine is now 16 and showing signs of mortality. Seizures, a tumor on her lung (yep, found in an echocardiogram done to check out her heart. Yep, big bucks.) And we are not only feeling tender about her, beginning the sad grieving that losing an old member of the family requires, but we are more gentle with her, not wanting to throw her down, knowing she is nursing multiple fragiities, anyo one of which could end her life.
So Saturday, after her second assault on a wary friend, I picked her up, put her in my lap and stroked her gently.
She wriggled free once, headed straight for the same guy, so i picked her up again and held her more tightly, all the while stroking her as we carried on a conversation with our friends.
Suddenly, savagely, she twisted around and sank her teeth into my hands, screeched and leapt from my lap, running into the next room.
This isn't the first time she has ever done something like this. But this time I didn't see it coming and she got a good piece of me. Lacey said she had heard the characteristic warning, the ominous purr morphing into a primitive growl, that warns of an imminent attack. I didn't hear it and I paid the price.
Jasmine has always demanded a lot of attention, rubbing against our legs, pushing open the bathroom door when we're on the toilet, so she can come in and do her dance between our feet. At night she finds a place up against one of us where she nests until we change position, causing her to complain loudly, jumping down to get something to eat or go use the litter box. Then soon again back against us.
But when you stroke her or play with her you better pay attention to her mood, the tone of her meow, the contour of her body. Because her change of mood - or whatever it is comes swiftly and without any other warning.
So why do we not only keep a cat like this, but love her, treasure her as if she were one of our children?
Because she is so utterly unafraid to claim her life, to make whatever move she wishes, without permission or warning.
We - and Cosmos, our Norfolk terrier - can only barely imagine, and envy, such unabashed selfness.
Jasmine will be loved on her own terms, when and how she pleases.
And die undomesticated.
Many of our friends aren't cat lovers. Jasmine, or Siamese, has infallible radar for those people and jumps into their laps without warning. They usually try at first to pretend it's fine. But it's clearly not fine at all and once we assure them it's OK to dump her off, they do.
But Jasmine is perverse and persistent. She will sneak around under the table and jump yet again into their unsuspecting and unwelcoming laps.
I used to then roughly grab her and throw her onto the floor. She would yowl and sulk, but usually give up after I took on a zealous watch.
But Jasmine is now 16 and showing signs of mortality. Seizures, a tumor on her lung (yep, found in an echocardiogram done to check out her heart. Yep, big bucks.) And we are not only feeling tender about her, beginning the sad grieving that losing an old member of the family requires, but we are more gentle with her, not wanting to throw her down, knowing she is nursing multiple fragiities, anyo one of which could end her life.
So Saturday, after her second assault on a wary friend, I picked her up, put her in my lap and stroked her gently.
She wriggled free once, headed straight for the same guy, so i picked her up again and held her more tightly, all the while stroking her as we carried on a conversation with our friends.
Suddenly, savagely, she twisted around and sank her teeth into my hands, screeched and leapt from my lap, running into the next room.
This isn't the first time she has ever done something like this. But this time I didn't see it coming and she got a good piece of me. Lacey said she had heard the characteristic warning, the ominous purr morphing into a primitive growl, that warns of an imminent attack. I didn't hear it and I paid the price.
Jasmine has always demanded a lot of attention, rubbing against our legs, pushing open the bathroom door when we're on the toilet, so she can come in and do her dance between our feet. At night she finds a place up against one of us where she nests until we change position, causing her to complain loudly, jumping down to get something to eat or go use the litter box. Then soon again back against us.
But when you stroke her or play with her you better pay attention to her mood, the tone of her meow, the contour of her body. Because her change of mood - or whatever it is comes swiftly and without any other warning.
So why do we not only keep a cat like this, but love her, treasure her as if she were one of our children?
Because she is so utterly unafraid to claim her life, to make whatever move she wishes, without permission or warning.
We - and Cosmos, our Norfolk terrier - can only barely imagine, and envy, such unabashed selfness.
Jasmine will be loved on her own terms, when and how she pleases.
And die undomesticated.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Hip Hop
I am driving myself (and likely you, too) crazy trying to work out how it is we suddenly have Barack Obama, a previously obscure man of mixed race from the streets of Chicago, as the focal point of our national hunger to move beyond the nightmare of the last 8 years.
It has seemed radical enough - maybe too radical - that the seeming lady-in-waiting was a lady. All the talk was about whether the country is ready to elect a woman president.
No one as recently as, say, 18 months ago was talking about whether we were ready for a person beyond the white skin we took for granted most of my life a person must have to break into the highest ranks.
Well, Wednesday night Lacey and I went to the La Jolla Playhouse to see Will Power's production of The Seven, a hip hop flipping of Aeschylus' story Seven Against Thebes.
A theater full of mostly old rich white folks in cushy upholstered chairs being switched on by a stage full of loose-limbed, trash-talking, break-dancing mostly (there was one loose-limbed young white man in the cast, unless he was an albino).
Maybe I'll try to fill in the blanks in future entries, but right now all I want to say is that I think Barack Obama is the last drop into a super-saturated solution that has caused it to crystallize out into an unexpected solid.
To be in a crowd like the one we were in Wednesday night - most of us would have been offended, maybe even walked out of a performance like the one we saw - feel the energy and excitement, is to know that, whether this year or sometime soon, the long racial nightmare of America is moving toward resolution.
And Barack Obama may be its first beneficiary.
It has seemed radical enough - maybe too radical - that the seeming lady-in-waiting was a lady. All the talk was about whether the country is ready to elect a woman president.
No one as recently as, say, 18 months ago was talking about whether we were ready for a person beyond the white skin we took for granted most of my life a person must have to break into the highest ranks.
Well, Wednesday night Lacey and I went to the La Jolla Playhouse to see Will Power's production of The Seven, a hip hop flipping of Aeschylus' story Seven Against Thebes.
A theater full of mostly old rich white folks in cushy upholstered chairs being switched on by a stage full of loose-limbed, trash-talking, break-dancing mostly (there was one loose-limbed young white man in the cast, unless he was an albino).
Maybe I'll try to fill in the blanks in future entries, but right now all I want to say is that I think Barack Obama is the last drop into a super-saturated solution that has caused it to crystallize out into an unexpected solid.
To be in a crowd like the one we were in Wednesday night - most of us would have been offended, maybe even walked out of a performance like the one we saw - feel the energy and excitement, is to know that, whether this year or sometime soon, the long racial nightmare of America is moving toward resolution.
And Barack Obama may be its first beneficiary.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Faith Crisis?
We talk a lot about people having a crisis of faith.
I wonder.
If what we mean is that people, as they mature, find the formulas they were taught as gospel no longer compelling, or maybe even believable, then I understand the term.
Not to seem flip, but stopping believing in Santa Claus is its own kind of crisis. Lots of us tried our hardest to keep on believing in Santa Claus if only because we suspected our Christmas loot would be reduced by the number of presents ascribed to him.
I would say - looking back - my last hurrah with classic Christian formulas was in 1984 when I went on sabbatical with my family to Zimbabwe. I was pastor of a middle size, middle-class church in suburban Boston. 44 years old, I had been ordained for nearly 20 years, making my living preaching, and was finding it all wearing thin.
African spirituality was just what I needed to boost my waning enthusiasm. The haunting harmony of Africans singing praise songs and their uninhibited religious enthusiasm infected my hungry rational psyche and gave me a huge lift in my vocation.
When we returned from sabbatical I tried to introduce the good people of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Precinct # 1 in Dedham, Massachusetts to rural African spirituality. Those kind people, who wanted so badly for me to succeed with them, tried their best to come along.
It took only a couple of months for me to face that the spirituality that grew from the soil of rural southern Africa was unsuited for hard Yankee soil.
Finally, without the excitement and distraction of African liturgy, I had to face that my own faith was no longer about the Trinity and salvation that we advertised as the payoff for paying your dues and attending church.
And that most of the people who came regularly to church and paid their dues really gave little thought nor cared particularly about the matter.
It took me nearly 20 more years to face reality. I was waited on by a group of earnest men in the church in southern California where I was then pastor, who expressed their concern that perhaps I was misleading people with my preaching which they - quite rightly - regarded as less than traditionally orthodox.
"We want to know," one of them began, "whether you believe in the literal, cell for cell resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as attested in the Bible."
"Well, first of all," I began my defense, "I don't believe that's what the Bible says."
"That's all we need to hear," he went on. "You need say no more. We think you are a kind and good man, but we don't think you have sufficient faith to be leading a congregation of Christians. We think you should resign."
I was taken aback, but I need not have been. They were right. I was not willing to appear to be giving the church over to what I regarded as their unnecessarily literalist views, knowing it would lead to a kind of religious inquisition in that perfectly nice parish. But I also knew that it was time.
I waited several months and then resigned.
I had wanted to give myself full time to writing, and most of what I wanted to write about had to do with what one does when the religious formulas that provided the parameters of life no longer do.
Crisis?
No, not really. A moment of growth, if not in one's picture of things,at least in one's courage in being honest about that picture.
Mine?
Still forming. But I have come to two basic questions that frame for me the question of whether one can call one's self a person of faith in contemporary terms.
Do you believe you have the power to decide or change the course of history in the universe? In other words, do you think you are in control of what happens here?
Knowing what we now know, would you say having been here was, on balance, a good thing?
If the answer to the first question is NO, and the answer to the second question is YES, then I would call you a person of faith.
I wonder.
If what we mean is that people, as they mature, find the formulas they were taught as gospel no longer compelling, or maybe even believable, then I understand the term.
Not to seem flip, but stopping believing in Santa Claus is its own kind of crisis. Lots of us tried our hardest to keep on believing in Santa Claus if only because we suspected our Christmas loot would be reduced by the number of presents ascribed to him.
I would say - looking back - my last hurrah with classic Christian formulas was in 1984 when I went on sabbatical with my family to Zimbabwe. I was pastor of a middle size, middle-class church in suburban Boston. 44 years old, I had been ordained for nearly 20 years, making my living preaching, and was finding it all wearing thin.
African spirituality was just what I needed to boost my waning enthusiasm. The haunting harmony of Africans singing praise songs and their uninhibited religious enthusiasm infected my hungry rational psyche and gave me a huge lift in my vocation.
When we returned from sabbatical I tried to introduce the good people of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Precinct # 1 in Dedham, Massachusetts to rural African spirituality. Those kind people, who wanted so badly for me to succeed with them, tried their best to come along.
It took only a couple of months for me to face that the spirituality that grew from the soil of rural southern Africa was unsuited for hard Yankee soil.
Finally, without the excitement and distraction of African liturgy, I had to face that my own faith was no longer about the Trinity and salvation that we advertised as the payoff for paying your dues and attending church.
And that most of the people who came regularly to church and paid their dues really gave little thought nor cared particularly about the matter.
It took me nearly 20 more years to face reality. I was waited on by a group of earnest men in the church in southern California where I was then pastor, who expressed their concern that perhaps I was misleading people with my preaching which they - quite rightly - regarded as less than traditionally orthodox.
"We want to know," one of them began, "whether you believe in the literal, cell for cell resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as attested in the Bible."
"Well, first of all," I began my defense, "I don't believe that's what the Bible says."
"That's all we need to hear," he went on. "You need say no more. We think you are a kind and good man, but we don't think you have sufficient faith to be leading a congregation of Christians. We think you should resign."
I was taken aback, but I need not have been. They were right. I was not willing to appear to be giving the church over to what I regarded as their unnecessarily literalist views, knowing it would lead to a kind of religious inquisition in that perfectly nice parish. But I also knew that it was time.
I waited several months and then resigned.
I had wanted to give myself full time to writing, and most of what I wanted to write about had to do with what one does when the religious formulas that provided the parameters of life no longer do.
Crisis?
No, not really. A moment of growth, if not in one's picture of things,at least in one's courage in being honest about that picture.
Mine?
Still forming. But I have come to two basic questions that frame for me the question of whether one can call one's self a person of faith in contemporary terms.
Do you believe you have the power to decide or change the course of history in the universe? In other words, do you think you are in control of what happens here?
Knowing what we now know, would you say having been here was, on balance, a good thing?
If the answer to the first question is NO, and the answer to the second question is YES, then I would call you a person of faith.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Obama (some more)
Now David Brooks has joined the panic.
Barack Obama, he suggests in today's NY Times, is a sort of cult figure who had a Zvengali hold on the unconscious of people who like him. It is based on nothing but viscera, has no substance and isn't sustainable. And, says Brooks, some of his most ardent groupies have "recovered" and seen the light. That he is chimera.
So interesting that the Times - the target of every right-thinking conservative - has made space for Brooks, yet another shill for the right. Perhaps the Times finally - just as the seeming generation of conservatism seems to have lost its momentum - caved into the complaints that it is biased. Not fair and even handed like Fox News.
It's a big thrill for me to see David Brooks panic about Obama.
Seems to confirm that he is the real thing. I haven't quite dared to let myself believe that. And, to give Brooks his due, I have probed my own excitement about his candidacy, wondering if I have let myself be seduced by all surface and no substance.
You should know that, for 30 years as a preacher, I was often accused of the same thing.
I usually became defensive when people - like my smart young curate - said I was great at getting people all worked up, excited and wanting to spend their best energy for good. And when the preaching was over, they never could figure out exactly what it might be they were to go and do.
I pled guilty. Not to falsely stirring people's excitement, but to providing energy but not solutions.
And that is what Obama has said he believes is the role of president.
To stir the best in people, reminding and encouraging them, helping them grasp the best that is in all of us, and then demanding that our leaders take us there rather than in the cynical direction of hegemony and greed that has become our national agenda over the past generation.
Hilary Clinton says the job of president is to manage the beauracry so that it serves your agenda rather than the agenda of those who have been there running it for years.
I reject - even while something in me would love to embrace it - the comparisons between Obama's candidacy and that of John Kennedy in 1960. Obama's father is not one of the nation's richest men, not has been ambassador to the Court at St. James. Nor has he hobnobbed with the rich, powerful and corrupt as Joe Kennedy had.
Which means those who are used to holding the reins of power do not know him.
Neither do I.
But I am getting to know him. And with every new day he looks more and more like the best possibility in at least a generation to provide a chance for our nation to make a new choice about our priorities. If getting rich has not only left most behind, but left an empty place in the yearning for justice that has marked America, what might it be like to make that justice once again our agenda?
And if dominating the world has not made us like ourselves better, what might it be like to yield some of our arrogance to become a partner rather than ruler of the rest of the world?
Barack Obama, he suggests in today's NY Times, is a sort of cult figure who had a Zvengali hold on the unconscious of people who like him. It is based on nothing but viscera, has no substance and isn't sustainable. And, says Brooks, some of his most ardent groupies have "recovered" and seen the light. That he is chimera.
So interesting that the Times - the target of every right-thinking conservative - has made space for Brooks, yet another shill for the right. Perhaps the Times finally - just as the seeming generation of conservatism seems to have lost its momentum - caved into the complaints that it is biased. Not fair and even handed like Fox News.
It's a big thrill for me to see David Brooks panic about Obama.
Seems to confirm that he is the real thing. I haven't quite dared to let myself believe that. And, to give Brooks his due, I have probed my own excitement about his candidacy, wondering if I have let myself be seduced by all surface and no substance.
You should know that, for 30 years as a preacher, I was often accused of the same thing.
I usually became defensive when people - like my smart young curate - said I was great at getting people all worked up, excited and wanting to spend their best energy for good. And when the preaching was over, they never could figure out exactly what it might be they were to go and do.
I pled guilty. Not to falsely stirring people's excitement, but to providing energy but not solutions.
And that is what Obama has said he believes is the role of president.
To stir the best in people, reminding and encouraging them, helping them grasp the best that is in all of us, and then demanding that our leaders take us there rather than in the cynical direction of hegemony and greed that has become our national agenda over the past generation.
Hilary Clinton says the job of president is to manage the beauracry so that it serves your agenda rather than the agenda of those who have been there running it for years.
I reject - even while something in me would love to embrace it - the comparisons between Obama's candidacy and that of John Kennedy in 1960. Obama's father is not one of the nation's richest men, not has been ambassador to the Court at St. James. Nor has he hobnobbed with the rich, powerful and corrupt as Joe Kennedy had.
Which means those who are used to holding the reins of power do not know him.
Neither do I.
But I am getting to know him. And with every new day he looks more and more like the best possibility in at least a generation to provide a chance for our nation to make a new choice about our priorities. If getting rich has not only left most behind, but left an empty place in the yearning for justice that has marked America, what might it be like to make that justice once again our agenda?
And if dominating the world has not made us like ourselves better, what might it be like to yield some of our arrogance to become a partner rather than ruler of the rest of the world?
Monday, February 18, 2008
Howie
Semper ubi sub ubi (Julius Caesar 100BCE – 44BCE)
When Howard’s image first reappeared on my radar after a half century, it was surprisingly sharp. And sweet.
Howard and I were neighbors and classmates at the American School in Manila in the 7th and 8th grades. Together we ventured 13,000 miles from home to go to Kent, an austere New England boy’s boarding school in the remote northwestern corner of rural Connecticut. For different reasons neither of us was suited for it and we both left after our sophomore year.
I lost track of Howard until our Kent class, approaching its 50th reunion, through the miracle of the internet, began tracking us down. A year or so ago came an email: if you haven’t read Charlie Wilson’s War, do. Two of our classmates figure prominently in it.
Howard turns out to be one of the most highly decorated CIA spies in the agency’s history. I finagled his email address from the other classmate who had finished his career with the spy agency as deputy director.
Howard is in failing health, living with his wife on a mountain top in southwestern Virginia. His health suffers from the encounter he had at 2am on a side street in Teheran just after our man, the Shah, had been overturned by The Ayatollah. Howard was scrambling to provide for the escape of members of Savak, the Shah’s clandestine service who had been doing our bidding, before they could be discovered and executed.
Howard had just delivered papers the CIA had cooked up, to a man who needed them to escape the country. Two men with rifles knocked him to the ground, screaming Spy! in Farsi (those were the days when our spies spoke other languages) and began beating and kicking him. He felt his ribs breaking and began spitting up blood.
They were better armed than I was, Howard wrote me, but I was better trained. Neither of them had their weapons pointed directly at me. I managed to get my hand on my service revolver, shot one, rolled the other way and shot the other.
I have Googled Howard Hart, looking for my old friend. And I have joined in the outrage that, because Howard didn’t report the incident at the time (They would have removed me, and I still had to get all my people out), and his body didn’t complain really bitterly until the past few years (he has had several surgeries, the surgeons say they have never seen a living person with as wrecked a body), he has been denied workman’s compensation.
He sent me a DVD in which he was interviewed about his uncommon career. He is now a tall, lean, white haired man, his compelling face lined with the creases that tell of a pitiless life. But I see Howie in there, hear a familiar voice in his old man’s solemn, composed, gravelly speech.
In the DVD the interviewer asks him why he did what he did, risking his life every day. Howie described the event that shaped the rest of his life. He was five and the Americans were returning to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation. Howie and his family had been held for five years in an internment camp. When the Americans arrived at the camp, most of those being held were sick, many just days from dying of starvation. The Japanese fled but they took positions outside the camp and began firing back at them.
An American Colonel scooped up Howie, put him under his arm and began jogging toward the beach where boats were picking them up. Over and over he said to Howie, “Don’t worry, Kid, I’m taking you home.”
He said he figured he owed his life to the country that saved his life.
I remember Howie as the pudgy redhead. His salacious sense of humor and quick wit made him endless fun to hang out with. On our trips on the PT boat our classmate’s father had liberated at the end of the war, Howie would swim at night among sharks, seemingly without fear.
He reminded me that one evening at Kent he and I skipped chapel, the cardinal sin in that rigid Episcopal School. We heard a senior coming to check rooms. Howard and I dropped to our knees on the rug in our room, and when the senior opened the door, we began chanting Allah, bobbing salaam. We figured two exotics from the Philippines could pull it off. Neither of us can remember if we did.
One spring when my parents were on leave, Howie came with us on a vacation to Florida. I remember how tenderly he and my mother bonded. He remembers that, too. I always wondered why he went to Kent. He told me my father, whom he greatly admired, had arranged for it. His memories of my family are touching, more generous than my own.
He says he hasn’t the stamina to make the trip to our 50th this May. He and I are scheming ways to see each other. We figure we are each other’s longest standing friend, and if we want to see each other still standing we better not wait another 50 years.
When Howard’s image first reappeared on my radar after a half century, it was surprisingly sharp. And sweet.
Howard and I were neighbors and classmates at the American School in Manila in the 7th and 8th grades. Together we ventured 13,000 miles from home to go to Kent, an austere New England boy’s boarding school in the remote northwestern corner of rural Connecticut. For different reasons neither of us was suited for it and we both left after our sophomore year.
I lost track of Howard until our Kent class, approaching its 50th reunion, through the miracle of the internet, began tracking us down. A year or so ago came an email: if you haven’t read Charlie Wilson’s War, do. Two of our classmates figure prominently in it.
Howard turns out to be one of the most highly decorated CIA spies in the agency’s history. I finagled his email address from the other classmate who had finished his career with the spy agency as deputy director.
Howard is in failing health, living with his wife on a mountain top in southwestern Virginia. His health suffers from the encounter he had at 2am on a side street in Teheran just after our man, the Shah, had been overturned by The Ayatollah. Howard was scrambling to provide for the escape of members of Savak, the Shah’s clandestine service who had been doing our bidding, before they could be discovered and executed.
Howard had just delivered papers the CIA had cooked up, to a man who needed them to escape the country. Two men with rifles knocked him to the ground, screaming Spy! in Farsi (those were the days when our spies spoke other languages) and began beating and kicking him. He felt his ribs breaking and began spitting up blood.
They were better armed than I was, Howard wrote me, but I was better trained. Neither of them had their weapons pointed directly at me. I managed to get my hand on my service revolver, shot one, rolled the other way and shot the other.
I have Googled Howard Hart, looking for my old friend. And I have joined in the outrage that, because Howard didn’t report the incident at the time (They would have removed me, and I still had to get all my people out), and his body didn’t complain really bitterly until the past few years (he has had several surgeries, the surgeons say they have never seen a living person with as wrecked a body), he has been denied workman’s compensation.
He sent me a DVD in which he was interviewed about his uncommon career. He is now a tall, lean, white haired man, his compelling face lined with the creases that tell of a pitiless life. But I see Howie in there, hear a familiar voice in his old man’s solemn, composed, gravelly speech.
In the DVD the interviewer asks him why he did what he did, risking his life every day. Howie described the event that shaped the rest of his life. He was five and the Americans were returning to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation. Howie and his family had been held for five years in an internment camp. When the Americans arrived at the camp, most of those being held were sick, many just days from dying of starvation. The Japanese fled but they took positions outside the camp and began firing back at them.
An American Colonel scooped up Howie, put him under his arm and began jogging toward the beach where boats were picking them up. Over and over he said to Howie, “Don’t worry, Kid, I’m taking you home.”
He said he figured he owed his life to the country that saved his life.
I remember Howie as the pudgy redhead. His salacious sense of humor and quick wit made him endless fun to hang out with. On our trips on the PT boat our classmate’s father had liberated at the end of the war, Howie would swim at night among sharks, seemingly without fear.
He reminded me that one evening at Kent he and I skipped chapel, the cardinal sin in that rigid Episcopal School. We heard a senior coming to check rooms. Howard and I dropped to our knees on the rug in our room, and when the senior opened the door, we began chanting Allah, bobbing salaam. We figured two exotics from the Philippines could pull it off. Neither of us can remember if we did.
One spring when my parents were on leave, Howie came with us on a vacation to Florida. I remember how tenderly he and my mother bonded. He remembers that, too. I always wondered why he went to Kent. He told me my father, whom he greatly admired, had arranged for it. His memories of my family are touching, more generous than my own.
He says he hasn’t the stamina to make the trip to our 50th this May. He and I are scheming ways to see each other. We figure we are each other’s longest standing friend, and if we want to see each other still standing we better not wait another 50 years.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Valentine's Day Massacre
Maybe you are too young to remember (actually, so am I, at 67, but it was a big piece of the history I learned) the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago on February 14, 1929, when members of Al Capone's mob gunned down seven members of Bugsy Moran's mob (actually only six of them were mobsters, the seventh was a mechanic, unlucky enough to be fixing one of their cars in the garage where the shootings too place.
This morning Lacey told me there was a Valentine's present for me on my bureau. Sure enough, three chocolate bars. And even though they are organic, they are reputed to be among the tastiest, and God knows I love chocolate. I had bought Lacey some bath salts, knowing she loves her nightly bath above most things. It was nicely wrapped, thanks to Burns Drugs, and she unwrapped it hoping for God knows...
The label says the salts are particularly good for calming jangled nerves. Already stressed by having set herself the task of finishing and wrapping several lemon curd tarts (try saying that several times fast) for her colleagues in the office and for a good friend, before taking Jasmine, our aging cat, for an x-ray and echocardiogram to see if throwing money at her may extend her life, Lacey was perhaps primed to take offense. Which, in a mild manner, she did at the notion that I might think she would need - or want - stress relief of any sort, ever.
Downhill from there.
Later, when we met for coffee to repair the breach - we no longer rehearse these things as we once did, just take some time off and then regroup - she told me of two of her friends she had tried to call this morning, both of whom were unavailable because they were doing combat with their husbands.
Valentine's Day.
No one in our in-love-with-facade culture any longer really understands what we mean by love. We believe it is a good feeling towards another. And if it is a good relationship, that good feeling endures through all sorts of trials.
But if love is a feeling, then it, like so much of our lives, is subject to our glandular health. Which is rather like wishing for warm sunny days every day of the year. (We live in San Diego in winter, which is reputed to have the nation's best weather, and that is maybe the biggest reason so many of us live here. Today it is over cast, with sporadic showers and 57º)
Love is an act of the will. It calls on every resource in us. While it may get its start thanks to favorable glandular lineup, that can't sustain it over a lifetime. Of even beyond the notorious seven year itch.
When I have wondered why so few people want to venture into the wilds of an encounter with the depths of reality (which some people call God, and which religion advertises as its purpose but in fact, like a vaccination, offers just enough to keep us from becoming infected with the real thing), I think of the opening prayer in the most indecipherable prayer in the Christian liturgy. The prayer is, appropriately, addressed to God:
"Unto to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid..."
Who could, who would live with someone that describes?
I recently read a book about five young men who entered the most austere and demanding monastic order in 1960. The book was written by a woman who is married to one of those men. (He lasted less than 24 hours in the order). Only one of them remains. The terror of being left with no hiding place is way too much for most of us mere mortals.
Marriage is the closest most of us come. And most of us either bail or learn to fudge.
Who can endure the searing fire of being known, utterly and without mercy?
The Valentine's Day massacre.
This morning Lacey told me there was a Valentine's present for me on my bureau. Sure enough, three chocolate bars. And even though they are organic, they are reputed to be among the tastiest, and God knows I love chocolate. I had bought Lacey some bath salts, knowing she loves her nightly bath above most things. It was nicely wrapped, thanks to Burns Drugs, and she unwrapped it hoping for God knows...
The label says the salts are particularly good for calming jangled nerves. Already stressed by having set herself the task of finishing and wrapping several lemon curd tarts (try saying that several times fast) for her colleagues in the office and for a good friend, before taking Jasmine, our aging cat, for an x-ray and echocardiogram to see if throwing money at her may extend her life, Lacey was perhaps primed to take offense. Which, in a mild manner, she did at the notion that I might think she would need - or want - stress relief of any sort, ever.
Downhill from there.
Later, when we met for coffee to repair the breach - we no longer rehearse these things as we once did, just take some time off and then regroup - she told me of two of her friends she had tried to call this morning, both of whom were unavailable because they were doing combat with their husbands.
Valentine's Day.
No one in our in-love-with-facade culture any longer really understands what we mean by love. We believe it is a good feeling towards another. And if it is a good relationship, that good feeling endures through all sorts of trials.
But if love is a feeling, then it, like so much of our lives, is subject to our glandular health. Which is rather like wishing for warm sunny days every day of the year. (We live in San Diego in winter, which is reputed to have the nation's best weather, and that is maybe the biggest reason so many of us live here. Today it is over cast, with sporadic showers and 57º)
Love is an act of the will. It calls on every resource in us. While it may get its start thanks to favorable glandular lineup, that can't sustain it over a lifetime. Of even beyond the notorious seven year itch.
When I have wondered why so few people want to venture into the wilds of an encounter with the depths of reality (which some people call God, and which religion advertises as its purpose but in fact, like a vaccination, offers just enough to keep us from becoming infected with the real thing), I think of the opening prayer in the most indecipherable prayer in the Christian liturgy. The prayer is, appropriately, addressed to God:
"Unto to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid..."
Who could, who would live with someone that describes?
I recently read a book about five young men who entered the most austere and demanding monastic order in 1960. The book was written by a woman who is married to one of those men. (He lasted less than 24 hours in the order). Only one of them remains. The terror of being left with no hiding place is way too much for most of us mere mortals.
Marriage is the closest most of us come. And most of us either bail or learn to fudge.
Who can endure the searing fire of being known, utterly and without mercy?
The Valentine's Day massacre.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Uno
Maybe you also were watching CNN last night when - about two-thirds of the way through Barack Obama's speech following his huge primary victories in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. - they switched to McCain's speech after he won the same primaries, but with far less impressive numbers.
The contrast was startling.
Obama, once he got warmed up and got his audience with him (he was speaking in Madison, Wisconsin, a traditionally liberal town and the home of the University), not only hit a stride that was like listening to a great rock band, but filled his performance with promises to take on the power brokers who took us into a futile war and wrecked the economy while making the rich richer and the middle class fall behind.
McCain just looked like a tentative old man. He ended his speech by saying, "I'm fired up." The effect was to draw a surely unintended contrast between the words and the visceral lack of energy in the speaker.
For the first time I felt - not hoped, felt - the possibility of a new moment driving out the cynical power brokers who have held power for a generation by either appealing to the worst in us - that their program that sponsors greed could make any one of us as rich as Donald Trump or George Bush - or by scaring us into believing we will all be blown up if we don't turn over our minds and our votes to people as tough and mean as them.
I still don't dare to assume it will happen. People who have enjoyed the kind of power these people have for as long as they have, come to believe it is their right, and will use whatever means necessary to preserve themselves.
But last night I dared to think we may be on our way.
Then I shifted to the Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in NYC. But I was too old and weary to stay up long enough to see the Beagle win. First time in the history of the event. A Beagle!
The contrast was startling.
Obama, once he got warmed up and got his audience with him (he was speaking in Madison, Wisconsin, a traditionally liberal town and the home of the University), not only hit a stride that was like listening to a great rock band, but filled his performance with promises to take on the power brokers who took us into a futile war and wrecked the economy while making the rich richer and the middle class fall behind.
McCain just looked like a tentative old man. He ended his speech by saying, "I'm fired up." The effect was to draw a surely unintended contrast between the words and the visceral lack of energy in the speaker.
For the first time I felt - not hoped, felt - the possibility of a new moment driving out the cynical power brokers who have held power for a generation by either appealing to the worst in us - that their program that sponsors greed could make any one of us as rich as Donald Trump or George Bush - or by scaring us into believing we will all be blown up if we don't turn over our minds and our votes to people as tough and mean as them.
I still don't dare to assume it will happen. People who have enjoyed the kind of power these people have for as long as they have, come to believe it is their right, and will use whatever means necessary to preserve themselves.
But last night I dared to think we may be on our way.
Then I shifted to the Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in NYC. But I was too old and weary to stay up long enough to see the Beagle win. First time in the history of the event. A Beagle!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Salvation's Walls
Lincoln’s Birthday February 12, 2008
You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.
Carl Jung (1846-1896)
With Salvation’s walls surrounded
Thou mayest smile at all thy foes. (from Hymn #522)
Austria. The tune has haunted me over the past couple of weeks.
At lunch across the street from the church where I used to work. My predecessor, wanting to increase the range of the chimes had the baffles removed. The tinny result was so offensive to even the untrained ear that – after complaints from neighbors – the bells went silent for decades.
They have been restored, sounding hymns and the hours across the village.
Glorious things of Thee are spoken… set up sympathetic vibrations with something warehoused in my brain stem, distracting me from conversation.
Two days later at the Fed Cup, the women’s version of the Davis Cup, the German and American teams stood at attention on the stadium court before the tennis began, for the playing of the two nations’ national tunes.
Had I known this was the German national anthem? Austria? This haunting 18th century tune by Franz Josef Haydn?
A week later – overhearing myself humming the tune everywhere I walked – at an affecting play in the tiny theater in the round in Balboa Park, a play about Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, the German boxer Louis fought twice in the 1930s as the two nations prepared to go to war against each other, as we took our seats the speaker behind me played the tune again. Austria.
Next morning, as he was steaming my mocha, I asked Peter if Austria had long been the German national anthem. (You may remember Peter, whose hobby, The Brick & Bell, La Jolla’s best coffee shop, entertains him while he gets rich playing poker. I never dreamed he was anything other than lifelong American until he told me he had been born an orphan in East Germany under the Communists who targeted orphans for particular skills. He was immersed early in American English. I’ve never asked him what, besides running a California coffee shop, might have been the purpose.)
Austria? Peter demurred. He didn’t know. Nor wish to discuss it.
With salvation’s walls surrounded, thou mayest smile at all thy foes.
Succinctly sums up soul longing. And maybe explains why my eyes begin to fill before I am conscious of hearing the music.
And why I’m wary of the this wide boulevard of yearning, paved over our unconscious, all too available to despots.
A wariness that wants my wish for Barack Obama’s success to be based on thoughtful principle carefully considered, not hysteria. A seasoned cynic, too calloused to become a groupie, having tended too many burials to fall for promises of being able to smile at all my foes.
Two nights ago Jasmine, our eccentric 16 year old Siamese, sometimes seemingly the sole nucleus around which our disparate family can cohere, had what looked like a seizure. She’s tough, has so far outlived the prognosis when, 10 years ago she suffered renal failure, that I had begun to discount her mortality altogether.
Sunday night she gave us this terrifying preview of what certainly lies ahead, likely soon. My years of brave resolve about our ancient foe dissolved in the moment. Anyone who persuades me that they could rescue us from facing this – Barack Obama, John McCain, Abe Lincoln, hell, George Bush – might well win my vote.
You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.
Carl Jung (1846-1896)
With Salvation’s walls surrounded
Thou mayest smile at all thy foes. (from Hymn #522)
Austria. The tune has haunted me over the past couple of weeks.
At lunch across the street from the church where I used to work. My predecessor, wanting to increase the range of the chimes had the baffles removed. The tinny result was so offensive to even the untrained ear that – after complaints from neighbors – the bells went silent for decades.
They have been restored, sounding hymns and the hours across the village.
Glorious things of Thee are spoken… set up sympathetic vibrations with something warehoused in my brain stem, distracting me from conversation.
Two days later at the Fed Cup, the women’s version of the Davis Cup, the German and American teams stood at attention on the stadium court before the tennis began, for the playing of the two nations’ national tunes.
Had I known this was the German national anthem? Austria? This haunting 18th century tune by Franz Josef Haydn?
A week later – overhearing myself humming the tune everywhere I walked – at an affecting play in the tiny theater in the round in Balboa Park, a play about Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, the German boxer Louis fought twice in the 1930s as the two nations prepared to go to war against each other, as we took our seats the speaker behind me played the tune again. Austria.
Next morning, as he was steaming my mocha, I asked Peter if Austria had long been the German national anthem. (You may remember Peter, whose hobby, The Brick & Bell, La Jolla’s best coffee shop, entertains him while he gets rich playing poker. I never dreamed he was anything other than lifelong American until he told me he had been born an orphan in East Germany under the Communists who targeted orphans for particular skills. He was immersed early in American English. I’ve never asked him what, besides running a California coffee shop, might have been the purpose.)
Austria? Peter demurred. He didn’t know. Nor wish to discuss it.
With salvation’s walls surrounded, thou mayest smile at all thy foes.
Succinctly sums up soul longing. And maybe explains why my eyes begin to fill before I am conscious of hearing the music.
And why I’m wary of the this wide boulevard of yearning, paved over our unconscious, all too available to despots.
A wariness that wants my wish for Barack Obama’s success to be based on thoughtful principle carefully considered, not hysteria. A seasoned cynic, too calloused to become a groupie, having tended too many burials to fall for promises of being able to smile at all my foes.
Two nights ago Jasmine, our eccentric 16 year old Siamese, sometimes seemingly the sole nucleus around which our disparate family can cohere, had what looked like a seizure. She’s tough, has so far outlived the prognosis when, 10 years ago she suffered renal failure, that I had begun to discount her mortality altogether.
Sunday night she gave us this terrifying preview of what certainly lies ahead, likely soon. My years of brave resolve about our ancient foe dissolved in the moment. Anyone who persuades me that they could rescue us from facing this – Barack Obama, John McCain, Abe Lincoln, hell, George Bush – might well win my vote.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Order & Chaos
Order, Henry Adams wrote (in The Education of Henry Adams) is the law of nature, order the dream of man.
In the Genesis story about the creation of the earth in our Bible - a story borrowed from the much older Gilgamesh Epic (the Hebrews originally had no creation story) says that God worked on a preexistent chaos (the waters of chaos... ever watched the ocean during a good storm?).
Now comes the first real political campaign for president in a generation.
Watch Obama, Clinton and McCain all struggling to bring order out of the chaos. (Huckabee seems to be flourishing in the chaos. In fact,continuing chaos may be the only hope he has of wresting the Republican nomination from McCain.)
The American military is apparently going to seek the death penalty for the six prisoners from Guantanamo it has decided to put on trial. The death penalty, nearly now absent from the nations of the west, and once seemingly from our own country, seeks both the most severe punishment and certainty that the offender can never again do harm. Apart from an instinctive revulsion to the death penalty, I see it as yet another futile attempt to wrestle order from the chaos of human behavior.
George Weigel has given a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in which he sets out what he believes to be the inescapable issues for this country if we are to succeed in the challenge Islamic Jihad has presented.
Among the most radical is his call for an end to what he calls our relativism and skepticism so we can come to common agreement about those bedrock matters which we agree are right, and real, against those that are wrong and illusory.
But suppose one of the - if not THE - overriding issues that distinguishes the post-enlightenment west from the Islamic jihad is precisely that skepticism that is fed by the freedom to explore reality without any fear of being punished for offending orthodoxy?
Weigel cites and praises the Pope for having said in his controversial speech last year that Islam was a religion of unrelenting violence when faced with counter religious claims.
The reason there was a Reformation and an Enlightenment is the insistence of the Bishop of Rome on retaining the right to declare the nature of ultimate truth and reality.
Now, there can be no argument that zealots have an immediate advantage over relativists. Strikes me that the resurgence of the religious and political right over the lazy liberalism of 60s liberalism makes that clear. Many of us believed that the resounding defeat of Barry Goldwater - the proud, defiant conservative - by Lyndon Johnson - hardly the picture of principled liberalism - marked the end of that debate.
There will be no end to that debate.
But as the competing candidates in our presidential election this year struggle to pull some order out of the chaos that many of us remember from days of yore - but is unknown to most of the country - we will remain skeptical that they can do more than move around a few of the checkers on the board.
In the Genesis story about the creation of the earth in our Bible - a story borrowed from the much older Gilgamesh Epic (the Hebrews originally had no creation story) says that God worked on a preexistent chaos (the waters of chaos... ever watched the ocean during a good storm?).
Now comes the first real political campaign for president in a generation.
Watch Obama, Clinton and McCain all struggling to bring order out of the chaos. (Huckabee seems to be flourishing in the chaos. In fact,continuing chaos may be the only hope he has of wresting the Republican nomination from McCain.)
The American military is apparently going to seek the death penalty for the six prisoners from Guantanamo it has decided to put on trial. The death penalty, nearly now absent from the nations of the west, and once seemingly from our own country, seeks both the most severe punishment and certainty that the offender can never again do harm. Apart from an instinctive revulsion to the death penalty, I see it as yet another futile attempt to wrestle order from the chaos of human behavior.
George Weigel has given a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in which he sets out what he believes to be the inescapable issues for this country if we are to succeed in the challenge Islamic Jihad has presented.
Among the most radical is his call for an end to what he calls our relativism and skepticism so we can come to common agreement about those bedrock matters which we agree are right, and real, against those that are wrong and illusory.
But suppose one of the - if not THE - overriding issues that distinguishes the post-enlightenment west from the Islamic jihad is precisely that skepticism that is fed by the freedom to explore reality without any fear of being punished for offending orthodoxy?
Weigel cites and praises the Pope for having said in his controversial speech last year that Islam was a religion of unrelenting violence when faced with counter religious claims.
The reason there was a Reformation and an Enlightenment is the insistence of the Bishop of Rome on retaining the right to declare the nature of ultimate truth and reality.
Now, there can be no argument that zealots have an immediate advantage over relativists. Strikes me that the resurgence of the religious and political right over the lazy liberalism of 60s liberalism makes that clear. Many of us believed that the resounding defeat of Barry Goldwater - the proud, defiant conservative - by Lyndon Johnson - hardly the picture of principled liberalism - marked the end of that debate.
There will be no end to that debate.
But as the competing candidates in our presidential election this year struggle to pull some order out of the chaos that many of us remember from days of yore - but is unknown to most of the country - we will remain skeptical that they can do more than move around a few of the checkers on the board.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Super Delegates
OK, let's talk Super Delegates.
Out of the 4000 delegates who vote to decide who will be the Democratic nominee for president, 800 are Super Delegates. That means they are appointed by the Party, not elected in primaries. So they are not obligated to vote for a particular candidate.
They are former presidents, Senators (maybe Congress Members?), many local officials and various other Party functionaries.
The idea behind it is to leave some power in the hands of the people who give their life to this business. And no doubt the comparatively small number - 800 out of 4000 - seemed as if it would never be enough to counter the results of the primaries.
But this year it looks as though those 800 people could decide who will be the candidate. And, unless the Democrats find yet another way to lose, the next president.
For those old enough to remember when the party conventions actually decided the nominee, this sounds familiar. I will never forget the TV image of Bobby Kennedy leaping over the backs of chairs to get to the (was it Wyoming?) delegation having worked the numbers and figured that if they quickly caucused and gave all their votes to John Kennedy, they would put him over the top. With the cameras intruding, the members of the delegation quickly huddled and did as Bobby asked and they had made a place for themselves in historical trivia.
I don't think Super Delegates are a bad idea. So long as politics is a profession, it makes sense that there be people who know all the inner realities of the process and can have an influence. I don't think any of us would sponsor the idea of going back to the brokered conventions in which the party bosses met in smoke filled rooms and traded favors for votes.
Although sometimes it seems we have merely traded lobbyists and corporate special interests for the old party bosses.
Most assume that because Hilary Clinton has been around so much longer and has the huge inside track of her husband having been president, she will surely have a much better shot at the super delegates than does Barack Obama.
But the Obama people are beginning to make an interesting argument that cuts the other way. Suppose he should do very well in the primaries to come, and end up with significantly more delegates than Clinton - but not enough to gain the nomination?
Then the question for a super delegate becomes: do you give your vote to the person who has been around the track and paid her dues and who will play by rules you think you understand?
Or do you go with the one who actually won the most votes and thus might be considered a favored choice by the voters?
And if you believe - as many seem to - that Obama will be a stronger candidate, particularly against John McCain, do you have a stronger pull to go with the odds on winner, or stick with your old friend and take your chances?
Now all this may be moot; either of them may win enough votes in the primaries to gain the nomination.
But if not, hunker down for blogs full of vitriol as the old horse trading begins in earnest.
Out of the 4000 delegates who vote to decide who will be the Democratic nominee for president, 800 are Super Delegates. That means they are appointed by the Party, not elected in primaries. So they are not obligated to vote for a particular candidate.
They are former presidents, Senators (maybe Congress Members?), many local officials and various other Party functionaries.
The idea behind it is to leave some power in the hands of the people who give their life to this business. And no doubt the comparatively small number - 800 out of 4000 - seemed as if it would never be enough to counter the results of the primaries.
But this year it looks as though those 800 people could decide who will be the candidate. And, unless the Democrats find yet another way to lose, the next president.
For those old enough to remember when the party conventions actually decided the nominee, this sounds familiar. I will never forget the TV image of Bobby Kennedy leaping over the backs of chairs to get to the (was it Wyoming?) delegation having worked the numbers and figured that if they quickly caucused and gave all their votes to John Kennedy, they would put him over the top. With the cameras intruding, the members of the delegation quickly huddled and did as Bobby asked and they had made a place for themselves in historical trivia.
I don't think Super Delegates are a bad idea. So long as politics is a profession, it makes sense that there be people who know all the inner realities of the process and can have an influence. I don't think any of us would sponsor the idea of going back to the brokered conventions in which the party bosses met in smoke filled rooms and traded favors for votes.
Although sometimes it seems we have merely traded lobbyists and corporate special interests for the old party bosses.
Most assume that because Hilary Clinton has been around so much longer and has the huge inside track of her husband having been president, she will surely have a much better shot at the super delegates than does Barack Obama.
But the Obama people are beginning to make an interesting argument that cuts the other way. Suppose he should do very well in the primaries to come, and end up with significantly more delegates than Clinton - but not enough to gain the nomination?
Then the question for a super delegate becomes: do you give your vote to the person who has been around the track and paid her dues and who will play by rules you think you understand?
Or do you go with the one who actually won the most votes and thus might be considered a favored choice by the voters?
And if you believe - as many seem to - that Obama will be a stronger candidate, particularly against John McCain, do you have a stronger pull to go with the odds on winner, or stick with your old friend and take your chances?
Now all this may be moot; either of them may win enough votes in the primaries to gain the nomination.
But if not, hunker down for blogs full of vitriol as the old horse trading begins in earnest.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Love It!
Super Tuesday. Super!
I guess McCain will lead the Republican ticket. Maybe Huckabee will be his choice for a running mate?
The seesaw on the Democratic side had me standing in front of my usually dark TV screen the way i do only when my home team is in the final moments of a championship.
I have let my usual cynicism give in to the excitement around the Obama campaign. Made last night thrilling agony.
Not that I can't become a fierce supporter of Hilary Clinton if she becomes the nominee. I will. I already admire her and think she could make a fine president.
But, much as I find Maureen Dowd's relentless besmirching of her tasteless and often baseless, I think she has out her finger on something important in today's column in which she says Clinton has taken to basing her candidacy on her ability to take a punch from the habitually combative Republican attack dogs. She says, quite rightly, that she has been their target for years and has come back strong. She suggests Obama hasn't the heft to stand up under their assault.
"No one is going to Swift Boat me," she boasts.
I sure as hell hope not. I am still appalled that John Kerry let that happen to him in 2004.
But fending off attacks is surely not what has become the totality of the qualifications required to be elected president.
And that hope is what is feeding the support for Barack Obama. I started to write "even" from, but maybe should write "especially" from many of the most calloused veterans. When was the last time - if ever - you heard the kind of passion from Ted Kennedy you have the past week in his speaking for Obama?
I just love this political season.
I guess McCain will lead the Republican ticket. Maybe Huckabee will be his choice for a running mate?
The seesaw on the Democratic side had me standing in front of my usually dark TV screen the way i do only when my home team is in the final moments of a championship.
I have let my usual cynicism give in to the excitement around the Obama campaign. Made last night thrilling agony.
Not that I can't become a fierce supporter of Hilary Clinton if she becomes the nominee. I will. I already admire her and think she could make a fine president.
But, much as I find Maureen Dowd's relentless besmirching of her tasteless and often baseless, I think she has out her finger on something important in today's column in which she says Clinton has taken to basing her candidacy on her ability to take a punch from the habitually combative Republican attack dogs. She says, quite rightly, that she has been their target for years and has come back strong. She suggests Obama hasn't the heft to stand up under their assault.
"No one is going to Swift Boat me," she boasts.
I sure as hell hope not. I am still appalled that John Kerry let that happen to him in 2004.
But fending off attacks is surely not what has become the totality of the qualifications required to be elected president.
And that hope is what is feeding the support for Barack Obama. I started to write "even" from, but maybe should write "especially" from many of the most calloused veterans. When was the last time - if ever - you heard the kind of passion from Ted Kennedy you have the past week in his speaking for Obama?
I just love this political season.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Code Red
face to face Friday with the door bearing the keypad calling for
the code
I learned a decade ago
to gain entry into the sanctum, my sanctum, my
sanctum
by sufferance
granted through the good offices of my
patron
and the code failed, buttons blinked
irate red
rejection
every time I punched in the numbers that have
given the green go ahead to my cubby, my sanctum this sublime
decade
red red red red red
no matter how hard or often I cuffed the thing
I feared my patron had been
unseated
and I with him
across the street at St. James, the previous decade’s lair
Brigid (Bride) of Kildare Day on the liturgical calendar and
I the celebrant at the noon service for four
of us
until just before communion a handsome young well
turned-out Mexican
came, knelt on the floor before the altar, received the wafer and left.
I was closing the chapel door, he paced the courtyard, on his phone,
suddenly snapped it shut and ran toward me just before the door latched
I need a blessing, Father
I’m going now to break up with my girlfriend , he tells me in
musically modulated inflection
we’re going to a therapist; that was her on the phone. She doesn’t know.
I love her but can’t be with her; I know this is right,
and drops at my feet, on one knee, head bowed
God be with you as you do this hard thing, I say as I lay my hands on his head, And with her in her pain. Now go in peace to do what you must.
Thank you. he rises, smiles sadly, disappears through the courtyard gate
on an audacious mission, rearranging a universe,
and I cross the street for one more heart thumping shot at the writing place
my holy hole
for the past decade, now seemingly closed sesame
one of the
maintenance men
sees me punching frantically, my neck red, sweating, sensors screening the
preliminary pain, grieving rejection, reordering my days
Code’s been changed, he tells me without affect, giving me
the new numbers and
my life
back
for a while
more
the code
I learned a decade ago
to gain entry into the sanctum, my sanctum, my
sanctum
by sufferance
granted through the good offices of my
patron
and the code failed, buttons blinked
irate red
rejection
every time I punched in the numbers that have
given the green go ahead to my cubby, my sanctum this sublime
decade
red red red red red
no matter how hard or often I cuffed the thing
I feared my patron had been
unseated
and I with him
across the street at St. James, the previous decade’s lair
Brigid (Bride) of Kildare Day on the liturgical calendar and
I the celebrant at the noon service for four
of us
until just before communion a handsome young well
turned-out Mexican
came, knelt on the floor before the altar, received the wafer and left.
I was closing the chapel door, he paced the courtyard, on his phone,
suddenly snapped it shut and ran toward me just before the door latched
I need a blessing, Father
I’m going now to break up with my girlfriend , he tells me in
musically modulated inflection
we’re going to a therapist; that was her on the phone. She doesn’t know.
I love her but can’t be with her; I know this is right,
and drops at my feet, on one knee, head bowed
God be with you as you do this hard thing, I say as I lay my hands on his head, And with her in her pain. Now go in peace to do what you must.
Thank you. he rises, smiles sadly, disappears through the courtyard gate
on an audacious mission, rearranging a universe,
and I cross the street for one more heart thumping shot at the writing place
my holy hole
for the past decade, now seemingly closed sesame
one of the
maintenance men
sees me punching frantically, my neck red, sweating, sensors screening the
preliminary pain, grieving rejection, reordering my days
Code’s been changed, he tells me without affect, giving me
the new numbers and
my life
back
for a while
more
Friday, February 01, 2008
Party Getting Rough
In what look to me like signs that Barack Obama is beginning to creep into the consciousness of the people who consider how their lives and fortunes could change if he is elected, i am beginning to read articles and get emails from people who are talking about the sorts of things he will have to endure if he is the Democratic candidate for President.
Rabbi Lerner, who leads both Tikkun, the progressive Jewish movement and the Movement for Progressive Religion, an informal organization of believers from various traditions who want to counter the weight of fundamentalists and militants, has written an article about what he calls Obama's Jewish problem.
Lerner says Obama's problem is that he, like Lerner, is a moderate, a progressive, who believes that negotiation ultimately yields more than confrontation.
The older Jewish voters - who comprise only 2% of the American electorate, but a critical 2% in the states with the large number of electoral votes - still hold candidates of both parties captive to the notion that any criticism of Israel's relations with its neighbors, or any suggestion that a less militant stance might prove more productive than its current tough military stance, is not only backing away from the US's historic support for Israel, but may even be anti-semitic.
Already we have seen some of the old black leaders - Al Sharpton who, understandably supports Sen Clinton from his home state - not simply disagreeing with him on policy, but suggesting he isn't really black because he hasn't been a part of the black movement born in the 60s civil rights movement.
This opposition will pale into insignificance next to what the Republican hate machine - that actually made a genuine war hero look like a phony while running their own candidate who used family connections to combat - will do to him.
It all says to me that people - all of us - will do just about anything to fight off change. The devil we know will always trump the unknown or even the uncertain.
Rabbi Lerner, who leads both Tikkun, the progressive Jewish movement and the Movement for Progressive Religion, an informal organization of believers from various traditions who want to counter the weight of fundamentalists and militants, has written an article about what he calls Obama's Jewish problem.
Lerner says Obama's problem is that he, like Lerner, is a moderate, a progressive, who believes that negotiation ultimately yields more than confrontation.
The older Jewish voters - who comprise only 2% of the American electorate, but a critical 2% in the states with the large number of electoral votes - still hold candidates of both parties captive to the notion that any criticism of Israel's relations with its neighbors, or any suggestion that a less militant stance might prove more productive than its current tough military stance, is not only backing away from the US's historic support for Israel, but may even be anti-semitic.
Already we have seen some of the old black leaders - Al Sharpton who, understandably supports Sen Clinton from his home state - not simply disagreeing with him on policy, but suggesting he isn't really black because he hasn't been a part of the black movement born in the 60s civil rights movement.
This opposition will pale into insignificance next to what the Republican hate machine - that actually made a genuine war hero look like a phony while running their own candidate who used family connections to combat - will do to him.
It all says to me that people - all of us - will do just about anything to fight off change. The devil we know will always trump the unknown or even the uncertain.
